Renting vs. buying: Canadian edition
I only recently started following Rational Reminder and I found this video on renting vs. owning in Canada fascinating. One, because it is a Canadian model; and two, because I have always thought “owning is throwing your money away” was a silly comment. Housing is a need, being angry about renting is – to me – equivalent of being angry at your grocery bill because you eventually have to go to the bathroom.
That said, I also have discovered that a lot of people prefer owning because of the reasons laid out below: it’s more of a psychology problem than a money problem. While I have discussed this issue in other posts and don’t regret my decision, a $15000-$22000 savings (on average) if you do EVERYTHING right as a renter just isn’t worth it to me. I really enjoyed this deep dive and model and I have summed up some of the key points below.
Renting vs. owning in Canada: research & a model
– Houses are forced savings. People are better at paying a bill than they are about saving money. If you are going to rent, it is only a better deal if you are investing the money.
– Owning is riskier short-term but is inflation-hedged in the long term. Renting is the opposite: riskier long-term due to inflation.
– Ben Felix’s model (2005+) includes both current rents and rent controlled units (vacant vs. occupied) for myriad rental types (bachelor, 2-bed etc) and both the primary (purpose-built rentals) and secondary units (condos someone may choose to rent) and includes things such as down payment and insurance costs as well. He runs the model as if the difference is invested in the market and is not taxed (ie: in a TFSA). See the video for a more detailed explanation of how he invested the money and the fees for owners and below market vs. jumping to a market rent as well as where he got his pricing details from. It assumes you would save 90% of the difference between renting and owning. Land also typically increases but building decrease so he does include some maintenance in his calculation. But he basically concludes that:
-
o Renting beats owning in 7 of the 12 metropolitan areas where he ran his model
o The renting net worth beat owning by +$15000
o Edmonton had the least difference between +renting vs. -owning
o Kitchener-Waterloo had the highest difference between +owning vs.-renting
o Investment fees are important: 0.25% is used for this model but people were actually paying WAY more (probably around 2.5% on average). In 2022 it was 1.76% on average, largely driven by active mutual funds. If he bumps the fee up to that 1.76%, renting trails owning in 10 of the 12 areas. IMO: this is a super important finding mostly because Canadians didn’t have access to discount brokerages for this entire period and were paying higher investment fees. We tend to forget but before the 2010s, self-directed investing was more difficult than it is today! Most people used banks or FAs that charged an AUM!
o On savings efficiency (how much of the difference you actually save to invest). If you save:
– 100% is where owning comes out ahead in 5/12 areas
– 90% is where owning comes out ahead in 7/12 areas
– 80% is where you are better off owning in 10 of the 12 areas
That is a HUGE difference!
o For the maintenance cost assumption:
– 2% it was better to own in 7 areas
– 3% it was better to rent in 3 areas
– 2.2% (the average) is 6 out of 12 favour owners
o They assumed amortization is 25 years but if you knock it back to 15, owning only beats renting in 3 areas and renter wealth exceeds owner wealth by $78000 on average. A 35 year amortization owning beats renting in 6 areas and owner wealth beats renter wealth by a little over $15000.
o With a 50% downpayment renters come out ahead in 9 out of 12 areas & renter wealth exceeds owner by $59000. With a 5% downpayment, renters still have a 7/12 advantage but the renter wealth advantage drops to $12000. Leverage works!
o This assumes you were also all-in on 100% equities, which may have been super difficult for people, especially through the 2008 financial crisis. “People panic sell stocks when they go down but rarely does anyone panic sell a home.”
o Disc: Maintenance/depreciation as a percentage of the housing value is contentious because the exact same structure may not cost more to maintain just because it is in a HCOLA area. BF then goes out to silo maintenance vs. depreciation and for this he looked at condo fees and discovered that in lower priced cities, condo fees were higher and in higher priced cities condo fees were lower (as a percentage of the property value). The result? Only one city – Victoria – switched sides from renting to owning being more of a benefit and it only increased renting to being advantageous by $22000 vs. $15000 in the model above.
Good points to consider
– People may be buying for their future selves, not their current needs.
– In an emergency, the last thing you will stop paying is your mortgage but the first thing to go is the savings.
– All things need to go right in order for the models to truly favour renting: discipline to save, low fees, not panic selling your portfolio and psychologically, this is very difficult.
