vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
* Likewise with health-insurance -- dirt cheap while you're young, and even cheap when your middle aged if you have no kids (and with good reason, no ""pregnancy/birth"" costs, no vaccinations or childhood diseases, no tonsil-removal operations, etc.) * Etc. Quite seriously, **people without kids simply don't have as many REASONS to work like ""slaves"".** A single person or childless couple can easily buy a home, car and other assets and pay it all off in a few short years (certainly less than a decade) -- **and live content &amp; fairly well on a minimal income** after that. Remember things like **cars chiefly wear down because of ""mileage""**; and most mileage is spent either chasing after INCOME (commuting to/from a job from a home in the suburbs, said home bought ""to get the KIDS into a good school"" and ""to give the KIDS room to play"", etc) -- OR chasing round for the KIDS -- explicitly playing ""taxi driver"" carrying the kids around to/from school, team sports &amp; other inane ""activities"". Ergo, the childless person (or couple) really doesn't HAVE to chase after the all-mighty dollar in the same way. *Instead they can enjoy life &amp; leisure (and to paraphrase MasterCard, that can be ""priceless"").*"
can't afford my dream house... If you don't have the down payment to make the numbers work (remember that this doesn't even include closing costs yet), there are other loan options like FHA loans that can go as low as about 5% down payment. The math would be the same but you replace 0.8 with 0.95. Then, look at your personal budget. Come up with general estimates of what you currently bring in and spend each month overall. Just ballpark it... Next, figure what you currently spend towards housing in particular. Whether you are paying for it or your landlord is paying for it, someone pays for a lot of different things for housing. For now, my list would include (1) Rent, (2) Mortgage Payment, (3) Electricity, (4) Gas, (5) Sewer, (6) Water, (7) Trash, (8) Other utilities... TV/Internet/Phone, (9) Property Insurance, (10) Renter's Insurance, and (11) Property Taxes. I would put it into a table in Excel somewhere that has 3 columns... The first has the labels, the second will have what you spend now, and the third will have what you might spend on each one as a homeowner. If you pay it now, put it in the second column. If your landlord pays it right now, leave it out as that's included in your rent payment. Obviously each cell won't be filled in. Fill in the rest of the third column. You won't pay rent anymore, but you will have a mortgage payment. You probably have a good estimate of any electricity bills, etc that you currently pay, but those may be slightly higher in a house vs. a condo or an apartment. As for things like sewer, water, trash or other 'community' utilities, my bet would be that your landlord pays for those. If you need a good estimate ask around with some co-workers or friends that own their own places. They would also be a good resource for property insurance estimates... shooting from the hip I would say about $100/month based on this website. (I'm not affiliated).
It's possible that by the time you're done fixing that house up some, through your own creative efforts or through the help you might get from your friends, you could end up with a $250,000 house, own it, and reap all the great benefits of owning rather than renting...or...better yet, sell that place for a nice profit, then turn around and buy the next one already fixed up with your newly acquired great credit to help you with the new mortgage, and ready for you to move in and enjoy. It's how my wife and I got started (only we didn't have the benefit of historically low interest rates) and if we can do it, I believe you can too. Here are a couple tips that might help out....1) Don't spend a lot of money to fix the place...try to find the time to do the simpler tasks yourself. If you don't have the skills, you can learn them on youtube or by picking the brains of all the great willing people working at your local discount home project superstore. 2) Cosmetics go a long way towards increasing the value of a house. a) needs paint and b) needs carpet but not a) major structural damage and b) needs roof. Regarding some of your other points... HOA, hopefully if you buy in a formal community, the HOA should be less than $200. If it's more than that, it might be harder to do as I suggest. Closing Costs, probably more like 4 - 5% Taxes, monthly if included in mortgage, normally quarterly or semi-annually if not Utilities...you're budgeting quite high for that. Depending on your area, you might only spend an average of $200/month, maybe even less. Insurance...see answer for taxes Regular maintenance, $1K a year might be about right but we better include irregular also, which comes up more often than you might think when owning, let's say $2 - $3 a year. Unexpected costs. Expect the unexpected but if the place needs a new roof or something big like that, then you didn't do your homework before buying.
I would not recommend borrowing your 401(k) money to buy a house for two reasons: When you borrow money from your 401(k), it is no longer invested. Yes, you pay yourself interest, but you miss out on the investment gains for the life of the loan.  If you leave your job, the loan is due in full shortly thereafter. If you do not pay it back, you are hit with taxes and penalties.  If I were you, I would roll it over into an IRA for the reasons you mentioned.
