Your Retirement Savings

xp - having to maintain property (building, equipment, plants, livestock) teaches you valuable skills imo - I feel marginally better about my chances of surviving an economic collapse because I have basic carpentry skills and understand properties of adhesives

xpost -- the previous dude was Rush Limbaugh?

The purely economic comparison between paying down a mortgage or renting is net cost of occupancy, and a dwelling's appreciation (or depreciation) only matters insofar as it figures into that cost. But a house isn't an investment, it's a place to live, too.

No two places to live are precisely equal in the quality of life they offer you, so you also have to factor in a lot of non-monetary imponderables when comparing them as a Prospective Place to Live Your Life. You try to figure out the best value in terms of net happiness, both short term and long term. Net cost of occupancy may be a big part of that equation, especially the poorer you are, but isn't ever the whole equation.

Also in the US there is a maximum earnings that you have to pay into social security on, that is now about a little over $100k -- so someone earning $250k, is only paying into the national retirement fund on less than half of their earned income. Is this the same in other places, or do you pay the same % no matter how much you make?

― sarahell, Sunday, 11 February 2018 6:28 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is similar in the UK, national insurance drops down to1% at some ridiculously low salary, £45k I want to say. NI is effectivenely just a tax, though and pensions are funded from general taxation rather than a specific government fund.

In Aus there is the age pension for low income people who never built up much of a super balance and that’s funded from taxation as well.

Anything I have to take care of myself is not a good investment. It’s all I can do to keep myself up and running.

lol otm

Why do I get the feeling that the "difference between mortgage and rent payment" equation above presumes that the rent is a lower figure

hey it was in a list, if a mortgage is cheaper it offsets some of the other pieces

my mom's mortgage is less than half my rent

my mortgage payment (mortgage + escrow for rent/insurance) is cheaper than my friend's rent downtown in.. Des Moines, Iowa

they have a pool, though

My brother was going to rent when he went back to school recently but then he just went ahead and bought a house instead because it was cheaper than renting.

(NB, he has already owned and sold a house and understands like financial stuff or whatever and makes good money and is an adult.)

Living in SF, believe you me, I know what the cheaper option is. (And I'm very, very lucky to have it.)

Yeah but the phrase "cheaper option" when it comes to living in SF, is like the phrase "safer option" when given a choice between shooting yourself in the head or having someone else shoot you in the head.

feel like rent vs. buy decisions are hugely influenced by where you live. i’m not too worried about the value of my house where i live but i can see it in other parts of the country.

― call all destroyer

my wife's grandparents bought a nice house on a river bank in west virginia after the war. when they died there they didn't have a backyard, it was all river.

on the other hand after living in indiana for a decade without buying, we bought a house within the first year of moving to portland. making a commitment to living in indiana wasn't something either of us wanted to do, and building equity was less important to us than the ability to get the hell out when the time came. also, every single goddamn west coast city is going the way of sf, and we figured we needed to buy while we could.

here's a good guideline about buying a house: if it's worth buying, you probably can't afford it.

I'll buy a house when I feel like it but I get sick of the smug attitudes of how i'm throwing money away. my parents had my childhood house for 31 years, and as a reward for their great investment....they got upside down, foreclosed and have filed for bankruptcy twice in a decade.

Obv context matters but to me doesn't seem like a slam dunk investment (at least not here). also I would probably burn the place down trying to make my first repair. my father's son I am not in that regard.

Social security is fine and is not on the verge of collapsing and sucking all our salary deductions into a babyboomer-shaped black hole by the time we're 35, btw. At least not unless the government steals all the money out of it, which is a political decision, not some kind of inevitable truth of financial instruments.

buying a house for us was a great investment tradeoff for the money it took out of my 401k. It's more the doubled in value in the past 7 years and it's never, I don't think, going to go down below what we owe on it. I mean maybe it could, but there would have to be like, a nuclear strike on the bay area, I think, to really shift housing prices that much here.

In orbit otm

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/03/05/rocky-road-taking-it-easy/

on the other hand after living in indiana for a decade without buying, we bought a house within the first year of moving to portland. making a commitment to living in indiana wasn't something either of us wanted to do,

you know that if you own a house, you don't have to live in it, you can rent it out? That's the one aspect of "mobility" that is often overlooked in the own vs. rent comparison. In expensive areas, it's often more expensive for a tenant to move than a homeowner to move and keep their house as a rental property.

One expense of becoming a landlord is the extra work involved in managing a rental property. If you farm most of it out to a management company, then you have to pay them for that and even then it isn't work-free for the owner. And if the house sits vacant for a time, it still generates costs with no income. So, there's that to consider.

