Morgan

Sounds interesting! Looking forward to your (or anyones) review!

I suppose it is a balance, but I view that as wildly risky compared to having the mortgages paid off. Once the mortgages are paid off, you have so much freedom and ability to withstand an eventual downturn. Not to mention FCFs are higher with no mortgage payments.

That place is cool looking. Very beautiful area too. The roads are supposed to be excellent for motorcycle rides. But you're totally right, that is a long way away!

Agreed, real estate gives a normal person access to (hopefully) safe leverage, and most importantly tons of control. There are so many ways to turn around a failing property. If you own stock, you can buy a good company, the market doesn't like and it crashes. If you add margin or options you can really lose it all real fast. Not to mention you have basically zero control. That being said, it is time consuming to manage your own properties.

R-22 has had some pretty intense prices swings in the last 2 years or so. A 25lb can was $700 two years ago, $350 last summer and $500 now. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the ductless mini-split systems or heat pumps, but I think that is because my area is too cold. Basically they stop working below 15F or maybe 0F. No heat is of course a problem in the coldest days of winter. Anyways, as supplemental AC, it is probably a good solution. I have also found that pros will not work on self purchased ductless mini-split systems. Frankly I think they don't know how to fix them. I don't either though. True. No one wants to quote over the phone. In their defense quoting an entire system without actually seeing it is probably too hard. A 1.5 ton AC unit or 100k Btu furnace has a set price though. I buy from wholesalers like the installers do so prices are decent. I'd say HVAC companies charge 4-8x the cost of the parts, but parts really aren't everything. Having all the tools, work vans, knowledge, licenses, insurance, administrators, and inventory on hand, does cost money.

CPI is totally fudged. They've made so many changes on how they calculate it over the years. It needs to stay within a certain range to make the politicians happy. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets modified over the next 1-3 years to put inflation back in 2% range.

We have Sams club and two slices of pizza and a drink for $2.50 deal, but as designed, I usually spend a small fortune in there on other mildly unnecessary stuff.

Yea we have the store CC's with the 5% discounts. It helps of course, but I still want cheaper prices (and to complain! lol) I agree on the food savings; not really worth it unless the coupons come to me with no work. I use them though.

7%? That is definitely not what I’m seeing. Everything I buy is up at least 15-20%. Building, HVAC supplies, tools, etc are up 35-100%. As we all know lumber went up 300%, but now it’s probably only up 100%. Oh joy. Even Egg McMuffins are up 35% in my area. A Subway footlong is up 60%. (Don’t judge my eating habits too much lol) From my perspective there has been a 20% decrease in quality of life. It seems like with all the shipping delays and shortages, we will have another year of substantial price increases.

I agree. The incentives are all wrong in these kinds of investment vehicles. The managers get paid to do deals, and the more and bigger deals they do the more they get paid no matter the outcome. What crap. The manager should only get paid when the investors get paid, whether it’s from the FCFs or from property sales.

Thanks!

God, that is just plain stupid business. Always support the customer. Sometimes you don’t get to eat because you’re too busy. And always take the money if a customer offers it! Jeez.

Thanks! Will watch on my commute.

Jeez. Maybe I should start managing other people’s money.

Caution is good, but how do you even keep a business open with performance like that? Wow.

Didn’t they just start this program? Already it’s going south. Jeez.

I just took a look at the plans and that looks nicer than the dorm and other places I lived in during university. I understand the need of adding more beds densely, and the rooms are small and basically only for sleeping. Once you wake up, you're in the community areas with what looks like quite a bit of natural light. I think it looks ok. One or two years in there wouldn't be there worst at all. It has elevators and AC!

If my memory is correct, his pre-Buffett investments were primarily in real estate. I guess he wants to go back to his early days. Nothing wrong with that, but no windows is crazy. At my dorm in university, I believe we had three toilets and three showers for 8-10 guys. It wasn’t an issue at all. Having only one toilet might have created issues. Particularly if it broke down. We didn’t have AC on the fourth floor either.

@Brett I’m interested and just PM’d you!

Woah that sounds cool!

Basically sounds like WFH will be a competitive disadvantage for creative companies to a certain extent. Companies that only require data entry for example, don’t need to have an employees randomly meeting and interacting. WFH may be a competitive advantage in these cases. In Creativity, Inc, it talks about building the new cafeteria for Pixar and Steve Jobs required that it be set up so all employees would be in the same area and thus more likely to share different kinds of info, just like this study suggests.

Amen. America is the land of opportunity like no other. Work, work, work and it’s likely you’ll succeeded.

Those programs were put in place because the average American is financially illiterate and financially irresponsible. Almost no one who receives a large one time sum makes good decisions with it. Let alone over their entire lifetime to fund retirement. While these programs certainly have problems, they may be the least bad way to avoid the elderly living in the streets. Agreed on hospital costs. No one even knows the price of anything. It’s totally stupid. If I were rich enough, I’d start a hospital with all the prices for everything listed on the wall and let the customers pick if they thought an extra scan was worth it or not. Prices for all surgeries and kinds of little stuff you never think of. Transparency is crucial for competition. I’d need some way to ban lawsuits but also incentivize good patient outcomes. I’m not sure if it’s possible to ban lawsuits other than forcing arbitration. Anyways, just my two cents lol

This is so awesome! Another amazing feat by SpaceX!

Thank you for sharing this. I read the executive summary and hope to read more in the coming days. It’s quite informative.