Oooo, my first AIBU
The Old Man and I were brought up, like most Brits I guess, to believe that renting was the preserve of the flighty and irresponsible and ill-advised, and that the only sensible thing to do was to buy your own home.
You know where this is going (no points for originality here): we are professionals, married 10 years, hoping to start a family, but cursed with being Londoners, and of the generation that began being gently and discreetly screwed into student debt by the Government and then being savagely shafted thereafter.
We have a respectable income, but it is so eaten up by debts and the cost of London living that we are focusing all our efforts on paying the debts off, and there is little left over.
There is no hope of us ever buying our own property: our jobs are public sector and/or the arts, and we would need to save a deposit of around £40k, and get a mortgage of something like 8 times our combined income. We're from unwealthy backgrounds, and there will be no bequests or lump sums appearing on the horizon.
Of course we could leave our hometown, but kindly do not suggest this because I don't see why we bloody should: our families are Londoners for generations, we know its very stones, all our friends are here, etc.
So (get on with it woman): AIBU to ignore all this guff about home-owning being the be-all and end-all, and be quite content renting? Our monthly rent is less than a mortgage payment would be; someone else pays for the plumbing; a nice couple come and mow the lawns; if it all goes bent, or all goes better, we can up sticks in a month.
And I'm talking planning on renting long-term here - ten, fifteen years, with (hopefully) children, and all that that entails. Maybe forever, unless one of us gets that pesky half-million book deal.
Is this irresponsible? Should we eat spaghetti hoops on toast (erm, even more than currently )and go live in Zone 72 or parts of the country we know nothing about, and where our friends are hundreds of miles away, just to say 'Oh yes, we own our own home you know'?
Do any other MN'ers rent from choice? Are you happy with it? AYBU?!
Most importantly, do you think there will be a cultural change, and people will care less about that holy grail of the mortgage, and tenants will (like Germany f'rinstance) get lovely long-term leases, with security and permission to paint over the sodding magnolia paint?
I thank you.