Aw...come Pat, you need to have a better attitude than that
I do know that you are living in a rather expensive area...We used to live in Manhattan Il, and couldn't even come close to affording a place there, even though it's such a small town. At the time 100K for a 1200 sqft condo with a crawlspace for a basement and a one car garage in a decent part of Joliet...
The way we've made it work for us is: We bought a home at the lower end of the cost spectrum. PITI normally runs about 20% of takehome. Unfortunately, this house has ended up biting us in the butt, and we would have been better off spending 20-40K more at the start, but there were significant advantages to this location that have since gone away. We purposely bought out of town and one county over to get reduced taxes and fewer restrictions.
I bought two of my projects when I was single, so that really doesn't count too much. The third was purchased for cash from my lunch expenses. I generally build my own lunch for work and that saves us a lot of bucks.
I drive a six year old second hand car and the wife drives a family truck while we save for the air conditioner repairs on her van. I haven't bought a new vehicle since 1986, always ending up with something out of the family fleet instead of it being traded in. We save up and pay cash for virtually everything we buy these days. We're down to one credit card and it's rapidly going away and will be gone by Xmas. Our two big luxury items are full cable service and high speed internet connections and eating out once a week or so. I will admit that our medical and electrical bills are higher than most peoples' due to my wife's disabilities and that also contributes to higher food bills at home too ( 5 minuets at the microwave and she will be about to cave in) so she and the kids get lots of nukeable meals when I'm at work.
Living 50 miles from work makes commuting a pain, but unless we moved into town, and within 5-8 miles from the plant, the time difference is not that bad.
It hasn't been all roses though. We went bankrupt and lost two businesses and were well into six figures of debt a number of years ago. The recovery from that has been slow and painful at times, but has taught us to better manage our money than we did. We're still a ways off from being where we want to be on money management, but it improves every month. With the wife becoming disabled a few years ago and me being laid off and spending time out on medical disability, recovery has been a bit hard, but we are personally stronger and much more selective as to where we spend our money.
So Pat, the only advice that I know of that will work, is devise a plan, live on less than you make, get rid of all your debt other than the house and go for it! I know it sounds simplistic, but it does work. So get fired up and figure out what you need to do to make it happen and then do it! Life is too short to be a gerbil on a wheel......
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but seriously...don't look at warbird ownership as a moneypit...buy a Stearman and put it to work hopping rides, you'll get a belly full of flying and pay for your ride to boot...even a good BT-13...anything with two seats works.
