This concept really resonates with me -- my girlfriend and I bought a house recently, motivated by a combination of the tax credit, ever-increasing rent, and a

This concept really resonates with me -- my girlfriend and I bought a house recently, motivated by a combination of the tax credit, ever-increasing rent, and a desire to be able to plant, build, and remodel to our hearts' content. Having a proper workshop in the garage and garden plots in the yard is important for me. I grew up "hacking" on physical objects just as much as computers, so being stuck indoors with only computers and small gadgets to work on always felt oddly limiting. At a fundamental level, home improvement and micro-scale agriculture offer many of the same sorts of problem-solving challenges as coding. Plus, it's a lot easier to get other people interested in your latest kitchen remodel or crop of produce than the SQL optimization you pulled off at work. Owning your own place can complicate the pseudo-nomatic lifestyle that a lot of developers seem to thrive on, but it can be totally worth it if you want interesting problems to solve outside of the digital realm.