Disowned For Being A Millionaire: Why I Still Won’t Buy A House

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When I first told my mother I was a millionaire, her response was:

“So what? You don’t even have a house.”

Didn’t matter if the houses in Toronto were unaffordable. Didn’t matter if I didn’t want to work a stressful job I hated just to pay off a massive mortgage. Didn’t matter if I have enough money to live the rest of my life with complete freedom, never having to set foot in a corporate prison again.

Without a house, I was a loser.

My parents and I barely speak anymore. Other than the occasional e-mail or phone call, we haven’t seen each other in a year. What’s the point? It’d just be the same fight every time.

My friends think I’m nuts. They think I’m anti-house for the sake of being anti-house. They think I’m having SO much fun being a contrarian. But what they don’t see is that, as the child of Chinese immigrants, it’s sacrilegious to not buy a house. Home ownership is part of our culture. It’s part of our DNA. Financial Samurai can back me up here. In Asian cultures, paper assets aren’t real. Only things you can touch with your hands are.

So even though I knew that logic and statistics and cold hard MATH told me I was right, because of my culture I had to get disowned for believing that the purpose of money wasn’t to buy granite countertops, hardwood floors, or soaker tubs.

The purpose of money is to buy…

Time.

Time is our most precious resource. We can always make more money, but we can’t make more time.

So I decided to buy back my time. Instead of paying off a mortgage for 30 years, waiting until I was 65, only to get too sick and too bedridden to travel, I decided to build a 7-figure portfolio, live off the passive income, travel the world, volunteer for non-profits, and be an author/blogger instead.

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Have to wonder would they feel similar when they have children or are over 60 years old?

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These are the FI bloggers I talked about in another thread. It seems they just quit as soon as they have enough passive income to pay for rent and food. Without sparing a thought for kids, health or older age.

I’d disown her if she were my kid. Fool I say.

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The delicate flowers who find office work too stressful after barely working for 7 or 8 years.

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There are plenty of FI seekers hate the jobs etc, it is very common attitude dreaming FI without a proper plan. Normally, they do not understand the world around.

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Since she’s Canadian, I wonder if her million dollar is Canadian dollar? If so, that’s 766K USD.

That’s not bad, but hardly something to brag about.

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If you have $3m US cash you can retire comfortably at any age…But even travelling around can get boring…I am sure her attitude will change over the years…If she is a good investor, there will be plenty of options open…

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This is what many people failed to understand. Saved money needs to grow more than (good %) inflation to make it secure !

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Even a dumb investor with $3m can get 4% which is $120k per year with no draw down in principle. .So she could buy an annuity, put it in an index fund…or blow it all on sex drugs and rock and roll…Most people make bad choices…My buddy got a Nevada lake front house next to Larry Ellison in Zephr Cove…for cheap …bought from the estate of a lotto winner…30 year, old account won $16m…built the $3m house partied his ass off and died of a drug overdose within 3 years…even accountants have a hard time managing money…My friend stole the place now worth $5m

With only $1m she could live in the third world very well…

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1m Canadian. Not the real thing.

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Remember, healthcare is “free” there. Healthcare inflation in the US is a killer and ruins the math if a lot of FI plans.

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Oh! Finally a person who knows about life insurance as a vehicle for retirement…:laughing:
The good thing is this person is enjoying life. That’s what life is about, enjoying that, life!

Now, I am pretty sure we all are going to die scraping the bottom of the barrel for more money to make precisely in the moment we are kicking the can…:smile:

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This blogger is dumb. If she is refusing to buy a house for a short time and try to time the market, it’s still ok. If she’s planing to live in a rental house or hotel for the rest of her life, she’s going to regret at certain day, and I hope she regret in a day she can still afford to buy.

Today’s million dollar might equal to a 200k 30 years ago. If someone lives on 300k for the past 30 years, she’ll definitely feel poor by now. If she can manage to get 5% return every year and was planning to live on 10k per year since 1986, I can bet that her life has been miserable for quite some years.

Say she can manage to generate 5% a year for the next 30 years, she can live on 50k now. But after 30 years, can she still live on 50k per year after the inflation? If Toronto rent triples or quadruples in 30 years, will she be able to avoid homeless?

FI could be a false dream for many people. I think a marketable job skill or the homeownership or a rental income is more secure than a million dollar account. If she only has 1 million dollars and if she is already over 30, her refusal to buy a home and to work a job is really dumb

But I suspect she is smarter than that. She is producing a blog, is her blog earning her an income? Did she make her millions from blogging? Maybe she just write something some people like and use the audience to earn some ads dollars.

If I have such a child, I would not disown her though. I’ll just buy a house and rent to her. If someday she is priced out of the housing market, I’ll freeze her rent and give her rent frozen home so that she has time to correct her mistakes. If she refuse to correct her mistake, rent will stay at market and she might need to get government subsidy when she runs out of her million dollar account.

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If she wants her $1M Canadian to last, she better moves out of Toronto.

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Sal Kahn had a youtube video on why he didn’t want to buy a house in PA either–all came down to numbers, but I would be interested to know how far off those numbers turned out to be. I have to wonder if he regrets that decision now.

This person wants to live life, and figured out how to do it? Fine. They’re FI as long as they don’t live in Toronto and travel to third world countries? Fine. They want their mom to respect their decisions? Ahh well. Good luck with that anyways!

She’s justifying her decision, to not be tied down. But in the long run, she will need some extra hefty investments or a house of her own as an investment to reduce costs in the long run.

Also this “houses require maintenance.” Uhm yeah. One way or another, SOMEONE is maintaining the roof over your head unless you’ve gone to sleeping in a bag out under the stars. She can always pay someone else to do it if she doesn’t like it herself.

I don’t mind her choice, but I don’t buy her reasons.

Let me ask this–in her culture are the parents supposed to move in with her? If so, I think we know the real reason she doesn’t want to buy a house!

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If the income is coming primarily from stock dividends than those dividends will rise with inflation - in fact, given historical trends, they will rise slightly faster than inflation. And high rents don’t necessarily make a location more desirable to live in if your income is passive. Heck, they may make it more homogeneous and less desirable. Then you move - which is easier if you rent. As for early retirement it all depends on how satisfied you are with your job. If you don’t have a passion for what you do than it really is silly to keep doing it just to be able to say that you are still “in the game.”

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If the mother has any sons the sons would be expected to take care of her. But if not the daughter would need to take her in.

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I think people have a certain risks budget. For sal khan who already took huge risks doing a startup, taking on a big mortgage may just be too much.

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I hope by “free” you really meant someone else pays? :sweat_smile:

Nothing is free.

"Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free, no no

  • Me and Bobby McGee
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Perhaps the blogger’s family disown her because they foresee she will come back and ask for money if they don’t? :slight_smile:

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