Renting vs buying oh we've done this before but we wanted to share our story about how
we became renters as opposed to homeowners way back when we were just getting married
I was renting an apartment in Suffolk, England and Tina and I were going together and we got
married and so that was our first home, it was an upstairs apartment in an old Victorian house
and it was great apart from the noisy neighbours and that's true and there was also another reason
to know that we had the plans that we wanted to start a family didn't we, we did and we maybe
thought that at the time with the noisy neighbours that wasn't the ideal location, we did then start
to look for purchasing a house didn't we were actively saving and within about a year just
under a year we had bought a house in Norfolk and we stayed in that first home for over three years
didn't we, we did and that's where our first child was born and it was an end terraced house it was
brand new and it cost us £9,995, well you remember that off by heart, I will never forget it,
we valued home ownership our parents were homeowners we were brought up with that and we
knew it was going to be a source of wealth to us but also a safe haven to bring up our family, yes
and at the time we felt that the children had a home and that we were all happy and that was
what the big part of the plan was wasn't it, It was our vision in life that here we are married
having two children and we wanted a family home we wanted a garden for them to play in
and that was just our sole focus we never ever thought about renting at those stages
but the one thing that did worry us throughout our home ownership experience was
living in an extreme climate like Canada and we would go away in wintertime leaving our house
unoccupied so when we do leave our home and go traveling the one thing that we're always
conscious of is our safety on public Wi-Fi and we always use a VPN when we're traveling and we use
NordVPN as our preferred provider you never know who's trying to hack your signal, public Wi-Fi
isn't secure you don't always have a phone plan with data to be able to use it so NordVPN really
is a great solution they provide coverage for 6 devices, I think that's one of the things that
we really like Norm is that we can have up to 6 devices so when we travel we've got our iPads our
cell phones and your MacBook all covered and it gives us a great feeling of security and NordVPN
has very kindly given a great promotion, we have a link to that where you can try it and it comes
with a money back guarantee so if you don't like it you don't have to pay for it but you'll get the
first month free and we have been using NordVPN for quite some time and have been very satisfied
with it and we would like to thank NordVPN for being the sponsor for our movie today. So our
house turned into a retirement fund for us we knew that didn't we, we did right at an early age yes
and basically what happens is as you get older you do go through different stages of life and we were
now going to be approaching retiring so the whole part of the plan was sell the home and once we had
been shown that renting was a good idea because I must admit we hadn't actually thought of it had
we until we met somebody and we learned then that it could be really good for us so we decided to
go back to renting again, after we sold the house for various reasons didn't we Norm very much so
one of the big ones is cost containment the other thing is leaving a house unoccupied in Canada,
if you don't have somebody coming in every day or if you're lucky the insurance company will do 48
hours but if you don't have that you're uninsured, if you have a burst pipe that floods the house
and you can't prove that you've had somebody checking the property then they're going to deny
your claim, these are risks that we didn't want to take, no so renting became a far more attractive
thing for us because our children were grown up they had their own homes and renting seemed
a very cost effective way of providing shelter and I think another thing too Norm is that it
gives us great freedom and as you know we like to travel so all we have to do is lock the door and
go we know that our place is fully looked after we've got superintendents in the building and
we feel very safe leaving it, it's great you just pull the door behind you and away you go
so the thing about renting, we found it was a mindset once we'd met somebody who had done this
ahead of us it started to make sense especially as we did budgets, yeah and looked at how expensive
a mortgage-free home costs and in Canada just in the last seven years there's been a massive
hike in prices home prices, well all prices but one of the things it's a double-edged sword now
your property that was selling for $350, 000 is now selling for a Million and the property
tax get reassessed so now your property taxes have gone up they're no longer based on a $350,
000 home but a Million dollar home and it just doesn't make sense to us, I think too Norm that's
something else that you should consider is do you always want to own something or could you
rent it and we're talking now if you want to have a boat or a vacation home or even an RV because
I would say it's maybe three or four years ago now we did a fabulous RV relocation trip didn't we, we
did but we didn't want to own it did we, we wanted to experience an RV a motorized one so it was
a really nice one it was so nice that we found out it was a hundred and ninety thousand dollars to
buy this but we managed to have two weeks for $29 a night and pay the gas which we would have to if
we owned it but when we had our two weeks over we just handed it back and lost the liability,
like our trailer park they rent fishing boats so if I want to go fishing I can just rent a
boat for half a day or a day and it's next to nothing and I have no hassles about winterizing
outboard motors or storage or Towing, so what we're really saying is do you need to own that
vacation home or rent it, we rent some really nice apartments around the world we can be
renting a million dollar Airbnb apartment and paying relatively small amount of money for it
so that's our take on why we rented, yes we started off renting as a young couple yeah
and now as a retired couple we're back to renting again and it's been a complete circle and
we do recommend for all young people to own property because it is an avenue to wealth
it's forced savings your property prices continue to increase just like the stock
market does yeah but at some point if you need to, you can cash out and that's what we did
so we hope that everybody is staying safe and keeping well until the next time bye bye, bye