Quote:
Originally Posted by flamesfever
I seem to recall long ago this big Texas oilman telling about his youth, travelling from rig to rig playing marbles with the other kids. He had this one big marble (I forget what he called it) that allowed him to continually win marbles from the other kids. And he was always careful to never risk losing his big marble. I believe the lesson was that you shouldn't gamble with, or expose to losing, the basic things that make you most secure, happy, and successful in life...and IMO a man's house would be one of those things.
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I agree with the other guy who says it's a cool story but not relevant. The question several posts ago was evaluating a mortgage prepayment vs some other kind of investment. If he doesn't make a prepayment he's not going to lose his house. Your analogy works better if he was thinking about taking out a 2nd mortgage to invest.
The safe thing to do is probably work at prepaying the mortgage, no matter how cheap his mortgage rate is. However if you have some ability to invest (thy guy who throws it all on Sinoforest is the opposite of this) and you have some goals about getting ahead then why not develop an investment strategy.
What's funny to me is how naively people were adding VAR, or in general risk to their lives 6 years ago, and now many people are absolutely allergic to any kind of risk whatsoever. The truth is somewhere between the two extremes we have seen in the last decade.