Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

50 years a mortgage

President Trump is floating the idea of a 50-year mortgage loan, superseding the current standard longest of 30 years. I think it’s a wonderful idea, because I can finally afford a home around here! All it takes is for a bank to practically own me for the rest of my life. If I were to buy a house today and it’s a 50 year loan, I will be 87 when the final payment schedule hits. Will I even be alive by then?

In simplistic mathematic terms, the 50-year mortgage makes sense. Housing is expensive, so let’s extend out the loan term so people can “afford” it. It’s the same thing happening in the automotive industry. The average new car price crested over $50,000 recently. Along with it are ever longer loan terms. 60-month used to be the maximum standard, but now 72 or 84-month is popularizing. Just so folks can squeeze in a monthly payment that is somewhat palatable.

Is that not a similar goal in floating a 50-year house loan? Perhaps it’s too big of a jump from 30? For sure 50 years will be more than half a lifetime for most of us. Also, think of the amount of interest that’s going to be paid for a loan that long. You can more than likely buy a whole other house on total interest payments alone.

But I think it’s a problem only from an investment lens. For a home that you want to stay in forever until death, a 50 year loan doesn’t seem that ridiculous. So what if the cumulative interest payments amount to a crazy high number? The most important number is for the monthly mortgage cost to come beneath an affordable threshold. Indenturing myself to a bank for the rest of my life is quite alright if I get a stable and comfortable home in return.

Surely the banks also wouldn’t mind that extra 20 years of accrued interest! I think mortgage terms longer than 30 years should be made available; as a tool, an option, but not a panacea to a problem.

Too dark too soon

While I greatly enjoy this time of the year of cold and coziness, the whole getting dark super early thing is not the business. Who really wants to be commuting to work in the dark, and then heading home also in the dark? If they ever manage to get rid of daylight savings time, I hope they keep the set time to be whichever provides the most sunlight hours towards the end of the day during the winter months.

Because when it’s dark outside but it’s only 5:00 PM, I feel weird eating dinner at my normal 7:00 PM hour. We’ve evolved to equate darkness with sleepy time, so it’s disconcerting to be two hours into darkness only to then start making supper. If they ever manage to make permanently below-ground living a thing with artificial sun technology, I hope they keep a consistent sunrise and sunset hour.

Perhaps I should move to somewhere on the equator. Word on the street is $100,000 USD can buy a Thailand residency visa.

You how when you buy a brand new car you tend to be super careful about it? Agonizing over the perfectly harmless parking space, and worrying about the slightest hint of dust laying on top of the painted surface. This motivation to keep something perfect - is it rooted in evolution, I wonder? Did caveman get traumatized from a lightning strike destroying their once intact cave facade?

What we do know is that nothing keeps perfect forever. After the first rock chip on the hood, or the first scrape from another parked car, we tend to relax into not caring much about the car anymore. The solution then is to buy used cars instead of new. Second-hand vehicles already come pre-blemished! Who cares if I chipped the wheel on a curb - there’s already existing rashes.

What you don’t want to do though is to fall into a trap of making a used car “perfect” again. That scratched interior panel because the previous owner hauled something carelessly? Leave it be. Even if a replacement panel is only a hundred bucks or so.

What you really want

A day off during the middle of a work week is a great opportunity to reveal to yourself just exactly how you spend your time. No work responsibilities, no weekend errands: you’ve got eight solid hours dedicated completely to you. How you choose to spend those hours is a good indication of what you really want to do.

This Veterans Day holiday, I spent the majority of the day reading. (The Red Rising trilogy is a fantastically good read.) In between two meals and a workout session, the rest was proper couch time with a book and a few cups of coffee. Eat, workout, and books; what more does a person need?

This list of things I chose not to do shatters the illusion that those things were something I actually wanted to do. Videos games? I’ve yet to play a single hour of games on the PlayStation in 2025. I pretend to be an avid gamer, but really it’s the idea of it that’s interesting to me. In hindsight, I should have never bought the PS5 at all.

Go outside and take photos? It turns out I’m not that type of hobbyist photographer. I want to be, but again it’s the ideal of it that I fancy, not the actual process. I enjoy taking pictures during my travels, that remains. Going around locally, hunting down moments and scenes? I am and was never that kind of photographer. It’s time I stopped pretending to be.

Take the car out of a spin on the mountains - for the fun of it? I’ve not done that since the beginning of the pandemic, and I never resumed. The magic of an open windy road is not as alluring as it used to be. I’m okay with admitting that I’m the sort of car enthusiast that enjoy cars as a static museum object. This might be sacrilege for some that consider mileage as a badge of enthusiasm.

Sometimes I watch YouTube car repair videos, and think to myself that’s something I would like to do. If only I have a garage. I should get a garage! Then I can be the DIY car person with chests full of tools and hours to spend tinkering. I could spend a ton of money pursuing that ideal, but I have to remind myself that I’m not even inclined to wash the car these days. What makes me think I’m want to spend a free afternoon wrenching, instead, of say, reading?

To quote the great DJ Khaled: “Never play yourself.”

Inspect the used car

The method to get really familiar with a new-to-you car is to give it a good hand wash. All the intimate details will appear in front of your eyes as you slide the wash mitt over every single panel. Details you’d otherwise miss on first inspection during the purchasing process.

It’s how I found out the windshield side moldings on my recently-bought 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI are surprisingly perished. It’s going to cost $100 to buy brand new OEM replacement, which isn’t too bad. The car must have been parked outside constantly with its previous owner. I also found out one of the wheels has a slight bent, though it balances just fine with the new tires I put on, so I’m not going to worry about it. For now.

