161–170 of 380 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Updated to: "Make more than you spend and save combined"
Wait, why? Where does the money go that is neither spent nor saved?
Your goal should be to maximize the savings section of the equation, and minimize spending.
I've sorta turned my back on the standard american dream. Racing to new areas of growth, working to build someone else's dream, getting paid well immediately for performance, paying high rent, etc to afford the image of success, and making friends that participate in this same high ambition culture. Instead of making markets, markets start making you. All the rules, and "norms" we've collected around ourselves to par…
> In broad strokes, this makes them good for the poor and bad for the rich The stupidity in this comment hurts my soul. Let me ask you this, out of the poor and the rich, which one is more heavily leveraged into assets (using debt).
Poor, because poor people are the only ones to be entirely in debt. Also everyone with a good income that has huge student loans. I think you've become very disconnected from what the lower middle class is like if you think high interest will help them. The average savings account in the US is well under 10k.
Money is a representation of your buying power relative to everyone else. So if everyone's money doubled, no one got richer. It's only when the percentage of buying power changes that anyone is really more or less poor relative to before.
Ok, back to the argument...
>Poor, because poor people are the only ones to be entirely in debt.
Wrong answer. You missed the part where I said leveraged into assets. If you are 50,000 in debt, and I have 50,000 in cash, if the amount of money doubled out there... I'm the same amount rich, but you're less poor than you were! So if that was the end of the story, you'd be right. Poor people get helped out more than the rich. But that's not the end of the story...
Now, let's say that 50k in cash went towards the down payment on a house worth 250k (20%).
Again, to make it easier, we're imagining the amount of money out there doubles. Guess what? My asset just went up to 500k. I was leveraged into the growth. I just made out like a bandit. Are you less poor? Yes, but relative to all of us who bought houses, you just got fucked. (Because of inflation).
Why are mortgage debtors referred to as home owners? Edit: I was being a bit facetious. With liar loans, no down payment mortgages, deferred interest, "prices only go up," etc, it's been too easy to sell home "ownership" to people without their requisite understanding of the risks involved and the constantly changing market realities. I'm all for personal responsibility but the use of language is powerful.
Why are people getting closer to death every day called living instead of dying?
Has anyone released a halfway-decent 'Rate My Landlord' site? Asking for a friend.
This article is full of "no kidding" like, oh: > In fact, metros with greater shares of renters have higher wages, higher productivity (measured as economic output per capita), and greater concentrations of high-tech firms, according to Mellander’s basic correlation analysis. People are attracted to where the jobs are, and so everything gets bought up and inflated, and the late comers have to rent. In related news, y…
Property taxes should basically kill the dream of "and don't pay a fucking thing to anyone" for anyone that lives in the US. Especially city dwellers. I was surprised to see tax for properties I could technically afford cost more per year than I had been paying in rent.
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The basic premise behind that idea is rents are (historically were) cheaper than a mortgage so you could take the mortgage-rent delta, invest that, and generate a return greater than the interest rate on the mortgage and end up ahead. A lot of the mortgage calculators have a 3-5yr inflection point where renting, traditionally, was always cheaper if you planned on staying somewhere for 3-5yrs and moving. The problem i…
> landlords have no problems keeping tenants increasing rent 3-10% year over year. Where are the accompanying income increases coming from? Clearly not W-2 income. What can't continue forever does tend to stop. Or at least what happens on an extremely small scale can't be the case over an extremely large scale. Can't squeeze blood from a stone... Also never forget the cost of home ownership isn't the mortgage, at lea…
Yes, the tradeoff between renting and buying is you assume the risk and costs of maintenance in buying. Most of the rentals i know of (single family homes or townhouse) push the cost of utilities onto the renter so really, all we aren't paying for is standard house maintenance and taxes. I'd rather assume the costs and risks of maintenance and taxes (and budget for them accordingly) and live with a fixed housing cost rather than continue fighting variable costs and potentially cranky landlords. Nothing makes a good housing situation sour faster than a bad land lord.
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I might be able to answer that. My wife and I are early 30s. I spent my 20s in the rat race, working 60-80 hour weeks for material possesions (nice vehicle, luxury townhouse, etc). At some point, I got tired of it and said, "Can we try something different?" I switched to a fully remote job. We disposed of the townhouse (no equity in it). We downsized our lives (1 car! I ride a bicycle everywhere! You would not imagin…
What a wife you have. One in a million, indeed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I might be able to answer that. My wife and I are early 30s. I spent my 20s in the rat race, working 60-80 hour weeks for material possesions (nice vehicle, luxury townhouse, etc). At some point, I got tired of it and said, "Can we try something different?" I switched to a fully remote job. We disposed of the townhouse (no equity in it). We downsized our lives (1 car! I ride a bicycle everywhere! You would not imagin…
What a wife you have. One in a million, indeed.
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They'd need to address the powerful incentive to create fake reviews.
While true, I think the bigger issue is that no landlord would, in their right mind, agree to be represented on a website that is almost certainly going to contain nothing but negative reviews. If one stops to ponder what would make an individual want to rate their landlord on a "RateMyLandlord" kind of site, then the answer is pretty simple: hatred. The biggest reason for people to write such a review is to complain…
So yeah, between illegally trying to evict me, never once exterminating that place, etc etc .... I'm glad I don't live in a building owned by a shitty landlord anymore. I'd give my previous landlord a solid F-; I'd give my current landlord an A. I'm also paying 150% what my previous place was for the privilege of having a landlord that doesn't violate the law monthly.