this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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It's not wasted. You get somewhere to live for the month for the rent. It's like saying all food I buy is wasted money because I'll just be hungry again next month.
If you're paying a mortgage, you get to live there for the duration of it, and then you get to own the place at the end.
If you're paying rent, you get to live there for the duration of it, and at the end you own nothing.
If we're going to compare it with food, it's like cooking your own food vs. going out to eat. If you cook on your own, you'll need to pay a bit more upfront for the equipment, but you own that equipment until it breaks and can make food for much cheaper from then on. If you go out to eat every day, at the end you're left with nothing.
Except the interest part of the mortgage payment is equivalent to rent, and the principle part is paying down the loan. Mortgage payments are often much higher than rent payments for an equivalent property. Whether it's a better deal to buy or rent depends on a number of factors and isn't as cut and dry as the op suggests.
That's plainly not true. The interest is not equivalent to rent, it's a combination of:
You're arguably correct only on that third point. However, as a homeowner pays off their mortgage, all those factors go away. The mortgage ends and then they own it forever, the bank doesn't continue to make money off of this arrangement. That's just never the case when renting.
For renting to be a better deal rent would need to basically only cover operational expenditure for the property. Literally a single cent more than that and the owner of the property is getting money just for owning land and the property on it.