I was right with you until you took that swipe at us homeowners. Our dishwasher died about six months ago, and the guy -- a former student no less -- who sold it to us swore that we could get the delivery guys to do the hookup if we just slipped them a tip. It took me the rest of the day, and two or three trips to Ye Old Tool Shoppe, before I got it in. If I'd known there was going to be plumbing involved, I'd have called someone with a Pl.D.....

I protest. :) It wasn't a 'swipe' at homeowners at all! Just an admission that I'm neither 'handy' enough nor well-funded enough to cope with the idea of purchasing multiple appliances, replacing roofs, repairing foundations, and all of those other homeowner joys.

And plumbing! Although not as scary as electricity, it contains mysteries that bewilder me.

I've done both plumbing and electrical repairs, but always with some trepidation. For the most part, replacement parts and kits contain very careful instructions, and if your house has been built to code, they actually describe the way things are. When there isn't a kit -- or an obvious place to apply tape or glue -- I call professionals.

For the record, our house payments (I can't use the word for a home loan due to your spam filtuer) here are less than any comparable rental property I've seen. Doesn't mean we can afford these things, just that we're supposedly reaping the benefits in value at the same time. Not having partaken of the now-collapsing "value extracting" second home loan market, it'll have to wait until we actually sell the place before we know if it was all worth it.

Homeowners don't move because of refrigerators, either. We go to Home Depot, find one on sale, arrange to have men bring and install (which if you do it right, you get most of the fee back as a "rebate" from them) and let them sweat with the heavy lifting and dolly work.

Ditto the washer and dryer. The only really expensive replacement I had to have done was the water heater.

But congratulations on your new fridge!! *g*

Okay, I take it back and you can get someone else to bring you a refrigerator and install it, even if you aren't a renter.

Still. I like being a renter. I like maintenance being Someone Else's Problem.

I don't like not having equity, no, but for the rent we pay on this place? We couldn't touch a payment for anything remotely comparable.