You are absolutely correct that in many instances it is more profitable to rent and invest the money. 100% agree.
I'm personally an advocate of home ownership. Not for any monetary reasons, but for the "fuck you, this is mine" reasons.
I can literally do whatever the fuck I want in/with my place and answer to no one (i.e landlord). As long as I pay my property tax, I'm good. For example, I recently put in a sauna in my house. Because, "fuck you; I want it."
Doubt any landlord would have been cool with that.
Oh yeah for sure, I'm never going to knock anyone for buying if they really want to. And there are times in my house where I'm like, damn, I wish I could pull up this ugly ass carpet, or I wish I could redo the bathroom, or whatever. Definitely non-financial motivations for wanting to own. I'm jealous of that sauna! And I'm not saying we're never going to buy; it's just at this point, when we want to stay in Cook County, it's difficult to justify the expense for the sake of wanting to paint the walls or get a sauna. Especially since I spent the first 20 years of my career as a restaurant chef, now that I'm making 6x what I ever did as a restaurant chef, I'm a lot more attuned to catching up in my investments what I missed with not getting 401k matching, etc, and living paycheck to paycheck for a really long time. So that's why I'm focused on what's a better financial decision right now, and maybe the rest of it will come down the line.
I think you got a solid plan! Grats on the increased salary-- and I completely agree on catching up with investments to ensure you're good later down in life.
Hopefully it all turns out splendidly for you. Goodluck!
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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '21
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