I read a post from 
When we are young, we have dreams of all of the things we will be able to do. A full time job and a decent salary is all we would need to get all of the cool things that we want. Cars, toys, games... you name it.
Reality rears its ugly head shortly after we get our first pay check. The government took how much of my money? Then the bills come in the mail. Then the landlord comes knocking.
The mind of a child sees a salary and thinks of what they could do with that money. The mind of the adult forms once they realize that most of that money is getting taken from you before you have a chance to spend it.
Much like the "real" world, "real" estate is one of those markets that can be a bit of a no brainer. If we keep renting, we keep buying a house for someone else. If we buy a place, at least we are putting some of our rent money back in our pocket... cause let's be "real", buying a house is just eliminating a middleman in the rental process. Home ownership means you are renting (to own) directly from a bank.
Regardless, it seems like a good financial move. You pay rent every month and get a decent percentage back each month in the form of equity. It beats paying the landlords mortgage.
I bought a house 8 years ago. I bought at the top of the market. I also made some mistakes with my mortgage, raising the monthly payment and not being able to lower it when circumstances changed. I lived in the house for 6 years. I put too much money into crypto in 2017 and held on too long (still am hodling). I also went through a pretty nasty economic downturn where work was sparse and the rates of pay were low. All of these things added up to me being house poor an spread too thin.
That being said, I had a whole bunch of money in the form of equity in my house. When I got married a couple of years ago, my wife, who is the best, helped me get the house ready for sale.
My credit was not good enough to get a mortgage this time around, and we were going to be forced back into renting. We would have a bunch of money from the sale of our house which would pay off all of our bills, but would be forced to go back to renting. We would rent for a year or 2 until the money for a downpayment was saved up and our credit was back on the good side.
That was the plan.
We took a bit of a leap of faith instead. There was one old house in a small hamlet an hour outside the city. We looked at it and decided against it when we were house shopping before the banks denied us. It was cheap enough that we could buy it outright with the equity from the house sale. We would still have all of our debt, but no mortgage or rent to pay.
We went for it. We had a few months where we had to pay to get things up to speed... but we made it work. We got the plumbing fixed week 1. We got the furnace up and running before the snow flew. Slowly but surely we are fixing it up and putting our own personal touches into it.
We will be one year in this place come July and we are now at the point where we are getting ahead of our bills and seeing our decision starting to pay off. There is still a lot of work to be done, but we are feeling pretty good to have a place of our own and to own it outright.
Once our debts are all behind us, we can decide if we want to continue living mortgage free in this modest little place or if we want to go back into mortgage land and trade up to something newer and nicer. I like where we are at and I feel great about our decision. I wasn't sure when we had to decide, but we needed to decide. I am glad we went the way that we did.
If the bulls keep running, and my positions in the crypto markets are good ones, our options may end up opening up sooner than later. I am not counting on it, but it would be nice. We shall see. For now, I will keep on working hard at my day job building houses, I will do what I can on Proof of Brain, LeoFinance, Hive and all my other tribes (can someone tell me what Broad Hive is?). I think that hard work will pay off in the long run. I have learned that crypto is not a get rich quick scheme. Real estate, even if you do everything wrong, is still a good investment (if you are going to live in the place you bought).