Are there setbacks from streams, swamps, ponds, wetlands, or steep slopes? Choosing a builder. For construction loans, banks want builders who will build what is agreed upon, in a timely fashion. If you want to build your own house, talk to your loan officer about what the bank expects in a builder. Plansets and permits. The construction loan process. If you hire a general contractor, and if you have difficulties with the contractor, you might be forced to refuse to accept some work as being complete. A good bank will back you up. Ask about points, appraisal charges, and inspection fees. Insurance during construction. Some companies have good plans -- if the construction takes 12 months or less. Some (but not all) auto insurance companies also offer good homeowners' insurance for homes under construction. Choose your auto insurance company accordingly. Property taxes. Don't forget to include them in your post-construction budget. Homeowners' insurance. Avoid properties that need flood insurance. Apply a sanity check to flood maps -- some of them are unrealistic. Strongly consider earthquake insurance. Don't forget to include these costs in your post-construction budget. Energy costs. Some jurisdictions require you to calculate how large a heating system you need. Do not trust their design temperatures -- they may not allow for enough heating during a cold snap, especially if you have a heat pump. (Some heat pumps work at -10°F -- but most lose their effectiveness between 10°F and 25°F.) You can use these calculations, in combination with the number of ""heating degree days"" and ""cooling degree days"" at your site, to accurately estimate your energy bills. If you choose a mobile or manufactured home, calculate how much extra its energy bills will be. Home design. Here are some good sources of ideas: A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander. Alexander emphasizes building homes and neighborhoods that can grow, and that have niches within niches within niches. The Not-So-Big House, by Sarah Susanka. This book applies many Alexander's design patterns to medium and large new houses. Before the Architect.
"From the details you have given it looks like you have ""Unit Linked"" insurance policy. In such policies a part of the premium goes towards the ""Insurance"", the balance is invested into ""Mutual Funds / stock Market"". It is generally not advisable to have ""Unit Linked"" policy compared to pure ""Term"" policy. Generally the amount of fees charged for ""Unit Linked"" policy is high and hence the returns to the end user are low. i.e. if you buy a ""Term"" insurance for the same sum insured and invest on your own the balance in any ""Mutual Fund"" you will end up making more that what you are getting now. Typically these policies have 3 years lock-in period. As you have purchased this in 2008, you can cancel the policy without any penalties. This will save you future premium and you can buy a term insurance and invest the difference yourself. Note the unit linked policy is useful for people who do not invest on their own and this is a good way to be forced into saving than nothing else."
The justification is eminent domain. It's very simple; when you buy land in the U.S. and a State thereof, you are still a citizen and/or resident of that State and the U.S., and subject to their laws. You're not creating your own country when you buy a house. As such, the government charges you for the facilities and services they provide in your area and your State, which are then your privilege to use. Obviously roads aren't free; a one-mile stretch behind my house is costing the county $15 million to expand it from 2-lane to 4-lane. Here's the kicker; you've already been paying these taxes. You think your landlord's just going to take the property taxes for the whole apartment complex on the chin? He's out to make money, and doing that requires charging a sufficient amount to cover costs, including taxes he incurs. You just never see ""allocated property taxes"" as an item on your rent statement, just like you don't see ""allocated landowner mortgage"", ""allocated facilities maintenance"", ""allocated gross margin"" etc. You know you're getting shafted, paying someone else's financing with a little extra on the side to boot. That's why you want a house. Unfortunately, not being able to pay these taxes is a grim reality for some people, old and young, and government generally doesn't go easy on delinquent homeowners. After medical bills and mortgage delinquency, property tax delinquency is the number three reason for bankruptcy, and only a mortgage or property tax delinquency can cause your home to be seized and sold. Well that and using it for criminal enterprise, but unless you're running a meth lab in your half-million-dollar home or financing it with coke money I wouldn't worry about that score. Retirement planners figure property taxes into cost of living, and they do often advise a downgrade from the 2-story house you raised your children in to something smaller (for many reasons, including lower taxes). There really isn't a way to structure a completely ""pay-as-you-go"" metropolitan area, and you wouldn't want to live in it if there were.
