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 arenβt 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 donβt pay or if they do indirectly itβs 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. Itβs 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 β or even more off the beat places in true west (not North Idaho these days).
The pandemic has tormented many sectors of the economy. The sector we highlight today is rental companies, whose income is captured in the Quarterly Services Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.
This survey covers only a sample of the rental sector: businesses that employ workers but not, for example, individual landlords. Also, the space being rented may be apartments, residential houses, or commercial real estate. But these data can still be a good proxy for the entire real estate rental industry.
Whatβs clear from the RE graph above is that income in this sector has dropped considerably during the pandemic. It was obvious that there would be effects from the nationwide eviction moratorium for unpaid rent. It is unclear, though, whether this is the only mechanism at work here, as there are also reports of substantial moves from rented apartments to owned houses. Regardless, this drop in rental income is unprecedented. The sector is recuperating now, and weβll be watching to see when it returns to its pre-pandemic level.
Clutter is just a fact of life. Stuff piles up, messes are made, and dealing with it all becomes one of many things on your to-do list. Easy enough to manage when life is calm and work is steady, but when things get hectic, itβs more and more tempting to let things slide and deal with them later. And eventually, all that procrastinating can turn into what feels like an impossible cleaning challenge.
The nagging feeling that buying is something you should do is one big reason that millennials choose to buy, says Bill Nelson, a certified financial planner and founder of Pacesetter Planning near Boston. We've also been told that buying is an investment, and renting is "just throwing money away."
Adding up the costs. Many experts recommend buying only if you expect to park yourself there for at least five to seven years. What if you like your city and current situation but also have no idea where life will take you in the next five to seven years? Sometimes, "the most you can say is 'I plan to stay in the same spot, knowing everything about my circumstances, career and family today,'" says Jeff Tucker, an economist at home-price site Zillow.com.
Back when George W. Bush was president in 2008, I decided to buy a can of cherry pie filling. Got busy, never made the pie.
Today in 2020, I decided to open that can and make myself a cherry pie. Best by date on the package was January 6, 2015. So what, itβs still good and yummy in my tummy .