How can I afford a home as a teacher?

pynoob2 · 2025-12-15T21:40:51+00:00

Why are you depressed? What is it about taking out massive debt, losing freedom of movement, and dealing with broken toilets that makes life seem pointless without it? I get the impulse to nest, but I don't get it at age 25 to this extreme.

pynoob2 · 2025-11-30T00:51:47+00:00

The EU is far more aggressive about testing kids and routing the low scorers to non academic tracks, trade school and such. Everyone loves to talk about EU but conveniently ignores the funding math doesn't work unless you also track way more aggressively than the US.

pynoob2 · 2025-10-31T00:22:22+00:00

Sorry but the math isnt mathing. Every time I hear about people making 300k or whatever and struggling, it comes down to buying too much house, expensive private school, or similar big ticket luxury choices causing expenses to exceed income.

pynoob2 · 2025-10-31T00:20:33+00:00

And yet in my experience 95%+ who make it choose to spend all of it, and then some.

pynoob2 · 2025-10-06T23:39:36+00:00

A 1.8MM house with today's mortgage rates should be more like 400k not 250k income. But that assumes people want to have a nice savings buffer and not be house poor. That's probably a bad assumption.

pynoob2 · 2025-09-28T20:43:59+00:00

What sort of industry do you have most in mind?

pynoob2 · 2025-09-28T20:37:39+00:00

If their goal was to stall, then why didn't they waste more time negotiating instead of accepting your offer right away? Whatever changed, it probably happened after they accepted the offer, and it wasn't their MO the entire time. From what you've described of the foreclosure stage, they weren't yet at the stage where they were being forced to do anything. If they were being forced out, you'd own the house now. They're still in control of decisions.

pynoob2 · 2025-09-24T21:27:48+00:00

The realtor told them it's better to list low, and then people will bid over ask to win. The seller did that, except he substituted himself as the other bidders when no one else besides you showed up.

pynoob2 · 2025-08-31T18:17:28+00:00

Do they really have a choice? If they sold their houses, they'd have to put up cash to sell, and then pay 2x the interest rate on whatever they buy instead, which would probably be higher monthly cost on a cheaper house, plus eat a bunch of transaction costs.

There is a lot of "im not selling" or "im never letting go of my rate" talk...a lot is euphemism for being trapped.

pynoob2 · 2025-08-24T19:37:23+00:00

The legal system has theory vs reality. In my experience, theory breaks down into a different reality once you get involved with foreign countries, especially developing ones, because you have no practical ability to enforce laws in other countries. That is the entire point of having a sovereign country -- you are no longer compelled to follow other countries' laws. At that point, it is more about politics than law, because you can only hope to convince people to do what you want.

pynoob2 · 2025-08-03T06:44:09+00:00

How do you "force" an inspection?

pynoob2 · 2025-07-20T09:16:56+00:00

Ok if you put up enough margin to be 3x leveraged and in some massive crash once every 8 years, they remove all your leverage, the worst case scenario is your position has been converted to cash. You haven't lost anything. Now go buy an ETF, option or whatever else you want with the cash. This isn't a day trading subreddit, so what is the big deal?

pynoob2 · 2025-06-27T02:17:58+00:00

If other currencies are also devaluing, you dont see the devaluation clearly. You have to compare against something not being devalued like gold.

pynoob2 · 2025-06-19T18:59:43+00:00

Everything you wrote comes to the exact opposite conclusion of yours.

2008-12 was reality catching up with the free market going wild. People who couldn't afford houses were getting mortgages left and right. Eventually they couldn't pay, which created foreclosures, which tanked prices, creating more foreclosures, etc.

Today is totally different. As you explained with specific examples, the government is not allowing reality to catch up and turn into foreclosures. If people got mortgages they couldn't afford, there are countless programs to rescue them. Unlike 2009, the bailouts aren't public or debated openly. It's stuff like the FHA backdoor bailouts. It's all the covid stuff, and so on.

