I love looking at houses that I can't afford. Apartments too. I don't discriminate.

I'll pick up the real estate brochure, or cruise around realtor.ca for a while, just checking out listings. Sometimes I look at ones that I can afford. And then I quickly expand my search criteria to include ones that are about $100,000 (!) more than I can afford.

Sometimes, I don't even bother. I go straight to looking at places WAY out of my price range. Looking at Dream Homes, if you will.

Except I'm starting to wonder if my guilty pleasure is bad for me. If looking at homes I can't afford warps my expectations of reality in a way that will leave me perpetually unsatisfied with the life I've managed to create for myself.

I know: I know all the cliches. "Dream big!" "Reach for the stars!" "The sky's the limit!".

But you don't get to pick all of your dreams. You don't get to do whatever you want to do AND earn whatever you want. I've made choices, career choices, that dictate what I'm going to be earning for the next couple of years. I didn't choose the most lucrative path, which means that I can't afford the fanciest house right now, or anytime in the forseeable future.

This didn't really bother me, not until I started thinking about settling down. Because I can see settling down in the next 10 years, starting a family - and I'm starting to come to terms that my dreams may not become reality. That I might not be able to afford to give my kids the life I dreamed of giving them, at least not while they're little.

You know what's frustrating? I don't even dream that big. But I live in a really expensive city that's become exponentially more expensive in recent years. Short of winning the lottery/falling in love with a multi-millionaire/radically changing my career path and being offered a job as a hedge fund manager tomorrow, there's no way I can afford to live even close to the area I grew up, which is what I wanted.

I can't even afford half of the sh*ttiest house on the sketchiest side of the street in the worst neighbourhood.

And it's not because I'm some entitled slacker kid, either. I do pretty well for myself. I have a friend who grew up near me. Her family was supported on one income - her dad is a doctor. Now, my friend is a doctor too, and she's dating another doctor. They're both physicians, they're thrifty, and they're still unable to afford to live anywhere close to where we grew up, with twice the income.

But what can you do? When it comes to something like buying a home, you do it when it's best for you, right? It's not about timing the market - that's a fool's errand. It's about doing what's best for you and your family, and dealing with the cards you're dealt, not bitching about how expensive prices are. Being angry isn't going to pay the mortgage.

Instead, you pick the dream you want the most, and go from there, right? Even if it means living somewhere else.

I have another friend who - miraculously - can afford to live in the area we grew up. Except she doesn't want to, because no one else can. She's like: "I don't want to be there alone. Everyone who lives there is like 40 years older than me. There are no kids, there's no community."

Dreams change.