I could mock their religion or insult their daughters, but if I dare mention that the house they live in is not an investment, the gates of hell are unleashed upon me. I state, very clearly, that a financial asset is something that brings in money. Living in your house is taking away money, not adding money.
If you’re lucky, the house might have more value when you sell it. I say lucky because it depends on your neighborhood remaining OK and population growth rising. This may not be the case. While I live in the fastest growing county in the United States, I know that trends can change.
It is not saying buying a house is a good or bad idea. It is only saying that the house you live in is a liability and not an asset. You have to live somewhere. There is nothing wrong with living in a house. Just don’t call the house you live in an asset.
Boy, do people scream at me.
When you buy a car, its value goes down over time, right? If you get really, really lucky, the car might go up in value if it becomes a classic. However, that is rare. And you have to have a car for many purposes. But no one calls their car an asset. The car just takes money out of your pocket from gas to maintenance.
People once tried to call comic books an ‘investment’. The idea was to buy them and sell them when they became ‘classics’. That didn’t work too well. If anyone says buying video games is an ‘investment’, I will tell you the same thing.
But boy, oh boy, the house thing just makes people shrill. Americans don’t seem to be passionate about anything. Not religion. Not love. Not war. But they are very passionate about their houses for some damn reason.
People say, “Buying a home is better than renting. With renting, all you are doing is making someone else rich.”
I reply, “Then building a business is better than getting a job. With a job, all you are doing is making someone else rich.” They tend to explode after that line.
And the irony is that no one truly owns their house in America. Don’t pay property taxes, and you discover who truly owns your house.
The more that I think of it, the more I suspect that it isn’t the house they are so protective about. It is their self-image as investors. They think they are investors because they bought a house and lived in it. And if the value goes up because of population growth in the area, then they think they are ‘good investors’. So someone like me who says the house you live in is not an investment destroys their self-image they’ve built up.
Can you imagine a conversation of Warren Buffet and other major investors with your typical American homeowner? “Be quiet about your Berkshire and Hathaway fun, Warren. I am an investor because I bought a house which I live in.”
From a financial context, the typical American is retarded. They don’t even know the difference between an asset and a liability. Perhaps it is good that they are enslaved to their jobs since they are unwilling to understand that the house they live in is a liability and not an asset. Their egos are too thick to penetrate.
Now I understand why education has been hard to spread throughout history. It is the ego. It is like the redneck farmer saying, “I don’t need no stinking reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.” Society fixed this by mocking the redneck farmer and lionizing the academic. The only way I can see any of this changing is if mockery is given to people who think the house they live in is an asset, and people who understand their financial statement are lionized.
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