vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Strictly by the numbers, putting more than 20% down is a losing proposition.  With interest rates still near all time lows, you're likely able to get a mortgage for less than 4%. The real rate of a return on the market (subtracting inflation and taxes) is going to be somewhere around 5-6%.  So by this math, you'd be best off paying the minimum to get out of PMI, and then investing the remainder in a low fee index fund. The question becomes how much that 1-2% is worth to you vs how much the job flexibility is worth. It boils down to your personal risk preference, life conditions, etc. so it is difficult to give good advice.  The 1-2% difference in your rate of return is not going to be catastrophic.    Personally, I would run the numbers with your fiance.  Build a spreadsheet tracking your estimated net worth under the assumption that you make a 20% down payment and invest the rest.  Then hold all other factors equal, and re-build the spreadsheet with the higher down payment.  Factor in one of you losing your job for a few years, or one of you taking off for a while to raise the kids.   You can make a judgement call based how the two of you feel about those numbers.
There are a few ways to look at this question. Assumptions. Per the original post's assumptions, this answer: In other words, if the owner paid the mortgage on its original schedule, the deal could boil down to a $ 40,000 up-front payment, in exchange for $ 200,000 of equity after 30 years. Or the deal could boil down to a $ 40,000 up-front payment, in exchange for a $ 810.70 monthly payment starting in 30 years. While the owner is paying down the mortgage, the return on equity is the principal payment divided by the equity. The principal payment is the net rent minus non-financing costs and interest, so it is actually a profit. The initial return on equity is 6.321 % APR, or 6.507 % APY. This is calculated by dividing the $ 210.70 monthly principal payment by the initial $ 40,000 equity, and converting from monthly return to annual return. After 30 years, the return on equity is 4.864 % APR, or 4.974 % APY. This is calculated by dividing the $ 810.70 monthly cash flow (which is no longer reduced by mortgage payments) by the $ 200,000 equity after 30 years, and converting from monthly return to annual return. The cap rate is the same as the return on equity in the absence of debt. In this example, 4.864 % APR, or 4.974 % APY. The return on equity declines from 6.507 % APY initially to 4.974 % APY after 30 years. This is because the cap rate exceeds the note rate (4.974 % APY vs. 4.594 % APY), and the leverage decreases from 5x to 1x. The weighted average compound annual growth rate of the equity during the 30 years is 5.511 % APY. Per the original poster's answer, this is computed by taking the 30th root of the 5-fold increase in equity. Because the owner made no extra principal payments (besides those already discussed), the relevant amounts are the initial $ 40,000 owner payment and the final $ 200,000 owner equity.
For big values the loss becomes negligible. Say you have a 10% chance to get 10 million $/€/Whatever, expected value 1m. You sell that chance for 990k, which loses you 10k of expected income. Why would you throw away 10k? Because in the face of getting almost 1m the 10k are insignificant, 1m and 990k will make you roughly equally rich. Also the richness increase from 1m to 10m is less than 10x since 1m gives you maybe 90% of the freedom that 10m does (depending on how well you can make 10m work for you, most people will just let it rot in the bank). Another way to look at it is to look at bankruptcy risk. Say I have 10k in the bank, which is nice. Those 10k cannot pay for a new house or 2 cars (mine and the one I hit), so I have a small risk of significant loss. If I buy an insurance I reduce my chance of going bankrupt from maybe 0.001% to 0% for a fairly small price. Usually you can buy insurance fairly cheap if you raise your deductible to maybe 5k (both for the house and the car) so that you shoulder the risk you can (shouldering risk = gaining money) and paying an insurance to shoulder the rest for you. That way you minimize the cost to remove the risk of bankruptcy. It makes sense to shoulder as much risk as you can (unless a fixed fee of the insurance makes in unfeasible) before paying others to do it for you so you can optimize your income while removing fatal risks.
It seems very risky have all of your net worth in this one home. If I were to buy the house, I'm not sure I would put that much down, consider 20% and keep cash on hand, in retirement assets, etc. I would look at how much a mortgage, plus interest, taxes, insurance, etc. would cost with 50% down and with 20% down and see how that impacts your cash flow. Renting may make more sense, it's hard to tell without more specifics (NYTimes Rent/Buy calculator is a nice tool), but regardless, I would not want to have so much net worth tied into one asset and so would opt for less money down if I were to buy. Focus on rebuilding some retirement assets.
I bought Health Insurance for myself after a period without it, and my premiums were not terrible. I was a 27 year old man, living in California, no preexisting conditions, and I paid approximately 90$ a month. This was for a standard Health Insurance plan.  However, when I moved back to NY a little while later, insurance companies wanted almost $500/month for catastrophic coverage.  So, from personal experience, my answer is that price varies widely by state. Different states have different regulations as to what Health Insurance Companies need to cover and at what price. In NY, Health Insurance companies can't charge different rates according to age. Also, in NY, there is a price spiral, where the price is so high, few people buy it, so they have to raise the price because not enough well people are in the pool, so fewer people buy it.... To test it out, go to an online insurance broker, like ehealthinsurace, and put in your proposed information, including that you haven't been covered for a period. This way you will know.
