321–330 of 341 posts
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> Because that's easy to do for everyone Is it? I don’t think it is. Why do you think it is?
That was exactly my point. It's absolutely not easy to do. I laughed when I read that.
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> A the adage goes: buy low sell high. Don't forget the other adage-- Don't time the market . > That said, firstly and foremost we should all make sure to have enough savings to ride out hard economic times—including personal ones. That is, enough to pay our monthly expenses for a year Having a year of expenses is good practice in general. I'm not sure that qualifies one as ready for actual hard times at a societal l…
Thanks for the clarification marcusverus. > Don't forget the other adage--Don't time the market. I did mean to to imply trying to time the market. The commenter wrote "Your advice might be okay for good times (investing, buying land, houses)." To me this says that it's OK to invest in good times but not bad. This in fact boils down t a form of attempted market timing—and the worst kind at that! Of course you should b…
I've always found that "living at my means" has paid dividends. To many folks, 'round these parts, they'd consider it "living below my means," but that's mostly because they "live beyond their means." I avoid personal debt like the plague. If that means living in a small house, and driving an old car, then so be it. I've also found that learning to deliver software, as opposed to just "writing" software, has made me…
I don’t understand how delivering software is related to “how can I prepare for hard economic times?” Let me tell you, as one of the highest performing team members in every organization I’ve been at: if a manager doesn’t care about you, no amount of performance will help you. It didn’t help me. And whether a manager cares about you is mostly luck of the draw. Sure, there’s politics at play. But the most common situa…
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> But going into debt for a depreciating asset like a car is a bad idea, yes. This is just as stupid as: "But going into debt for a depreciating asset like a computer is a bad idea, yes." They are both investments in potential tools. For many, an investment in a car can ultimately be cheaper than most other modes of transportation. Just like how companies finance their data centers with debt. Of course, it does not m…
> For many, an investment in a car can ultimately be cheaper than most other modes of transportation. That's a joke, right? It's entirely dependent on one's location, and i think for more people here on HN the inverse would be true ( I'm assuming the majority of users here live in or around big cities, where tech was traditionally concentrated). In well developed big cities ( so excluding the many failures at urban d…
Certainly not a joke. Unless you live in Manhattan, or happen to luck into a house within walking distance of your job (ignoring pandemic WFH), then in order to maintain a lucrative career you need to get to work, in time, without spending most of your day waiting for buses. That means investing in a car.
A car by itself is of course a terrible non-investment. But if it brings home that high salary, it becomes an investment.
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Lol, you clearly don't live in the U.S. With the exception of Manhattan, and some parts of D.C. and SF, no car = no job.
I made it around just fine in Seattle, Vancouver, DC (Tenlytown), and Nashville without a car. Bikes and ubers. Everywhere but Nashville was pretty easy to be a person, and Nashville was a PITA at times but doable.
Ubers are cars, just with an extremely high markup.
I had a coworker so proud of not spending money on car. So he commuted on Uber. Over $50/day. That's over $1000/month!
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> i don't think there are any places around the world where owning a car is cheaper than paying for public transit ( with the caveat that depending on how you measure the time spent could alter that) That's the world's biggest caveat. Investment in a modest car that stops you from spending 3 hours each way commuting over 4 separate bus routes from exurban home to exurban job is about as high a return on money as you'…
>Investment in a modest car that stops you from spending 3 hours each way commuting over 4 separate bus routes from exurban home to exurban job is about as high a return on money as you're ever going to see. I know your example is exaggerated but even so making decisions about where to live and work like that is on a parallel with making poor decisions about your finances.
The example isn't exaggerated at all. Unless you happen to live on a straight bus line to work, it's going to add many hours to take a bus downtown and then out to the office.
Office locations come and go, a house is for the long haul. You're not going to sell and move houses every time you chance jobs.
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> I avoid personal debt like the plague. If that means living in a small house, and driving an old car, then so be it. Going into debt that you can pay off and will make you a profit is good - because making a profit is literally the thing that gets you through bad times. (That's why having savings be 100% cash is riskier than investing - you are 100% guaranteed to not have it go up.) And recent years' zero-to-negati…
Your advice might be okay for good times (investing, buying land, houses). But in hard economic times, the global economy will be doing badly and therefore most investments will too, even housing (see 2008). Going into debt that you then invest is doubly risky: you have debt, plus you have a risky investment. Saving cash is actually indeed the best way to prepare for hard times.
Cash is the worst possible holding. Inflation will destroy it.
If you feel higher inflation is coming, holding as much debt as possible is what you want.
Of course, you do want to have enough cash on hand for short-term expenses, say like a year of living. Anything beyond that is very risky.
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Your advice might be okay for good times (investing, buying land, houses). But in hard economic times, the global economy will be doing badly and therefore most investments will too, even housing (see 2008). Going into debt that you then invest is doubly risky: you have debt, plus you have a risky investment. Saving cash is actually indeed the best way to prepare for hard times.
Inflation will wipe out that cash though. Honestly, it's hard to give advice since it's so specific to the region and job market, etc. Like many US engineers can easily afford to buy a house outright with $200k+ salaries, that isn't possible as often in Europe or Asia for example. But basically do what you can to get fixed costs that you know you can afford and stability - i.e. a fixed rate mortgage, fixed rate utili…
That's about 100K after taxes + medical (not included in taxes in the US) and other deductions.
With houses in good markets far above $1M, nobody making $100K net is buying a house outright. Or even being able to buy a house at all.
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It does not protect you from being bombed to oblivion, or summarily shot by anybody with an ak-47 jealous of whatever you have, or raided by a military looking for food or entertainment, or expropriated in the unstable years ahead. It might help if things don’t go too pear shaped, but this kind of event (a foreign invasion by a military with no regards for civilians) is basically game over regardless of your situatio…
If anything, Ukraine shows that civilization doesn't necessarily immediately collapse. Despite the madness the only thing I learn about looting from Ukraine is: - civilian would-be looters still getting punished - Russian soldiers are looting i.e. when your rations expired you get desperate and since the Russian army is armed and know they are an utter disgrace anyway this happens.
It’s been 20 days. I’d refrain from being overly optimistic just now. More likely than a full civilisation collapse is a return to feudal tribalism as in Afghanistan and Lybia, which is not very good either.
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I don't think it's useful if in the threat model there is also the risk to get a misplaced missile on your house. Yeah you can defend against some poor guy/group of guys looking for food/things, but that's about it.
To be fair though, a missile on your house isn't exactly the only threat in the model right now in Ukraine.