Your spending money account will be empty but you will still have food money. Set your debit card up so that it denies your charge if you dont have enough money. Once you realize how much you truly spend for needs in each category, yoy will only put that much in each account. Therefore, You can't use the house card to just ""borrow"" from it till next month. If you do, you won't be able to pay your bills. If you have so little discipline that you knowingly spend your bill money, then there is a deeper issue going on than just finding the right budgeting/cash flow system for you. Something is seriously wrong and you need to seek professional help. When someone is trying to help you, the first step is to determine what category you are spending too much in. Then when you realize it's the house category, for example, you will need to figure out why you are spending so much in that category. A bank statement wont tell you that. So you can do what we did. On every receipt --before you walk out of the store-- write down what each purchase is on the receipt. Then you can hand over the receipts to whoever is helping you. Most items are easily recognizable on the receipt so you wont have to write everything down. you should be doing this for insurance purposes anyway. Again, if your receipt is so blooming long that this is onerous, probably everything you just spent is not a need and maybe you need to turn right around and return stuff. Maybe you need to go to the store more often so there are only a few purchases on each receipt. Groceries are groceries. You don't need to detail that out. For Ikea when you have to purchase pieces to a set, we get a separate receipts for each. So the brackets and shelving for the bedroom will be on one receipt and the brackets and shelving for the other room will be on another receipt. Even at the store I cant figure out what all the little pieces are! But really, if you are making a decent enough salary, then you are probably spending too much on wants and are calling the items needs. So really your problem is correctly identifying needs from wants.
You are not a landlord.  You have choices: The current situation is charity. And that's ok, so long as you acknowledge it. In the big picture, anything less than market rent is a gift that you are giving the person living in your house. A good tenant might keep the place in better shape, and deserve a lower rent, but that's a quid pro quo. In the end, landlording is a business. If you had 10-20 apartments, they would be proving an income to you and you would have a large chunk of your wealth tied up in it. You would keep the apartments in good shape both to be legal and not a slumlord, but you'd also collect market rent. $100/apt would be $1000-$2000/mo income to you and your family.  You wife is right. As always. You have a decision to make to stop the bleeding.
Or you could flip houses. i'm not sure where you live but hwere im from its not uncommon to buy a house for 5k or a duplex for 8k. put about 4k into it and charge about 600 rent. or put 4k into the 8k, thats 12k sell it for 20. if it takes a year that's a 66% return on your investment in one year. and its small risk. also, if it doesnt sell, youre still renting it out with month to month or 3-6 month leases.
I've heard that B&amp;N also OWNS the property of the bookstore itself, so there are other benefits beyond selling books. Most other book stores simply rented the property, which means they HAD to make quote for sales.   I love browsing book stores, but it's SO much more convenient, faster and cheaper to buy online, half.com or amazon are my gotos for when I know what book I want.
I've tried to argue this to some close friends who bought homes, pre/post-crisis, if the crisis ever ended, they thought it was ridiculous. There is a clear fulcrum where renting makes more sense than buying, when appropriate inputs of data are entered into the model. I think Khan Academy did a good 10-minute run down on the subject and used a relatively good model, as well.   Further than that, I read the first few paragraphs and stopped reading, it was a commercial. I was shocked. The entire thing up till' 2 paragraphs in is literally a commercial.   The supposed 'antagonist', explicitly implied by the title isn't actually an antagonist, it's a click-bait commercial -article posing as a real article, (imitation), that actually might have some real science below the commercial, as you've indicated, but that part also sounds like junk finance; to sell the idea to consumers that they should in fact buy homes (instead of rent), and get loans from banks (preferably this one), and do anything to achieve that, if need be, even move in with their parents.   This financial institution appears to have a sophisticated public relations marketing team doing their commercials-posing-as-news campaign(s).   Very interesting to see the marketing beast morph itself into something so sophisticated, as to contain such clear imitation, junk science, and click-bait. I wonder what kind of penetration they are getting with this model, and what percentage of those see it for what it is.   I suppose that would be a big-data question, answerable through analytics.
So you're telling me you can't commute upwards of one hour away from your work to find affordable housing? That is what Californians do.   High-price houses are a convenience based on location, you can easily find great deals if you're willing to remove convenience.
Similar thing in Korea. Since many people use public transportation, it makes more sense to buy grocery and other items, drop it off at the delivery station, then head home. Your stuff gets delivered to your house same day, and you don't have to worry about lugging the bags home.
