I think I’m witnessing my parents (70s, retired) about to make a bad financial decision and I would love to get a sanity check from you guys.
They’ve both been extremely bored during covid and have decided that they want to spend around $350k (USD) on a house in the suburbs of Italy that they’re only going to stay in at most 3 months maybe every year or every other year until they get bored of it. I’m being very generous in calculating about 15 months max in their entire lives. Edit: they have zero plans to rent it out while they’re not living there. I’ve suggested it too.
I’ve suggested renting a house when they want to get away, instead. My stepdad brushes off my concerns by saying “I’m not into renting, it’s just throwing money down the drain”. But from my perspective, they’d be throwing nearly $300k down the drain for something they can get for maybe $75k (15 months x $5k/month. The $5k is a high guesstimate of what they might be able to rent a nice house for in the small towns they’ve been looking at).
This all feels very timeshare fallacy to me. Am I off base here? Or is this a dumb financial decision? What angles am I not considering? Thanks!
Submitted November 14, 2020 at 08:29PM by zebrasnever https://ift.tt/38GFyPK
