In 2020, Anita Kinoshita, 28 years old at the time, started looking into buying a house.
Kinoshita was living in California and making around $70,000 a year as a software engineer for the Department of Defense.
As a first-generation American from a farming family in Mexico, Kinoshita believed the best way to finally achieve the American dream her family had for her was to own property.
“I had my first big girl job and thought the next responsible thing to do would be to buy a house,” Kinoshita tells CNBC Make It. “I didn’t necessarily want to buy a house. In fact, I was trying to figure out how to finesse the purchase.”
Initially, Kinoshita was seeking a property with the intent to sublet some of the bedrooms and lower her share of the expenses. She had about $20,000 saved for a down payment.
“My vision for the future was to be able to have a family and spend as much time with them and not necessarily have an office job. [But] I still went forward with what made sense for this American Dream path,” she says.
“I was 28 at the time, so I still kind of cared what my community defined as successful, and homeownership was part of that. At the time, I thought it was the responsible thing to do.”
Kinoshita always believed achieving the American Dream meant owning property.
Anita Kinoshita
Kinoshita wanted to learn as much as she could about the home-buying journey she was embarking on. She enrolled in a nine-week course that teaches people how to manage their money, offered by Financial Peace University.
During the retirement module of the online class, Kinoshita used a retirement calculator that helped her realize that if she started contributing a bit more to her 401(k), she could retire around age 55 and buy a house at the same time.
“All of a sudden, the vision I had for the future and the freedom and lifestyle I wanted became possible in my mind for the first time,” she says.
For two years, Kinoshita looked at least a dozen places and put in a total of four offers. She got accepted for one, but then the sellers backed out. She was also approved for a single-family home, but there was a mismatch in the appraisal, so she walked away from the deal.
“I ended up backing out because the only way to be competitive during that time was to invest less and save more for the down payment, and I wasn’t willing to do that,” she says.
“Ultimately, I felt like it wasn’t the time for me at the moment, and I was not willing to invest less either. I wasn’t satisfied with my career and felt like I was living my dad’s dream and not really mine.”
Kinoshita viewed a dozen properties and put in a total of four offers.
Anita Kinoshita
Redefining success
Kinoshita switched her focus. Instead of saving for a down payment, she set a goal of having $500,000 invested in her retirement accounts. By April 2022, she had invested $200,000 and reached COAST FIRE — a strategy where you save and invest enough to eventually stop contributing to your retirement accounts and let the compound growth continue rising so you’re on track to have a traditional retirement. She decided to quit her job.
Kinoshita isn’t alone in choosing to wait to buy a house. The median age of a first-time home buyer has gone up in recent years, from 35 in 2023 to 38 in 2024 alone, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.
After quitting her full-time job, Kinoshita started working part-time, creating curriculum for California State University, Monterey Bay and making financial literacy content online. Both of these positions made her more money than when she was working as a software engineer.
Kinoshita, now 34, is going to wait until she reaches early COAST FIRE, which, when you have enough invested, lets you stop contributing by the age you decide, versus the traditional retirement age of 67.
Kinoshita quit her job and is now making financial literacy content online.
Anita Kinoshita
Her projected retirement age is now 45, and she expects to have $1.5 million invested by then.
“I value my time and freedom a little bit more than I value home ownership. In retrospect, I think if I had bought the house, I would have felt trapped in my career,” she says.
Kinoshita and her husband recently moved to the California neighborhood where they would one day like to own a home. They pay $4,000 a month in rent and live in a single-family home in a gated community, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
When the couple is ready to buy, she estimates they will have about $300,000 saved to put toward the home. But they still don’t know when they will start getting serious about buying.
“I’m not in a rush. I don’t want to use it as a financial tool in any way. I’m looking at it more as a luxury and less as an asset these days,” she says. “I would rather have my money working for me in the stock market than in real estate.”
Kinoshita and her husband are now renting in the neighborhood they hope to buy one day.
Anita Kinoshita
Kinoshita says her definition of a dream home has also changed.
“I don’t want too many bedrooms. I think what I care more about these days is the charming architecture. I don’t want it to be overwhelming in terms of square footage. I want it to be in a really beautiful neighborhood where I feel safe. I want to look outside and see nature,” she says.
“I don’t see a reason to settle for something else, so for us it’s a as long as it takes kind of thing.”
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