On the weekend, my wife and I spent countless hours moving from Western Sydney to the Inner West of Sydney. We both made a decision to move closer to my office, to avoid the 3 hours I would spend a day, getting to and from work. It wasn’t an easy decision initially, but after weighing up the time I would be saving, petrol costs, tolls and city parking expenses, it all made sense.

As most of you all know, I am a big fan of ‘Rentvesting’ (buying where you can afford and renting where you want to live). Rentvesting has allowed us to pick a suburb that ticks all the boxes for our current situation. When picking the suburb we wanted to live in, we considered the commute to work and how we can minimise it as much as we can, we considered schools for Isaac, we considered the community and most importantly if we could live in the suburb.

It wasn’t easy to decide on a suburb, but Rentvesting allowed me to have choice and flexibility to pack up and move my family home to a location that was the best possible option for our current situation, and if our situation changes in the future and another suburb is a better option then I would seriously consider moving. I know this isn’t everybody’s cup of tea to get up and move your family, but for me if I can move to a location where I buy back 3 hours a day to spend with my family or have a choice to do what I want and not sit in the M5 traffic, then its very important to me.

I can hear you saying ‘I can sell my current home and buy a home in the suburb I want to live in, why do I have to rent?’ Yes, you can buy a property and move to your desired suburb, you can pick the best house you can afford and buy it, but how do you know that is the best location, within that suburb? The street might look quiet on the weekend, but full of traffic during the weekdays. Ok, we can live with a little traffic, but let us look at the costs of selling your home and buying another property. Think about all the cost of selling your home and purchasing a new one, this costs could be approximately up to $50,000 and this includes real estate agents fees, stamp duty on the new property and legal costs. You could potentially justify that cost once or twice in your life, but not more than that, that amount could potentially cover your rent for 1.5 years, not to mention, it usually costs less to rent the same property than the interest expense of owning that same property.

I am happy to run you through my actual situation and how much I’m saving by rentvesting and can go through any potential scenarios and let you know what your numbers look like.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. ” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Thank you for reading