You still own a house in indiana

And a mortgage to an indianese bank

I would never be a landlord much less of a property further away than next door or downstairs

tbh that's what property management companies are for, although that definitely puts a dent in your rent income

if i ever buy a house again it will definitely have a garage or basement apt/ MIL suite of some kind.

i will, of course, live in the basement apt and rent out the house

I would never be a landlord much less of a property further away than next door or downstairs

Gah, no thank you. A rented property that I could see from my window would be anxiety times ten.

Not sure which would be worse, being lessor or lessee.

If my landlord's a big company way across town, I can relax. However, if my landlord lived upstairs or next door, I'd feel watched (no matter how chill the arrangement or how friendly the handshake. Was last weekend's party too loud? Am I doing the right thing with the recycling? Can I have the band over? If so, what time do we need to turn down the amps? Can I paint everything purple? Can I nail up my extensive collection of Scandinavian death metal paraphernalia?

Contrariwise, are the tenants barbecuing an endangered species in the firepit? Are they having a party where they have satanic ritual sex while swinging from the chandeliers? Are they sawing into the floorboards to anti-vampire stakes? What was that noise in the basement just now? Did someone just say "it puts the lotion in the basket"? No matter how many times I told myself to not look into their affairs, it would be hard to just never even cast a passing glance at how they were behaving inside my investment.

you know that if you own a house, you don't have to live in it, you can rent it out? That's the one aspect of "mobility" that is often overlooked in the own vs. rent comparison. In expensive areas, it's often more expensive for a tenant to move than a homeowner to move and keep their house as a rental property.

― sarahell

oh god, yeah, so i could deal with my tenants not making their payments on time and then saying "oh by the way i need my sink replaced, i dropped a toothbrush in it and it broke", fuck you you didn't drop a toothbrush in it you had a drunken party and somebody SAT ON my fucking sink and it collapsed and now i have to spend six months' rent to replace it, no thank you

anywhere that it's attractive to buy a house, you have no idea what that place will look like in 30 years because climate change

anywhere that it's attractive to buy a house, you have no idea what that place will look like in 30 years because climate change

― 龜

having said that most models that don't involve total human extinction have portland coming out fairly well.

Until the cascadia fault slips

the one that's on a presumed 400 to 600 year recurrence cycle and had its last recurrence 300 years ago? compared to new madrid i'm not terribly concerned

hey can we predict nuclear annihilation too & really make this thread a party

jeez guys

Tbh I think climate change is good news for my retirement planning considering it makes it more likely I’ll die prematurely

Lots of unlikely people will suddenly have oceanfront property,

Looking forward to living in the beach, if only for a while

http://www.fantasticalandrewfox.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/On-the-Beach-cover2.jpg

Lots of unlikely people will suddenly have oceanfront property,

Looking forward to living in the beach, if only for a while

― I'm walking on Sondheim (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, February 11, 2018 6:07 PM (yesterday)

I looked at maps a while back, and if I stay in my current place ... total beach!

Some advice: don't look too closely at what's floating in the water.

Based on the smell of what is currently a lake, this is already my standard practice.

Fortunate to be about the last age group at my company with a guaranteed pension. Subsequent union contracts have eliminated the company-provided pension, while promoting personal responsibility for retirement. Didn't start my IRA until early 30s, against much advice, so am behind the curve to some of my peers, but still ahead of the national curve, I think.

Knock on wood, between personal savings, pension, retirement account w/ company match, and possibly Social Security, I should have enough to keep a SINK with a modest lifestyle set. Health is the big question mark.

certainly moving will make you re-evaluate how much vinyl you want to own

remember, even if you have a pension they can evaporate! Nothing is certain. Especially if the pension is not well funded

I hope to retire selling my valuable CD collection

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Idk more interested in these poll results than most

Poll options not high enough

otrm

Sorry. Guess I assumed most of you were in terrible positions in regards to retirement savings.

i think the people that are in great positions want to distinguish themselves from those who are in merely ok positions ...

Centrists Vs upper middles

I have no idea what position I'm in (not bad? but maybe not good) and figure out what qualifies as good for someone with my income and interests

age is a key factor in "good" -- if i was in my 20s and had what I have saved up, I'd feel pretty good about it, but I'm in my 40s, and so ... not so good.

I'll definitely say that if I hadn't've got in and stuck with my UC position all this time since 1997, it might be looking a little dicier for me to an extent. Knowing I've had an actual pension as a backstop -- and that I'm three years away from being able to claim it if needed, though obviously the longer I stay in the system the more it will be -- takes a load off one's mind. (Also, compared to other pension situations that are indeed looking pretty dicey in general, the UC's is on stabler ground overall -- it's certainly nice to hear that the CalPERS system is on better ground now too, though UC's setup is separate from that.)

I'm kind of hoping, perversely, that the pension plan gets killed and rolled into my 401k or something as a lump sum? Because I think I have to retire from this place to get the pension (or get laid off) and I'd like to quit before then.