I say this all the time as some who has bought/sold two houses and is currently a renter.

It IS really nice having the “forced savings” of buying a house, and knowing that if you pay off enough and SHTF you can always sell for a chunk of change, but holy shit, people VASTLY underestimate the maintenance costs.

Most people think: “Haha, I would rather have a $10K roof replacement every 20 years” or “I could handle a $1K water heater NBD”, but its not that. At all.

We had a pipe bust underneath our house that home insurance wouldn’t cover because it didn’t directly affect the house itself, and that was an unexpected $30K hit and digging under our home in multiple locations. People like to tout the foundation/roof being good, but I’m telling everyone, dont sleep on the hydrostatic leak tests. And if I ever buy a house again, that is something I’ll get done like every other year, because our pipe burst after we had owned the home for over 10 years.

Right now though, I am HAPPY knowing that the only “emergency” I’d have to cover would be vehicle issues, and my savings are going to largely stay my savings.