Our mortgage is $2600 month. My wife has a much better paying job than me. I make $2200 a month after taxes/deductions. She is currently going through cancer treatments and although everything is looking positive it really got me thinking about what the hell does life look like for my family if something happens to my wife?
I’ve had the same bus driving job for 23 years. I’m undereducated. A 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment is $1600 month here. I don’t know how I’d ever be able to take care of myself and two kids.
They want us to have 80k+ in school debt so you can be allowed to have mortgage debt or rent and own nothing. I don’t know where I’m going with this but I’m just bummed out about life right now.
You literally beat me to this reply by like 4 minutes haha. Banks were giving variable mortgages to people who could barely afford current rates, they don’t give a shit.
I would never ever take an adjustable rate mortgage. That is just begging to get fucked. Like right now for example. My mortgage is like 4.2% but if it were an adjustable id be at like 6+% and be out of a house.
Probably make as much use of the scam mortgage insurance that they can too. I forget what it’s actually called but it’s a scam IMO. $100 a month baked into my escrow for insurance to the lender in case I lost the house. To my knowledge it provides me no benefit.
Upside is when I refinanced it was taken off. (Think the whole first time home owner program requires it for the initial loan.)
I’m in exactly the same boat as you. Undereducated, lower paying job than my wife, mortgage, etc. I’ve frequently had panicked thoughts about what I would do if she died. And we have a kid, which makes it even worse.
Part of the reason my partner and I don’t want kids. It’s almost impossible to raise them alone and she has a preexisting condition that she wouldn’t want to pass on to them. If she passes away I could always just go live in my car by the beach and be fine. Wouldn’t be able to do that very well with a kid.
Consider term life insurance? (Not whole life which is a ripoff.) It’s usually pretty cheap for a 20 year policy that’ll give you a few hundred grand if the worst happens. Like literally $20-$50/month. I’m not a salesman, don’t work in insurance, just a suggestion.
Yeah, if you’re in your 20s and reading this, and your healthy, get term life insurance now. Get it while it’s go out to dinner cheap. I’m 43 on medication due to congenital issues and mine is $350 PER MONTH!
My finances are my problem. All a landlord needs to know is that I am willing to pay what they are asking. It is my problem to actually pay the money. There are lifestyles in which you don’t have the ability to show someone a pay stub, and can still pay rent on time every month.
That is why things like credit checks exist. It’s a way to verify that a person has kept their finances in order and are responsible enough to pay their bills on time.
You know what place doesn’t? A place where your landlord requests your salary documentation.
If that doesn’t happen where you live, then this warning is meaningless to you. If it does, it’s an appropriate thing to warn people about given the enthusiasm surrounding this post.
Can't afford to buy, can't meet exaggerated rent criteria,..., profit? I did see a nice rock i might be able to live under, as long as the HOA fees aren't too bad.
You don't even need photoshop. Just use the inspect function in your browser and edit the values directly in the HTML. Free and much easier to not fuck up the formatting.
Surprisingly enough PDF is a (mostly) plain-text format, so you can probably still change the values in Notepad, unless they just did the whole thing as an embedded image or whatever
Income requirements are often 3-4x the actual rent, so if someone has a good financial grip (no debt, no car) as many in NYC do, they may be able to afford it but not technically qualify. This is a sure fire way to become house poor but if you’re smart about it you can make it happen
The issue is you aren’t even “house poor” in that case since it is rent. “house poor” at least has a way out if you don’t fully go bankrupt and can sell the house at some point. This cash just goes in the bin.
That said: If it is your only option to live in NYC and you need to…
Remember that renting can be financially better, depending on circumstances.
Purchasing also throws some money away, interest, insurance, maintenance (which is more than people think), and actual purchase and sale fees to banks and realtors.
Often the recommendation is to only buy if you really think you’ll be in that house for at least 10 years, can put 20% down… and some other things I can’t recall of the top of my head.
If your mortgage+insurance costs are comparable to your rent, it is pretty much always better to “own” if you are planning to stay there for at least one or two years. Mostly because, with housing trends, you are making significant percentages of that back (if not a profit) when you leave. Albeit, that is a lot harder with the insane interest rates right now but… rent is also getting insane.
