Posted on 11/12/2015 11:23:52 PM PST by Up Yours Marxists
OWNING your own house is as much the Australian dream as the American dream, and it's one that feels increasingly out of reach for many.
But when one user on Quora pondered whether it was ultimately better to rent or own your own home, blogger and investor James Altucher penned this highly controversial response:
I am sick of me writing about this. Do you ever get sick of yourself? I am sick of me.
But every day I see more propaganda about the American Dream of owning the home.
I see codewords a $15 trillion dollar industry uses to hypnotise its religious adherents to BELIEVE.
Lay down your money, your hard work, your lives and loves and debt, and BELIEVE!
But I will qualify: if someone wants to own a home, own one. There should never be a judgment. I'm the last to judge. I've owned two homes. And lost two homes.
If were to write an autobiography called: "My life - 10 miserable moments" owning a home would be two of them.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Your home is the most precious possession you could possibly achieve in your life. Destroy this and you destroy the middle class and the American Dream. Being secure in your own home IS the standard...is the American Dream.
I think you are always better off with a hard asset than not, whatever that asset is. If you own it, you have lower costs over time than renting it. It can also be converted to cash if need be. Cash is only good in stable economies. If the US economy goes Weimer, it wont matter how much cash you have as it will be essentially worthless.
The only exception I make is probably a vehicle. If you can get away without one, you’re probably better off financially.
Investors are now trying to interest retirees to buy several properties and rent them out.
Can’t have the public OWNING their homes when people have investment opportunities they are trying to make monthly income off of.
Totally makes sense to me.
Renting means someone still owns the property. Who does this person want owning it, government?
Several decades ago, a couple of my nutty sisters tried to convince my elderly mom to sell her house and just rent an apartment. I told my mom that was nuts, because even if she could afford the rent then, it would continually go up beyond her ability to pay. Years later, the house sold for many times what it was worth back then. Renting is okay while you're saving up for a down payment on a home, other than that it's money down the drain.
A house should be used as a home by its builder and owner, and houses do degrade and physically depreciate. There is something pathological about an economy that promotes disproportionate inflation of real property prices without real and substantial improvements. It’s only another fraud for getting money without doing real work.
I do own a house. But it in no way represents any form of “American Dream” to me. It is a house.
In my thought if a house is the “American Dream” and I achieve it at age 25 or 30 or 35 then I am going to have a pretty bored life for the next 30 - 40 years.
The “American Dream” is freedom. Freedom to choose, freedom to live, to pursue and achieve whatever it is I desire......
I guess these folks could always buy into a trailer park.
There is a certain permanence to that, a certain commitment, and if you aren't lucky enough to find a place that you're perfectly happy to contemplate being removed from wearing a toe tag, then perhaps the freedom of impermanence is more attractive. But if you happen to be determined and lucky enough to have what I do, that cabin in the forest on a lake overlooking a mountain, paid for by a lifetime of labor and with deed in hand, beholden to no one but a grasping state for taxes it routinely misspends...that's another issue...if you are in that position there is nothing in the world like owning a home. It's called a "dream" for a reason.
The author has the freedom to depart and put down new roots. I have the freedom to do what I wish with what is mine. Both have strictures preventing them from being labeled true "freedom" but I think I prefer the latter. If the author prefers the former, God bless him.
Live within ones means, control as much of your environment as possible, harden your assets, be self sufficient, have reserves and alternatives and the ability to barter for basic needs of food, water, shelter, health, security and transportation. Preclude, foresee and mitigate the damage from as many natural, federal, commercial, public and private threats possible your life ......
Liberty has a price. The cost is up to the individual .
Stay Safe !
Owning a home is losing its appeal for me that’s for sure, in part because you could lose it through asset forfeiture just because some crooked bureaucratic government thief or vindictive leftist politician decides to snap his fingers and take it. No court need be involved.
There just isn’t as much financial security in owning a home as there used to be.
At least in the old days, if the market were falling, you could sell it and get out.
Now you could lose it in the blink of an eye.
Of course, you could always lose a house in the blink of an eye in the past as well (fire, flood, tornado, etc.), but now such loss is significantly more likely, what with every thieving bureaucrat in the country eyeing it as though it were some tasty morsel just waiting to be snapped up. And don’t think it isn’t going to get worse. It’s BEEN getting worse.
Some of us are getting the impression that you might as well just sit on a big bag of money on some empty lot somewhere.
Maybe I should just get a bunker instead.
Renting may seem appealing until you have a place you really enjoy living in and the landlord says you have to leave.
My dream is to one day be a home owner of a small home with a large yard to grow a garden. Right now I’m renting and your right. Renting has its convenience like maintaining landscape but are lousy to fix things around the complex. They rather wait until you move out. Also rent keeps getting raised might as well use the amount on a mortgage toward a home than renting.
If the author means owning a home with a mortgage I can agree with him.Even though we truly never really own our home,even after the mortgage is burned.Because local property taxes will eat you alive especially if you have an irresponsible liberal government.
THIS.
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