Just found out the wife ran up some serious credit card debt

Just dont ouch the bottled water budget. #Priorities #minemineminemine

 

All this yakking and the OP hasn’t updated? Uhoh.

 

More housing info for ya ...

 

Haven't been on here in a while, just catching up and saw your post. We are still plugging away at it, will be a 1.5-2 year process to dig out I'm estimating. So far we've paid off 18K. Spent way more on Christmas on the kids than I wanted to but it's just hard cutting back on Xmas. I got her a $100 gift card and I got nothing, which was absolutely fine. I've been tracking our expenses every month since I started this thread and it's been very eye opening. No major lapses but little shit adds up quick. Mostly kids activities/sports/music/school projects/school lunches etc.

Probably the BEST thing we did was get the HELOC. That alone is saving us like $650/month in interest. We are paying it down little by little, just going to take time and sticking with it.

 

Glad to hear that "We" are still plugging away at it.

 

You can always do a loan against your 401K depending on the level of money that you need, sometimes it is a good option.

Just make sure you pay it back before the tax man gives you a deep dicking.

 

Right you need metal studs and a bone in your nose.

 

More housing info ...

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/existing-home-sales-unexpectedly-fall-january-straight-month

 

It's hilarious that they call this unexpected. 12 months ago Stevie frickin Wonder could have forseen the increase in mortgage rates coming (by increase, I mean reverting to historic mean, NOT to what should in any sense be called ""HIGH""). Of course there were a shitload of home sales 12 months ago FOR THIS VERY REASON. Anyone who could manage to afford a home bought one. Now people who bought 12 months ago are not buying, and anyone who missed the glory years of absurdly low mortgage rates will likely never own a home. At least not for a long damn time. I'm actually a bit surprised that mortgage rates aren't even higher, but the fed is caught between a rock & a hard place with their rate action, plus we're lying to ourselves about what the true inflation rate actually is.

Welcome to the glorious future of corporate landlords, owning nothing, and eating ze bugs.

 

Eating ze bugs? Sign me up!

 

The fed is in the buiness of fleecing us.

Next what happens, interest rates rise, home prices come down, the economy crashes, foreclosures, and blackrock gets fiat to buy everything up. Again.

Throw in the fact that the dollar is at its end of its reserve currency run. Things are going to get a lot worse for us until we get a debt jubilee and return to sound money.

 

Put your assets in precious metals. I’m going long on tin foil.

 

Or prices are just coming back to what they should be based on supply and demand. I liked seeing a huge value for my house last year, but I never thought it should increase in perpetuity. Same with interest rates, it was great for a while but it never made sense long term, eventually they had to get back to reality.

 

So, when does a small business owner, me, making a very ho hum average income get to buy another house? Sold ours a few years back and rent a place above our business in a small downtown area for peanuts. Which, I've gotta say we've fallen in love with. The lifestyle, hardly ever driving, never driving to work of course and the convenience of everything is hard to not love. My tools and motorcycles etc along with that lifestyle ain't happening now of course. Everything is stored away at friends and families spots. Still own an empty build-able lot in a great spot in the next town over, right next door to the old house. However, building doesn't seem like an option either. $$$ . Would like to buy close to this downtown where the business is to keep the same lifestyle honestly. What's my move?

 

Ok, now we know R1 is a central banker! Thanks for showing up on CNBC and giving us a reassuring lie.

 

Rent/buy garage space for a man cave....doesn your business require warehouse space?

 

The developers around where I live are betting on duplexes. There are hundreds of them being built right now. I've heard they are going for 300k to 500k for the whole unit which seems crazy to me. Pre pandemic that amount of money would buy an extremely nice house with some property around here. We have a smaller house on 7 acres but it's conveniently located. The value has probably close to doubled since we bought it 9 years ago. Unfortunately so have our property taxes.
I often wish our culture didn't place such a priority on homes from a financial standpoint.

 

I don't see this happening again. The main reason is that the mortgages that have been issued since the '05 crash are FAR better documented and safer. People will feel "less rich" and consumer spending will drop, that more than anything will slow the economy. That plus the free money running out.

Without getting too political, I feel there has been a shift in our economy that will be very hard to "undo". We are being turned into a more socialist type economy where everything is more expensive, wages can't keep up, and our standard of living will generally fall lower when the eventual "austerity measures" come. We are going to be like Europe.

I don't know that "they" (politicians) are smart enough to have engineered this disaster, but it's what's coming. I'm halfway through my life and my personal goal has been to own some real estate debt free and not over spend on "stuff". So I think I'll be fine, but I do feel bad for anyone just starting out in the working world or trying to buy their first house. The values have gone up tremendously and renting seems like the only sane option. That just emboldens the corporations to spend more building rental housing, and shifts more wealth towards the higher end of the scale. Since that's my business, you would think that it makes me happy- but it's not what made America great.

Dave, I don't know what reserve currency could replace the dollar, just by virtue of volume and stability- but you are right that our debt is unsustainable. And when you look at the US government's total obligations, it's Entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Change is coming to those programs, one way or another.

FWIW, I predicted the '05 real estate crash pretty easily, but what I didn't understand was the impact that derivatives had on the overall financial system and the sheer amount of them that were being traded. So take my opinion with a grain of salt. Who knows what they have come up with this time that will break the system.

 

Until we do that same thing we did with utilities and truly treat housing as a necessity and not an investment vehicle this isn't going to change.

 

The russia/ukraine thing isn't a big deal......... yet. For now it's just a massive money and equipment laundering operation.

If China takes Taiwan you're gonna see some weird shit happen. All markets will go the direction of gravity.

If the value of the US dollar plummets your country will never be the same. You can only print money for so long. This whole country is ran on borrowed money.

Many of the buyers in the Detroit area were cash buyers so I'm not expecting another 2009 again, but ya never know. That interest rate controls everything.

You never own a house here. You own a tax/insurance liability.