– Renting is throwing your money away unless you are already prone to throwing your money away
The Commentariat
They did a video update based on the comments they received, and it is also well worth the watch:
– Here is the Globe and Mail article they reference
– You can’t get evicted owning but if you have to move, the transaction costs are a lot
– Moving is disruptive (especially for kids)
– Maybe there aren’t rentals in the place you want to live & it’s especially more difficult to find single-family homes
– “Renting isn’t throwing money away, throwing money away is throwing money away, buying a home may help people to throw less money away”
– “People rent for the minimum they will accept but buy for the ideal” …or buy for the future
– People don’t do the math on housing. The amount properties increase never are as crazy as they seem when you break it down
– Owning a home becomes more attractive when you have maxed out your other non-taxable accounts due to the no capital gains on your primary residence in Canada
– Landlords are taking a loss on ownership in some areas & holding out for capital appreciation (they didn’t discuss that a lot of landlord expenses are tax deductible though as are losses when rent doesn’t pay the bills)
– “Wealthy people tend to be owners!” But renters also tend to be younger, make less money and spend more of their income on housing. Correlation ≠ not causation
– Just because you could hypothetically have a higher net worth doesn’t mean you should necessarily borrow against your house but for a lot more volatility and less peace of mind
– Renters need more wealth because they don’t have the hedge against future housing consumption
– If you do find a great rent controlled place, renters can have less stress and more money
– Labour mobility: owning while young could commit you to one geographic location and it could stifle your career
…but are owners happier than renters?
– Canada: no significant impact except for lower income households were more unhappy. Similar neighbourhoods = similar happiness
– Switzerland: no, maybe small negative relationship between owning and happiness
– Germany: yes, but much less than people think (especially for people who are extrinsically motivated)
– US: no. Owners are more unhappy because they spend less on other enjoyable activities
– Germany: mortgage debt negatively affects people, especially for people who have higher mortgages relative to income
There are some things that I have brought up before but I feel need special attention here as well:
You can go a very, very, very long time not doing any maintenance to a house except for emergency repairs and still have a liveable space & see a huge appreciation in your land value. Almost every neighbourhood I have every lived in has had one of those neighbours who keeps to themselves, does almost no home maintenance and the grounds are only sporadically maintained. The roof shingles are peeling, their cars are on blocks and they generally seem to be shut-ins. One day you see a for sale sign, a dumpster is placed in the driveway and it is sold for land value & torn down. Now, I am not recommending this by any means but most homes can go a very long time without preventative maintenance. You can live somewhere for a really long time without it falling down around you.
On the back of that, I’d like to say: if you are poor, disabled or on a fixed income: buy! Smarter people would buy together. If you are going to have to rent a shared space anyway, then if you can qualify for a mortgage, do so. Single parents, disabled folks and poorer folks have less options when they are renovicted. So why not buy with friends? In my province it is two adults per sleeping room. I mean, I also lived in a 17-bedroom Goth commune in university so maybe I just have a higher tolerance for friction than many other people.
We have a pretty ok financial plan but if everything went to crapola, we would rent rooms out. The going rate in my neighbourhood for a room rental is $1000. Having a house would allow us to take in some renters to smooth over some rough patches in our retirement plans. Do I want to do this? No. But I would in a heartbeat over losing my home or not eating. Sure, it’s great for Mr. Tucker and I to have a shared office but if we needed to we’d pack it in and rent the room. Having a home gives us this option. Even if we end up selling this house when the kids move and buying, say, a smaller condo I would definitely stick with a two-bedroom so that we could take in a renter if need be. Heck, having co-op or exchange students would bring in income and give you summers off if you wanted as well. I can’t rent a part of my portfolio (although, I may be able to use it for a loan).
To me, the peace of mind of having an accessible, paid off home that can house my family is worth the $15000-$22000 price tag of a LIFETIME of PERFECT investments. I know I won’t be a perfect investor, so forced savings works for me. I also like to put holes in my walls to hang up art and I adore my accessible bathtub. I have been tossed from way too many apartments in my 20s to really consider going back to renting unless I was under duress. Sure, our house appreciated by 55% in the 7 years since we bought it (which mimics a similar investment in the TSX) and because the house was maintained well by the previous owner we’ve only done cosmetic things to it (except for the bathtub but I got tax credits for that). So overall I am happy with my choice.
(I have done my best to take notes/summarize as much as possible. Most errors are probably my own and not the creator’s. Apologies if there are mistakes)
Kitchen reno results!
A very unimpressed Cooper
Well, it’s done! While I said in my last post that it would probably cost less than 4 replacement cabinet doors, it was closer to 11. Oh well! I guess a potential career as an estimator is off the table. We also didn’t end up using the handyman. Mr. Tucker managed all of the tiling himself.
We only put the finishing touches on the kitchen early this week and although it took a little over three weeks to finish, that is mostly because we have other things on the go as well. We went to Kingston overnight on Thanksgiving weekend & our kid’s activities have started up again so between meals and work and activities and social stuff, we have eked out a kitchen refresh as well. I am terribly impressed with ourselves, if I do say so myself.
Chaos reigns!
