Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you need to finance a boat, pool, second home, vacation cruise etc then you can't afford it. These are all cash items only.

You should be able to buy a second home in cash? Come on! You must be incredibly wealthy and out of touch to think that.

ITA with him/her that you should be in a position to pay cash for any of these items or you shouldn't buy them. I say this as someone who constantly daydreams of a yacht purchase in 10 years or so, and whose parents didn't buy their second house until they were in their 60s.

You cannot tell nearly as much about a person's net worth as most people think by what they drive, where they live, how they travel, or where their children go to school.

Anonymous wrote:Maxing out every possible retirement vehicle is really not necessary for most people, even people who can easily afford it.

Can you elaborate on this? Especially for younger folks, I feel like it's one of the most necessary and important things you can do. Social Security is a maybe at best, healthcare and housing costs keep skyrocketing, and I feel like my generation (myself included) see retirement as a time to do more things you enjoy like travel, eating out, etc., not to cut back, which requires more income in retirement than while working. Especially since many millennials and Gen Z both got screwed with their young adult years and missed out/are missing out on several years of income growth and savings.

Anonymous wrote:If you need to take out parent plus loans or private bank loans to afford a kid's college you can't afford the college and neither can your kid. If you can't afford it now there is no chance you can afford paying it plus interest for the next 20 years.

Completely agreed with this--PLUS and private should be avoided unless it's just for liquidity purposes. For an undergraduate education though I'd say federal student loans are a great financing option and students/families should not be scared away from them. I'd also say public all the way especially for undergrad. Private colleges and universities are not worth it.

Anonymous wrote:If you need to finance a boat, pool, second home, vacation cruise etc then you can't afford it. These are all cash items only.

You should be able to buy a second home in cash? Come on! You must be incredibly wealthy and out of touch to think that.

Anonymous wrote:That credit score is an indicator of wealth

Disagree, when I was in college I had a great credit score and minimal income or assets. I only used the card for my needs (groceries and gas) and paid it off each month.

If you need to take out parent plus loans or private bank loans to afford a kid's college you can't afford the college and neither can your kid. If you can't afford it now there is no chance you can afford paying it plus interest for the next 20 years.

That credit score is an indicator of wealth

Also you should pay cash for home renovations or not do them.

If you need to finance a boat, pool, second home, vacation cruise etc then you can't afford it. These are all cash items only.

Anonymous wrote:You shouldn't consider your primary home an investment. With maintenance costs, taxes, home improvement projects to make it nicer, etc. they're not great investments.

ITA with this. And the home improvement isn't even just to make it nicer, necessarily. You need to do it if you want it to maintain its value with "comparables." That's a huge drain on the investment returns.

It depends entirely on the timeframe. I paid off my MBA loans of $180k quite aggressively for 2.5 years after graduation. Then I threw everything into the market. I got a 5.5% return on my loans, effectively, but now I’m rebalanced and can capture the market upside without worrying at all about playing the arbitrage game. To each her own.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
3. People taking out those 6-figure loans should pay them off as soon as humanly possible and not let them stretch out for 20-30 years.

I'm in no rush to pay off my prime + 0% loans. I have never not beaten that rate of return in the market

Still don't see the point of hanging onto student debt for decades. IMO, debtors should pay their debts and then invest that monthly payment once their debts are cleared.

why? the amount is variable, but always less than market returns. If I were to pay extra towards debt, my mortgage interest rate is higher than prime

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
3. People taking out those 6-figure loans should pay them off as soon as humanly possible and not let them stretch out for 20-30 years.

I'm in no rush to pay off my prime + 0% loans. I have never not beaten that rate of return in the market

Still don't see the point of hanging onto student debt for decades. IMO, debtors should pay their debts and then invest that monthly payment once their debts are cleared.

Anonymous wrote:
3. People taking out those 6-figure loans should pay them off as soon as humanly possible and not let them stretch out for 20-30 years.

I'm in no rush to pay off my prime + 0% loans. I have never not beaten that rate of return in the market