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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> How  
many young folks have you convinced to follow your example?

Maybe my own children.  At least they conduct their affairs like that right 
now.  For example 13 yo daughter had her eye on something she wanted to 
purchase and so his morning after hearing her rumble through the corn bin for 
a 
while, she comes up with half a dozen rather skillfully done corn dollies 
which 
will soon appear on her Etsy account.  So far for them its always been cash 
in 
the purse before we consider buying anything.

Other than that?  No one.  Less than no one.



>> My brother says it  
> is the best thing I have ever done. Considering all the mistakes I  
> have made, I cannot disagree. I have never regretted borrowing that  
> purchase money.

No doubt.  I once ran my left thumb,. neatly straight from the tip to the 
knuckle, into a table saw blade.  I knew that in the emergency room there was 
a 
doctor there fresh from Viet Nam (this was some years ago) who was really, 
really good a trauma injuries.  I could get in to see a doctor in ten minutes 
or 
defer in the triage and see the other doctor whenever he could manage it.  I 
deferred.  

If you've never had such a bone injury, you cannot imagine the pain.  I had 
come to the hospital as I had been in the shop, shorts and tank shirt and 
nothing else.  I was freezing, losing blood, going into shock from the pain, 
and it 
took two hours of that to see the doctor.

It was one of the best decisions that I ever made.  He reconstructed the 
thumb and except that I can very accurately predict rains storms with it, one 
can 
hardly tell it was ever injured.  I do not regret waiting that two hours to 
see him.

It does not follow that I'd run my other thumb into a table saw blade to see 
him again.

While I don't think we suffer from collective dementia to the point that 
people will ever think that it's good to saw up one's thumbs, or at least 
there's 
no need to safeguard against it since there are good trauma physicians out 
there, yet we do have enough dementia to think that debt's OK, or at least 
there's no need to have a feasible plan in our financial lives since, after 
all, we 
can always borrow the money.

I'm glad the debt worked for you, and if I had had no other option, I'd have 
taken out a mortgage too.  But I've never been that enthusiastic about thumb 
sawing on any level if I can avoid it.

> 
> >Perhaps in some cases. But note that we now have a minority race man  
> who may become our next president who used student loans to get an  
>  


Hmmm, I've got to mull over the notion of 'education' in that context.  Is 
the big O more knowledgeable or skilled than most men I know his age?  I 
don't 
think so.  So when we say a Harvard "education" what do we really mean?  
Connections and name recognition, I'd say. That's what one buys with that 
tuition 
money.

But even if I conceded the point on real estate and "education", the argument 
being made is "Look at all these wonderful things debt can buy!"   Yes, but 
NO debt can buy them as well.  Even better.  It's a little like saying, "Look 
at this wonderful tomato!  They sell tomatoes at WalMart so doesn't it follow 
that since tomatoes are desirable then WalMart must be a wonderful thing?"   
No, the tomato would be much better if it was growing in your backyard.

Same with real estate and education.  If all you can manage is a tomato from 
WalMart, then perhaps that's better than no tomato at all.  But that's sad.  
And even sadder if it is the expected and the norm. 


I did want to answer this too:
>And were your early real estate purchases worth the same when you sold  
them as when you bought them? I suspect not. If not, what was their  
rate of appreciation?


No, you are right.  I did OK on all of them.  No, I did much better than OK 
because I bought them with  cash and all the appreciation in them was mine 
alone.   Because they were cash (and the first one was modest indeed!)  there 
were 
no closing costs, no inspections (except my own), no mortgage insurance, etc. 
and above all no interest.  All that went into my pocket.  I did, of course, 
buy title insurance and paid for a title search (I could do a title search 
myself, but you can't get title insurance that way).

A lot of people tell me, "I paid $30K for this property and after ten years 
it's worth $55K!"   Yes indeed, but although the amount of the mortgage is 
$30K, in the first ten years they've paid $50K in payments and other fees so 
they've really only "made" $5K.

Moreover the money I DIDN't pay in interest went into other investments that 
paid me  interest or appreciation.


So, yes, real estate that I've owned has always (it was the times) sold for 
more than I paid for it.  But, says I, that's ALL the MORE reason to not 
borrow 
to buy it.

I guess I just live on a different planet!   </HTML>