On owning a house

I have always been scared of owning a house, but until the last week I haven’t really been able to explain it even to myself. Everyone has always told me that I should want to own “my own” home, that it’s the adult thing to do, that it’s the Australian dream, that it’s the successful person’s dream, that it’s the most financially savvy thing to do, etc… And yet at the same time knowing that it’s not my dream, I thought that I may be lacking something: maybe maturity, maybe the drive to think big. The thing is that I have rarely met people who “own” their houses, just a lot of people who think they own homes and really only own mortgages. In other words, in my eyes I know a lot of people who own large debts. I also, and not coincidentally, know a lot people who feel enslaved to jobs they no longer enjoy, a lot of people who feel a constant pressure that if they don’t earn they will lose a large sum of money and pride. I know a lot of people whose prisons are their jobs for the crime of loaning large sums of money to buy the illusion of owning the structure they take shelter in. Is the illusion worth it? Is a house really worth the slavery most people submit to for 20-30 years? But, people tell me, I am missing the point. See, they tell me, at the end of it you’ll own the house! And you were already going to be pay rent, so may as well use that same money you were already going to spend on the same thing (shelter and a living space) towards something you will eventually own. Yes, something I will own when I am over 50… and which serves me for what? Oh yeah, to live in. That’s it. That’s all the good I can see come of this.

But wait, you don’t have to just own one house, you can own several. You can own one and rent the other/s, or resell them at a higher price. And if you’re smart, you can earn a profit from doing this. Profit? Yes! Of course that is how people like Donald Trump have amounted massive amounts of wealth. However, I have to admit that I haven’t met many Donald Trumps. At the very least I haven’t met anyone who is made happy purely by the fact that they own many properties or have a lot of money. Is my view in this skewed? Yes, for two reasons: 1) I don’t know a lot of people who are made happy by money or property because I don’t share the same values as them and so don’t associate or attract these people as friends; and 2) it means little to me or my happiness how much money or property I own. If I am to be convinced that owning property is going to be beneficial to me, I have to be able to see how it would help fulfill me; unfortunately the properties and the money to be made from them would not make me feel more fulfilled.

What do I care about? My family, participating in and enjoying life while I am alive, and not making a world a worse place for anyone or anything. Call it Christian values or call it hedonism or my own particular philosophy, but it’s as simple as that for me. Yet wouldn't having more money allow me to spend greater time with my family, or “enjoy” life more, or participate in life to a greater extent, or increase my likelihood of what I could do to improve social justice or the environment? Probably. And don’t get me wrong, I usually support thinking “long-term”, but I have come to realise that life is actually not that long. Perhaps it’s as a result of the environment I grew up in with the life-expectancy of those around me being so unpredictable due to poverty and warfare, or perhaps it’s because of the job I do, but I think it’s not always wise to put off living. I genuinely worry that if I spend too much time engaged in earning (to provide for my family or enjoying life, etc), I may well miss out on my family or the time to enjoy life. Sure, most of us in Western society can quite safely expect to live past the time we would've finished paying our mortgage and past retirement, but should we really wait until then to start enjoying the profits of our labour? Maybe it is my yet immature thinking or the fact that I don’t yet have children that clouds my vision, but I don’t want to it put off too long.

Now, what if -worst case scenario- and I work, pay off my mortgage, and then die? Shouldn't I be proud and glad that at least I will have provided for my children a house for them to inherit? I mean, that’s good, right? Sure, that’s noble. How many of us, however, have not inherited houses and still turn out quite OK? I’d say that’s the majority of people. So I’m not convinced at this stage that that is a good reason to own a house. I think it was the billionaire businessman Warren Buffett who said that the perfect amount of money/things  to leave your offspring is "enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing”. That is exactly what my mum did for my siblings and I and she never owned a house or anything of that cost; she just made sure to be supportive and educated us. I want to do exactly that for my children. The rest they will provide for themselves if I manage to teach them responsibility and self-reliance well enough.

OK, OK, now back to the financial reasons as to why buying a house would be good for me. I am told that if I continue to rent, then I am throwing away money, that it is “dead money”. Dead because I can’t profit from it, apparently. But you know what else is “dead money”? The money paid on interest on a home loan. Yes but I’m forgetting about the part where I get to keep my house after I have finished paying the bank back the loan and the interest! Yes, that’s nice, don’t get me wrong; and I do get the fact that you can do whatever you like to a house you have a mortgage on as opposed to one that you’re renting. For all the money I “throw away” by renting, I could be slowly paying off my house, wouldn't that be nice? Yes… if things in life could be guaranteed. I wish someone could guarantee that I will want to work with the same agility, strength, passion, and desire in 10, 20, or 30 years as I do now. Because if I lose my enthusiasm, that is when work becomes my jail for the crime of owing my house to a third party: the banks.  So most people have to keep working in order to avoid defaulting on their loans, working past the time that work became enjoyable, and working with the pressure and fear of keeping the bank fed. That is stressful! It kills the joy in life. How do I know this? Precisely because I meet people who are overwhelmed by these stresses every day at work.

I know there is stress also to pay the rent if you are renting, but I have noted one fundamental difference between those who are happy to rent and those who want to own a house: those of us who rent may stress about getting the money together at the end of the month also, but we don’t share the stress of potentially losing a large sum of money that people who default on loans take on. When you’re renting and you move house, that is it; you pay again for the chance to occupy a space you can live in. Renting is the same as any other consumer product. When we move house or as time goes by, rarely do those who rent sit to add up all the money we have “lost” by continuing to pay our rent. It is the same way that I don’t feel bad when I buy food that I have spent a small amount of money for something that is gone after I eat it when I could have instead put the money aside to buy a farm so that I could grow my own food, which eventually will overall turn out to be cheaper than all that food I bought over the years. Housing to me is just another consumer product. But those who have a mortgage and are unfortunately unable to keep paying it for whatever reason, end up owing a lot of money – and that scares me! Houses cost a lot of money and I don’t enjoy the pressure of having a debt that big.

I met someone a few years ago that told me that he was overwhelmed by the amount of work he had to do in order to provide for his family and maintain all the properties he owned. I asked him why he had so many houses. He said that it was because that was the Australian dream. It wasn't his dream, though. And I started wondering to myself ‘who is selling us these dreams, then?’ And then I read an internet post recently that answered this question and summarised the financial reasons of my fear of getting a home loan: “It is necessary that you be forced deeply into debt, and therefore forced into slavery, for the banks to make a profit”.