Maxwell Guessing Game

[holothuroidea]

Where I live if you managed to get a job with just a HS diploma at 18 it would take 7-10 years of saving all of your earnings and spending none of it for you to buy a 1000sq foot 3 bedroom house with 0.10 acre of land (in other words, not enough to raise a quiver on) without debt.

[kpmom]

Where I live if you managed to get a job with just a HS diploma at 18 it would take 7-10 years of saving all of your earnings and spending none of it for you to buy a 1000sq foot 3 bedroom house with 0.10 acre of land (in other words, not enough to raise a quiver on) without debt.

The Maxwell boys don't wait that long to start saving. They start saving as children for this "vision".

ETA: According to real estate web sites there are a number of houses for sale in the $100,000 and below price range in the Leavenworth area. Since Joseph's house appears to be a fixer- upper, I'm guessing it's below 100,000.

[fundiefan]

Of course it is a house! The lives of the Maxwell offspring are already planned, just like poor Joshua, from birth. Of course he will live at home until he's married. Not until the house is done, but until he is married. Because there is no other option. What will he do if he's like Christopher and doesn't get married until he's in his 30's? Waste money on taxes and insurance for a house he doesn't live in?

Their vision has more than just a few flaws.

At least he's a little further than next door though. Maybe when he finds the perfect wife, or, um, when god sends him the perfect wife, they can have more of a life of their own. A mile isn't as easy to cross as a yard or street.

[MamaJunebug]

"Joseph has a beautiful backyard."

Tsk, PoorSarah! Pride and lust, all at once!!! :shock:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ETA that there are foreclosures of reasonably decent properties in Leavenworth for well under $100k.

http://www.trulia.com/for_sale/66048_zi ... losure_lt/

Yeah, I'm a little envious ... and I'm also thinking: PoorSarah enthuses that it's possible for a young man (never woman) to buy real estate debt-free, and for parents to raise children who won't rebel.

I'm thinking of the Junior JBs who do and don't own their own at the point in time. I'm thinking of how each of them rebelled in some things, and still are rebelling, if you consider "not living exactly as your parents live" to be rebellion.

Would I prefer they be living debt-free? Sure.

Would I prefer they believe exactly like me, dress like me, read like me, clean like me, raise their children exactly like I raised mine?

Simply: No.

And why not? ... I guess it's because I don't feel like I've achieved perfection, nor that I ever could, so I never tried.

I've never had that much ego. It's seemed to me over 60 years of being a Christian that the two were mutually exclusive.

Also - I love my children despite their rebellions, and a little more because of some of those rebellions!!!

Well, that's just me. I wonder if the girls will be allowed to travel the mile from Santa Fe Street (Maxwell Central) to Chez Joseph alone. I'm betting on "not," as Steve Lord only knows how many rebellious people live along the route.

Bless Joseph and all who enter into his home. But I wouldn't wanna be him.

[clibbyjo]

I want to see the front of the house from the outside.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Even after the house is all fixed up, he won't be allowed to actually live in it until after he's married. Christopher was living at home until he married Anna, wasn't he, even though he already owned the house they live in now?

Maybe Joseph isn't even going to keep the house. Maybe he's just planning to flip it and resell it! Got to have projects to keep them busy, and it looks like it needs a ton of work.

I was thinking he could fix it up and then rent it out - it's a steady income that way, and if he has the skills to fix up the house, he has the skills to manage the property. Then when he gets married, he just has to not extend the lease another year, and plan the wedding to happen after the end of the lease.

Of course I'm not sure how the Maxwells feel about renting property or becoming landlords. Also I do kinda wonder if they'd have weird requirements in their lease, but presumably the city has some regulations on that. (I rent out the house I lived in before marriage, which I fully own and is a few blocks away from where I now live, and there's definitely rules about tenants' rights, as it should be.)

[MamaJunebug]

Of course it is a house! The lives of the Maxwell offspring are already planned, just like poor Joshua, from birth. Of course he will live at home until he's married. Not until the house is done, but until he is married. Because there is no other option. What will he do if he's like Christopher and doesn't get married until he's in his 30's? Waste money on taxes and insurance for a house he doesn't live in?

Their vision has more than just a few flaws.

At least he's a little further than next door though. Maybe when he finds the perfect wife, or, um, when god sends him the perfect wife, they can have more of a life of their own. A mile isn't as easy to cross as a yard or street.

Fix it up, rent it out for the requisite time, sell it at a profit when times get better, buy something contiguous to the compound. That's another option in the Maxwellian plan, no?

[holothuroidea]

A thought occurs...

So the boys buy the house and fix it up and THEN get married and move in there?

So, a woman's entire life is tied to this home. She's going to spend all her waking hours taking care of it and raising children in it... and she doesn't even get a say in what house it is!?!?

That is SERIOUSLY FUCKED UP!!!

Fundy Boy Checklist

1. Save all your money and never have fun

2. Acquire House

3. Fix house and wait for god to send you a servant for it

4. Impregnate your servant as much as possible

[Mountain Girl]

Living at home until he feels called to get married? Even after the his new house is habitable? Congratulations Maxwell parents! You've managed to completely stunt your children's intellectual and emotional growth and potential. Bravo!

[MarciaBrady]

If the alternative to not rebelling is to become mindless robots then I choose rebellion. And I would consider myself a failure as a parent if I had raised children who are unable to make their own decisions when they are in their 20s and 30s.

[Markie]

Wonder if Christopher kept a hidey hole in his house with a stash of porn to use while he went over to house to "renovate?" Joseph may be plannig to do this as well...

[formergothardite]

How much is Steve paying these guys that they can afford to pay cash for a house at such a young age?

[Creaky Mom]

I want to see the front of the house from the outside.

