>"renting is just throwing your money away"

Unless you think landlords are running a charity, some part of your mortgage is going to them as profit (over a large enough sample of renters anyways), and some percentage of your rent is covering 'bad tenants' (which you're not, right?).

Their entire improvement section is also something renters tend to not think about. It's a weird situation when renting that you aren't incentivized in any way to make improvements to where you live. You might not even be allowed to.

With home ownership though, things like a modern kitchen, a shed, new laundry machines not only better your life today but also (likely) have some value add. Though you also get the luxury of being able to ignore the value add if you just really want to paint that room neon pink for some reason.