Early retirement without home ownership

[Alphaville]

You should see my quirky antique rug collection! It's less toxic, more efficient, more visually interesting, and a far better investment.

please post up some photos, if you wouldn’t mind!

[zarathustra]

I gotta figure out how to attach photos. . .

[Flurry]

In Austria renting seems to be easier to me. I rent a apartment with a small garden (what I find luxurious) for 1050€/month together with my wife. Buying a similar apartment would cost around 400.000€ + fees up to 10%. We'd lose flexibility and become the bank's slaves. I like the idea more to purchase stocks until they yield enough dividend to pay the rent
In Vienna there's also a very good social housing system, if we reduce our working hours to move to a lower income bracket, we can apply for an apartment which is even cheaper.
Moving to a rural area gives us the opportunity to purchase a cheap house but we'd need to go from 0 to 1 or 2 cars which adds a lot of costs again and I really don't think it's worth the effort.

[ertyu]

The car issue is definitely a reason why I ultimately decided on settling in a city. A house in a rural area is cheaper than an apartment but it is also more expensive to maintain and carries with it all expenses associated with compulsory car ownership. In the end I decided that purchasing my produce and not having to deal with maintaining a roof and a septic system + avoiding car, fuel, car insurance more than makes up for the added cost of urban housing.

I have to admit that I gave in and I bought a place. There are definitely cons, but let's hope it all ends up alright.