Everyone who doesn't have $5 million to afford a house has to use a normal toilet.
If you live in the US, I challenge you to find 10 renters in your area that have a bidet or whose landlord actually gives a shit (ha ha) about their tenants' bum health.
You can buy one with all the bells and whistles for < $300 on Amazon. 2 minutes to install. I’ve had to use an extension cord (kept dry, and into GFCI outlet) if there isn’t a convenient outlet for the heated water/seat/dryer ones.
A lot less effort than mounting/unmounting a $300 TV and the quality of life improvement is so great I’m actually willing to talk about how I clean feces off my anus in semi-public.
The non-integrated TOTO Washlets range from $400-$1000. These have heated water, heated seats, heated dryer, a carbon air freshener and a remote. Some have auto-closing lids too. Definitely accessible for many in the HN crowd.
Cold-water bidet attachments are, like, $30.
Houses cost $1-2 million in any city that actually has jobs. Yeah, you can get a shack in Kansas for $200k but good luck finding work there.
Nothing wrong with renting, it's not gonna come with a bidet though.
390k 1,000 ft starter home, two bedrooms two bathrooms, in a literal beachfront town in southern California where you are at most a 10-minute walk from the water. Oh you're picturing something more mcmansion like, sorry that may take a little extra creativity and luck. But you absolutely do not need to spend 2 million, 1 million or even half a million, to live in a highly desirable area in this country. It took me all of about 30 seconds to find, granted I live in the area and have a general sense of where to look for something like this but zooming around the map will find dozens of such examples.
This house is 390K. A few pennies short of a million much less 2.
All in, because sellers pay all fees so the price shown is 95-100% what you pay.
With decent credit you could get this with 10% down, now 40K in the bank is not exactly couch money but it's nowhere near beyond the reach of a single person, much less a couple, before kids and who jointly make an absolutely reasonable 70 to 90k combined given the area that you'd be in.
b-Buying stuff with money you don't have should never be the "default" way to do things. If you don't have the cash you can't afford it.
Your claim here is that someone who is buying a house, likely early-mid in their career at 25-40 years old, needs to pay for a million dollar house in cash while also having $3-4 million dollars additional cash reserves? For retirement, which they won't be doing for 30 years? What?
And this is why "normal people" are broke.
I don't buy stuff with money I don't have. It should never be "normal" to do so.
> For retirement, which they won't be doing for 30 years? What?
They job might be obsolete in 5 years with AI on the horizon.
War may break out given the current incompetents for presidency.
Climate change is happening.
If I had $1 million I would be saving it up and investing it for potential hard times coming, not blow it on a $1 million house.
If I had $5 million, sure, I might throw $1 million of it at a house.
The only time I would take a loan is if I have the cash but I believe I could significantly beat the loan interest rate by investing the balance in something else, AND I have other stable assets in case my plan doesn't work.
If you took out more loans than you have assets, you are broke.
Yeah, the US economy is f'ed up, roofs to live under should not be this expensive. If you think a huge fraction of the economy borrowing money at high interest rates to have basic life necessities, despite being employed, is normal, you have been brainwashed by the system.
Yes some people push it, no that's not what I'm talking about, as your argument was that you must have enough assets to purchase a house cash before you can "not be broke buying a house."
In the USA, not at all. I've only ever seen them in rich peoples' homes that they purchased. I have not once seen a rental property in the US with a bidet.
It is required by law.