Stock market is all gambling. You just gotta choose a bunch - some indexes, like Dow/S&P, some bonds, and then a few stocks you “like”. Then hold them for decades, and check in only a couple times a year. Otherwise you’ll most likely lose money.
Seriously, even if you can technically afford it, if you’re not still flush with cash after close, it’s just infinite stress.
The main issue is that you are now locked into the area around your home. Unless you’re making so much to be able to afford a house AND appartment rent, your job opportunities have become that much more limited since remote job offerings are on the decline. Relocation assistance is a thing, but if your house purchase is at all recent, still a good chance that selling will put you in the red.
You also have to pay for any repairs or improvements in the event that the only house you could afford is old and not up to safety regulations. In my case, I also have interest rates to worry about. I bought my house while they were on the rise and locked in above my comfort zone (not in a “i’m about to bankrupt myself” kinda way, don’t worry) in hopes that they’d go down and I could refinance, but obviously they havent, so what should be a comfortable payment for me at 3% (~$1100) is instead a “wow I can literally never have fun anymore” payment of $1850 at 6.5%, and will remain so for the forseeable future. Also: Because the only affordable place was like an hour from my job, gas money’s eating a hole through my soul as well.
Alternatively, buy a plot of land from an area less desired by the general public. Have the house built yourself, and move in. House buying is not smart unless you are pressed for time, which is not a smart way of handling it as you should take your time with houses.
Buying a house or land in an area that is saturated with demand is also unwise. Live within your means. Most who are able to afford land and house are more than capable of affording more time away from the job or remotely work. If your job requires a lot of your time, then it is more wise to just rent a small room and take vacations outside the area. There are a lot of factors in place when you consider a house, and you made great examples.
I am sorry about the interest rate. A 6.5% rate is not the worst but disadvantageous because, historically, most ROI for safe investments are 5%. This means it is more beneficial to pay off the house than it is to diversify while you are paying the house. Which is bad because you should be diversifying your portfolio. My sister has a 2% interest rate, she is so lucky and I tell her to diversify instead of putting all her money towards paying off the house.
I get you, but the other option is to burn money every month on rent. I think a lot of your issues are solved it you can work remote and have a good home owners warranty.
Do you have any recommendations of who to trust? I’m in a good place in my career but mostly do everything myself. It’s very basic stuff but I think I could be doing better. I just don’t know what the next step is.
Our mortgage brokers, we had a broker that told us it would be best to go with variable because you always end up paying less. We had a choice between 1.35% variable or 2.05% fixed. We had 1.35% for 2 months and it is 6.1% now. We could be putting so much against our principal but instead we are paying 3k+ in interest and 1200 in principal.
You have to approach loans to friends and family members as straight-up “gifts” without anticipating ever seeing the money again. If you do ger repaid consider yourself very lucky.
My wife and I “loaned” a dear friend of hers $2000 at the start of covid. He hasn’t mentioned it since. But we went in knowing this was the likely outcome.
When buying a house people tell you to make sure the roof is in good condition because that’ll be expensive to replace. What they don’t tell you is that is all the other things that you may need to replace and how expensive they are. Fence, paint, siding, water heater, washer/dryer, AC, heater, kitchen appliances, etc. Some this might show up in the inspection report, but it’s hard to get a good idea of what it’ll cost beforehand. Also your realtor will have an incentive to downplay any problems to get the deal done.
Home warranties are universally a scam. It was talked about pretty much every week on the Reddit homeowners forum. Just week after week someone getting scammed.
For one, they’ll fight tooth and nail not replace things. When there is absolutely no way that heater can be patched up and run a little longer they’ll replace it with the cheapest heater possible using the cheapest HVAC guy possible.
This is a great point and an important lesson: part of what makes scams so appealing is that they stroke your ego. A lot of them rely on the mark believing they’re somehow better and different than all the people who got swindled, ignoring the fact that there is no correlation between all the victims besides “they all participated in this scam.”
For example, a lot of sleight-of-hand gamers will let other marks see the sleight of hand while someone is playing. This makes them feel like they’re in on the secret and can’t be fooled by the scammer. What they fail to realize is that the first mark was actually in on it, and the scam happens off the table when you get pickpocketed, or other plants in the crowd “accidentally” jostle you distracting you from the table, or the 6’8", 320 lbs guy named Tinkerbell with the brass knuckles is suddenly very insistent that you must be cheating to win so much and you owe homeboy his money back (and some crowd members are even saying they saw you cheat???)
Scams above all rely on controlling the environment. If you “see through it and know how to come out on top” no you don’t, and no you won’t; it’s almost certainly just another layer of the scam.
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