OohPooPahDoo

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BenchSims is a textbook alter. You're welcome.

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Alert!!!

ilovebama is a textbook tattletale!

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Yes, it is an issue that the majority of Americans with absolutely little money-sense runs into, but I have faith that the regular MTBs' are intelligent enough to invest intelligently and within their means.

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:lol: OK. last time I checked being smart didn't exclude you from investment risk.

If you're "smart" you'd move all your risky investments mostly into treasuries by the time you retire - which means the taxpayer has to foot the bill anyway!

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If you believe SS is absolutely necessary for the existence of the country, then we are going to disagree so much philosophically that we will never come to terms.

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What does philosophy have to do with anything? In 1929 the stock market crashed and by 1934 millions of folks too old to work were left destitute. So in 1935 social security was passed. The seniors of that day got a freebie since they didn't have to pay into the system. That's OK since when they were in their working years SS hadn't even been though of - but no more freebies anymore.



If we eliminated social security - the same damn thing is bound to happen somewhere along the line (unless you think maybe you and your MTB friends can get together and figure out someway to prevent stock market crashes from ever happening).


Not to mention the obvious practical problem with ending it - you'd have to either
1) dick over the folks who have been paying into it all their lives
2) make current workers pay for it even though they wouldn't be getting it

I'm assuming we wouldn't do 1 - and really we couldn't, since a lot of the folks who write are laws fall into that group and might take offense to the idea that they should have to give up something they've paid for all their lives - in which case by doing 2, you'd be asking the current generation to fund not only the last generations retirement insurance but their retirement plan as well. Sorry but I just don't have the income to fund two retirements!

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Let me have access to my own damn money to invest, save, or spend as I choose.

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When you lose it on bad investments and are left destitute and too old to work the government will step in anyway.

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So you're saying the Treasury has zero dollars?

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No.

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That's very much a chicken/egg question. If they print money and thus prevent treasuries from "crashing," then its irrelevant.

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That won't keep treasuries from crashing. If anything it will do the opposite. No one wants to tie $1 up in debt for a year if they think $1 will be worth ten times less in a year.



And, like I said, the Treasury is only entitled to the PROFITS of the Fed. Absent Congressional intervention, it would take years for the fed to make up its losses and turn profit again.

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if you are thinking of getting into IRE I would learn the 2% and 50% rule. It is a good evaluation system for a beginning investor.

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Cool, thanks

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The 50-2 rule is very basic. First, the 50% part of the rule says that 50% of your rental revenue from the property will be eaten up by maintenance, repairs, property management (property management is 10% of gross rent) and vacancies. The 2% rule requires that the property generate 2% of the cost of the property per month in rental income. For example, a $100,000 investment should provide $2,000 a month in gross rents.

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Can I use this conversely to see if a home is overpriced? If a duplex rents for $1000 a side - then by the 2% rule it should cost $100,000. Well the one we're looking at now is double that!

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You fail. If they don't raise the debt ceiling, the Fed will just create more dollars to pay off any debt payments.

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:lol: Sorry that's not how it works. The U.S. Treasury is only entitled to the Fed's profits - and after U.S. Treasuries tank, the Fed will take massive losses.

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ETA: All this junk and not even a single mention about S&P issuing a negative outlook?

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I'd issue a negative outlook on U.S. Treasury obligations, too, with all these goons talking about not raising the debt ceiling. See what even a mention of it does?

Is there some sort of rule of thumb I can use to gauge an upper limit to what the cost is to maintain a rental unit? Or can you tell me what you've paid in the past on average?

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i like how you dehumanize the problem with a term like "long term solvency issues"

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Wow, now that's some feigned outrage! You can't dehumanize something that isn't a human.

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we have 6 things that need to be cut dramatically, across all government

1. medicare
2. welfare
3. social security
4. defense
5. medicaid
6. national health care

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OK, then I guess we'll just get everyone to agree on that before MAY.

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we have not even really begun to feel the brunt of the boomers on SS/Medicare, and we can't pay our debts as is

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Yes we can. The U.S. has never missed a debt payment.

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would you rather wait until the US has far lesser international economic impact to make the cuts?

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The issue here is whether or not the U.S. should send the market into a tail spin by refusing to up its debt ceiling.

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Debt default; however, means that you are unable (or have no intention) to make payments that are currently or past due.

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There's no reason to believe that if the ceiling is raised in May it won't result in default. It will certainly make the market believe that default could be imminent - and the market will respond accordingly by blasting treasuries to smitherines. In fact the cause and effect could get reversed - if the market thinks default is imminent, it will raise the price of borrowing for the treasury to absurd levels, which means it won't be able to replace old debt with new debt - inevitable default.

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World markets plunged as a Greek debt default loomed and China took another step to curb its runaway inflation.

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World markets plunge when the GREEKS come close to defaulting - what do you think will happen if the biggest economy on the Earth defaults?