An interesting article entitled "The Renter's Manifesto: Why home ownership causes unemployment."

The article title is a bit misleading; it implies that home ownership causes unemployment. However, it explicitly states in the article: "English economist Andrew Oswald has shown that across European countries, and across U.S. states, high levels of home ownership are correlated with high levels of unemployment."

Semantics aside, this reminds me of the mentality shift I had a while ago regarding home ownership. I remember when I first started at MindTouch, I was saving a decent portion of my salary since I was living at home. Needing a goal to invest towards (it's really hard to save money when all these technology goodies stare at you from your RSS reader), I decided a "home" would be a good goal. I would save to buy a house.

A few months ago, I decided that buying a house would be a net-negative on my life. The article above gives a few reasons why (I drew similar conclusions), but the biggest reason why I had this shift away from house-buying was that house buying limits your career flexibility, and that is the best invesment of all - investing in yourself.

If the goal is future financial freedom as well as future happiness (my oversimplified definition of happiness: "being able to wake up/go to bed satisfied with your attempts at fulfilling your dreams"), then why should I willingly tie myself down to an area and set down roots? A house, if anything, clouds my decision making ability when it comes to a career, because I'll let the roots I've set down affect my career decision-making.

Realistically, if I had bought a house a few months ago in NC, could I have moved to San Diego? Would I be willing? If I had left MT, where would I have worked? IBM?

The most important advantage I have going in my life is my flexibility. My career mobility and my lack of roots will let me objectively determine if a specific job is the best thing for me.

I think it's a riskier path than taking a plush job at a big company, but it has a better potential upside. Risk, risk, risk.