12. I Owned a Home for 10 Years. I'd Never Do It Again.

Buying a home is supposed to be the ultimate sign that you've "made it."

Build equity. Stop paying someone else's mortgage. Invest in your future.

But after a decade of managing my family home, I realized homeownership came with far more than monthly mortgage payments. From six figures in repairs to HOA rules, rising property taxes, and the constant weight of responsibility, I started questioning whether owning a home was actually giving me the life I wanted.

In this episode, I share why I made the decision to sell my home, why I don't plan on owning again, and why I believe we need to stop treating homeownership as the only path to financial success or a meaningful life.

I yap about:

• The hidden costs of homeownership no one talks about
• Why "building equity" isn't always the winning argument people think it is
• The financial and emotional realities of maintaining a home
• How my definition of wealth shifted from ownership to freedom
• Why renting can be the right choice—and why you don't have to follow society's timeline

Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsallmost/

Visit my website: https://www.itsallmost.com

Join The Conversion Club: https://itsallmost.com/the-conversion-club

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, my lovely little yappers. Kieran here. Welcome back to another episode of the Conversation Club. We are talking about today homeownership. Homeownership. Okay, okay. Alright. So I'm gonna be talking a little bit about my experience as a homeowner for oh gosh, 10 years. A little under 10 years, maybe, but I wanted to talk a little bit about why I personally do not choose homeownership and why I think a lot of people should know a little bit about why before they go into probably one of the biggest financial purchases of their lives. Again, I'm speaking from my experience. I was a homeowner in Washington State. I was about to do air quotes for homeowner because there's a whole thing. But anyway, I was the person responsible for taking care of our family home in Washington State. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience doing that and why I personally don't prefer to own. I don't imagine a world where I would ever own again. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about that because I know a lot of people have their own opinions about ownership versus renting, and we'll get into all of it. All of it. So just to give you a little background, as we get more episodes under our belt on the roster, I know I keep trying to be like, I think I mentioned this in episode whatever. My point is go listen to the previous episodes, it'll give you a lot of context for a lot of the things that I talk about. But yeah, in terms of home ownership, I inherited our family home in a very suburban area of Seattle. So, like about 30 minutes outside of Seattle proper, towards the mountains, towards the hiking trails, all that, towards nature. And that's the house I grew up in. That's the house that when I was born, I was taken home to, and I grew up since I was a little babe. I inherited it when I was 14. So pretty young for inheritance, and I actively managed the home for about 10 years. Obviously, 14 to 31 or 30. Again, I know you're gonna be like, why are you throwing a bunch of numbers at us again? I'm just trying to get a timeline of when everything happened. So, yes, around 10 years actively managed the home from when I was about 20 years old to when I was about 30 years old. But I did inherit it when I was 14 years old. Totally understand a lot of the things I say on this podcast, and especially in this episode, there's a lot of privilege in being able to talk about this. There's a lot of privilege in the experiences that I had. Again, it came at a cost of losing my mom. It came at a cost of raising myself and all that stuff. But I will say a lot of 14-year-olds who are left to their own defenses don't have what I had, which was a family who sent money to make sure that I stayed alive and then also a home to live in. And so I totally recognize the privilege that I have speaking from this place. Even though it was very difficult, it was very much a privilege to have been able to do it. But I don't think a lot of people realize how difficult homeownership is. It takes a lot more than just buying the house and being able to afford your mortgage payments. It takes a lot more than just being in there moving your stuff in. I don't know much about the buying process. I know a lot about the sales process and I know a lot about the ownership process. I know buying is incredibly difficult, especially in our market right now, and just in general, it usually is, but homeownership is such a big undertaking. And there's so much that I think a lot of first-time homeowners romanticize about homeownership that the reality doesn't necessarily line up with that idea or fantasy of what homeownership might look like. And so I don't want to rain on anybody's parade or anything like that, but I do want to give maybe a more realistic understanding of what it takes to own a home and why I personally would not choose it again if it were up to me. I know the first thing that people are gonna talk about, the first thing that so many people unsolicited told me when I was telling people that I was moving and I was selling the