> Buying a house comes with a lot of responsibility and you basically give up any freedoms to be able to pay your mortgage, saved up for any repairs, and hope t

> Buying a house comes with a lot of responsibility and you basically give up any freedoms to be able to pay your mortgage, saved up for any repairs, and hope that a natural disaster doesn't wipe out your largest investment. I think you kind of missed the point. The GP was talking about the days when a laundry truck driver could afford a house, i.e. a time when owning a house wasn't that big of a deal. If you could afford it as a laundry truck driver in your twenties, then you cold also afford to totally lose it, live as a renter for a few years, and buy another house in your thirties or forties. The entire point was, it didn't take such a crippling anmount of debt back then.