It has been more than a month now since we’ve left our rented house in Antipolo and one of the things that we miss the most is being on our own. When Ramil and I got married almost five years ago, we immediately lived on our own. We looked for a place we could rent, slowly bought things to fill up our place, and played house.

The whole set-up surely did not allow us to buy gold bullion because of the usual expenses of maintaining a house on our own but it sure helped us grow together as a couple and later on as parents. Despite all the money lost on rent and utilities, we will never exchange it for money saved because we chose to live with our parents.

Now that we’re not on our own anymore and living in my parents’ house albeit temporarily, we recognize and appreciate the benefits of starting like this. We now fully realize how much we could have saved. Still, despite all our realizations, we still miss living on our own.

In fact, we have become so independent in those five years that we are actually looking forward to starting all over again from scratch in Brunei. It’s going to be very, very challenging especially with a preschooler and an infant in tow but we know it’s going to be another learning experience for us.