Why I choose to rent 🏡

I like my rundown, inexpensive apartment in the suburbs where I can take the bus to work, walk down to the library or the park and aren’t dependent on driving everywhere.

While money spent on rent will never be recovered, many costs of homeownership are unrecoverable:

• Interest and bank fees that tenants don’t pay or if they do indirectly it’s split among tenants
• Maintenance costs are responsibility of landlord, no need to buy your own lawnmower or power tools
• Higher costs to heat and electric power for a full house compared to small apartment
• Higher property taxes on house compared to what is embedded in rent for an apartment
• Fuel and greater wear and tear on my truck if I lived in outlaying area rather then somewhere I can walk or take a bus

Now, I get my apartment is not nice. But the location is great and the rent inexpensive. The savings on many of the expenses allows me to save more towards retirement and general investments. Money that would be lost on higher utility bills, commuting costs, and maintance costs. I look forward to in the future being able to purchase my off-grid property with cash, which will save enormously on financing over bank financing. 

Rural land can be relatively inexpensive, especially if you are looking at small cabins that are on dirt roads with electricity or running water a long ways from a city in a low tax state. It’s amazing how far $200,000 can go at buying land in a place like rural Missouri or Nebraska or anywhere else in the Mid-West — or even more off the beat places in true west (not North Idaho these days).