Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle
Originally Posted By: KenO
Originally Posted By: cashmoney
Because of WW2 my immigrant parents never made it past 5th grade in school. They were careful with their money, always saved a little for a rainy day, but never made enough to buy a house when I was a kid so we lived in rented apartments. My 82 yo mother final bought a small super cheap condo that she lives in about 20 years ago and paid it off in 10 years.
I was lucky enough to get a really good education, majoring in Economics and Finance, got a decent job out of school, saved my money like crazy for a down payment and bought my first starter house when I was 25 years old. I am currently on my 7th house (fully paid off). I learned early that doubling and tripling up on mortgage payments will quickly produce a paid off house. There are lots of fancy theories about how people should not pay off mortgage but instead put extra money into leveraged investments, etc. I say pure 100% horse-poop to that. Anyone that claims they can consistently make more than current mortgage interest rate on their personal investments is almost always lying or deceiving themselves. If they could consistently invest at that performance level they would be running a hedge fund for $5-10 mil a year.
Especially if you are a young person, please listen to this advice - Buy a house and some property you can afford as soon as you can and then save like crazy and pay it off in 5-7 years max. It is the greatest feeling in the world when you make that last payment and actually truly own something of value. Then and only then you can start leveraging, synergizing, etc on your way to being a big time investor.
Oh yea and never buy new cars, buy 3 year old nice low mile cars for cash and drive them for 10 years minimum. That is also the ticket to wealth.
At current home mortgage rates, this is horrible advice. My mortgage is at 3.5%. I've considered paying more money towards it, but I think I'd rather build my savings account for house #2, and turn this one into a rental property. Then rinse & repeat.
I just dumped my house and wish I'd done it sooner. It's at the point where the property taxes just aren't worth it. I'm in a nice apartment for not much more than what I'd been paying in taxes!
There are definitely places in this country where property taxes are insane. But I'd relocate before I lived in an apartment. btw - if you think you aren't paying property taxes in an apartment you are deceiving yourself - its built right into your rent and reflects the value of the apartment. It has to work that way, the landlord is running a for profit business not a charity.