Most rent-vs-buy advice compares two paths over ten years.
The decision deserves four paths over thirty, with retirement modeled through age 95 to verify funding.
TheHousingModel runs Rent & Invest, Buy Now, Rent, Then Buy, and Starter Home → Upgrade side by side against your actual financial life. It tells you when the verdict is "too close to call" instead of pretending otherwise.
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The housing question gets reduced to a fight between two confident slogans, each pushed by people whose business depends on you believing them. The model exists because the real answer lives somewhere neither side will admit.
Over a real 30-year horizon (with retirement modeled through age 95 and Age 85 NW as the wealth headline), the wealth-leader path is often not the recommended path. Some routes look attractive on net worth and quietly bankrupt you in the middle decades. The model exists to show you both at once: which path wins on wealth, and which one your household can actually survive.
This is what the rest of the internet hands you: five inputs, a single answer, no second-guessing. Below is roughly what that screen looks like. Read the right column for everything it's pretending isn't there.
Skip the single-answer trap. The free calculator ranks all four paths — Buy Now, Rent Then Buy, Starter→Upgrade, and Rent Forever — on the same household, so you can see which one actually wins.
Try the 4-Path Quick Verdict →The simple version on the left gives you a number. It doesn't know about any of these. Each one moves the verdict.
Most calculators force a binary. Real households compromise. These are the four strategies the model evaluates simultaneously, using one shared set of assumptions about your income, taxes, kids, and retirement.
Rent forever. Invest the down payment and the monthly differential into a diversified portfolio. The FIRE-blogger favorite.
Purchase a home in Year 0. Default: 20% down at the current mortgage rate. The realtor-approved default; the path your in-laws keep suggesting.
Rent for N years (default: 3) to build a larger cushion, then buy at the appreciated price. 20% down, no PMI. Often the actual winner.
Buy a modest starter at Y0. Sell and roll into a forever home a few years later. Two transactions, double the friction, often-overlooked tax mechanics.
Illustrative projection for a dual-income household starting at age 30 with an $80k cushion, modeled at a $1.15M home price and 7.0% mortgage rate. The actual model takes 15 Quick-Start inputs, organized across 7 core planning tabs with optional modules for debt, cars, big lumpy spend, actuals, and stress-tests when you want them.
Every run produces a Dashboard that reads like an honest planner, not a marketing calculator. The wealth-leader flag is separate from the six cash-stress diagnostics, because the highest-net-worth path is sometimes the one that bankrupts you on the way there. In the example below, the wealth leader is flagged 🟡 CAUTION. Only the #2 path is 🟢 GO.
Dashboard wealth checkpoints show Y30 and Age 85; retirement solvency is tested through age 95.
| Rent & Invest | Buy Now | Rent → Buy | Starter Home | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall Verdict | 🟢 GO | 🟡 CAUTION | 🟡 CAUTION | 🔴 DO NOT PROCEED |
| Housing / Income ratio (≥ 35% = stressed) |
22.4% | 47.0% | 29.4% | 31.6% |
| Stressed Years · Avg Severity (years with ratio ≥ 35%) |
🟢 0 yrs | 7y · avg 43% · peak 47% | 4y · avg 39% · peak 42% | 24y · avg 41% · peak 53% |
| Post-Purchase Liquid Cushion cash · brokerage · combined (mo) |
— | 4mo · 3mo · 7mo | 6mo · 38mo · 44mo | 6mo · 7mo · 13mo |
| House-Poor Check (both stressed = 🔴) |
🟢 Comfortable | 🟡 Stretched (7y, 47%) | 🟡 Stretched (4y, 42%) | 🔴 Chronic (24y, 53%) |
| Highest year-30 NW (today $) | ⚖️ TOO CLOSE TO CALL — Rent → Buy leads Buy Now by just 3.7% ($490,725 gap at Y30, today's $). Returns & inflation assumptions will flip the order. | |||
| Why it leads | At this resolution, path choice matters less than execution. Focus on cash-stress diagnostics below. That's where the real differences show up. | |||
| When it took the lead | Year 1 (age 35) — RENT, THEN BUY first took the #1 NW spot across all 4 paths. Lead held early ✅ — durable. | |||
| Rent & Invest | Buy Now | Rent → Buy | Starter Home | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 5 NW | $2.1M | $2.2M | $1.8M | $2.2M |
| Year 10 NW | $4.3M | $4.7M | $4.9M | $4.3M |
| Year 20 NW | $12.9M | $14.1M | $14.6M | $13.5M |
| Year 30 NW (today $) | $12.0M | $12.9M | $13.4M | $12.5M |
| ⭐ Age 85 NW (today $) | $17.5M | $18.0M | $19.6M | $18.6M |
| Year 30 Wealth Rank | #4 (−10.0%) | #2 (−3.7%) | #1 leader | #3 (−6.6%) |
| Age 85 Wealth Rank | #4 (−10.6%) | #3 (−8.1%) | #1 leader | #2 (−5.2%) |
| Rent & Invest | Buy Now | Rent → Buy | Starter Home | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y30 Home Equity (illiquid) | — | $4.1M | $3.9M | $3.5M |
| Y30 Cash + Brokerage (truly liquid) | $16.6M | $15.4M | $16.5M | $14.4M |
| Financial Assets as % of Total NW | 96.0% | 85.9% | 84.3% | 85.4% |
Two paths can show identical total NW with wildly different sleep-at-night metrics. A house worth $4M doesn't pay your utilities.
