What are you thinking about?

[minutemancl]

I think this neighborhood feral cat is trying to adopt me. We've seen it a few times lately, coming up to us if my wife and I are leaving or coming home late, so it is dark. It comes out to us, I think, from underneath the neighbor's house, meows at us nonstop, rubs up against us, and tries to follow us inside the house. We thought it was just the neighbor's cat at first, but we finally saw it during the daytime and it is very obvious that this is not anyone's cat. No notched ear, pretty dirty, skinny, and a bald patch on its side. It is so incredibly sweet though. While we can't let it into the house (I've got a dog and an 11 month old), I think my wife and I do want to make sure it is alright and maybe make it a little more comfortable.

What are the correct steps to take here? Should I just leave it alone? It's obviously been ok for however long so far. Or should I take it to the vet, get it fixed and checked for diseases, then set it up with an outdoor shelter of some sort? I wouldn't mind a strictly outdoor cat hanging around the house.

[Ty21]

14 hours ago, MWil23 said:

Not sure how they are after their drummer passed away unfortunately. 

Foo Fighters were always the Dave Grohl show for me but idk how invested I am after having to replace Taylor Hawkins. It’d be like RHCP without Flea for me

[MWil23]

4 hours ago, minutemancl said:

I think this neighborhood feral cat is trying to adopt me. We've seen it a few times lately, coming up to us if my wife and I are leaving or coming home late, so it is dark. It comes out to us, I think, from underneath the neighbor's house, meows at us nonstop, rubs up against us, and tries to follow us inside the house. We thought it was just the neighbor's cat at first, but we finally saw it during the daytime and it is very obvious that this is not anyone's cat. No notched ear, pretty dirty, skinny, and a bald patch on its side. It is so incredibly sweet though. While we can't let it into the house (I've got a dog and an 11 month old), I think my wife and I do want to make sure it is alright and maybe make it a little more comfortable.

What are the correct steps to take here? Should I just leave it alone? It's obviously been ok for however long so far. Or should I take it to the vet, get it fixed and checked for diseases, then set it up with an outdoor shelter of some sort? I wouldn't mind a strictly outdoor cat hanging around the house.

I have an outdoor hybrid cat, and the only potential issue is that he will go wherever he wants once his setting is established.

Cats can roam up to 2 miles, but if you establish a regular feeding schedule and location, and maybe keep a litter box in your garage, he will choose you.

I let our guy roam all day, then like clockwork between 7-8PM, he comes into the garage and wants to be in for the night.

He also will kill rodents and other undesirable creatures for you in all likelihood.

[minutemancl]

10 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

I have an outdoor hybrid cat, and the only potential issue is that he will go wherever he wants once his setting is established.

Cats can roam up to 2 miles, but if you establish a regular feeding schedule and location, and maybe keep a litter box in your garage, he will choose you.

I let our guy roam all day, then like clockwork between 7-8PM, he comes into the garage and wants to be in for the night.

He also will kill rodents and other undesirable creatures for you in all likelihood.

At this point, I'm not too worried about claiming him or making him choose me. After we take him to the vet and get him fixed and healthy, we'll see if he wants to stick around. We'll try to keep feeding him every night though. That shouldn't be too difficult; he's literally been catching us every time we leave or enter through the front door lol.

I tried to get him away from the door so my wife could leave this morning without him running inside. I started walking into my driveway and the cat straight up followed me. I've never seen that before, and I've owned cats before.

[MWil23]

21 minutes ago, minutemancl said:

At this point, I'm not too worried about claiming him or making him choose me. After we take him to the vet and get him fixed and healthy, we'll see if he wants to stick around. We'll try to keep feeding him every night though. That shouldn't be too difficult; he's literally been catching us every time we leave or enter through the front door lol.

I tried to get him away from the door so my wife could leave this morning without him running inside. I started walking into my driveway and the cat straight up followed me. I've never seen that before, and I've owned cats before.

Cats really do choose their people more than any other animal.

[MWil23]

@minutemancl here’s how I look at it and some disagree which I get:

A lot of those cats are already dead, so if you makeshift adopt them and do your best to give them some care and attention, if something happens to them then it really “doesn’t matter and isn’t your fault”.

For example, I adopted 3 farm cats. 1 disappeared (fox I bet), 1 got run over, and the male is still here.