The majority of the kudos belongs to Mr. Tucker who removed the metal peel-and-stick tile (which was glued on – LOLSOB!) and then pre-prepped the wall for filler/patching, base coat and sanding. He then tiled 25 square feet of wall, painted all of the other walls multiple times (including the stairs to the basement and part of the hallway), built the island and put up new light fixtures. Meanwhile, the kids and I took the cabinet doors outside and sanded and painted them. I am making it sound so easy but quite frankly, it was a ton of work and Mr. Tucker spent most of his non-working, non-family care time working on it. But on a positive note: the cabinet doors don’t hit the light fixtures now!
We also purged and organized a lot of the stuff we had in the kitchen, relegating some stuff downstairs (holiday items like cookie tins, mason jars and a pan large enough to fit a turkey), selling some higher-end items and putting some stuff up on our local Buy Nothing group. I still need to do a few things such as sell the Ikea Kallax storage we had in the kitchen but overall we have set things up to be way more efficient than it had been.
With new closed storage of the island, we now are able to hide things that once looked like it was overflowing from baskets and piled on surfaces. We also bought some Ikea organizing pieces – such as a few knife holders for a drawer and shelves so we could store mugs and dishes on two levels within a cupboard. I will also admit that we splurged on plants, plant pots and some hanging acrylic shelving for the windows. I also received a free fern and a free palm tree from people in the neighbourhood.
The challenge is that if it were up to me, we would have a bright & colourful quirky kitchen with green or yellow cabinets. If it were up to Mr. Tucker, we would have a cold, modern and dark industrial kitchen. These are two fundamentally opposite styles so we decided to settle on a classic white look: something not too trendy so that it doesn’t look dated in a few years but also something we can jazz up with pockets of colour and personalized decorative bits. It looks pretty sterile now but I am sure as the days go on and we bring more herbs inside and find hangers for our dish towels & put up some art, it will warm up a bit.
At the end of the day, this is what we spent:
To be honest, we had to compensate for some lack of knowledge with money. Because the walls were in bad shape, when Mr. Tucker tried to prime them they bubbled up. So he ended up running out and buying a special sealer to rectify that. We probably could have found an alternative (we did watch some videos that suggested diluted white glue) but we are always pushing the boundaries of time/money/life so I consider that a learning tax. Overall, the paint and tiles make up the largest category at 42.4%, the new lights and the island were about 34.2% of the cost, and the decorative items were 23.4%. As the kids say: I’m not mad about it. Considering we got a quote for $9000 for a small (2×5) backsplash and to replace two countertops (bathroom and kitchen, less than 5 ft each) last year in the condo – and that guy wanted to tile over the backsplash tiles that were already there – I consider this a solid deal. Besides, we got to learn new skills and have the satisfaction of finishing a DIY project.
The one thing I did not factor into the costs was out Tool Library Membership. I suppose for accuracy’s sake we could toss on a little over 1/3 of that cost for $100 adding to the total here. But honestly, we get an OTL membership every year and it is difficult to price out the value of it because it depends on what we borrow and how many classes we take there. So I decided to leave it out. We feel that the OTL is a super important resource for our community so even if we didn’t use it at all one year, we would still pay for it.
In the end, I am pleased as punch with how it turned out. I had never noticed how reluctant I was to spend any time in that dark gray kitchen. But the kids love the new island and sit at the bar stools (Ikea – $20 each!) and chat with us when we are making dinner. Behold, the glory of the new kitchen:
(Yeah, I could have maybe tidied and staged it better for the final photos but this is real life, not instagram)
Books in the Big Yellow Taxi
There is a short story I read once about how Canada didn’t have a lot of famous authors because it was a cold country. I don’t remember much else except that I a> read it as part of my coursework either in university OR high school; b> it was in an anthology of short stories; c> for years I thought it was by Stephen Leacock. I have poured through Leacock’s collections, quizzed my librarian friends and have even begged on social media for someone to help me remember what this story was from. So far, nothing.
But in that process, I realized how fickle the world can be. Stephen Leacock was a HUGELY famous in his time, widely regarded as the world’s best humourist who went on to inspire other famous people such as Groucho Marx. Today though, probably the only reason we know of him is because of the required reading of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town in high school. While I wouldn’t say he’s completely disappeared from literary scene, I feel that Leacock is only known to a contemporary audience because of the requirement to take Canadian Literature classes in high school & university. It’s the same CanCon phenomenon that makes the CBC turn out fantastic shows like Schitt’s Creek and Kim’s Convenience. I’m not mad about it.
I was disappointed – but not surprised – by the ruling against The Internet Archive recently. I suppose eventually it may end up like Napster – too visionary for its time and replaced by the bottom-feeding capitalism of Spotify who is lauded for what Napster was condemned for doing. In fact, the new partnership with google probably signals that very thing, exactly as now google will have its finger in yet another piece of our collective pie.