house in order to move, the word equity, the word equity was thrown around quite a bit when I was talking about selling the house because everyone's like, oh, you know, when you're renting, you're not building equity, you're just paying someone else's mortgage and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Which I mean, yes, technically is true, but at the same time, housing is a necessity. Housing is a basic human necessity, and so either way, I'm gonna have to pay for housing in some form or other. And I personally would rather not be responsible for all of the repairs, everything involved in dealing with being a homeowner that I'll go over in just a second, than to be building equity. Because frankly, I mean, how many years do we think we have left as a global society? We saw this summer the reason why I'm recording this episode so late is because there was a heat wave all over Europe and I wasn't really able to record during the day or even in the evening. So anyway, I'm just like, I have to build equity for what? For decades? Do we have decades for that? I don't know. I don't know. I understand that people are like, okay, well, if I want to get something done, I'd rather be the one to do it than have to go through the landlord and then have the landlord half-ass it and then da-da-da-da-da. I get it. Dealing with landlords, that's like a whole separate thing, right? And I know that there can be really bad landlords, I know there can be really good landlords. It's always a toss-up. And so I understand the trade-offs, right? I'm currently living through the trade-offs. I'm renting once again. And personally, I would rather deal with the frustrations of a landlord and dealing with a landlord than the frustrations of all the responsibilities of being a homeowner. The cost. I'm gonna talk a little bit about how much it cost me in the 10 years that I was actively owning and managing the home. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the level of responsibility it takes, especially in the United States. There are a lot of institutions in the United States that other countries may not have. And so I'm definitely speaking from the experience of someone who lived in Washington in the United States. And so there's just a lot of responsibility that I don't think many people maybe they think about it, but they don't realize how much it involves when home ownership is actually involved. And then just things like being able to address things in a timely manner. Yes, obviously owning is gonna be a little more easy for that than renting, but even with owning, like you're the one who has to get on the phone with the contractor, you have to set a schedule, and it's not gonna be done that much faster. Again, it can be coordinated a lot faster, but in terms of getting done, I don't know. Again, I'm speaking from experience. I personally will always choose renting over owning. And this episode will give you a little bit more insight into why. I do think that, especially coming from a very Chinese family, a family whose older generation is very stuck in those older generation ways, and a lot of the people that imposed their doubts on me when I said that I would rather go and sell the house than become a landlord from abroad, because everyone was like, well, you should rent it out, and you should hire a rental company, and you should. And everybody just saying, okay, especially the older generations, this concept of property is so valuable, right? Land is one of the most valuable things that you can own, that you can possess. And first of all, I mean, this episode is not for us to get into all of that, but like this land is stolen, okay? This land was stolen by white people. It was taken by white and non-white people after it was stolen and sold with official deeds and paperwork and all this stuff that wasn't involved in the stealing of the land. So, I mean, land is very valuable, sure, but like it's all very relative, right? To me, freedom, freedom is what's valuable. To me, freedom is the currency that I live by. The more free I am, the richer I am. The more I have the flexibility to do exactly what I want for myself. That's wealth to me. But I know a lot of the older generation, they're very set on owning property, owning a home, da-da-da-da-like all of that stuff is more valuable than, I don't know, living your life, which is wild to me. But again, we are all products of our generations. We're all products of the time that we were brought up. And that was the notion that was ingrained and drilled into all of them in that generation is that land is valuable, property is valuable, da-da-da-da-da. I personally subscribe to do what makes the most sense for you. Not what society expects, not what other people expect. If it does not make sense for you, you don't have to do it. Just because society is like, oh, buy a house, why pick a fence, lawn, family, da-da-da-da-da. You don't have to do all of those things just because society says that that's what you're supposed to do. There's nothing. There's really nothing in life you're supposed to do. You are allowed to do anything you want to do. Personally, for me, if I had listened to an episode like this before everything I went through as a homeowner, I would have been like, uh-huh, sold that shit a lot earlier. You know what I mean? And I know that again, I'm coming from