re: What would you say the best financial decision you ever made was?

I've always contributed at least 6% or whatever was necessary to get the company match. It was also going to grad school after working for about 2 years at a bank right out of college. Outside of this, it's been real estate. My wife and I bought our first house when we were 24 for $165k. 6 years later we sold it after the market crash for $230k and moved to a bigger house that had come down in value after the crash. Also, when the market crashed, I got out of the funds I was in and went all in on the Fidelity Select Banking and Fidelity Select Insurance. I figured these would have bigger bounce backs than the regular funds I was in at the time and boosted my 401k balance. I also took some of our cash and bought C, BAC, and GE for really, really cheap which allowed me to take that money and do other things with it. In the last 26 months, I've bought 4 other properties:

Townhouse for $142k in May 2015 - similar unit just sold for $215k

Townhouse for $231k in Dec 2015 - similar unit just sold for $310k

Townhouse for $198k in Aug 16 - similar unit just sold for 215k (not excited about this one but it rents extremely easy)

House to flip for $225k in May 2017 and about to list it for $370k.

I originally did these as another way to invest money, pay for kids college, retire early, beach house one day, etc. We don't go out and get new cars every few years and don't spend much on consumer goods mainly because we don't have time to shop.

Sold house for $80k more than purchased after 2 years. Good return for a <$400k house.

Not going back to NOLA after Katrina.

You have to live somewhere, you can pay rent for 0 return or buy something and hope to make a return.

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10% average (gross) annual rate of return seems like a good return to you? Once you acknowledge transaction costs and ownership/maintenance costs, you're below 10%, probably closer to the average 7% annual return on housing (according to Shiller). S&P 500 has been ~17% over last 12 months, you'd do better in index funds.

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Yeah...but.....he more than likely didn't have to invest 400K to get that return. Only cash at risk was his down payment....Right??

ETA-and not that people care, but I'm not your downvoter

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Rent gives you the flexibility to invest your capital in its most efficient way,

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the thing is, that in some town you don't have any capital left after renting in a safe neighborhood.

Put money in a 401k from day 1 & haven't stopped. Haven't missed a cent of it. I'll never be rich, but I should have a financially stress free retirement.

Dropping out of law school rather than accumulating 250 k in debt when I wasn't sure I even wanted to be a lawyer.

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Rent gives you the flexibility to invest your capital in its most efficient way, without the significant costs and illiquidity of ownership.

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Mortgages give you the opportunity to buy inventments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for as little as 5 cents on the dollar. Those 10% gains were made with 20% or less of the cost, and 25% of the interest was tax deductible. And you can raise a family in that investment. Very rarely, at least in my market, is the interest alone more expensive than rent on apples to apples property. You can literally buy a warranty on a house that covers everything for $500/yr. If houses were these money pits you rentards said they were, these companies would be out of business. But they rake hand over fist.