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

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141–150 of 324 posts

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

#141
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its not renting vs owning that's the problem, its renting vs mortgage where mortgage is improperly considered synonymous with ownership. but that's because its so rare to be able to own the home near the places you can rent. so sure, renting vs buying a home in cash will give the cash ownership a leg up. but then it shifts over to people that would love to espouse about the 'time value of money' and leverage, where p…

From where I come(South Indian Muslim), there is a saying that how quickly you own a home, get married and have kids decide the overall affluence you have in life. If eat that frog is a think for daily schedule, there is also such a thing for life itself. You just have to get a few things done as early in life as you can. Or you end up living for other people.

It's only as one ages that we begin to realize how much wisdom there is in 'traditional' ways of life. It's almost like over millennia of humanity, we gradually found ways to maximize overall outcomes, even if they might come with aspects that aren't as ideologically ideal. At least this is something I can pass on to my own children.

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

#142
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, even bonds can be stressful.

But also: an owner occupied house is a single lumpy, undiversified asset. And in many cases it's bought on so much leverage, that its value is bigger than the buyer's entire net-worth.

> Even if your house depreciates, it's still a house! There's even an upside - your rent to the government decreases.

Yes. Though depending on government policies, you can also lose use of your house (or even lose your house). Depending on where you live and how you set up your holdings, investing in international stocks and bond can be more stable.

To summarise: owner occupied housing does make sense for a lot of people. But it's far from being automatically always being the best choice.

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

#143
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.

That's actually not (much) less true in other places. It's just that in eg the US the land is typically a lot more valuable, and people tend to mix up the value of the land (which doesn't really deprecate) and the value of the structure on top.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people still "stay together" for the children.

I have no doubt this is a widespread behavior, but I do have doubts as to whether or not this benefits children. Children seem to benefit primarily from watching relationships that genuinely make both parents happy. There's very little evidence to support that faking it yields results of children reacting as if you weren't faking it. You might as well divorce.

It's not all just about the relationship, but about the father and mother. Both offer very different aspects of life that help children develop in a way they'd never get from something like a 'visiting' parent, let alone the Big Brothers/Sisters program. Those latter things are of course much better than nothing, but the ideal is an ever present father and mother. For but one example, the most obvious is that a father understands what a 13 year old boy is going through in a way a mother never could, yet that mother will do a far better job with that same boy in his early years than the father ever could.

Statistically children from two parent households just do dramatically better by just about every single measurable metric, with 0 control for the quality of that household/relationship.

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

#146
post #135
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…

Im guessing different people have different life priorities. So in some way its not correct to argue a point derived from an assumption/axiom other person doesn't believe in.

>>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.

Paid by your money.

>> 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.

I get a feeling if one is fairly rich they don't have to worry about money. When you are that rich, it doesn't matter whether you rent or own.

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

#147
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where I come(South Indian Muslim), there is a saying that how quickly you own a home, get married and have kids decide the overall affluence you have in life. If eat that frog is a think for daily schedule, there is also such a thing for life itself. You just have to get a few things done as early in life as you can. Or you end up living for other people.

It's only as one ages that we begin to realize how much wisdom there is in 'traditional' ways of life. It's almost like over millennia of humanity, we gradually found ways to maximize overall outcomes, even if they might come with aspects that aren't as ideologically ideal. At least this is something I can pass on to my own children.

Most 'traditional' ways of life often aren't all that old. Definitely not millennia.

(However they might still be a good idea. I don't know.)

It also depends on how you translate the 'traditional way'. For example, on the one hand, for most of history people had about one surviving descendant per person, ie two kids that made it into adulthood to have their own kids. [0] On the other hand, they gave birth to many, many more kids. Which of the two perspectives do you want to preserve?

Similarly, during most of the last few millennia most people used to have kids really late in life: they typically only had about perhaps 20 years or less left to live when their first child was born. Should we emulate that? Viewed through a different lens, people used to have kids really early in life: the distance in years between your own birth and the birth of your children was much shorter, too.

Of course, the above paragraph is just a long winded way to say that people live longer these days. But still: how do you want to translate past behaviour? It's a choice that's up to you.

[0] I'm basing that purely on the mathematical observation that population numbers have only gone up substantially in the last few hundred years. Thus replacement level fertility used to be the norm.

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

#148
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where I come(South Indian Muslim), there is a saying that how quickly you own a home, get married and have kids decide the overall affluence you have in life. If eat that frog is a think for daily schedule, there is also such a thing for life itself. You just have to get a few things done as early in life as you can. Or you end up living for other people.

It's only as one ages that we begin to realize how much wisdom there is in 'traditional' ways of life. It's almost like over millennia of humanity, we gradually found ways to maximize overall outcomes, even if they might come with aspects that aren't as ideologically ideal. At least this is something I can pass on to my own children.

There is a saying in Kannada language ವೇದ ಸುಳ್ಳಾದರೂ ಗಾದೆ ಸುಳ್ಳಾಗದು which means the vedas can go wrong, but a saying never turns out wrong.

There is a wisdom in this. Most of the sayings in any culture are largely a distillation of a kind of civilisation darwinism. All it took people to survive big problems in life, distilled in neat statements.

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

#149
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…

its not renting vs owning that's the problem, its renting vs mortgage where mortgage is improperly considered synonymous with ownership. but that's because its so rare to be able to own the home near the places you can rent. so sure, renting vs buying a home in cash will give the cash ownership a leg up. but then it shifts over to people that would love to espouse about the 'time value of money' and leverage, where p…

You can’t ever roll rent forward into the new purchase. That’s not the same for a mortgage

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

#150
post #117

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…

>its not even the buying vs renting thing, renting is bad, you don't get to own anything at the end of the journey

let's say you are an investor (crypto and day trading, living at home rent free in your parents' basement: "more tendies mom!")

but alongside your crypto and day trading, you scrape together enough cash to buy a house as an investment. it's an investment, you rent it out and earn rental income. What's rent? let's say it's $10,000 a month. Great! so, in addition to the appreciation of the property over time, you also get $120,000+ a year (the + is because you get some of the money at the beginning and middle of the year and you can pour it into lucrative day trading and crypto)

with me so far? nothing up my sleeve.

now you're feeling flush and you figure with your success, you don't have to live in mom's basement any more. Heck! you own a house, you can live there! and eat your cheetos in the the living room instead of the basement! So, you move in.

If you live in the investment house you own, you no longer get the $120,000+ a year. Why...why...why, wait, it's just like you are paying $10,000 a month rent!

Moral to the story: owning does not save you from paying rent, you are still paying rent, forgoing that income on your investment. Yes, that "it's so obvious everbody knows it" personal finance advice you read in major publications is complete and utter garbage.

don't thank me [tips cap] glad to help. And now you know how i feel sharing the planet with people, "experts" even, who don't have a clue what they are talking about.

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