[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

amphibian, on 21 November 2023 - 06:57 PM, said:

As always, how does AI and robotics put more money into my pocket or Maark's pocket without wrecking our industries and killing our jobs for extractive capital entities to make money off stealing/crushing unions/individual people?

We digress though.

I think having 3x salary liquid is absolute nonsense because that money would be sitting there doing little when it could be invested or spent to make life better now.

I don't really have savings right now due to putting together a life after divorce. I put a decent chunk of my paycheck towards retirement and always have, but that's not easily accessible, liquid money. I am slowly getting to a place where I can sock away money, especially with my recent good results at work. I am not alone in that - there's quite a few of my peers and others who cannot do even this. Maark's dark joke bites hard for me and harder for him + others.

6 months salary seems to be a healthy point for emergency savings. I will aim for that.

The transition may be turbulent, but we'll be better off in the end. In the interim I'd (yet again, as I did near the start of the pandemic) recommend investing what you can in the stocks most likely to benefit from AI and robotics. As the transition is taking place mass political movements may be necessary to ensure sufficient universal basic income---though the relevant leading tech companies have been refreshingly enthusiastic about future UBI. With human 'work' no longer being practically necessary, it will hopefully no longer be the bugbear-crutch it currently is to justify ongoing extreme economic inequality, and consequently there should be more political support for the redistribution of wealth. Perhaps people will compete for virtual 'capital' if that's what they want to do.

Stocks are liquid assets:

Quote

Stocks are a classic example of liquid assets. The stock market is established with a steady number of buyers and sellers. How easy a cash conversion is will vary by security type, but you can typically sell your shares and use the funds within a few days.

What are liquid assets and non-liquid assets? | Brex

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 21 November 2023 - 08:11 PM

[Macros]

I do think I should clarify a bit more.

The folks we stayed with, yes as well off now, and being white of a certain age in SA were in a fine position earlier in life. But for him to get to the zero credit situation they were on their knees before the first big pay check came in, like everything was on the block and living totally hand to mouth. It paid off, but they had the opportunity to make that big gamble for the industry they are in. So better starting place, but also willing to noodle soup and kill yourself for that dream of zero debt.
That still sounds wrong, they were dealt a better start8ng hand than most so not comparable someone living under a debt that will never leave.

Anyway.

Given certain situations in the world right now I will have good paying work readily available, indeed if I wasn't running the current 0roject I'm on I could have got sucked into some of the ridiculous overtime going on on some government projects, busted myself for 6 months and wiped half of our debt. When this job ends, if that brutal stuff is still going on I will be sorely sorely tempted to take it.
Our relationship will suffer, badly, for 3 months whilst I w9rk, but the others idea of the tunnel is 2 of the loans cleared. Is that insanity or seizing an opportunity that betters us in the long haul?

[amphibian]

What does your partner say about the relationship suffering badly for 3 months thing?

I usually think that a job that doesn't exact a crushing toll or risk a relationship is worth having to pay off debt slower.

[Mezla PigDog]

I think the trick when you are pushing hard to clear a debt or raise some funds faster than you absolutely need to is to have an end point defined. If you are sacrificing relationship time or whatever then know how long it is for. When you are lucky enough to be on a career roll then there is always the next opportunity to push hard for the next thing. Before you know it years might have gone by. So if you do it do it for a reason with your eyes wide open.

[Cause]

Time, happiness and money are all forms of limited resources we have. Dont borrow too heavily from one to get the other. 3 months doesnt sound like a huge chunk of time to me but it seems you may have been pushing it hard already for quite a while. I think Mezla was right when she said in a previous post you have to live for the now too. Thats the balance that I worry about often.

Discuss it with your partner, if you disagree about it I would say thats the first red flag. If you both agree to the hardship it will place on your relationship that mutual agreement at least should partly help you discuss your way though it.

[Macros]

It's loosely something we've discussed. I think a week ago we were more open to the idea, the recent diagnosis of friend has chwnge the mindset considerably.
There may be a middle ground that clears the most onerous of the loans.

Weare due a sit down and review of our finances

That's something we are good at doing semi regularly

[Tapper]

Cause, on 21 November 2023 - 09:39 PM, said:

Time, happiness and money are all forms of limited resources we have. Dont borrow too heavily from one to get the other. 3 months doesnt sound like a huge chunk of time to me but it seems you may have been pushing it hard already for quite a while. I think Mezla was right when she said in a previous post you have to live for the now too. Thats the balance that I worry about often.

Discuss it with your partner, if you disagree about it I would say thats the first red flag. If you both agree to the hardship it will place on your relationship that mutual agreement at least should partly help you discuss your way though it.

I would not qualify happiness as a resource you can dip into or temporarily decrease to achieve something else.

It is fleeting - you have it when you have it and when you lose it, there’s often no clear way back to that “same level” of happiness, certainly not just by reverting to the previous situation. Mind you, it’s definitely easier without children being part of the equation.

Finally, money/debt is more than a figure on a page. There’s a range of emotions attached and from personal experience, I can tell you that not knowing what it represents to the other can create huge discomfort between you.
To some, having money is an opportunity for growth (studying, opening a business) or for the future (retirement, children’s study budget), for others it’s a feeling of success or being able to expand their lifestyle (travelling, fine dining, branded clothes, starting a family) and for yet others it represents safety ( whatever happens, we’ll be fine for a year, supporting parents/family).
Not having it has a similar range of feelings, some of which could be contradictory as well.

