Email rant: “It’s not buying a home”

June 29 2 Comments latest by jon

From my old college roommate JRK:

“As you continue to move on towards full-on personal finance guru status, may I make one request:

Never, ever use the phrase “buying a home.”

I know this has become completely idiomatic in finance (not to mention real estate) jargon, but it’s just smarmy and offensive.

You buy a house. A house is a physical entity which sits on a piece of real estate. You can’t buy a home. Your home is an abstract place. The very notion that you could BUY a home betrays a terribly misguided sense of what it even means, born out of consumer culture run rampant. That, and it’s a piece of business-ese that just bugs me. Like “monetizing upward synergies.” But it’s become so universally used that people take it for granted.

Well, I want to take that word back, one person at a time. I’m now asking you, in your elevated status in the personal finance world, to be the first to help me do this. Believe me, it’s for the greater good.

Seriously though. One of these days I’m going to kill the bastards.
-jrk

Truer words were never spoken. Also, try to understand how much JRK and I ranted to each other about stupid people.

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Posted June 29, 2005 under Real estate, Miscellaneous

Ramit: low maintenance

I love this