A place to call my own
I was watching the news the other night and there was an item on about house prices in New Zealand. The average house price these days is $350, 000. This depresses me. How am I ever going to buy my own place? I was talking to my dad about it and his response was 'Well, you might not always be a teacher' (he has always feared that my chosen profession doesn't pay enough). But I like teaching. Sure I could find a more highly paid job, but would I like it as much?
I don't think I will ever be able to afford to buy a house on my own. I was talking to my friend Brad the other day, and we were discussing where we think we'll be when we are 30 (six years away for us). When I was younger (I mean up to about 5 months ago) I always thought I would be married and living comfortably in a house with maybe a young child and definitely a dog. I don't know where this preconception came from. I'm guessing my parents. But since breaking up with Luke, I've realised I have no idea what direction my life is going to take. The last guy I dated was 35. Had that worked out I imagine it would be vastly different than marrying someone closer to my own age.
I want to travel in the next couple of years, so I guess there isn't even any point worrying about a house at the moment.
Who knows, I may meet and marry an Englishman of weath and never have to worry about it again.
I don't think I will ever be able to afford to buy a house on my own. I was talking to my friend Brad the other day, and we were discussing where we think we'll be when we are 30 (six years away for us). When I was younger (I mean up to about 5 months ago) I always thought I would be married and living comfortably in a house with maybe a young child and definitely a dog. I don't know where this preconception came from. I'm guessing my parents. But since breaking up with Luke, I've realised I have no idea what direction my life is going to take. The last guy I dated was 35. Had that worked out I imagine it would be vastly different than marrying someone closer to my own age.
I want to travel in the next couple of years, so I guess there isn't even any point worrying about a house at the moment.
Who knows, I may meet and marry an Englishman of weath and never have to worry about it again.
posted by Lis | 2:46 pm
5 Comments:
I always thought I'd be settled down by now, but Im still young. Well Im a young 36. :-)
Bah! who needs houses anyway. What you really want is an interesting life. You can't take houses or money to the grave with you, so you may as well not worry about it in advance and just enjoy the life you've got while you have it.
You want to know the average house price in London? £300,000 - thats NZ$1,000,000!!!
That's so unachievable that i have simply written that option off and would much rather spend my cash on seeing more of the world and having fun with the people i care about.
Yes but that is your opinion - to reference a saying i heard recently 'those that don't own a house, dont realise they are poor'
I do agree with seeing the world etc etc - but having a house can be used as an asset, in turn which can be used to get the funds to travel.
So both are releativly achievable.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about this property-owning business, and I hate to sound like those motivational speakers you dislike so much, but I've been talking to a couple of informed and prosperous people, and their advice is to start small (funnily enough).
One guy Joel that I was waxing lyrical with, suggested putting $5K into something (equity/finance company, forestry, share-schemes etc) with a 1 year return, then still saving at the same time. Then when the next year rolls around you should have 10K at least kicking about (Maybe 5,250 from the investing, plus what ever you've saved plus interest for example). So put that 10K into something else with possibly a longer term, maybe 2 years. Still save, then after a year into that, look into diversifying (maybe start getting into the share market etc, I'm sure you can see where this is going). By the end of the third year you'll have assets around the value of 20-22K (if you save 5K a year plus interest), but more importantly you won't just have a lump in the bank that gets you itching to get into a house - and the incredible burden of a mortgage.
I think it's as good a plan as I've heard, plus it takes away some of the guilt for not wanting to live like a hermit and save every penny. 5K a year is not too hard, and there's something quite nice about telling yourself that that's all you need to do, something's happening on the finance side of your life, but apart from that you can get on and live it.
In terms of what to do with it later I'm thinking of continuing to rent myself and buy some rental properties - much, much cheaper than trying to buy your own house and have no money coming in for it - and once I have had one property for a couple of years I'll use the equity to buy another, and then another etc etc until I can afford something nice for myself.
I don't really care if thats what I end up doing or not, it just means that I can say to myself that if I get started then there'll be something good down the line. Because I've figured out that it's not actually the being rich, it's the feeling like you're rich. For me, anyway.
What a prattle. Apologies. I'm really, really tired and am just writing the first things that come to my head. Costi, how are ya? Haven't seen an email in a while...
I'm currently at the Uni procrasting from cleaning a scan file that needs to be done by morning. Sleep has become a bit of an abstract concept to me at the moment (yes, I do want your sympathy, I'm tired and grumpy) so I figure I'll do it later.
Hmm I really should get back to that actually. It's good to get past the company filters and have a read around the pages I haven't seen for ages.Awesome.
Luke
Interesting to know.
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