Pat

Sure, if you keep it for 30 years and pay off the entire thing. But that's not really the same topic. You could try to compare that to renting for 30 years, I guess, but rents go up all the time and I doubt it would be a useful comparison.

Right now, rates are around 6-7% depending on credit. That gets amortized over the loan term, which is usually 30 years. When you pay off the loan (when you sell), you don't pay that interest, you only pay off the principal. So the example I gave doesn't really change with interest rates.

No, college. But anyway I'm sorry to have said something offensive and will just drop it now!

I did it, I mean I literally made like $200k over those 2-3 years when the housing demand in the US drove prices up alarmingly. All my friends who owned did the same.

That's exactly right, buying a home is gambling that an asset is better to hold onto, at that moment, than cash. If inflation goes all haywire, the cash becomes less valuable and the owner of the asset wins. The math works, honestly, I'm literally a math graduate and can give the formulae 😬

To answer your question of "what have you made," you could take that $600k and use it as a down payment on a much bigger house. Or, you could go back to renting with $600k in your bank account. You made a 6X return on your investment while inflation was only 2X, so you are way ahead either way.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to disagree with your original post. I rented for many many years, and yes I now own property. I learned it from actually doing it. I was lucky enough to own a home through 2019-2022 when home prices went nuts due to covid and supply chain and all that drama.

Yep! And to this very day, every maga bro is out here in the comment section explaining how "wokeness" is the evil empire and Donald Trump is actually Luke Skywalker.

I'm obviously ignoring all the details like taxes and interest, but a house really is a defense against crazy inflation, and Trump is almost certainly going to create crazy inflation because he's a moron.

So you paid $100k and owe the bank $400k, meaning if you sold the house today, you would walk away with $600k (because $1M - $400k = $600k).

So yes, you're right that the price of everything has doubled, but your investment of $100k turned into $600k, which is way way better than double.

Say you buy a house for $500k and you put 20% down. You've now paid $100k out of your pocket and owe the remaining $400k to the bank.

If inflation drives up the price of the house, let's say it doubles (for round numbers) and is now worth $1M. You still only owe the bank $400k...

Good point, that's something I talk about with my friends who rent (my partner and I own a home), but there's a weird thing that happens with owning a home, which actually does kind of create money out of thin air when inflation drives the price of the home up...

I have had to listen to people for 50 years telling me the government was coming to take your guns away if we let those radical Democrats run the country.

Well guess what! it's time for you to rise up against it actually happening right now!

No one could have seen this coming

Part of the reason is what @briancutter.bsky.social said in this thread, but part of it is that now there are people like Joe Rogan and MTG saying "hey maybe Trump isn't so great after all!" They're the reason we're in this situation, despite everyone telling them for a decade how awful he is.

America just killed two of its own citizens and a very large fraction of Americans immediately jumped in to say that they deserved it.

Someone, maybe Russia, has succeeded in destroying America from within, and I guess we deserved it. We were the bad guys all along.

Oh hi, welcome to 2017

Isn't it weird that he felt the need to post that? I think if you ever find yourself having to write a post that says "guys guys guys, we're not EXACTLY like the nazis, there are some differences," then it's time for a very hard look in the mirror

I've got good news for him, then: maga doesn't know that soccer exists, so consider the world cup officially boycotted

Fox is reporting that this whole "5 year old abducted by ice" is a left-wing media hoax. Fox is obviously not trustworthy, but I don't know what the real story of this little boy actually is.

Well actually you can turn a boat around in one night, even a really big one, JD

That's the tricky thing about evil. Everyone who does evil things can justify it in their own mind.

It's weird to watch someone gaslight themselves.

Chris, don't you think the Gestapo said exactly what you're saying? That they weren't REALLY the bad guys, they were just making an honest living doing hard work for the German people, following the law (according to Hitler)...

Yeah sure it's bad but did it get you to stop talking about Epstein?

Isn't it odd how someone who speaks in complete sentences, with actual experience in the subject matter, gets called "unhinged" and "deranged" and "lunatic," while the absolute dumbest among us are leading the country?

Wish they hadn't wasted money on a study just because they didn't know the definition of the word "tariff"

Why censor the word "removal?" Just curious. Does BlueSky's algorithm look for that word?

In that very same article, Hunter says the "very fine people on both sides" quote was a hoax. He links to a Snopes page that misrepresents the entire issue, but actually does verify that the quote is real, and that the Charlottesville rally was organized by white supremacists. Typical maga.

If common sense isn't enough reason for them to remove a pedophile from office, why would sending them an email make any difference? You think they're going to get an email and go "Hey wait just a minute! This email says Trump might be in the Epstein files!!"

Gee I wonder why he thinks he can do that. It's not like it's worked for him so far...