As much as I loathe the guy, I think we all dodged a bullet.

If he died of natural causes last month I don't think the MAGAts would have rallied behind Desantis, or whomever got the nomination. I'm not saying they wouldn't have voted for them, just that the excitement wouldn't be there.

If this has succeeded, the supporters would have transferred and been even more pumped up. And sympathy from those weird fuck undecideds could make the difference, not just in the presidency, but both chambers of Congress, and for their policy goals too.

Riding the wake of an assassination the draconian shit they would push through could have been far worse than anything Trump would have been able to accomplish in a second term.

Take civil rights legislation in the 60s; a lot of what LBJ accomplished was credited to the national feeling after the Kennedy assassination. Would JFK have been able to accomplish all that if he had served eight years with public sentiment toward civil rights being divided?

It sucks that this is boosting his chances in November. But a martyr, a new figurehead, and a more energized base could have been far worse.

Just using some nice round numbers in the hope that it would help you understand the concept and using your original $500 number. But you're right, given current interest rates a 10% difference the first year isn't likely without a large down payment.

Make it whatever you want. 2.5k vs. 3k, 6k vs. 7.5k, 10k vs. 13k, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is you understand that after a few years the monthly advantage to renting disappears, the tables turn, and the renter pays more for the rest of their lives, and a lot more when the owner is done with the mortgage. Or until they wise up.

You've been given bad information. Don't ruin your financial future by stubbornly clinging to it. The best time to learn about personal finance is yesterday. The second best time is today. It's never too late.

Christ dude do you think before you post, or do you think only renters get raises?

Let me try to make it simple enough for you to understand.

You and I have the same job, make the same money, and have the same non-housing expenses.

We moved into the same neighborhood, right next door, identical houses.

Accounting for mortgage, tax, insurance, amortized maintenance expenses, and tax breaks I pay 5k a month with nothing left over.

Your rent is 4.5k giving you an extra $500 to save.

$500 more than me.

Next year, we get the same raises and after inflation of non-housing expenses we have $200 extra.

My property taxes and insurance went up $100. Now I have $100 to save.

Your rent went up $300. Now you have $400 to save.

Only $300 more than me.

Do I really need to do every year for the next 20 years for you to get it?

Your extra savings will evaporate after just a few years and the tables will turn. And several years later, maybe a little over a decade, my brokerage balance will beat yours, even including capital gains and you investing what would have been a down payment. And that's without even mentioning equity. After 20 years I could light a match, burn the house to the ground, and walk away without a penny and still have a fatter brokerage account than you.

The guy two doors down from me is paying around $40k more in rent every year than my ownership expenses.

Next year when my mortgage is done it'll be closer to $90k and only go up from there for the rest of my life.

All because 19 years ago I put 5% down and spent 3-5 years paying a little more than my renting neighbors. Putting that money in my brokerage with the rest of my non-tax advantaged savings wouldn't even come close to the money I've already saved once rent exceed my expenses, forget about it paying the difference between rent and ownership expenses for the rest of my life.

Your missing the point when you talk about appreciation in home values. The paper value of a home with no mortgage is irrelevant to the person living in it. Unless they downsize, that only matters to their heirs. The value to the owner is spending the rest of their life paying peanuts for housing. And paying less than rent a few to several years after purchasing, depending on the specifics of the mortgage and the initial condition of the home.

I'm pretty sure you're engaging in an exercise in creative writing, possibly fueled by sour grapes. But just in case you're serious, I'll say one more thing. And I hope you take it in the spirit it's intended, sincere concern. I'm sorry, there's no nice way to say this.

You are financially illiterate.

Don't feel too bad, you have lots of company.

If you have any disposable income, or think you will in the future, please, for your own sake and for any impressionable ignorant people you talk to; stop googling for things to support your misconceptions and repeating things you read on Reddit written by some other clueless individual, and find a way to get a decent education in personal finance.

Lol, yes I'm very well aware of these things. I don't like dropping personal information breadcrumbs, and I don't find appeal to authority arguments convincing anyway so I'm just going to have to leave it at "trust me bro."

Outside of a few edge cases, like planning on moving every couple years for work, lifetime costs of renting dwarf lifetime ownership costs. Unless he's comparing an expensive house to a small, cheap apartment. An apples to apples comparison isn't even close. Even if month one he can save $500, that savings will shrink every year and eventually his rent will be more than the expenses of a neighbor that bought years ago and not only won't he have an extra $500 to save, he'll be saving even less than he was before.

