9 ms·

Get ahead by not shooting yourself in the foot

89 points by artpi 5y ago

jlizzle30 5y ago
> Here are the dragons: ... Buying a house or an apartment will disproportionately affect other areas of your life I agree with the general caution about buying a property and the baggage it comes with. Unfortunately with kids there be dragons in renting as well: having to move when getting priced out.
- mcguire 5y ago
  That's a corollary: Don't have kids. They're like shooting your life in the foot with a howitzer. Also, don't get married; the author says they got lucky, but we'll have to see the long term before you can make that conclusion. In fact, just stay away from other people. They are an emotional and financial liability. (This is sarcasm, of course, although I suspect the author is serious about avoiding things that many people find meaningful.)
  - Dwelve 5y ago
    Getting ahead is the most important thing in life!
    - irishloop 5y ago
      That's right. And not for its intrinsic value, but to impress others!
- artpi 5y ago
  I (author) have a kid, a dog, an apartment and a summer house I inherited. I definitely speak from experience here and am not specifically against anything in particular, except rushing into decisions. Houses have sizes, locations and whole spectrum of varieties that can be taken into account!
- periheli0n 5y ago
  > Unfortunately with kids there be dragons in renting as well: having to move when getting priced out. And the cost of moving with kids is much greater than moving alone or as a couple. You will need to find new schools, activities, etc. It constrains your search space and will inevitably take a toll on your time budget. The areas with decent schools etc also tend to be more expensive. When you buy property in such an area you can at least lock in a flat rate on your rent for the next 10-20 years or so, until your kids have grown up and can leave the nest. So it does make a lot of sense to buy when you have kids. Either way, those "risky career moves" are anyhow much less of a good idea when you need to provide for a family. Even as a couple it can be a challenge to move because of your career — it's rare that both partners get a career bump out of a joint move.
foobarian 5y ago
Sounds to me like author has had some bad experiences and is trying to generalize them. But I would have been curious to read about those things directly that inspired the author to write this, instead of the indirect points. It all seems reasonable stuff that most of us do when picking a place to live, work, etc. Of course buying a house will pin you to the surrounding area. And I don't know if anybody does that without at least examining the house and area in person at least once, instead of just going by photos. Anyway.
- virgilp 5y ago
  You'd be surprised how otherwise perfectly rational people look at irrelevant stuff (furniture, interior design) and miss important things (floor plans; neighbors; practical aspects like storage space, number and position of bathrooms, etc)
- artpi 5y ago
  Precisely the opposite! Author is annoyed listening to friends complaining about mistakes that would have been easily avoided if they took time to think.
  - foobarian 5y ago
    I appreciate your reply. Understandable that it probably would not be too polite to go into identifiable details in public then. :)
sillyquiet 5y ago
> The typical employment lifecycle of an engineer is: Get frustrated by the current company culture and/or benefits, let this frustration sit for way too long, snap and choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out, join there, and repeat the cycle all over again. It's scary how real this is, but it's easy to say "don't do that", when all the inhibitions about leaving your current job rotate around some seriously bottom levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - you literally could be without home and (in the US) healthcare if you do this precipitously or without somewhere to jump to, or if you make a poor choice in jumping. Not saying it's good to sit pat until things get so bad you can't, but there's real scary things behind folk's decisions to stay and weather the horseshit at a place.
- mprovost 5y ago
  The takeaway here is to leave before you're frustrated. While things are still good. That is when you are in the best position and frame of mind to make a change. Because you can walk away from any offer that isn't better. If you wait until things are terrible then yes you can feel trapped in a bad situation because you have to pay the bills.
  - sillyquiet 5y ago
    sure sure, but given the (potential) downsides of choosing wrong, what would be the trigger or reason for leaving IF things are still good? Or are you saying if you see signs of things going downhill but things are currently good?
    - nefitty 5y ago
      More money. More impressive title. Wanting to relocate. Downsizing. Learn new tech stacks/skills not available at your current job. Scoping out a new industry to prepare for launching a business.
    - mprovost 5y ago
      Compare it to investing. Do you wait for the stock to go down and then sell, or do you sell when it's high and take your profit elsewhere? Even if you invest it in something that then goes down, you still made your profit. If you move before things get bad, you'll always be able to look back at your time at the company with happiness. No burnt bridges, no bitterness. Sure it's a risk to move somewhere else, but in this other world where you wait for things to get bad before moving then 100% of the time you're signing up for some period where your (work) life sucks.
vorpalhex 5y ago
Complains about pop ups and modals on the modern web.. has an email modal pop up randomly while you are reading.
- artpi 5y ago
  Busted!
jayroh 5y ago
Not to be that guy but I'll be that guy > Don’t loose your asset Did you mean ... "Don't LOSE your asset"? (sorry)
- artpi 5y ago
  Updated! Thank you - English is my second language and that sort of thing still catches me off-guard
  - chucksta 5y ago
    English is my only proficient language and I still mix those up :)
haltingproblem 5y ago
Or as I have learnt the haaaard way - amateurs win at [insert sport] tennis by not making unforced errors i.e. just return the ball and make sure your serve is not out... most of the time and you are good. Pros win by hitting aces and shots. At most games in life we are amateurs - buying cars, buying/renting houses, getting jobs since we don't do those things frequently enough to get good at them and learn all the tricks and traps. We can try to get a great deal on a car but that is near impossible - try and avoid the usual traps and you are doing good enough. Buying "too much" house is one of those traps. Buying a house that needs too much work is another. Buying a house with an expensive amenity (e.g. swimming pool or too big of a garage or lawn) is another.
godot 5y ago