a place of privilege in saying this, but like I do firmly believe that we get to create whatever life we choose to create, we get to do whatever it is at whatever point in life it makes sense for us to do it. And so, yeah, I don't really subscribe to this property is valuable. I'm gonna go into you know real estate investments and all that. And like part of me wants to say that I won't judge you for you wanting to go into real estate and you wanting to be a landlord, but like, I mean, I am those of you out there who are like, I'm making my money by owning a bunch of property, I'm making my money by driving up rent prices, I'm making my money by da-da-da-da-da. I don't have as much respect for you, frankly. I don't think that this is a way to withholding affordable housing from people just to make a profit and have multiple properties that you own. I think it's unethical. And I personally would never do it. That's why when I moved, I was like, I want to sell this place. First of all, just the burden of managing an estate from a different country. Tax-wise, it would be a nightmare. Just so many things about it logistically, I did not want to think about. Then the second thing of being, you know, just the fact that, like in Washington state, you have to take on the first person that is eligible to rent. So I would say always like, check your state laws, because for Washington State, you have to rent to the first qualified person. They could be litigious, they could be a nuisance, they really could be a nightmare tenant, and you would have to deal with them. Right now, my brother's renting and he's dealing with the landlord, but he's also dealing with a really terrible rental management company. This rental management company owner literally called my brother and like yelled at him over the phone, which I know for me personally, you know your girl. I can get really mad. I can get really, really, really mad. I have never once in my eight plus years of doing business yelled at a client for being frustrated at them. That shit is just ridiculous. So that's my other thing of like, I'm sure these people did the same thing. They did their research, they hired a rental management company that they thought would do a competent job. And now this rental management company is making the tenants' lives miserable. I didn't want to be a part of that equation. I didn't really want to have a shitty rental management company, have shitty tenants have to manage all of that. And then my brother ultimately would have to be really managing it from Seattle because he's the one actually living there. And so there was a lot of factors in why we made the decision we made, especially considering the fact that I did the math. And even with the most conservative projections, not including property tax, not including repairs, it would have taken at least 30 to 40 years renting to make what we made selling. And so I don't know what I'm gonna be doing in 30 years. I don't know what I'm gonna be doing in 40 years. I don't need to be a landlord and be owning this home and renting it out. Every being in my body, every fiber of my being truly just did not, did not want to do that. And it was not what I felt called to do. And so I made that decision after a lot of thought and a lot of research and a lot of evaluation, a lot of calculations, a lot of projections. I did my due diligence and factored in so many things, including the effort it took to actually manage owning this home. One of the main reasons I did end up choosing to sell, and one of the main reasons that at the very least in the United States, I would never become a homeowner again. I'm gonna say this as calmly as I think I can say this, because I have so much hatred and contempt for this word that I'm about to say out loud. Okay. Are we ready? Everybody just take a moment with me. Homeowners associations. Fuck an HOA, fuck HOAs so goddamn hard. For those of you that don't know what an HOA is, it is a homeowners association where essentially in a neighborhood, a bunch of homes are going to agree to a set of terms of rules, aka C C and Rs. Ugh. Swear to God. If some of these words I never hear ever fucking again in my entire life, I will be happy, truly. It's an organization of homeowners who essentially contribute fees to cover sort of neighborhood beautification, neighborhood management of shared spaces, that kind of thing. So, like if there's a pond or the trees along the road or the lighting along the road or any storm damage or whatever it is, everyone pays a monthly fee or an annual fee, depending on where you live, and you just go in and you have to follow this set of rules. What I will say about HOAs is that historically, famously, people who are on boards of HOAs are nosy as hell. Nosy as hell. They love to enforce rules, they love to be fucking watching you like a hawk. They love to infringe on your rights as a human being, they love to just fine for the dumbest shit. They also, if you don't know, they can put liens on your house if you don't pay your dues, your fees, if you don't pay your fines, if you don't follow the rules, they can literally jeopardize your actual ownership of a home with the bank. And I think that shit's pretty fucked up. If your home is in an hoa, again, it depends on the rules, but for the most part, in many situations that I've heard in the United States, if your