Selling the House Is Not Losing a Home, It Buys Back Real Freedom in Life!

Written on July 26, 2026 at 8:56 p.m.:

Teacher James, I found CLEC and found you, and after listening to two videos I put my savings into an exchange-traded Nasdaq index fund, then used my job to apply for a credit loan. Part of it is already invested and part is held in reserve. I also have a question: I now want to sell the only home I own, and I hope for your advice.

My husband and I both come from ordinary families, and our parents could give us no financial help at all. We met, married, and had our child, who is now in primary school. Over these years we tried starting businesses several times, failed, and went back to salaried work. He taught himself software, sold software, sold a company. On our own we bought a car and a home, and took on a mortgage. In the early period after buying the home, household spending rose and income was unstable. Because of that, I began learning about investing and personal finance, read nearly a hundred books, kept accounts, and lived frugally, until I met you. I felt that the financial knowledge I had studied before finally closed into a loop, that there was now a definite path and I knew how to follow it.

Looking back on these years of frugal living, I have found that thrift does not solve life's real problems. Mainland China does not lack diligent, frugal people, yet in the end they still fall into poverty in old age. I see many such cases around me. One uncle owned a sofa factory when he was young and bought shop fronts and a home, but by retirement age the factory had closed, the shop and the house went to his married son, and he himself could only drive a taxi in another city to make a living. Far from home, working very long hours, his body worn down by insomnia. That situation set off all kinds of thinking in me. Following your teaching, the truth is that we do not have many assets we can mobilize, so I want to sell the one home we own.

The home is three bedrooms and two living rooms, 105 square meters, bought for 1.66 million with a mortgage of 1.06 million, of which 830,000 is still outstanding at a 2.6% rate with a monthly payment of 3,700. The same unit would rent for about 2,000 a month. Selling now would bring roughly 1.1 million; after transaction and agency fees, about 1.03 million would be left.

My husband and I currently live in different cities. I take our child to school while he works elsewhere and will most likely build his career there for the long term. I want to sell the house first and rent, working while accompanying our child to school. If we transfer schools in the future, we might have to buy again or pay for a private school, and I do not want to spend that much. Selling is also a bet that real estate from here on is simply a large consumer good, so I would rather cash out early. The money from the sale I want to hold long term in a Nasdaq 100 index fund.

If my current job becomes hard to keep, then after our child finishes primary school I would consider buying a small unit in the city where my husband works so the child can go to school there. Going back would also put me closer to my own parents. Part of the reason I do not want to transfer schools right away is that I want to accumulate more assets first and make the family's finances safer.

Is it all right for me to sell now? In my heart I long to sell. First, the three of us do not need a place that large. Second, I want more cash in hand. The wider environment is poor, and the thought that the house could be sold and life could be better afterward genuinely excites me. As for past losses, I will let them go with a smile; as you say, money is not the most important thing, mood and relationships are. Our mortgage is not a large share of income either. My husband takes home about 15,000 a month, I earn 5,000, and household spending is around 12,000 including the mortgage. But my job may not be stable.

What makes me hesitate is that property may also be part of asset allocation, and selling at a low point now may be a little irrational.

Here I have grasped a great deal of life philosophy: that the process of seeking wealth is what matters most, because that process makes us think and become better people; and that money is not the most important thing, relationships are. Your words made me understand what it means for one kind word to warm three springs. Spreading financial knowledge for decades entirely free of charge, looking across the whole world, you truly are a person of great love, and ordinary people cannot do it. Thank you so very, very much. I wish you good health and all the best.

James's Reply

You should sell the house, and the sooner the better. Once the sale is done and you have the money, buy in immediately. Having capital invested, so that your future life is not constrained by money, is what real freedom means.

A child does not have to attend a particular school district. A child who grows up with parents present has already received the best education. What I want to tell everyone is that children cannot be produced by education; children are not taught into being. A child with no financial support and no good school district, if he is a serious child, can still learn very well. In the past many children had to help their parents farm or run the family business, and they still ended up accomplished.

All through my own schooling my parents never managed me. I simply studied on my own, and no one told me how to study. I would go to the bookstore and buy reference books myself; in primary school I bought a book of 500 applied mathematics problems and worked through it on my own. By the time of the joint college entrance exam, even after the results were posted, which school I entered and which department I read were decisions I made myself. I told my parents and they had no objection; they never restricted us. Even when I went camping for four or five days, they might not know where I was camping or when I would be back. Of course, at that time I was too free, and I did not even tell my parents when I left the house, which was not right at all. But my parents never limited what we should or should not do.

These days I always let my family know when I go out. In every city, from setting off for the airport, to boarding and taking off, to arriving and checking into the hotel, I keep my wife and daughter informed of my whole itinerary.

Only when you are willing to let your children know your movements, your plans, and where you are right now can you expect them to be willing to tell you where they are going and what they will do.

Some children are sent abroad by their parents to top schools and end up living off them, speaking harshly to them, and doing nothing but demanding money, spending it, and squandering it. My own cousin was sent to America as a young student and ended up in a gang; his fate turned out very badly.

So let children grow up naturally. Do not buy a house in a school district just because of the child.

My daughter in America never went to cram school or took supplementary classes. (Many Asian parents in America send their children to SAT cram schools, and even to advanced math classes and so on.) To be honest, I have never once looked at my daughter's report card, and I still do not know whether report cards are even a thing in America. When it came to applying to university, my daughter prepared and applied by herself. We are first-generation immigrants and knew nothing about American college applications; I only told her that everything had to depend on her. So she applied to schools herself, found teachers to help prepare the portfolio for her applications, and asked teachers to write recommendation letters.

So do not worry about your children. As long as parents do not interfere too much and manage too much, children will walk out their own path. If parents are not caught in the rat race, children will not be caught in it either. Children are spoiled by being over-managed and mis-taught; they do not go bad on their own. If the parents' outlook and values are sound, if life is normal, three regular meals, regular sleep, regular eating, then the children will be normal. How many families today can sit down at the same table for dinner? Getting that right may matter more than any school district.

Asian parents are the ones caught in the rat race, and the result is that they raise children who are dragged further into it. That is not good.

So wait until you are very wealthy and a house has become a consumer good, and only then think about whether you need to buy one. When you are seventy or eighty and want a mansion, treat it as a consumer good, like buying a pair of slippers, and consider it then.

Sent from my iPad

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Written by: James