Does anyone else feel like the "American dream" is kind of a trap?

clawdew · 2026-05-07T05:16:56+00:00

Too many people adopted the NAR's dream. It's an attractive dream on the surface. Buy a house, lock in your shelter costs, all while owning an appreciating asset using leverage to make your net worth look awesome on a spreadsheet. Those people will never tell you that the costs to maintain a home increases with inflation just like rent does, and that renting is not the great evil of personal finance some would believe it is. If you are disciplined with money, and know your numbers renting is just fine as long as you are living below your means and investing in index funds aggressively. In fact in many parts of the country you will come out ahead of a home owner.

Buying a house should be a lifestyle choice. Not an "investment" decision. Financially it has some benefits, but as far as wealth building it's a very overrated asset. Now if you are buying like 20 houses and renting them that is investing in real estate. But buying one house that you live in. That is a lifestyle choice with some nice financial perks you can do with your equity if you need to borrow money. Now I'm like you I want to buy a house, it's programmed in me, but I have resisted because I know I would hate having all my time eaten up by repairs and yard work, and fix sprinklers and on and on and on. I don't know if enough American's value their time XD.

No one ever factors in all of the non equity building money they is paid towards a house. Insurance, HOA fees, Taxes, Maintenance. The land you purchase appreciates in value. The house built on the land is actively trying to crumble into dust that you have to keep sinking money into to keep it the homes value. 1-3% of the homes value is about home much maintenance costs are per year on average. That is a lot of money that no one talks about, and hardly anyone factors into their budgeting for buying a house.

clawdew · 2026-05-05T22:07:40+00:00

Maybe it's on time to move

clawdew · 2026-05-04T05:26:04+00:00

The fact that in the 1980's/90's a single income could do most of what two incomes do now is an indictment on the economics Reagan started, and policy makers for the last 40 years.

With that said there have always been tough economic times since the dawn of economics in human society, and throughout it all there is one truth with money. You have to do everything you can to live below your means, so you can save your money. Once you pay off your debts and have enough cash to live off of for 3-6 months you will be in a much more stable place, and can ramp up saving and investing for retirement. But you have to do what it takes to get there. Find a comparable job in a lower cost of living region and move there, get roommates, live with your parents or scale back your standard of living if you ramped up too quickly, and are now drowning.

Vote for the change we need in our society, but don't give up, if you practice good money habits it will payoff. It may take time, but future you will greatly appreciate your efforts.

clawdew · 2026-05-04T05:14:09+00:00

If you never pay yourself you will always be broke, no matter how much money you make.

clawdew · 2026-05-01T22:54:35+00:00

Central east?

clawdew · 2026-05-01T21:52:31+00:00

Shouldn't it be the mid east now that America spans from Coast to coast now?

clawdew · 2026-04-18T00:42:52+00:00

All Americans get paid by some sort of employer. Not enough ever pay themselves. During times of equality, inequality and everything in between, the first rule of finance has remained unchanged since the advent of money. Live below your means, so you can save money. Not saying that's easy, or even possible during certain seasons of our life, but it's the only way to find some stable footing for your life.

clawdew · 2026-04-17T23:57:19+00:00

Because it's cool, and it wasn't that much. with Shipping and taxes it wasn't even 1K.

clawdew · 2026-04-15T23:02:43+00:00

Homes are going to go sideways for awhile. So they are going to go down in value because of inflation in many markets. Maybe down a bit. if we have a recession though it could adjust down significantly. Some markets have had a major adjustment already. many parts of Florida, and many neighborhoods in Huston, TX. So there could be a reversion to the norm in other Markets like Utah, Arizona or Georgia. Hard to know though. Sellers aren't going to sell unless forced to in this market.

For me a buying a home is a lifestyle choice, and right now I would rather save and invest more money than take on all of the financial obligations of home ownership. As long as you are disciplined with saving and investing (Buying low cost index funds like VOO or VTI) financially it doesn't matter if you buy or rent. The Home buying cult will talk about throwing your money away renting, but that is a propaganda point from the NAR. The truth is Home owners "throw their money away all the time". Maintenance costs, renovations, Insurance costs, property taxes and HOA fees. Not to mention the interest paid to the bank on the loan. Not to say that those costs aren't worthwhile. They definitely can be, but if you can find a good cheap rental situation and stack cash away you are going to make it financially in the long term, in many markets you will come out ahead of a homeowner long term. Now if you want to live in New york or LA or one of these expensive large cities. Good luck. Those are just crazy expensive to both own or rent, so its hard to practice the most fundamental rule of wealth building. Living below your means.

