When it comes to home ownership vs. apartment rental, take a look at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html

The OP article is pretty generic and goes from talking about renting vs buying music (spotify vs amazon) to renting vs buying homes.

Personally, I'm still renting an apartment.  As the article stated, with renting an apartment, I have a fixed rate per month that I pay with zero surprises.  No new dishwasher, refrigerator, washing machine, etc  I also don't have to own and buy and keep a lawn mower, string trimmer, etc all gassed up and maintained and stored somewhere.  As long as I buy a house within the next little while, I think the calculation of renting vs buying will come out pretty well... where although my money has been going to the apartment complex, if I had a mortgage, the majority of it would be going towards taxes and interest. 

The longer I've waited, the better position I am in to buy something I really want, vs buying a fixer-upper and dealing with extra maintenance costs.  Although I'm not afraid to do a lot of stuff myself, I grew up in a house that was a constant fixer-upper and it's really been nice not having to worry about anything.  I'm also in a better position to put 20% down (thus no PMI) and immediately start putting lots more toward principle that i would have been able to years ago with near 0% down + PMI.

That's also not to mention it was a really good idea not to buy a house within the last 4 years when the housing market died.  The central PA area really didn't get touched at all by the housing bust, at least the specific area I'm in.  Thus, there were no drastically low prices and no foreclosures to make me want to buy something.

Finally, here we are in a potential double-dip recession so things are a little crazy to buy something.  On the flip side, interesting rates on 15 and 30 year mortgages look like they are going down again.

I've gotten into the mentality of either rent an apartment or own a house. Meaning, if I ever move into a house, I want to own it from day one. Not pay off mortgage over time. That's just about the same thing as renting; You don't truly own the house until the mortgage is paid off. I know most people would prefer this as well (don't see why not anyway), but if I can't do that, than I'd rather just rent an apartment knowing that it's not mine instead of pretending it is :P

But I have the same mentality when buying just about anything else. If at all possible, pay it off at once, don't finance over time, and in turn, save money. As such, I have stopped using my credit card completely about 4 months ago. I pay everything via debit.

Alright so my wording was a bit flawed. And yes, it would take a long time of saving to buy the house I'd want. My point was that I don't like having debt, or being indebted to anyone, especially a bank. Just my preference, but I like to truly own the things I buy.

I like to truly own the things I buy.

But? You'd rather rent?

It's confusing cause it's wasting money.

/facepalm

Equity vs Trash Can (aka Rent)