Don’t Go into Debt For Your Photography

[ktmrider]

Don't know when the article was written but I believe Eric Kim uses a film Leica (MP) and a 35 Summicron. Don't have much in the way of comments on his work but he resists GAS pretty well if you read his blog.

 

[giganova]

Not true that it is always best to buy cash and never on credit (apart from the fact that we wouldn't have much of an economy if everyone would only buy cash):

I'm financing my new car through the bank at 0% interest rate for five years when it is paid off in full. Would have been stupid to buy it cash.

 

[giganova]

No kidding. I have an excellent credit rating but it has dropped a bit since the loans I had were paid off. The tips I get to improve my credit is to take out new loans i.e. get in debt again.
So essentially I am being penalized by being debt free. This whole credit rating scam is to pump up the economy and keep people forever owing.

I think you misunderstood: "take out new loans" is NOT "getting in dept". You have to show that you are a responsible loaner. So simply open a credit card account and don't use it. This will increase your credit score a lot.

 

[noisycheese]

Does he have a Leica ? 😀

No, he's more practical than that. Not about posing or bragging, he just gets the job done with things that are a better value. I know he loved an Olympus OM-1 for years. His wife got that too.

🙄

I have a Leica. Posing and bragging have nothing to do with it.

I would imagine there are more than a handful of other Leica users on this forum who would say the same.

 

[x-ray]

Not true that it is always best to buy cash and never on credit (apart from the fact that we wouldn't have much of an economy if everyone would only buy cash):

I'm financing my new car through the bank at 0% interest rate for five years when it is paid off in full. Would have been stupid to buy it cash.

People would have more disposable income if they weren't paying it out in interest. Buying with cash you never lose sleep over losing your car or house or whatever if something goes wrong. A lot of people lose their jobs causing them to lose their house and cars.

I'm moving into a new house this week I'm paying cash for. I'm moving from a very upscale neighborhood. In the past 4 or 5 years about 10 homes around me have gone into foreclosure. The owners depended on both husband and wife having a specific income. One lost their job and couldn't find another or one that paid as well and they lost their house. Lots of debt and no savings sunk their ship.

I can sleep better at night knowing that can't happen to me.

 

[KM-25]

People would have more disposable income if they weren't paying it out in interest. Buying with cash you never lose sleep over losing your car or house or whatever if something goes wrong. A lot of people lose their jobs causing them to lose their house and cars.

I'm moving into a new house this week I'm paying cash for. I'm moving from a very upscale neighborhood. In the past 4 or 5 years about 10 homes around me have gone into foreclosure. The owners depended on both husband and wife having a specific income. One lost their job and couldn't find another or one that paid as well and they lost their house. Lots of debt and no savings sunk their ship.

I can sleep better at night knowing that can't happen to me.

But Don....what you say about your situation is so not what most people get to do, it is not even on the radar of feasible for most people who are looking to buy a home, so you must be older than 60, right?

With developers / investors buying up homes like those in foreclosure turning them around for rent / Airbnb, it is making it really hard for a lot of people to buy homes. The high rents make it to where families can not save enough, this is a big problem with greed balls like Blackstone gobbling up homes to flip or rent at above market rates.

So not everyone can afford to do what you are doing, I certainly can't with average home prices at 4-6 million in my town. My wife and I are largely out of debt but will have to save at least $300-500k for a down payment on a $1.5 million condo in order to have a monthly note of not more than 4K per month. We could easily afford more but I am capping it at 4K monthly in case one of us has a job / major client loss.

I know what you say is ideal in practice, but since the economic crash, greed has put home ownership well out of reach for a lot of Americans. And now the rental market is shrinking to give way to high profit Airbnb, a really big problem that only some cities are putting regulations on.

That is capitalism for you though, screw everyone else, at least they get to sleep at night.

 

[x-ray]

But Don....what you say about your situation is so not what most people get to do, it is not even on the radar of feasible for most people who are looking to buy a home, so you must be older than 60, right?

With developers / investors buying up homes like those in foreclosure turning them around for rent / Airbnb, it is making it really hard for a lot of people to buy homes. The high rents make it to where families can not save enough, this is a big problem with greed balls like Blackstone gobbling up homes to flip or rent at above market rates.

So not everyone can afford to do what you are doing, I certainly can't with average home prices at 4-6 million in my town. My wife and I are largely out of debt but will have to save at least $300-500k for a down payment on a $1.5 million condo in order to have a monthly note of not more than 4K per month. We could easily afford more but I am capping it at 4K monthly in case one of us has a job / major client loss.

I know what you say is ideal in practice, but since the economic crash, greed has put home ownership well out of reach for a lot of Americans. And now the rental market is shrinking to give way to high profit Airbnb, a really big problem that only some cities are putting regulations on.

That is capitalism for you though, screw everyone else, at least they get to sleep at night.

I agree with most of what you're saying. Greed and big corporate have taken a toll on my business too. I really understand.

It gets harder and harder for most folks including me but I live within my means. I drove my last car 12 years and my wife's car is 13 years old but in great shape. I saved and paid cash for a new Jeep Weangler Unlimited and have been sav get for another. My wife and I took every extra penny and put it all into paying the house off in as short a period as we could manage. We didn't take vacations and didn't buy anything we didn't have to have.

