zurch1818

Yes...I'm not going to deny that leveraging the value isn't a way to get more value out of it. You are also paying property taxes on the assessed value each year. My property taxes last year on my $500k house in a suburb of Madison were $8.5k, so the net gain in your 2% scenario for me (since my house is paid for) would only be $1.5k. Additionally, with how mortgages are set up, you pay the interest up front, so that also should get accounted for to in your scenario. On my mortgage that got paid off in under 3.5 years, I paid 20k in interest (roughly a third of the interest on the minimum payment amortization schedule). I feel like the lender's get a pretty sweet gig. They get this return with no property taxes or other expenses. Furthermore, that gain in value is now tied up into something you can't easily access unless you get another mortgage (HELOC) and pay more interest. I like being liquid. This is toobimportant to me. You could have instead invested that $70k you put down in the market and with the rule of 72, it will double in value every 7 years (assuming a a 10% interest rate). It will be worth roughly 230k after 12 years. But you have to pay cap gains on the gains, so total gain is (230 - 70)*(1-0.15) = 136k, not bad for only 12 years...but let's say you let it go 28 years (4 doubling periods). 70*2*2*2*2=1.12 million (890k net gain after cap gains). As Einstein says... The bottom line is, yes, I agree with you that what I said was not quite right, but the ROI isn't nearly as great when considering other expenses. This is why I said the increase is basically a few percentage points above inflation. You can make money on it no doubt, but it may not make you wealthy. Now paid for rental properties = cash flow!!! Especially if you know how to buy properties under market value. Also, diversifying assets between real estate and the market is also smart. There's also an aspect of real estate that takes time. It's something not required with stocks. Hopefully it won't come back to bite me.

Is there a way for you to retain ownership until they completely pay you? It's essentially what is happening. You can let them do the reno while still being the official owner. It's just if they default, you won't have to sue since you are still the property owner. I'm guessing your lawyer can come up with a way to make this happen in the contract.

First off...congrats on getting an offer you are considering accepting. That's not always easy. Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a real estate expert. I'm only speaking from my experience on paying off my house in 3.5 years. I also have no interest in ever owning rental property (though I could probably start this in a few years and buy my first property with cash...being a landlord is just too much work for me with having 3 kids under 3). I'd take the cash offer and here's why. If they are going to do significant work on it and they go under, you are going to be stuck with a house that may be difficult to sell as not many people are interested in buying a house halfway through a renovation (unless they get it at a good discounted price). Nope...it's just not worth the headache in my opinion. I don't want my money tied up in something I don't have control of...plus you may struggle to find renters to live in halfway renovated space. Stay liquid (that's the new water 😀). Real estate itself is actually not a great investment. It does help diversify your assets and isn't volatile, but only goes up in value a few percentage points above inflation (LINK). It only becomes lucrative when you have no payments and you can get rental income on top of the increase in value. I'm going to guess that the 6.75% interest payment is going to be way less than what your current rental income is at this. Sure 6.75% is a good interest rate, but when you consider that the S&P has gone up 17% this year, it doesn't look as great. Granted, not every year will do that, but on average, the yearly return of the S&P has been 10.5% over the last 100 years. The bottom line is the track record of the stock market will likely have a better rate of return (without the rental income). I'm not a bond expert either, but Louis's bond above gets more interest. Heck, we have a HYSA that is getting 4.25% now, which I know we can get more but it's not as convenient. It's an emergency fund. For the volume of money we are keeping in the account, it's only 100s of dollars different a year and the interest won't make us wealthy. That's a job for the brokerage bridge retirement account and Roth 401k/IRA accounts. Set it and forget it.

In retrospect, here is what the trade machine says about this trade now. The only part of it that I can't add is Manny Piña as he has been DFA'd by the A's (which had negative value originally). Brewers = Actual A's. A's = Actual Braves. Braves = Actual Brewers (as they should be). I think the only thing that is valid is the sum of the current gets as the gives came from different teams. I find it interesting that now the most valuable piece is Contreras...and Payamps (barely) has more value than Ruiz. Here is what values were at the time of the trade.

