longweekend58 wrote on Feb 12
th, 2013 at 10:49am:
so why at 80 had she not already bought and paid for her own home? if u take the advice of the lieks of stupid-nail or pansi then you will rent all the time and end up like your aunt. If you take more traditional advice and buy a home when you are younger then when you are old you dont need to rent at all and you can even reverse mortgage or downsize and enjoy the cash.
Well, if you can provide us with a working
time machine to take us back about 40 years I'm sure we'll be able to make good use of your advice.
But, back in the real world, we have to make the best of what we have. Paying $177 a week rent as we do now sure beats paying $450 a week (that's the average rent here in Perth at the moment, btw).
I worked out some time ago that I'm better off living in public housing paying a quarter of my income (which, in WA public housing at the moment is $430 a week
before tax) than I would be working full time and paying private rent.
That means I work about 20 hours a week with lots of spare time to take care of my aunt and take her out, etc.
At least if anything happens to me, my elderly aunt will have an affordable place to live in. Her pension wouldn't even cover the cost of the cheapest private rental in Perth right now. And, we're not at the mercy of private landlords who might decide to kick you out because they want to sell the place, etc.