Latest / Making Cents / Is Your Home an Investment - Or Just a Place to Live?

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Is Your Home an Investment - Or Just a Place to Live? · Making Cents

• 0:00
  There is a belief that is almost a religion to some people that if you buy a home, hold onto it, pay off the mortgage, you are financially sorted.
• 0:10
  Which I'm sorry to tell you, is really not true.
• 0:14
  And if you let that belief guide you, you could miss opportunities for building real financial stability because you feel like.
• 0:22
  You're ahead when you're actually not.
• 0:25
  Because while buying your own home can be a good financial decision, that does.
• 0:30
  Not make it an investment.
• 0:32
  A big saved cost, sure.
• 0:35
  A way to create stability for your family, yes.
• 0:38
  But to create actual wealth and to.
• 0:41
  Count as an investment, a home would have to bring in money.
• 0:45
  And it doesn't.
• 0:46
  And what's worse, it can sometimes lead to missed opportunities.
• 0:50
  Just ask Janika Terrellen.
• 0:52
  She's a property reporter for Staff.
• 0:54
  She covers these issues every single day.
• 0:57
  And when she finally sat down and.
• 0:59
  Ran the numbers on her own home, she found something surprising and not really in a good way.
• 1:06
  Oh, the house hasn't gone up very much.
• 1:09
  What about I chuck some numbers into a spreadsheet and try to figure out if buying this house was worth it in a financial sense.
• 1:15
  And it wasn't.
• 1:18
  Because it turns out there can be hidden costs to owning a home, as well as missed opportunities while you're paying.
• 1:23
  Off that mortgage, which can change the calculations from the story that we've been sold.
• 1:28
  What surprised me about it was the true cost of ownership.
• 1:31
  It's not just the purchase price you're looking at with a house, it's all of this stuff.
• 1:35
  And none of that exists with renting.
• 1:38
  So if your home isn't quite the investment you thought it was, what is it?
• 1:43
  And does that change whether you should buy at all?
• 1:46
  What this has taught me that is that home ownership, but I don't think it's the way to wealth if you're living in the home nowadays.
• 1:54
  So welcome to Making Sense.
• 1:56
  It's the podcast people who want financial freedom without giving up their coffee.
• 2:00
  I'm Frances Cook, financial journalist and fellow financial freedom seeker who makes money simple for you today.
• 2:07
  Why your home is not an investment.
• 2:10
  This episode of Making Sense is brought.
• 2:12
  To you in partnership with Odoo, the of owner, all in one business management platform that brings everything you need to.
• 2:18
  Run your business into one place, fully.
• 2:21
  Integrated and actually affordable.
• 2:23
  Go to odoo.com, that's o-double o.com for more.
• 2:28
  I want to help as many people as possible build a better life for themselves by understanding and taking control of their money.
• 2:35
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• 2:37
  First, make sure.
• 2:38
  You're subscribed wherever you like to listen, whether it's YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
• 2:43
  And then send your favorite episode to a mate.
• 2:46
  Then we can all level up with money together.
• 2:48
  The show grows, and I can keep bringing you the money info that actually moves the dial.
• 2:53
  Janika, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:56
  Um, you put out a very good article recently that as soon as I saw it, I was like, I need to get in touch with Yannicka.
• 3:01
  This is so my jam.
• 3:04
  Because it was.
• 3:05
  It was so good.
• 3:06
  And I thought you laid out the case really well about the moment that you realized that your own home wasn't necessarily an investment, which I think is this huge money myth.
• 3:16
  We do get told this.
• 3:18
  So tell me a bit about what that moment of realization was like.
• 3:21
  I had a look at our investment accounts and saw that it had been doing quite well.
• 3:26
  It was over 10% over the 11 years, almost 11 years that we've owned the home.
• 3:32
  And then after tax, it was like 8.7.
• 3:35
  And I thought, oh, the house hasn't gone up very much.
• 3:40
  What about.
• 3:40
  I chuck some numbers into a spreadsheet and try to figure out if buying this house was worth it in a financial sense.
• 3:46
  And it wasn't.
• 3:48
  It wasn't.
• 3:49
  So what was that comparison like?