His xERA, FIP, and xFIP are all much more impressive. His statcast peripherals are below. It seems he walks over 5 batters an inning and his babip is also 0.400, which is not a good combo. Seeing that the hard hit percentage is in the 91st percentile, I wonder if his ERA would be better if he has the Brewers defense behind him. He's also only pitched 31 innings, so a lot can still change with that small of a sample. With that said, you can put me in the jury is still out on him camp. It seems the Brewers have cycled through a lot of these dime a dozen hard throwing high walk pitchers over the years, so maybe like you said, they know something more than what the peripherals I'm seeing are showing?

Just curious...shouldn't this article get banished to the trade rumors forum as I just don't see it ever coming to fruition? The Brewers organization is just too analytical.

I tried really hard to watch the World Cup. The lack of commercials is a definite positive. It was entertaining but I don't think I could watch it all the time. It's just a little bland for me (much like American Football where there is too much dead/commercial time). Soccer isn't a terrible sport by any means but as a fan of hockey, I also find offsides, the lack of substitutions, and the lack of shots on goal frustrating. The strategy between soccer and hockey is pretty much identical. I also used to hate on hockey and soccer until college. Having a roommate from Minnesota, I started getting into hockey. I can remember playing the video game with him for the first time where I got destroyed like 10-1 or something close to that. Then I started learning offsides and icing and some of the strategy and I was hooked (pun not intended). The commercials aren't terrible for NHL games either...14 10 and 6 minute marks of each period (assuming there isn't a break in the action or a power play). Additional, the offsides line is static, there are on-the-fly line changes where each shift is a minute or so, and way more shots on goal. At this point, I think I like soccer more than American Football. I would like to see soccer played with hockey rules. They could have boards to keep the ball in play and why not...checking. I think this may be indoor soccer (well without the checking) but I'm not sure.

In my quest of trying to figure out why the Diamondbacks traded Scherzer in the first place, I found this gem. LINK. Ian Kennedy and Edwin Jackson for Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth. 🤦‍♂️

Regarding a more recent Brewers AA to MLB debut, I just confirmed a memory that Dana Eveland did this in 2005.

Yes. At least this moderate one does. There are crazies that are in each political party that give each party a bad name (democrats, republicans, and even libertarians). Employees shouldn't suffer because the company ownership didn't prepare for a storm...or a government mandated shutdown. It is the exact reason why unemployment benefits make sense. Now if that was an employee that never showed up for work, slept on the job...then full unemployment benefits don't make sense. It's a spectrum that is hard to quantify which makes this such a touchy subject.

My libertarian take is as follows: For the duration that the PPP loan was issued, a wall-run business should have had enough retained earnings to cover the business expenses and not needed take out a loan to cover this. If they didn't, they should have closed down (at least temporarily) and the employees should go on unemployment and gotten paid through that. We already had a system in place to cover this. There is no reason a new inefficient government program was needed. In hindsight, the PPP loan just was too susceptible to fraud since the employer was getting paid upfront and could take advantage of the government. I think business owners agreed to take on risk when they opened a business. With higher risk comes possible higher reward (higher compensation). In my opinion, businesses should be grown at the speed of cash. It's slower but much more sustainable and can weather storms such as pandemics. On the other side of the equation, I feel that car and student loans both need to be given based upon your earning potential. There is no reason why someone should qualify for $100k+ loan for someone that will have an earning potential of $40k. That's how the whole student loan debt debacle started. There are other more affordable options to get the training you need for your career. Where you go to school is not a major factor when getting hired. Mortgages are the same way. When I got my mortgage, I was pre-approved to buy a house that would have had a payment of nearly half my net home pay which is just financial suicide. Now I've mentioned this before, but I am now a year into paying off my house early. It's been great. My 401k deferral is at 18% and I can adjust it as needed. It is making saving for a minivan to buy with cash so easy since we have more positive cash flow than when we had a mortgage payment. To me the cash flow vs. the potential to earn a little more interest(other risk) is just not worth it. Let me give an example: I just opened a HYSA (since I have positive cash flow and am saving for a minivan) and it gets 4.25%. That means for every $1,000 saved, I get $42.50. That is not life changing money for me. Point being, playing the interest game just isn't worth all the hassle of having a separate account...especially if something goes wrong and I need the money. Just pay your loans off as fast as you can. That was you can't cheat on yourself either. If you need to pay them off faster, a second job/side hustle is going to be more effective than playing the interest game.

