Lesson: To Buy or Not to Buy

If you’re reading this, you most likely have a place that you call home. You may rent, or perhaps you have purchased your own home. Either way, you have a roof over your head. As your career progresses or you think about building a family, perhaps you may consider purchasing a home you can call your own. Then again, you may be content to rent. In North America, owning a house used to be the big dream. You hadn’t made it until you had your own home. Until then, you were faking success. These days many young people cannot afford to buy a home without the bank of mom and dad. The question we will discuss in this lesson is whether buying or renting is the best way to go. In my case, there was never any question that I would live in my own home. I always took it for granted that I would, and I don’t look at the house I live in as an investment; it’s my home. To rent or to buy, that is the question: Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer while paying the costs of an outrageous mortgage or to add paying rental fees to your sea of troubles and regret them in the end. (I think Shakespeare said something like this.)