Oh the joys of home ownership.
Congrats Greg.
Now you can forget about having extra money.
The house always seems to come up with a way of spending it.
No it's not that at all. I've lived in a trailer for the last two years, I lived in a house 33 years before that (and apartments before my first house).
The simple truth is that if somebody can buy a housing unit as an investment and make a profit on it, you can buy that same housing unit yourself and live in it at a lower price because you're not contributing to the support of an investor/parasite.
Dig deeper and you'll discover that our government (US) is printing money like it's going out of style (it is). They're running the money printing presses 24/7/365 and every time they print another dollar without any gold standard all the other dollars devalue a bit. The house I bought this month will always be worth the same in real money irrespective of the value of the dollar, or lack thereof, because a place to live has true value and it will always have true value because people need places to live.
Or look at it this way: you can rent a place month to month, or you can get a quantity discount by buying it forever. Any way you look at it it's cheaper for me to live in this house than it could ever be renting some house or apartment. Probably cheaper for anybody/everybody who knows where they want to live the next several years and has the capital to invest in a house.
Or another way to look at it, compare it to the stock market. The stock market has a historic cyclic pattern, it goes up and down in cycles, but over many decades there is a recognizable pattern: the average is always up (a straight line approximation that filters out hills and valleys). Each time the stock market reaches a peak it declines, sometimes just a minor fluctuation, sometimes a major readjustment.
But looking at the stock market fluctuations another pattern becomes apparent. This is a very imprecise pattern, but in approximation every time the stock market reaches a peak and then falls it falls to a level about half way between the new recent peak and the last valley.
This is a very rough approximation, but you can wrap it up in a catchy phrase: take two steps forward then fall one step back, take two steps forward then fall one step back, take two steps forward then fall one step back...
I believe the housing market follows the same pattern. It goes through peaks and troughs but the overall pattern is ever upwards. There are two reasons for this: the stock market and the housing market are both cyclic, and there is a constant background of inflation or devaluation of currency (same thing). This is because inflation/devaluation is the carrot that the the government dangles in front of the donkey (i.e. the public) to keep everybody working to achieve more.
And again looking at a different way, the US national debt is stratospheric. We are owned by Communist China. The baby boomers are retiring earlier and living longer. The US government is in a bind. There is only one way out: inflation or devaluation of the dollar.
Yeah, we aren't experiencing much inflation, right? Just keep in mind who is in charge of keeping the statistics: the government. Would they lie to us? (LMAO, you make up your own mind.)
Just as a fun experiment, look at energy prices (gasoline prices 1, 2 or 5 years ago) or housing prices. In my market segment house closings are rising at least $1000 per month, or more.
Yet the government says "no significant inflation." Yeah right. (Aside: Q, how do you know a politician is lying? A, their lips are moving...)
I paid cash for my house: no mortgage. That's because I owned my previous house 33 years and it was paid off, and I didn't spend the proceeds...
So look at it in yet another different way: I'm not living in a house, I'm living in a bank! My Social Security income is all I get and it doesn't come even remotely close to covering my living costs. But I live in a bank. When my savings run out I can tap the bank and start living on my equity (reverse mortgage).
So getting back to your original statement Zagut, I
DO have extra money and it's the investment in my house. I'm a baby boomer just barely retired and I expect to live in this home for the rest of my life. When the money runs out I'll turn the house into a bank and I'll continue to live here until (a) as Western fables goes, he/they lived happily ever after, or (b) Eastern, he/they lived happily ever after until the Great Destroyer took them.
Oh and by the way I'm a very experienced home improvement enthusiast. Most of the home maintenance I do myself, along with the improvements. I'm going to be very busy!!!
"But that choice of the GF vs the table saw. That's a tough one. If I were a guy I would probably pick the saw. You can always get a new GF.
"
Just remember that when the blade gets dull on the saw you can replace just the blade. I don't think it works that way on the GF.
If it were me I'd pick the GF.
I really like GF and I'm liking her more every day, but we are not committed and she owns her own very beautiful house in The Valley (SFV). I'm pretty sure that the choice of table saw or GF is in our remote future. We are both having a great time and GF will always have her own private parking spot in my driveway.
If I know she's coming I'll park my pick-up truck on the street. If AH neighbor doesn't like it I can remind him to look up the definition of "public street" and remind him that non-commercial vehicles can be parked in a residential area for up to 72 hours (in L.A. county). Life's a b**** when your delusional belief systems includes the expectation that you have a legal or moral right to park in front of your house.