This looks to be a frontview albeit not the whole thing.

A lot of moldy shakes. Wonder if he took time to have a professional home inspection done?

titus2.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DSC_3293.jpg

[Markie]

How much is Steve paying these guys that they can afford to pay cash for a house at such a young age?

How much of the proceeds from Sarah's books have paid for her brothers' houses?

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Where I live if you managed to get a job with just a HS diploma at 18 it would take 7-10 years of saving all of your earnings and spending none of it for you to buy a 1000sq foot 3 bedroom house with 0.10 acre of land (in other words, not enough to raise a quiver on) without debt.

They fetishize the whole "buy a house debt-free" thing. Of course, their kids are all living at home for free while they save up.

If you can't live for free with someone else, you're going to have to suck it up and pay RENT, if you want to have a room to sleep in. Yeah, you can find cheap rent, but it's rent.

And of course the thing about rent is, you don't get anything to keep at the end of it. So if you know you're not planning to move out of your general area, far better to find a house that you have to take the evil, evil mortgage on, but set your sights reasonably on a modest house so that the payment isn't all that worse than rent, and ideally one you can afford to overpay to get rid of it in a few years. In some places of the country, it's possible. That's what I did, anyway, and owned my house quite quickly. It just makes more sense than trying to save up money and pay rent (which you don't get anything from) at the same time for years.

But of course it wasn't "bought a house debt-free." Talking about it online there were all sorts of people just absolutely fetishizing the whole "no credit!!!!" thing, and didn't seem to think about how they'd actually be ahead if they just did some SANE credit.

How much is Steve paying these guys that they can afford to pay cash for a house at such a young age?

That's absolutely the money question, isn't it? Not to mention the question of their expenses.

They work for businesses owned by their parents, as far as I know, so the whole issue of just what their wages are and what their expenses are is murky - they probably don't pay for board, but on the other hand the food money comes from the same place as their wages.

It all depends on the accounting. Lots of families will say they give their children a house, because their kids work for the family business too, but officially unpaid, and eventually the business is profitable enough to get a house and give that to the kid as a parting "okay, now you start your own life with this capital" thing. The Maxwells are interesting in that they have all the kids working at home at family businesses (as far as I know - or are any of them actually employed for other people? The One Ton Ramp pages and some mentions in "Heart" imply that at least one of the boys has worked in an office before with non-family members, but I'm not sure who owned that business) but they still put on the show of the "usual American way" of making the kids supposedly "independent" once they hit 18 or whatever it is.

Wonder if he took time to have a professional home inspection done?

If you get certain kinds of loans (when I bought my house, I had a FHA loan) the law will require you to have the place inspected in order to get the loan, because it has to meet federal housing standards if they're going to enable you to move into it. Also I think many private banks will require it too, because they want to know that if they end up just owning the house themselves, it's worth at least what they loaned you for it.

But buying a house in cash without a loan, I suppose they're free to not do anything in particular. I'd like to think they realized it's a good idea to inspect something before you buy it, but who the heck knows.

[sassycupcake]

This looks to be a frontview albeit not the whole thing.

A lot of moldy shakes. Wonder if he took time to have a professional home inspection done?

titus2.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DSC_3293.jpg

This picture is actually really creepy- that's not Joseph's reflection in the door. That's one of his chaperones brothers creeping in the background.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Sarah needs to clean the lens of the camera, too - there's a smudge in the upper right that appears in a bunch of the pictures. At first I thought it was a smudge on the wall, but no, it's in the same spot in photos of different rooms.

[Zoom]

Once again Joseph and Anna look like a married couple.

[marmalade]

Living at home until he feels called to get married? Even after the his new house is habitable? Congratulations Maxwell parents! You've managed to completely stunt your children's intellectual and emotional growth and potential. Bravo!

Architect's daughter here. Tiny slope, HUGE foundation problems. If your POS repo cant even grow into a hill that appears to be about 18" high, you have work to do, son. My dad tweaked every place in which he lived and the first thing to fix is FOUNDATION.

Since the Maxes are not forthcoming about how the house is going to be fixed (that 3 season porch could have been saved and added later...but a place where people can have FUN is verboten. But hey, it could have been made into ANY kind of room to keep it over, what 850 sf?

[gardenvarietycitizen]

HUGE foundation problems.

The house, or the buyer? :D

[Creaky Mom]

Yeah, that slope is a bad thing.

Oh well, Rebecca!!!!!!!!!! likely now has her hopes up!!!!!!!!!!!!

[WonderingInWA]

Yeah, that slope is a bad thing.

Oh well, Rebecca!!!!!!!!!! likely now has her hopes up!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG, this is so true! And it would certainly be a step up from her trailer living where she's still sharing a bedroom with her sister!

[pixydust]

This picture is actually really creepy- that's not Joseph's reflection in the door. That's one of his chaperones brothers creeping in the background.

And it looks like he is standing with quite the wide stance!

[Marian the Librarian]

Don’t let the world tell you that it’s impossible...to raise children who won’t rebel.

Joseph will continue to live here at home until the Lord calls him to get married.

It never fails - if I read the Maxwell blog for more than a couple of minutes, I would swear every molecule of air is being sucked out of the room. Steve and Teri win the "World's Biggest Parental Clusterfuck Of All Time" award.

[DowagerDuchess]

I have a questions about the birht order of the Maxwells. Nathan, Chris and Sarah are the older three - Sarah is 30 so the brothers are prob about 32 and 34ish, I guess. The youngest two are Jesse Mary who are about 17 and 15. What is the birth order of the rest of the reversal kids? Wonder if John or Jesse have dibs on the grandparents' house?

Glad the house is a mile away, too bad it wasn't more like 200 miles away. Little Maxwell steps...

Joseph. John, Anna, Jesse, Mary