Because yes, your rent per month might come out a bit lower and you (probably) don’t have to worry about repairs. But all of that is just going down the drain.
That said, with the modern housing market: it is less that renting is “better” and more that you are fucked either way. But you can at least afford rent… to the degree that it will prevent you from ever building up enough cash for a decent down payment (20% would be nice to avoid PMI but it is far from necessary… depending on interest rates).
Everyone has to do their own math (if they even have an option, which they likely don’t). But the “ten years” advice has been wrong for years. And a lot of the people who jumped the gun and bought a house a few years back… have REALLY REALLY good interest rates and potentially a solid retirement asset (plus a home). And they either rent it out when they move or sell it for a significantly higher price.
But also: none of that really matters here. Putting the majority of your income into a mortgage is bad, but potentially has payoffs… sometimes. That is being “house poor”. Putting the majority of your income into rent has no payoffs and is mostly just a way to get trapped because you have no way to save up to change anything. And are pretty much screwed the moment you are unemployed/underemployed.
They ask for the stupidest things. They want 3x rent up front for first, last, security. They want you to have a full year of rent in your savings. Until laws were passed, a person in my town would have to drop $9000 on DAY 1 to rent a 2bd, 2bathroom.
Perhaps you’ve never rented before. Affording and “not qualifying” are very different things. Sometimes you make far more than enough money to rent but maybe you work in the wrong industry.
At least you get texted about properties you once owned. I get texted about some dude’s properties across the country even though this hasn’t been his number for a good decade now
Haha it’s just weird to get a txt asking if I want to sell x property I haven’t owned for twenty years.
It has to be a credit report thing as my gf gets txt about the properties and she has never been on the loans or titles. The properties are always in my name.
I had 800 credit working fast food because l carried extremely little debt.
Twenty years later, my score is fighting to stay about 750 because I make 6 figures, a few credit cards with zero debt. Because they WANT me to hold onto debt to show my trustworthiness? Fuck that.
No you don’t. Technically you get a small (~10 point) bonus for showing literally anything other than $0. But you get zero points for carrying that balance beyond the payoff date.
You should never ever ever pay interest on credit cards. It doesn’t help you in any way.
Nah, there’s something else that’s triggering it. Average length of credit matters a lot, so if you cancel cards and get new ones frequently that would do it.
Long term debt for sure is good, carrying balances on cards is never rewarded.
The reason they’re OK extending credit when you have debt is because they can see you are managing it. Mortgage or auto loans (asset backed) aren’t bad. Don’t carry balances on cards ever if you can avoid it.
As another poster said, there’s probably no functional difference for you between 750 and 830.
Yes, but also you don’t get good credit by entering into contracts you can’t afford. What I can and can’t afford are my decision to make.
Just like you can have good credit and low income, you can have high income and be shit with money. It really doesn’t prove anything by showing a pay stub.
lemmy.world has a mental health community that used to not allow posts mentioning suicide. Yes, a mental health community. Like wtf man. They only changed the rules because I made a meme criticizing that rule.
you dont even need adobe, if the statements are in a web page just use inspect element. Then technically the screenshot would be real until you reloaded the page
I remember the first time I ever saw that video was when I tried playing Enter the Gungeon. I didn’t even pirate it. I just screwed up when I was installing some mods lol
Yup. Adobe may not be the ones causing the housing crisis, but all this nickel and diming from other sources is part of the problem too.
Hey Adobe, if you want people to stop pirating your shit go back to a pay-once model or lower your subscription costs. Then maybe use some of that money you’ve got to help us out over here so we can afford to pay you.
This is fine until she gets caught. Then it’s a fraud conviction. Nothing like getting yourself in over your head and then sent to jail to stick it to the man 🙄
In order for something to be fraud someone has to be defrauded. If she pays her rent there’s no crime. I doubt they’d try to get her charged with fraud for not paying her rent.
IF she pays the rent then the landlord will likely not be incentivized to do anything about it even if they find out, but still would sour the relationship. I mean, what else could the tenants be lying about?
