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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • It’s not common for people to itemize any longer after Trump’s tax updates a few years ago

    The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 Trump passed put in place permanent tax cuts for corporations and temporary tax cuts for individuals. The individuals tax cuts expire next year in 2025 so in 2026 the current standard deduction for single filers of $14,600 drops to $8,300. For joint filers is currently $29,000 and dropping to $16,600. source

    Unless these tax cuts for individuals are renewed, we might see many more folks itemizing again because the standard deduction is too small again.


  • I had a long reply typed out exploring the various aspects and raising questions to the methodology and applicability of the advice in the article to different groups of people in different geographies and stage of life. However the tone of replies seems to just want to accept the article as is. Its a yahoo finance article, so the depth is pretty shallow and only speaks in broad generalizations. Your reply is doubling down on exactly that. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but it looks like the there isn’t a desire in this thread to explore it any further.

    So we’ll just accept the article answer which you summarize well: “generic/average month-to-month overview, home ownership is almost always more expensive.”

    Conventional wisdom says keep renting folks and don’t question it.



  • Once you factor in things it mentions like insurance, taxes, upkeep along with others like a down payment then it’s very easy to see where the 14% numbers comes from.

    So you’re agreeing with me that they’re only comparing the first month of ownership of the house with the last month of renting? There’s no factoring in the long term rise in rents to their math?

    There’s a lot of additional and hidden costs with home ownership.

    There certainly are, but its very situational. A 100 year old home will have very different upkeep costs than a 10 year old home. A home in a hurricane zone will have different upkeep than one that isn’t.


  • First, musk is an ass. No defense of him.

    Spaceflight, however, is awesome.

    I’m a space systems propulsion design engineer by profession. I worked on a project which I will not name that requires on-orbit refuelling. (It’s not this one and I don’t and will never work for Elon Musk).

    I’m just an enthusiast so I trust your professional opinion more than my own knowledge.

    The technology for in-orbit refuelling doesn’t exist, and there’s a whole lot of new technology required.

    I’m assuming your referring to the SpaceX on-orbit refueling of cryogenic propellants requirement, which I agree hasn’t happened yet in history by anyone. However, there is a regular on-orbit refueling of cryogenic propellants for years on a regular basis with Progress spacecraft refueling the 400 liters worth of tanks (860kg of hydrazine) on the ISS for its orbit raising rocket engine located on the Zvezda module of the ISS. Cryogenic propellants would be a whole different animal however.

    I’m sceptical that they do have current solutions which are feasible and useful, rather than something like a one-shot refueling subsystem that weighs 250kg and delivers 15 litres of hydrazine.

    As this technology is in regular use in space today, I don’t doubt SpaceX could do this, but we agree this doesn’t accomplish anything close to what is needed for the lunar mission SpaceX signed up for.


  • On paper, owning a home is almost always more expensive than renting — about 14% more, on average, after factoring in expenses like insurance, taxes, and upkeep.

    I’d be interested in seeing how they arrived at the 14% number.

    When I bought my first home a couple of decades ago I moved out of my 1 bedroom apartment which I was paying a monthly rent of $700/month into a small starter home with a mortgage of $1000/month. 20 years later that exact same apartment rents for $1350/month. All of the years I lived there my house payment never rose higher than the $1000/month mortgage payment while the rent on the apartment apparently continued to increase year over year. Meanwhile I ended up selling the starter home for $110,000 than my purchase prices nearly 20 years ago.

    So is their 14% number just calculated on the first month of each (renting vs buying)?