The reluctant house-hunter

My friends are trying to convince me to buy a house. I want a house, really I do. I just don’t want to live in the kind of house I can afford. Richard thinks I’d be better off buying a house than contributing to an RRSP – and he’s one of Canada’s leading experts on taxes and retirement income security programs. Fred and Sherrie think I should buy a fixer-upper duplex and fix it up and rent half of it and live in the other half. Never mind that I can barely hang a picture straight – they’re convinced I can renovate a house. Based on what? Based on the fact that THEY did it, so I could surely do it. My sister’s a real estate agent, so it goes without saying that she thinks I should buy a house.

I know I should buy a house, but there’s something about it that shakes me to the core.

The fact is, I was poor for a good portion of my life. I grew up in a poor single-parent household. Then I had a baby when I was quite young, and lived in poverty for years. I went back to school when my son was two years old so I could get us out of poverty (that was back when Ontario actually made it possible for single parents on welfare to go back to school….now it’s pretty much illegal). It took years, but eventually I emerged from poverty. I haven’t been poor since 1991. But you know what? Poverty leaves a permanent impression, a scar of sorts. People who lived through the Great Depression still save string, and people who spent most of their lives in poverty never feel safe from it. I feel like I climbed out of poverty but I’m only a step or two ahead of it. One bad decision, one stroke of bad luck, one wrong move, and the jaws of poverty will snatch me back where I belong. In my own mind, I will never be middle class – I will always be a poor person who happens to have some money right now.

And then there’s debt. I live a completely debt-free existence. Whatever I own, I own outright. I pay off my credit cards in full each month. (I never even HAD a credit card until I was in my 30s.) If I want something, I save up for it. If I can’t afford it, I don’t buy it. Every month I put away money for a down payment, and I contribute to an RRSP. I feel that buying a house would paint me into a corner. Not only would I owe thousands and thousands of dollars for the mortgage, but suddenly I would absolutely need expensive things I couldn’t afford: a new furnace, a new roof, things like that. Frankly, that scares me.

But anyway. I’m so ambivalent about this house thing. I’ve got an agent, I’ve been pre-approved for a mortgage, and I’m going to look at the first six places tomorrow – two fixer-uppers and four condos. But deep down I’m hoping none of them are suitable.