My parents moved into a large home in a desirable neighborhood when I was six months old. When I went to college, my cheap one bedroom apartment in a city with similar costs of living was only about $25 (in 90s $) less than their mortgage, taxes, and insurance combined. A few years later their mortgage was paid and they've spent over two decades paying less for taxes and insurance than they do for utilities.

If that $500 savings continues for 41 years (it won't, see above), an extra 1.5mm, even with a ballsy withdrawal rate, adjusted for inflation 41 years from now (your example), wouldn't make up for that, not even close. Take inflation the other way: $500 today is the equivalent of a little less than $160 in 1983 which would give you less than 500k today using your growth numbers (this is leaving out a lot of important things, by the way, but I'm going with your example numbers to keep things simple for you.)

I don't know why you're so invested in "your friend" being so much smarter than every financial advisor, and frankly, this sounds like some "I didn't want to buy a house anyway" copium from someone that can't get their finances together enough to execute a plan, but on the off chance this "friend" is in a position to buy and they really think this, you should suggest they consult a professional for their own good.

Well then, he must be blessed to live somewhere with very reasonable rents, and generous rent control, if he thinks he can save money renting for 20-30 years instead of paying a fixed mortgage plus other expenses.

Like I said in my first edit, although my expenses started out a bit higher than rent for a comparable house, 19 years of rent increases while my mortgage stays the same means I'd have to move to a shoebox on meth street to pay less than my mortgage now.

And it still seems like he's not taking into account having a paid off asset with negligible housing expenses after the mortgage is paid off. In the case of a duplex, a money generating asset.

Sounds like he's not factoring in the money saved after the mortgage is done. I'll be done in a little over a year then my housing costs drop to property tax and insurance. That'll come to a little under 15% of what rentals in my neighborhood go for. Even with an aggressive withdrawal schedule an extra million wouldn't make up the difference.

Edit: I also doubt his calculations. Maybe he's not taking inflation into account? When I bought my house the mortgage, property tax, and insurance was a little more than renting a house in my neighborhood. Almost 19 years later, the mortgage is the same, the property tax has gone up about 25%, and the insurance has increased about 50%. Since the mortgage is the largest part by far my total costs have gone down significantly adjusted for inflation and they are only around 50% the cost of rent. Even counting maintenance and remodel costs I would have paid much more in rent over the years.

Edit 2: If I had invested my 5% down payment in the s&p in August 2005, with reinvested dividends, before taxes, it would only be 13.7% of my current home equity. Your boy's math ain't mathin'.

There were normal diplomatic disagreements that all allies have. And consider the source of that statement. Yeltsin's critics would have included any anti-democratic groups. This was a period of unprecedented cooperation and trust that was growing until Russia turned its back.

Before Russia did their heel turn in the aughts, they almost joined NATO after a period of significant cooperation. Russia seeing the U.S., or it's allies, as enemies is a symptom of Putin turning a fledgling democracy into a dictatorship, not the natural state of affairs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93NATO_relations

Go to the "Development of post-Cold War cooperation (1990–2004)" section and check out "NATO-Russia Founding Act", "NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council", and "NATO-Russia Council".

Back then the talk was pearl clutching over NATO with Russia being seen as some racist white alliance against China, MENA, India, and others in the global south.

Russia only sees us as enemies because Putin needed to create enemies to seize and consolidate power.

It's a lot easier to tolerate the copaganda when they're almost exclusively going after rapists.

The thing I found funny about SVU is someone obviously said "shit, Olivia has been at this for decades, she should be a captain by now," so they made her one but she's still taking calls, the first on the scene, and participating in the investigation.

It'd be a damn shame if everyone started putting pixelfed at the end of every message to both deny threads content and create a Streisand effect.

If you want to know how bad we're being fucked, search for the PPI, the producer price index. CPI, the one we always hear about, is the measure of inflation to us, the consumer. The PPI is the measure of inflation to producers, what they pay for goods and services to produce the goods and services we buy.

The PPI has been back to "normal" for a while now. Pretty much as soon as the post COVID logistics issues were mostly ironed out. The difference between PPI and CPI changes is almost all profit.

We don't get daily articles on the PPI though, I wonder why.

Tell people about PPI whenever you can, online or off, the more people know, the better. It's easy enough to say inflation is just down to greed but being able to back it up by comparing two simple charts will help people really understand.

PPI

CPI

Yeah, whenever you have dead space on one side you hug that side to give more space to both you and the person on the other side.

Last spot on the aisle, curb, pillar between spots, cart return, whatever.

Being a cybertruck driver he's almost certainly a douche, but this isn't why he's a douche.