Home Is My Best Investment

Home Is My Best Investment

Home Is My Best InvestmentSaturday mornings I slip silently out of bed in the early hours and creep through the hallway past the kid’s bedrooms, down the stairs.  The house, much like it’s dwellers, is mostly asleep.  The wooden steps groan under the weight of my clumsy feet and the heater rumbles to attention from its late night hibernation.  Each room its own peccadillo, its own petty offense.  Much like its inhabitants.  The overly formal living room, or the underly formal family room.  The kitchen with its slab countertop smack in the way of any reasonable sort of traffic flow.  The foibles of a structure, of a family.  Of my family.  My home is my best investment.  It is the warm blanket that huddles us together on a cold night.  The walls are not just barriers but boundaries.  The skin that separates inner from outer.

Before

I have lived in other places before.  The home of my childhood comes back to me in dreams.  I wander through the basement and climb up the steps into the outdated kitchen.  Becoming cognizant of the unreality, I study each nook and cranny.  I remember the place where my father both lived and died.  From sanity to tragedy, and back again to something that can only be defined as after.  After his death, we remade his office into a bedroom and I moved out from the safety of the space I shared with my brother.

Before and after.  That childhood home stayed with me years after my mom remarried and we moved.  I revisit it from time to time.  Not only in my dreams but on the way through town when we happen to drive in that given direction.

The facade has changed

But not the memories.  The memories crowd and shroud.  Scream and laugh. They become the blueprint for my adulthood life.

And settle a few miles down the road in another red brick house.  My biggest outlay of cash.  Home is my most costly investment.

Home is my best investment.

Dollars and Cents

Home Is My Best InvestmentI cannot argue the economic voracity of shelter.  I cannot spreadsheet safety and comfort.  Sitting alone as the sun rises in the living, breathing entity that has become my life.  Outlined by a bunch of walls made of thoughtless stone and concrete.

Home is my best investment.  The place I brought my children from the hospital.  The walls I painted and the bareness that I adorned with art, and memories, and life.

The day to day monotony of our existence housed in a single series of rooms.  My daughter playing legos on the floor.  My son sitting at the table accidentally smearing his homework with leftover grease from the evening meal.

The broken, and cracked, and chipped nature of things that age.

I have Invested

I have invested in stocks and bonds.  Speculated on art and baseball cards.  Side hustled with writing and real estate.

Home is my best investment.

A selfish, non-liquid asset with scant returns.

A place to awake in the morning.  The soft hum of the beginning of the day.

Coffee in the kitchen on that slab countertop with my sons grease stained homework.  Overlooking the living room strewn with blankets and my daughter’s legos.

Before everyone wakes up.

 

Doc G

A doctor who discovered the FI community but still struggling with RE.

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20 Responses

  1. As a proud homeowner I couldn’t have said it better myself

  2. Ray says:

    This is a fantastic post. “Is your home an investment or a consumption item?” debate is always popular in the FIRE community, but the truth is its neither. Its value isn’t purely monetary and so can’t be measured like most investments (ie stocks or bonds), and you have an emotional attachment that you don’t feel for most consumption items (food, electronics). Its the physical shell that you wrap around the most important things in the world.

    We have a big family and a big shell to wrap around them, and sometimes the upkeep and repair cost drive me nuts. But, ultimately its worth it. Its our place, and for us, its the best place in the world.
    -Ray

  3. E says:

    Lovely post! Yes,a place to call home; hands down best investment. Homeowner too . And, I’ve done the same thing driving past the home I grew up in, where cherished memories of my mom took place. Think I smell something, here on the east coast…… it’s your fresh brewed coffee! Mmmmmmm

  4. Church says:

    It is these intangible moments that make a home priceless.

    Thanks for warm post.

  5. Gasem says:

    This morning I woke up a little early and the sun was comming up over the Atlantic. In my working life I’d be thinking about my day, the surgeon I’d be working with, and the case load, on Wed it was Ortho or ENT bones or beaks. Since retired instead I was thinking about our lives. Daughter #1 is starting a job at a Montessori school in Kansas. She officially doesn’t live here anymore. Daughter #2 signed up for her next year of college, and in a couple years she will be gone too, who knows where? The home will then be too large. Who knows what’s next? Enjoy theLego’s and the grease smeared homework, enjoy the present. It will not last.

  6. Thanks for the reminder. Home is where the heart is, it’s an expense but it’s also where you live. That can’t be undersold.

  7. Hatton1 says:

    To me my house is a consumption item. I also drive by the houses I grew up in to remind me where I came from. What I love about my house is the flowers that I have planted.

  8. Wonderful post. My house is not just a wood structure; it is a home. Filled with the chaos and messiness of young children. I curse when I step on Lego bricks and random socks scattered throughout the family room. But I know this will not last. One day, the kids will grow up and leave. It will be quiet and I will pine for the noise. A home is where the heart is.

  9. Dr. McFrugal says:

    The return of investment on a home is absolutely priceless!

  10. Dr. MB says:

    My home WAS my investment. It was our previous multiplex rental property. (Dr. MB knew to buy into a nicer part of the city) Nowadays, it houses my husband and I in our unit and my two children in the other unit. They are both old enough now to live on their own.

    A home can be a consumptive item and an investment. Unlike equities, real estate allows for creativity.

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