Renting, your home or anything else.

My parents have a very strict approach of “if you can’t afford it you can’t have it” which I completely agree with when it comes to luxuries, but which meant that I never thought of things like owning your own home without a mortgage or buying cars outright as luxuries. As far as they were concerned renting or owing any kind of money was for people who were too irresponsible to have enough money.

Also, now that I’m renting my apartment it turns out that the other result of this is that they have absolutely no idea how expensive renting is. I have a degree from one of the top universities in the UK, work full time, and spend easily 80% of my salary on my rent. Not only do they refuse to accept that I have to pay that much to live in my shared apartment at the lowest end of the housing spectrum, but they also refuse to believe how much rent can vary. In the next city over the same apartment would cost at least £200 less, and in the town where they live it would cost nearly double.