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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • 380k with a 30 year mortgage and something like $25k down. Amortization on 5.89% will show at the end of it, you’ll pay over 774k for it. Mortgage payment would be $2150. That’s after closing costs. Property insurance and property taxes about $700/mo. And I live in a high property tax area.

    Utilities aren’t included, but I haven’t seen many rentals that include utilities either. The house may be bigger and use more utilities though.

    The lowest rent in my area for 3 bedrooms is 2.2k/mo and that’s an outlier. Most are $2,700+/mo. If I were to pay the $2.7k for 30 years, that’s just shy of $1 million. And at $2200, it’s just shy of $800k in 30 years. That’s break even.

    This isn’t even addressing the instability of rental prices. My mortgage payment is locked in, at a fixed interest rate. If I were to rent, there is no guarantee that the rent i am paying today is the rent I’ll be paying in 5 years.

    Renters should be getting renters insurance too, so add that to the renters side.

    Yea, I will have home repairs I’ll need to pay for. But I’ll also have equity that I can leverage for them if I need to. I’d have to put in $200k in the course of 30 years to match what a renter in my area would be spending. And that’s just repairs, if I were to spend on renovations and/or additions than it would raise the property value.

    As for capital gains, that’s only when I sell, but if I have to pay taxes because I made money. Well, then I made money instead of… Only spent money?

    If the house doesn’t appreciate and only holds it’s value, it’s an asset that protects against inflation.






  • Yea. I could go on and on about why I prefer cash a lot of times. Not always, but I always carry a couple hundred bucks on me. I also usually hide $20 or so somewhere in my car. Just in case I need gas and I forgot my wallet or the payment system was down or anything like that. It won’t get me a full tank. But it will get me home.

    The odds of getting robbed are slimmer than getting my credit card skimmed. I’ve had credit cards skimmed multiple times in the last few years. Last time I was robbed was over a decade ago, and that’s cause I passed out at a party and someone told my wallet.

    One could spend thousands of bucks before getting shut down (and thankfully I have good fraud protection so I didn’t pay) while the other got 50 bucks.

    Bartering is also a good one. It’s easier to barter with people at stands or who make their own goods. Most handymen or trades workers will charge you less if you pay in cash. They probably aren’t reporting the income, but they also aren’t having to pay the payment processor 5% of the total. When you make a $5000 repair to your house, that’s $250 just in fees the contractor/handyman has to pay. Cash avoids that.


  • One: Using a card means all transactions are tied to my financial history. For better or worse, I don’t want all my personal habits in a ledger somewhere.

    Two: Fees. Merchants have to pay fees on credit transactions.

    Three: Consolidating financial institutions between a handful of company’s. (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, etc)

    Four: Complexity. At least one side of the transaction must setup a system to interact with banks or credit cards. Cash is as simple as counting and handing it over.

    Five: Budgets. It’s been shown that people spend less when they use cash. When someone can see the money actually leave and what they have dwindles they are more responsible with their spending.

    Six: Tax evasion. Sometimes, if the waiter/waitress is struggling tipping in cash means it’s easier for them not to report that income.

    Seven: It makes it much harder to make financial transactions that aren’t “approved.” Whether or not you like it, some people want to be able to buy drugs or something else that isn’t legal. Or even worse, the whims of whatever payment processor they use. A private company shouldn’t get to say who can be a merchant and what they are allowed to sell.

    Eight: Gifts. Cash is just a simple, nice gift that Zelle or Venmo can’t replace.

    Nine: No chance of overdrafting and getting hit with bullshit fees.











  • brygphilomena@lemmy.worldtoComics@lemmy.mlThe DNC
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    2 months ago

    Shitty as it may sound, and as broken as the US political system is, our votes do count. Just not as much as they should.

    We need to vote Democrat until we have a viable option further left or that the right starts moving left to pull in voters forcing the Dems to go even further left. The more of us turn out and vote the more the Republican party is going to need to concede if they want to keep getting elected. I’m in a blue state so while my vote may not be the deciding factor I will still cast it for a left candidate so those on the right that do count the votes know that I want progressive policies and that they don’t represent me.

    I’d really like to see third parties focus on the local governments and build enough of a base that they can start competing at the state and national level. But sadly we aren’t there yet. We need to build that local movement first before voting third party in the presidential election makes sense.