Interesting graphs and charts department

[Gravdigr]

And, yes, I lived there. Once.

Talk about motivation...ugh.

[Lamplighter]

... $130 / week is equivalent to $563 / month.
... with minimum wage = $ 7.25 hr X 160 hr / month = $1,160 / mo

$563 per mo / $7.25 per hr = = 77 hrs of work / month
$563 per mo / $1,160 per mo = 48.5 % of income for rent

This is even higher than the map shows for KY, maybe due to including water bill.

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Rent is usually monthly. I got the impression the number was how many hours a month for the rent. Also, nobody could do it in a week on Minimum wage, no matter where you live.

In the chart key it say "hours per week."

[xoxoxoBruce]

Hmm, then I'm still confused. Maybe they're saying your rent shouldn't be above 25% of your gross.
I am sure working for minimum wage sucks, though.

[classicman]

yes it sure does. Especially when is manual labor and you had been making 4x that.

[Spexxvet]

It's for a 2 bedroom unit at fair market price

[infinite monkey]

Fair market for a place including bedbugs, cockroaches, mice, trashy neighbors, shootings, etc...or fair market for a safe and clean facility?

[glatt]

It's been 15 years since I lived in an apartment, and the rent then was $950 for a 2BR. So I just pulled up craigslist so see what rents are now.

Wow. I don't know if I would be able to afford to live here if I had to rent. It would not be easy.

[Griff]

He he... I think we paid $250 all included for our last rental. Major elbow grease in lieu of money and they never raised the rent on us.

[glatt]

Amazing that my mortgage payment for an entire house is so much cheaper than the rent of a 2BR apartment today. When we were buying the place, I was nervous that our mortgage was going to be more than what we were paying in rent at the time, but our agent kept telling us that rents keep going up, but the mortgage payment stays the same. Turns out he was absolutely right.

It's kind of embarrassing. I pay less for housing than some of the kids right out of college coming to work here.

So here's a question. Why can't you deduct rent from your income taxes the way you can deduct mortgage interest payments? Seems like the poor get a double whammy there.

[infinite monkey]

Not just the 'poor.'

Non-homeowners make up for homeowners' deductions, like those with no dependents make up for child deductions.

When I was a DINK (double income/no kids) it seemed that we were 'dinged' a lot, then we got some breaks, but not much. Those breaks were still better than any breaks I've ever received. The most significant one of late was the 'making work pay' credit which saved me 400 bucks. That's gone now too.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

Not just the 'poor.'

Yeah. That was a bad choice of words. Sloppy on my part.

But it seems like the more money a person has, the more the system is set up to favor them. I understand that in this example, the government wants to encourage home ownership, and I'm glad they do. But another way of looking at it is that they penalize renters.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by glatt

So here's a question. Why can't you deduct rent from your income taxes the way you can deduct mortgage interest payments? Seems like the poor get a double whammy there.

Because every rental does still have an owner, and that owner is deducting the mortgage interest from his taxes. So at a minimum, you'd have double deductions on the same house. But what would also then happen is you'd have people renting their own houses to themselves, or renting it to their spouse filing separately or whatever, so they could take the deduction twice.

The trick is to always look at everything from a scumbag mindset. Fraud is easy if you're looking for ways to do it.

Originally Posted by glatt

I was nervous that our mortgage was going to be more than what we were paying in rent at the time, but our agent kept telling us that rents keep going up, but the mortgage payment stays the same. Turns out he was absolutely right.

It's kind of embarrassing. I pay less for housing than some of the kids right out of college coming to work here.

What about your property taxes? Surely those have gone up over the years, probably at a rate similar to the amount rent has gone up? At this point my dad's property taxes are far, far higher than the mortgage on his house, and when he's ready to retire he'll have no choice but to sell the house because the neighborhood has gotten too nice for him to keep paying the property taxes on it.

[HungLikeJesus]

Good point; there's also major maintenance and renovation costs, which can be significant. I haven't really tracked it, but I bet we spend between $5,000 and $10,000 per year on things like furnace repair, new roof, etc.

[Gravdigr]

JFC.