Sometimes you just need to drink the Astros (or Rays) brand Kool-Aid. Maybe they just saw something in his approach? Or maybe it's just smoke and mirrors in terms of xwOBA?

My 2.5 year old son is literally deathly allergic to milk (to a point where we don't even keep it in the house). On his first day of preschool, they poured him a glass of milk. 🤦. Then after he ingested some, he started having an anaphylaxis allergic reaction. The school then didn't even come close to following our emergency protocol we sent them. 🤦🤦‍♂️. The school told us they were trained in using EpiPens which they clearly weren't as they didn't monitor for symptoms, didn't call 911, or time in-between uses of the EpiPen. 🤦‍♂️🤦🤦🏼‍♂️. I could write so much more about what else went wrong too. Anyway after spending most of Monday in the ER (which is standard for this type of reaction), my son is ok and appears to have no long term health concerns. My wife and I decided we weren't going to send him back...but we did meet with them yesterday and that went well. We could see that they wanted to change. If they can show that they can improve the situation, have a safety protocol in place, we would consider sending him back. Until then, there is no way he is going back.

Also it's not exactly crying. My wife and I alternate as "bassinets" while we try to rest on the couch. Hers has an optional feeding option while mine does not. Each of my shifts lasts from 1.5 hrs to 3ish hours (once they hunger cry). Sometimes on my shorter shifts, I'll "double shift" where I probably won't sleep for the half hour while she feeds them and take them again. My wife does not really sleep while holding them but I can if I'm tired enough otherwise I'm just mindlessly scrolling my phone. This is what my lap looks like when I don't have to hold them. My vote is we hijack this thread and turn it into the 2023 optimism thread!

There are too many doom and gloom sky is falling threads popping up here. I understand the field product is underperforming from the high expectations set from the start of the year, but we need some optimism after beating the Rays at home by 2 runs! The offense has also averaged 5 runs/game these last 2 days. *Bring someone that doesn't watch movies, I also have no idea where this came from. I'm also up in the middle of the night holding our newborn twins. I'm optimistic that Brewers will find their groove before the twins don't need to be held all night.

Oh that would have been awesome if they played in south of Scottsdale. Too bad that didn't work out. It's really odd that places like NY, LA, Boston, Chicago can successfully host multi sport facilities but Phoenix could make it work. I hear you on my overoptimism. Maybe I just like rooting for teams that performed like the 2002 Brewers. Using that analogy maybe we are in 2003 or 2004. I do like the direction this new GM Bill Armstrong is going after having a team of relatively expensive aging defensemen. They were more fun to watch last year (not setting the bar too high). I was expecting them to be just as bad as the year prior but they exceeded my expectations. They have a wealth of talent coming in the wings, so we will see what happens. It's hard rooting for Logan Cooley on the Gophers. The Badgers have been Coyotes bad lately, so it isn't the end of the world. I'm glad to see he's playing another season in Minnesota as that is good for his development. I agree with the Panthers! They are who I want to win it all this year. The one team I don't want is Vegas. I have some coworkers that don't want Dallas because they took the Wild out and they used to be the North Stars.

As the resident Coyotes fan on the site, I can say the ownership over the last 5 years or so has not been the problem. Their owners have actually been decent. They even traded for Taylor Hall in 2019. Although their stadium is/(was?) decent, I feel their location has been their problem. It is in Glendale (a western suburb) right next to the Cardinals stadium and most of the money is in the eastern suburbs (Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, Gilbert, etc). With traffic, it can be a 0:45 minutes to 1:15 minutes away through downtown Phoenix which just isn't really feasible for a snowbird population with other team loyalties. This is why Tempe was so attractive. They actually played last year in aptly named Mullett Arena, the brand new 5,000 seat ASU arena last year. I wasn't a fan of theirs until maybe 2011 or 2012 when I got good with them in the video game and was blacked out of watching the Wild (no FSN+ access) and thought they could move to WI someday, so I don't know why they built the stadium in Glendale in 2003. My guess is it must have been political. I'm also excited for their upcoming youth. It has the feel of the 2005 to 2008 Brewers. Hopefully if they relocate, it will not be in a city I despise.

