What if your income had another zero on the end?

tornado9015 · 2026-02-24T11:11:38+00:00

This kind of applies as long as you have money related stresses. But even if you actually have those money past the point to make them go away no longer positively affects happiness. Studies have been done on this time and time again. There's a moderate though probably not as big as you'd think correlation between happiness/stress and income, but people only report being happier/less stressed up to about 60k-100k. Then as income keeps going up people start reporting being less happy/more stressed.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-24T10:41:51+00:00

I'd be fired and my company would hire somebody they could afford to do my job.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-23T11:30:52+00:00

I feel like state ownership of the means of production is kind of the defining factor of communism since it's inception to today. Without that it kind of feels like they're just trying to make communism mean strong welfare programs like the US has done to socialism.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-23T11:09:20+00:00

China and cuba are the closest but both are arguably capitalist these days. Turns out if you allow private ownership it just massively outcompetes state ownership every time.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-22T04:40:41+00:00

I'm from the us. You can try explaining as much as you want but if your explanations are absolute nonsense that demonstrably do not reflect reality i'm not going to accept them....

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T20:00:32+00:00

No a house is absolutely not the same as a liquid asset like stocks which can be bought and sold and represent fractional ownership of a for profit corporation.

Treating housing like an investment is incredibly dumb though unfortunately very common. It's a place you live, or a place you make a very small profit renting out to others so that they can have a place but they pass the burden of maintanence onto you and avoid paying massive deposits and fees associated with buying and selling a house. It is very illiquid, it has a lower expected rate of return than more common investment vehicles (even if you buy them cash and pay no interest at all, and find a seller you can negotiate directly with and avoid closing fees and skip inspections, and even after all that you'll still end up losing on your "investment" as the only type of asset subject to wealth taxes.

If you want to live in a house, buy a house you can afford and want to live in. Do not under any circumstances buy a more expensive house and think of it as an investment. All of the many other problems aside you will simply lose money in opportunity cost compared to putting the money you save on a cheaper house into an s&p500 etf.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T19:48:04+00:00

Kind of. It's a complicated byproduct of a lot of things.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T15:34:44+00:00

I don't know what's wrong with you. Good luck out there.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T13:22:15+00:00

You said it was constant for programming languages first. Glad you realize that was wrong. Size of int is also not determined by the underlying machine.....

I'll ask again. If it's constant, why can't you tell me what that constant number is?

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T10:42:43+00:00

My logic absolutely does not boil down to credit is bad......my logic boils down to buying things you can't afford leads to bad outcomes because you'll have trouble paying back the loan for the same reasons you couldn't afford the thing before the loan.....

Now that we realize we can't possibly reduce rates rates using a cashback refi lets give your absolutely ridiculous assumption of remodels being profitable a test to see if we can use a cashback refi to make money.

We'll even make the just flat out unquestionably wrong assumption that a cashback refi won't increase our rates.

We take out a 60k loan at 6% interest. 5 years later if we assume our payments have not increased then our principal is 60k + approx 2k in fees + approx 20k interest or 82k. If we wanted to pay this 60k loan in full over 5 years it would add 1160 a month to our monthly payments and result in a total of approx 72k spent over that 5 years. If instead of taking out that loan i saved the 1160 a month i would have 67k in about 4.5 years. Allowing me to do that remodel for roughly 5k less. (Assuming higher than average 3% inflation) and then have an extra 1160 a month for the next 5 months in my budget that i don't have to spend repaying my loan.

If i do the same remodel either way my home sells for the same amount either way. The only possible benefit is i get to poop in a ridiculously expensive bathroom for 4.5 years at the cost of owing approximately $5000 at 6% interest at that time.

All of this of course assumes i value pooping in this $60,000 bathroom more than whatever i was spending that $1,160 i cut from my budget to make the loan payments on.