• 3:50
  So when you say your investment accounts, I'm assuming shares.
• 3:53
  Yeah, Passively managed, mostly shares.
• 3:57
  Fund with low fees, high growth for my age of 39.
• 4:02
  And that had done.
• 4:03
  Yeah, better than housing over such a long holding period.
• 4:06
  And I thought that's what was interesting about it.
• 4:09
  When you look at the previous decades, it would look very different.
• 4:12
  The 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s house growth was high.
• 4:17
  I knew that it hadn't been high, but I hadn't quantified it in the 10 years that we'd owned.
• 4:23
  And so I decided to figure out if it was worth it or not, or if we should have just invested our deposit.
• 4:30
  And it turns out we'd be slightly better off if we'd invested the deposit and never bought the home.
• 4:35
  So if we'd wiped the last almost 11 years of ownership and started today, we'd be slightly better off than having bought the home.
• 4:44
  What was that moment of realisation like?
• 4:45
  Did you look at the numbers and be like, oh, well, that sucks?
• 4:49
  I thought that would be.
• 4:51
  It would be neck and neck just from knowing the basic numbers.
• 4:55
  But what surprised me about it was the true cost of ownership.
• 4:59
  So our home is 1953, weatherboard home, once you consider the maintenance on that, and none of it was major.
• 5:06
  But ongoing maintenance on that, plus the rates and insurance.
• 5:10
  It's not just the purchase price you're looking at with a house, it's all of this stuff and none of that exists with renting.
• 5:17
  So that's what really made the difference.
• 5:19
  It was surprising.
• 5:20
  Run me through some of those little costs that sneak up because I think that is another one that really does.
• 5:25
  Throughout these calculations, people, if you just look at some of the very top line numbers, it can look very different to when you take in the true costs.
• 5:34
  Right, right.
• 5:34
  So what true costs did you have to factor in?
• 5:37
  Some of them were initial upfront costs that we knew about when we bought the home.
• 5:41
  So we replaced a beam, replaced a hot water cylinder, put a waterproof coating on the roof, replaced a pile underneath the house that had borer paint, sanding, basic stuff like that.
• 5:54
  Nothing structural, nothing major.
• 5:56
  And then in an ongoing sense, it's more when things break or that sanding needs to be done again.
• 6:03
  Repainted window breaks.
• 6:06
  Oh, the heat pump is broken.
• 6:08
  New heat pump.
• 6:09
  Oh, the other room's really cold.
• 6:12
  So I've calculated the necessary maintenance costs and there were extras that I haven't put in the calculation that were optional.
• 6:20
  So if I put the optional stuff in, it would be worse for home ownership.
• 6:24
  It's funny, isn't it?
• 6:25
  Because I do feel like New Zealand particularly all around the world, I would say Australians also really love their home ownership, but New Zealand particularly has had for a long time this real idea of buy a home, pay
• 6:40
  it off, you're set.
• 6:42
  And I certainly for a period of time was sucked into that.
• 6:46
  Do you think you were in that mindset?
• 6:48
  Would you still be in that mindset?
• 6:50
  I think there is an emotional benefit that comes with home ownership where, you know, once you're retired, that's a non cost.
• 6:59
  Whatever happens with rents, whatever happens in the future, you've got your rates and insurance to pay.
• 7:05
  That's gone.
• 7:06
  I think that's why people love it.
• 7:07
  I think that's why I don't regret it as well as having the emotional benefits of living there and belonging in my community.
• 7:15
  But I do think it's not the only way to financial freedom.
• 7:19
  It's can be part of the picture, it can be one way.
• 7:23
  Possibly if you bought in a regional area, you would have a bigger gain.
• 7:27
  But for us buying in a city, it hasn't been a big gain.
• 7:30
  It's kind of a hopeful thing I think really, because if you can't afford to buy a house and you can afford to invest, you do that $50 a week, up it to $75 a week, then up it to
• 7:43
  $100 a week, you're still making progress.
• 7:45
  And I think what this has taught me that is that home ownership is not the only way to financial freedom.
• 7:51
  It can be a nice little emotional benefit.
• 7:53
  It has been in our case.