home is in an HOA, you don't really own the home. The HOA owns the home because it tells you what you can and can't do in terms of your lawn, it tells you what you can and can't do in terms of painting your house, in terms of roof replacement, in terms of materials, repairs, all this stuff. Like they get to dictate exactly how your home is supposed to look and can't look. And I'm just like, how is that owning a home if I have to follow all of these stupid fucking rules? I mean, yes, technically you're given the set of rules before you purchase the home, but like fuck fucking hell, fuck me in the ass. Like, I really fucking hate an HOA. I mean, some examples of how power trippy the board was. The president, the rule enforcer, the whatever. I don't even know all the positions on an HOA board, but I know all of them are nosy and unhelpful. But yeah, some examples in terms of my experience with the HOA are things like I had two yard lights, and one was white and one was yellow. And so it had like either a white hue or a yellow hue, and they didn't like that. So they told me I had to change my light bulbs or else I would get fined every single day. And then I had the break-in a few years ago, and they broke through the glass door in the back of the house. I had it boarded up, but I didn't have the glass door replaced for a few months. I want to say like six months or something like that, because I was just afraid that the burglars were gonna come back. I was really traumatized. I was like, oh, I'm just gonna replace the glass and then they're gonna come back and they're gonna break it again and they're gonna da-da-da-da-da. So I kept it boarded up. Now, from the street, if you're driving down the street or you're like walking down the street, you cannot see this boarded door unless you look like through the bushes, unless you look really hard for it, you cannot see the door has been boarded up versus it being a glass door. And so, anyway, it was one of those things where apparently my neighbor didn't like having to look at it. And so they were like, if you don't get it replaced in the next five days, we're gonna start finding you. And I was just like, Can you be like patient with me? Seriously, I literally do not have the patience or the level of calmness and peace that I need to make this decision. I am full of anxiety. I'm terrified these burglars are gonna come back. Like, what the fuck? And they were just the least understanding people. Same with my siding. So some of the wood was rotting on the siding in the back of the house, and that's a whole other story about the experience there. But I wasted about $10,000 on that job because I was a dumbass and didn't read the contract properly. Or I did read the contract, but I didn't really understand exactly what east wall meant versus west wall, all that stuff. So anyway, I had the siding replaced, but I didn't paint it. And so it was like white versus beige, light beige. Okay, so like only really a few shades different if we're thinking about it. It wasn't like purple and white, it was literally just light beige and like white paint. That was the difference. And apparently that same neighbor that didn't like the door being boarded up also didn't like looking at two different colors on the wall. Part of me, honestly, I should have just fucking painted it like rainbow or something and been like, how do you like the fucking seven colors now, bro? But anyway, I had to deal with that as well. But that meant that I had to deal with painting the entire exterior because no one would just paint the one wall for me. And that shit cost a lot of fucking money. That we'll go over in just a second, about how much that ate into my budget. And even like the trash situation, my neighbor on the other side, and you would think that I, with all these stories, that I'm the bad neighbor, I was very quiet, I was very respectful. I didn't throw parties, all I really had was people coming over to like deliver me food. That was the only activity that happened frequently. I didn't even have friends over very often. I did my best. I hired people to manage the yard and to help me manage the home, but it's like you can only do so much, you know? And so I did my best to be like as respectful as possible, but I don't know what it is about the neighbor to the back because I was on a corner lot, and so I was the neighbor to the back and the neighbors to the side. They just both really didn't like me for whatever reason. And I mean, the one to the side I know it was because he was an Asian man and didn't appreciate me being like this young Chinese woman who lived in a home by herself, and I don't know, it really bothered him for some reason. I don't know why. And then the other neighbor was just really nosy as shit, fucking looking out at my back wall every single day. Obsessing over the two colors, like I don't fucking know. But anyway, so one of the other neighbor they used to throw trash every two weeks over the hedge, and they would be like, Oh, it's a bear, a bear's dragging our trash out of our trash bins, and I'm just like, every two fucking weeks, every two fucking weeks, like clockwork, the bears are doing this. Really? Is that where we're gonna go with? It was just ridiculous, and obviously the neighborhood HOA didn't care, and it didn't help. It didn't help any aspect of homeownership. But yeah, dealing