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The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

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Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#131

Post by DANmode »

kristianp wrote: post #108
magneticnorth wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that he'd go home for dinner, up until his wife died. The hotel pool was apparently also where he did his "job": being a deal-making middleman for a 2% cut, per a later description in the article. His job, or at least his former jobs, paid well enough to have a home in Beverly Hills, drive a gold lexus, and wear beautiful suits every day. So they weren't necessarily estranged - he just worked lon…

Of course when they bought their house it would have cost mere 10s of thousands. You can see why there's an attraction to owning your own house.

You can see why there's an attraction to visiting the casino, as well.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#132

Post by gamedever »

kamaal wrote: post #117
kristianp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course when they bought their house it would have cost mere 10s of thousands. You can see why there's an attraction to owning your own house.

Owning a home is always good no matter what the finance influencers tell you. In fact, earlier the better. Its not even the buying vs renting thing, renting is bad, you don't get to own anything at the end of the journey, and often the kind of things you have to put up with to save rent, or avoid getting homeless in case of of a job loss or other life crisis is just worth your mental health. Most of your life is spen…

Japan would like have a word with you. Houses in Japan are like cars. The moment you buy it it's now "used" and worth less and it keeps doing down in value.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#133

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #105
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any memes where people say it's OK to eat fat in excess or pretend "it doesn't matter". Even the extreme low carb diets aren't about eating fat in excess - if anything, people on those diets tend to lose weight because (a) not being able to eat any carbs gets monotonous fast and (b) fat induces a feeling of fullness, so people eat fewer total calories.

> I don't know of any memes where people say it's OK to eat fat in excess or pretend "it doesn't matter". Hang around on Reddit for a day or two and you'll see them. Or heck, remember the Atkins diet, which was explicitly advertised as "you can eat as much fat as you want"?

[deleted]

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#134

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

lmm wrote: post #105
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any memes where people say it's OK to eat fat in excess or pretend "it doesn't matter". Even the extreme low carb diets aren't about eating fat in excess - if anything, people on those diets tend to lose weight because (a) not being able to eat any carbs gets monotonous fast and (b) fat induces a feeling of fullness, so people eat fewer total calories.

> I don't know of any memes where people say it's OK to eat fat in excess or pretend "it doesn't matter". Hang around on Reddit for a day or two and you'll see them. Or heck, remember the Atkins diet, which was explicitly advertised as "you can eat as much fat as you want"?

Atkins doesn't say that, at all, and then explicitly mentioned extreme low carb diets in my comment.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#135

Post by eru »

kamaal wrote: post #129
eru wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you HAVE to do a mortgage, then its likely that renting will be a better deal for you for over 10 years straight, before the mortgage pays dividends. How do mortgages pay dividends? In any case, it's all about opportunity costs, and yields. To give an extreme example: if the house costs 100x the yearly rent, you are probably better off putting your money in the stock market instead of buying the property, and pa…

Having to pay rent likely makes retiring early, or even retiring itself impossible. Somethings like marriage, kids, buying home just have be done in life as early as you can. Note money is just a number at the end. The idea is not to have max($money), rather max($free_time, $health). Optimise for $free_time and $health, and then you have a very different life strategy to work towards.

You are still ignoring opportunity costs.

If you have $x, you can buy a house and save on $y rent. But you could also buy eg bonds, and make $z return per year. If z > y, going for the bonds is better.

Free time and health don't even come into the picture here. [0]

(Of course, taxes and regulations can make this more complicated. And there are systematic and idiosyncratic risks to take into account.)

It's not automatic that buying owner-occupied property is always the best way to invest your wealth.

[0] Well, I assume renting is better for your health: I was significantly less stressed about all the water damage that we had about two years ago, because I knew it was ultimately my landlord's problem, not mine. But the overall effect is likely to be rather minor, and it can go either way, as some people get a mental health benefit out of knowing that they own their home.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#137

Post by rtpg »

gamedever wrote: post #132
kamaal wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning a home is always good no matter what the finance influencers tell you. In fact, earlier the better. Its not even the buying vs renting thing, renting is bad, you don't get to own anything at the end of the journey, and often the kind of things you have to put up with to save rent, or avoid getting homeless in case of of a job loss or other life crisis is just worth your mental health. Most of your life is spen…

Japan would like have a word with you. Houses in Japan are like cars. The moment you buy it it's now "used" and worth less and it keeps doing down in value.

This is not as true as it used to be. I don't even know how true it used to be!

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#139

Post by lmm »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #134
lmm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know of any memes where people say it's OK to eat fat in excess or pretend "it doesn't matter". Hang around on Reddit for a day or two and you'll see them. Or heck, remember the Atkins diet, which was explicitly advertised as "you can eat as much fat as you want"?

Atkins doesn't say that, at all, and then explicitly mentioned extreme low carb diets in my comment.

> Atkins doesn't say that, at all

The meme version of it does, and their official website gets pretty close - fat is unrestricted, it's fine to eat as much fat as you have an appetite for, it's fine if a large proportion of your calorie intake is saturated fat. I guess "to excess" is subjective, but Atkins certainly says that fat consumption levels that respected medical authorities say are dangerous are fine.

Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)

#140

Post by somenameforme »

eru wrote: post #135
kamaal wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to pay rent likely makes retiring early, or even retiring itself impossible. Somethings like marriage, kids, buying home just have be done in life as early as you can. Note money is just a number at the end. The idea is not to have max($money), rather max($free_time, $health). Optimise for $free_time and $health, and then you have a very different life strategy to work towards.

You are still ignoring opportunity costs. If you have $x, you can buy a house and save on $y rent. But you could also buy eg bonds, and make $z return per year. If z > y, going for the bonds is better. Free time and health don't even come into the picture here. [0] (Of course, taxes and regulations can make this more complicated. And there are systematic and idiosyncratic risks to take into account.) It's not automat…

[0] is so unbelievably true having lived through a major natural disaster. People don't realize how much, in general, you're on your own you are after something like that. Really life and perspective changing. BUT I think you're also misunderstanding his point about buying - it's not about maximizing your wealth which in the end doesn't even matter, but rather about minimizing the things you need to worry about. Even bonds can be stressful because they're not guaranteed money as they might seem due to 'guaranteed returns.' If rates/inflation go up you're left with money losing pieces of paper. See Silicon Valley Bank [1] for the obvious example. Even if your house depreciates, it's still a house! There's even an upside - your rent to the government decreases.

The one case where I think buying doesn't really make sense is for people who enjoy traveling long-term. You can still theoretically rent or sell the place, but now you're back to increasing life stresses especially in the rental cases because you have a lot of obligations there that would require employees if you're remote and so on. And then moving money internationally, especially between currencies, and all of this stuff. Just ugh, no no no.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...

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