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Comment Re: Another silly decision (Score 1) 480

The big difference between renting and buying is that instead of throwing away money to pay someone else's mortgage, you are building equity in your own property.

Renting is not throwing away money. Where I live (Seattle) rents are easily less than half what your monthly mortgage would be to buy. If I take the extra cash and invest it somewhere else, I'll have more money from my investments than I would have equity from buying. And that's not even accounting for maintenance costs, which are the landlords responsibility when you rent.

Depending on how much property values change and how rent compares with mortgage payments and maintenance, you could just as well say buying is throwing away money.

Renting in most markets is throwing away money. You are forgetting that rents increase not only with inflation but with availability of vacancies. I switched from years of renting to owning last summer and I am paying around the same as I would for rent for the same condo but I am building equity and I live in the 2nd least affordable city on earth. If the price of renting is the same or less than mortgage payments then you are better off owning even if you are single. If you cannot stay in the same job for at least 2 years or same city then there is something seriously wrong with you. You should have at least a 5 year plan.

Comment Re:Another silly decision (Score 1) 480

buying a home. Hasn't made sense since the 1970s. The social contract is broken, you no longer can rely on job security or a decent pension. Yet the banks still expect you to pay them on time. A home is a *liability*, not an investment.

No, rent is a liability with no possible return on what you put in. Renting is for suckers and I wish that I had bought over a decade ago instead of renting all that time. I finally got into the property market and the assessed value of my condo has increased in just 6 months.

Comment Re: Another silly decision (Score 4, Insightful) 480

Definitely a good option in your case. In ours, we found a townhome that allows us to paint and do limited remodeling, and plant a garden. And if anything major goes wrong, we don't have to foot the bill. Oh, and there's rent control on the entire complex, so raising the rent is indexed against property taxes (meaning property tax would also be going up like this).

Other than as a financial investment, I really can't see the reason for buying a condominium though -- you pay just as much, and own no land (but still have conditions you must agree to about property use).

I'd buy land in a rural area if I could afford to live there -- but that's what retiring people tend to do, and it's bumping up the land value pretty much everywhere as the boomers retire.

The big difference between renting and buying is that instead of throwing away money to pay someone else's mortgage, you are building equity in your own property. You do "own" a portion of the strata if you bought a "freehold" instead of a "leasehold". The latter is rent free for a period that is usually 99 years and after that date, you lose whatever value you had and have to enter into a lease with the land owner.

Comment Re:Now what's Tyyrone going to do for a living? (Score -1, Troll) 190

Hard to believe such a racist comment is posted from an account with positive karma, but even harder to believe this has been upvoted. WTF??

Are you an American? That would explain your lack of sense of humour. It's called black humour and ironically your righteous indignation makes you sound racist to non-Americans. Get with this century already.

Comment Re:Alien life (Score 1) 52

Well, there are beliefs substantiated by mathematics and overwhelming statistics, and then there are beliefs substantiated by coercion and threats of everlasting hell fire and torture unless you behave properly.

But you are still basing your belief on a combination of unsubstantiated (made up) constants and statistics deprived from those made up numbers. We only have one data point of planets with life, namely the earth. Everything in the Drake equation is fictitiously speculation.

Comment Re:Too bad about WWII (Score 1) 645

The world went to war against Germany to fight Nazism

No. The world tolerated the Nazis. We went to their Olympics. We marveled their zeppelins. Their eugenics ideas were fairly debated in universities. We made business deals and traded heavily with them.

The world went to war against their imperialism, not their policies. Don't pretend we actually gave a shit about their internal affairs. If they hadn't started a war, we'd have treated them like we treated China today.

Fine, imperialism. ISIS has taken significant portions of two countries already and has vowed to conquer more. Should that not be enough to motivate the nations to crush them?

Comment Re:Too bad about WWII (Score 1) 645

It's too bad the Allies released those photos of the concentration camps. They were literally working for the Nazis and their SS arm.

Yeah, so many do not realize that ISIS and groups like them are acting like Nazi Germany. The world went to war against Germany to fight Nazism knowing that not every German was a Nazi but something had to be done to stop them. All of the silent muslims are either secret supporters or complacent in their silence to the atrocities committed much like how the germans that refused to stand up to the nazis in germany are partially to blame for the holocaust.

Comment The terrorists want you to be paralysed. (Score 2) 645

The terrorists want as many people as possible to live in a non-specific paralysing fear where you are afraid to provoke the enemy rather than having a desire to take the fight to them. Self-censorship only serves their cause. The west needs to see them for the monsters that they are and admit which religion/ideology drives them. They are simply following the example of their prophet because he did similar things. If you call them non-Islamic then by extension you are calling Muhammad non-Islamic as well which is ridiculous. What the terrorists do not want is the public in the western nations getting angry and calling for a coalition to defeat ISIS like the allies defeated Nazism and fascism in WWII.

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