The American Dream a scam??

As I posted previously, I’m looking to buy a home.  So when I came across this article I thought it was pretty interesting.  Now, I have always thought that renting was a waste of money, just giving your money away.  I didn’t really do any math or analysis to prove this.  It was always just a thought.  After all, if I move back home after college with my parents, I live for free.  If I live in an apartment, it costs $1000 bucks or whatever.  So, if you put it in those terms, then I guess that it really is a waste.

However, like many people out there, you have to live somewhere.  And for most people that comes down to either renting or buying.  And if you don’t want to be a leach and live with your parents your whole life, and renting vs buying are your only two choices, then is James Altucher right when saying that “the notion buying a home is a ticket to financial security is a ‘scam’ perpetrated on the American people by corporations” true?  Is his statistic that homes only went up in value .4% annually in the last 120 years even right?  Its actually quite interesting to me because I have always had this deep seated anti-business/corporation mindset that all corporations only care about money and nothing about people.  And if that is the case, then this “scam” is even more devious, convincing people to buy a home as a means to better get them to buy their needless consumer goods.  Kind of like what DeBeer’s did with women, convincing them that blood diamonds are equal to love.

But, conspiracy theories aside, is buying a home really a bad investment?  I’m too lazy to do any formal analysis, but if you actually look at all the costs of buying a home that are mentioned, is renting really a better decision?  Also, have you ever looked at how much interest you actually pay on a 30 year loan compared to how much was actually borrowed?  Its kind of scary in that depending on the interest rate you can pay more in interest than the actual amount of money borrowed.  Even if your home goes up in value, and your purpose of buying a home is for an investment, then what kind of “investment” is that?  But, if the purpose of buying a home is to live in it, then why not rent?  Why tie yourself down as the author says?  Why pay for all those costs?  If you are looking for an investment, then why not use that money for a down payment on an actual investment?

I don’t think that this article deters me from looking at homes.  In fact, I just looked at a few homes yesterday and will look at more this Saturday.  Is it just that this “American Dream scam” is just so ingrained in my head?  Is it the evil corporations spewing out marketing and propaganda so well that I have renting is a waste still stuck inside?  I mean, if I just rent, I could probably live a heck of a lot more comfortably as I would have a decent amount of money to spend since I didn’t have to pay a huge down payment.  Buy my furniture, a new car, vacation, etc. But, despite all this, I still would rather buy than rent.

Any analysts out there that can argue the opposite point and show that buying a home really is a good investment worthy of the title “American Dream”?