Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
If the savings yield less % than the installments pay in %, pay off the hard drive. Otherwise… don’t? I dunno seems like a math question
Bad at money, bad at math, GREAT at linguistics... 🤓
There is a $100 difference/leftover: the disk is 900, the refund is 1000. And if I'm putting aside 100 per month anyway for savings, then it feels like I should pay off the drive. 🤔
You probably should, debt is only worth having if you are certain you can pay it and it’s below the inflation value. I financed a phone that I could pay because at 0% interest, the value of the monthly payment is less today than it was the month I bought it.
Moneys. Math.
Your take isn't quite right. Debt is only worth having when the long term payments are less than the long term value. Value is not just money, but don't lose sight of money. Dept is automatically paid off when you die, which is sometimes a consideration though only rarely. However in between the question is what could you do with the money going to payments instead.
Buying a house - most of your payment would go into rent anyway and you have to live someplace. As a general rule of thumb if you will live in the same place for at least 7 years buying is better, but YMMV. When the house is paid off you live there rent free.
Buying something for your business - check with an accountant, but you should be able to make enough money with it to pay it off and make a nice income.
Buying collectable art. I'm not against it, but it is common for art values to collapse as what is "in" changes. It is also common for tastes to change. Thus not a thing even if you can afford the payments.
Inflation devalues debt relative to most growth assets tbh
The advice above is correct. If the rate payment is without extra cost, you got a loan at zero percent interest. Even if your money is just in a savings account, the payment loses in value each month at you pay infinitesimally less every month in terms of what you can buy with that. If you put the money into savings, assuming broad market index funds (etfs), that's about 7 percent you earn on that per year while you pay off the rates. Well just 8/12 of that, but still...
I'm debt free and i prefer it that way, but I also know i pay a big price for that over thirty years.
The problem is the math is correct on paper. However in the real world people who do the math tend to not translate correctly to the real world - they see the math and they don't save anything while also keeping the loan. People who hate debt are more likely to pay it off, and then put something into savings so they don't have to get more debt later.
Lesson: hate debt.