A debt perspective

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

I would refinance to save half a percent, but would only go back to thirty years if I did not have a choice.

Closing costs on a mortgage often make it unwise to refinance for anything less than a 1 point reduction (percent in banking jargon).

People often refinance for the purpose of reducing their monthly payment, and not to reduce their overall expenditure on the house. This resets the payback period to 30 years unless they choose a shorter loan term.

The way I calculate if refinancing is worth it is to add up the remaining number of monthly payments on the current mortgage (about 24 years worth on my house) and compare the total cost of a new lower mortgage payment at 30 years plus closing costs. Sure, my monthly payments could be lower, but they would last another 6 years compared to my current loan. I'd have to refinance at a rate somewhere in the 3.x% range before it would actually save me money.

To maximize your hedge against inflation, and for the easiest monthly repayment terms (in case there is difficulty making payments some months), it's usually best to go with a 30 year loan. You can still gain most of the benefit of a 15 or 20 year loan by making extra payments toward the principal.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Dead how? Lots of things that can make a laptop (or desktop FTM) seem not to work are relatively easy to repair.

I've revived dead laptops (no response to power button) by removing the mainboard and baking in the oven to reflow the solder joints. This is usually a temporary fix as the laptop usually dies again later.

If you want longevity from a laptop, avoid the consumer level models from any brand and instead choose at least an entry business model. For Dell, the cheap consumer product is the Inspiron line, and their entry business is Vostro.

On the other hand, if you want the latest tech and intend to upgrade every 2 years, the consumer level products will usually last that long.

I'm typing on a 5 year old Lenovo x220 (business class). It travels with me everywhere I go, so I needed something tough enough to put up with constant moving and use.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

16G installed, 32G capacity?

Yes, but the one I linked was $50 more than the one I bought. If that is the only difference, I would rather save the money.

Crucial says I have 2x8, with room for two more, $30 each. It looks like an SSD would only be $70, but I never installed the last one. The first one made my laptop amazingly quick, but died after a month. The second one did not seem to make a difference, but died after a week. The replacement is refurbished and I did not feel motivated to attempt it.

I prefer to replace computers with at least as much RAM and other specs as the older one, although I am not sure I have filled up a hard drive in a decade or more. I do not download movies or anything. I do not plan on downloading any games. This should work perfectly, I got the extended warranty, it it far easier to work on a desktop, and it is 10% less likely than I will drop this than my last three laptops!

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Dead how? Lots of things that can make a laptop (or desktop FTM) seem not to work are relatively easy to repair.

I told people that I expected it to boot up just fine eventually and it did today. I wish it had just said "I'm not talking to you!" in the meantime. All systems functioning within specified parameters. Great. It did this when I was trying to write seventeen progress reports before annual training. I was trying to figure out how to get it done, ran out of time, went to work, and the computer booted just fine afterwards.

I really do need a reliable computer for work.

I got on for the first time since coming home from Iowa and as I started looking at my speech documents it just froze. I ended up pulling the battery and unplugging it. When I put them back, it did not respond to the power buttons. I tried dozens of times and went to Costco.

That is exactly what it did three weeks ago, but it sat for sixteen of those days.

Would there be some kind of log indicating what might have caused it to freeze? I did not have a BSD.

Oilpan, how many times have you been to Afghanistan?

Redpoint, I did not realize that refinancing mortgages had closing costs. You basically replace one mortgage with another? My ten-day fiancée refinanced her home and they gave her $800, which she happily spent.

I thought she should have put that back into the mortgage, on top of her normal payments.

Baking is good for motherboards? How do they smell? I think you have discussed business laptops on here before. If I do decide to get another laptop in the future, I hope I remember that. I bought an HP notebook before my first annual training and it was supposed to last the rest of my schooling, but it slipped out of my fingers when I came home and when it came back from warranty repairs, I cracked the screen again!

I still have not sent that in. I keep forgetting the extended warranty expires soon. I bought it 7/10/2013. You may recall Windows was telling me to purchase a new license.