I feel like I agree with this in principle but the examples almost feel backwards to me. The bullet points under buying a house seems to be specifically about: 1) Overstretching your budget to buy bigger houses than you can afford, 2) Buying somewhere very remote where there are no job opportunities if you don't work remote, 3) Leisure options and friends are far away. None of these points are about buying a house itself as a decision (vs, renting). Depending on your timing and location, renting is way more of a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot decision than buying a house. I graduated from college in mid-2000s and after a few years finally saved up to buy a house in early 2010s. Plenty of my peers saw no real need to this and continued renting through the decade of 2010-2020 while seeing home prices rise to unaffordable levels. I acknowledge that I got lucky in my timing and location (bay area), but it's hard to imagine a scenario where buying doesn't make sense when you can afford to. If nothing else, a (fixed rate) mortgage at least guarantees your monthly housing payment won't increase, vs rent. The decision to rent (as in, not being forced to rent because you cannot afford to buy) seems way more footgun-ish. On the jobs section, the way most people choose jobs is insane, not by choice but more because it really is that hard and luck-based choosing a job. Over my career, I got to the "choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out" point and landed a job, twice, and these both happen to be jobs I loved and stayed for a long time. Notably, another time, I moved to a company because I had a lot of friends working there so I knew I'd enjoy the people there, it didn't work out after a year and a half for other reasons than the people. The point of this all is, it's just really difficult to know what really matters at a job and company, so it's really hard to call this a footgun decision.
anyfoo 5y ago
I grew up in Germany, where, for reasons I don't really know or understand right now, paying rent has been common and normal across a large part of the population since long before I was born. Buying an apartment or even house to live in almost seemed to be more like a "luxury" for rich people to me. I moved to the US a decade ago, and (I knew this before) the mindset seems to be that renting is only a temporary situation, until you finally settle down buying "your" house to raise your family in. People talk about their "first house" or "starter home", terms that aren't really common in Germany at all. Buying property isn't totally uncommon there, but often happens much later in life, and many people are happy never doing so at all. I always felt that differing mindset has been doing me a service, as I feel zero compulsion to buy property until the conditions are really fully satisfactory. I am aware that any rent I pay is "gone", while the mortgage ultimately pays into a principal, but so far the overall equation taking everything into account (also including those aspects without a directly gaugeable monetary value that the article mentions) did not tip over towards owning yet.
- __turbobrew__ 5y ago
  Something else to factor is that Germany probably has much stronger rental protections than many US states. Renter-landlord rights are fundamentally at tension so jurisdictions have to choose where that balance lies. If rights are lopsided towards the landlord it becomes much less desirable to rent because you have little control over your living situation.
  - anyfoo 5y ago
    Almost certainly, yeah. I try to counteract this by choosing "good landlords" (a lesson I learned after my first apartment here, which was owned by a corporation that was terrible to deal with), but there's only so much you can do of course. Right now we lucked out, and it feels mutually beneficial.
- schimmy_changa 5y ago
  A big piece of this is that 30-year mortgages in the USA are strongly subsidized and encouraged (see, mortgage interest tax deduction, loan guarantees, flood insurance, sewer and road system subsidies, etc). So for a middle-class person, there's a giant incentive to buy a house as it's the next-best thing after 401k matches to 'free money'. Meanwhile, as we continue to not build housing (a trend over the last ~50 years), the price of renting continues to increase and the value of a house that you had previously bought also increases. I would rather avoid buying a house for flexibility reasons, but it just seems like such a waste when I compare against my peers who have bought property. Hopefully things change, but these are some of the reasons why it's such a good deal in Germany vs the US to rent. (granted I don't know much about the German side)
closetnerd 5y ago
I get the general attitude/perspective and I'm largely in agreement. I'll nit-pick on his point of buying experiences vs things. Though I agree that instagrammable experiences don't have much meaningful value, I do value a lot experiences where I paid not an insignificant amount of money. I'm assuming the author meant some balance but called something out based on his impression of an audience (maybe some projection on his part). But "paid experiences" can meaningfully lead to personal growth, perspective of other countries/peoples, deepening friendships. That being said - you should have good long term finances to even make all that viable.
mdoms 5y ago
Buying a house is, by far and away, the best thing I have ever done for my personal happiness and wellbeing. Have I constrained myself financially? Yes, sure. But every day I work in my garden, work in projects in my garage, take on home improvement projects etc. Despite the constraints, I have never felt more free. I would never, EVER go back to renting. Ever.
switch007 5y ago
I find some people really romanticize renting. It varies by country I guess. It sucks in the UK/Ireland. Here are some downsides to renting off the top of my head: - Getting kicked out when the landlord wants to sell or "move in their family" - No pets - No decorating (painting walls etc) - Landlord taking up to 12 months to repair basic things, if at all ("well, you accepted the property when X was broken/in Y condition") - Landlords trying to scam you out of deposits - Poorly maintained properties - Up to 25% annual increases in rent - Moderate to extreme difficulty actually finding somewhere - Mold. It's incredible how many rentals have mold problems (in my experience) - Moving costs if you are forced to move frequently
musicale 5y ago
Or grow bulletproof feet.
foxyv 5y ago
The best way to get ahead is to start budgeting properly. Get an app like YNAB and get to the point where you can go for a few months without a job. Then, when a company decides to go dark-side, you can afford to leave and spend some time looking elsewhere. The stress reduction is insane. All of a sudden, losing your job isn't the end of the world. The reason employers have so much leverage is because their workers are living paycheck to paycheck. If workers could just leave at any time for months on end then they would be in a much better situation to negotiate for better pay.

