One of the goals, i set when starting this blog was to track the steps to FIRE- Financials Independence Retire Early- although honestly for me its more around the FI part than the IR part.

In that vein i purchased a house!

Herein starts the endless debates between the warring factions of the FIRE community….don’t buy rent and invest the difference vs buy and payoff as soon as possible.

The reality of living in Sydney Australia….expensive options both ways. Still why did i choose to buy a house…two reasons, the emotional pull finally won over me, ive been renting for 10 years plus and i wanted to finally put down roots….but the other reason and a bit of an oversight in these debates owning a home can actually allow you to get to FIRE faster than renting!

Heresy! Well not really, i started looking at future forecast out 5/10/15 years and then thinking of inputs costs over that time (power/water/food) and owning a home made more financial sense in that time period. However there is a big BUT, the but was the house had help reduce inputs, the way that occurs is moving to a non suburban area exurban areas where those inputs are almost provided free.

How are these inputs (semi) free…..three things, water tanks/solar panels/raised beds.

Two of the three are free and the last ones major input requires time as its only input.

Watching the market, S&P500 is up, bonds are trending sideways (or doing down) ….the only thing of value EM markets!