Yeah those are similar numbers to the largest cities in the US.  You can buy a house in or near a mid-sized US city for 100K but it would be a very basic house in good not great neighborhood.  After the downturn, I bought 2 houses as investments.  One I bought for 31,000 USD and after renovations I had 85,000 in it.  Sold it for 115,000.  The other I bought for  $91,000.  I still have that one.  It rents for $1200/mo and is currently worth maybe $140,000 (3 Bedrooms, 1 full bath, 1 half bath, 1400 sq ft).  It is a very safe area but Cincinnati city schools.  FYI Cincinnati has a STEM academy that is one of the top public schools in the country but you have to test into that specific school.    Those prices just blow me away.  I make a very good living plus the investment income and I don't think I could even sort of make the payment on 1.4 million for a shack.  Everyone can't be a trust fund baby or a Google millionaire.  FYI(2) I joined a Bay Area internet startup back in the day and in the end it got bought up by an ERP company.  My stock that I hoped to make millions on got me a $45,000 payday (so a lot better than nothing but in no way buying me a house in the Bay Area)
You may have to put some of the money into cash equivalents with negligible return. But this should allow you to research more what your situation really is. If we set returns to 3.5% after inflation and 2.4% after inflation and taxes, that changes the numbers slightly but importantly. The ""no house"" number becomes .024N. The ""with house"" number becomes So that's $24,000 (which needs to include rent) versus -$800 (no rent needed). There is not enough money in that plan to have any remainder to live on in the ""with house"" option. Given the constraints for N and these assumptions about returns, you would be $800 to $8000 short every year. This continues to assume that property taxes are 10% of the property value annually. Lower property taxes would of course make this better. Higher property taxes would be even less feasible. When comparing to people with homes, remember the option of selling the home. If you sell your .2N home for .2N and buy a .08N condo instead, that's not just .12N more that is invested. You'll also have less tied up with property taxes. It's a lot easier to live on $20k than $8k. Or do a reverse mortgage where the lender pays the property taxes. You'll get some more savings up front, have a place to live while you're alive, and save money annually. There are options with a house that you don't have without one."
"No, it won't work like that. Get rid of regulations and people sill start building shitty houses that will fall down.  Even better solution, havethe governmenr sieze all property, and now you don't buy a house, you merley ""rent"" it from the governement."
You could use the money to buy a couple of other (smaller) properties. Part of the rent of these properties would be used to cover the mortgage and the rest is income.
"&gt;I would expect to see more ""rent with option to buy/contract for deed"" sales when the flipper crowd realizes they need to address the fact that buyers can be found without using banks.  Provided the sellers can afford to ""self-finance"" the deals, yes.  But the plain fact is that a lot of Boomers are highly leveraged -- they may have their name on the title deed of a McMansion and a couple of vacation homes, but these days they all too often hit retirement with significant mortgages on one or more of those properties -- so the reality is that a lot of them will NOT be able to sell without getting the bank involved (and that number will be sufficient to drive the ""at the margin"" prices way down, especially in the face of minimal demand)."
New York City is high cost-of-living, and I have absolutely no clue why people live there.  It's a tough place, and the taxes are oppressive.  People buy a studio apartment for $150,000 that has 175 square feet (that's not a typo) plus a $700/month maintenance fee that continues after the mortgage is paid off.  And that's just what the fee is now. Our rental house (which used to be our primary residence) at 1,300 square feet has a (15-year) mortgage payment of about $800, and $1,000 per year in property taxes.  And my area isn't particularly low cost-of-living. High cost-of-living is just that.  More money flies out the door just for the privilege of living there.  You make good investments with real estate by buying property at a good price in a good location.  Those deals are everywhere, but in high CoL locations you're probably more susceptible to price fluctuations which will trap you in your property if your mortgage goes underwater. Anyway, that's a long way of saying that I don't buy your recommendation to get property in high CoL areas.  There are desirable low CoL places to live, too.
"But look at the bright side. The Home Owners Association is telling your neighbor (for the low low fee of $200 every 4 months) to put his garbage can into his garage after every garbage pickup. Your house is worth a fortune, even if nobody is willing to buy the 12 houses for sale on your block (never mind the fact that they have been for sale for the past 2 years or the fact that nobody is willing to ""rent"" a place in butt fuck Egypt for $1500 a month)."
"Note that the quote distinguishes between ""all families"" and ""families with some savings"" - this just means there are so many families with less than 5k that they equal all those with savings above 5k. That might be because they are young and haven't started yet, or because it is just not a priority for them compared to food and rent. Nothing about the quote suggests that anyone believes once you've saved 5k, you're done. In fact since they show savings vs age, you can immediately see many people still have decades to save more. They may have 5k or less now, but they're not retiring now. How do you survive if you get to 65 and have nothing saved? There is some government money (social security) and many people sell their houses or get a reverse mortgage. Having equity in a house is not the same as having savings. And some older people live very frugally - they stop buying clothes, they stop redecorating their houses - while others live in flat out poverty. But you can't tell if that is their future from the fact they only had 5k saved when they were 32."