Buying a trailer...

When you get married, there's a standard line of questioning you have to answer when people query you about your relationship status.

"When's the big day?" You tell them a date in response. She'll give an exact count of days, hours, and minutes left.

"How's wedding planning going?" they ask, while your eyes glaze over and you start spouting figures from your bloated budget.

"Where are you planning to live?" It's not always the third question, but it's generally in the top five. And it's a valid one.

Sonja and I don't live together. We live in the same town, but she's four miles down the road—close enough where we spend quite a bit of time together. She'll probably eat about half her meals at my place, she has a toothbrush on the sink, slippers in my closet, and my sweatshirts are constantly disappearing as she wears them home at night.

We've talked about where we want to live after the Big Day. Right now, the plan is to stay put. Moving is a pain and there won't be any time to look for a new place in the weeks leading up to the wedding. Afterwards, we're planning to pay off some bills and settle into life without the added hassle of hauling furniture. So, for the foreseeable future, my swinging bachelor pad will become a cozy apartment for two.

With the housing market the way it is, though, we've talked about buying a place. And why not? If you can get a loan, housing prices are way below the place they were just a few years ago. Up here in the Northeast, the market remains above other parts of the country, but it's still weakened quite a bit. It's gotten to the point where buying a place is feasible, even on our not-too-overwhelming income.

So, in my free time (yeah, I do have bits and pieces of that here and there), I've been trolling through Zillow.com. Have you seen the site? It's pretty cool. Basically, it's a real estate listing website. But instead of seeing pictures of homes with addresses, you can actually view available homes in your area by clicking through a Google map. Homes are listed by price and you can sort for your preferred area and cost. Pretty sweet and a great way to kill some time on the weekends.

Zillow lists all kinds of properties: condos, apartments, mansions, vacant plots, big houses, small homes, etc. They have it all... including mobile homes.

That's right, I've been looking through trailer parks for a place to live.

Of course, I haven't been looking with any kind of sincerity. But I won't lie... it has been rather tempting. Did you know, for example, that you can buy a two-bedroom home with a deck right next to a river and pay under $400 a month? Sure, your house will be on wheels and there's always the oft-chance that a tornado will strike your patch of garden gnomes at any second, but $400? That's not much more than I pay for groceries!

(Granted, I like to eat filet mignon covered in gold dust, but still...)

$400 bucks a month! And you can own a house. Yes, the outdoor hot-tub is a caldron placed above a pile of firewood (and it doubles as a possum slow-cooker), but it's still a hot-tub. For $13 a day, you could have the ability to put a gun-rack on your pickup and climb the cinder block stairs with pride to your own doublewide castle. With the money we'd be saving, Sonja and I could take up hobbies like wearing flannel, forgoing shaving, and even figure out how to chew tobacco... or Big League Chew. The possibilities really are endless.

I'm really not considering buying a mobile home. But, for the price, it's probably a better investment than opening another 401k, right?