The sheer facts are that if I didn’t adopt those cats, they’d have died long ago and wouldn’t have had any love. Yeah it sucks that 2 didn’t make it, but they had a better life than they would have during their tenure here, and the male who did is already playing with house money because the lady told me “He is going to run with his mom in a week and we will see if he ever makes it, you should just take him”.

Granted I live in a farming community, but that’s the nature of outdoor cats. We do everything we can to care for them but if something happens, likely it would have if not for my intervention…and during their time which we hope is a long time, they will get food, water, and a lot of love from my kids. I don’t think if you intervene that’s in any way a negative for this cat.

[Tugboat]

On 7/17/2023 at 5:55 AM, ramssuperbowl99 said:

It's also more profitable for the renter.

There are other types of value besides home equity. Re-posting this since apparently we've got a reading comprehension issue.

 

Renting can actually be win-win.

You're not proving yourself smarter than anyone by alleging some massive corporate conspiracy to keep people poor, you're just demonstrating that you've actually never gone through the logistics of evaluating buying a house.

 

The thing is, renting is by definition NOT Profitable.  It's paying money to someone else.  It's their profit.  There is no possible "profit" to be made by renting because when you walk away you own absolutely nothing.

It might be cheaper in the short term, especially depending on regional context and other factors.  It might even make sense depending on your life situation, to have far less liabilities and a much more even cost for housing every month.  But the one thing it cannot possibly be, is "profitable".

 

And again, this isn't some tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.  This is readily available information.  Blackstone, Goldman, JP Morgan, the list goes on.  Capital investment firms have been buying up homes all over the place to convert to rental properties...because they understand that a roof over your head is one of the most profitable and stable commodities you can invest in.  They ramped this up during the pandemic in particular when they could squeeze even harder.

 

On 7/17/2023 at 4:59 AM, MWil23 said:

Okay, I’m going to give a bunch of different “scenarios” here that are legitimately perfectly hypothetical to illustrate my point on housing. Full disclosure I’m not endorsing any particular idea or method but merely illustrating that many of these methods are valid and lead to the same destination after roughly a 30 year period of time.

Lets say that I buy/build my “forever house” and lock into a 15 year mortgage at a 2.25 rate (I did) in December 2020. My last payment will be around the time I’m in my upper 40s with one kid in college and two more likely to go. While maxing out my employer match and my wife doing the same concurrently, we won’t have as much liquidity or availability to do side investments. However, we will have a lot of liquidity to pay for weddings and college expenses in cash with the mortgage payoff.

Let’s say @Tugboat buys a home and flips it because he’s very handy and continues to do the same thing for 15 years until he buys his forever home in cash. He’s basically going to be where I am during the same time while taking an alternate route.

Let’s say @ET80 decides to be more risky and consistently utilizes HELOC and cash out refinancing on his home essentially using it as a giant low interest rate credit card, while using the credit to purchase other houses, start a business, or something else that will get him long term success. After 30 years, he can sell his home, clear his debt, pocket the cash, and move where he wants.

Let’s say that @ramssuperbowl99 never buys a home but aggressively maxes out his Roth, employer match, and utilizes his HSA hacks. He has zero worries about fixing anything for 30 years or having to invest in things like tools or yard equipment. At 50-55, he’s flush with cash having played the long compound interest game, and can probably buy a home in cash if he wants, or continue to rent a reasonable place having set aside money to do so each month with the interest paying for those things instead of his principal investment.

There are even 2-3 more legitimate avenues that I can see people utilizing, such as my brother in law who fixes dumps up and then rents them (flip to rent) and will have a nice cache of quality rental properties to bring in monthly income for him, or he can give a house to each of his kids come adulthood.

 

This is a fair way of looking at it.  Certainly buying isn't the way to go for everyone, and there are a lot of different forms that can even take.  But i don't think that colors the reality that home ownership continues to become more expensive.  Whatever form it takes...it's more expensive than it ever has been.

Which is what makes the rental market burst back into the picture.  These companies aren't investing billions of dollars in that for kicks and giggles though.  They're doing it, because it's more profitable for them and they've got extensive research to back that up.

 

On 7/17/2023 at 7:43 AM, MWil23 said:

I think “where” you live also matters in the conversation. My monthly all in including escrow is $2200 a month, but I have a 15 year mortgage. If it was 30, it would be closer to $1500-1600 a month, whereas to rent a house here it would be about $2K a month.

Also, at another time I’ll rant about the sheer stupidity of HOAs and how they’re at best an overreach and at worst super discriminatory.