I don’t know enough about NYC tenancy laws but I wonder if obtaining a rental through fraudulent means gives the landlord rights to break the lease, thus putting the tenants at risk of being evicted.
Have you rented from corporate landlords lately? The relationship doesn’t have a chance to be soured because it doesn’t exist. Fuck the system. It runs on fraud anyway, but once the filthy masses start playing the rich man’s game all of a sudden it’s a problem? They’re not going to look into it. You’re vastly overestimating the amount of effort these scumfucks want to put into their “business”
But wouldn’t it be worse if it’s a faceless corporate landlord you are dealing with? There is virtually no “relationship” so if they find out you obtained the lease through fraudulent means, are they not more likely to come down on you? Because you are a “high-risk” tenant and they don’t want to encourage this behavior. Just handle it through laws since it’s in their favor.
My point is, the system is rigged against renters for sure, but I don’t think there is necessarily a win here if you do this.
That’s what the second bit of my reply was about. They dgaf. They’re not going to look into it past the approval process. Think about it. If you lose your job and are no longer able to pay rent but have a month or twos’ rent saved, are they going to evict you? No, of course not. They have no way of knowing you lost your job. What if you take a new job after that that pays less than the one that qualified you for your apartment and now you technically no longer qualify. Are they going to evict you? No. They have no way of knowing unless you tell them. And even then they don’t care. If your rent is paid they don’t give a shit. They’re not going to look into it. There’s no reason to.
If you lie about how much you make to get into a place that’s beyond your means then that’s your own fault. You’re going to get evicted when you keep coming up short. They’re still not going to slap you for fraud. If you lie about your income to get into a place that’s within your means (because the income requirements for these.places are entirely arbitrary and unrealistic) then you’re going to face no repercussions because you know how to pay your bills.
Well the whole thing is contingent on the fact that you can actually pay rent. The stress test is the landlord’s way of trying to verify that, and if you are assuming you can do that above all else then sure, everything will be just peachy.
I’m not absolutely not convinced that everyone who claims they can pay rent actually could, however.
Please, show me one instance of someone in the US being arrested for fraud because they lied about their income. Show me a real world example of this “stress test” you mentioned.
The same could be said of people who meet the income requirements for any given residence. Just because someone can pay rent on paper doesn’t mean they can actually pay rent. Doubly so for credit checks. Someone with a low score isn’t necessarily in an unmanageable amount of debt and someone with a high score isn’t necessarily someone that has a manageable amount of debt.
If you’re going to commit fraud in order to secure a rental then you need to go in with the understanding that it’s important to know what you can actually afford. The same goes when you’re doing it through “legitimate” means. If you can’t pay the bills, then you lose your house. Its the same conclusion whether or not you lied about your income.
You’re not going to go to jail, they’re not going to check. And given the situation a lot of people are finding themselves in right now, it’s pretty shitty to not empathize with people who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, appealing to “the legality” of what their doing. As if the laws and people who wrote them aren’t responsible for the fact that people have to resort to fraud in the first place.
The fact that you’re either unwilling or incapable of understanding this shows how little you think of people who are struggling to make ends meet. Your constant resistance to the idea of people doing what they need to do to acquire shelter results in you essentially saying “if you have to lie to get a roof over your head, then you just shouldn’t have a place to live”. Which is a pretty fucked up stance to take.
When did I say anything about anyone going to jail? The only point I made about getting a rental through fraudulent means is that it could potentially backfire on the tenant if the tenancy law allows landlords to break the lease because of it (which largely depends on regional tenancy laws).
Just because someone can pay rent on paper doesn’t mean they can actually pay rent.
So what do you suggest as a way for landlords to make sure people can actually pay rent? Because this is a legitimate issue that landlords have (corporate or not) before entering into a contractual agreement.
The fact that you’re either unwilling or incapable of understanding this shows how little you think of people who are struggling to make ends meet. Your constant resistance to the idea of people doing what they need to do to acquire shelter results in you essentially saying “if you have to lie to get a roof over your head, then you just shouldn’t have a place to live”. Which is a pretty fucked up stance to take.
