What a lovely, sumptuously-written piece. Thank you for sharing!
The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
261–270 of 324 posts
Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#262Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
For a proper comparison, you need to pay up the guy paying off the mortgage with someone who eg invests similar amounts in an index fund. To be even more proper, you'd need to allow the stock market investor to use leverage, just like the guy with the mortgage does. Or, if you want to avoid the mortgage/leverage complication, we can compare someone buying a house outright with someone investing the same amount in sto…
An important thing to consider is not just average return, but risk factors, and worst case scenarios.
If you buy a home instead of investing, you've got a locked in, controlled rate for your housing expenses. (Yes, there's some variability with property tax and insurance). In difficult times, you can still plan very carefully around your housing costs and wait for better times.
If you rent and invest, your housing costs can be highly variable and uncontrollable over time. Your investments may not cover increases in housing costs.
A critical factor is that housing is more or less a _required_ cost of existence - just like feeding oneself. It is not something where one can necessarily "invest in other areas" instead. There are extreme cases (living out of an RV or in a tent on the side of the road), but for the most part those extremes are not representative of how someone wants to live. One can only downsize so much, and downsizing your housing investment comes with very real changes to quality of life (storage space, commute time, access to grocery stores, etc).
Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#264Earlier 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…
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Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever heard of opportunity costs?
How does that even apply here? Assuming you aren't living with family it's fair to assume you have to spend money on housing. So the question is, do you want to keep some of that money in the form of equity or give all of it to your landlord?
You're ignoring the costs of buying and selling and supposing incorrectly that property always appreciates on a relevant time scale.
Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#266Earlier 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…
The current exploitative nature of renting is a policy choice. Renting doesn’t have to be like this. There are real-world examples of providing affordable housing that allows people to live with dignity, even if they can't afford to buy a home. How Britain (almost) solved the housing crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZpLiJdIGbs
Oof - it cuts both ways. Its near impossible to own a home in London when everything is on land-lease. You're just buying the house for a while...so...renting. Because some generations old family owns the land.
Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#267> ordered breakfast: scrambled eggs back in the days when people ate eggs, and, more recently, banana and granola with skim milk. It's funny how much life cycles. I do kinda remember a phase where people were eating a "healthier" breakfast of some kind of fruit, and when granola became popular, and when milk fat was considered the worst thing you could do to your body. But now eggs are fine, again. Great, even.
I was immediately struck by this remark too. Were eggs particularly unfashionable in the early 1990s in the USA? Apparently so.
It was about health. You know, trying not to grow old and get sick and eventually die. Between the seventies and about 15 years ago, educated people in the US, the sort of people who got their toehold in the middle class by doing what their betters told them to do, would look at you like you were deliberately trying to kill yourself if you had eggs and bacon and white bread toast with real butter on it for breakfast. It probably peaked around the turn of the century.
The margarine section of the dairy case was bigger than the butter section. Imitation cheese slices were sold right alongside regular processed cheese - they're now completely dairy free and banished to the vegan food section.
There's a famous scene in "Sleeper" (1973) by Woody Allen where the character wakes up in the future to find out that everything that was considered bad for you is considered good for you again. Woody Allen was born in 1935 so had been around long enough to know these things go in cycles.
Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Egg consumption was considered to lead to high cholesterol levels and thus linked to cardiovascular disease. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4632449/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/19... https://australianfoodtimeline.com.au/egg-consumption/
My parents (in their 60s) still think this way - they mostly use that ‘egg substitute’ that comes in a carton (I think it’s some sort of processed egg white) as the bulk of their eggs, e.g. scrambled eggs using a 4:1 ratio of substitute to real eggs. They used to almost exclusively use margarine instead of butter too. I like eggs a lot better now that I’ve learned to make them myself.
> they mostly use that ‘egg substitute’ that comes in a carton
I like to make a fried egg sandwich in the morning, and I can't get that stuff not to stick to the pan.
Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Egg consumption was considered to lead to high cholesterol levels and thus linked to cardiovascular disease. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4632449/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/19... https://australianfoodtimeline.com.au/egg-consumption/
My parents (in their 60s) still think this way - they mostly use that ‘egg substitute’ that comes in a carton (I think it’s some sort of processed egg white) as the bulk of their eggs, e.g. scrambled eggs using a 4:1 ratio of substitute to real eggs. They used to almost exclusively use margarine instead of butter too. I like eggs a lot better now that I’ve learned to make them myself.
That stuff is pretty much just egg white and food coloring. Nowadays they sell undyed egg white in cartons alongside it because the trend has shifted to high protein diets.
Re: The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (1993)
#270Earlier 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…
> Get disappointed and lawyer through the arguments to justify renting a home. As opposed to just flatly stating that owning a home is always good and dismissing any opposition out of hand as “lawyering”? Here’s my first attempt to lawyer: I don’t want to live in a house. Is owning a house always good for me?
You can own apartments too. I assume the logic is pretty much the same either way.