with the HOA and dealing with those dumbass neighbors really took a toll, took a toll on me as someone who was owning this home. Over the 10 years that I was actively managing and actively taking care of it, I calculated over a hundred thousand dollars in repairs and replacements. So 10 years, 100,000, that average is about 10,000 a year. Now, this isn't including property taxes, this isn't including regular maintenance of the yard, regular maintenance of any of the regular costs. Okay, so these are like the bigger expenses and things like that that I spent $100,000 on over the 10 years. I mean, the roof, the roof was the biggest thing. So when I got back from college and I was like, oh shit, I gotta take care of this house now, the roof was leaking. I contacted a roofing company and got them to come out. They gave me a quote, we were ready to start work, and literally the day we were starting work, they're like taking the materials out of the truck, and this woman runs up and she goes, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You cannot put this material on the roof. Why? Because it's not an approved roof material for the HOA. Do you know what the roof material that was approved by the HOA was? Yeah, it cost about $10,000 more than what I was trying to pay. So that was fun. Just the fact that I had to fucking pick this expensive ass shingle. I don't even know if shingle was the right word for it, but it was so expensive it cost $25,000, more than $25,000 to repair that roof, to replace it with the HOA approved materials. Same thing with the exterior painting that I had to do because I had to do it last minute. They gave me a fucking week. They were like, you have to get this done in a week. And I'm like, you cannot book shit like that in a week. That's not how fucking life works. So they gave me like a month or something like that. So I had to book. And I want to say this was like September, maybe October when this was happening. It was right at the end of painting season because in Washington it starts to rain. And when it starts to rain, I mean it's always raining, but like especially in the winter, I think it's like end of October through March or something like that. They don't do exterior painting jobs because obviously it just doesn't dry the same. It doesn't make a lot of sense. And so I had to do like a rush job before the painting season closed because by the time it came back, they were like, We're gonna fine you $100 a day, subject to increase, subject to doubling. And I was like, What? Excuse me? That's fucking crazy. And so anyway, I had to pay about $15,000, a little over $15,000 for that exterior paint job. And again, remember, a lot of these things I would have paid less for, but the HOA had requirements about how it was done, what material it was done with, in what time frame, all that shit. So it was kind of ridiculous. I also remember when I got my water heater replaced, the guy that came, I don't remember what company it was, but they came to install and he was like, hey, look, if you pay me in this in cash, we don't have to go through the company. You could just pay me and da-da-da-da-da. So I was like, Oh, that sounds good. That sounds like a good deal. It was a good deal. I did save a couple hundred dollars from that. The problem was when I followed up for maintenance and for them to come, there were some earthquake straps that they didn't fully install properly, and they never responded. And so I was like, fuck, I should have just should have just paid the extra and gone through the company and gotten actual maintenance care and that kind of thing when it came to the water heater. Same deal with the furnace, had to replace that as well. I did the same process and it was a bad idea. And then I also had like oh my gosh, I just remembered the squirrel, the squirrel invasion of I want to say it was like a four or five year saga, maybe even longer than that. I haired it when I was 14. I was in high school then. At 18, I went to college, and I went to college for four years. No, 17, 17, I went to college, and then I came back when I was 20 because I graduated a little bit early and I started taking care of the house. And when I came back, because that was like a good seven, eight years, something like that, where the house was supposed to be getting taken care of by my cousin, but wasn't. That's a conversation for another fucking time. But yeah, I came back and apparently like squirrels had taken up residence in the crawl space below the house. And squirrels, for those of you that don't know, are very territorial. Once they make a place their home, they are not leaving that shit. And in Washington State, it was illegal to, or it still is illegal, to physically remove squirrels from an area and move them somewhere else, like it's illegal to do that, and so we couldn't just like trap the squirrels up and take them somewhere else in the state. That just wasn't allowed, and so we had to basically just seal everything up. Can't remember what it was called, but it was like clear it out, seal it up essentially. So we did that. Apparently, the guy who came to do the insulation, he was like, that was the most pine cones I've ever seen in my 20-something year career doing this. And I was like, Great, love that this was memorable for you. Traumatizing for me. But yeah, so we had squirrels, we