(Honestly, this is most of the time.) Don't even dare to add up all the money you've spent over the last year paying for the right to call a place your own, but not to truly experience as your own. It's where you keep your stuff. It's where you park your shoes. Add up what you've paid in rent over the past year, and it will shock you: realizing you won't ever see that money again--it's as if you paid for a year-round hotel with no vacation.
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| Sometimes renting doesn't make sense |
You start to long for the freedom and autonomy you would have over your own property: if it was yours, you could change out the cabinets, paint the wall yellow, switch the cheap beige carpeting to warm cork. If it was yours, you would have chosen differently: you would have chosen a garden out the back and a place without popcorn ceilings. Renting can feel like settling for second best--every single day.
It's not only personally limiting to rent, but also it's spiritually exhausting to keep paying for something that has no long term value to you. It becomes demoralizing to pay a significant amount every month for a place which you can neither cultivate and alter to reflect your expression, nor call YOURS. MINE. This is MINE. I OWN IT.
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| A child's iconic vision of Home |
It takes a leap of courage to take on the attitude of one who can care for property: Because it is a metaphoric commitment to caring for yourself. Showing up every day and taking care of your own self is akin to taking care of your home. Every child goes through a phase of drawing houses: the box; the tree next to it, the windows and the door, and the family standing outside--because Home is archetypal, the home is the primary metaphor for ourselves and our place in the world.
Taking care of a home takes perseverance, commitment, planning, focus, and execution. If that sounds like work, it is. It can be the greatest leap we make, from "going with the flow" to showing up everyday, with an attitude and habits that cultivate our place in the world...our investment in ourselves.
There is no other investment as rooted in something real, like Real Estate. It is real ownership of a tangible thing: your home. And when you live in it, wake up there, play and relax there, laugh with friends and family there, be alone and quiet there, surround yourself with your chosen objects there--AND you OWN it, your investment is a Living thing. Your investment is Where You Live.
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| Illustrator Roger DuVoisin's image of Home |
In exchange for the commitment, you receive a couple of things back. Sure, you get tax advantages: you can claim the interest you paid on your mortgage off on your taxes. (You don't get to claim anything for the rent you've paid--no tax benefit there.) Primarily, you have a real piece of property that you can pay off, month by month, year by year, and live in and on.
You decide what to do with it. Pass on to someone else. Sell it in years to come, use the proceeds to buy a smaller home, and keep the rest of your profit. Move elsewhere and rent it out and receive that check every month. (Now the experience as renter flips to the experience of landlord. How different the view seems from here!) After you have paid for your home for a while, you earn the ability to decide what to do with it. It expands your options. It advantages you.
It's no accident that home ownership is the centerpiece of our cultural Dream, which balances stability and freedom, responsibility and self-autonomy. You prove your commitment to your self, in taking on homeownership. You prove your own worthiness: you are worth investing in. Your home is your self. Imagine you can take care of a home with the same love and attention that you take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, START THERE.
Remember: How you do one thing is how you do all things.
If you would like to shift from renting your life to owning your life, I'd love to help.
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