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Just FYI for whoever needs to read this: If you go into debt for a single investment, it's a mistake. You are supposed to invest your excess, into as many isolated pools as reasonable. If you're part of the majority of the population, which doesn't have an excess, you are not investing - you are gambling.
Just FYI for anyone who needs to read this: it doesn't matter how fucking wealthy you are, ranking yourself with a watch is cringe and idiotic. Don't be a fucking sheep if you are poor. Don't be a fucking sheep if you are rich.
This is not really applicable and only works if you look at investments pretty naively.
The most obvious rebuttal to this is home ownership a mortgage is debt and is also a 'single purchase' however for most people, a mortgage is their first step towards financial independence. The next concept of course is TVM (time value of money), having cash available now to invest in worth more than later, and so utilizing leverage to invest money is important.
Generally, investments that beat interest make it worth it to utilize debt to make them, this is the premise behind investing using margin, utilizing heloc loans, or taking out a loan for a business, education, or tooling that will allow you to earn more.
Debt isn't inherently bad and there are many ways to use debt to your advantage.
A good way to look at it is like this, if you have a line of credit available to you that satisfies your emergency fund, let's say a few thousand dollars, instead of sitting on the fund in a low interest savings account, you can move that to something marginally less liquid, like an REIT or an index fund, and use the line of credit to float cash until you can withdraw. Use the credit for the 4-6 days it takes to clear the transaction. You may pay some interest, but the emergency fund will have actually gained significantly more than any interest you would pay.
Not all investment is the same, buying out of the money long calls on mene stocks is not the same as moving medium or long term savings to high dividend managed funds.
I'd say the mortgage example is special, as it's not just an investment for investment's sake, it's a house you are actually going to use, and your realistic alternative is to rent a place on indefinite terms.
For most folks, investments that beat the loan interest is a tricky and often outright risky proposition. If you are leveraging yourself too far then you are almost certainly not getting a good rate, and the investment may be assumed to do better, but could go significantly worse.
Thanks for providing the additional clarifications, I think pretty much all of it is valid, I just have a slightly different perspective.
Most people would likely agree with you that investing into a home through dept is reasonable. I don't disagree.
I also agree that you can utilize loaned capital in a way that your earnings outperform the debt incurred.
You're still gambling though. You can not afford to lose your home, or that loaned capital. Maybe you feel like your chances are good, and maybe they really are, but you're relying on your personal prediction of the future to ultimately resolve that debt.
A "real" investment is just as much gambling, but the fallout from failure is entirely different.
A watch is never a good "investment" anyway. Re-sale value is a nice to have but it's not a buy and hold.
Anyone telling people to go into debt to buy a watch is at best a fucking moron and potentially actively malicious.
There are two exceptions: education and real estate. Treat education as an investment (and research it as such). And real estate probably isn't worth going into debt to buy unless it's your primary residence.
Rolex is a watch that poor and middle class people think is a rich person's watch.
Most well-known "luxury" brands are. Real rich person's brands won't even bother selling to the poor. There's currently a meltdown among the middle class because Hermes is laughing them out of the store. It's quite funny.
Just to be clear - Hermes is also a fucking waste of money that serves no purpose other than to signal your membership in a club that has no value to society.
All luxury products works that way
Yeah because luxury doesnt mean quality, pretty sure I could get a custom leather coat from some Amish dude out by Salmon Idaho thatd blow away any luxury leather.
This comment makes me want to drive out to Salmon Idaho and buy a custom leather coat.
Exactly, if you take off the brand logo of an item, its price would drop significantly.
The item itself is secondary, what's important is the status it passes to other people. That's why we find those ridiculous stuff with Supreme brand
Seriously. Past a certain level of wealth, you don't even need to buy brand-named items for most everyday things. You don't buy a suit from an expensive brand. You hire a world-class master tailor to custom make you a suit from scratch. It's fit exactly to your body, made to your exact tastes and specifications. The same thing should be possible with watches. You don't buy an expensive brand, you hire a watch maker to make you an entirely custom piece.
I'd imagine that's pretty rare with watches. I'd guess if they aren't just wearing an apple or Samsung watch, they're wearing something like a Parmegiani.
Sounds pretty cheesy.
Buy a rolex if you want to impress other guys with rolexes. Literally nobody else cares
Or buy a replica, for a very small fraction of the price and see if anyone ever knows the difference.
I have a $350 Japanese made replica of a Patek Philippe Grand Complication, everything works on it. To me it is indistinguishable from the real thing and didn't cost me $300,000
If you are a first time Rolex buyer you for sure aren’t getting the watches that will appreciate in value. Rolex purposely creates a scarcity and will only sell limited watches to long time customers who have bought many less valuable watches before. It’s also so chuds that believe this guy don’t devalue the brand.
