roscoe
@roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on This boomer couple would be hit with $700,000 tax bill if they sold their mansion 4 days ago:
Everyone in here is ripping these people and ignoring their actual situation and the problem it creates for all of us.
If their profit is that high, they bought decades ago, when the price of a home like this was in the reach of a normal high paid professional. Decades later after raising kids, paying for college, and saving normally, they might not be wealthy, or even rich in cash and investments. This house might be a large majority of their net worth. And guess what? Anywhere they want to move is going to have had the same crazy inflation as their current home. Why would they sell when, after taxes, any place they buy with what’s left will be a major step down.
And for their specific example, 55-plus communities usually sell for much less per sqft because they come with huge HOA fees to fund all their amenities. Generally people expect to pay these fees with the difference between the sale of their old home and the new one. They might not be able to afford the HOA fees after taxes.
They’ve got two choices: They can sell and either make up the taxes with their savings drastically reducing their standard of living (if they’re even able to do that, don’t forget if they take 700k out of a 401k all at once they’ll get wrecked in taxes that year) or move somewhere shittier with the after tax proceeds. Or stay in their too large home, keeping it off the market.
Empty nesters staying in their family homes keeps them off the market driving up the costs for young families and everyone else in the market as a whole.
As far as a solution goes, I’m not a fan of a larger exemption. I would advocate a special account for home sale profits, kind of like an HSA or a 529, that could only be used tax free for qualified expenses like purchasing a home, property taxes, and HOAs. But anything that encourages older people to leave their too-large homes for something more suitable would help the market for everyone.
If you can’t get past “boo hoo rich people problems,” cut the numbers in half, or more. The problem persists. In California a profit in excess of 500k (250k for a single person) after decades of living in a modest family home is not at all rare. Many normal people who are not rich by any stretch find themselves in this situation.
My MiL was in this exact situation (selling and moving to a 55-plus community), and she is not rich. To make the numbers work I had to make her investments higher risk/higher reward than they should be for her age to allow for larger withdrawals. Luckily she has my wife and I to make up the difference if it goes tits-up, but not everyone has that luxury.
- Comment on If everyone spontaneously became the same race the world would realize that the rich are the real problem 1 week ago:
Fucking Gauls.
- Comment on Everything is a problem 2 weeks ago:
I recently renovated and said fuck no to all the smart home shit. Just the idea of having to troubleshoot the WiFi because my kitchen light won’t turn on drives me into a rage.
- Comment on What's the story in your field? Here's mine 3 weeks ago:
I had a chance run in with one of my profs and his TA at a bar. He was the department chair but got roped into teaching an undergrad class that semester. He was basically that guy on the right, and the TA was on his way there. The insights into what life as a physics PhD was really like that I gleaned from that conversation is why I’m not the guy on the right and instead found something easy and high paying with a different major. Sometimes I feel like I might have wasted my natural ability, but I think I’m probably much happier. Also, maybe I’m just not that smart anyway and my absence is absolutely no loss to the field.
- Comment on "And my dick fucks your wife more than you do. What's your point?" 2 months ago:
I guess it’s true, money can’t buy taste.
Fun fact: Alec Baldwin’s character was invented for the movie to provide exposition. The filmmakers didn’t trust movie-going audience to pick up the information from the three conversations that occur at the beginning of the play.
- Comment on Neville Page Says ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 1 Klingons Were “A Salty Broth” 2 months ago:
If I remember correctly that’s kind of what happened. The Klingons used augment genes from Earth’s eugenics wars (the ones used to make Khan and others) to try and create their own augmented Klingons. It went wrong and the result was human looking Klingons and it somehow became a transmissible virus. That’s where the TOS looking looking ones came from. All of this is retcon of course.
- Comment on WoW's Leeroy Jenkins, one of the internet's oldest memes, turns 20 years old—and after looking back on what we wrote in 2005, I feel like we've failed Leeroys everywhere 2 months ago:
My wife love it too even though she didn’t play MMOs, but she had a basic understanding from hearing me talk about them.
She couldn’t get enough of the DKP minus video from around the same time, although I did have to explain DKP because none of my groups used it.
- Comment on Digital Fingerprinting: Google launched a new era of tracking worse than cookie banners | Tuta 5 months ago:
Does ublock do this?
- Comment on Infinite Hotel Paradox 5 months ago:
I thought it was that the guest in room one was doing some weird diaper/puppet sex shit and the prospective guest was no longer interested in the room.
But maybe that’s a me problem.
- Comment on Time for a road trip 8 months ago:
I’ve always liked that one. On a scale of fanny to gash, how impolite is it considered over there?
- Comment on your mom falls significantly faster than g 9 months ago:
This would make a good “What if?” For XKCD. In a frictionless vacuum with two spheres the mass of the earth and a bowling ball how far away do they need to start before the earth sized mass will move 1 Planck length before they come together?
- Comment on This researcher wants to replace your brain, little by little. The US government just hired a researcher who thinks we can beat aging with fresh cloned bodies and brain updates. 10 months ago:
Yeah, I’m probably being too optimistic.
- Comment on This researcher wants to replace your brain, little by little. The US government just hired a researcher who thinks we can beat aging with fresh cloned bodies and brain updates. 10 months ago:
That might be their outlook on “local” pollution for a while, but you don’t think going from 20 years left to centuries to live might affect their opinions on global climate change?
- Comment on This researcher wants to replace your brain, little by little. The US government just hired a researcher who thinks we can beat aging with fresh cloned bodies and brain updates. 10 months ago:
Might be the only way to get them to give a shit about the environment.
- Comment on Man-in-the-Middle PCB Unlocks HP Ink Cartridges 10 months ago:
I wonder how much more it would cost to just donate or throw away your printer every time it runs out of ink and buy a new one. Printers are sold at a major loss to lock you into their ink. It might be worth the expense to know your costing these pricks money.
- Comment on All Of Apple’s Foldable iPhone Prototypes Have Visible Creases, Which May Explain The Company’s Apprehension Towards A Launch 10 months ago:
The large U.S. carriers have plans that are, I think, $20-30 a month and you get the newest phone as soon as it comes out, apple or Samsung. They also partner with manufacturers for discounts and trade-in deals, especially when a new model comes out. My last phone was 2 years old but when they offered me the newest one for something like $120 after trade-in (I think that was almost $1100 off, I don’t remember all the details) I upgraded everyone on my plan. I think they did the same thing this year but even with those discounts the pain in the ass of upgrading plus the price, even though it’s low, wasn’t worth the small year over year change. Probably next year or the year after. Assuming similar deals, that makes it $40-$60 a year to get a new phone every 2-3 years.