• 7:55
  But I don't think it's the way to wealth if you're living in the home nowadays.
• 8:02
  Yeah, well, exactly.
• 8:03
  And I want to pull on something you sort of mentioned a little bit earlier where I do wonder if maybe things have changed a little bit and that's possibly why there's this mindset that still sticks around that I
• 8:15
  don't think is necessarily true now.
• 8:17
  Do you think at one point just having the home and paying it off did work for building wealth?
• 8:23
  This is the first real crunch point because the past generations did make that money.
• 8:27
  That's where that belief has come from.
• 8:29
  That's why we were told best time to buy is yesterday.
• 8:32
  Get in, get in as soon as you absolutely can.
• 8:35
  And it's no longer the case in the cities in New Zealand.
• 8:39
  So we're finding out in real time now.
• 8:42
  My generation, your generation.
• 8:45
  It's such a good point that you made about, you know, the savings, because paying off, getting rid of that cost to have a roof over your head.
• 8:54
  Massive, great for peace of mind, really big.
• 8:57
  Saving housing is often the biggest cost for people.
• 9:00
  And yet in terms of, as you say, the wealth generation, it's maybe not going to do it.
• 9:04
  And I think knowing that early means you can sort of split your strategy up a little bit.
• 9:10
  I mean, when you looked at these numbers, did it make you sort of be like, maybe you might want to change a few things on how you handle your finances?
• 9:18
  It stopped me wanting to upgrade our home in the future.
• 9:22
  It stopped me wanting to go, let's get a bigger house and enjoy that.
• 9:25
  I think that's probably going to be dead money in Auckland.
• 9:28
  I don't think we're going to see huge house price growth in Auckland over the next 10 years.
• 9:34
  It's meant that I've seen how successful investing is, can be, and I think my money is better used continuing to put it there and not upgrading the home like we'd plan to, like everybody sort of did in the
• 9:48
  past.
• 9:48
  Our home's fine.
• 9:50
  I, I think it's comfortable.
• 9:53
  I'd rather invest for the future than, than have that money sitting there in an upgrade that I'm.
• 9:59
  That's not working for me.
• 10:00
  That's that I'm just living in and possibly my enjoyment of my home will go up 5, 10%.
• 10:05
  But knowing that this money is working for me is of more benefit to me and to us.
• 10:10
  Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 10:11
  And you've also like picked up on something there that I want to dive into a little bit more because I think someone once described it to me as New Zealand doesn't have a property market.
• 10:20
  It has many property markets.
• 10:22
  And it can be so different what's happening in the different regions.
• 10:26
  And I think you saying sort of the, the cities versus more regional areas is a really big split point.
• 10:33
  Do you think this is maybe a slightly different calculation on those?
• 10:37
  If you look at somewhere like Kawaro that has experienced almost a tripling of house prices over the last 15 years.
• 10:44
  Wow.
• 10:45
  So it will be very different depending on where you bought.
• 10:49
  But there are such large populations in the big cities and most working age young people would be there.
• 10:56
  So that's probably where they're bought, close to their jobs, close to their families.
• 11:00
  So I think it would affect a lot of people and regionally it would look quite different depending where you are.
• 11:06
  So I mean really it comes down to sort of seeing your home and I want to say your home, not just property because I think that's a different sort of.
• 11:16
  We'll get into that in a little bit.
• 11:17
  But your home being maybe an asset rather than an investment.
• 11:22
  Do you think that's where you've landed on this?
• 11:24
  Yes, I sort of thought that.
• 11:26
  I believed that and then I got, I went, oh no, really?
• 11:29
  It's like it's still a low key investment.
• 11:31
  Right.
• 11:32
  You know, I sort of purported to believe that without truly believing that, I think.
• 11:37
  And now I truly believe it.
• 11:38
  So I think I heard you say it.
• 11:40
  I think, I think you've said it and I thought I'm brainwashing more people.
• 11:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
• 11:45
  I'm sure, I'm sure that's true.
• 11:46
  But now I truly, truly believe it because you can kind of know these things and then experiencing it takes it to another level.
• 11:56
  Level, doesn't it?
