To rent or own? That is the question!
My husband and I have owned our home for nineteen years and counting. We previously had rented a cottage together. While there are many benefits to owning your own home, it also has its downside. The constant maintenance, lawn mowing, things breaking, and possible damage from nature itself. The work never ends and after a long hard day on the job it can be tiring. We are tired. Now that our kids are in high school we have started to put together a five year plan that includes selling our home and renting a place or even two.
Why would we want to rent? What could we afford?
It has been quite some time since we rented so using a rent calculator to figure out what we can afford has been useful. Zumper helped us with that one! What is Zumper? Zumper helps millions of renters to find homes, rooms, condos, or apartments for rent. You can apply online and submit rental applications, and credit reports with Zumper’s screening service which is powered by TransUnion. Zumper has quality listings and realtime alerts. You can set your notifications for new rentals as they appear. You will be the first to know!
We have been able to keep our eye on the market so we can start planning now for the future. You never know what can happen if we spot our dream rental now. We could possibly jump on it. The general rule of thumb is to spend around 30% of your income on rent. Since we are getting older we are planning our future with different incomes in mind. We do still need to save and have some money leftover for fun. The rent calculator allows us to play around with different sets of income. Now we can have a plan with a much wider range easily available to us. This will allow us to make a choice that fits our needs at any given time. Changing income is another plus of renting a space over owning! As our needs change we can adjust how and where we spend our money. Knowing how much you have available to spend is key to remaining debt free and finding a space that is affordable to you. We have thought long and hard about our options. Not everyone is debt free and their key to figuring out what is affordable or not is by creating a budget. This will allow folks that have debt to figure out what the right amount is affordable for them to spend monthly.
Ideally we would like a home base for our children when they are not at school (college) and a place for us when we are in the area. (Not traveling or working our dream business) We are clearing spaces and figuring this out. I can see it. Maybe we could even sell our home and pay rent on a place in advance and save a few bucks in the long run. It is all in the planning.