Picasso said:
An aversion to making payments on non appreciating items really surprises me considering you just recommended renting over owning.
I guess we can"t afford it though guys, pack it up, take the light bulbs, those fuckers from wall street are taking our shit.
if I buy immediately with 3% down instead of saving until 20% down but make the same payments as I would have been saving wouldn"t we effectively reach 20% equity simultaneously excluding pmi which would definitely be a smaller loss than renting for that period?
I"m not sure, because I don"t study money all my life... I tend to focus of what it gets me.
Cutlery is retarded because my parents are not and were not wealthy. I had to work full time throughout undergrad which was at a public university while also on scholarship. I got exactly zero support from my parents. Eomer"s the one with rich parents.
And no, buying at 3% and just making payments minus PMI isn"t the same as saving up to 20% and then buying, for a couple of reasons:
Your overall payment will be higher, forever. For the same 30 year note, if you finance 96.5% of the property, your payment will always be higher than if you financed 80% or 70% or whatever. Unless you get 2 loans and do an 80/16.5/3.5 thing, but have fun with double closing costs. Also the interest rate on your second mortgage would be considerably higher than the market rate.
You will also be paying interest on the 16.5% while trying to pay it down, rather than... not paying interest on it.
From a purely behavioral point of view, learning how to live below your means (which will allow you to trivially acquire the 20% you"d need for a house in your income range) while saving for the 20% will eventually, depending on your income and discipline, make you financially independent. Now I"m all about buying cool shit, taking vacations, eating nice meals, etc - just do so comfortably within what you can afford, and have a 5 and 10 year plan for where you want to be. Your goal should be to have several years of living expenses in semi-liquid investments, debt-free or close to it, maintaining only that debt which is advantageous to you (reference Cutlery"s mocking of my mortgage: that is free money, and when you have opportunities like that, pay that shit off slowly.)
Anyway, apparently telling people not to spend so much and you"ll have more money makes me elitist, so whatever.