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Prioritize. What's important to you? Put that first.
Personally, I would LOVE to travel. I don't have that option because my wife works a gig where she can't get time off.
So the idea of taking a week and going to Hawaii or Vegas, or New Orleans? Not going to happen.
So I take the money I would spend on stuff like that and invest it locally in making our lives better.
Bought a house in 2021, got out from under $1,800/mo. rent. Traded it for a $2,000/mo. mortgage, but you know what? I looked up our old place... $2,300/mo. now. House across the street is a rental, $2,600/mo.
As time goes on, our mortgage is going to get cheaper and cheaper.
Owning a house means more projects. Some of the plumbing needed to be re-done, the electrical panel needed an upgrade from 100A to 200A, the roof was 20 years old with a 20 year lifespan, swapped for a 50 year roof that will outlive me, the house has a 3rd patio which couldn't be used because there was no cover, so we added a retractible awning, solar panels, just got a hot tub.
And, yeah, consumer capitalism, but these are infrastructure investments that improve our lives and add value.
Watch out this is Lemmy, people want to just blindly complain about capitalism, and seeing someone succeeding will make them angry.
They can get angry all they want, my spine health deserves a hot tub and the hourly rental shop was $70 before it shut down for covid. :(
At $70 a pop, this tub will have paid for itself after 194 sessions. 2 times a week for 2 years?
Yeah seems reasonable to me, although I consider the environmental impact more than financial.
Well this is true, fortunately we have solar panels so the electrical costs will be minimal.
The big potential environmental damage is going to come from draining and re-filling the tub every 3 months, and to be honest, I don't know the impact of dumping 380 gallons of hot tub water.
Basically zero impact from draining into a sanitary sewer or spreading on a lawn.
https://www.portland.gov/bes/preventing-pollution/prevent-pollution/pools-and-hot-tubs
That's great! Living the good life while being considerate
if something is important to you and you don't do it then it wasn't really that important to you.
most people don't understand that the dream is often more important than the reality of the thing.
$2,000/month mortgage? Houses in the hood in the LA area here are going for $800k+
OP is saying that you should find a project and a way to better your life, not that you must follow their exact path
Portland is getting expensive too, we got super lucky on a 3 bedroom, 1 bath for $390 in 2021. 3.25% 30 year fixed.