My wife is a succesfull artist, painter. We're both in several fine art galleries. We promoted our work and expanded our following and galleries during this time. Other than taxes we took all of our art money and put it on the house. In addition we made extra payments when we could. At a minimum we put extra on the every month. It took a lot of dedication and sacrifice. I'm afraid a lot of people aren't willing to sacrifice for something this important. At least it was that important to me.

After we paid the house off we took that extra money and saved and invested. Today I work because I like what I do not because I have to. I'm happy I sacrificed mow but it wasn't always easy. There were many vacations I wanted to take, wanted to buy an airplane and a new Porsche but held off. Tge airplane won't hapen due to an illness but the vacations are happening and the Porsche will happen all with no debt.

Yes I'm over 60. I'm coming up on 68. I did all of this in my 50's. Ive had my own commercial photo business for about 45 years in one form or another. I Worked for some major ad agencies as a department head for years and for the past 32 years had a very succesfull studio. It's had it good and it's bad. There's a lot of risk but I felt the only way to make good money was to take those risks. Fortunately I have a good business sense and have had a very good client list.

Where do you live with average home prices at 4-6 Million? Folks must be making unbelievable salaries just to live there. I e found income and housing prices run pretty much in unison. Low cost of living / lower income. Cost of living is very low where I live and as a rule incomes are low. Unfortunately that's life.

One of my best friends father was a barber. Cutting hair was all he ever did. My friend told me that he saved his money but still had a nice life and when he passed away he and his siblings discovered he had close to $1M. He passed away about 15 years ago.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

But Don....what you say about your situation is so not what most people get to do, it is not even on the radar of feasible for most people who are looking to buy a home, so you must be older than 60, right?

With developers / investors buying up homes like those in foreclosure turning them around for rent / Airbnb, it is making it really hard for a lot of people to buy homes. The high rents make it to where families can not save enough, this is a big problem with greed balls like Blackstone gobbling up homes to flip or rent at above market rates.

So not everyone can afford to do what you are doing, I certainly can't with average home prices at 4-6 million in my town. My wife and I are largely out of debt but will have to save at least $300-500k for a down payment on a $1.5 million condo in order to have a monthly note of not more than 4K per month. We could easily afford more but I am capping it at 4K monthly in case one of us has a job / major client loss.

I know what you say is ideal in practice, but since the economic crash, greed has put home ownership well out of reach for a lot of Americans. And now the rental market is shrinking to give way to high profit Airbnb, a really big problem that only some cities are putting regulations on.

That is capitalism for you though, screw everyone else, at least they get to sleep at night.

The $4000 a month you're budgeting for a house payment is $48,000 a year. That is more than 75% of full-time American workers earn in a year!

Even your situation of far outside the bounds of reality for most Americans.

 

[Addy101]

The key word is "hobby". Business is another matter.

Cheers,

R.

Agree, I phrased that carefully.

 

[Highway 61]

I'm financing my new car through the bank at 0% interest rate for five years when it is paid off in full. Would have been stupid to buy it cash.

I know no bank which loans at 0%. Or they all would have gone into bankrupt.

By writing "0% interest rate for five years" you might count with the natural inflation over the loan years so it's rather "0% interest upon the upfront borrowed and reimbursed sums in front of the real constant value of the money on the monetary market".

The problem is that isn't true any longer in many countries having interest rates higher than the natural inflation level now.

If you're absolutely certain not to lose your job nor get into personal difficulties (divorce, health problems etc), having debts (whatever they've been contracted for) representing a low and always controlled percentage of your monthly and regular income isn't much of a problem (specially if you have savings aside). Otherwise...

Mr de Lapalisse could have said it.

Steady job, modest yet regular and secure income, old car and old photo gear, no debts and some little savings (equal. one year of my income) for me. But I don't own any house, I never could afford that and never wanted to get into a mortgage process, so I rent a flat. And my life is nice enough. 🙂

 

[David Hughes]

I think you misunderstood: "take out new loans" is NOT "getting in dept". You have to show that you are a responsible loaner. So simply open a credit card account and don't use it. This will increase your credit score a lot.

Hi,

1, How do you borrow money without owing it? Money owed = debt...

2, If you pay cash why worry about credit rating?

3, Why has no one else asked this?

Regards, David

 

[David Hughes]

I agree with most of what you're saying. Greed and big corporate have taken a toll on my business too. I really understand.

It gets harder and harder for most folks including me but I live within my means. I drove my last car 12 years and my wife's car is 13 years old but in great shape. I saved and paid cash for a new Jeep Weangler Unlimited ...

Hi,

I do the same but I look for a two year old car and save a lot that way, then run it until the scrap dealers start stopping their trucks outside and waving cash in my face...

Talking of house values etc, two cars ago I looked carefully for a not very posh car and got a 3 year old Audi A6 which was what I wanted and was the smartest dearest car in the road. Now there are two Bentleys, a Rolls and a Porsche or two to say nothing of the common or garden Audis and BMWs. But this is a very nice village with thatched cottages and people commute to the concrete cow city...