| Rent & Invest | Buy Now | Rent → Buy | Starter Home | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Crossover Age portfolio survives funding to age 95 | Age 46 (Y13) | Age 47 (Y14) | Age 47 (Y14) | Age 48 (Y15) |
| Stress-tested FI Age same sim at 5% nominal return (FIRE-standard) | Age 49 (Y16) | Age 51 (Y18) | Age 51 (Y18) | Age 52 (Y19) |
The first year your portfolio could fund all path expenses without your salary. Bear-market stress-test included.
| Rent & Invest | Buy Now | Rent → Buy | Starter Home | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1️⃣ House-Poor Burden | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🔴 |
| 2️⃣ Brokerage Drawdown Used | 🟢 0y | 🔴 7y | 🔴 13y | 🔴 12y |
| 3️⃣ Brokerage Exhausted Cash Shortfall at Y30 | 🟢 n/a | 🟡 $897k | 🟢 $0 | 🟡 $322k |
| 4️⃣ Emergency Fund (months) | 🟡 4.1 | 🟡 3.0 | 🟡 3.7 | 🟡 3.7 |
| 5️⃣ Retirement Funded? | 🟢 to 95 | 🟢 to 95 | 🟢 to 95 | 🟢 to 95 |
| 6️⃣ Chronic Housing Stress | 🟢 None | 🟡 7y · 47% | 🟡 4y · 42% | 🔴 24y · 53% |
| Stress Score (🔴 / 6) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
Live output from build v173, sample data: HENRY couple in NYC. Your dashboard will tell a different story.
Two purpose-built tabs do the pressure-testing. Sensitivity gives you a guide of stress tests across housing, market, career, and retirement assumptions — run them, save up to six snapshots side-by-side, and see which inputs actually move the verdict. MaxHomePrice exposes the affordable ceiling when the dashboard's yellow flag is hiding a darker number.
| LIVE | Cheaper House | Hot Real Estate | Job Loss Y3 | Infl + Rate Shock | Sequence Crash | Frugal Retire | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rent & Invest | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
| Buy Now | 🟡 | 🔴 | 🔴 | 🟡 | 🔴 | 🟡 | 🟡 |
| Rent → Buy | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🔴 | 🟡 | 🔴 | 🟡 | 🟡 |
| Starter Home | 🔴 | 🔴 | 🔴 | 🔴 | 🔴 | 🔴 | 🔴 |
| Path | CumDeficit @ Y30 | Affordable? | Age 85 NW (today $) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy Now | $896,833 | 🟡 Stretched | $18.0M |
| Rent → Buy | $0 | ✅ Comfortable | $19.6M |
| Starter Home | $322,261 | 🟡 Stretched | $18.6M |
| Rent & Invest | — | ✅ N/A (no purchase) | $17.5M |
| Wait | Buy Year | Home Price (then) | DP + Closing | Cash on Hand | Cushion / Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 yrs | Y1 | $1.2M | $280k | $153k | ❌ −$127k gap |
| 1 yr | Y2 | $1.3M | $297k | $308k | ✅ +$11k |
| 3 yrs | Y4 | $1.5M | $334k | $678k | ✅ +$344k |
| 5 yrs | Y6 | $1.6M | $368k | $946k | ✅ +$578k |
For the Rent → Buy path: at each waiting year, can the cash cushion cover the (appreciated) down payment + closing? This is how the model picks the optimal "rent for N years" value automatically.