Yeah, for people who aren't aware...Rolex reps only make certain high demand models available to preferred customers, i.e. people who have a track record of purchases with them. That's why these models are so "exclusive". It's a long con.
Had a friend buy his second or third Rolex and we were all new grads. I was broke as hell at the time so it surprised me he was buying watches the price of a car right out of uni (and his parents just bought him an apartment so he lived in a different world).
He was telling me how this watch is gonna increase in value so it'd be stupid not to get it.
I never said it and only thought about it, but I was thinking that if you were buying it as an investment, why are you wearing it? Why not keep it at home？ It could get stolen or lost or broken. But I guess I have brokey mentality.
Past a certain level of wealth, it might make sense to invest in some really expensive jewelry just as an emergency and liquid wealth store.
Consider the US right now with its volatile political situation. Or any other country with volatile and uncertain politics. Or just uncertainty from major national disasters. People sometimes need to flee from disasters on short notice.
For a normal person, carrying around $100k worth of jewelry on your person would be foolish. For most middle class people, that would a substantial portion of your wealth that they're walking around risking. But imagine your net worth is $50 million. Now that $100k worth of jewelry you wear every day is only 0.5% of your net worth. But if you need to bug out of your city or flee the country for some reason, you now carry around with you the means to do so. International money transfers can take time, and bank accounts can be frozen. But if you have $100k in jewelry just on your person, you have a liquid form of emergency bugout money. You can get on a plane with nothing but the clothes on your back, fly to a far off country, and immediately have access to enough resources to get yourself set up. Even if your accounts or frozen or your nation's banking system has collapsed, you can pawn some of that jewelry off to obtain essentials like food, shelter, etc.
I think a fair number of rich people like having this amount of jewelry for the same reason that they often like having multiple passports. The odds of having to ever flee the country are low. And for most people, maintaining the means to flee the country at a moment's notice is simply too much. But when the cost is a tiny portion of your net worth, putting what is the equivalent of pocket change into the ability to quickly flee a country isn't so unreasonable anymore.
"go into debt if you have to"
That guy writes like minimum wage
Let me give you some real advice, buy a Casio G-SHOCK, pick a version with tiny solar panels. Seriously, they will last a very long time, no need to change a battery or synch it. Strapped my watch on like a decade ago, still works without any maintenance or anything.
Yes! I bought one 15 years ago and it's still trucking. Solar powered and syncs with an atomic clock so no maintenance. Also while cleaning I found a cheapo battery powered gshock that's probably just as old if not older, and it was still going and only 8 minutes off. Seriously amazing watches. If I didn't rely on my smartwatch for sleep tracking and notifications, I wouldn't wear anything else
That or the Casio Pro-Trek if you want something that's not the G-Shock
Almost everyone in this thread is talking about wannabe tryhards, investment, and reliable watches, but for people who are interested in the pictured watch, they're real, but pretty cheap and flimsy; I have a couple.
They came out in gashapon machines a couple of years ago, although I got mine just last year for (IIRC) ¥500 a pop. It's a series by Takara-Tomy with two models of Saturn (black and white), and two models of PS1 (PSX and PSOne).
https://dlmag.com/playstation-1-and-sega-saturn-themed-watches-for-classic-game-fans/
https://www.piggygaga.com/shop/gashapon-sega-saturn-playstation-vs-watch-collection/
Bought a Casio Data Bank DBC-32B-1ADF "calculator watch" about three years ago for like $30 USD. I get more compliments on that watch than any other piece of clothing/accessory that I own. Started using it as my daily driver watch and it's genuinely great, a real conversation starter. If anybody wants one, they're still in production and can be easily bought new on the big retailers' sites.
Always buy fakes, if you find a good quality fake. No one will know. Unless you absolutely don't care about the money.
Exactly, and maybe spend a couple hundred for a Japanese replica and all the functions might work.
I absolutely love the design but I'm surprised nobody has pointed out that this goes against the very purpose of wrist watches: you can't just turn your wrist and look at the time.
I know it's just a press of a button, but if only one of your hands is full (depending whether you're right or left handed) then it gets annoying rather quickly.
As for the Rolex obsession: I've lost several watches, but every single time I just re-bought my cheap Casio. I love it and it does the job quite reliably. Also, I personally dislike analog watches.
Me, with my watchy, not givenafuuuuuck bout Rolex.
But yeah that's some rad nerd chic there.
I'd be way more impressed by the Sega watch to be honest. I probably couldn't spot a Rolex if you put a gun to my head anyway.
The guy with the Rolex will just tell you he's wearing one. That's how it works.
Every watch guy will tell you otherwise. And present a spectrum of choices across multiple price bands.