• 11:57
  Yeah.
• 11:57
  And how does that sort of, sort of reframe asset versus investment?
• 12:02
  I mean, does that change how you've already said you don't want to maybe upgrade.
• 12:08
  Does that change sort of your overall financial plan?
• 12:11
  It's just reinforce the idea that investing is more important than I thought.
• 12:17
  Yeah.
• 12:18
  And controlling your home ownership costs is more important than I thought because we're not going to get those crazy capital gains and I don't think that those crazy capital gains are good for New Zealand.
• 12:31
  And I'd rather have that scenario that's good for New Zealand where people can afford to invest in their communities and have a roof over their heads and not be kicked out if a landlord needs to sell and have
• 12:44
  all of that than to have this rampant growth capital growth.
• 12:50
  So I'm happy to go with that direction and just double down on investing.
• 12:56
  Yeah.
• 12:57
  And your home actually did go up in value.
• 13:00
  So you bought in 2015 and now into 2026.
• 13:04
  Your home actually did go up in value in that time, which sounds like a win.
• 13:08
  You know, it's like we were talking earlier before about the headline.
• 13:10
  Numbers can look really good, but you don't feel like it was.
• 13:14
  Walk me through how it actually shakes out.
• 13:17
  We're lucky not to have bought in 2021.
• 13:19
  No shade to people who, who bought at that time.
• 13:21
  Everyone has.
• 13:22
  Circumstances change and people aren't economists and you buy when you think you can afford it, generally.
• 13:30
  So yeah, it was surprising that over such a long holding period and truly calculating the home ownership costs, that it worked out that we would be worth off having bought the home if we'd taken that $65,000 initial 10%
• 13:44
  deposit and put it into investments that would have left us better off than buying the house.
• 13:50
  Which is interesting when you calculate the true cost of ownership.
• 13:53
  What I didn't run the numbers on is another counterfactual scenario which I suspect would be even worse for home ownership, which would be what if we'd rented something cheaper and then aggressively invested that difference.
• 14:05
  So say if, you know, the rents in my area are around 650 at the moment for similar three bedroom house to us, but if we'd not spend that much, if we'd spent say a hundred bucks less on a
• 14:18
  central city apartment, not dealt with the traffic, not spent thousands of hours on the motorway, aggressively invested that hundred dollar difference, we'd be much better off, I suspect, which is interesting.
• 14:29
  It's interesting that you could wipe the whole 11 years and just not be any better off than you would have been just chucking the 65k into an investment account.
• 14:39
  It's funny, isn't it, the opportunity cost of things where it's like, you know, any, any choice that you make, any yes that you have with your money is a no to something else.
• 14:49
  And so of course, putting that money in, buying your first home, it must have felt like a huge win at the time.
• 14:56
  And now you look back and you're like, we were saying no to other things that I didn't necessarily realize I was saying no to yes.
• 15:01
  And we didn't.
• 15:02
  I didn't calculate the time that we spent on the house.
• 15:06
  I didn't calculate some of the other costs like missing out on prior houses.
• 15:11
  So we would have spent thousands on offering missing out due diligence on those prior houses.
• 15:16
  That's why we ended up with a lower deposit of 65,010%.
• 15:21
  It's because so much of it got eaten up trying to buy.
• 15:26
  So it's interesting.
• 15:26
  And yeah, it felt like a huge achievement at the time.
• 15:29
  29 is still below the average age of first home buyers in Auckland.
• 15:35
  We were among the first of our first friend group to do it because we could only afford to save for a couple of years and then a lot of people are in that position of kind of not saving
• 15:45
  till their late twenties now with the cost of everything going up and with pay not super high in New Zealand.
• 15:52
  And we'd been outbid and we'd been out offered and we were really relieved and happy to have bought.
• 15:56
  We thought we were doing the right thing.
• 15:58
  We probably did do the right thing when you look at the emotional benefits.
• 16:01
  But yeah, it's surprising that it hasn't been worth it financially.
• 16:06
  And I never thought we'd be in that position, you know, almost 11 years down the track.
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• 17:41
  Right back to it.