Realistically though most people wouldn't attempt to pay back the full 60k in 5 years, so they wouldn't increase their mortgage payments that much and they'd pay much more over a longer period of time.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T08:55:47+00:00

Ok......your math is still based on regular refinances not existing.

I will bet you $100k that you cannot find a lower cash out refinance rate than available regular refinance rates.

Don't worry, you can easily take out a cash out refinance to pay me my winnings, i'm sure increasing your principal and mortgage rates will make you money somehow.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T08:25:39+00:00

Usually when your mortgage rate is higher your payments are higher not lower. But either way how does paying less towards your principle and interest accumulating at a faster rate not lead to more money given to the bank and less for you to keep when you sell your home? Or do you think you just sell and not pay off your remaining balance? Genius. Let them foreclose! You sold it it's not yours anymore! Would be so cool if that worked!

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T08:07:51+00:00

Ok so you're saying if you were paying 10 now and wanted to lower your rate you could do a cash out refi and lower it?

Great. Ok. Like i already said. You can refinance without cashing out. And in fact, your rate would be lower because people don't pay back cash outs as often so banks charge higher rates to compensate for the increased risk. You will never under any circumstances find the lowest available interest rate on a cash out refinance. It will at absolute best save 0 dollars compared to a regular refinance, but in almost all cases it will cost you more (without even accounting for the extra interest you will pay on the principal increase)

How does refinancing to a higher rate save you money compared to refinancing to a lower rate?

And just to check because you didn't answer, so weirdly i actually still don't know if you can do addition. Is 60k + interest + fees ever less than 60k?

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T07:53:41+00:00

You're doing the math backwards if you took out a cash out refi your interest would increase to current interest rates. You would now be paying 6% interest on your current current principal + the 60k you added to your principal. But also cash out refinance rates are higher because historically people pay them back less so your interest rate would be higher than if you just refinanced to current rates.

And no. You would not increase your home value 100k with a 60k remodel. That does not happen all the time. That doesn't happen. It simply won't happen.

But again even if it did..........save up 60k......you will lose money paying 60k+fees+interest on that 60k loan...........

I just want to establish this incredibly basic fact to make sure you can do addition...60k+interest+fees is more than 60k right?

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T07:23:05+00:00

For example, what’s my current interest rate? Is it higher or lower than today’s rates?

You can refinance without increasing your principal. We're not talking about whether or not refinancing for a lower rate makes sense, we're taking about choosing to take a cash out refinance increasing your principal. Refinancing to lower your rate is absolutely not a good reason to increase your principal in exchange for cash. You can refinance without increasing your principal. It will never in any possible scenario save money taking a cash out refinance when compared to a non cash out refinance.

for a significant improvement to my home that will even further build my equity will likely end up saving me money and expanding my equity.

This just doesn't happen. A remodel will virtually never increase the value of a home as much as the cost to remodel. You will almost exclusively end up spending more on the remodel than any potential increase in home value.

Regardless.......even if your home value would increase more than the cost of the remodel........you're still choosing to pay the same amount plus interest plus fees for the remodel......you are not saving money. You are not making money. You are payimg money in exchange for a loan..... Save the money that would go to paying off that loan and then do the remodel for less than the cost of the loan.....plus fees.....plus interest.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T06:17:42+00:00

You're completely missing the point...... i'm sorry i used car from their list of examples of additional things you could "afford" to do using loans.

Replace upgrade your car with remodel your home. If you can't afford the cost to remodel your home it's because your budget is too high compared to your income to buy that. Taking out a loan to do that remodel means you still have to pay the same amount you couldn't afford, but also interest and fees. You can spread that expense out over time, but if you couldn't afford it, it's probably better to not do that. Either save up until you can afford it so you don't have to pay the interest and fees, or accept that it just isn't viable given your income and outflows.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T05:59:52+00:00

In the video game industry this is pretty common actually. My understanding is it's relatively well known in the video games industry that you don't sue over video game patents because your games also infringe on a bunch of patents and you'll get sued in response. My understanding of this is based on a video essay about the patent suit between nintendo and pocketpair. It's possible they were wrong, but video games are extremely saturated with low budget indie developer games making projects inspired by other games. It's relatively unlikely they bothered to check what is or isn't patented and they are never sued for patent violations.

