Lifestyle

Michelle, Single and Retired, Spent a Day Touring Houses With Her Daughter. Then One Clear Thought Hit: “My Season Doesn’t Need a House in It”

By Curtis Jones · November 12, 2026

Michelle Meitler went house hunting this year, just not for herself.

“A few weeks ago, I spent the day looking at houses with my daughter,” she says at the start of a video on her YouTube channel, @MichelleMeitler. Her daughter is ready to buy, she explains, and wanted her mom along. Michelle says she loved every second of it.

Then, standing in one house with a sunny back room and original hardwood floors, something settled in.

“I had this very clear thought, ‘I’m never doing this again. Not for me,’” she says. “Not in a sad way. My season is different, and my season doesn’t need a house in it.”

Michelle describes her channel as a place to talk about building a peaceful, confident life after 50, especially for people living alone, traveling solo or navigating retirement. She is single and retired, and she is careful about how her decision lands with viewers.

“I’m not anti-house. I’m not here to tell anyone they made the wrong choice,” she says.

What she questions is the idea that buying should be the automatic choice. Her reasoning starts with a simple point about living alone: “When you own a house alone, every single risk lands on one person.”

She runs through what that looks like. A tree limb comes down and you are the one getting quotes, picking the contractor, writing the check and supervising the work. “A pipe bursts at 11 p.m., you’re the one in pajamas making a thousand-dollar decision while half asleep,” she says. A property tax reassessment comes out of one income, not two. “Solo ownership is just not the same product as partnered ownership.”

She also talks about energy. Even when nothing is broken, she says, a house keeps a running list in the back of your mind: gutters, insurance renewals, the thing a neighbor mentioned. Renting, for her, means weekends without a project waiting and a savings cushion that does not get swallowed by a furnace replacement.

She is clear that owning makes sense for some people, such as those with deep roots in one place, the cash flow to absorb surprises, or a real love of caring for a home. Her line on it is short. “The point isn’t that home ownership is wrong. The point is that defaulting to it is.”

Her experience is one side of a real tradeoff, and the numbers show why it is worth thinking through rather than assuming either way. In its Housing America’s Older Adults 2023 report, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that adults living alone are far more likely to be cost burdened, spending 30% or more of income on housing, than couples: 47% of single-adult households versus 21% of couples. The same report found that in 2021, 56% of older renter households were cost burdened, compared with 26% of older homeowners. So renting can buy freedom from repairs, but it does not guarantee lower costs, and rent can rise.

If you are weighing the choice on your own, a few questions can help. What would a typical year of repairs, insurance and property taxes cost on the home you want, and could your income absorb a surprise bill? How much has rent gone up where you live, and how long a lease can you get? How long do you expect to stay, and do you want to leave a property to anyone?

Michelle’s answer for this season of her life is to rent. “It’s the quiet pride of knowing my home supports my life instead of running it,” she says.

This article is for general information and is not financial or legal advice. Views and experiences described are Michelle Meitler’s own, as shared in her video. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.