Nevertheless, a considerable amount of money is required for the first (and any further) property(ies).
But this isn’t really about money ...
Of course it’s also about money, but usually a property without a bank doesn’t work. Rent costs money, when it comes to cars a lot of money generally disappears in Germany, plus maintaining beloved, expensive habits that one doesn’t want to give up or change.
At least I didn’t mean collecting multiple properties, but always "trading in" one for another life path. That path doesn’t always go upwards, it goes just as much sideways and also downwards.
I had many such conversations within my circle of acquaintances and I keep hearing that people would also like it as I do o_O and I immediately know: No, you don’t actually want it, because you could have it!
When we then looked specifically for ways, we found some, but people were simply not willing to pay the felt high price. This little word "price" often has a painful meaning. You would like it differently and more beautifully but without the high "price," or the usually accompanying pain.
My beautiful building plot here cost under €70, but no one wanted to live so far away because of travel times; I, however, have had a daily commute of 2-3 hours my entire life, that has always been A price many don’t want to pay. We took care of our own parents and thus enabled property ownership together, or our then landlady, a lovable old lady, offered something similar... but who wants that; we would have done that alternatively. I now live very far away from my children and old friends, that can also be such a high price, and I have always had two jobs... or I ended my job at 50 and started something completely new, without a safety net and partly in a low-paid foreign job.
Whether that was sensible and right in retrospect or whether it works for others is quite another question, but if you drop all these preset parameters once, options always arise; in today’s Europe more than before.
I once had such a conversation with an acquaintance, a 59-year-old civil servant who allegedly was completely exhausted, burned out, and at the end of his rope; that’s how he seemed to me. We found many possibilities for change that evening and his eyes lit up again from time to time but none of the ideas was even remotely conceivable for him, because he would have had to sell/rent out his large paid-for house, forego 30% of his pension for life, etc.; for that, he could have been a "free" man that very evening. Result: He just sat out his time there and still whines today... with a full and good pension, however, and occasionally tells me how great I have it o_O and I think... oh dear... apparently his pain threshold is not that high after all.