Get off your soapbox and take your strawman with you. These are entirely your words, not mine, none of what I wrote has anything to do with your virtue signaling and pretend grievances. The only “fucked up stance” I see here is you debating an imaginary opponent on points you made up yourself.
A civil agreement between private parties cannot be under penalty of purjury. A civil penalty could be levied if it is specified in the contract, but I’ve never seen a rent contract that specified a penalty beyond the landlord having the right to break the agreement if they find out.
Generally speaking, a landlord has an incentive to keep you if you pay on time and don’t damage property, regardless what you lied about.
Might be about the same. But you can’t leave the jail cell. If you move to NYC and spend all your time in your 1 bedroom apartment you’re NYCing wrong.
Introverts are not by definition antisocial though they can be. They just spend energy to be social. A shut-in is likely an introvert. An introvert doesn't have to be a shut-in. I don't know the mass public mistake where folks assume introverts are the same as people who don't like social interaction. So an introvert can easily enjoy socializing in NYC and seeing people. It just uses energy.
That being said, if you're not going to leave your apartment, choosing a place that's super expensive due to all the things you need to leave your apartment for, you're not making a good choice.
The guy implied that enjoying time alone at home is wrong. Introverts enjoy time alone at home. I didn't say introverts only enjoy time alone at home, and I'm not doing this thing where I need a dozen disclaimers proving I really do know what the words I used mean every time I want to make a one-line quip.
Also why are y'all assuming she moved to NYC on purpose? Can no one just be from there originally and move from a roommate arrangement to a studio? Please lol
I really didn't take that as their implication. Apartments in New York are often not that comfortable--they can be cramped and cluttered, and not even all that private thanks to thin walls and sometimes even shared bathrooms. So even an introvert with that kind of apartment tends not to spend much time in it apart from sleeping. Instead they'll go to libraries or museums or parks or makerspaces or cafes. It's surprisingly easy to be alone in public in New York.
I think that's all they meant. I see how you could take their comment differently, but I think they were being sincere. Actually spending a lot of time in their tiny dismal one-room apartment with no natural light is actually a mistake that some introverts make when they first move to New York, and it's genuinely depressing to do that.
A caveat to all this is that I've only spent very brief periods in New York, and I do find it overwhelming, partly for this reason. But yeah. I don't think that person meant to condemn spending time alone; they were just saying that treating a New York apartment like a solitary confinement cell isn't good for your mental health regardless of your socialization tendencies.
If you want to spend time in your house alone, and you’re living in NYC, yes you are very much making a stupid choice.
You could move outside of NYC, pay half as much in rent or less, and be a shut-in all you want while still commuting in for whatever reason you had to ever go to NYC as a shut-in in the first place.
That got me thinking. If spending all your time in a tiny 1BR apartment is NYC’ing wrong, would living in a hotel make sense? If you stayed at a mid-level chain like Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn, it’ll cost you $3000+ a month, but that already comes with daily breakfast, utilities and internet, free parking, and regular housekeeping. Some rooms might even have a small kitchen and could be bigger in total area than a 1BR apartment. The only issue is you can’t modify the interior except maybe add some furniture. But if you’re supposed to be out most of the time anyway, maybe that wouldn’t matter as much?
Realistically speaking this is fraud that’s extremely difficult to detect. They would have to be able to prove that the income was falsified, and income can change quite a bit over time as people get promoted, demoted, change jobs, gain/lose bonuses and incentives etc. Its like lying on your resume, it can be what gets your career kickstarted, but its also risky
Ugh. Took my kids to their school for schedule meet and greet. Saw kids who looked like the ones who bullied me when I was their age and all the emotions and memories came flooding back. These are kids 1/3rd my age and strangers, they have no power over me and yet I felt messed up.
Maybe not, could make protective covers with insulation. Might help until you cool it down. Lava is between 700 to 1200 celcius. Platinum doesn’t melt until over 1700 celcius. So maybe a layer of insulation inside a thin layer of platinum, then poor some water on it if you get splashed.
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