cleared out the crawl space, replaced the insulation, sealed it up, and then they found the attic. They went up to the upstairs and burrowed up there, so we had to clear out the attic, we had to seal it up again, and then they found other cracks in the crawl space, and so we had to seal that up. And then they went back to the attic, so we had to seal that up, and it was just back and forth and back and forth. It was a whole fucking thing, and dealing with the exterminators, dealing with the insulation replacement, just all that like that. So, again, this is more of a wildlife experience that obviously not everyone's gonna get, but it was very frustrating, and then just other things, like we had a lot of skylights in the house. I mean, I knew obviously that some kind of maintenance was required, but we had one of the skylights start leaking, and then we had to like cock it up and da da da. And so there's so much that you don't know about what you don't know, and it's just hard, especially if you are a first-time homeowner, especially if you've never done this before. It's a huge learning curve. Another thing that was really frustrating cost-wise for me was the landscaping. I think American lawn are so fucking stupid. The whole green grass lawn, like all that bullshit. Our yard was so big. And again, speaking from privilege here, we had a very big yard. But the thing is, is we were the only yard. I drove through that neighborhood multiple times. We were the only house that had the size yard that we had that was getting direct sunlight from the sun in the afternoon. Everyone else had some kind of tree cover, had smaller patches of grass, had their house, you know, cast a shadow on the lawn, like whatever it was. We were the only house in the entire fucking neighborhood that had the size patch of grass we had that had direct sunlight all afternoon and there was no tree cover. It was just the way the orientation of the lot was, and there wasn't anything to be done. Like we couldn't grow trees on the lawn to like cover and give some tree cover, unfortunately. Because the HOA was like, here's what you're not allowed to do. And I was like, Okay, so either I'm not allowed to do that or I'm not allowed to water. I don't know what you want from me because all they did was complain about the lawn being yellow. And I was like, Do you know the water bill that it would take for me to keep this lawn fucking green in the summer? Do you want to pay? Do you want to pay that bill? Is that something that you would like to do? Because I can't afford it. That's fucking ridiculous. And so I was like, hey, can I grow a wildflower yard? And they were like, no, we don't allow wildflower lawns, yards, whatever you want to call them, because it doesn't fit the aesthetic of the neighborhood and it reduces curb appeal. Jesus fucking Christ, curb appeal. I hate that phrase. I hope whoever uses that phrase steps on Legos for the rest of their lives and that their pillows are never cold, ever. Because fuck curb appeal. What even is that shit? It's such a capitalistic concept, it's such an American fucking term. It's essentially, for those of you that don't know, it's like we want everything to look uniform and beautiful in this neighborhood because the curb appeal makes more people want to buy, makes more people want to be a part of this neighborhood, yada yada yada. So they were like, we won't allow a wildflower yard because we don't want to affect the curb appeal of the neighborhood. So what could have been a beautiful space for a lot of pollinators and could have helped move our ecosystem forward, they were like, no, you have to fucking put a nasty, disgusting ass weed lawn, just lawn with green grass, that's it, that's gonna turn yellow in the summer because you can't fucking afford to water it enough to keep it green all the time. There's just so many things about homeownership and especially dealing with an HOA, just a lot of hidden costs. Some years it's minimal, and some years they're massive expenses. Obviously, over the 10 years, $100,000 averages out to $10,000 a year. That's definitely not how it was. During the pandemic year, I spent zero dollars, right? 2020, I spent zero dollars. Some years I spent $25,000, some years I spent $30,000, some years I spent $10,000, some years I spent five. And so it just depends on the year. These are the averages, and so you have to essentially prepare for these hidden costs, unexpected costs. And for me, I as a single young woman, whenever I dealt with contractors, I especially at the beginning didn't know what I was doing, didn't know what I was asking, didn't know the questions that I needed to ask, didn't know the things I needed to vet. And I was definitely taken advantage of by many, many contractors, many, many bidders who told me things would happen this way or didn't explain things to me thoroughly, upcharged me for things, added certain services that I never approved of or asked for, just a lot of that. I got taken advantage of quite a bit by contractors, and so that was also very traumatizing. I work with like Task Rabbit sometimes, and even then I'm just like, oh, like, are you gonna scam me again? I've dealt with so much, so many scammers when it came to contractors. And then just going back to like you just don't know what you don't know, especially with the climate in Washington, like the