The Off Topic Topic

[Ideologue]

Man, I just found houses for less than I would expect to pay for a car.  There has to be something absurdly terrible.  Murder houses?  Meth lab houses?  Murder meth lab houses?

[Habbaku]

Man, I just found houses for less than I would expect to pay for a car.  There has to be something absurdly terrible.  Murder houses?  Meth lab houses?  Murder meth lab houses?

Far worse.  Housing bubble burst. 

[DGuller]

I'm pretty much resigned to never owning a home unless I'm the last heir standing when my parents die.

Here's a secret.

If you have to take out a loan to buy something, you don't really own it. I mean, sure - you have the title and the deed and so on. But it isn't *really* yours - not in the sense of "I give you this currency/item/whatever and you give me this thing, and we take our respective stuff away and neither of us holds claim to the other person's stuff anymore". And not only is it not really yours, you owe far more on it than your offer would indicate, thanks to the magic of interest.

Keep renting and squirrel away money until you can buy something with cash. Tell the vipers at the bank to fuck themselves. That's my angry, bitter advice for the evening.

SFG has clients who do this, typically Latinos who work their asses off and save, over a number of years, let's say $80-100K. Then when they shop for houses, they shop for houses which are...wait for it...$80-100K. If a Latino landscaper knows mortgage interest is a sucker's game, surely we all can learn such a valuable lesson.

I love my house. I really do. But if I had it to do over again I'd never have bought it. The mortgage has caused me so much stress over the last year thanks to a number of things that it's been more headache than heartwarming. And home repairs are fun, too, but you know what else they are? Fucking expensive. I prefer to get paid to do them than to have to pay to do them.

Hey, I despise the home-ownership fetish as much as anyone, but you're going a bit overboard here.  Interest is just a rent on capital, although it's a kind of rent you can't back out on nearly as easily.  Mortgage is a leveraged investment, making you more vulnerable to loss of income, which is something that way too many people don't realize until their meet financial ruin, but in many circumstances it can make good sense. 

[jimmy olsen]

 

[Syt]

[jimmy olsen]

Not a Star Trek fan?

[Syt]

Yes, but I fail to see the humor in this strained effort of being funny.

[Admiral Yi]

Interest is fine as long as it is at or below inflation rate.

Not for the lender it's not.

[lustindarkness]

http://www.bcsportbikes.com/forum/showthread.php/146566-Build-to-Fail-Fail-to-Build.-What-is-this-I-don-t-even.....


This thread is going viral, funny stuff.

[Grey Fox]

Well, shit.

[garbon]

Beautiful.

[derspiess]

I heard that Hillary was bitching today at some women's conference about treatment of women in the US.  One of the things she mentioned was that women here have shorter life expectancy than any other industrialized country.  Strikes me as a bit of an odd grievance, when women still live about five years longer than men.

[garbon]

[Syt]

[Eddie Teach]

That's great.