Ever wonder if they are short sellers, boost the stock price and sell at the top, it will be great entertainment watching how all this plays out through to the end of the yr, I do feel for the easily lead and those who had no say with their 401K, a price boosted by SiFi talk and not actual company profit figures can only remain high until the bubble bursts ..... and it's not like it's never happen before, eh ...... T1 Terry
Sorry to disappoint, but this old man is doing just fine. You don't have to be a hater to make a living or pay for retirement.
Converted 401k over time into TSLA by taking losses on gold and a technology fund and moving all to TSLA stock About 10x capital gains value Read (still have) Musk biography Have 180,000 mi Tesla with FSD Sold all TSLA for a non-TESLA solar roof Capital gains canceled by the tax credit Lost confidence in Musk when he became distracted by his Twitter folly My obsession is reducing my operational expenses by efficiency and technology. Musk has no monopoly on that. So I have no problem buying when he offers a competitive, better deal. If being a cheapskate is an obsession, then that is me. Never forget I owned Prius 2005-2019 like many here until better came along. First a 2014 BMW i3-REx in 2016 and in 2019 traded in my last Prius, a Prime, for my 180,000 mi Tesla. So yes, I am obsessed with living cheap. Bob Wilson
Big difference between living cheap and wasting money. If you are paying electricity bills rather than generating your own power via solar, you are wasting money. If you by fuel rather than charging your EV from your own solar, you are wasting money. If you have no plans to live on the moon or Mars, or crunch huge numbers as part of your every day life, then why waste money investing in data centres, rockets and moon/Mars colonies. Better returns to be had making your household self sufficient, no more fuel bills or electricity bills is great way to start. T1 Terry
Brilliant strategeries! Buy a $25,000 grid-tied solar system to save $100 a month in utilities.....or a $40,000 BEV to save $100 a month in gas! That's MUCH better than investing it or establishing an emergency fund and zeroing out your debt! -this is why I take financial advice from people who are politically agnostic.
I guess that is to be expected from someone who posted a reply: ""ROI" is a Russian bot answer." While I see some good reasons for doing what he did, personal finance is not among them. Especially for someone with a remaining life expectancy of only a dozen years. Young aspiring investors should get their financial advice ... somewhere else. Very glad I did.
I can make a good use-case for building a grid-tied solar system into a home under construction - but people should be clear-eyed about what they're paying and getting. If the stock market is over-bought in 2027? Then most new home purchasers are REEEEAAAALLY overspending on their first homes. They call them MORTgages for a reason - and a 30-year home loan is in many cases the BEST investment that a young person or family can make!!! Me? I'm young enough to buy green bananas, and my intentions are to start dabbling with solar, but I have NO FREEKIN BUSINESS yanking $25000 out of savings to have some professionally (??) installed solar system. While it's true that it "might" add 25K to my home value, that's like putting $25K into a savings account to raise ITS value by $25k........ Yeah. I might save $100 a month in electrical costs but I also have to worry about upkeep and maintenance.....not to mention the RFI (an issue for me) and the esthetics (an issue for my CFO.) Nope! A BEV is a HARD NO for my CFO, and it doesn't make walking around sense for me. I would probably go for a PHEV because....2 fuel sources > 1 - but my CFO gets 'next pick' and........... .........Happy Spouse. Happy House!
Reality is different: ~$64,000 solar roof system bought free and clear from no-dividend TSLA stock. Tax credit wiped out the capital gains tax I still own the house and solar roof Solar roof cut electric bill in half over the first full year. $24,000 new 2019 BEV by trading in former 2017 Prius Prime that offended my engineering values (yes, some people liked it but I had a 2014 BMW i3-REx.) Bought BEV for 2019 AutoPilot, $1,200 extra, that saved me and my family the next month. I buy things for my requirements and have no expectations (or projections on others.) Git what makes you happy. There are alternatives. Bob Wilson
I divided my 401k into three pots: Gold stocks Technology fund TSLA Every 6-8 months, I sold the poorest performing and put the leftover in the best performing. After about a year and a half, it was all TSLA stock. After Musk got distracted by Twitter and other nonsense, I sold TSLA to buy a solar roof with capital gains canceled by solar roof tax credit. I was lucky. Bob Wilson
In that British example, the annual electric bill is 10.6% of the installation cost of the solar+battery system, though he then assumes it will cover only 80% of the bill, or 8.5%. But that still puts his initial raw 'ROI' higher than the 7% he figures for the financial instrument used for comparison. No surprise that his analysis shows the solar to be the better 'investment'. This also indicates that in his region, electric energy is far more costly than in my area. At the lower electric price in my location, the value of my current annual solar production is about 5.7% of the installation cost 11 & 13 years ago. If I'd put that money into an S&P500 Index fund then, its value would have grown so much (not counting dividend reinvestment) that the my annual production would now be only 1.6% of that. (Income and cap gains taxes and solar incentives greatly complicate the comparison, narrowing the spread, but don't flip it.) Speaking strictly in financial terms, I knew even then that solar was not my best financial choice, but financially I already had 'enough' so was doing it to put my money where my mouth is on climate change. In the oft-repeated Huntsville example here, a $64,000 capital investment is producing a cost avoidance of $1000/year, for a 'raw ROI' of 1.56%/year. Taxes and incentives again complicate the comparison and reduce the effective spread, but financial analysts in the audience are very unimpressed. At Huntsville's comparatively low electric prices, one needs more reasons than pure financial to justify the investment. Though I do count putting one's money where one's mouth is, as a sufficient reason. As for increased home value, around here a solar system doesn't seem to increase the property value by the full installation cost, there is some depreciation. And when I plan to sell my home, it will most likely be a "teardown", worth more as a base for up-development than as a normal SFR (single family residence), so will most likely be scrapped and replaced by a McMansion or a multi-family facility. The last regular SFR in the neighborhood was built well over a decade ago, all new construction since has been McMansions. The edge of the apartment zone has been only 2 blocks away for a while. An immediate neighbor sale several years ago was won by a family that only barely outbid a developer, while a developer recently won on a property just a single block away. So all improvements we make are strictly for our own enjoyment, with no expectation of increased resale value.
