Getting away from comfort
By By Kim West
Being a homeowner makes a lot of fiscal sense, but I've always been a renter. My grandfather believes paying for a home is a good investment, while renting an apartment is a waste of money, which explains why he owned his own company and I work for one.
Of course, some day I will buy a house, but that won't happen until I finish paying off student loans and figure out where and when to settle down. As a kid I wanted to move to Chicago and buy a house in a suburb near Lake Michigan, but since I'm confident I won't ever make a six-figure income, I now think about moving to San Diego or Asheville, N.C., at least for a couple of years. Most of my family lives in north Alabama, and they don't understand why I would want to live somewhere as far away as the East or West coasts, but I think it would be an interesting experience and definitely outside of my comfort zone.
My comfort zone growing up was my parents' cattle farm and a Class 3A high school with a football field bordered by a cow pasture. I remember for one soccer game, my teammates and I had to avoid two things – slide tackles from the opposing team and several piles that were left by the cows that had wandered loose the day before.
It was a great place to grow up, but I was ready to live on my own in college. For the first few years, I moved constantly and lived in dorm rooms, rental houses and apartments with an assortment of dorm mates, housemates and teammates in Florence and Tuscaloosa. I spent my last two years in college working as a resident assistant.
In my dorm, that job came with a single room with its own bathroom, which was blissful.
But after graduating from the University of North Alabama last May, I moved in with roommate No. 19, a close friend who was living in a two-bedroom apartment with pets but no roommate. Now it's time to move again, and I'm looking at places in Muscle Shoals and Russellville, since living in either city would cut down on the daily commute from Florence and help my Saturn reach its 11-year anniversary.
I've already found a roommate, a former dorm mate and classmate at Shelton State who lives in a spacious two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in Muscle Shoals, but there's one catch – she would like to move into a cheery little rental house in Florence because it's slightly cheaper and a lot closer to her classes at UNA.
I would love to find a local place to rent, because this seems like a good city to live in and the restaurants around here have a good combination of friendly customer service and tasty, affordable food.