Still, bright lights exist. Today, I loved reading Vanishing Culture: on the impact of forgotten books by Brad Bigalow. It turned me onto his Recovered Books project. I love that people are out there preserving history and culture by bringing old works to the surface again.
My friend Sara argues with me about modern books, preferring to read works that stand the test of time. Her perspective is that, “Time is a sieve, and it weeds out irrelevant works.” But not all art and culture needs to be relevant 100 years from now. They can be perfect for helping people navigate the here & now and still be worth engaging with! Conversely, I also agree with AJ Jacobs in his book Breaking Bread With the Dead that we shouldn’t throw out all historical works just because they don’t align with our modern sensibilities, instead we should engage with them, be challenged by them. No need to give up the modern invention of the shower NOR throw the baby out with the bathwater. As the internet asks, “Why not both?”
I was surprised to see the Five Little Peppers and How They Grew in the Recovered Bookstore. I had this book as a child growing up in the 80s and it never occurred to me that it hadn’t really been a part of the modern bibliography, until now. But I guess it is the way of a lot of art and media: you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.
PS: Incidentally, my friend Angela has been looking for a copy of Pump Up the Volume forever. She mentioned it was one of her fav movies of the 90s and wanted to rewatch it to see if it still held up. She mentioned that she couldn’t find it anywhere. I also tried to find it and noticed that it wasn’t anywhere: not on video websites, not on streaming services, not even on torrent sites! But low and behold – The Internet Archive has copy of it. HASHTAG BLESS.
Well in my day, sonny boy, we had this thing called RADIO…
Renovation inflation
Office real estate photos from our home’s listing in 2017
I have recently become obsessed with Alexandra Gater’s YouTube channel. She does a lot of budget-friendly & small space home décor and DIY projects and I especially love her StudioFix episodes. Having lived in a 530sq ft box in the sky with Mr. Tucker and a large dog, I would have appreciated more content like this in the early N’aughties. She points out that most home décor content is aspirational (and for most of us, unattainable) but it is very easy to change things up on a budget. There are some great ideas in her videos for people of all abilities and at the very least, the videos will show you how very small things can brighten up a space. Bonus: she’s in Canada and lists products we can get here.
Our kitchen is very small, especially for people who actually use their kitchen for cooking. We have a wheeled sideboard for extra prep space, which is a pain in the butt because it blocks the window & we also have a Kallax unit from Ikea that divides up the space. After watching the AG videos, Nick and I decided to replace these storage units with a kitchen island that has closed storage to open up our space a little & keep untidy things hidden. The kitchen will look better with less furniture crammed in it, less clutter will bring more light into a small space and we won’t have things piled up all over the floor or overflowing from the baskets in the Kallax.
But as I kept watching AG turned me onto companies who sell pre-painted replacement cabinet doors for Ikea kitchens. My mind was blown that these places existed! Since we have a tired, old Ikea kitchen (that was repainted before we got here. Think: this style) I thought it would be fun to investigate this as an option. I first started by measuring all of our cabinet doors. I then hit the Ikea site to see if they sold replacement door fronts. Sadly, that was a dead end: I could only find a few door front sizes. So I went to the websites that AG had recommended – and we discovered local companies who also did the same thing, so we also started researching those as an option. That didn’t last long though because most doors were $200 or more! We have TWENTY-THREE doors and drawer fronts in our kitchen. So we scratched that. Miss #1.
Next up, we found people who would custom make doors for a lot less than the above companies. But even then, these were also expensive and had shipping costs. Miss #2. Finally, miss #3 was when Mr. Tucker figured he could make some doors using his Tool Library Membership and booking some time in their studio and…at this point it was clear that the entire idea of a low-cost, low-time DIY was getting away from us. Our lives are busy enough, we don’t need to add any more HUGE projects to our chores.
We were suffering from Renovation Inflation aka, “we are already doing X, may as well do Y as well…” except for Y is an infinite number of projects, if you don’t check yourself. It is also how you end up spending more money, “well, we’re already paying $500 for a kitchen island, what’s a couple of doors?”
In the end, we sat down and really thought about changes that would make a huge difference in our lives and the biggest one? Paint. Our kitchen is a two-toned gray colour that darkens the entire space. So the walls needed to be painted. The cabinet doors are fine, as in, they are functional and not falling apart (ok, that one cutlery drawer is hot garbage). So in the end, we decided that we could probably get an entire kitchen refresh with a coat of paint. Even if we buy the REALLY GOOD cabinet paint a gallon of that will still be less than one cabinet door. Will it be as fancy? No. Will it be more modern? Still no. Will it brighten up the kitchen and make us happy? Yes.
