Wow, congrats!! Most of the Ramsey investors I talked with recently all advised against paying mine off, bc the interest rate is so low and we have so much equity. YMMV, I guess, but I know Ramsey preaches paying it off. Up until a few weeks ago, I was in the same camp.
OT: Is everybody just struggling lately?
- Thread starter dorndawg
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Really, really off topic, but that sentence is a reminder of all the failures of the English language. That sentence can correctly read to mean basically two opposite things. Really crazy that the sentences, "You will be surprised how much less you have to spend in retirement. On the other hand, that will be offset somewhat by the fact that you will be surprised how much less you have to spend in retirement."
For the record, the first time reading it, I read it the first way.**
I was going to feel sorry for you until I read the second post. And well done sir.
If you are going to work until you retire, rather than just deciding to hang out when you don't care if they fire you, you really must have been terrible at being a government employee.**
I don't know, if your mortgage rate is less than 3%, and you can get 4% in a money market, it's hard to justify paying it off.
I mean certainly before you have enough to pay it off, you shouldn't be paying it down extra. You should have a lot more peace of mind having that money easily available if you need, it plus it allows you to out earn the interest payments even in a virtually risk free account. But even when you have enough to pay it off, you can out earn the interest, if you aren't doing a roth (backdoor or otherwise) each year, really hard to beat the ability to get tax free returns, and you can always pull your contributions out (provided you have had it open five years), so you should definitely hold off paying it off if that is the difference between maxing out all your roth options each year or not.
I guess maybe if you're a compulsive spender, there is benefit of locking that money up in home equity, but figuring out whether to pay off their house or not is not usually a problem compulsive spenders have. I guess maybe for couples with one spouse that spends irresponsibly if it's available then paying it down probably helps.
That's highly market dependent. It should be crazy, but we've jacked up the housing market so badly that it may not be. I think a better rule of thumb would be something like the lesser of 2 or 2.5 times your income or 2.5 to 3 times the median home value. And that's probably unreasonably restrictive in depressed areas where the few areas you want to live in carry a big premium compared to the median.
I have a few months left before my oldest leaves for college. Everytime I think about it I break down. It happened too fast.
As you know & in all seriousness, many rank and file government employees have been underpaid during their tenures.
I had a few years of no COLA increases because of lack of enough funding…
It took retirement and working elsewhere to get to a point where I was earning more than I would have just working for the state but I can’t retire yet because I still have that house note…
A lot of folks at my former workplace were shocked that I left.
One comment I got pretty often was that it was a big loss for them that I left, and that my current employer should be very fortunate that I’m with them now…
And that might be the best compliment I’ve ever gotten when it comes to work… I know I did great, and I’m missed…
As you know & in all seriousness, many rank and file government employees have been underpaid during their tenures.
At the state level, lots of them.
Makes the PERS cola that much more objectionable. Just an absurd system when retirees get raises working people don't. Tax payers should get to slap legislators that voted on that any time they'd like. Maybe a system where you can slap them once a day, and cap it after the first five tax payers each day slap the **** out of them. Same thing for everybody that has ever sat on the PERS board and advocated against fixing it.
Definitely a great compliment.
Replace Have with Need and it makes more sense. English has never been my strong suit. I’m a lot better at siphering money than talking good.
My grandparents got married. Drove around an hour to Hattiesburg. Back at church the next morning at 10 am.
Any of those degrees cover compound interest?
The rich use leverage as a tool to grow generational wealth; the middle class believes debt is a burden!
Last 3 years has been worse.
NIL right after we win a natty, Leach dies, Cohen turns heel, OM wins a natty….thats tough.
Using someone else’s money and borrowing money are two different things. You use someone else’s money when you have $125000 in the market making 12% and you want to buy a new F250 and they will finance it for 6.9%. You borrow money when you couldn’t come up with $125000 in cash to save your life but your credit report and the finance guy says that you can afford the payment on that new F250.
Funny enough, both of them do. You see my degree in Chemical Engineering included a class in Engineering Economics. That is where I learned how to calculate the mathematics that cover compound engineering.
Also my philosophy degree taught me that having the most amount of money isn't a thing. However it also taught me how to corner the market on olive presses and get rich as ****.