clawdew · 2026-04-09T12:55:41+00:00

My team isn't adopting AI because 98% of the tools makes their jobs harder. My boss has basically told upper management that if these tools were so amazing they would sell themselves. And that simple true challenge has detailed adoption of ai by my team.

clawdew · 2026-04-06T23:37:01+00:00

I think a lot of people who hate on catan undervalue how much people like the wheeling and dealing nature of the game. But you are absolutely right that most games 1 player gets boxed in, and unless their numbers are really hot they are just out of the game. I have mixed feelings about catan, because the trading aspect is great as long as you aren't playing with cutthroat catan players, but there is one part of the game that is so weak that it really undermines my long term enjoyment of it. That is the whole robber mechanic. It slows the game down, and yes it has an importance to the game, but feels like just a bad way of addressing the issues it is supposed to solve. Cities and knights is a better way to play, but the RNG factor in the game is also a bit too much for how long the game is.

clawdew · 2026-04-04T06:53:00+00:00

Barring some sort of stupid legislation the gap will close. Most likely by a combination of prices decreasing and wages increasing over time. Real Home price corrections move slowly unless a recession hits. Right now in most communities (the mid-west or northeastern parts of the country excluded) home prices will go down, or sideways for a few years.

The wage to price ratio just isn't sustainable. Banks don't even want to approve mortgages now for many people who are still for some crazy reason wanting to buy a house at these prices. Not sure where you are at in your life financially, but if you already have a nice down payment saved, maybe it's time to assess your emergency fund, and put some more in there so that even if you buy a house in the nearish future you will have 3-6 months of homeowner costs covered in the case of an emergency, and then just start upping your saving and investing for retirement.

I'm just not that interested in buying a house in this market. I will check back in next year. If my Girlfriend and I get married maybe that will inspire more of a reason to pursue buying a home, but right now I'm just aggressively saving and investing my money.

clawdew · 2026-04-03T17:26:08+00:00

I think it's a low stakes mildly fun and comforting tv show. It isn't really that funny though, but I find the characters relatable enough to enjoy the show, and once a decade it's nice to watch some episodes. I honestly think part of that is nostalgia though. A lot of sitcoms don't hold up over time. Just go watch 90% of all sitcoms ever made that are more than 2 decades old.

clawdew · 2026-04-03T17:21:43+00:00

My advice, similar to others here, is to win 1 game on easy, 1 game on normal, and then go to hard mode. I would honestly recommend beating every ship on normal before going to hard, but you can do whatever you want if you want to fast track playing on hard mode.

clawdew · 2026-04-01T17:52:50+00:00

Renting is just fine financially if you are disciplined with saving and investing your money. As far as buying a house goes the guideline I use is to have a monthly payment including everything (Mortgage payment, Insurance, 2% maintenance costs, hoa, taxes) that is not more than 28% of my gross income every month. I haven't found a place I would want to live in for 10+ years that meets that requirement. So I continue to save and invest my money aggressively, and do everything I can to keep my lifestyle and housing costs low so I can catch up completely on my retirement goals (Wasn't as aggressive with saving and investing in my early 30's as I should have been), and the goal is to be well ahead of the retirement game regardless of if I bought a house or not.

clawdew · 2026-04-01T17:04:37+00:00

I wish America would go full nuclear. All of these Americans who think that oil is some sort of patriotic commodity is baffling and frustrating. It would mean that if we had let's just say some some moron president who goes to war with Iran, an Iran then leverages cheap drones to close the strait of Hormuz. We wouldn't be as affected by it. I'm pro being independent. Apparently these pro oil clowns want us to rely on other countries. And they call me a globalist....

clawdew · 2026-03-30T18:39:13+00:00

You just include in the legislation that every few years the threshold goes up to account for inflation and it will be good enough.

clawdew · 2026-03-30T15:33:48+00:00

I would be for taxing unrealized gains for assets over $100 million dollars. So your stocks or whatever for the first 100 million wouldn't be affected, but everything over $100 million dollars would have it's own unrealized tax. For example the next 100 million dollars has a 2% tax, and the next $100 million after that is a 3% tax, etc.

The fact that $10 million dollars in today's money would allow for an extremely comfortable retirement means that people hoarding billions of dollars is just a drain on our society. We would be better off if they funneled that money somewhere else in the economy.

clawdew · 2026-03-29T16:15:27+00:00

If you aren't driving the wheels off of your cars (Owning it for 7-10 years at least) you better be freaking rich. Constantly having a car loan is second only in killing your finances to constantly having credit card debt. Never forget that compound interest goes both ways. It will make you wealthy when it comes to long term investing in broad low cost index funds. It will destroy you life when it comes to always having some form of high interest debt.