Hot damn, I wish there were more democrat assholes that would happily announce they'll fire people if Romney goes into office, because neither really affects their business at all.  Actually, Romney would be worse, because he wants to make it illegal to discriminate and illegal to have a waiting period but also not require people to buy insurance.  I will wait until I get sick to buy insurance, then cancel right after I'm well. It'll be really cheap and mean I pay in less (and so will everyone else, because it would be fiscally stupid to not do it) than I take from the pool.
So what you're saying is if government didn't steal everyone's money to buy something then we woukdn't have it at all? Have you ever been outside your house? And I don't know where the hell you live but I have to pay for my own internet, had to pay to get the lines put in too.
I think playing certain kinds of lottery is as economically sound as buying certain kinds of insurance.  A lottery is an inverted insurance. Let me elaborate.  We buy insurance for at least two reasons. The first one is clear: We pay a fee to protect ourselves from a risk which we don't want to (or cannot) bear. Although on average buying insurance is a loss, because we pay all the insurance's office buildings and employee's salaries, it still is a reasonable thing to do. (But it should also be clear that it is unreasonable to buy insurance for risks one could easily bear oneself.) The second reason to buy insurance is that it puts us at ease. We don't have to be afraid of theft or of a mistake we make which would make us liable or of water damage to our house. In that sense we buy freedom of sorrow for a fee, even if the damage wouldn't in fact ruin us. That's totally legitimate. Now I want to make the argument that buying a lottery ticket follows the same logic and is therefore not economically unreasonable at all. While buying a lottery ticket is on average a loss, it provides us with a chance to obtain an amount of money we would normally never get. (Eric Lippert made this argument already.) The lottery fee buys us a small chance of something very valuable, much as the insurance frees us from a small risk of something very bad. If we don't buy the ticket, we may have 0% chance of becoming (extremely) rich. If we buy one, we clearly have a chance > 0%, which can be considered an improvement. (Imagine you'd have a 0.0000001% chance to save the life of a loved one with a ticket who'd be 100% doomed otherwise. You'd bite.) Even the second argument, that an insurance puts us at ease, can be mirrored for lotteries. The chance to win something may provide entertainment in our otherwise dull everyday life. Considering that playing the lottery only makes sense for the chance to obtain more money than otherwise possible, one should avoid lotteries which have lots of smaller prizes because we are not really interested in those. (It would be more economical to save the money for smaller amounts.) We ideally only want lotteries which lean on the big money prizes.
Having a highly liquid emergency fund can lubricate the wheels for disaster recovery.  For example, several years ago I returned from a vacation to discover that, during my absence, a plumbing fixture had broken and my house was flooded. Since we had sufficient liquidity to cover the cost of the repairs in our emergency fund, the insurance company was much easier to deal with, and the relationships between the contractor, bank, and insurance company were much smoother. The bank was able to approve the insurance in minutes versus days. Ironically, we didn't actually have to touch our emergency fund precisely because we had it. Clarification - I make it a point to have no debt.
I like to buy video games, my wife likes to buy books. This is not for vacation, or stuff together, but just little, tiny stuff you can do for your self, without asking ""permission"". The number should be small, and equal. Maybe 50€. Finally setup a budget. House Stuff 200€, Car stuff 400€. etc. etc. then it doesn't matter who bought the house stuff. You only have to coordinate so that you don't both buy house stuff. After some time (took us around 6 months) you will find out how this works and you can add on some rules. For example, I don't go to Best Buy alone. I will spend too much on ""house stuff"". My wife doesn't like to make the budget, so I handle that, then we go over it. Things like that."
"I hate when people say this type of thing. Someone spending $20k on an event is using their residual income, and can most definitely also afford to go on vacations. It's like saying ""I'd never buy a Lamborghini, I'd buy a house instead"". That's nice wishful thinking, but the dude getting a Lambo isn't going to have an issue having a house."
@Jeremy Using CVV doesn't decrease the transaction cost. I know this because I have quotes for CC transactions and the cost/transaction doesn't depend on using CVV. That said we don't plan to use CVV because we sell insurance and the likelihood that someone who steals CC will buy insurance is very low.