You enjoy borrowing as the borrower is slave to the lender.
Various challenges around the country due to recent ice and arctic low temps are probably leading many to feel frustrated and/or helpless.
I look forward to it being a balmy 26deg tomorrow.
I look forward to it being a balmy 26deg tomorrow.
The wealth gap is as large as it has ever been coming out of Covid. The wealthy have expended exponentially. Meanwhile folks working at middle class level keep seeing expenses skyrocket with very little if any improvement to pay. All my bills have significantly increased over the past 4-5 years and this year everything seemed to have made a jump. Me and some old room mates in text chat all say we make more than we ever have but feel like we make less due to the cost increase to everything across the board. Every month seems to be a notice something is going up and not because of increased use or services.
Couldn't have said it better. While my family certainly earns a decent income, the cost of all goods and services has increased drastically over the last five years. The pinch is real. I had to have a fence replaced in 2019 and it cost ~$4,000 in Colorado. Our rental needs a new fence (roughly the same size, maybe a little smaller) and I've gotten 3 quotes, the cheapest is for $8,500.00. Lesser quality wood. That's just one example. Watching the buying power of the dollar shrink in real time is depressing.
True points but one does not have to look too far to other nearby countries to see that it is much, much, much worse.
This is true, but I hate the argument for everything is that it sucks less
That, of course, is not the point of the statement. Things have always been objectively worse in my lifetime in countries like El Salvador, Syria, etc. That has nothing to do with the state of affairs here. I'm not asking for something I don't deserve. I'm observing deteriorating economic conditions in our country that have occurred in the last 10 years in particular.
It's almost as if the crushing national debt of basically every single first world country on earth is finally having some negative effects after we all watched that can get kicked down the frozen interstate for decades.
Not trying to be overly positive...
Not trying to be overly positive...
The middle and upper middle class/lower upper class are victims of their own political power. They have an outsized influence on policy, and what do they care about? Largely housing, healthcare, and education. So what does the government do? They interfere with market influences in housing, healthcare, and education. So we get inflation in those sectors outpacing inflation as a whole, and the middle class feels poorer even though wages have outgrown inflation as a whole, because the things that have gone up faster than CPI are things that take a disproportionate size of their budget and attention.
Call me a lefty but I get the feeling companies and consumer spending habits have had a hand in price increases.
yep. It isn’t even close to being the American consumer’s fault totally, but we damn sure have played a role.
Funny enough, the value of the dollar was discussed yesterday at a rally about 2mi from my house, since it just hit a 4 year low.
And from a purely economic perspective, I have no idea if hitting that 4 year low is a net positive, a net negative, or a wash for most Americans.
I am guessing that for most Americans, it will be a net negative and they will be hurt by it. Then for some, it will be a net positive and they will benefit a lot by it. And when combined, it will be largely a wash across all socioeconomic groups.
Again, this is me trying to just understand the ramifications for our country's economy and not political.
- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the value of the dollar was "great", when asked whether he thought it had declined too much, adding to pressure on the greenback which hit a four-year low.
- The dollar's recent weakness stems from multiple factors: expectations of continued Federal Reserve rate cuts, tariff uncertainty, policy volatility including threats to Fed independence and rising fiscal deficits, all of which have eroded investor confidence in U.S. economic stability.
- A lower dollar can also benefit U.S. exporters, though Trump said he was not seeking for its value to decline further.
"I would want it to... just seek its own level," he said.
- "No, I think it's great, the value of the dollar ... dollar's doing great," Trump said when asked by a reporter if he thought the value of the dollar had declined too much.
- While the dollar's fall reflects investor worries about the U.S. economy's strength and could lead to inflationary pressures due to the rising cost of imports, it can help some businesses. A weaker greenback makes it cheaper for multinational companies to convert foreign profits into dollars, while also boosting the competitiveness of U.S. exporters' products.
- Steve Sosnick, market strategist at Interactive Brokers, Greenwich, Connecticut, said that a weaker dollar "was a two-sided coin". "On the one hand, it’s good for multinationals... If you have operations around the world and foreign currency revenue that will have a conversion advantage when you turn it into U.S. dollars, that will be good. On the other, it makes imported goods more expensive and there might be some inflationary impact from that."
You're a lefty.
