OP - I do sort of understand, if you have a sister who is struggling to pay her mortgage and people in your life who are mortgaged are struggling, whereas those who are renting aren't, it might look like mortgages are only for the rich - however, what you have to remember is that until very recently, mortgages where often lent that just weren't affordable. When we looked to buy in 2008 (just before things all went a bit wrong in the economy), we were offered £200k more than we ended up borrowing a year later when we finally bought somewhere. We could live in a much larger house, but we did the sums ourselves and decided it would be a struggle to pay it back once we had DCs. (As it was, by 2009, mortgage providors were being far more sensible, and the amount we wanted to borrow was now pretty much the limit to what they would lend us, even though DH had recieved a sizeable payrise in the interim).
Your sister might be worrying about how to pay a mortgage, but believe me, as she is a home owner, it's a hell of a lot harder for the bank to get her out of that house if she stops paying her mortgage than it is for a landlord to get you out if you stopped paying. Most recently, there's been a lot of changes to make it very hard for banks to evict owners, which is probably the only reason we've not seen anywhere near the number of reposessions at this recession as we did at the last (I knew so many families when I was growing up who had to move in the 90s recession, I don't know anyone who's gone through it this time round, even though I know quite a few people who were made redundant)
What you need to do is in the same way you would with renting a flat, work out what you can afford to pay each month, personally with a mortgage, I'd aim for a little less on the understanding rates can go up, and if you have 2-3 years of accounts, go to see your bank (it's usually easier with the bank you already have your accounts with) to see what they would lend you and the rate.
If you got a 20 year mortgage, you would have paid it off by 61, when are you planning on retiring? At least this way you wouldn't be trying to pay rent out of your pension. If you get a 25 year term, you would be close to paying it off anyway by 65, it wouldn't be that long to pay out of your pension.
Another thought worth remembering, that your mortgage payment stays pretty much the same - bar changes in interest rates, however rents tend to go up with inflation. What might sound a lot in 2014, might sound very little in 2034, whereas a rent on a similar property might be similar now, but will go up with inflation by then (or to put it another way, the monthly repayments my parents were paying when they started their mortgage was a huge amount for them to find, by the end of 25 years, it had gone from being c40% of their monthly income to being c4% of their monthly income, yet what they paid had only flutated by about £50 a month)
This is not to say you should get a mortgage if you really don't want to, but perhaps accept that you do need to pay for your housing one way or another, if you don't have the funds to buy something without credit, and don't want take out a loan so you can buy something outright, then you will have to rent it. Foot stamping will not put a roof over your head.