How to Make A Decision When You're All About Emotions and He's All About The Numbers

So…I missed blogging last week.  Not because I didn’t wanna…I just overbooked and overworked myself.  And then I found myself having to make an important decision.

Years ago, I created a rate-a-date spreadsheet to help me decide who was good for me to date and who wasn’t.  Yes, I could’ve blindly followed my gut instinct, but that seemed to get me into more trouble than not.  The last time I used the rate a date spreadsheet was when I met Doug, now fiancé.  By following a criterion I had set for myself and then sticking to the numbers, I found myself a pretty decent soul mate.  My life has significantly improved since he’s been in it.

Back to my very important decision…

Many of you know I moved from St Petersburg to Lutz permanently in October.  We decided we liked the location of our vacation home so much that we needed to be here full-time.  Unfortunately, our vacation home appears to be a really lousy permanent home.

Doug and I were in a disagreement about what to do next.  I’m an emotional and intuitive decision maker.  I felt constrained by our current living conditions and wanted to move into a place better suited to our needs.  Doug is a numbers guy.  He thought we should stay put, as it’s going to cost additional money to move again, especially since we’d be moving into our forever home in 2-3 years.  I felt that 2-3 years to be in a place we both hate living in full-time is a long time.  He ran the numbers and decided the extra expense of moving was not worth it.  I countered, who knows how long it’s going to take to build a house with current building supply shortages and inflation? Round and round we went.

Doug suggested we use my old rate-a-date system to help us decide what our next move should be.  The rate a date system accounts for both emotions and numbers, as you’ll soon see.

We took our current home and the 2 other places we were thinking about buying, and compared them next to each other. 

We created a criteria, room by room, feature by feature, so we could compare the homes to each other.  We started with the kitchen.  We felt our current kitchen was a 0.  Option 1 had a very dated kitchen, which was a 5.  Option 2 had the counter space we wanted, tons of storage, and new appliances, which made it a 10.  

Then we moved to the Master Bedroom.  Our current bedroom is a 5.  Option 1 & Option 2 came in at 10, because they were much larger.  

The Master Bath was next.  Our current bathroom was a 5.  Options 1 & 2 were 10s.  We went through each room or desired feature, assigning a number to how we “felt” about it.  Then we totaled the numbers.