"Let's face it: most people pay more in insurance premiums than they ""get back"" in claims.  I put ""get back"" in quotes because, with very few exceptions, the money paid out in claims does not go to the insured, but to others, such as doctors and hospitals.  But even if you ignore the question who does the money actually go to, it's a losing proposition for most people. The exceptions are those who have a major loss, greater than what they put in over the years.  But never forget: these are exceptions.  The return on your money, on the average, is only a little better than playing the lottery. The usual counter-argument to the above is, but what if you are one of the exceptions?  I for one refuse to let my life be dictated by worries of unlikely events that might happen.  If you're the sort who obsesses on what could (but probably won't) happen, then maybe you should have insurance.  Just don't tell me I need to do the same. When I lived in California, they had a program where you could deposit $25,000 with the State, and then you could drive, legally, without insurance.  I did this for a while, didn't have any accidents, and exited the system (when I moved out of state) a few years later with more money (interest) than I put in.  You don't accomplish that with insurance. But let's get back to rich people.  Unless you get into an accident with you at fault and the other guy needing a head transplant as a result (joke), you could probably absorb the cost of an accident without blinking an eye.  Those in the upper-middle-class might do well with high-deductible insurance that only pays out if there's an extreme accident. Then again if you have to borrow to buy something expensive (making monthly payments), they will usually demand you buy insurance with it.  This is a way for the lender to protect himself at your expense, and if you refuse, good luck getting a loan somewhere else. I hate the idea of insurance so much I would make an act of insurance punishable by law."
"In your particular condition could buy the condo with cash, then get your mortgage on your next house with ""less than 20%"" down (i.e. with mortgage insurance) but it would still be an owner occupied loan. If you hate the mortgage insurance, you could save up and refi it when you have 20% available, including the initial down payment you made (i.e. 80% LTV ratio total). Or perhaps during the time you live in the condo, you can save up to reach the 20% down for the new house (?). Or perhaps you can just rent somewhere, then get into the house for 20% down, and while there save up and eventually buy a condo ""in cash"" later. Or perhaps buy the condo for 50% down non owner occupied mortgage... IANAL, but some things that may come in handy: you don't have to occupy your second residence (owner occupied mortgage) for 60 days after closing on it. So could purchase it at month 10 I suppose. In terms of locking down mortgage rates, you could do that up to 3 months before that even, so I've heard. It's not immediately clear if ""rent backs"" could extend the 60 day intent to occupy, or if so by how long (1 month might be ok, but 2? dunno) Also you could just buy one (or the other, or both) of your mortgages as a 20% down conventional ""non owner occupied"" mortgage and generate leeway there (ex: buy the home as non owner occupied, and rent it out until your year is up, though non owner occupied mortgage have worse interest rates so that's not as appealing). Or buy one as a ""secondary residency"" mortgage? Consult your loan officer there, they like to see like ""geographic distance"" between primary and secondary residences I've heard.
Cryptocurrency investments. Got lucky and turned 1k into 50k in a month. 25k given to me from family members and 25k saved from working. I have a college degree btw. I just can't use it because i have deeprooted anxiety issues keeping me underemployed. Anyway 100k isn't a lot. I can't even buy a house and can barely even get a downpayment where i live and i wouldn't come close to being able to pay my mortgage.
The liquidity is quite bad. I have seen open Intrest drop from thousands to zero.  Theta and the lack of liquidity are strong reasons not to buy options. Instead, consider selling them.  They say that most Option purchases expire worthless. Why is this so? Because hedge funds buy those out-of-the-money puts in case their position goes against them (like insurance).  Make money selling insurance. No one makes money buying insurance.
"I recently requested an off-schedule escrow analysis. We refinanced a house in August and the servicer got confused about when the home owner's insurance was due (in October). They refunded the ""insurance"" money to us in September. That combined with the fact that the insurance amount was different than what they expected, made me request the escrow analysis. That way I can decide whether to pay up the escrow account now or do it over the next year. The servicer agent just said that the monthly payment amounts might change again in January when they do the usual analysis. If you like to set up automatic payments, that would be a downside. I haven't done that yet, so not a problem for me."
&gt; Their housing market appears to have really hit rock bottom,  Yep.  We didn't have the bubble of the 200Xs, but we crashed with everyone else.  Want to buy a house in Wayne County, MI?  I've got a good deal for you, 40% off what I paid for it in 2002.
We all have a concept of costs.  We have all said F that I am not paying $2.00 for a candy bar, but I'll pay that for that ice cream bar, only because we are used to paying $2.00 for an ice cream, but not $1.50 for a candy bar.   Business owners are the same.   I'll throw in my very limited knowledge of roofing.     Looked into doing it myself.  Could have had my roofing supplies delivered to my roof for about $1800, but didn't have the insurance so I got four bids to do my roof.  $6200, $6400, $9100 and $17,000.   Four guys showed up to my house and it was done in a  day.     Now I am a business owner.   I get that there is insurance, advertising, trucks, accounting, bookkeeping, etc.  But if you are talking about roofers.   4 guys x 8 hours= 32 man hours.   If you increase wages by $5.00 an hour that is $160.00.  Gotta think that being able to get a $6000 job even if it costs $160 more, is an acceptable cost. Even an additional $10 an hour is acceptable.
