Or, to put it another way, why buy a house?
You will probably have seen it written, or heard it said, many times before - a mortgage is the largest debt you'll ever take on in your life.
Put that way, it's a frightening prospect - one that should only be considered under circumstances of dire necessity. Yet we treat obtaining a mortgage as a great accomplishment - something almost to be celebrated. I well remember the TV adverts that portrayed different people when they first received the news that they'd got the mortgage they were hoping for. Their reactions ranged from subdued excitement to outright ecstasy! None of the ads portrayed those same people going out to work, day in, day out, to pay the damn thing off!
Why do we treat mortgages this way?
Almost certainly because having a mortgage means 'owning' our own home, which, like getting married and having children, is something we think our parents would like to see us do. Seen as "taking on a huge great debt that's going to be hanging like an albatross around our neck for the next quarter century", perhaps those same parents wouldn't be quite so enthusiastic about the whole thing!
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