Rent or buy? The answer is a number, not a dogma.

Renting is throwing money away.

It's the line that closes the decision before it starts. And it's almost always incomplete.

Buying and renting aren't good and bad. They're two different calculations. And the answer depends on something almost no one runs first:

How long are you really going to stay?

Because buying has costs that don't come back — on the way in, and on the way out.

Getting in costs: the lawyer and the paperwork, the move, furnishing if you need to, and the fixes that show up once you're living there.

And getting out costs more than people think: selling takes time, there's the commission, the exit costs and the taxes —in Panama, transfer tax and capital gains—, sometimes a bank penalty for paying early, and the risk that the market isn't on your side when it's time to sell.

If you leave fast, all of that weighs more than it seems. In many cases, someone who moves in two or three years finds that buying ended up costing more than expected.

And if you stay longer? Buying usually starts to make more sense — but only if the full calculation still works. Not always: sometimes you bought high, the area changed, you had to sell at a bad time, or the unit aged for what the market wants. Time helps; it doesn't guarantee.

And here's another part that rarely comes up: what do you do with the difference?

Buying ties up capital: down payment, closing, money that stops being available.

Liquidity you no longer have so close at hand.

If you rent and that difference evaporates, it's one calculation. If you invest it or put it to work, it's another.

And renting has advantages the cold calculation doesn't show: flexibility to move if your life changes, big repairs and structural costs usually fall on the owner, and fewer financial surprises on top. It isn't free either — there are the increases, the moves, the limited control, and the uncertainty of whether they'll renew you.

That's why the calculation is rarely just mortgage versus rent. It's friction, flexibility, time, liquidity, the cost of getting in and out, lifestyle, and how much risk you can take.

"Renting is throwing money away" sounds final. But the phrase decides nothing. What decides it is your time, your difference, and whether the full calculation works.

Buying doesn't always win. Renting doesn't either.

The one who wins is the one who runs the full calculation before deciding.