I feel that. My wife and I have a rule: if our expenses go over what we could make working in fast food, we sell some stuff.
I like how this rule sounds, but am wondering whether you live in a high-cost area or not. Having two incomes at the level of the fast-food industry seems somewhat limiting, but this depends on where you live and how frugal you are.
In other comments I'm also noticing that having a mortgage is part of the need to stay in a high-paying job, so maybe renting can alleviate some of that pressure and be more flexible to adjust to live below your means?
Renting is pound-for-pound far more expensive than owning. We couldn't find an apartment we liked within our budget, so we bought a starter home instead. Owning also lets us recoup value when we sell. Buying an expensive house isn't something we want to do, so there's no need for us to pay $2500 a month for a McMansion with a quarter acre of golf course outside.
Come to Toronto and say that to my face. I'm going to laugh, and laugh, and...
This may very well be true for your scenario, so I'm not addressing that. I just want to poke at the myth that owning is always cheaper than renting. The real answer is: it depends on a lot of things.
There are costs associated with achieving a purchase (and later, a sale), there are costs associated with paying rent for extra cash (ie the mortgage), there are property taxes, and there are both time and money costs in maintenance work (that is obligatory for owners, a savings if you are renting).
If you move more often than once every 5 years, the math probably works out for it being cheaper to rent than to own. Committing to 5+ years decreases your flexibility to do things like: take higher-paying work, let go of real maintenance needs, move out of a bad neighborhood, etc.
edit: $400 of that $1k is property taxes. Live outside of town. It's better. I promise.
There are trade-offs to that cheaper cost too though.
Mostly in terms of job availability (though maybe that's changing with remote work), stuff availability (foods, people), and centralization of knowledgable people in software (not many). Weather.
Schools and variety of public opinion was also not great, but that's a problem most places and only really matters if you have kids. I wouldn't want to raise my kids there though.
Congrats, you found the reason why we're leaving. It's a combination of that, tax rates, and gun laws. Upstate NY doesn't need to suffer for the problems of NYC.
> Mostly in terms of job availability (though maybe that's changing with remote work)
It is. I'm starting a new job in Orlando on Monday.
First, there's cultural difference around the world about owning property - or if not cultural, than at least pragmatic: FWIW, vast majority of my European friends and family don't plan/anticipate to own a property - ever. Huge percentage of my North American friends and family wouldn't even settle for a condo - it's house or fail. These friends and family are in comparable positions.
Second, location location location. Maybe your high tech jobs leads you to live in downtown of a metropolis, but a low-paying job "forces" you to a small town of boonies or boonies of small town or both. You may or may not find that lifestyle better for mental health.
Finally, size, size, size. I was born and lived HAPPILY as middle-class family in a 3-room apartment as a five-people nuclear family (parents, one grandmother, two kids [ourselves]). It was fine. It was great.
I am now in a house, same family config but a generation down, we have four rooms on top level alone, plus main floor and basement, and we are CRAMPED. We rented a locker until last year when we did a purge. There's stuff everywhere. Not even because we are well to do (though we are), when you have kids in north america the amount of stuff friends and relatives and facebook groups share is awesome but overwhelming. And the household work... GAWD the household work... I don't find peace in it and it overwhelms me just to think of the time and expense owning property entails.
Hey, these aren't even first world problems, these are privileged well-to-do first-world-plus problems, I recognize and address that. But owning sizeable house is by far not the only way to happiness.
Edit: Let's not forget kids vs no kids. That is a huge differentiator as to options, and I think more of us commenting or advising here should be explicit about current state and plans. I didn't think kids were as "life changing" from economics/lifestyle perspective as I'm now aware :P. This is not to say I didn't think they were a huge deal... just didn't realize intuitively internally just how much it is YourLife:Part2. I went through civil war, change of continents and countries, passage of parent, broken heart and ending up with The One... and ALL of that was a relatively similar "Phase 1" compared to the radically different life after we got kids :D