winters can get really cold, and so like winterization of the pipes, like I didn't fucking know how to do that. And sometimes the things that you don't realize need to be fixed, you don't realize until they become broken, until they become faulty. And so sometimes it really is learning through the mistakes and learning through lots and lots and damages and lots and lots that are gonna cost you to replace, unfortunately. Sure, I probably could have done a better job, but like please remember that like I was literally 18 years old, and so I didn't really know what I was doing. And then also just shit, like you know, you gotta get licensing and permitting for repairs and work that you wanted to do, and you had to make sure to register it with the local authorities and blah blah blah blah blah. Dealing with things like property tax. I mean, property tax continues to soar in the United States, I'm sure around the world as well. But for me, by the end, it was over $13,000 a year, and every year it was like another thousand more or another two thousand more, and it was just so ridiculous. That wasn't even included in the hundred thousand dollars over the 10 years that I'm talking about. But yeah, I mean, there's just so many other factors these days, right? There's the wildlife that I talked about. I mean, we've seen, especially this summer, summer 2026, I think people are starting to hopefully finally like click in that these heat waves are not normal, the winter storms are not normal, this flooding is not normal. There are so many more storms and natural disasters and droughts and just all these things that we aren't gonna be able to predict that are just gonna get worse year after year that we're gonna have to deal with. For me, something I'm really excited to never do again is to never shovel snow. So many people have had heart attacks shoveling snow. That shit is not easy. It takes so much time, it's so tiring, it's such a grueling fucking exercise activity. I would give almost anything never to shovel my own fucking driveway ever again. Shovel a goddamn fucking sidewalk, shovel any part of a road. Ugh, that shit was so annoying. I hated it. I hated it to my core. And then just, you know, other things like neighbors and dealing with all that shit. And I just remember when I sold the house, when the house closed, and we signed the deal, did the damn thing. I was so, so relieved. I truly felt such a burden lifted off of my body, lifted off my soul, lifted off my conscience because it had taken such a mental, mental toll, mental drain, mental energy off of me, physical energy, financial energy. Like it just took so much from me. And it really did take some of my best years from me owning that home, managing the property, managing the home, and it just was not easy. And so I really want to emphasize that if you want to be a homeowner and that makes sense for you, that's wonderful. And I hope the best for you. But like for me personally, it didn't make sense for me. And I just wish that the narrative wasn't so like equity, equity, who are you? You're paying for someone else's mortgage instead of your own. Like, property's so valuable, and it's like, shut the fuck up. Really, like, shut the fuck up. Your life is not gonna look like my life, your needs are not gonna look like my needs, okay? And like to continue to demonize people who choose renting over owning, I think is stupid. I think it's ridiculous. When I sold the house, I was really excited because I hadn't utilized all the rooms in the house on a consistent basis. I lived in the room that I lived in, I had my bathroom, I was downstairs in the living room for the most part, I had my office, but like there were at least like 40, 50% of the house that I didn't use on a regular basis. And like when I transitioned the ownership over to the people who bought it, like it really felt like me making space for other people to build their lives, for other people to be utilizing this space in a way that I was never going to. I had a very personified relationship with my house. I spoke to it, I commiserated with it. And so when I said goodbye to it, I was like, look, I hope that this new family can love you the way that I just never could because I didn't have a family, I didn't have the life that you needed to like really use that house the way it was intended to be used, which was to have a family with lots of kids running around and all that stuff, and that just wasn't gonna be the reality for me. I did love that home, I loved growing up there, I loved all of my memories there, but like it really was time to make space for a new family to build their lives. And I know I'm like tearing up a little bit thinking about it because the house meant a lot to me, and it was a very, very difficult decision to do what I did, which was to let it go and choose myself once again. This was probably one of the biggest steps that I took in. I know I can't remember what episode, but whatever episode I talked about, moving to Portugal, leaving Seattle, choosing myself. Like this was a big, big part of that equation. And it was not an easy decision to have made. It was actually an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it was the right one for me, truly. And that's where we are, and that's where we are with that. And I am really glad to like, I mean, as much as I'm like a little embarrassed