The Zestimate of our house in the Madison area has gone up in value by almost 45% from the time we bought it 4.5 years ago and we have done nothing to the house to increase its value. I'm not even certain we would purchase our home today if we were on the market given our budget. However, we would have had more time to save...but I'm guessing the rent prices have also gone way up.

Maybe you were late to the party and they already had someone that they liked? I can say that interviewing is a full-time job and when you have other things to do, it is difficult to interview every qualified candidate. I am an advocate of turning in your application in person. This almost acts like a first interview...even if you don't actually talk to the interviewer. Make some small talk and work in your story and also be thankful for the consideration.

Could this be merged with the existing Weimer being called up thread? I find it to be duplicative. Thanks!

Oh yea...title insurance, that is definitely a bigger scam. When we refinanced our house, I don't recall getting our house getting valued again. They only looked at what the remaining balance was on the mortgage. I don't know if that was because I refinanced less than 2 years after we closed and the original one that we did was close enough. We refinanced in the fall of 2020, so maybe COVID had something to do with this too. I'm guessing refinancing probably isn't a very popular thing to do these days. In the refinance, I was also trying to get the monthly payment as low as possible, so we actually brought money from a recent bonus to the refinance closing. It turned out that I received some inheritance a little over a year later and it was enough for us to feel comfortable draining some of our emergency fund down and pay off the house. I figured I wouldn't need as much of an emergency fund with a paid for house. When considering closing costs, we saved a whopping $157. We showed them who was boss. If you have a really healthy emergency fund, I would recommend doing some math and possibly throwing some of it at your house just to increase how much goes to principal (besides ridding yourself of PMI). You won't see a huge gain in interest saved until the mortgage gets paid off...but it could definitely save you thousands of dollars in interest alone.

I feel for you. That sucks. In my opinion, PMI is a complete scam. I feel the mortgage company shouldn't be allowed to pass that cost onto the homeowner. I'm guessing when a sports contract gets insured, the player isn't the one paying the premium, the team is because they are also the beneficiary if you default. If they think you aren't trustworthy to buy the house with less than 20% down then they shouldn't give you the mortgage. There are plenty of mortgage brokers out there that will give you the loan, so it should be their lost. If they do give you the mortgage, the insurance should be something they should have to cover with the interest they are receiving from you.

Haha. I'm coming up on my 9 year anniversary of getting outvoted 1-1, so even ignoring the pending twins, it is true. Our plan was to have 2 kids and my wife was on the fence...now that it is 3 our whole world is about to turn upside down. My wife's sanity is already upside-down. We are lucky we can get 3 carseats to fit in our current vehicle but we are going to probably have to buy a minivan. I also bought a bike rack for 4 bikes last spring (whoops!). We do already have a double wide bike trailer, so that wasn't a complete waste. Now we've got to look into hiring a nanny and all that fun stuff. Kids are expensive...especially since the "hand-me-down" stuff only accounts for one of them. I don't care what kind of "tax break" there is. It's a net pay more. Thanks for the congrats. I just wish there was a way to sort of fast-forward the first 6 months so I can sleep a little bit better and they aren't going to be 100% helpless but more like 90% helpless.

Wow. That's really awful. My wife outvotes me 1-1 all the time, so I can understand. I think that's how successful marriages are built. Hawaii is where we went for our honeymoon and we want to get back there again some day. Unfortunately, we have 2 year-old and are expecting identical twins any day now, so it will be 5-10 years out.

It's bugging me that in our fantasy draft we are allowed 2 keepers. Somehow ESPN glitched and one team had their keepers go in the second and third round and they were able to snag a 1st round player too. It was also weird that it snaked the second round which I've never seen in a keeper round. So now that team has Trea Turner, Aaron Judge AND Gerrit Cole. The only reason Trea Turner was even available was our league as a keep limit of 3. I guess that guy is going to have to make a tough decision next year.