• 17:43
  It's interesting to keep the nuance of the conversation right because as you say, maybe financially this wasn't the absolute pinnacle.
• 17:51
  Best use of money and yet you don't necessarily regret it.
• 17:55
  Which I think is a smart perspective to take on it.
• 17:59
  Walk me through that.
• 18:00
  Why don't you regret it?
• 18:01
  Why was it still worth it?
• 18:03
  It's the stuff that you can't calculate on a spreadsheet.
• 18:06
  I guess it's the knowing that we'll have a paid off House in 10 years.
• 18:12
  We're not going to be kicked out.
• 18:14
  At the time we were seeing all those Facebook posts like our landlord is selling our house.
• 18:18
  Our kids are desperate to stay in this area and be by their friends.
• 18:22
  We haven't been able to find a rental.
• 18:24
  The market was quite hot ish at that time.
• 18:27
  So landlords were selling and it was really sad and we didn't want to be in that position one day.
• 18:32
  For our kid it's been great.
• 18:33
  He's got his little bike gang kids that maraud around on the local boardwalk having their best time.
• 18:40
  The neighbors pop over with their curries and their rotis and give us their Chinese moon cakes and my kid goes and sees the, the older neighbors and they bring out their little vintage cars when they see them coming.
• 18:53
  And you can't calculate that.
• 18:55
  That's why we don't regret it.
• 18:57
  Yeah.
• 18:58
  And I think that's where it lands for me as well that I think buying my own home was a real mix of the financial and the emotional.
• 19:07
  Like I do want that saved cost, I do want that ease in retirement and then the stability and getting to build that family life there I think is super important.
• 19:21
  And that's why housing and property becomes such a loaded topic for people because it's both financial and emotional and you can't separate the two.
• 19:29
  And yet if that is someone's only financial plan, it makes me so nervous for them because I'm like, ah, but your home doesn't bring in money.
• 19:39
  I think it's the word only.
• 19:41
  I think it can't be the only thing or it shouldn't be the only thing.
• 19:45
  I think I'm more in favor of not extending yourself so much that you can't afford to invest at the same time separately, even if you know for the first couple of years of your mortgage, you're investing nothing and
• 19:57
  then you're investing 50 and then you're investing hundred.
• 20:01
  You've just got.
• 20:01
  Got to scale that up as soon as you can because it can't be the only thing that you're relying on for your retirement.
• 20:07
  No one knows what's going to happen with New Zealand super in the future.
• 20:10
  Nobody knows what's going to be the cost of living at that time.
• 20:14
  You need something else.
• 20:15
  And also if you can't afford to buy a home, there is another way.
• 20:19
  Keep doing that, you're still making progress.
• 20:22
  That's the accessible option right now that you can control.
• 20:25
  And if you do that, the returns are actually pretty good historically.
• 20:31
  So, you know, you might find that you do, you can afford to buy in five years or something if you keep that momentum up.
• 20:38
  I so agree with you.
• 20:39
  And I think that's actually, that's a really smart way of putting it.
• 20:41
  Is just like it's the word only is the problem here.
• 20:45
  Like housing can be great if you feel locked out of it.
• 20:47
  There are other options that are actually potentially even better.
• 20:50
  But even if you go for it, have some other options.
• 20:54
  That's why it's really important to say this conversation is centered around the family home.
• 20:58
  Because of course an investment property would be something totally different again, wouldn't it?
• 21:04
  You'd be looking for different things in an investment.
• 21:06
  You'd probably be looking for regional places, higher yields, lower maintenance costs, like brick, possibly lower number of bedrooms, like two bedrooms to fill gaps in the market that exist with that.
• 21:18
  So you would.
• 21:19
  It would be completely different scenario.
• 21:21
  And this is not bad.
• 21:22
  Yeah.
• 21:23
  When you're living in the home itself, A, like you say, you pick different things.
• 21:28
  B, it's not generating income for the vast majority of people.
• 21:32
  Exactly.
• 21:33
  And I think investing is also more hopeful because you can do it right now.
• 21:38
  You know, it might be a long time, if ever, that you can afford to buy a rental property, but you can invest right now.
• 21:45
  And also if you do that for a few years, you might be able to buy half a house or you might be able to have a huge deposit.