at our latitude, solar is about a 10 year payback, not counting loss of the potential $25,000. investment. at 71, a hard pass for me, but at 43, I'm encouraging our daughter to pull the trigger. I wish I had when we purchased and remodeled 20 years ago
So my eyes see: "$64,000 capital investment is producing a cost avoidance of $1000/year, for a 'raw ROI' of 1.56%/year" The original capital was no-dividend TSLA stock, or $0/year. In my math, $1000/year is more than $0/year What happens to TSLA stock when someone dies or better competition shows up or a bad government policy gets an executive order "Taxes and incentives again complicate the comparison and reduce the effective spread" Utility bills are paid with taxed income. The $1000/year is tax free. Taxes are a real cost added on to any expenses paid with taxed money. "incentives" - I beat the executive order death of solar incentives. Without the incentives, I would have paid significant capital gains tax on the stock sale. "analysts ... unimpressed" - in my case, I'm 76 years and Dad passed in his mid 80s and Mom in her early 90s. Unmarried and no offspring with four slightly younger brothers, it isn't clear that an estate with a significant TSLA stock asset helps anyone. Might as well help myself while I can use it. There are many ways to handle one's accounting but two seem common: One big pool - it combined operational and capital into one pot of money. It makes calculating ROI trivial and IMHO, often wrong. For example, my hybrid hot water heater was 50% more expensive than a regular resistance hot water heater. But the ~1/3 lower electrical cost pays the difference over time. Split operational and capital pools - this means operational expense can not be glommed onto capital expense and value. So I take the extreme goal of minimizing my operational expense. Capital such as owning a home, a car, or any other asset only has value to the degree they benefit me: shelter - the home that avoids rent that has no capital utility transportation - the car(s) that let me live an interesting life investment - the realized profit(s) that improves my quality of life ... while I am alive to enjoy it. Is my way the only way, NO! But it is the way that makes me happy and would be death to others who try to blindly copy. The beauty of freedom and capitalism is we can each experiment to find what makes us happy. Bob Wilson
Love to see somebody take a whack on the numbers of the 10-year payback. Not being pedantic......just curious about the math. Not counting the loss of a $25000 investment is a little interesting as well - but that is what it is. As I stated earlier, I could make a useful argument about rolling solar into a new home build, or maybe even a remodel 'sucking less' than the alternatives. I look at solar agnostically - but I DO look at it as part of a strategery for hardening myself against significant power outages. For now? A propane fired genny will have to serve. Propane is easy to store at significant volume, it won't get scrubbed off of my roof during a storm or be damaged by "120 mph pine cones" and I can pay for it 'left of bang.' Solar has significant advantages but at my age even this curious 10-year ROI is over my local horizon.
You only pay $100 mth is fuel costs, never change the oil or filters, never needs spark plugs, do you even drive the thing? Your electricity bills are incredibly low, I would have thought they would have been higher with you staying home all the time, I'm guessing solar isn't for you then. Did I mention grid tied solar at some stage? Can you provide a link so I can correct the error ...... Grid tied solar where they dictate what they will pay you for your solar is just legalised theft, and if you are paying $25,000 for a solar system, then I quite understand why you bought Tesla and now the latest Musk scam product .... T1 Terry
Yeah I just asked grock, for example, the average electric bill in our old area of South Orange County Calif (some of the highest electric costs in the nation, in addition to being in one of the most densely populated areas) a 4 person family (w/out ev's) typically pays their utility company ~$300 in the summertime running AC. Add 2 plug-in cars to the equation? Add in NOT having to pay 30%-40% income tax to pay for that electricity & gasoline? That's why our PV system paid for itself in just 6 years. Of course between state & fed incentives at that time, the 8kW system cost us under $20K out the door. Our installers would then give us $600 for each person that we got signed up - so that kicked another $3k back to us over the years - in addition to no electric bill. On the downside, yeah, the rooftop PV seldom, if ever adds value to the home sale sticker price. People don't buy a house for its free (or less expensive) electricity. They buy for it's safe location, School quality, beautiful view, overall home style Etc - as much as folks can afford for those features. even so - YMMV