Real life is messy. The model is built to accommodate that mess, not to round it away so the chart looks cleaner.
A 15-input Quick-Start tab gets you to a first answer in 15 minutes. Seven core planning tabs underneath (Income & Taxes, Net Worth, Housing, Kids, Retirement, Spending, plus Start Here). Optional modules for ConsumerDebt, Cars, Big Events, Actuals tracking, and the Sensitivity / MaxHomePrice stress-tests when you need them. No more 32-section scroll-of-doom.
A guided flow walks you through every must-edit tab in order: Start Here → Income & Taxes → Net Worth → Housing → Retirement → Kids → Spending → Cars → Big Events → Done. Skip ahead if you'd rather edit cells directly.
A live dashboard at the bottom of Start Here tracks which sections you've customized vs. left as sample data. ⚠ next to any section that's still showing the HENRY couple's numbers, so you know what's still pretending to be yours.
A one-time setup anchors the tax math to your actual take-home. Captures HSA, FSA, employer benefits, NYC's 3.876% city tax, and the withholding quirks generic brackets miss.
Toggle Household type to Couple or Solo. Solo households get single-income tax math, single emergency fund target, single retirement drawdown. Couples get full dual-income modeling with two paystubs, two 401k profiles, two SS streams.
The canonical NYC-rent → NJ-buy use case. Set a move year, post-move state, post-move city tax, and pick which paths apply the move. The model flips state + city tax math and (for buying paths) flips property tax to the destination town automatically.
House-Poor Burden, Brokerage Drawdown Used, Brokerage Exhausted, Emergency Fund, Retirement Funded-through-95, Chronic Housing Stress. Wealth ranking is computed separately. A path can win on NW and still get flagged.
Doesn't just flag "house-poor in year 1." Reports how many years a path stays stressed, the average severity, and the peak. The difference between 5 stressed years and 24 stressed years isn't subtle.
For each of the four paths, the year your portfolio could fund all path expenses without your salary. Comes with a stress-tested version at 5% return for the FIRE-conservative crowd.
When a path gets flagged, a dedicated tab shows the affordable ceiling for each ownership path, plus a suggested "try these prices" ladder (−25% / −10% / current / +10% / +25%) so you can find your honest budget.
A guide of 14 named pressure tests grouped by category — 🏠 housing, 📈 market, 💼 career, 🏖️ retirement — each with specific inputs to change. Run them, save up to six snapshots side-by-side, and watch which inputs actually flip the verdict.
When cash would go negative, the model pulls from brokerage. If brokerage is exhausted, the shortfall accumulates and compounds at the investment return rate, then gets subtracted from net worth. No silent overdrafts.
Splits net worth into illiquid home equity vs. truly liquid (cash + brokerage). Two paths can show identical NW with wildly different sleep-at-night metrics.
Up to 6 dependents. Childcare phases (daycare → after-school → self-sufficient), age-banded kid costs, 529 contributions starting at birth, college-cost waves.
Up to 3 vehicle slots. Off / Buy New / Buy Used / Existing / Owned Outright / Lease, with per-path purchase timing. The Rent & Invest path might keep an older car longer than the Buy Now path.
Paste in your Rocket Money export (optional). The model auto-suggests budgets per category from your 3-month rolling spend, and tracks projection vs. reality month by month.
Optionally reset your mortgage rate mid-projection. Closing costs deduct from cash in the refi year. The "what if rates drop to 4.5%" what-if, modeled honestly.
RSU equity comp, startup ISO/NSO options, job loss / sabbatical / parental leave. Collapsed by default; expand only the ones that apply to you. No paying the complexity tax for features you don't use.
Built-in Watchdog, Fingerprint, and versioned Audit tabs flag broken cells, circular references, or version drift. The model tells you when something needs attention, not the other way around.
A dedicated FAQ tab answers the recurring "wait, why does it do that?" questions inside the file itself. A Feedback tab captures notes from beta users so the model evolves with the people using it. The current build is shaped by people who've already run it on their own households.
This isn't a 30-second answer machine. It's a serious model. Five minutes below will tell you whether it'll actually help you, or just frustrate you.
The model is in private beta. If you've been sent a password, download below. If not, drop your email and I'll notify you at public launch — the first 100 beta-list signups get founding-member pricing.
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