 

This is also a very fair point.  Maybe part of this is that we're all talking past each other with different real estate markets.  But it's a similar story here, where depending on when you locked in a mortgage and a bundle of other factors, if you can front enough cash even with ridiculous interest rate hikes...ownership is often still potentially the cheaper option.  Plus the obvious value of...y'know actually owning something and building equity instead of just paying someone until you leave.

 

 

HOA fees for suburban communities always make me laugh.  There are some very valid reasons for them when they come in the form of Condo fees for shared building maintenance and all that.  But for a suburban community?  Why even?  Basically just spending money to pay somebody to tell you what you can do with your lawn or what color you house can be?  HOA fees are like a tax on being in suburban hell.

The idea of "protecting the integrity" of something so mundane is hysterical to me.  But Condo/HOA fees are a huge factor to think about in overall cost.  The fees associated with some older buildings or mid-90s suburban neighborhoods are absolutely insane.

[ramssuperbowl99]

4 hours ago, Tugboat said:

The thing is, renting is by definition NOT Profitable.

I very rarely laugh out loud at posts here. This one got me.

[Ty21]

Does anyone know how BBF is doing these days 

[TVScout]

Window dodger!

Prigozhin resurfaces in Belarus, tells Wagner fighters they have the 'biggest job in the world coming up' (msn.com)

[NeptunePenguins]

Family finally got rid of the overprice tv packages and such. So been using other things now for news. Have on PlutoTv and I can see the local channel news of a few different cities, and it is kind of interesting to see how they talk about certain topics. Some even be talking about NFL teams and such. The weather is also an interesting change as well. Was watching Pittsburgh's weather lady go "and dew points above 60F generally feel quite muggy and sticky outside". Heh the Houston weatherman always had a dew point of 70F+ as the magical number with dew points under that being pretty decent. Guess it shows you the difference in perspective of the local climates. I bet San Francisco almost never sees even Pittsburgh level dew points.

[K9]

17 minutes ago, NeptunePenguins said:

Family finally got rid of the overprice tv packages and such. So been using other things now for news. Have on PlutoTv and I can see the local channel news of a few different cities, and it is kind of interesting to see how they talk about certain topics. Some even be talking about NFL teams and such. The weather is also an interesting change as well. Was watching Pittsburgh's weather lady go "and dew points above 60F generally feel quite muggy and sticky outside". Heh the Houston weatherman always had a dew point of 70F+ as the magical number with dew points under that being pretty decent. Guess it shows you the difference in perspective of the local climates. I bet San Francisco almost never sees even Pittsburgh level dew points.

 I'm a total weather junkie! I actually will watch the Weather Channel once on awhile just to hear what other cities are dealing with. I would luv to hear what a Houston meteorologist says about our 'humid' MN summer days 🤣

[NeptunePenguins]

Just now, K9 said:

 I'm a total weather junkie! I actually will watch the Weather Channel once on awhile just to hear what other cities are dealing with. I would luv to hear what a Houston meteorologist says about our 'humid' MN summer days 🤣

Heh oddly enough the only other state I've ever lived in is Minnesota. Although for the most part only part of the year, and typically not during the summer months. Though during 2022 from March to June in the very southernmost part of the state near Rochester, and there was one day that got about as humid as a typical Houston summer day, and it felt worse than usual probably because I hadn't felt such conditions in months. Although, outside of the few days of high heat and humidity it was pretty nice yeah. The rest of the time I was up further north, but it was outside the summer. It got super cold for sure lol. 

[Tugboat]

On 7/19/2023 at 9:04 PM, K9 said:

 I'm a total weather junkie! I actually will watch the Weather Channel once on awhile just to hear what other cities are dealing with. I would luv to hear what a Houston meteorologist says about our 'humid' MN summer days 🤣

I think this is me as well.  I regularly follow the weather in cities i've previously lived in, where friends or family live.  Even if the forecast is currently incorrect in my own location.

 

Accuweather has a station that's like...less than 1km from me and yet somehow, is often completely wrong.  But i follow it anyway.  And follow a bunch of other places for no good reason as well.

 

I also feel like i'm somehow better at handling humid heat than, "it's a dry heat".  But that's probably more just about how hot my apartment gets.  It just makes me so incurably thirsty.  I'd fully die in some place like Florida.

[Ty21]

On 7/19/2023 at 11:04 PM, K9 said:

I'm a total weather junkie!

You’re probably lethal at small talk