that I'm like crying on that, because I never really had like a big cry about about the house and about selling it. And so right now I'm just like, I think all of that is coming up a little bit. So if you want to see your girl tear up, which she will on this podcast because I am a cancer moon and I am as much as I'm like a Scorpio stinger on the outside, on the inside I'm really big softy and I'm really big crybaby. So you will see more of that on this podcast. So to wrap up our episode, I just want you to think about before you buy, I really want you to consider what you don't know. I want you to consider what a massive undertaking owning a home really involves. Are you ready for the financial responsibility? Are you ready to have to potentially drop $30,000 to $50,000 at the blink of an eye for a repair that you didn't expect? Are you ready to see property taxes increase year after year to the point where you're paying anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 in property taxes? Like, are you ready for that? Are you ready to get hit with curveballs and have to pivot and have to deal with all of that while still regulating your emotions and your nervous system? You can create the life that you want, no matter where it is, no matter what it looks like. You don't have to buy a house, you don't have to live in the same neighborhood for 40 years. If that's what you want, great. But like you don't have to be shackled to a 40-year mortgage. If I've learned anything in the last year of living here, I've met so many people who have lived all of the world, lived in so many different countries with so many different cultures in so many different places, and they've really truly traveled the world. That is what I'm envious of. Just being able to pick up and say, I'm gonna go to Kazakhstan for two months, or I'm gonna go live in Ireland for six months, or I'm gonna go to Chile for three months, or to go for two weeks, or whatever it is, like that to me is true freedom. And that's the life that I want to build. If that's not the life that you want to build, that's okay. But to say that people who choose that kind of life, who choose to rent, who choose to travel the world, who choose not to be rooted in one place or really shackled to one place for decades, to say that their lives are less successful, less meaningful, less whatever because they don't own property is ridiculous. It's a ridiculous sentiment, to be honest. And I really just think that equity is bullshit. I think equity is a dumb argument for why you should own a home. I think everyone invests differently. Like I mentioned in my episode about my personal finance journey. Some people invest in real estate, some people invest in gold, some people invest in art, some people invest in there's a million other things that I can't even think of right now that don't involve stocks or bonds or whatever it is. But like just the fact that this idea that everybody needs to own because everybody needs equity is ridiculous because not everybody does. Everybody lives differently, everybody chooses to have a life that looks different. And so I think the equity argument is ridiculous and unfounded and not applicable to everyone. And I do think that renting is perfectly okay. And not that you're asking for my permission for any of this, but if you are out there and you're like, I don't think I want to own, everyone's telling me I should own, but I don't really think that's what I want to do. I'm with you. I am with you because I agree that it's not necessary and that renting is a perfectly fine option. So, no homework this week. I just want you to think about, you know, if you're thinking about owning a home, if you're thinking about all this fantastical stuff about what it would be like to own a home, I want you to listen to this episode, take a step back and think about how much it actually takes to own. And I hope this episode was helpful. I hope it gave you a little insight into the harder side, the darker side of homeownership that I don't think enough of us talk about. And if you see me out here complaining about my landlord because I chose to rent, know that it was a choice that I made. And I am completely justified in complaining, and also it's the choice that I made, and I chose not to be a homeowner, and that's okay. And all of it, every choice is perfectly okay, whatever it is that you choose to do. Thank you so much, Yappers. It has been another wonderful episode of the Conversation Club. I hope you enjoyed. I hope you learned a little bit, I hope you got a little insight, and I will see you all next week. All right. Ciao ciao. If this episode gave you something to think about, take it and do something with it. If you want more of this or you just want to see what my life actually looks like, come follow me on Instagram at it's almost with two L's. Be sure to link it in the show notes. You can also follow me at Almost Consulting for some juicier, spicier takes. And if you're serious about getting your emails to convert, you can check out the Conversion Club, our monthly email marketing membership for founders who are ready to turn email into their most profitable and sustainable sales channel with expert guidance, plug and play tools, and strategy you'll actually use. Check it out. That's the link in the show notes. I'll see you in the next episode, Yappers.