Could You Live In A 90 Sq Ft Home?

I recently came across this article from YourMoney.ca, which did a feature on a couple of people from the US that live in 90 square foot homes by choice. I thought this was pretty interesting considering I think a 500 sq ft condo is a shoe box and almost unlivable for me, let alone 90 sq ft. Somehow these people make it work and actually like it. Could I ever do it, I don't think so! I mean, I don't need a 6000 sq ft home but something within reason especially once I have a family. Although majority of people would not even fathom of living this way, it brings up another interesting point of the philosophy that bigger is better.

In this day and age where everyone wants everything super sized and people are consuming way more then they actually need, this article has some truth to it. Majority of society is going into great debt to buy big properties that they really can't afford and need and living off credit to finance the rest of their lifestyles which is a backwards way of doing things and I'm partially guilty of it too. We are putting ourselves in "debtors prison" as the article says, when in fact we should be acquiring only what we can afford. I'm not trying to say that mortgages are evil and we should be buying our homes/condos in cash only, as that's almost next to impossible, especially in the Toronto area where housing prices have doubled in the last 10 years, but we shouldn't be house broke either. We are seeing the house broke phenomena happening more and more as the average price of a home in the GTA increased to $465,000 in October 2011 and the average household income was only $82,000, according to CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.)

Maybe these people have taken it to the extreme, but there must be a happy medium, where we can still have the satisfaction of home ownership and not be house broke and living off credit. I`m not saying it`s easy, but maybe it is, if you apply the philosophy of buying what you can afford and not using your credit card as an extension of your pay cheque. That way you can have a reasonably sized home with an affordable mortgage and still have room to participate in the great things the City of Toronto has to offer.

My friends and family will probably say, once reading this post, that I should practice what I preach and for the most part I`ve been trying to make an honest effort at it...but sometimes that shopping spree is hard to resist especially when it`s an ``end of season`` sale.

Here are video tours of 2 people in the US in their 90 square foot homes:




Do you practice the art of buying only what you can afford? Let me know which side you're on.
***Image and videos via YourMoney.ca***