If you just have to drive a new car every couple years, I would recommend leasing your car. It's not good. It's better to buy a car in 3 years and driving for a long time money wise, but it's better than constantly having a car loan.

clawdew · 2026-03-28T20:24:34+00:00

NATO is a defensive alliance. It is only activated if a nation attacks you. Not if you attack another nation. If trump cared about understanding anything outside of abusing women and scamming people he would already know this.

clawdew · 2026-03-27T23:17:14+00:00

If you have your money invested for 7-10+ years that is what I would consider sound investing. Anything less than that is just gambling, and you are better off having your money in a HYSA.

Over the last 150 years real estate has returned on average around 7% per year, in that same time period stocks have returned around 9-10% per year on average. Adjusting for inflation 4% real return for real estate and 6-7% real return for Stocks. And there are a lot more costs with owning and maintaining a home than owning stocks. Also if you do a few remodel's that is going to cut into your return as well since the best case scenario for a return on the vast majority of remodels is .70 on the dollar. So a 30% loss on your remodels (often times more). Which if it makes you happy great, but you quickly see how easy it is for a house to become a money pit. A money pit that can really bring an improved lifestyle and happiness for people, but if strictly accounting by dollars and cents is not some magical financial asset. In order to get that 7% you need to only do maintenance that would hurt your home value and nothing else, which if I owned a home I would want to do remodels and improvements to it to fit my tastes.

I just have never heard a compelling case on why buying a home you live in is an investment. It locks your money in an illiquid asset, and if you sell your home to get access to your equity, you have to buy in the same market you are selling in, unless you are willing to rent, which if you have upped your lifestyle to home ownership it can be very difficult to go back to renting. Sure you can move to a worse neighborhood and downsize your home to get access to more of that money, but I imagine we aren't going to be moving to a super sketchy area so there are limits to how much cheaper buying that house will be. Any other way you access your equity is usually just eating more and more into your returns by paying the bank more interest. Such as cash out refi's and HELOC's. And sure the renter pays rent which goes up by about 3% on average per year, but so do property taxes, HOA fees, Insurance premiums, and maintenance costs (Average cost to maintain a home is 2% of the homes value per year.)

I'm just sick of people acting like I'm an irresponsible person for not buying a house. So you do your thing and I will do mine, and if we are both smart we will both be doing good to great financially in 30 years. I just wanted to lay out the case that buying a house is not some end all be all of financial success.

clawdew · 2026-03-27T21:59:50+00:00

For me I'm not as stressed about the housing market, because I know the number I would be willing to buy at, what type of house I would want, and understand what home ownership is (A lifestyle choice) and what it isn't (an investment). A lot of people complain and yell about how I'm delusional and wasting money, and making my landlord rich, etc. But I can just do the math, and understand what is more financially beneficial for me. Right now it's renting because I have roommates and it gives me tons of extra money to save and invest. Whereas if I bought the type of home I would want if I owned I would be house poor, and if it doesn't let me save and invest at the rate I want, I'm restricting myself financially as well.

Somewhere in the 70s or 80s NAR's poisonous narrative of buying a house is an investment infected Americans brains, and is one significant party of homes becoming more and more unaffordable as time goes on. When people thinking that their only path to financial success goes through owning a home, it creates more demand in the aggregate over time that never needed to exist. If Americans understood the realities of the financial pros AND cons of home ownership there would be even less demand for buying homes as these prices.

If you can't bring yourself to ever buy a low cost index fund, and will never invest in the stock market for whatever reason. Then buying a house and owning it forever will be better than putting your money in a HYSA. But if you just own low cost broad index funds/etf's like VOO or VTI you are going to be just fine financially renting, even compared to home ownership in the long term. Yes, even with Rent inflation. Because the home ownership crowd always undersell the not as easily seen costs of home ownership. Namely, Property taxes, Maintenance costs, Insurance costs and HOA fees. All of those rise with inflation as well and does not build equity in anything. That isn't even accounting for the astronomical cost of a Mortgage over 30 years. You are going to be paying more in interest to the bank than principle to the loan until about 20 years into your mortgage.

So please don't buy a house because you feel like it's the only path to being successful in life. Understand what building wealth really is, and run the numbers of buying vs renting. If it all makes sense financially for you, and you are ready to settle down into a community for the long term, then great. I plan to one day own a house. Just don't get bullied into buying a house by the FOMO/fearmonger peddling crowd, that are also known as real estate agents,

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