opebo
Atlas Legend
Posts: 47,009
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« on: March 28, 2009, 03:13:12 PM » |
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It is very fashionable nowadays to say that renting is better than buying, and you can see why people talk this way, given the current climate.
However, it is not better. The fact is that for a working class person owning a home is no gaurantee of 'getting ahead', but it is at least a possibility creating some small savings - some little nest egg. To do this with renting you would have to really strenuously save every spare penny. In a sense it comes to the same thing, only with the house one is 'riding the market' - in other words one is effected by the government (aka the economy). With saved cash, its just cash under the mattress. Of course some would have you put that cash into 'investments' such as stocks, but this is far worse folly than the house, as it is quite likely to lose its value as well as providing no utility (at least the house you can live in).
Basically there are no good options, but owning a house is probably slightly less bad than renting, at least if one's goal is to have a small nest egg by the time on is old, sick, and dying. This nest egg will not really be enough to actually make any difference in one's working class demise, but it will very likely be larger than the nest egg of the working class renter.
The actual best advice for the working class person is to live entirely 'in the moment' and then have a spree when things get really bad.
That said, I love hearing the tales of Okiehomie and decry those who jeer at his struggles.
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