I turn 25 next month. Which doesn’t bother me in the slightest (don’t worry, this isn’t a rant-about-my-age post). I’m cool with the idea of growing older, in fact, I’m actually quite excited about the future and everything it holds. And to be honest, while I’m a true believer in learning something from everything that happens to us (and, indeed, everything we inflict upon ourselves), there are plenty of experiences I had during my “formative” years that I’m perfectly happy to consign to the realm of history (example: drunkenly throwing up in my Dad’s car on the way home from a party, age 16). No, I’m enjoying growing up. Long may it continue.
Nevertheless, “growing up” seems to bring with it another, different set of things to ponder (I think I’m done for now with “What am I going to do with my life?” and “How much alcohol can I realistically drink before I become loud and annoying?”). And one subject that seems to keep returning to the discussion table between my similarly aged friends and me is the topic of house buying.
I live in an old redbrick tenement (which, incidentally, has been covered from top to toe in some impressively bland scaffolding since the beginning of this year) in a leafy, quiet area of Edinburgh. It’s cosy and comfortable, and I’ve done my absolute best with the decor given a very limited budget and some rather heavy restrictions on what can be changed. My flatmate and I rent this humble abode from the local letting agency, and I’ve been here for almost two years now. Prior to moving in, I lived in a series of other, similar, rented flats around and about the South (ahem, best) side of the city.
I’ve always enjoyed renting. It drives the would-be interior designer in me insane for sure, but generally I like it. I like knowing that I could hand in a month’s notice and flit somewhere else within a matter of weeks if I decided I wanted to. I like the fact that renting allows me to live in what I consider to be one of Edinburgh’s nicest areas – cripplingly expensive when it comes to first time buying. Most of all, however, and selfish as it probably sounds, I like to know that the responsibility, both financial and otherwise, for almost all of the maintenance and repairs that a beautiful old building like this one inevitably requires from time to time lies at somebody else’s front door. That scaffolding outside? It’s been here for six months already – expensive. There are, on average, three workmen on it every day – more expensive. And that’s not even to mention the work that’s going on – you get my picture. The bill for all of this will have to be split between the owners of the flats in the tenement. To tell the truth, at this moment in time I’m almost painfully glad that I’m not one of them.
Having said that, I’m not entirely opposed to the idea of buying a place to live. Which has definitely not always been the case. In fact, there was a time when I was going around telling anyone who would listen that taking on a mortgage was akin to having a child: life would never be the same again, and you would forever be restricted in terms of what you could and couldn’t do by the weight of a responsibility you had voluntarily taken on board.
It’s safe to say I don’t think that way any more – probably because I’ve witnessed several good friends pass through the gates to home ownership in the past couple of years and live to tell the tale. Yet somehow, I still don’t feel like buying is quite ‘me’. It’s certainly not me at the moment in my wandering but happy state of unemployment, but even once I go back to full time work in September, I still can’t visualise myself going through the process of actually committing to purchasing a house.
The most expensive thing – as in tangible, material possession – I’ve ever bought is a car for which I paid £300. I’ve spent more than that on flights and travels, and I regularly (as in, on a monthly basis) spend more than that on rental payments, but still – the most expensive material possession I’ve ever bought cost me £300. So perhaps it’s understandable that the thought of spending over £100,000 on what is, stripped down, little more than a possession strikes me as slightly unnerving. I live a very frugal, simple life – extravagant purchases are not, and never have been, my boat. And while I understand that you don’t just go and actually drop 100K plus on your chosen home just like that, there is still a part of me that reckons myself too young and irresponsible to be entrusted with looking after and paying for something as expensive as a house.
But the thing is (and there’s always a thing, isn’t there?), I’m secretly starting to long for just that: a house. I long to be able to spend weekends wearing dirty, paint-splattered jeans, splashing colour up the walls, making and hanging my own curtains and attempting to restrain my love for Cath Kidston-style furnishings for fear of the place turning into a chintzy floral hell. I also long for a garden – even two square feet of a garden – in which to grow tomatoes and chillies and work my way, seed by seed, towards ditching the farm box in favour of my own front yard. As materialistic as it perhaps sounds, what I’m longing for is a place to call my own. Not necessarily a pipe dream home (remote farm cottage replete with solar panels, wind turbines and cow named Jeeves in the yard whom I milk each morning in case you’re wondering) but just a little corner of Edinburgh that belongs to no one but me, and which can be decorated according to the will and by the hand of no one but me.
Is that weird?
What are your opinions on renting vs buying a home? Do you own? If so, what’s it like? Do you (or have you) been through the paint-splattered jeans phase?
Image above from Flickr – Images_of_Money.
(no, I can’t believe I got to age almost 25 without reading it either). What’s on your bedside table?