Then there is the other Asus that I bought earlier in my deployment. My buddy asked if he could use my laptop while I went to work. Then I came back and he said "I didn't do it, but your laptop died." He refused to answer any questions. So, I sent that in for warranty repair, and bought the newer one. The day the second one arrived, I got the older one working, so I returned the new one, and they just mailed it to my mom's house, where it waited the rest of deployment, a year in Germany, and the first couple of months I was home.

The older one worked perfectly, but I decided to use the "brand-new" one that sat in a box for a year and a half.

The older one never worked right after that. When the newer one has gone down, the older one seems to boot fine and everything appears okay, but then it abruptly dies. I run burn-in software and 90% of the time it goes however long I tell it and gives zero errors, but sometimes it goes black without anything showing up in the logs.

Then there is Dad's, with the dead fan.

I may have more...

People thought I was crazy for bringing my brand-new laptop to annual training three years ago. I thought they were crazy for assuming I would, I left it at home!

Plenty of Soldiers brought theirs, though.

We desperately needed reliable computers while we were out, though. Don't you know the military runs on malfunctioning on-line classes?

Thanks for the feedback!

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'm typing on a 5 year old Lenovo x220 (business class).

Got you beat. My main machine is a Lenovo T61 ThinkPad, maybe 8 years old. Did upgrade to an SSD, and had to fix the fan a couple of years back. (Both easy.) I do have several others, but they're set up for special things (e.g. the dual GPU tower for serious number-crunching), or booted to run as a mini-cluster.

[Xist]

How difficult was it to replace the fan? On Dad's laptop it requires removing the motherboard.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

Redpoint, I did not realize that refinancing mortgages had closing costs. You basically replace one mortgage with another? My ten-day fiancée refinanced her home and they gave her $800, which she happily spent.

When a person has a mortgage, they have equity in their home. Equity = the current market price of the home - the amount of debt remaining on the loan.

If a home is worth $200,000 and the principal amount left on the loan is $150,000, the equity is $50,000.

It's possible, as was common in 2006, for the value of the home to fall below the amount remaining on the mortgage. This leaves people with negative equity. Example home value is $100,000 and the amount owed on mortgage is $150,000 = -$50,000 equity. This is why people were foreclosing on their homes in droves. It's not that they couldn't afford their mortgage, because their monthly payment didn't change; it's that they could walk away from their mortgage obligation and the associated negative equity. Having zero debt by foreclosing (the bank takes back all ownership) and having no equity makes more financial sense than having negative equity (owing more than it's worth).

In your fiances case, she had some equity in the home and got a "cash out" refinance. This means she borrowed more money than she needed to, and will have to repay that amount with interest in the future.

If I had ANY debt at all besides the mortgage, I would probably do a cash out refi and pay off those debts. Mortgage debt generally carries the lowest interest rates since the loan is secured by the home. Also, interest payments on mortgages are tax deductible. You could essentially turn your credit card debt into mortgage debt by getting a cash out refi, and deduct the interest on your taxes.

I wasn't sure if I could pay the second year of medical school for my wife, but I still declined school loans. My plan was to take out a HELOC (home equity line of credit), which is low interest and backed by the equity in my home. It's also tax deductible, and the debt is erased if you foreclose, unlike school debt which cannot be erased through bankruptcy.

Debt and savings act as a time machine for money. Putting money into savings is paying now for future purchasing, and debt is purchasing now with future payment. Both have opportunity costs involved.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Xist

How difficult was it to replace the fan? On Dad's laptop it requires removing the motherboard.

Pretty easy on the ThinkPad. Just remove bezel & keyboard (screws on back), and the heat pipe from the CPU/GPU. Didn't even need to actually replace the fan, just cleaned & lubricated it, and now it's almost impossible to hear when it's on.

[Xist]

Last I checked, the interest on my savings account is one percent...

...of one percent!

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Xist

My buddy asked if he could use my laptop while I went to work. Then I came back and he said "I didn't do it, but your laptop died." He refused to answer any questions.

He's not your buddy, guy.

...he's not your guy, pal.

[Xist]

I think he punched his roommate's laptop when we returned to Germany.

[vskid3]

Originally Posted by Xist

Last I checked, the interest on my savings account is one percent...

...of one percent!

That's what investments are for. Most savings accounts are barely better than stuffing you money under your mattress.

16GB of RAM is plenty for almost anyone.