Money money money money money

I like to peruse a few financial websites every now and then. Usually I stick to MSN Money, Yahoo! Finance, and CNN Business. For what it's worth, I recommend Yahoo!: they strike the best balance between advice for drooling morons and advice for gazillionaire businessmen. Mostly, I read them because they make me feel good about myself, because I read the advice, realize that most of it would be suitable for a finance class for 6th graders, and settle, satisfied, into my own ego, which by now has assumed the size, shape, and comfort level of a good papasan chair.
Of course, these sites are primarily useless, because good financial advice mostly breaks down to:

1) Live below your means
2) Invest your excess income intelligently, but simply
3) Let compound interest work its magic

But if I just had a financial website which consisted of nothing but those three points, repeated over and over, I probably wouldn't get a lot of site visits. Every once in a while, however, I see something that really irritates me. Right now, that's the 'follow the bouncing housing price' tendency of all of these sites to suddenly discover the amazing fact that, "Hey! Sometimes, renting makes more sense than buying!"

If you follow points 1, 2, and 3 above, you will discover that, sometimes, it is not possible to own. Maybe you cannot live below your means while owning. In this case, renting makes sense. Sometimes, even if you can afford to own, renting makes sense. It all comes down to prices. Say I can rent a house for $1000 a month, or own it for $1500 a month. At the beginning, at least, of that $1500 a month, only $200 or so is going to be principal payments (assuming a 30-year fixed mortgage.) All other things being equal, if I take that extra $500 that I don't spend on renting, and invest it in an 8% average-return stock market fund, my equity is going to build much more quickly than if I was an owner, assuming the 30-year average appreciation rate of about 5% a year for houses.

Anyhow, my point is simply that anyone who argues for a one-size-fits-all financial strategy is just being ridiculous, and you should save your time. Only you (with the help of a good financial planner, if necessary) can determine what the right course is for your particular situation. Just because you are 'throwing your money away' with rent every month doesn't mean it's actually the wrong thing to do...