I've lived in 22 homes/locations in my over 80 years, including 6 years in a university dorm. A number of them were provided by my employer. In some cases, I shared a home with others, and once shared a house with a couple of other men, and we ate in another house on the same compound where three or four women lived: we were all missionaries, helping with health and educational issues in war-torn Korea, with some of us helping refugees get back on their feet. I boarded with an old lady for a couple of years 25 or so years ago when re-locating back to Ontario, rented a room from a guy for a couple of years, then shared a two-bedroom townhouse with unfinished basement with another guy for a couple of years and continued living there alone for another dozen years or so. I was paying about $800./mo. for the townhouse, paid for my power and heater rent but water provided, no sewwer or garbage fee, prior to moving here to what was old step-unle's farm, nearly 7 years ago. The bungalow on the farm had two bedrooms and a wreck room, plus unfinished basement, but being older it had somewhat less utility than the one in town ... but the initial rent was $450.00 per month. Water for washing, etc. was from a well so the only fee was the power bill to run the pump, but the well is too close to what used to be the barnyard so I pick up water in the city, etc. in jugs for drinking and most cooking, though I may boil potatoes in well water. Landlord will pay to pump the septic tank if/when it may need it. I pay the power bill, and landlord shares it, as he installed it into his shop from the same meter a few years ago. Put newspapers, plastic out for recycling, free - could do so for aluminum cans, but I sell them to scrap dealer. Garbage costs $1.75 a bag, but much of it is added to the landlord's burn pile. While travelling past my old townhouse home the other day, I saw that they were offering them for rent, starting at $849./mo., so that rent has not gone up a huge amount since my departure. I'm paying $512.50 rental, with increase as of Mar. 1 anticipated. I have a shed in which to park my car, with extra room in it where a friend's van is parked, a garage where I have builing materials, supplies, a couple of trunks and a freezer, plus space in the barn which I use to service the large garden that I have, plowed and tilled by my landlord ... and he gets a share of the produce. The government offered us a tax-free savings account aimed at home owneership about 35 years ago, max. allowable $1,000. per year, $10,000. total and I thought that I'd need to find a home on retirement in about 20 years. I invested the max allowable $1,000./yr. beginning in '74, and continuing till '83, missed one year so had invested for 9 years, $9,000. total, into a fairly stable, mortgage-based mutual fund. Its current value, having been unmolested in the interim, has grown from $9,000. in '84 to over $73,000. now, 27 years later, i.e. about 9% annual compound rate - with no deduction for the high-rate income tax that I've paid annually on the increases. I've been thinking that, in the interim between seniors, especially singles, living in their traditional home and entering a residential or nursing home, it seems to me that, rather than buyig a (temporry) condo or renting an apartment lone, it makes a great deal of sense for several singles to share a home. There are several advantages: sharing a home means discussion and more mental activity than when one lives alone; I find that I'm inclined to talk to strangers when I'm out, and am sure that I would do less of it if I shared my home with someone. Many find that carrying out all of the chores related to operating a household becomes onerous - and sharing would mean shared chores. They eat better, for several atthetable wouldd preclude the"tea and toast:" that a number of seniors may refer to as a meal. If someone fell, there'd be help available - and they couold triage:we can rtake care of it; we call this person's caregiver; or we call 9-1-1 - right now! There'd be major saving of money, what with rent, utilities, insurance, etdc. Gotta run - 3 min. to library closing (but I figure that my loaner car'll get me safely home). ole joyful

In Los Angeles we went through the overbuilt cycle a number of years ago and the problem was that while the new homeowners could afford the house they were not prepared for the maintenance costs. So my guess is that in several years McMansion will mean suburban blight. When you are a homeowner and realize that maintenance is charged based on square footage having a large house, especially if you are only using a part of it, is very costly. Poor insulation leads to higher utility costs. All the decorative roof peaks and valleys that might leak…and those post tension foundations where a plumbing repair that could be quickly and easily handled on a raised foundation may end up costing thousands...

There are a number of DVRs that you can use to record TV inputs from whatever source, but you'll have to do a manual setting like on an old timey VCR if you don't have one integrated with your provider. Most don't have tuners, so you'll still need a TV or cable box to set the channel and have that set to the correct channel at the recording time as well. You can also make one out of an old computer plus some parts, if you're technically inclined. The question is whether rental is a better deal in the long run. If something fails, with the rental, they send a guy to change it out for a replacement box, no charge, at my cable provider. Other places might want you to pay for the visit, but let you bring in the kaput box and swap it free for a different one (not "new", unless you're lucky, because they're usually ones that have been repaired and put back in service). If you have satellite service, you can probably buy the associated DVR equipment from a third party vendor rather than renting, but it may be limited to recording from satellite. If you don't mind paying a lot, just don't like rental, you can get professional equipment, like the studio execs have, with a dozen or more tuned recording channels and scads of memory. Those are semi-custom to custom and run in the middle four figures. Panasonic used to make a great all in one with DVD, VCR, SD and DVR and at least one tuner in one unit. They went from ordinary price when new to over triple the original price now used. There was a kind of agreement between the hardware makers and the providers, when the latter went into DVRs big time, not to sell DVRs with tuners for the home market. People, in general, prefer the automatic recording schemes with the integrated guides that come from having one tied into your provider's system. The accessibly priced DVRs nowadays are meant more for camera recordings, whether for security (a big use of multichannel), or home video.

My house is not paid for - it could have been multiple times. But I have used the equity in it to make major upgrades that I could never have made out of my income, and with the first refinance, pay of a ton of credit card debt that was accumulated when we had two children in college - plane tickets, car repairs - you name it. It all added up, and yes, we were living beyond our means in some ways. I've always been able to refinance and actually LOWER my monthly payment as interest rates were falling. My very first mortgage was not a fixed rate, and it was for 30 years. Luckily for us, interest rates continued to fall and when the time was right about 12 years later, we refinanced with a fixed rate 15 yr mortgage. We paid off every single penny of credit card debt and have never again had any. Multiple refinancing later, all were fixed rate 15 yr mortgages, and all made good improvements to the house. I could not possibly rent a 3 bedroom house in as nice a neighborhood as I now live, for anywhere close to my my monthly mortgage payment, plus property taxes and insurance. BUT..I bought this house 33 years ago when prices were way lower than today in this neighborhood, and I still have a very low mortgage - about 20% of the value of my house. When the time comes (and it will come one day in the near future) that I can no longer live in this house, it will be sold and the money left after paying off the mortgage/real estate fees etc should pay for about 5 years in a very good assisted living facility. After that, I will have to dig into my IRA and other savings, if I'm still living. But I'm not like most people. Most don't buy and stay in a house for 30+ years. They buy a house that is more than they truly can afford, and they move every few years, usually when the house starts needing expensive repairs. And they just keep moving. While building up equity in a house is not a sure thing, neither is investing in any financial product. They key is not buying at the top of the market, buying what one can truly afford, and staying where one is. That is not always possible for home buyers today.