The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: heybro on May 27, 2016, 03:25:48 AM
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What are some cheapest housing ideas?
1. Move in with parents
2. Buy a 'tiny house' hehe. Those are cute!
3. Buy a trailer.
4. Buy a camper.
5. Buy a studio condo.
6. Buy a one bedroom house.
7. Get roommates.
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My son's buddy is a bachelor and bought a house. He has two buddies that he gets along well with and they are basically making his mortgage payment for him.
They get cheap rent, they all split utilities and he's getting help paying for the house. Works out good for all of them, but could be miserable with the wrong housemate.
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8. Become a perpetual traveler. Label any spending on AirBnB, VRBO, Hotels, etc. as "Travel" and $0 "Housing" spending. ;)
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Professional house sitter. I read about a retired couple who got paid to stage luxury homes for sale. They garden, keep the place clean, and live in million dollar homes. A friend of mine did some of this after a divorce, but she found that she had lots of choices from April to August, not so much September to March.
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Professional house sitter. I read about a retired couple who got paid to stage luxury homes for sale. They garden, keep the place clean, and live in million dollar homes. A friend of mine did some of this after a divorce, but she found that she had lots of choices from April to August, not so much September to March.
Oh, that should have occurred to me. Especially since I'm doing that right now; we're house sitting right now in Australia for two months.
You, of course, pay costs to get there. But no utility bills or housing costs more than makes up for that (especially since you can travel hack travel costs).
Good call.
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Professional house sitter. I read about a retired couple who got paid to stage luxury homes for sale. They garden, keep the place clean, and live in million dollar homes. A friend of mine did some of this after a divorce, but she found that she had lots of choices from April to August, not so much September to March.
+1. In seasonal vacation locations* there are alwasy a large percentage of homes that sit vacant for 9+ months out of the year. Like axecleaver said, you stay there and do odd jobs and generally keep an eye on the place while the owners are away. The downside is that you loose your housing when the owners want to come back (sometimes with little/no warning), it has to be kept in a perpetual state of tidiness and you can never personalize it to your tastes. I've had a few friends who have done this for several years - when they get displaced by the owners they travel and couch-surf.
I've also read about people who live in homes that are 'staged' (furnished to sell) for sale, particularly in markets where homes might sit for a couple of months before being sold. Similar deal, only here you have to be super clean and you often have only a few hours to get you and your suitcase out so the home can be shown to someone else.
*as examples: Coastal Maine, any beach town (during the winter), near any ski resort (during the summer), around lakes, etc.