Like My Two Dollars, I rent an affordable home (an apartment) in a neighborhood of million-dollar homes. My Two Dollars blogs about the economics of renting and that post was one of my favorites from the 107th Festival of Frugality edition, which is up at Cash Money Life.It's an excellent carnival and I am grateful to the host for including one of my pieces in the lineup. Here are a few of the posts that caught my eye.
From Tip Diva: Top Ten Tips for Reducing Your Electricity.
From My Two Dollars: the frugal option is to rent an apartment, rather than buy a home.
From Beauty and Grooming: beauty tips for winter skin and hair care.
From Free From Broke: breakfast is the most important meal.
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Previous Posts:
What is Luxury? Town & Country: Luxe is a Moving Target
Reformed Spenders Provide 10 Ways to Save in 2008
Barking Dogs, Stinking Turtles and Sick Hamsters Taught Me About Money
Cheap Travel Guide: Month-by-Month, City-by-City Hotel Savings Rates
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Sharon Harvey Rosenberg is the author of The Frugal Duchess of South Beach: How to Live Well and Save Money... Anywhere!, which will be published in the Spring of 2008 by DPL Press.
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6 comments:
Thanks for liking my post. :)
I agree with the basic premise of renting over owning (especially when the disparity between rent & mortgage is so great in your region) but at the same time both you and two dollars aren't mentioning some of the real downsides of renting. Like when the furnace runs out of oil at 1am on a Friday night in February and the property management company can't be reached until 9am Monday (a VERY big deal when you live in Canada!). I've also had several nice and well-priced rentals sold out from under me, forcing me to move to a more expensive place at awkward times of the year with little chance to save for the unavoidable extra costs.
That said, the costs of renting vs owning are much closer in Toronto, where the housing prices aren't that inflated and rental prices are very high after about 2 decades of 1% or lower vacancy rates on rental units. We pay about the same as we would to rent a similar quality home in our current neighbourhood. It made it a much easier decision to purchase after the mambo restaurant moved in next door to our last apartment!
Thanks so much for the mention!
not an artist - now imagine you own that house and you have to pay for that repair - that's not a downside of renting!
Thanks for the mention Sharon!
Two Dollars -- but that's just it, it wasn't a repair. If we had owned the property I would have remembered to to have the furnace's tank filled for winter! Its the lack of control over what happens to your own home that I have an issue with. In the end it cost us MORE as tenants, because we were responsible for our own electricity costs and had to heat what we could with old electric space heaters for 3 days. And freeze anyways, because you can't heat 700sqf when its -10 outside with 2 tiny space heaters!
Thanks so much for mentioning my post! Keep an eye out on my site if you like saving money... it seems to be a popular draw for our readers, so we'll be including more savings-themed tips in the future.
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