I was moderately grumpy until I got to the final (highlighted) line and then steam started coming out of my ears like I was a cartoon character.
Not a prank? It's a lovely prank article.
The author's other "articles." There seem to be two or three formulas, mostly listicles. I'd say anything written with that much time and care deserves... well, "Twitter" seems adequate.
Well, her method does show harder work than the classic way, which is asking your trust to release some of your funds early.
It's less hard work, however, than running a fundraising dinner at your dad's yacht club.
Some people lost everything, Daddy. I'm sure that includes athletic equipment.
You laugh, but her husband paid off his student loans by marrying the most un-self-aware person in the world. It's not easy!
This is one of those aspects of the culture that make me glad/sad that my grandfather isn't around anymore. I can see him making some allowance for funding appeals for people who are actually, or about to be, destitute. But the idea that someone who was employed, housed, etc. would go to a mass media platform to beg for money from strangers -- man, he would have had a lot to say about that.
(7 speaking more to the general state of things than this particular incident)
I wonder what he would have made of yoga pants.
Does the photo showing that Ms. Horton is a person of color* make her story more or less horrific?
* Keeping in mind the possibility that this article is actually a joke/parody/fakenews.
Earned her money the old fashioned way, by inheriting it?
Love for 5.
The actual piece. It seems to have been updated with the value of the condo, which was purchased at auction for $13k. Still.
13: That implies the family was also somewhat lucky on top of having the spare cash, no? It's not every $13K auction property that reliably yields quick rental income, even for the savvy real estate investor. (Or maybe they spent a lot more fixing it up.)
The article does make them sound more striving and lucky and less subsidized. But the sleeping kicker is that, with a MBA, she was only getting worse into debt; she had to read Orman to understand her running costs.
That story really drives home the difference between the real estate owning and renting classes. Her living situation sounds about as close to pure profit as you can get. No rent paid, lots of rent received. Whereas for most people who can't make that one initial purchase, housing is 100% loss.
I want to know in what market can you buy a $13,000 condo that doesn't require at least $100,000 of serious repairs? Something here isn't adding up.
The 2008/subprime/etc crash left a lot of empty places, not all trashed by their ex-inhabitants. Not all of them had been inhabited at all. I got lost in a neighborhood of those in California. And wasn't it right near where her family lived? They'd know what was basically OK.
It sounds a whole lot like stories I've heard from Polish and Jewish Americans about how their families made it out of the old neighborhoods, actually.
My current city has a bunch of townhouses that were partly to mostly completed- anywhere from framing/utilities/roof but no walls, through to rough finishes but uninhabited- but are now just sitting empty and unfinished because of the economic crash. While rents are low, labor costs are also so low here that I have to think someone with decent cash on hand could buy several properties, get them finished pretty quickly, and be renting out several to a dozen properties.
Also- buildings here are all done in masonry, they don't build wooden houses at all, so even the ones that have been sitting without walls seem like they're in good shape after several years. Consequently fire codes seem pretty insane to me, our apartment has no smoke detectors.
10 was to 7, not about yoga pants. An online platform for people who want to yell at people who are making pleas for funding online.
That implies the family was also somewhat lucky on top of having the spare cash, no? It's not every $13K auction property that reliably yields quick rental income, even for the savvy real estate investor.
Super, super lucky. Finding a GOOD tenant (prompt, pays bills, doesn't damage property) is not that straightforward. Huge roll of the dice that you don't get someone who for one reason or another stops paying rent and can't be evicted. Or just that you don't have months between tenants for whatever reason (eg university towns where rentals really only turn over once a year).
This article is so odd I really don't know what to make of it. There are some genuinely notable points that suggest some parts of her story are pretty attainable for some other people. E.g., $38K is a pretty modest salary (above median individual income for the US but below median HH income) -- it's not like she was making six figures. And a $13K condo is not crazy out of reach for most people with a graduate degree. Some of the advice given is not bad -- some people can do more to radically shear expenses, even if not everyone has the exact options open to her. (Especially if they have children, medical expenses, or other major financial game-changers.)
But there are SO MANY holes and contradictions. How did she rack up that much debt? Was the MBA some worthless online degree? What made her confident she could find renters quickly and bring in the amount of money she anticipated? How did she luck out and never have any big unexpected rental property expense?
The whole thing so strange that I basically figure this article is 30% true and the rest half-truths, making it useless as either anecdote or data.