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Ten for Tuesday, September 7, 2010
By JLP | September 7, 2010
I hope everyone had a nice 3-day weekend.
1. Frugaldad writes about a young couple paying $475,000 for their first house. I don’t envy this couple.
2. Credit card rewards take from the poor and give to the rich.
3. Meg needs your advice: should she cancel cable and or/internet?
4. Are low mortgage rates around for the long term?
5. 3 ways you can simplify your financial life.
6. 5 easily avoidable financial mistakes young people make.
7. Larry Swedroe has 5 retirement mistakes to avoid from his new book, Wise Investing Made Simpler (Second in a series)
8. Don’t tap your retirement fund to pay off your house.
10. Finally, some advisors see bright spots.
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Topics: Weekly Roundup | 1 Comment »
September 8th, 2010 at 10:08 am
I didn’t particularly care for Frugaldad’s post – I sensed ageism (“barely look old enough to buy an alcoholic beverage”) and a condescending tone because they’re not making the choice that Frugaldad would make. The couple he mentions presumably has high-paying jobs: salary.com puts drug sales and account executives combined *starting* salaries at about $160K – and if this couple, at 27, has 5-6 years of experience under their belt they could be making well over $200K by now. They might have no other debt and been living frugally since college and saved up a large down payment because having a large, nice house is something they value. They’re not necessarily committing to 30 years of payments (average time in a home is 7 years, I think?). And when I read “we can afford the payment” that, to me, says they looked at their budget and said “this is how much we can afford per month” rather than “this is how much the bank says we can afford.”
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but you can’t necessarily tell enough about someone’s finances from a 1-hour TV show, and certainly not enough to make the kind of judgments Frugaldad was making.
And I wish someone could tell me how much longer rates would stay low.