This is a thought that has popped into my brain more than once over the last 3.5 years of living in my little rental home.
In fact, when my brain starts to calculate the rent amount from the last three years, I mentally look away because the thought is so unpleasant.
In addition to the “Renting is throwing away money!” thought, there’s also a slightly nagging feeling that you have somehow not quite arrived as an adult if you are renting.
Before I left my marriage, I’d been a homeowner since the year 2000! So when I rented this house, it had been 22 years since I’d last been a tenant. It felt a little bit like going backwards in life stages.
Despite these brief forays into negative thinking about my housing situation, I do feel generally good about it. And some of that is because I have loosened up my thinking about renting and decided to tell myself some other stories about it, stories that are more helpful.
I know some of you may be in a renting situation when you wish you weren’t, so I’m going to share my thought processes here and maybe it will help you too.
The main thing I tell myself is this:
Rent money IS getting me something
The “renting is throwing money away” view is merely looking at a financial return on investment, and while there are arguments to be made for renting being more financially wise, I like to look at it in a different way:
I’m not throwing money away; I’m buying myself things with every rent payment.
What are those things? Let’s run through some!
Flexibility
Sometime in the next few years, I will likely become an empty-nester. Who knows what I will do after that? Will I want to downsize into a little home for one? Will I move out of the area? Will I try travel nursing?
I don’t know. So as I look toward some years of change, I appreciate the flexibility that renting has to offer.
Predictable housing costs
I know exactly how much I will spend on housing each month; I don’t ever have unexpected home-related bills.
Home ownership comes with unpredictable maintenance and repair bills, as evidenced by the new boiler system my landlords just had to install!
A lovely neighborhood
Renting buys me the privilege of living in a neighborhood where I could not afford to buy, and where people rarely sell.
The houses are spread apart a bit, there are beautiful old trees everywhere, and it’s ten minutes from my hospital!
Less stress
Buying a house is stressful and time-consuming. I haven’t even found the time to buy a car; how would I possibly manage buying a house right now?
Moving is also stressful and time-consuming. All of my stuff is here, neatly settled; I’m happy to pay rent for the privilege of just staying in place for now.
May 2022!
Stability
If you’ve read any of my Patreon posts, you know that things were rocky for me for a long time.
But the years from 2018-2022 were especially full of upheaval.
2018 was the first time I left my marriage, and the girls and I shuffled between family members’ houses for months. Then in 2022, the girls and I lived with my parents again for four months before I rented this house.
from when the girls and I stayed at my brother’s house in 2018
Here, though, we’ve peacefully landed for a few years, and we don’t have to leave if we don’t want to. I think that’s important for Zoe and me.
Safety
I feel what is probably an unusual level of attachment to this house because it has been our safe haven.
I mentioned the moving-houses that happened starting in 2018, but the years between 2018 and 2022 were chock full of troubles, even when we did consistently live in the family house. Honestly, when I reluctantly ended the separation in 2018, I almost felt like I was going back to a prison.
I had so many miserable experiences in that house over the years, I sometimes shudder when I see pictures of it.
But this house feels peaceful and safe, like home should feel. Maybe it’s a little bit like a security blanket for me at this point.
Perhaps I will be ready to leave it at some point in the future, but right now I’m not, and that’s ok. 🙂
If you’re a tenant, what is your rent buying you?
P.S. People often ask, “Could you buy this house from your landlords?” And the answer is no; the previous renters wanted to as well! 😉 This was my landlords’ starter home, and they want to hang on to it.
