We’re in the same situation as you except that our house is some larger and newer and our a/c bills are eating our lunch. It takes almost $20,000 a year to live in our part of Texas for just the basic necessities not including food or any medical expenses. No way we could ever afford to obligate ourselves for a car payment again.
One of the ladies at our church just sold her home and moved into a Holiday Inn close to the beach. $900 a month covers all her costs - twice a week cleaning, cable TV, utilities, taxes and insurance. Her bedroom is separated from her living room by a partial wall. Everything except for food, meds and clothes. Sounds like a wonderful solution.
We’re kind of in the same situation as you. Nice large home in a country club neighborhood in California and paid for. House was built in 1978 so we have been doing major updating...granite in kitchen, sprinkler system revamp, new doors and windows. Redid the pool 5 years ago, air conditioner last year and all appliances in the last 4 years. Our electric bill is still eating us up and now with the drought the water rates are going up. Now we have termites......sheesh...and will probably have to be tented.
My plans are already made if hubby goes before me. I’m moving to a big ole baoat on the water in Ventura. I’d do it now except hubby refuses. Sick of home ownership.
This is what I find shocking about the cost structure today. Governments have put so much on the backs of home owners and the ‘regulation’ of banking has made the cost of getting a home so high along with the associated risks of ownership from the short term perspective it makes more sense to rent.
Unfortunately that short term perspective is all a lot of millennials can afford for two different reasons:
1: The job market for entry level jobs is terrible (who would have thought that given how much they are flooding the country with foreign nationals) So smaller and smaller shares of us can even afford the now much higher down payment.(Thank you Washington)
2: The Jobs we are geting tend to be a lot more transitory and unstable, gone is the days of staying with a company your entire life and that means Millennials are looking at the prospect of moving more often just to keep working.
Owning a Home is Great if you can guaranteed you have a job for years and decades to come. But it becomes a liability the more your likely to have to move to new jobs. Moving to new Jobs is what the market is like going forward.
If that wasn’t disincentive enough with the housing market crash in the late 2000’s we aren’t even garrenteed to make money on the ‘home investment’ or be able to sell it equability. These financial realities make home ownership even more expensive.
The unstable job market unfortunately creates one more problem for the Millennial marriage, If both parents have to work then unstable jobs means difficulty finding work due to narrowing field of locations.
Women today generally demand you live near their family and are not as willing to follow you where your work goes(they have their own careers that take priority to them). Thus a larger share of millennial men are likely to be single and/or under or unemployed. Gone are the days when its easy for families to stick together. Of course the family is a major reason to buy a home and with that out of the picture the bachelor drifting life is a lot more likely if you can afford it.
All of this also point to why people are moving to the cities, as the cities are always where there are the most opportunities(or really anything) within traveling distances and thus also the highest likelihood of finding a new job to replace the old one without having to move.