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In almost all cases, buying a house only makes sense if you’re going to be there long enough for the value of the home to exceed not just what you paid for it, but the taxes and maintenance costs too. This can take 5, 10, even 20 years (read: a lot more than a few). Also, renting doesn’t mean you’re a financial failure. Somewhere along the line, we got this idea that renting is “throwing money away,� when in reality, you can use what you save on property taxes and maintenance and invest that money into your long-term savings plan. In the end, you might be able to accumulate more by investing in retirement accounts and other investment plans than what you would have earned selling a home.

Nestpert Ramit Sethi, author of the new book I Will Teach You to Be Rich and personal finance guru for companies like Deloitte, KPMG, and Intel

-- The Nest Editors

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