89 points by artpi 5y ago

> Here are the dragons: ... Buying a house or an apartment will disproportionately affect other areas of your life I agree with the general caution about buying a property and the baggage it comes with. Unfortunately with kids there be dragons in renting as well: having to move when getting priced out.

mcguire 5y ago
That's a corollary: Don't have kids. They're like shooting your life in the foot with a howitzer. Also, don't get married; the author says they got lucky, but we'll have to see the long term before you can make that conclusion. In fact, just stay away from other people. They are an emotional and financial liability. (This is sarcasm, of course, although I suspect the author is serious about avoiding things that many people find meaningful.)
- Dwelve 5y ago
  Getting ahead is the most important thing in life!
  - irishloop 5y ago
    That's right. And not for its intrinsic value, but to impress others!
artpi 5y ago
I (author) have a kid, a dog, an apartment and a summer house I inherited. I definitely speak from experience here and am not specifically against anything in particular, except rushing into decisions. Houses have sizes, locations and whole spectrum of varieties that can be taken into account!
periheli0n 5y ago
> Unfortunately with kids there be dragons in renting as well: having to move when getting priced out. And the cost of moving with kids is much greater than moving alone or as a couple. You will need to find new schools, activities, etc. It constrains your search space and will inevitably take a toll on your time budget. The areas with decent schools etc also tend to be more expensive. When you buy property in such an area you can at least lock in a flat rate on your rent for the next 10-20 years or so, until your kids have grown up and can leave the nest. So it does make a lot of sense to buy when you have kids. Either way, those "risky career moves" are anyhow much less of a good idea when you need to provide for a family. Even as a couple it can be a challenge to move because of your career — it's rare that both partners get a career bump out of a joint move.

foobarian 5y ago

Sounds to me like author has had some bad experiences and is trying to generalize them. But I would have been curious to read about those things directly that inspired the author to write this, instead of the indirect points. It all seems reasonable stuff that most of us do when picking a place to live, work, etc. Of course buying a house will pin you to the surrounding area. And I don't know if anybody does that without at least examining the house and area in person at least once, instead of just going by photos. Anyway.

