"I sold my condo in Surrey and moved into a rental townhouse in Burnaby. My sister explained to me that I didn’t understand the importance of leaving real estate for my children."

MBA at VREAA 5 July 2011 7:30am -
“I sold my condo in Surrey and moved into a rental townhouse in Burnaby. My sister to me explained that I didn’t understand the importance of leaving real estate for my children. I didn’t find that argument compelling. I was planning to have kids while she already had kids and a house in the Fraser Valley. I was moving specifically because I wanted to be a better parent. If housing prices continued to rise, I was never going to be able to move “up” out of a condo anyway, a decidedly unfriendly place to raise children. But more importantly, I was spending 2 hours a day in traffic commuting over the bridge AND my wife needed to work full time to feed the mortgage and strata fees. I decided that my children would be better served having me home for those two hours a day than they would be from this etherial real estate winfall when I die in 60 years. That’s without addressing the inconvenient logic that I pay less in rent now than the interest portion of my mortgage + strata fees + property taxes + levy to fix the roof I was paying in the other place. I am now able to put 10% of my paycheque plus all of my wife’s part time pay directly into savings. I think my kids will be ok because they will have a father they get to see and a mother that can afford to stay home with them full time. I still don’t have kids, but I’m pretty sure when they are adults they will approve of the choices I’ve made on their behalf.”