Since we are saving money on the refresh we also decided to get rid of the metal peel-and-stick tile that was used in the kitchen. It’s super dark & dated and worse, it is peeling in places which could be a concern for water damage. Not only is it on the back splash behind the sink and stove but the previous owner also created a band around the entirety of the kitchen and the basement half-wall. Sadly, as Mr. Tucker started to remove it we realized that it was GLUED ON & taking it off is pulling some drywall down with it.
The plan is to start by filling the large chunks before sanding and painting. We will lay real tile (white, subway – we are pretty basic) behind the stove and sink (with the help of a local handyman) and the entire family will sand and paint the cabinet doors next weekend. Unfortunately, all of the doors and the walls will need to be cleaned with degreaser first before any of the actual painting can get started. We are hoping to do that in the evenings.
I feel like (despite the real estate photos) our kitchen is grey and cold and painting it white will give us a lot more light in the space. I am not looking for a super fancy renovation here, I want a usable kitchen that is bright and airy and where the windows aren’t half-covered by cabinets due to lack of storage.
Here is what it looks like right now:
The room is actually 9’3″ x 10’2″ – so, tiny
Here is what we are doing:
– Ditching broken storage (Kallax and cheap movable island)
– Removing old metal peel-n-stick tile
– Painting the entire kitchen white (walls and cabinets)
– Tiling the back splash on two walls with real tile
– Replacing the old light fixtures
– Putting in a closed storage island
I think in the end it is easy to let your imagination run wild with renovation inflation. But if you stop and breathe for a second and figure out what you truly need to refresh a space, the answers are usually small: a new coat of paint, some new cabinet knobs, a new ceiling light. I suspect the entire refresh of our kitchen will cost us less than 4 cabinet doors from one of those replacement door companies.
Check back in a week and a bit and I will let you know how it goes (with price breakdown).
Labour for Labour Day
UGH. Dark, dirty, cluttered and unusable
My friend Cory says that the real New Year is actually the first day of school. I am not going to lie: the first day after Labour Day does have fresh start vibes. I think it also helps that in Canada it often feels like fall comes in suddenly between that last week of August and the first week of September. For sure it also has a lot to do with the fact that we spend 14 years in school and even more if you head off to post-secondary school. With every new September, I loved the feeling of the fresh start with every school year. So when I joined the work world and was trudging off to work, I would see all of the kids during Frosh week & made me nostalgic and a bit sad. It felt like that fun time of my life was over and that all I had to look forward to was 40 years of drudgery in the form of a full time job. (SPOILER: thankfully, it didn’t end up like that though!)
When we moved into our house in December 2017, a month later in January 2018 I was diagnosed with PLS. So then came the most chaotic two years of us figuring out disability, managing emotions around disability, figuring out my work situation, dealing with a child who was upset with the move and the urge to TRAVEL RIGHT NOW TO ALL OF THE PLACES BEFORE YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ANYMORE. We did some travelling over the next two years and then found ourselves home-bound – much like the rest of the world – in 2020. Of course, that had its own challenges and while we gardened and had family activities to replace the ones we lost, we never quite unpacked or went through our things like we should have. Our new home had a ton of storage and when the kids outgrew things, we just stuffed it into a box in the back room.
Then this year, for some strange reason, I decided a week before our community garage sale that we would finally, FINALLY go through all of the junk we had stored for the past 6 years. Enlisting the children to help by bribing them, we went through all of the boxes. We sorted, we washed, we donated and we tossed a lot of stuff over that week and in the end we joined in the garage sale, it went well and the children made some pocket cash.
Un(fortunate?)ly, we also discovered that the seal on our toilet had failed and that the toilet had started leaking through the floor. I am glad we caught it when we did because it ended up being a cheap fix but it meant that we had to keep all of the storage out in the main rec room area of the basement while everything dried…and then – in true Tucker fashion – we just left it there.
Then a few stars aligned: the city decided that they would impose a 3-item max on garbage as of September 30th and at some point the amount of crap the kids would just toss around the basement became out of control. The laundry started seeping out of the laundry room into the main rec area and it was becoming clear that we had lost a lot of things to the giant pile that was growing beside the Eldest’s room. Enough was enough: something needed to be done.
That something came in the form of me, going downstairs. Stairs are typically difficult for me so I don’t usually head down to the basement despite the fact that we had installed a second railing and set up a small home gym last year. I kinda abandoned the home gym though because the lighting was so dark and with the black floors and dark brown walls it was just too depressing to go down there.
So it was clear that we needed to make a more inviting space. The Eldest is having a lot more sleepovers and it was embarrassing to watch them all sneak into her room and shut the door because the rest of the basement was so cluttered. Since we have a projector down there and some couches, I figured it would be nicer if the kids had their own little space to play video games or watch movies.
