For the past 10 years, I've been kicking butt.
My expenses have been extremely low:
--Public Transportation instead of a car.
--Owning a small unit instead of renting.
--Paying off student loans and my mortgage.
I am finally about to have my mortgage paid. I will have zero debt at that point.
My problem is that the very things that allowed me to achieve this are no longer working for me.
10 years ago, my urban environment was low-key, easy, and even quiet.
Now, with the economy heating up, the urban environment is growing like crazy. Vacancy rates are way down. The buses are now packed. There is noise everywhere. This could also be that I am 10 years older than I used to be but there is a clear change.
In other words, I don't want to live here anymore. I don't want to sit on public transportation anymore.
So, how do I abandon the very things that got me to this point?
Is there such a thing as a quiet building? I don't want to own a house or a townhouse. I'd love to rent a basement in a house.
Trouble is, as you move away from an urban place, you no longer see small unit condos for sale. You see places to rent. Those places may be just as bad for noise and chaos.
If you pay more, you don't always get a quieter place either if you are stacked in a building.
They say you should always own in a building because owners respect the place more. But, even those owners can choose to rent their places out at some point.
I just don't want to move if I am going to end up in the same situation.
I could buy a car....that might help a lot.
Ideally, I'd like to rent a nice large one bedroom with nice carpet and a washer/dryer in the unit. Having owned, I am scared of renting and the threats of rent increases. By definition, I may need a car because public transportation generally extends only to areas with a lot of people. But there are so many more options when renting than when trying to buy these small types of places.
What a reality hit. Funny really.
I've always wanted to work part-time always so true FIRE isn't my goal but regardless of my answer going forward, rest assured, the retirement accounts are going to be funded as much as possible. This question is mostly about changing housing when the housing/transportation you've relied on no longer seems ideal.
If I've relied on cheap transportation and cheap housing and now I need to change, how do I change without completely abandoning my frugal ways.