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Just got back from month long vacation # 3 this year, perspective fully changed: Working for money is fucking stupid. Wow, is it stupid.
I've met dozens of people who travel full time from property and investment income from their grandparents; and I am probably a couple years from fully supporting myself purely from passive income (though I'll probably keep working just to get the number higher; maybe pile up some burnable cash to buy more investment property during the next crash).
The switch was sudden and totally unrelated to anything specific I had done; it is just a result of two generations of skin flint behavior and interest rates. If your family line can get together mid six figures of money in investments and assets and sit on it for 1.5 generations without anyone buying penis compensation trucks or boats or developing a gambling addiction or fentanyl addition; you can just be fucking set. (Said in the tone of a joke, but actually a big ask according to the facts.)
The people talking about class war are 100% right; I can say that for a fact now that I've experienced it from both ends. It's really nice to be on the winning side for once. I just watch the money I float in my checking accounts go up 70k every couple months and most of it goes into investments that will only be dinged if the government of the USA collapses; recission proof and inflation proof and 98% risk free. It is so fucking easy to live solely off the sweat of other peoples brows; no wonder these dudes who were born into it start thinking they can't possibly fail.
All this to say: What the fuck do we do about the fact that owning shit and renting shit is just flat out better in every way than doing shit or making shit?
It's easier, it's safer, it's more sustainable over the course of your life, and you can pass it down to your kids locked away in trust so even the frailest son can't fuck it up.
I know that my solution (radical wealth redistribution, red-black shit at large, etc and so forth) isn't popular here; but even conservatives have got to recognize there is a problem.
How do you solve it without the revolution? Is that question even coherent?
I really suspect that's not 98% risk free, if you're talking about renting property. There are a lot of property investors who are overly leveraged and suffering right now, in the US and elsewhere. Think about it, if it was 98% risk free why wouldn't you go all in and leverage up?
Every property in the pool is owned outright; and aren't included in the low risk pile.
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if you got a fixed rate a two years ago, you are doing great.
Yes, and so are lottery winners. That doesn't refute the point that investing in real estate carries risk.
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Just prior to the pandemic I was toying with the idea of investing in multi family rental properties.
Thank God I didn’t. Even with the pandemic moratoriums lifted, our county deliberately underfunds eviction courts so that they hear only six cases per day. Last week I read a story of a guy who owns a house but has to live in his van because he can’t expeditiously evict the non-paying assholes he was unfortunate enough to have as tenants.
Yeah, shares are better IMO. Global companies, enormous amounts of liquidity sloshing around meaning easy, low-slippage transactions. No mucking about cleaning things up, no dealing with people, no real-life stresses and pressures, just profit and loss.
And stocks provide better returns too! https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052015/which-has-performed-better-historically-stock-market-or-real-estate.asp
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Because when you leverage it stops being 98% safe? Assume that you have something like 5-6 apartments/condos whatever that you inherited in good part of new york. They are all paid for and yours. Or even better - a saner city where there isn't rent control to complicate your life. As long as they cover the taxes and generate 3 months of your standard of living - you can stop working. If you leverage - suddenly you are exposed - even if you make more money, there is additional stress caused by your vulnerability. So your total QoL may decrease.
This. We aren't interested in doubling our returns if it increases risk above the no thoughts head empty level we are at now. The current level of growth and return is fine, no need to rock the boat for stary eyed yacht dreams.
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