• 21:51
  My personal view.
• 21:52
  This is not financial advice.
• 21:54
  My personal view is that we're not going to stay rampant house price growth in the big cities anytime soon.
• 22:00
  So there's less reason to be disheartened and there's more reason to keep up whatever strategy is accessible to you right now.
• 22:07
  But do that.
• 22:08
  Don't give up, do that.
• 22:10
  Yeah, exactly.
• 22:10
  And I think there are actually a few economists that I've seen who certainly agree with your projections.
• 22:15
  It's looking like we've had some pretty big house price increases, especially in those main centers, and that maybe we're a little tapped out in terms of how people can spend.
• 22:26
  I think we're so on the edge of affordability already.
• 22:30
  House prices have grown so much over 50 years.
• 22:34
  No major parties seem to be committed to huge migration anymore.
• 22:39
  So I don't think we're going to see massive growth.
• 22:43
  That's my view.
• 22:45
  It's almost impossible to predict future mass crowd psychology and interest rates and all of the things that economists are trying to look at.
• 22:54
  But I don't think we're going to see the kinds of rampant growth with house prices that we've seen in the past anytime soon, if ever.
• 23:03
  I always find it interesting with this debate because I've talked about this before in terms of your home being an asset rather than an investment.
• 23:11
  And some people agree really strongly.
• 23:14
  Some people get quite upset at the suggestion.
• 23:18
  And so I always find it really interesting, the response.
• 23:23
  And of course, you put out your very good analysis on a huge platform of stuff, so I imagine you got emails back.
• 23:32
  What sort of response did you get from people and did people share their stories with you, too?
• 23:36
  It's a bigger response than I've had for any other property story.
• 23:41
  A lot of people message me, people that I know and people that I don't know.
• 23:45
  It's probably about 30 to 40 messages, which is a lot to receive personally rather than comments on the article.
• 23:53
  A lot of people just said we're in the same boat.
• 23:56
  And a lot of people said, I suspect we're in the same boat.
• 23:59
  Let me run the numbers.
• 24:00
  It kind of validated what I thought a bit, that this is not a unique experience.
• 24:07
  I'm not the only one in this situation, and I think to be aware of it and have it as one part of your knowledge, beliefs and strategy is good.
• 24:18
  And that's why I wanted to write the article, because I knew it wouldn't be unique.
• 24:24
  And I think it's important information to think about as part of the bigger picture for your future.
• 24:30
  Yeah.
• 24:31
  Yeah.
• 24:31
  And I do think, you know, as we talked about earlier in the conversation, that things have just the ground has shifted a little bit to.
• 24:37
  Do you think it's that property and how we approach homeownership has changed, or do you think also potentially what we need from our money has changed a little bit too?
• 24:48
  I think people realize that you can't eat your house more, and it's not great to have it all locked away in a house.
• 24:56
  You need to be able to access some of it for an emergency.
• 24:59
  You need to be able to spend it in retirement.
• 25:03
  A lot of people don't want to downgrade their home when they get to retirement.
• 25:06
  You know, it can be really expensive to sell, can be really tempting to want to come and have your grandkids stay in the house that they grew up in, your kids grew up in.
• 25:15
  And it can be quite expensive to downsize if you want to stay in the same area that you're in.
• 25:21
  And so I think it's just knowing that you need something else is knowing that it's not great to have it all locked away.
• 25:29
  You need to have some spending money and you need to have it at least two pronged strategy.
• 25:36
  Yeah.
• 25:37
  And it's also tricky, right, because I feel like New Zealand so loves the three bedroom standalone house that when people come to the downsizing.
• 25:45
  I've heard that this is quite anecdotal, but I've heard it from a lot of people.
• 25:49
  It's actually really hard to find something that works as a downsize.
• 25:52
  Squirrel did some research recently about what downsizers want and it was a garage, a garden, hopefully standalone or at least a duplex, not an apartment.
• 26:04
  So it's not actually that much cheaper.
• 26:06
  If you do all of that, you might have 100k left over and then by the time you've spent 30k on selling your home, you know, you might have 70,000 left over.