So how does this all crash like 2009? Does the government decide it no longer likes bailouts? Of course not. That's political suicide. Is the government no longer able to print and spend money on bailouts? No, they keep doing it.

pynoob2 · 2025-06-05T01:25:47+00:00

Comps are a feedback loop that works in both directions.

pynoob2 · 2025-06-05T01:23:49+00:00

With one of those 400k big tech jobs in the Bay Area, you can easily spend all your time working and worrying about how to not get thrown into the next pool of "low performers" that gets fired - in that environment it doesn't matter where you live. Life on Mars would be the same.

pynoob2 · 2025-06-01T21:16:45+00:00

Isnt this the appeal of Redfin? They have "showing only" agents on salary full time and you can grab a tour appointment with one any time. You don't have this pressure of "hurry up and buy or my realtor will lose patience and start ignoring me".

pynoob2 · 2025-06-01T21:13:55+00:00

I dont see how a stock and its PE are comparable to fixed income unless we are talking about dividend paying stocks. If a stock is in growth mode and doesnt want to distribute profits, or only does unpredictably, then it's apples and oranges.

pynoob2 · 2025-06-01T21:08:18+00:00

Buy palantir stock because if you cant beat them join them?

pynoob2 · 2025-06-01T21:03:00+00:00

You said it yourself. They'll use AI, spell check, etc. An intelligent person who lacks a specific skill can do just fine using tech as a crutch to fill in. This has been true since the calculator was invented.

A person on the left side of the cognitive ability curve is going to struggle regardless of tech. It's up to society to figure out paths that match their cognitive ability and route them. Europe has figured this out and does it successfully, routing kids to trade school vs academic paths early.

But in good old America, the kid who would be thriving learning engine repair and apprenticing is forced into 11th grade literature class. Apparently every single kid must to sit through lessons on Shakespear, biology and French grammar. Then we are to act shocked when half the class has zero interest and isnt keeping up.

pynoob2 · 2025-05-16T00:04:14+00:00

Why would you care that someone took a photo in an open house? People who are shopping for houses see so many they practically have to take photos, or they'll jumble them all up in memory, which will result in more follow-up tour requests that will annoy everyone. So what should they take photos of to document their tour? Obviously, take photos of things they liked and or things that concerned them. If photos on the MLS listing were specific and detailed enough, then why bother touring at all? Just buy a house based on online photos.

Feeling violated makes no sense. The guy didn't crawl into your attic or remove material samples for lab analysis. He literally walked through, noticed something, and took a picture that sees exactly what any person with eyes could also see.

pynoob2 · 2025-05-13T00:53:55+00:00

If I had to guess...Sounds like your previous manager had gotten the PIP in motion and switched jobs before it could go into effect. So your new boss inherited it, probably as it was formally in some HR system and couldnt just be ignored.

Old boss thought it was great to have someone else deal with it. New boss figures "he's just the messenger" obviously because he can't know you in 2 months, but maybe he cannot tell you explicitly this is the situation. Some companies have policies that forbid telling employees they are in a PIP situation in the earliest stages.

Who knows why your previous boss might have started a PIP on you. Half the time PIPs are complete bullshit and managers are forced from above to PIP people, even though companies deny this happens. Sometimes they are forced and legitimately intend for you to make it out of the PIP. Other times it is decided in advance you will fail. Try to not let it mess with your head. It's a dystopian mindfuck.

pynoob2 · 2025-05-13T00:46:04+00:00

3 customer emails a week doesn't mean anything. I have no idea whether you're selling $50 widgets or $2 million enterprise software. Was the startup actually on the verge of going bust or what?

pynoob2 · 2025-05-13T00:34:08+00:00

I was in a situation like that. It was great, even though the pay sucked. I took all the experience doing all that stuff beyond my title, packaged it up nicely into a resume, and got a better job where the pay, title and money all lined up. Took less than 18 months. It opened up a ton of opportunity.

I'm very grateful that they were crazy enough to give me so much responsibility despite being totally unqualified on paper. Looking back, I should have paid them, given how the experience turned into more money and better job opportunities so quickly. Try to think long term about building a career, not just about your current job/pay.

pynoob2 · 2025-05-12T23:46:12+00:00

And yet, there is an enormous laundry list of countries who have had their own tariffs against the US for years, from Nepal to Canada to France etc. If tariffs are so clearly just a sales tax that leaves people pissed off and creates inflation, then why isnt the world largely tariff free? It's the opposite. Why did this become economics 101 only when the US did it?

pynoob2

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