Home ownership in America

Home ownership has been somewhat the Holy Grail of the American dream. Having your own place the king and his castle and that whole thing. And there's some truth to it. If you plan it carefully it can be a blessing. But the average path that we go down is not carefully planned ends up being fairly expensive is a huge maintenance nightmare. A list of stuff involved with home ownership is massive there are hundreds if not thousands of things on the list. The list just outside the house in the yard alone is huge. Most houses where we live have sprinkler systems sprinkler systems have a large number of pieces that break periodically pieces that can be damaged by bicycles cars animals kids these Pieces cost money then if you're not careful with the sprinkler system they can freeze in the fall which damages more parts. we haven't actually talked about any of these parts and this is just one tiny piece of a house which is actually on the outside and you don't even need. If you hire someone to do this maintenance you'll spend somewhere around 2 to $500 a year fiddling around with your sprinkler system. If you do the work yourself it's significantly less but I found it to be somewhere around $100 a year. This is simply to put water on stuff that you don't really even care about. From there we go to all the things in the yard and the fence around the yard and the concrete driveway and the patio and the porches and the steps and the gates and any kind of antennas you have on the  outside of your house to support the electronic digital media that you want to get. Then there's all the insects and diseases that can attack the expensive plants you put in your yard. Oh and by the way your house is going to need Paint it's going to have to have trim boards replaced there can be mold there can be downspouts that get rusted and have to be replaced the gutters get clogged up every fall from leaves have to be cleaned out if you don't the water will back up on the roof back up under the shingles and freezing snow can damage your house. how much fun do you think a leaking roof is in the winter?
 The outside of the house is simple compared to the inside. After all the inside is where you live.
There are lots of things you can do to simplify streamline downsize and reduce some of these headaches. For instance you can buy simpler appliances that don't have a bunch of electronic gadgets on them to break. Another approach his to buy very basic appliances that are inexpensive. When they break every 5 years you throw them away and buy new ones. Remember to put this on the budget. And remember the expensive stuff brakes too. Something I've learned to do is to buy extended warranties. You also have to go through very reputable retail outlets that will back up their warranties. the Great Deals not so great if the guy who sold you the warranty is no longer in business.
So if I had it to do over I would choose home ownership while I have kids in the house. Once the kids are out of the house sell and rent. You don't need all that space you don't need all that complex stuff. if you can't bring yourself to do that then just get rid of a bunch of stuff. You don't need six TVs. You don't need three laptops and two desktop computers. You don't need satellite TV in every room.
So you might ask gee what's the fun in that? well it's really a question of how much time do you want to waste on this stuff anymore? Take some weekends off. Take some walks spend more time with friends and family. Simplify, the economy isn't going to miss you.
Oh, and make getting the house paid off a top priority. Go with a 15 year fixed mortgage. If you can't swing that then don't do it. Just rent, travel light, if your spouse or other family members just can't live this way well we all have to make choices.