Building a house at 21 years old .. too young?

Everything MUST be perfect, everything else is a total disaster...? Are you still aware of anything?

I see it exactly the same way. Only the expectation of a young person that the house should be for "eternity" I find naive. Do, live and keep your mind free: thumbs up. If you shuffle the letters in the word ERROR, you get HELPER. Internalizing this helps. Confidence and no "insurance mentality" as well. "Sunk money" usually reappears somewhere. "Sunk quality of life" is gone.

At that age, I was glad to have even two jackets, wore both of them over each other in winter, and saved up for my two-room flat on the ground floor by cutting back on everything else. Those were three months of rice & beans. If a peer had told me back then that he was building a house, I would have gotten serious depression.

At that age, I was glad to have even two jackets, wore both on top of each other in winter, and saved up for my two-room apartment on the ground floor. That was three months of rice and beans.
If a peer had told me back then that he was building a house, I would have gotten serious depression.

Yes, that may all be true, but you might be different at that age than another person. If the OP is already thinking about a house, is very down-to-earth, and has completely different life goals and plans, you can't compare that to yourself. That's why planning a house might be a completely different matter for such a person than for you. For such a person, this could actually be the investment of a lifetime because they might want to live their whole life in that house and no longer wish to orient themselves otherwise.

Understand? Therefore, this planning naturally needs to be considered much more intensively than for someone who says, "Let's see what we do in 5 years"...

But of course none of us know that, so the OP should report on that in this regard.

I know enough country folks around here who have exactly these thoughts! These people should definitely deal with it more intensively and think about the future.

You misunderstood me. I meant that in a positive way. So just the fact that he can even build (and plan) a house is already so outstanding that you don’t have to shoot sparrows with cannons here. Or to put it another way, if I had been able to build a house back then, I wouldn’t have worried about it at all but would have simply fallen asleep smiling all the time.

You misunderstood me. I meant that positively. The mere fact that he can even build (and plan) a house is so outstanding that there's no need to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut here. Or to put it another way, if I had been capable of building a house back then, I wouldn't have given it a second thought but would simply have fallen asleep with a smile on my face.

Yep, okay, you're absolutely right! I had already commented on the floor plan and found it not too bad... It can definitely be improved, but it’s totally livable! I just also think that if someone at that age is planning something like this, it "probably" means they are a very down-to-earth type who maybe wants to make this their dream and possibly live there for a very long time, since they are likely building somewhere where their life revolves around (family, friends, clubs, etc.) and where they want to stay. This naturally calls for more intensive planning than someone who initially sees it as a home to live in for now and maybe sell later.

It's not about how flexible you are at what age, whether you have three or thirty jackets, but in my opinion, it's about the fact that, no matter how old you are, you shell out a substantial sum for a house. And at least I am made in such a way - and I already was in my early twenties - that I want everything to be as perfect and good as possible. A house is not like a T-shirt from H&M that I wear twice and then I just don't like it anymore and it ends up in the clothes collection.

If I had had the opportunity, I probably would have built a house in my early twenties too - I was already designing houses just for fun back then. If I saw a great plot, I thought about what dream house I would have built on it, etc.

But, looking back: it would have been a completely different house than the one I built now, 30 years later. Whether I would have sold the first one by now - no idea. Probably not. Maybe remodeled, optimized, but I probably would still have it.

Only the discussion about whether at the beginning of your twenties you would more easily accept some planning mistakes, I find stupid, honestly. Even in your early twenties, you want/can try to get the optimum out of it.