151–160 of 324 posts
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If you live in a place that doesn't have oppresive taxes and the real estate market maintains an unrealistic growth rate.
You have described London. There are no taxes on owning a property at all, the growth rate has slowed somewhat since the 00s heyday but it's still going up.
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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 r…
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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…
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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.
Maybe in urban centers. But go out into the hills and you will find many towns where land prices tanked once the local resource industry moved on. It isn't just 18th century gold rush stuff. There are towns from the 80s that just emptied when the local industry moved on.
https://justinmcelroy.com/2022/07/26/visiting-canadas-50-mil...
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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…
If you bought it, you're paying off the old price. If you're renting, rent increases every year to keep more or less in line with the accruing value. So while renters and buyers may both start out paying (eg) 20% of their income on housing, for buyers, this will typically go down (due to inflation --> higher wages), while for renters, it will stay the same and might even increase.
You're right about considering opportunity costs, but around here, it just turns out far, far worse for renters.
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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!
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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, ma…
So for instance the Founding Fathers died at an average age of 72 including things like Hamilton being killed in a duel at 47 years old. Only 2 of them died before 60 - Hamilton and Hancock (who had health problems throughout most of his life). John Adams lived to 90, and Sam Adams/John Jay/Ben Franklin/Jefferson/Madison died in their 80s. In fact this mortality age of ~70 expands all the way back to at least the Ancient Greeks. [1] The Bible also references this in Psalm 90:10: "As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away."
All the advances in medicine over the past millennia have dramatically reduced childhood mortality, but its impact on people who would have already made it into adulthood has been relatively small - perhaps 5-10 more years of very limited quality.
[1] - https://aeon.co/ideas/think-everyone-died-young-in-ancient-s...
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I think he benefitted from the Vitamin D, since he died at 101.
Well I agree, and I myself supplement with D3; however the mainstream advice is to avoid sun exposure, for example: https://www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-prevention/ Clearly more research is needed.
You're more likely to die in a traffic accident or from insufficient sun exposure than to ever develop skin cancer.
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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"?
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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…
Around here, houses appreciate in value. Quite significantly, actually. A house can gain 100k in value in just a few years. If you bought it, you're paying off the old price. If you're renting, rent increases every year to keep more or less in line with the accruing value. So while renters and buyers may both start out paying (eg) 20% of their income on housing, for buyers, this will typically go down (due to inflati…
Wha a world that would be. More in the 35-45 range.