I mostly agree with your post from a purely financial perspective, I was just giving some examples where people might think that the potential financial benefits of buying a house are worth the potential risks you mentioned. I’ve got a friend who falls into the example you gave (doesn’t have/plan to have children, will leave his house to charity in his will), and this doesn’t seem like that terrible of a decision for him.
EAs who will/may have children however perhaps shouldn’t buy a home as, if they do, the pressure to leave the home to their children will be very great. There’s certainly no guarantee the child will use the asset to do good.
To engage with what you said a bit more, I find this paragraph difficult to reconcile with the idea that it seems much easier to have children when you own a house. Without that, your family will likely have to move around a lot more, your children may be forced to switch schools, you might have to deal with longer commute times when moving between places, you may deal with periods of insecurity (eg. if you live in a popular city it may be difficult to find a suitable rental at some points), your financial situation could be less stable (eg. you might have to accept significantly higher rents to stay in the same house/neighbourhood, or move to a different house/neighbourhood and deal with the previous considerations), etc. All of these could impact your financial situation but also your day-to-day wellbeing/the amount of security you feel. And if a person’s living situation is more stressful I could also see this impacting their performance at work and possibly their lifetime earnings. So this doesn’t seem clear-cut to me, even though I do agree there will be more pressure to pass the house along to your children as opposed to selling it and donating the proceeds.
(Disclaimer: Some countries guarantee more rights for renters that would negate some of the above concerns (eg. Germany), but if you live in the US/UK/Canada/Australia/etc, I would expect the above concerns to apply.)
I mostly agree with your post from a purely financial perspective, I was just giving some examples where people might think that the potential financial benefits of buying a house are worth the potential risks you mentioned. I’ve got a friend who falls into the example you gave (doesn’t have/plan to have children, will leave his house to charity in his will), and this doesn’t seem like that terrible of a decision for him.
To engage with what you said a bit more, I find this paragraph difficult to reconcile with the idea that it seems much easier to have children when you own a house. Without that, your family will likely have to move around a lot more, your children may be forced to switch schools, you might have to deal with longer commute times when moving between places, you may deal with periods of insecurity (eg. if you live in a popular city it may be difficult to find a suitable rental at some points), your financial situation could be less stable (eg. you might have to accept significantly higher rents to stay in the same house/neighbourhood, or move to a different house/neighbourhood and deal with the previous considerations), etc. All of these could impact your financial situation but also your day-to-day wellbeing/the amount of security you feel. And if a person’s living situation is more stressful I could also see this impacting their performance at work and possibly their lifetime earnings. So this doesn’t seem clear-cut to me, even though I do agree there will be more pressure to pass the house along to your children as opposed to selling it and donating the proceeds.
(Disclaimer: Some countries guarantee more rights for renters that would negate some of the above concerns (eg. Germany), but if you live in the US/UK/Canada/Australia/etc, I would expect the above concerns to apply.)