Silicon Valley
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 6, 2012
- 1,092
- 1,116
A Home is a Liability, Not an Asset
This is a crazy point when you first hear it. I thought so anyway. *By the way, we’re talking about buying a home to live in vs. buying a home to rent out. The thing we always hear is that a home is a good investment and that it is like paying yourself instead of paying someone else. When you’re old and gray, you will own the house instead of owning nothing if you rent. A nice side bonus to home ownership is that you can deduct mortgage interest on your taxes.
Sure, this is all great, but to Robert T. Kiyosaki, the book’s author, these points are irrelevant. His argument is that when you buy a home just to live in, you buy in to a liability. This home you are buying comes with many responsibilities, many of which are financial. You have to pay property taxes. You have to maintain the home when things wear out. You have to heat and cool the home. You also have to cut the grass, spray the weeds and rake the leaves in the fall. The bigger and/or more expensive the home you buy is, the more of a liability it becomes.
This is a crazy point when you first hear it. I thought so anyway. *By the way, we’re talking about buying a home to live in vs. buying a home to rent out. The thing we always hear is that a home is a good investment and that it is like paying yourself instead of paying someone else. When you’re old and gray, you will own the house instead of owning nothing if you rent. A nice side bonus to home ownership is that you can deduct mortgage interest on your taxes.
Sure, this is all great, but to Robert T. Kiyosaki, the book’s author, these points are irrelevant. His argument is that when you buy a home just to live in, you buy in to a liability. This home you are buying comes with many responsibilities, many of which are financial. You have to pay property taxes. You have to maintain the home when things wear out. You have to heat and cool the home. You also have to cut the grass, spray the weeds and rake the leaves in the fall. The bigger and/or more expensive the home you buy is, the more of a liability it becomes.