Financial Samurai

I feel like all of your statements contain errors and all these errors happen to benefit the pro-owning view. So I primarily spent my time addressing the errors. I think you kept waiting for me to explain why housing is a bad investment but that was never my point of view. I think people are way too confident on their housing investment. Some FUD is good.

> If you have one and feel like it, I'd still love to see a detailed scenario that is easy for a normal person to achieve where renting exceeds buying over a 10 or 20 year term.

I recommend that you understand what that NYT calculator does exactly then punch in the numbers for your area and see if you can find rent for the given amount. It really seems to come down to how bullish you are on your local housing market vs your stock portfolio. Plus the premium you are willing to pay for mobility vs the premium for extra space and a yard.

As a side not, according to [1] only 37% of Americans live in their house for more than 10 years. The median is 8.7 years.

>> It makes no sense to compare renting + no investments to owning with lots of money in equity.

> So, just curious, why did you share and defend the calculator that does exactly this?

I think you are mistaken about the NYT calculator, it does exactly (1).

>> economies of scale keep rental unit maintenance fees lower.

> FWIW, that's not what the calculator claims - it states explicitly calculating house rentals comparable to purchases, where there is no economy of…

For a long time, Google Finance [1] & SeekingAlpha [2] were great sources of content on financial information. The former had great charting/data, but it is completely changed now. The latter, although it was not targeted towards beginners, provided a great amount of value in both articles, has depth of coverage across asset clasess, and the comments sections, but the site is now paywalled..

Mr Money Moustache [3] & Financial Samurai [4] are both good sources of Financial Independence type of content.

I used this in conjunction with:

r/personalfinance (great for thinking about spend to saving/investment ratios)

r/wallstreetbets (best for binary bets and high opportunity situations - only use with a speculative small percent )

r/realestateinvesting (all RE of course)

r/investing (general stuff)

There are a number of high quality videos on Youtube that I have found to be particularly good, depending on your own financial situation. Dave Ramsey, although maligned, is great for those with debt problems. I have no debt, and so his content has limited application for me.

I also read Investopedia [5] for general terms, Tastytrade [6] for options coverage, and many brokers provide a large amount of free content to understand investments.

[1] https://www.google.com/finance/

[2] https://seekingalpha.com/

[3] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

[4] https://www.financialsamurai.com/

[5] https://www.investopedia.com/

[6] https://www.tastytrade.com/

> The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship.

This is so true it hurts.

And while there's some numbers that outsiders can look at and gasp[0] at how absurd it's become, there's a whole lot that isn't being tracked or documented. Official immigration numbers are ~0.5mn for 2023, but (and I've seen it elsewhere, but I can't find it right now) if you use a common sense definition that includes all inflow (e.g. asylum seekers, tfw, foreign students, etc) then it's 1mn+. It's insane for a country of <40mn, with highly socialized services.

The quality of life in Canada is horrid in a way that's not comparable to anywhere else other than maybe australia. Everything is silly expensive, with low salaries, and it's not like in europe where you can travel 3 hours to go somwehere with cheaper services. It's crazy. Or what about crime, the right wing, tough on crime party leader yesterday said that if someone has 3 convictions for car theft that it should mean 3 years. It's no wonder that I know some crazy personal stories about people getting their cars stolen and the police doing nothing.

Anyways, I don't want to rant even more, all I can hope is that for younger people in Canada to realize that the best thing they can do is hop to the US or something.

[0]…

I’m not sure I’d do the math the same way. First, it seems to me that the median household income is a better number, as most people share expenses and many households have two incomes. That seems to me to better inform ability to get by. In Washington, that’s $70k.[1] Half that is $35k, or just shy of $3k/month. With ACA subsidies, a person in that situation won’t likely be paying $400/month in health insurance. The max for a family of four at $35k is actually $1300 per year, or a little over $100/month, and an individual at $35k is closer to $200.[2] $2800/month is not a great deal of money, but it’s not living in squalor. And, as you say, it depends on location. A high proportion of of those people will not be living in Seattle, but rather rural areas where the cost of living is cheaper. The median household income in Seattle is closer to $85k. Also note that federal after taxes income after accounting for transfers actually goes up for the second quintile.[3]

[1] https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/washington/
[2] https://www.financialsamurai.com/subsidy-amounts-by-income-limits-for-the-affordable-care-act-obamacare/
[3] https://taxfoundation.org/average-federal-tax-rates-income-group/

Obviously I would need to buy the author's book and subscribe to his newsletter.

Sarcasm aside we had such an opportunity just a year ago: crypto and NFT. High risk that potentially would've matched his 3000->150000 (50x) return. It was in the open, in all tech news channels, available to anyone with a bit of money. Ok, most lost money it seems but it's the kind of opportunity the author talks about.

In https://web.archive.org/web/20210426154653/https://www.financialsamurai.com/what-are-nfts/ he talks about NFTs, too, with instructions how to buy them. There is a section on caution and skepticism, too. "Now you know a bunch of stuff about non-fungible tokens. We covered what an NFT is and isn’t, how they started, why they’re booming, skeptics’ concerns, how to buy one, and how to create and sell an NFT of your own."

That was 2021. Later the author changed the article https://www.financialsamurai.com/what-are-nfts/ and adds more skepticism and "Invest In Real Assets Instead" which conveniently links to his platform "Personally, I’d much rather buy real assets like real estate than NFTs"

New Tires is a very strange (and illogical) reason to purchase a new vehicle. How is that any more frustrating than filling your gas tank when it's empty? All vehicles (used, new, gas, electric) need new tires after x amount of miles. This is a regular and expected maintenance item that all vehicle owners must deal with. It would be a different story if a critical component like your transmission unexpectedly went out well before it's life expectancy.

Honestly, if you consider $1,000 on new tires to be a frustrating expense, then you really can't afford to purchase new cars in the first place. A new vehicle is a multiple of the cost of new tires and even more so when the balance of your last vehicle is rolled into the new financing and spread out over payments with interest. I worked at a car dealership while in college. There's a reason the "finance guy" drove a 10+ year old Honda that he paid cash for.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/11/28/new-cars-and-auto-financing-stupid-or-sensible/

http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-110th-rule-for-car-buying-everyone-must-follow/