But what does your statement even mean? You think companies got greedier recently? That consumers got dumber?
We've had consolidation in some industries that is not helpful for competition. We have had an insane increase in expectations of the middle class. I don't think that's bad per se. We should want to be richer as a whole and increase expectations over time. But it is a little jarring to hear people talk about what a middle class person "should" be able to do, and realize it's basically live with more conspicuous consumption than rich people did 25 years ago.
But those can't be the real problem because inflation isn't bad in those areas. Because the government allows markets to respond and increase supply in response and don't restrict competition, or at least not to the extent of completely breaking the market. If you recognize that Griggs v. Duke Power is absurd and repeal it by statute, and college is probably half the cost on average at this point. Tie student loan caps to CPI-U 30 years ago, and college would have magically tracked inflation. Let people build. Loosen restrictions on healthcare licensing to allow reasonable licensing (or hell, at least fund more residencies if you're going to keep the current system), or god forbid, allow people to choose to buy health insurance that doesn't cover the latest and greatest, and you'd see healthcare be affordable (probably still a baumol's cost disease issue there where it would still be higher than CPI over time, but it wouldn't be an anchor hanging from the neck of the middle class). Housing is probably the easiest of all. Just make affordable housing legal, and it would suddenly be affordable.
It's really not complicated outside of healthcare (although that's not nearly as complicated as we make it). It's just not politically easy and the middle and upper middle/lower upper class wouldn't stand for most of the changes necessary to make things affordable (although they'd probably have been fine with repealing Griggs v. Duke Power if they ahd realized how badly it was 17ing everything up).
I mean, I think the latter is definitely possible and maybe even likely, but I'm still unclear on your model for how that drives inflation. Consumers got dumber with respect to things like healthcare, housing, cars, and food and beverage, but smarter with respect to software, cell phones, clohting, tv's, etc?
The American consumer keeps complaining about the prices of everything but keeps buying nonessential items and living above what they make like they are going to die if they don’t
YEP. And while everyone has personal agency and responsibility, it's worth remembering there's a LOT of smart folks whose job it is to do anything possible to get consumers to make those choices.
Both are true. Hard times here but exponentially harder in other places. Not that that matters here. It is just perspective for a sense of gratitude that we live here and not there. I still go back to the reality that just 3 generations ago, it was not about convienence, comforts, multiple decent cars, vacations, enterntaiment... It was a daily grind just to survive. Not that long ago. We have had unprecedented prosperity and that is not normal and not sustainable.
We are trending back to a modest lifestyle and more dependent on community than the last 40 years.
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Bro, housing, healthcare, education aren't the only things increasing exponentially. Every day products, local taxes, insurances, utilities. Unless you are putting each of those things in
Most of that stuff is what the average person is buying it's not like they are buying expensive stuff on purpose, I'm not looking at a Cadillac. I'm looking at the Hyundai. The cost difference on that alone is insane for what an economy car goes for. I'm buying regular old cereal not fancy yogurt. I'm buying water and electricity same rate as always but the the cost per unit had gone way up. Cost per pound of most everything is way higher. And the pay increases for most have not been matching all the increases when summed together.
On average wages have outpaced CPI-U, and would have by decent margin if you remove the big ticket items that the government 17s up.
We're still working through the inflation baked in by Congress deciding to simultaneously shut down large portions of the economy while helicoptering money and while the FED was completely asleep at the wheel. We're largely worked through that pain and you're generally seeing what you would expect, which is for wages to slightly outpace CPI as productivity increases. But many more potential gains are sucked up by housing, healthcare, and education. You get the government to stop 17ing those up, and everybody would feel and actually be a lot richer over time. No magic formula for the short term though as all of the possible fixes will take a while to start making a real difference.
I’m really proud of the pack for the thread making it this far. It’s been a good read.
As for life, I’m 43 with a two year old boy. He’s perfectly healthy, smart and handsome. I’m broke and his mother hates me…..but every morning, first thing ….i thank god that he is mine and I can hold him. Everything else is lagniappe.
As for life, I’m 43 with a two year old boy. He’s perfectly healthy, smart and handsome. I’m broke and his mother hates me…..but every morning, first thing ….i thank god that he is mine and I can hold him. Everything else is lagniappe.