Housing

In Ontario the average cost of a 2-bedroom apartment is pushing $2300/mth, but in Da Nang Vietnam you can rent a modern condo for $500-$1000 per month.

Problem

You are paying through the nose for rent, which means you are just a cog in the employer-to-landlord pipeline, just like people in SanFransisco and L.A. You work hard to enrich your landlord, not to enrich yourself.

Solution

Housing is the greatest expense that people have, and that is because we've been programmed and indoctrinated by TV into wanting a sex-and-the-city fancy apartment that is well past our means. Fight that programming, and do more with less.

• Starve the beast. You don't have to get an apartment in the fancy neighbourhoods. Commute for longer so that you have a nicer and larger space.

• Starve the beast. You don't have to get your own place. Stay with your parents and invest that rent money in a growth ETF. That money can grow at around 16% every year for the next 20 years.

  Let's say you'd be paying a rent of $1500 for a 1-bedroom apartment. But you stay with your parents and pay them a reduced rent of $500/mth. Now you have $1k extra every month. That comes to $12000 every year. If you invested $1k every month for the last 10 years, and put that money in SCHG, you'd have over $250k now.

  $1k invested per month can get you $250k in 10 years. Or you could blow that money on a fancy apartment. Your decision, your consequences.

• Starve the beast. Don't get your own place. Share an apartment with friends and split the cost. The math works the same as above.
• Starve the beast. If you can't get along with people and have to have your own place, get a shoebox studio apartment that is professionally managed. That way they can't kick you out after a few years with the "my cousin needs to move in there" excuse. And then live in that shoebox for over a decade. This is what I did, since getting along with people isn't a strength of mine.

You don't have to make the lifestyle choice of paying an arm and a leg for rent. Make different lifestyle choices, and get out of the rat-race. You can get out, you just have to work for it. Nothing is free.