virgilp 5y ago
You'd be surprised how otherwise perfectly rational people look at irrelevant stuff (furniture, interior design) and miss important things (floor plans; neighbors; practical aspects like storage space, number and position of bathrooms, etc)
artpi 5y ago
Precisely the opposite! Author is annoyed listening to friends complaining about mistakes that would have been easily avoided if they took time to think.
- foobarian 5y ago
  I appreciate your reply. Understandable that it probably would not be too polite to go into identifiable details in public then. :)

sillyquiet 5y ago

> The typical employment lifecycle of an engineer is: Get frustrated by the current company culture and/or benefits, let this frustration sit for way too long, snap and choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out, join there, and repeat the cycle all over again. It's scary how real this is, but it's easy to say "don't do that", when all the inhibitions about leaving your current job rotate around some seriously bottom levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - you literally could be without home and (in the US) healthcare if you do this precipitously or without somewhere to jump to, or if you make a poor choice in jumping. Not saying it's good to sit pat until things get so bad you can't, but there's real scary things behind folk's decisions to stay and weather the horseshit at a place.

mprovost 5y ago
The takeaway here is to leave before you're frustrated. While things are still good. That is when you are in the best position and frame of mind to make a change. Because you can walk away from any offer that isn't better. If you wait until things are terrible then yes you can feel trapped in a bad situation because you have to pay the bills.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  sure sure, but given the (potential) downsides of choosing wrong, what would be the trigger or reason for leaving IF things are still good? Or are you saying if you see signs of things going downhill but things are currently good?
  - nefitty 5y ago
    More money. More impressive title. Wanting to relocate. Downsizing. Learn new tech stacks/skills not available at your current job. Scoping out a new industry to prepare for launching a business.
  - mprovost 5y ago
    Compare it to investing. Do you wait for the stock to go down and then sell, or do you sell when it's high and take your profit elsewhere? Even if you invest it in something that then goes down, you still made your profit. If you move before things get bad, you'll always be able to look back at your time at the company with happiness. No burnt bridges, no bitterness. Sure it's a risk to move somewhere else, but in this other world where you wait for things to get bad before moving then 100% of the time you're signing up for some period where your (work) life sucks.

vorpalhex 5y ago

Complains about pop ups and modals on the modern web.. has an email modal pop up randomly while you are reading.

artpi 5y ago
Busted!

jayroh 5y ago

Not to be that guy but I'll be that guy > Don’t loose your asset Did you mean ... "Don't LOSE your asset"? (sorry)

artpi 5y ago
Updated! Thank you - English is my second language and that sort of thing still catches me off-guard
- chucksta 5y ago
  English is my only proficient language and I still mix those up :)

haltingproblem 5y ago

Or as I have learnt the haaaard way - amateurs win at [insert sport] tennis by not making unforced errors i.e. just return the ball and make sure your serve is not out... most of the time and you are good. Pros win by hitting aces and shots. At most games in life we are amateurs - buying cars, buying/renting houses, getting jobs since we don't do those things frequently enough to get good at them and learn all the tricks and traps. We can try to get a great deal on a car but that is near impossible - try and avoid the usual traps and you are doing good enough. Buying "too much" house is one of those traps. Buying a house that needs too much work is another. Buying a house with an expensive amenity (e.g. swimming pool or too big of a garage or lawn) is another.

godot 5y ago

I feel like I agree with this in principle but the examples almost feel backwards to me. The bullet points under buying a house seems to be specifically about: 1) Overstretching your budget to buy bigger houses than you can afford, 2) Buying somewhere very remote where there are no job opportunities if you don't work remote, 3) Leisure options and friends are far away. None of these points are about buying a house itself as a decision (vs, renting). Depending on your timing and location, renting is way more of a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot decision than buying a house. I graduated from college in mid-2000s and after a few years finally saved up to buy a house in early 2010s. Plenty of my peers saw no real need to this and continued renting through the decade of 2010-2020 while seeing home prices rise to unaffordable levels. I acknowledge that I got lucky in my timing and location (bay area), but it's hard to imagine a scenario where buying doesn't make sense when you can afford to. If nothing else, a (fixed rate) mortgage at least guarantees your monthly housing payment won't increase, vs rent. The decision to rent (as in, not being forced to rent because you cannot afford to buy) seems way more footgun-ish. On the jobs section, the way most people choose jobs is insane, not by choice but more because it really is that hard and luck-based choosing a job. Over my career, I got to the "choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out" point and landed a job, twice, and these both happen to be jobs I loved and stayed for a long time. Notably, another time, I moved to a company because I had a lot of friends working there so I knew I'd enjoy the people there, it didn't work out after a year and a half for other reasons than the people. The point of this all is, it's just really difficult to know what really matters at a job and company, so it's really hard to call this a footgun decision.