• 26:18
  I'm just making up, you know, some mildly typical scenario, but yeah, it's not, it's not always the king financial hit that people might think that it is.
• 26:28
  Do you think this is a myth that sort of impacts how we approach property in New Zealand?
• 26:33
  Because you would talk to so many people and see a lot of research around on this.
• 26:38
  My personal experience is that the generations that experienced the growth are more likely to believe in its future and the generations who haven't experienced the growth are less likely to believe in its future growth.
• 26:55
  No matter what the research says, your personal experience kind of trumps it for most people.
• 27:02
  I think it's shifting in some people and not others.
• 27:04
  And I think it has shifted and I think it is shifting and I think that's probably being led typically by that slightly younger generation, the belief shift.
• 27:15
  But yeah, I mean a lot of older people that I speak to too are looking at all of the data and starting to shift their perspective as well.
• 27:22
  If you could go back to 2015, you about to bid on that successful house, would you tell her to do anything differently?
• 27:33
  It's really hard because I know the market peaked in 2021.
• 27:37
  Knowing what I know now, saving a bigger deposit for longer would have been a better move.
• 27:44
  Knowing that house prices didn't go up that much over 10 years.
• 27:48
  And then the emotional benefit of having ownership once Your child was 5 and needed to start school would have been the balance.
• 27:56
  Right, balance of emotional and financial benefit.
• 27:58
  But it would be really hard not to get caught up in the FOMO of 2021 and, you know, get in then.
• 28:05
  But the market was higher at that time.
• 28:07
  So this is what makes it so tricky.
• 28:09
  Overall, probably not.
• 28:10
  Overall, probably, yes.
• 28:12
  We should have bought it, considering the emotion, the finance, that extreme peak that we saw in the middle of that 10 year period.
• 28:22
  So no, I don't regret it.
• 28:26
  I don't regret it, but I'm definitely not going to upgrade.
• 28:31
  Yeah, I was just going to say sort of your overall.
• 28:34
  After you've looked at these numbers and suspect that you could run them in an even more depressing way, has it given you at all a little steer, even if it's a small change in how you handle your money
• 28:46
  from here?
• 28:47
  Probably.
• 28:48
  The plan was to upgrade and buy a rental when I was younger and now the plan is to hold our property and invest separately in a diversified range of things that includes property within that portfolio, but not in
• 29:06
  an outright, here's my rental kind of way.
• 29:08
  I think that's because of what our parents thought and what they thought was the right thing to do.
• 29:15
  And now I don't see a rental property in our future.
• 29:20
  Do you think you'd ever be open to it in the future or are you just like.
• 29:24
  No, I think when you consider the hassle and the time that you have to put in, maybe it would be financially worth it if you got really clever about it and you bought in the right place and you
• 29:35
  did all the right things.
• 29:37
  But when you add in the hours on top with the management and all that kind of thing, and then you could probably get a good, you know, a good return investing with no effort, you know, I'd rather do
• 29:49
  that.
• 29:50
  I'm so with you.
• 29:51
  I'm all about that easy financial life.
• 29:53
  I'm so with you.
• 29:55
  I think seeing how good the returns have been and again, you can't predict the future on that, but it seems like a good strategy.
• 30:03
  Absolutely.
• 30:03
  Thank you so much for coming on.
• 30:04
  Janica Terellen, you do fabulous reporting and you've only been in the hot seat a little while for stuff, but highly recommend people checking out your articles cause you've been great.
• 30:14
  So thank you very much.
• 30:15
  Oh, thank you.
• 30:16
  I've enjoyed this so much.
• 30:17
  It's been such a pleasure.
• 30:18
  It's been really fun.
• 30:19
  We'll have to get you back in.
• 30:20
  You can look at all the property stuff for us.
• 30:22
  Oh, I would love to.
• 30:23
  Now, if this episode was helpful to you, send it to a friend.
• 30:26
  We can all level up with our money together.
• 30:28
  Until next time, have a great day.
• 30:31
  This podcast can only give you general information about how things work in most situations.
• 30:36
  It's not individual financial advice.
• 30:39
  If you're after that, a financial advisor is always the best bet.