A key goal for a comfortable retirement is owning your own home outright when you get there. Many renters nearing retirement write to me looking for advice, and it’s difficult to respond given the ongoing housing crisis, a problem without an easy fix. In my view, renting is a bad investment, often a necessity, driven by circumstance rather than desire.

But this week, I decided to dive deeper and asked some people who rent, why they do it. Some of their stories are sad, while others show the tradeoffs people are making. The truth is, renting can teach you some pretty hard lessons. Here are four of the biggest ones.

A frequent goal for a comfortable retirement is owning your home outright. But for many, that’s a goal that’s out of reach.Credit: Getty/WAtoday

Let’s be honest: renting sucks. There’s no end in sight, no moment where you can sit back and say, “I’ve made it.“ Every year or two, when your lease comes up, you get that knot in your stomach, wondering if the rent will go up or if the landlord will decide to sell. It’s a never-ending cycle of uncertainty. And it’s worse when you’re older.

Take Susan, who’s 70 and living on Melbourne’s northern fringe. She’s widowed, broke, and relying on the single age pension after her husband’s business went under during COVID, and he died of a heart attack not long after.

She had to sell everything they owned. Now, she’s moved out of the city, away from her friends and community to be able to find a place to rent for $370 per week, which she affords thanks to some help from rent assistance.

It took her a year of lining up at rental inspections and submitting applications to find a place because landlords took one at her application as a single woman on the full age pension and offered it to someone younger or more affluent. She lives in constant fear that her lease won’t be renewed.

Owning a home used to be the great Australian dream, but the data points out that buying a home in the inner circles of our capital cities is unreachable for average young people in........

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