anyfoo 5y ago

I grew up in Germany, where, for reasons I don't really know or understand right now, paying rent has been common and normal across a large part of the population since long before I was born. Buying an apartment or even house to live in almost seemed to be more like a "luxury" for rich people to me. I moved to the US a decade ago, and (I knew this before) the mindset seems to be that renting is only a temporary situation, until you finally settle down buying "your" house to raise your family in. People talk about their "first house" or "starter home", terms that aren't really common in Germany at all. Buying property isn't totally uncommon there, but often happens much later in life, and many people are happy never doing so at all. I always felt that differing mindset has been doing me a service, as I feel zero compulsion to buy property until the conditions are really fully satisfactory. I am aware that any rent I pay is "gone", while the mortgage ultimately pays into a principal, but so far the overall equation taking everything into account (also including those aspects without a directly gaugeable monetary value that the article mentions) did not tip over towards owning yet.

__turbobrew__ 5y ago
Something else to factor is that Germany probably has much stronger rental protections than many US states. Renter-landlord rights are fundamentally at tension so jurisdictions have to choose where that balance lies. If rights are lopsided towards the landlord it becomes much less desirable to rent because you have little control over your living situation.
- anyfoo 5y ago
  Almost certainly, yeah. I try to counteract this by choosing "good landlords" (a lesson I learned after my first apartment here, which was owned by a corporation that was terrible to deal with), but there's only so much you can do of course. Right now we lucked out, and it feels mutually beneficial.
schimmy_changa 5y ago
A big piece of this is that 30-year mortgages in the USA are strongly subsidized and encouraged (see, mortgage interest tax deduction, loan guarantees, flood insurance, sewer and road system subsidies, etc). So for a middle-class person, there's a giant incentive to buy a house as it's the next-best thing after 401k matches to 'free money'. Meanwhile, as we continue to not build housing (a trend over the last ~50 years), the price of renting continues to increase and the value of a house that you had previously bought also increases. I would rather avoid buying a house for flexibility reasons, but it just seems like such a waste when I compare against my peers who have bought property. Hopefully things change, but these are some of the reasons why it's such a good deal in Germany vs the US to rent. (granted I don't know much about the German side)

closetnerd 5y ago

I get the general attitude/perspective and I'm largely in agreement. I'll nit-pick on his point of buying experiences vs things. Though I agree that instagrammable experiences don't have much meaningful value, I do value a lot experiences where I paid not an insignificant amount of money. I'm assuming the author meant some balance but called something out based on his impression of an audience (maybe some projection on his part). But "paid experiences" can meaningfully lead to personal growth, perspective of other countries/peoples, deepening friendships. That being said - you should have good long term finances to even make all that viable.

mdoms 5y ago

Buying a house is, by far and away, the best thing I have ever done for my personal happiness and wellbeing. Have I constrained myself financially? Yes, sure. But every day I work in my garden, work in projects in my garage, take on home improvement projects etc. Despite the constraints, I have never felt more free. I would never, EVER go back to renting. Ever.

switch007 5y ago

I find some people really romanticize renting. It varies by country I guess. It sucks in the UK/Ireland. Here are some downsides to renting off the top of my head: - Getting kicked out when the landlord wants to sell or "move in their family" - No pets - No decorating (painting walls etc) - Landlord taking up to 12 months to repair basic things, if at all ("well, you accepted the property when X was broken/in Y condition") - Landlords trying to scam you out of deposits - Poorly maintained properties - Up to 25% annual increases in rent - Moderate to extreme difficulty actually finding somewhere - Mold. It's incredible how many rentals have mold problems (in my experience) - Moving costs if you are forced to move frequently

musicale 5y ago

Or grow bulletproof feet.

foxyv 5y ago

The best way to get ahead is to start budgeting properly. Get an app like YNAB and get to the point where you can go for a few months without a job. Then, when a company decides to go dark-side, you can afford to leave and spend some time looking elsewhere. The stress reduction is insane. All of a sudden, losing your job isn't the end of the world. The reason employers have so much leverage is because their workers are living paycheck to paycheck. If workers could just leave at any time for months on end then they would be in a much better situation to negotiate for better pay.