Rent vs. Buy

I’ve been plugging a lot of numbers into this Rent vs. Buy Calculator, and most of the scenarios I come up with point me towards continuing to rent. The big variable is the expected appreciation of the home you’re theoretically buying. There’s no real way of knowing that, of course. If I pick a conservative value, like 2% or 4%, it usually comes back telling me I should continue renting. If I assume a 10% annual appreciation, and I stick with the place for 10+ years, then it tells me I might want to buy.

This calculator, on the other hand, is pointing me towards buying over renting in most scenarios. It’s taking into account a number of variables that the other one doesn’t ask for. Who really knows what calculations they’re doing behind the scenes, though. I guess I need to do some more reading.

The new MSN search

Walt Mossberg thinks the new MSN search isn’t quite as good as Google, and I tend to agree.

Searching for Andrew Huey on Google, for instance, finds my home page, and my Amazon page, no problem, along with a bunch of pages related to other Andrew Hueys.

Seaching my name on MSN though, comes up with a pretty weird result list. The very first link has neither Andrew nor Huey in it anywhere, as far as I can tell. It’s a pretty interesting quote, though.