Concept
Own your dwelling
Own your dwelling is Clason's fifth cure: turn the place you live into an asset rather than a lifelong rent, while checking, in today's markets, whether buying actually beats renting at current prices and interest rates.
In Clason's parable, Arkad tells the people of Babylon that a man who pays rent all his life ends with nothing, while one who buys his own house, even slowly with a loan from a moneylender, ends with a home that is his and the rent money turned into savings. The idea has a sound core: housing is the largest expense in most budgets, and owning can turn part of it into wealth. But the arithmetic depends on prices and rates. When mortgage rates are very high, as they have often been in Turkey, the interest can cost far more each month than rent for the same flat, and that gap, invested, may grow faster than the house. Owning also ties up savings and makes moving harder. So the modern version of the cure is not "always buy" but "compare": the full monthly cost of owning, including interest, maintenance and taxes, against rent plus what the difference would earn if invested. Buy when the comparison favours it and you plan to stay; rent without guilt when it does not.
A real-life example
Selin and Burak in İzmir are told by every relative that rent is money thrown away. They price a flat they like: the monthly loan payment would be more than double their rent, and the down payment would take all their savings. They write both columns on one page, keep renting, raise their monthly saving, and agree to run the comparison again each year or when rates fall.
How to use it
- 1Calculate the full monthly cost of owning: loan interest, maintenance, insurance and taxes.
- 2Compare it with rent plus what the difference would earn if you invested it.
- 3Repeat the comparison every year or whenever interest rates change significantly.