I'm building a big addition onto my house. It's my third huge construction job. I use Amazon to buy tools, lighting, wire, radiant heat supplies, small appliances, smart home items, and specialty parts. HD and Lowes are good for cheap or heavy items. I also want to inspect my lumber, but even that is better delivered from a lumber yard when I need more than a few dozen boards or sheets of drywall. I have things delivered to my house almost daily from Amazon.
i used to buy tools there.  Craftsman used to be a trustworthy brand.  theres a branch near my house,  its almost deserted and creepy and, misfiring? would be one way to say it.  been that way for a couple years.  i feel so terrible for the people working there.  ill never buy there again  you have any information about the CEO and his Activities? not that i doubt you, just curious
It's interesting that the most upvoted comments miss the point entirely.  They did not have tax/insurance escrows.  They make the point that they were not *required* by their loan docs to have escrows.  Further, they make the point that despite not being required to have escrows **AND** being current on taxes and insurance, B of A paid the taxes in duplicate and **forced** insurance.  I have several mortgages with B of A from acquired companies.  I have been current on insurance on all accounts with the same insurance provider since before the four years or so BoA has owned/serviced the accounts.  At least once a year BoA either notices me that they are going to or actually does force place insurance.  If I don't catch them in time it can be 8-10 phone calls over several months to get credited back properly.
It's really not possible to know what your best investment strategy is without knowing more about you, which isn't the place of a site like this. However I'll make some general comments about insurance policies as savings. Insurance policies are extremely inflexible. They lay down specific payments, and specific returns that you will get back. However typically if you don't follow the shcedule of payments laid down, you will lose almost all the benefit of the investment. Since you say you are a beginner, I'll assume you are young too. Maybe in a few years you will want to buy a house, or a nice car, or get married, or put money into some other investment opportunity. If you are committed to making  insurance policy payments you will have less available for the other things you want to do. Related to this is the 'estimated returns'. You say the 'nonguaranteed bonus is around 3.75%-5.25%'. But because an insurance policy locks you in, if it turns out that it's the low end of that - or worse - you can't get out, even if other investments are outperforming it.
You are correct that 20% has an impact on your interest rate, although it is not always hugely significant. You would have to do your own shopping around to find that information out. However 20% has an impact that I consider to be far more important than your monthly payment, and that is in your equity. If the DC market tanks, which I know it has not really done like much of the country but none of us have crystal balls to know if it will or not, then you will be more easily underwater the less you put down. Conversely putting 20% or more down makes you an easy sell to lenders [i]and[/i] means that you don't have to worry nearly so much about having to do a short sale in the future. I would never buy a house with less than 20% down personally and have lived well below my means to get there, but I am not you. With regards to mortgages, the cheapskate way that I found information that I needed was to get books from the library that explained the mortgage process to me. When it came time to select an actual broker I used my realtor's recommendation (because I trusted my realtor to actually have my interests at heart because he was an old family friend - you can't usually do that so I don't recommend it) and that of others I knew who had bought recently. I compared four lenders and competed them against each other to get the best terms. They will give you estimate sheets that help you weigh not only rates but costs of different fees such as the origination fee and discount points. Make sure to know what fees the lender controls and what fees (s)he doesn't so that you know which lines to actually compare. Beyond a lender make sure that before closing you have found a title company that you think is a good choice (your realtor or lender will try to pick one for you because that's the way the business is played but it is a racket - pick one who will give you the best deal on title), a settlment company (may be title company, lender, or other) that won't charge you an excessive amount, a survey company that you like if required in DC for your title insurance, and homeowner's insurance coverage that you think is a good deal.
Yes, I think many of them actually do. All one has to do is look at how people responded to the [*exact same responses to Syria under Obama as well as under Trump*](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html) to understand how much politics clouds people's thinking.   I think there is a percent of that population who never had to buy insurance before, and are not happy with having to now. I think there is a percent who had junk insurance before which wouldn't cover anything important and are upset that there is now a standard for coverage (and conveniently ignore the fact that they would leave the taxpayer responsible for covering it because the same people who buy shoddy insurance are usually the same people who can't cover catastrophic medical bills). Then I also think that there is a percentage of them who are facing the repercussions of their state government not enacting the Medicaid expansion and not taking part in the state exchanges. I think most of them have bought the party line - hook, line, and sinker - that this is all the ACA fault and that the GOP tinkering and obstructionism has nothing to do with it.
I don't have preexisting conditions. I am only speaking of how *my own personal* healthcare situation got worse because of the ACA.   I did used to use the dental and vision portions of my company-provided insurance regularly but I don't have that as part of my ACA insurance because again, it is unaffordable.