As for buying cameras with cash, I now limit myself to coins and not paper money. The film costs (even with Poundland's help) were getting silly and the test roll was boring me to tears taking the same photo's over and over again but it has been fun seeing what the cameras could do...

Regards, David

 

[David Hughes]

... But I don't own any house, I never could afford that and never wanted to get into a mortgage process, so I rent a flat. And my life is nice enough. 🙂

Hi,

Interesting point, I've noticed that a lot of prosperous countries (mainland Europe mainly) have rent controls and it is normal to rent. I wonder if there's a link. It would make the labour market more flexible...

Regards, David

PS I do agree about 0% loans and wonder what the (wads of) cash price would be.

Trouble is, the banks here charge you to take your money in and then lend it out twenty or thirty times over. And I can remember when 2% over bank rate was seen as dear and reserved for dodgy borrowers.

 

[robert blu]

Hi,

Interesting point, I've noticed that a lot of prosperous countries (mainland Europe mainly) have rent controls and it is normal to rent. I wonder if there's a link. It would make the labour market more flexible...

This was enhanced by a recent research in Europe, the countries with more owners of houses are the ones with more economical difficulties and more unemployment, like Italy and Greece. Swiss and Germany on the other side have less owned houses and more prosperity, general speaking.

In today's world flexibility and possibility to move around seems to be a must to find or keep a job.

robert

 

[Roger Hicks]

No debt = no worries. ... .

Dear Garrett,

You've never been ill? Or divorced? Or lost a loved one? Or been forced to move house for the economic convenience of your employer?

For that matter, there comes a sort of platform below which it is increasingly hard to live. Take the price of a humble light-bulb. They used to be a dollar or less. Now they're (roughly) 5-10x as much. A pack of a couple of light bulbs puts a significant dent in the weekly budget of a really poor person.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Agree, I phrased that carefully.

I thought you probably did. Some, however, have not read it as carefully. And as KM-25 put it,

I stopped reading the article after the first paragraph:
"I remember when I was sitting in my cubicle at work, dreaming and lusting after a digital Leica M9."

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

No, he's more practical than that. Not about posing or bragging, he just gets the job done with things that are a better value. I know he loved an Olympus OM-1 for years. His wife got that too.

Dear Garett,

As Noisycheese points out, owning a Leica may be about posing and bragging for you. For many others it's about a small, light, easy-to-use camera that lasts a very long time (as least in the days of film cameras) and TAKING PICTURES. The anti-Leica brigade often seems to neglect these aspects of Leica ownership.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

The $4000 a month you're budgeting for a house payment is $48,000 a year. That is more than 75% of full-time American workers earn in a year!

Even your situation of far outside the bounds of reality for most Americans.

Dear Chris,

You also can't help wondering where all this rental/AirB&B money is coming from.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Highway 61]

For many others it's about a small, light, easy-to-use camera that lasts a very long time (as least in the days of film cameras) and TAKING PICTURES. The anti-Leica brigade often seems to neglect these aspects of Leica ownership.

That was all true during the film era (although the Leica film cameras never were as reliable as their marketing hype told they were, but this is another story).

Now at the digital age, a Nikon D700 with a good Nikkor lens would be a way better choice for the modest photographer ready to drop $1000 in a second hand kit which will take picture after picture without any problem and may virtually last forever without any maintenance or repair. The D700 was marketed long ago enough now so we all can know how highly reliable it is.

Someone I know just sent his M8 to Wetzlar because that camera (which he had bought from new and always used as a careful amateur) suddenly ceased to work. The camera came back and the invoice for the repair was 1,075 euros. And if you consider what happened to almost all the M9 units... well.

I don't belong to any "anti-Leica brigade" but we all have to acknowledge that, today, the digital Leica Ms are everything but reliable cameras which will be used for taking pictures for a lifetime without forcing their owners to spend top dollars on them for repair on quite a regular basis. So, buying a new digital Leica today means, nolens volens, continuously spending money on it even long after the purchase day. Another kind of debt...

 

[Roger Hicks]

That was all true during the film era (although the Leica film cameras never were as reliable as their marketing hype told they were, but this is another story).

Now at the digital age, a Nikon D700 with a good Nikkor lens would be a way better choice for the modest photographer ready to drop $1000 in a second hand kit which will take picture after picture without any problem and may virtually last forever without any maintenance or repair. The D700 was marketed long ago enough now so we all can know how highly reliable it is.

Someone I know just sent his M8 to Wetzlar because that camera (which he had bought from new and always used as a careful amateur) suddenly ceased to work. The camera came back and the invoice for the repair was 1,075 euros. And if you consider what happened to almost all the M9 units... well.

I don't belong to any "anti-Leica brigade" but we all have to acknowledge that, today, the digital Leica Ms are everything but reliable cameras which will be used for taking pictures for a lifetime without forcing their owners to spend top dollars on them for repair on quite a regular basis.

They're still small, light and unobtrusive. A D700 isn't. That's quite a compelling argument as far as I am concerned.

As far as I'm aware, too, corroded sensors are replaced free of charge. Is this no longer the case?

Cheers,

R.