[Macros]

Was looking for the techno advice thread and stumbled upon this.
2 years later near abouts, realistically if we carry on as is we're on track to be debt free in a years time (my estimate was 3 years, 2 years ago).
But that's with loading another loan in that we took after some serious mathing last summer to buy a robot mower for the range, but the savings in wages and quality of life bonus for us, its paid for itself already in my opinion.

That outlier aside we have been getting by well and still have been able to holiday and not bought anything we can't afford, to the point we are looking at expanding the range and ideally funding it totally in house, so on the business side I think we're not a million miles from the no debt purchasing/ improving model we wanted.
We have been fortunate, we live in a shed I converted so no rent or mortgage (we used that buffer to over pay on repayments as much as possible) and my promotion back in February has really brought a lot more comfort financially than I expected, despite earning reasonably well for a lot of my life I've never been comfortable, finding myself living month to month an awful lot, I think I'm finally at a stage where I can be look at getting a proper emergency pot and 3 months expenses gathered up.
We are now considering buying a house, and I want to, acknowledge our shed has a limited life span and we have a rambunctious Husky/Spaniel cross galloping round the place, we could do with the space.
But the thought of a mortgage honestly depresses me, now that I've battered our debt into submission, do I want to be staring down the barrel of 30 years of debt, where (as far as I loosely understand the math) for every 200K you borrow you'll be repaying 300k, 3,2,1. Borrow 2, pay 1 in interest over the term, repay 3.
That's a lot of cheddar, and I like my cheese.
Is this just one of those things that is inevitably a part of life? waiting to buy a house straight up is not feasible.

Waffling was just interested to see where I was 2 years ago, glad I didn't go down the brutal over time route for the money, took a job closer to home which ultimately ended in a promotion which has helped me immeasurably professionally as well as financially and led me now back to leaving this job in 3 weeks time to take the job I was offered back in February, much closer to home, better hours, ultimately more prospects for growth with the company, but a better deal on the table because of the experience I have gained in the interim.


I think I've relaxed a bit about debt because I've watched the numbers come down significantly every month (I update the excel file end of every month) but I really don't want to see it come back.

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 15 October 2025 - 05:27 PM, said:

and we have a rambunctious Husky/Spaniel cross galloping round the place, we could do with the space.

You sonofabitch, you never mentioned you have a doggo, what's their name?

Macros, on 15 October 2025 - 05:27 PM, said:

But the thought of a mortgage honestly depresses me, now that I've battered our debt into submission, do I want to be staring down the barrel of 30 years of debt, where (as far as I loosely understand the math) for every 200K you borrow you'll be repaying 300k, 3,2,1. Borrow 2, pay 1 in interest over the term, repay 3.
That's a lot of cheddar, and I like my cheese.
Is this just one of those things that is inevitably a part of life? waiting to buy a house straight up is not feasible.

I was like you. We lived in our condo for like a decade, got married while there, had both our kids there and started raising them there. Right downtown in one of the most expensive cities in the country. My in-laws owned it and we paid them a PITTANCE in rent per month (just covering the upkeep fees) so it allowed us to save and live lives we liked...but once we had kids, the feasibility of being right downtown and all the stuff we'd learned to just deal with, became more glaring.

The housing market is trash in Canada, so even with my wife's inheritance from her mom who passed (we used for a LARGE down payment), we were staring down the barrel of nearly $670k on a house just over a Mil purchase price....and the thought of that sent me loopy....my wife calmed me down and slowly helped me realize that debt in our society is just part of life in this country and that as long as we could handle the monthly payments (and shit that might come up) we would be okay. So we jumped and did it...and I'm not going to say it's always easy...it's not...and being in debt (even mortgage debt that most people have) sucks, but the kids are blissfully happy to have a yard in a small town, our commutes are not terrible, and we no longer have to deal with the crap we had to deal with downtown...so it's all for the better. It just took realizing that the mortgage debt was indeed inevitable and that we don't live in a universe where it was avoidable...and as Canadas housing market has been artificially inflated for like 2 decades, we could not even cheap out on it if we wanted somewhere halfway decent.


So yeah, it sucks...but you'll get over it and as long as you do the math on affordability month to month (figuring in emergencies too, cause they happen even in new houses) then you'll be okay.

[Macros]

Doggo now in picture thread.

I thought our housing market was bad!

We bad considered building, would get a site on my folks farm and we could definitely build well under market value but planning is a serious pain here and realistically if we started the process now we would be doing well to be in a house within 2 years.

We could buy a fixer upper, and beat the market price there I guess.
We'll see what the mortgage advisor says once I get my return for this year done and have cleared another loan, we were a bit deflated after meeting them earlier this year with them not overing out what we thought they would

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 16 October 2025 - 06:07 AM, said:

Doggo now in picture thread.

I thought our housing market was bad!

We bad considered building, would get a site on my folks farm and we could definitely build well under market value but planning is a serious pain here and realistically if we started the process now we would be doing well to be in a house within 2 years.

We could buy a fixer upper, and beat the market price there I guess.
We'll see what the mortgage advisor says once I get my return for this year done and have cleared another loan, we were a bit deflated after meeting them earlier this year with them not overing out what we thought they would

Whatever happens, just know that whatever you decide will be the right decision for you guys. And if it doesn't feel right, try another avenue you've mentioned. They are all valid, and it sounds like they all have painful bits to them, but not insurmountable.