Since the beginning of my time on Mint I have spent $671,557.96 on my house. That’s all spending.

I started using Mint in September of 2009. So 9 years of tracking. Noah and I were married for three years before that and he bought the house in December of 2002 I think. Let’s call it 16 years of paying on the mortgage. I’m away one year from being done with it.

Obviously the home equity line of credit would own my ass for a few years if I stayed.

If I look at just the bathroom remodel let’s say I put in 9 months of labor (I put in over 2 years) and that I worked 10 hours a day 5 days a week. (In reality I often worked 12-16 hours/day and 6 or 7 days per week.) But just to make the number not seem inflated.

Very conservatively that’s 1,950 hours. I’ll call it 2,000 just to make it easier. I mean… really.

Then there’s the garage. That was not as laborious, but it took quite a bit of work. And the yards.

I understand that a lot of the painting in my house (bedrooms, living room, kitchen) are on the chopping block.

So let’s say that I have put an absolute minimum of 3,000 hours of work on my house.

In between principal and interest and other major home remodeling stuff I’m going to guess that Noah paid $150,000 before I started tracking on mint.

So we’ve paid out of pocket probably at least $800,000 for this house and yard and arbor and play set and and and.

How much is my time worth?

How much is my creativity worth?

Now, paying a lot of money for something doesn’t mean you can get that money back. Sometimes you can’t. That’s a fact and I get that.

Houses in my neighborhood are selling in under a month for over a million dollars.

How much do I value myself and the future I can have with Noah and my kids?

Questions.

If I make the house neutral enough but leave some symbolic art pieces (most of the garage, the hallway, the bathroom) I can probably find someone who is genuinely excited to own this house with the art.

I won’t get to visit the art again, but such is life.

I wanted to sell to a friend. I wanted to be able to visit the art. But if life isn’t going to grant me that serendipity it isn’t. I can cope.

This is going to be complicated.