MARRIAGE AND FINANCES: DREAM HOME
The fact remains that home ownership is still the dream of most, and if it is at all possible, the idea should be encouraged. Rentals paid to landlords are never retrievable. It is “dead money.” Certainly the landlord has every right to get a percentage on his invested funds, so don’t blame him for making life hard.
The majority of couples, even in these days of high-priced housing, should make plans as early as possible to purchase their own bit of real estate. As I watch couples marry, I find it most stimulating to see a given proportion, even in these days of astronomical prices, still purchasing (and paying off) their own homes in the early days of their marriage.
It is possible. But it must be planned for. Many sensible couples work hard before marriage, and accumulate a nest-egg at the bank. When they marry, they pool the funds, and this is often adequate for a deposit on a modest dwelling.
Once the deposit is paid, everything thereafter is payment off the principal (and the interest), but inevitably the principal sum is being gradually whittled down.
Generally speaking, in times of inflation, it is in the buyer’s own interest to purchase and pay off. You buy today at whatever the going rate is, just suppose it to be $85,000. But you are paying it off in terms of money values over the next ten or twenty years. By then, if inflation keeps going (and it seems this way, despite what the pundits say), you are paying it off in money of tomorrow’s value. In short, your income is greater, and it may take a lot less time to pay off the total principal than you had imagined. What is more, your house tends to keep pace in value with the inflationary spiral.
It is worth bearing this in mind. A smart real estate man told me a long time ago: “The best time to buy (or build) your house is today.” Sure, yesterday or last year or ten years ago would have been better, but that is gone and dead and buried. Tomorrow’s prices will be significantly more. Today is the time. Get the message, young couple, unsure of making a decision?
If you do not take the step, in twenty years’ time you will still be wishing you had. By then rentals will have tripled, as well as the price of houses, and you still own nothing.
However, you must put the cost of housing well up in the list of regular “outgoings,” for it is basic.
Today, every young couple seems to want the lot, as far as everyday domestic conveniences are concerned, right from the start. There is no harm in wanting.
*19/76/5*
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