If we were going to do something with that space, it needed to be before school started and before the garbage restriction – so Labour Day weekend it was!
Last week the Eldest had stopped working and the Youngest was out of camps so we buckled down and sorted through the boxes. In the evening, Mr. Tucker organized them and put what we were keeping back in storage. On Thursday night we headed out and did errands managing to kill many birds with one stone (or one circular trip, as it were): we got school supplies, bought paint, porch dropped some things that I had put up on Buy Nothing, and the rest got dropped off at the charity store (for which we got a 20% off coupon for our next purchase!) all within 1.5 hours! It was glorious to finally see the hard work come to fruition. A couple of hundred dollars more would get us some floor lamps, couch covers and a Chromecast & then we were set: a basement we could use again!
The cost? (all prices in CAD)
$115.24 Couch covers
$158.15 Daylight mimicking lamps
$193.78 Paint & supplies (we could have made this cheaper but I consider the quality combined with the short window of opportunity to be worth just going for it)
$0 Chromecast (paid with a gift card that Mr. Tucker had but originally $39.99+tax)
—-
$467.17 total
But what is really great is being able to use our space again! I am no longer embarrassed to have the Eldest’s friends over and Mr. Tucker are going to design our workout schedule going forward.
Sure, I could have done it for less money and waited for sales on a variety of things. But there is a reason why we have the saying, “strike while the iron is hot.” In most of our days we struggle balancing having the time, energy and space to get larger projects accomplished. So when the stars align and we have able bodies and a 3-day weekend, I am going to eat the cost and have the goal accomplished. It makes no sense for me to wait it out to save $100 if in the end that means 5 more months (or more) of having an unusable space.
BEHOLD! A useable, bright amazing space!
Dear social media, it’s you, not me
After seeing the most eye-rolling, terminally online crap hot take this week, I made a decision: Instagram was next up on the list of shit that had to go.
I went ahead and deactivated Instagram and deleted the app from my phone. I discovered I was picking my phone up way too much to be distracted by videos and memes. Social Media has become a content regurgitation factory where so much of the content I am served is gleaned from twitter, threads, reddit and tiktok. I figure about 1/3 of it is also things I’ve already seen. So I am going to try this for a bit (maybe a month?) and see how it works out. Like most people, I use the phone when I am bored and anxious and Insta is my go-to (because I am old and don’t have tiktok).
Like many people, I am also wrestling with how social media fits into my life. I was reading this Spyglass article and this quote really stuck with me:
“People have long joked (and not joked!) that using social media makes them feel worse… Yes, there are funny tweets, but that’s increasingly because the network is a hive of stolen meme content from elsewhere (or other Xitter users). You see the same things that get engagement pop up over and over again just completely ripped off by other users. So even funny things feel bad!”
(The Bloomberg piece it references also is worth reading: The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X)
I will be honest: as soon as I retired from the working world I deleted both Twitter and LinkedIn. But I am so emmeshed into the Meta properties that I find it difficult to extract myself. My Instagram use is pretty high even though I have seen the same funny videos, the same screenshots of funny tweets, reddit posts and the same hot takes over and over and over again. Because our personal social media account is a microcosm, I find so much content is shared and re-shared by many of my friends. So I may see the same video in different people’s stories 3+ times a day. That’s harmless when it’s a cute cat but how many times do I need to see violent or political content? Probably not that much. I probably don’t even need to see the cute cat that much, if I am honest. I figure since there is so much regurgitation in the things I see, maybe up to 1/3 of my time is spent rewatching things I have seen over-and-over-and-over again. I realized when I was going through my facebook memories that I had seen the same meme make the rounds again in the past week. I don’t even remember posting it the first time! That’s how many there are roaming around and 99% of them have the same qualities: funny but forgettable.
As for Facebook, I would completely divest but Nextdoor hasn’t really taken off in my area so all of my community info is gleaned from Facebook. Also, it still is the best way to organize events and sell things locally. I do however find myself de-coupling as much as possible. I have gone back through my memories and made as many as I can private posts and now I make anything I do post private within 24 hours. But I am posting rarely as facebook is just basically an address book to me now – and it shows. I have seen the reach of my posts plummet over the past few years the less I post. I also find I am not getting notifications like I used to. Sure, facebook used to hold back some notifications so that when you came back later it would show that you had a little red circle in the notification corner (from hours ago) and therefore you’d get more addicted to it. But the less you engage with the platform the less it seems to bother to tell you that you have anything at all. If I am waiting for a reply, it’s best to go to the post in question to see if there is one because facebook rarely tells me about it. It seems to be ghosting me as much as I am ghosting it.
