>>28678221 (OP)
Owning a house isn't even a financially intelligent decision in most cases because it usually entails inhabiting a much larger and more luxurious space than you'd inhabit by renting in the same area. For example, if you buy a house in my small city you're getting two or more floors, a garage, a driveway, a backyard, an attic, a basement, a dishwasher, washer and dryer, the ability to own pets and do whatever you want with the space, an airgap from your neighbors, the ability to live away from black people, etc. That's a high standard of living that's going to cost about $4,000 per month after your down payment of $120,000. But if you rent an apartment in the same city you can just inhabit one bedroom, a small kitchen, a small bathroom, and that's it. And that only costs $1500 per month. So while you do lose money renting that place compared to if you could own the same tiny slice of a building, it still ends up being much cheaper than owning an entire building. And while I realize that condominiums do exist, in practice they are almost all very large and luxurious with high ceilings and high tech appliances and lots of amenities in the buildings, more comparable to high-end luxury apartments (which they are in fact slightly cheaper than) but still a waste of money compared to renting a slice of a shitty building with black neighbors IF your entire calculus is based on spending as little on housing as possible. Now consider the opportunity cost of not investing your down payment in the stock market for an average of 10% annual returns and it becomes even more obvious that what I'm saying is true. But I don't even need to invoke that fact, so the people who can't do math can surely still follow along.
I think most people intuitively understand this, but they can't really fully divorce the fiscal responsibility argument from quality of life considerations. They will reply to this post saying I'm wrong because living like a bug sucks. True, but irrelevant.