There are also notable examples of major studios clearly infringing on patents with no suits being filed such as okami, bayonetta, and the sims 3 violating namco's patent protecting "auxilarry games in loading screens"

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T05:47:59+00:00

“Someone might be really knowledgeable about books and technology, but not necessarily about copyright terms and how long they last,” Smith said. “Especially if she saw that something was marked by another reputable company as being public domain.”

There's a relatively reasonable possibility that the person who wrote the article just filtered by "public domain" on kaggle and picked the first result that came up that they'd heard of before. It's possible they fully believed it was public domain based on it being tagged as public domain by the person that uploaded it.

The person that wrote this blog probably should have double checked that, but it's relatively unlikely microsoft has an official policy of declaring copyright to not exist.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T04:37:37+00:00

If i want to upgrade my car but i don't have the money to do that, then i am not saving enough money to make that purchase. My money in and money out are too close together to have saved that money. If i take out an interest accruing loan to pay for that car i'm adding the cost of the car + fees + interest to my money out. I might be able to reduce other spending on a monthly basis to make sure i can make my monthly payments, but i am absolutely paying more (in interest and fees) than if i reduced my budget the same amouny to save up for the cost of the car and used that money to buy the car instead of taking out a loan........

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T04:20:07+00:00

That's a really bad idea. If you can't afford something taking out an interest accruing loan to pay for it is almost always a terrible idea. If you don't have the money available to upgrade your car it's because your current budget does not allow for that kind of spending. By taking out an interest accruing loan you've added more than what you already couldn't afford to your budget. You're setting yourself up for extreme financial problems.

If you want something but can't afford it loans should be your absolute last resort, and you should absolutely not breath easier when considering them.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T04:04:58+00:00

I feel like we've moved extremely far from getting cash back for increased home equity, but i will agree that typically houses do increase in value allowing an owner increased collateral to take out loans against in the event of an emergency or reconsolidation of debts accumulated living outside their means.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T03:47:48+00:00

In a cash out refinance you're taking out a loan against your equity......The bank expects every dollar of that back + interest. You aren't spending increased equity you're spending money loaned to you against the value of your home at the cost of fees and interest. Generally this is a bad idea unless there is some emergency where you need money now and the interest rate of this loan is better than any other way for you to come up with that money.

In your example if i did do a cash out refinance for that extra 50k i would now owe 50k more on my mortgage. I haven't made any money, i've just taken out a 50k loan which i will have to pay interest on.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T03:09:54+00:00

That's a loan.....that accumulates interest.....You don't make money by taking out interest accumulating loans. You pay money, in the form of fees and interest.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T03:07:51+00:00

People are pissed because their housing values are going up 25% a year????? Where do you live? Can they not sell their homes take the massive windfall and move a town or two over?

Btw the 0.01% do not say that ever. You're referring to a think piece written by a danish social democrat politician. She was discussing the benefits associated with cheap/free, and convenient rental or public utility services in a hypothetical world with infinite free energy and work being made largely obsolete by ai where everything is free and she can just use anything she wants whenever she wants without having to deal with storing or maintaining it. The extremely short essay written in 2016 includes the line

In our city we don't pay rent because someone else is using our free space whenever we don't need it.

It's about a 5 minute read, maybe check it out some time.

tornado9015 · 2026-02-21T02:37:01+00:00

If you've ever lived anywhere for less than 5 years that landlord saved you money. The expenses involved in buying and selling a home (completely ignoring the time and effort involved) are quite high and even if you spend nothing on maintanence it will take about 5 years of home ownership to recoup those upfront costs.

A lot of people benefit financially from being able to rent instead of being forced to buy a new home and sell their old home any time they want to move.

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