Hilariously, as I was writing this a friend of mine posted this article to facebook (natch!) about the AI spamming happening on Meta’s platforms: Where facebook’s AI slop comes from. So another nail in the enshittification coffin for social media.
So now I have no social media on my phone at all and no Instagram accounts available to even access via browser. It is insidious though: since deleting the app, I find my fingers automatically go right to the place that the button once was. Muscle memory is pretty strong so I figure it may be a while until my brain finds no reward there and stops trying. Until then, I find myself staring down at my phone wondering why I opened the blur tool for photos.
Tucker and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month
Ok, I am using a bit of hyperbole there! But July has been a mish-mash of both good and bad. But it started terribly.
On July 1st – Canada Day – as our backyard was filling up with friends and neighbours, Mr. Tucker was pulled into a work call: they were laying off 50% of the company, effective immediately. I won’t bury the lede here: Mr. Tucker was not one of the people they let go. However, he was the only one left on his team. Most teams at his company are down to one, maybe two people. So his workload would be increasing exponentially – just as he was leaving on two weeks of vacation. It was absolute chaos at his company and it was absolute chaos at home as we speculated about what the future would hold. Of course, there are a ton of rumours flying around about the profitability of the company and whether or not there are more cuts to come (or worse, bankruptcy). This is very common when major changes occur at an organization and it’s hard to figure out what is speculation and rumour and what is the truth.
As I mentioned in The End Game all would be well if the condo had sold. It hasn’t. In fact, only 10 condos have sold in the area since January. Truly abysmal. Without the condo selling, we can’t afford to have Mr. Tucker retire so at least he kept his job. However, that puts us in the position of now preparing for the worst-case scenario, which is what we are doing. Currently on the agenda:
Reduce the interest rate on the mortgage: the mortgage is small but I took an open mortgage a> in an attempt to not get penalized should we sell and need to break it; and b> to wait for the prime rate to go down. The latter seems a bit silly but I knew that there was a chance that if the condo didn’t sell that we would need to rent the condo instead. Not ideal, but it was an option. So I did the math and figured that if the condo sold within six months of my renewal in June, the open mortgage would be less than the penalty I’d have to pay to break the mortgage. However, if we decided to rent the condo, we would renegotiate the mortgage at a lower rate. Considering the prime rate went down to 4.5% from 5%, it will be lower.
Rent it: we are looking to perhaps rent to a student or someone else who would like a shorter-term rental (but above 6 months, as per the condo rules).
Stuff more money into savings: the plan is to have at least 6 months of condo expenses in the bank in case something does go wrong and Mr. Tucker ends up losing his job. It would give us some more breathing room.
It feels like we just settled into spending more money and treating ourselves a little more when this all went down! Whomp, whomp or Sad Trombone is appropriate here. Still, while the news is bad we still have a lot to be grateful for: we can pay our bills, keep a roof over our heads, and food in our bellies. We even have money for extras – not as much as we once did – but definitely extras. We are in a far better position than a lot of people and I am grateful for that. We spent a lot of time building up our savings and paying down our house in case something like this would happen and while it hasn’t happened yet, it’s good to know that most of the worst crises could be averted.
I am genuinely upset for Mr. Tucker who was looking forward to a Staycation of taking up oil painting again, swimming in the pool with a few beers and making music. Instead, he spent a lot of his time ruminating about how it all went down, chatting with colleagues and people who were laid off and generally speculating about the future. It was such crap. So he didn’t even get to really relax on his vacation (that’s twice this year!).
In the end, we came out the other side relatively unscathed. After the dust cleared and we got out of PANIC mode, we realized that we would have been fine even if he had been laid off. Sure, the condo scenario sucks but it showed me that there was a small hole in our planning and that we do need a wee bit more savings to cover a loss for the condo. Because we anticipated that it would be already sold by now, we hadn’t expected to carry it this long and so we didn’t plan for it. But we should have! So now we plan a bit better and move forward. As Robbie Burns most famously said, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley” (The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry).
Moving a lot in childhood contributes to depression
I know that some people who are superfans of renting often will say that they moved a lot as kids and that they turned out just fine, thankyouverymuch. Having moved a couple of times myself as a kid and knowing how chaotic it felt to me, I never wanted to move my kids if I could help it. Sadly, we did end up having to move once and one of our kids really struggled with the change. It looks like moving a lot in childhood is associated with depression later in life – even if you move to a more affluent area.
The Puddle
Connell: not a swimmer
When we were in the process of buying a house, I knew I wanted either a> a pool; b> enough space to install a pool. Of course, anyone who heard me say this immediately clutched their pearls and screeched, “A pool isn’t a selling point for potential future buyers! What about property values?!”
To which I say: I do not give a flying f&%k about property values. This is my home. It is a safe place to live and raise my family. While it is theoretically an asset, I just see it as a roof over my head. A paid-off roof over my head, which is nice.
