We absolutely have a mortgage and are in our dream home, we built 7 years ago and there are minor things we would tweak but I love it. We were only able to do this by blind luck of hitting real estate at the right time and selling our other house for three times what we paid for it.

The "pale blue dot" is the only home for all of us. We try to care for it during our fleeting stay.

(Aging gives you perspective! Or at least the conceited illusion of it.)

This all depends on your earning power and time plus skill set. We didn’t build our dream home til we were in our 50’s. We got a mortgage when rates were rock bottom. Because I have a construction background and am a designer, and we both had executive corporate positions I knew we had to have a builder execute the build. I designed the whole house and the builder’s architect designed the roof (complicated French gable so not in my skill set!) but I can tell you it was a challenge. It took 14 months after slab was poured. 26 months total. The final product was divine and we had so many people who wanted to buy it that we knew when we wanted to downsize (it was just under 6,000 sq ft) we would have no problem. We thoroughly enjoyed the home and made a tidy profit when we sold it. It’s too bad you didn’t take a mortgage when you bought the land and mortgage rates were sooo low. You are probably looking at 5-8 years of building this way. Not something I recommend but if you are willing to essentially live in a construction zone for that time, you can have fun with it. With today’s cost of materials it will be very stressful I am afraid. So take care of your health, find ways to give yourselves relief like mini long weekend get aways to relieve the stress. Study hard because you “don’t know what you don’t know”! Good luck.

Sorry. Typo. Total was 16 months. Always takes than predicted!!

It took us 40 years to buy and live in our dream home! we started several companies and sold them..now we are in our early 60..we sold the last company and retired…..we lived in Texas and returned to Michigan our home…..we searched for the perfect home and yard and found it🤗 we were able to pay for it so no worries about a mortage🙏🏻 it was worth the wait! everyone had different needs at our age…we are fit and healthy so we are still very busy…when we made the move we thought my 92 year old mother would be living with us so needed a spot for her to live…..we even put in a elevator so she did not have to navigate stairs but that did not last long..she is safe and comfortable in her own senior apartment now… we also needed bedrooms and bathrooms that would be comfortable when our 2 adult children and their families come to visit…it all worked out and we love our big dream home..it is 6700sft with another 3500sft finished basement with a Theater room( our favorite spot, we use it just about everynight) have no idea how long we will be here but we are loving it and so is the family🩷

People's dream home changes throughout the years. The several acres and 4000 square feet plus barn and outbuildings hobby farm idea in your 20's becomes a smaller suburban lot, with close access to kids soccer games and ballet in your 30's. Then morphs to a more realistic assessment of time spent on home things vs time spent doing other things in your 40's and 50's. Or wanting the bigger house for all the grandchildren to visit, if the gods of fortune have smiled upon you, and you can afford the help to maintain all of that. As we age, our income will dictate the dream to be large or small, but the biggest thing that all have in common is wanting to feel financially secure and not have income dictate choices between shelter, medicine, and transportation, etc.