Minor flaws are what you must tolerate when buying a used car. Even the most stringent of owners cannot avoid some form of deterioration to their cars. What isn’t tolerable is major flaws that are detrimental to mechanical operation. These days it’s far too easy for people to offload cars to CarMax or Carvana that are in need of major maintenance or fixing. Used car buyers have to perform due diligence.

Good news for those of us in California. A new law states buyers of used cars under $50,000 - from a dealership - can now return the vehicles within three days. That’s ample time to schedule a visit to a mechanic to look over the purchase. Any major red flags found is then an easy decision to give the car back. For what remains a person’s second biggest monetary purchase in their lifetime, a purchase inspection is a must do.

I bought the GTI from Carvana, which has its own seven day no questions asked return policy. After picking up the car, it went the very next day to the local Volkswagen dealership for inspection. There were some items needing fix, but none out of the ordinary, or catastrophically expensive. Needless to say, I still have the Golf.

Make showers great again

I think one of the worst designs in American homes is the combination shower and bathtub. The two really ought to be separated. There is no benefit to them being in one unit, other than the obvious cost savings to the constructor.

I’m not the biggest guy out there, but even I find the width of a bathtub to be constricting when showering. I weep in joy and jealousy whenever I travel, and the hotel has a proper shower stall with enough space for my shoulders to move side to side. Keep in mind that you get less foot/floor space due to the curvature of the tub, too.

The combo shower and tub creates another problem when I want to take an actual bath. Think of all the soap scum and bodily dirt that has accumulated onto the tub surface from your (hopefully) daily showering. Well then you’d want to clean all that off before laying on top of it, wouldn’t you? I know I would, which is why I’ve yet to take a proper bath ever because I don’t want to clean the tub every time that I do.

If I were lucky enough to own my own place in the future, there will for sure be some remodeling to the bathroom. A shower stall is a must. And if there isn’t space leftover for a bathtub, then so be it. Who can afford tubs full of water in this economy anyways? Besides, rather than a bathtub, a single-person sauna box would be way more useful.

A stacked combo washer and dryer is a great space-saving design. The combo shower and tub, however, simply inconveniences both of the two experiences. Stop it, homebuilders. Get some help.

Infinite money losing glitch

Word on the streets is that online gambling is a big problem? We’ve all seen the advertisements, surely. No major sports broadcast is complete without ads for DraftKings or BetMGM. Some of the services even give new users “free” money to bet as an introductory offer. Remember when few years ago every other ad was about crypto? I feel like we’re now in a similar era of sports betting.

I personally don’t partake in gambling because I don’t subscribe to forsaking my hard-earned money like that. We all know how incredibly shitty the odds are. The most risk I am willing to take with money is putting it into the broad stock market.

People are saying online gambling is a problem because lots of young men are falling into addiction and debt. But that’s just the natural outcome, isn’t it? Only a very few subset of bettors can win - by design. Otherwise the game wouldn’t exist. A game that creates many losers will of course have negative consequences. So long as the carrot remains ever gleaming, legions will keep returning and returning.

I think the allure of gambling is the possibility of a huge monetary reward in a short amount of time. Social media has shown everyone the world is indeed our oyster, but most of us don’t have the sort of capital to make that possible. I absolutely cannot traditionally invest my way towards affording a brand new Porsche 911 GT3, unlike the many influencers on the Internet. Online gambling then becomes an alluring shortcut towards attaining the lifestyle that social media has promised us.

There’s a money shortcut available to women that’s closed to men: selling your likeness online. Any reasonably attractive woman has potential to earn money quick if she is willing to forgo a few bits of clothing for people to watch. Heck, if a lady is attractive enough, she can be fully clothed and simply stream herself playing video games. That sort of leveraging of beauty is typically not an avenue open for men. So they instead funnel towards online gambling. Or day trading.

Listen, if all it takes for me to be able to buy a GT3 is to “YOLO” my entire savings into a five game parlay? Hmmmm…

Almost had it

Lady Luck may be a cruel mistress, but you must take advantage of the opportunities whenever she looks favorably upon you.

I feel bad for the city of Toronto, and the country of Canada. Canadian sports are still paying penance for the Toronto Raptor’s 2019 NBA championship. How fortunate was it that Kevin Durant’s achilles tendon gave out during the NBA Finals? No hate, though. The Raptors took advantage when Lady Luck intervened on their behalf.

Sadly the Toronto Blue Jays did not do so during last evening’s World Series Game 7. How can your closer serve up an absolute meatball with two outs remaining, leading to a home-run to tie the game? The Blue Jays then had a chance to win it all at the bottom of the inning, but the lead runner on third base did the worst base running in the history of the game! Why on earth would you slide - slowing you down - when it’s a force out? Had the runner ran straight through, the Blue Jays would be World Champions today.

Soon as I saw the blunders in real time, I knew the Los Angeles Dodgers will end up winning the game. Lady Luck doesn’t stick around after you forsake her entreaties. I was, of course, correct.

Congratulations to the Dodgers on consecutive championships, a rare sight in baseball on this side of the millennium. The marquee team from LA is proof positive that you absolutely can win (multiple) gold by simply outspending everybody else on talent. Fans of other teams should look themselves in the mirror and ask why your own team isn’t competitively spending to the same level. Don’t hate the player, hate yourself.