I know it is du rigeur to inflate ones’ net worth by counting it in as a part of a calculation – which makes sense – but it also gives me big, “statistics lie” vibes. I need somewhere to live, and for now this is the place I want to be. After all, I need to live somewhere*. Yes, it is an asset I can sell if I need to but it isn’t something that I plan to draw down – unlike my portfolio, which has future spending in mind. Of course, downsizing is always on the table for the future but even in that case I will probably still own property.
I know the pearls are being clutched even harder here so I will explain.
As I’ve mentioned previously, renting is a great idea if you have money and are able-bodied. Saving money on renting vs. owning is a very smart idea if you run the numbers and figure you can make more on investments. But I posit that people who are disabled and people who are very poor should own if they can. In the first case, there are very few accessible rentals available. In the second case, it is forced savings (if you stress test your situation well).
I know that sounds weird but if the pandemic has taught us anything it is that 30 years of shitty housing policy in this country has jacked up both rents and house prices well past the point where it can be safely only 30% of your income for many people. Even in my province people who have rent control of some sort are seeing inflated renovictions. Smalltime landlords found an amazing opportunity to sell off when housing prices boomed in 2022. This led to long-term tenants seeing themselves shuffled out as families bought these home to actually live in them, not to be landlords. During this period, rents also saw an explosion and a 1-bedroom apartment is now $2000 leaving many people with very few options.
If you have money, you can just brush off your knees and find the best option available, safe in the knowledge that all of those years of cheap rent have bolstered your portfolio. But if you are living on a fixed income or living near the poverty line, that limits your options substantially. If you are disabled you are probably the most screwed because there is such a lack of accessible housing that the availability of an accessible apartment is almost NIL.
Which brings us back to why I choose to own.
You know what else brings down property values? An accessible bathtub. Although it cost me $15000 to install it will bring down my property price if I go to sell. Again though: I have to live here! I installed it because I love baths and wanted to have the option to have one when I wanted to. I also have grab bars and ramps and other things that a landlord probably wouldn’t look to favourably at me installing in a rental.
So quite frankly, let’s just toss the pool into the fray of things that add IMMEASUREABLY to my quality of life that also bring my property values down. Because really, I don’t care. I want to enjoy my home, raise my family here, host pool parties here, and have a life full of memories here.
The naysayers will probably point out just how ridiculous it is to have a pool in Canada, where you can only have a pool open about 6 months of the year and only during 4 of those months is it nice enough to swim with any regularity. To those folks I say: wussies! You can swim anytime if you have enough fortitude! But also: you have a good point. If we are looking at things from a purely financial point of view, The Puddle costs me about $3000 a year to maintain (current year expenses + savings for when things break down). That makes it about $188 a week for the 4 truly swimmable months ($125 for the full 6). Many people would see that and balk because they don’t want the work and cost of maintaining an inground pool. That is fair. But you will take my Puddle away from my cold, dead hands.
Considering that I spent $13000 for a week at the world’s worst all-inclusive, swim-up room, “Diamond Club” hotel in March, The Puddle is a deal. I spent that week surrounded by crowds and had mediocre food and sad service (I also have a few pointers about how to maintain a pool properly). It was the least relaxing vacation we have ever had, and it made me realize just how wonderful having a backyard oasis really is!
The past week Mr. Tucker has been on vacation and it has been amazing. We have spent the day outside for a good 12 hours every day it wasn’t raining. We’re writing, we’re reading books, we’re drinking beers and just chilling out. Also, when we are in the pool we have complete privacy as no one can see us. I get up in the morning, toss on a bathing suit and a sundress, grab a coffee and my journal and head outside into the morning sun. It’s the perfect start to a summer day. The best part is that we can also play our own music at reasonable levels, as we are old people. Also, we get to share The Puddle with friends. We had about 40 people pop in for a Canada Day BBQ and we will do a crafting and swim night with friends next week. This year we even stuck a beer fridge outside so that we can access drinks and snacks easily.
Sure, I could live somewhere else, somewhere cheaper, somewhere less enjoyable and save a pile more cash. But I’ve done my time in cheap student apartments and while I am grateful for that experience & learning the skills to be able to live on very little, I don’t need to do that anymore. I am at the point in my life where I value having a stable home for my kids and an accessible bungalow for me (with a bathtub and a pool!) more than I value more money in the bank. There was a point in my life where I couldn’t imagine not wanting to travel every year. The last couple of trips have taught me that maybe staying home for a few years is perfectly ok. Maybe sometimes it’s good to just stop and appreciate where you are.
*Not necessarily here but selling a house is difficult; it’s a very illiquid asset. Yes, I could borrow against it, if need be.