City V's Country

I took a 4 hour trip to Flinders on the weekend with 8 girls that I went to school with. For those of you who have never heard of Flinders it’s a sleepy little town along the coast of the Mornington Peninsula and on a beautiful sunny day you can see Phillip Island from the shore.

It’s the first time all of us had been away since we made a break to schoolies at the end of our time spent in the class room. I was amazed how much our actions & conversation had changed over the 6 years since we have been out of school. We weren’t as brazen as we used to be, now preferring a nice glass of white or red wine over cheap red bears and cruisers we were drinking at schoolies but that wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Our conversations had turned from talking about exams and TER scores to private health insurance, purchasing homes & mortgage & car repayments.

We had an even split with City v’s Country if you exclude me from the bunch. There were 4 city girls & 4 country girls.

The main difference I saw between the girls from the city & the country is that their conversations were slightly different. The country girls seemed to have either bought or were talking about buying their first home & discussing mortgage repayments whilst this wasn’t a thought on the radar for the city girls. It made me ponder the idea - if this is the case, is living in the country more beneficial to you financially when starting out? A significant factor for this is Real Estate prices in the country compared to those in the city. Will the country girls be more financially stable as they are able to break in to the real estate market a lot earlier then those who are living in Melbourne?

The girls in the country are repaying mortgages instead of paying rent & hopefully getting some capital growth along the way – all this is formed around the affordability of living & buying in Echuca over living & contemplating the dream of buying a house or apartment in inner Melbourne.

The start of my compulsive saving went hand in hand with my first purchase of Real Estate. It gave me something to aspire to and save towards. I have since sold the house that I built with my brother which has left me in a far better financial position than I was before my first real estate purchase.

I see some obvious benefits of living in Melbourne. They have the major events ie: sporting, entertainment, however all of this costs money.

I did have a short stint in Melbourne and the pinnacle reason for my return was because I was able to save and make a life in Echuca & could therefore do more of the things I wanted to do because I was more financially stable. It hasn’t always been easy with friends living it up in the city – having extremely exciting social lives. However, I can now afford to go away for weekends to Flinders or go to Melbourne to catch up with my friends & also do what I am most passionate about, which is travel.

Starting out and getting your foot into the real estate door is always a tough decision. It’s an even harder decision when the First Home Buyer range is between $400,000 - $500,000 in inner city Melbourne. Echuca is a great place to call home and helps me with my journey to financial stability. I don’t feel like I have missed out on what my other city friends have because everything they have done I have experienced it with them.