notauser

Any dispute which has a Wikipedia page (like the Malaysia/Singapore water dispute) is:

- Too complicated to assign blame to one party

- Futile to rehash in HN comments

That's because rent of $1.5k is for the whole of a house, whereas the mortgage is only covering whichever part of the house you don't own.

My rent would be $3k, but I own one third of the house, so my mortgage is $2k.

The alternative would be paying $3k in rent and investing the $100k in equity. The cash-flow from the equity investment would off-set some of the cost of renting.

In the UK, lenders are resticted by the regulator - only 15% of their loans can be at greater than 4.5x income.

As a result 5x and 6x income mortgages tend to be easier to get the more you earn.

There is definitely non-linear pricing in the London housing market as one example.

When I was last looking -

Studio apartments and one bed room apartments rented for similar amounts, and so did two beds and three beds.

But the price jump from one bed to two bed was much larger than any of the other jumps.

You can speculate on many reasons why this might be the case (smallest size apartment for a family in the city, smallest size you can split with a friend, smallest size with space for an office).

There are exceptions and I'm sure that more research time could help you find them.

But one of the points made convincingly in the artle is that if you are poor you don't have a lot of energy, time or gas-money to do that kind of research.

Aluminium or Titanium frames make the best travel bikes.

- Unlike steel, they don't rust.

- Unlike carbon, they can cope with rough treatment (for example when loaded into the hold on a plane). They are less likely to be damaged, and the damage is more likely to lead to a gradual failure.

Titanium is reputed to be better but modern Aluminium frames are pretty light, pretty comfortable, and vastly cheaper.

I have an aluminium bike that I use whenever my trip involves a train ride or a flight.

I work on the basis of 80g of uncooked pasta per person for our family.

We aren't exactly skinny, either, despite being pretty active (an average of 70 miles of cycling a week).

The difference is probably made up with vegetables, fruit etc.

Not hard. We have taken the whole family camping by bike-train-bike. Even a small car would be a doddle.

The four year old is towed using a follow-me, all the gear goes in a couple of panniers.

We have spent a small part of our car-money on some very high quality gear, through. Small and light equipment is much easier to pack than Walmart camping gear.