Happy to be renting

Getting a white picket fence doesn't seem like a big deal anymore. (Photo: iStockphoto)

I distinctly remember telling a friend six years ago how jealous I was of all the people in my beautiful, coastal California town who were snapping up homes left and right.

Why couldn’t I afford one? Where was my piece of the American dream?

To make matters worse, I wrote about housing for my local newspaper, and was writing stories daily about historically low interest rates, amazing new loan products that meant the American dream was available to everyone and their pet Fido.

You could say I was having my very own pity party in my cubicle.

Despite all the hype at the time, I knew I was in no position to buy a home: I had abysmal credit. I was terrible at managing money. I had tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt that felt like it would be with me for the rest of my life. And, lest we forget, the mania for homeownership and those very special new loan products (you know—the ones that caused the financial collapse? Those ones?) meant the median home price in my little slice of paradise was leaping every month until one group called my little area one of the least affordable places to live in the country.

So I didn’t buy, but I did seethe with resentment.

Now on this Thanksgiving, I’m giving thanks for my misfortune. I’m grateful, in a very strange way, for my bad credit and my instincts that I couldn’t take on a loan no matter how willing local mortgage brokers would have been to give me one. It would have been a disaster all around for me.

I’m certain I would have taken one of those interest-only loans where you take out more than 100 percent of the value of the home and used that excess as mad money. It would have been gone and I wouldn’t have even known where I spent it.

And I have no doubt that I would have lost that home in the last year, if not sooner.

Instead, I’ve spent the past six years cleaning up my credit, paying down my debt and learning financial responsibility 101.

Now, I’m still in no position to buy a home. I moved from an expensive coastal town to San Francisco, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. Don’t believe me? A two-bedroom, one-bath condo down the street from me sold for $750,000 a few months ago. No kidding.

But I’m happier. I’m less jealous of homeowners because I know that being part of that special club doesn’t confer any particular rosiness or specialness all by itself. You have to be a good financial planner to make homeownership the dream it’s meant to be. Some day, I’m sure, I’ll get there. For now, I’m contented to have inexpensive rent in a beautiful, expensive city.

My experience reminds me of an old Taoist fable, slightly paraphrased:

A farmer wakes to find his horse has run off. He exclaims to his neighbor, “This is terrible!” The neighbor’s response: “We shall see.”

The next morning, the horse returns with three wild horses. He tells his neighbor, “This is wonderful news!” The neighbor just nods and says, “We shall see.”

The next day, the farmer’s son tries to ride one of the horses but is thrown and breaks his leg. The farmer is distraught, crying, “Oh no! These horses are a curse!” The neighbor just nods and says, “We shall see.”

The next day, the military comes to the village and drafts all the able-bodied boys, and the farmer’s son is spared. The farmer is relieved. “What a gift!” The neighbor nods and says, “We shall see.”

The moral is obvious: What seems like a blessing could be a curse and what seems like a curse could be a blessing.

That was true in my case. What I thought was a tragedy turned out to be a gift. So this Thanksgiving, I offer thanks for my poor financial acumen and for status as a renter.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Read the previous Thanksgiving blog post.