The benefit of owning a home is almost always psychological, not financial. If you take the money you'd use for a down payment and mortgage and invest it instead (after paying rent) you end up in about the same place. But the psychological benefits can be huge. You have much greater control over the place you spend most of your time. You can change it to your liking. You don't have to worry about rent increases or ow…
Yeah this. But some additional flavor to emphasize the 'don't do it for financial reasons' aspect. In the late 90's I, like a number of my married friends, 'owned' a house in the Bay Area. Dot coms were going crazy, the economy was insane, and people who got big equity payouts were buying places with their stock. At the height of all that, my Sun stock holdings were enough to pay off the remainder of my mortgage but…
> I still got complaints from my financial advisor that she could get us a better return than that, but I didn't care. I wanted more certainty than that.
Seems to me that she is the one hurting more because your choice undermined her commission lol