My wife and I bought an old house (at least it’s old for Canada).
Before we moved we thought a lot about how nice it would be to have ownership over a space. Finally we would be able to make choices on painting and knocking down walls.
And that’s true.
But more than that I think about the history of this place. That we are just a part of its history, and if we do a good job… we’ll send it off towards a bright future with other families.
This is our house. But it’s also a house that belonged to many people before us. I would love it to belong to many people after us.
It’s a shift between seeing something individually and seeing something collectively, and I think it’s an important one. It’s a thought that I’d like to take into all other areas of ‘ownership’.
What happens when we expand our thinking around our assets and incomes past ownership and into stewardship? How does that affect that way we look at our portfolios and our tax returns?
I don’t know, but it’s something that I’ll be thinking of a lot in the coming months.
