Readit NewsThey say that because owning a home allows you to reduce your bills, but also more crucially and viscerally because owning a home allows you to be free and have a place that is truly yours to do with what you will. You can paint the walls, have a pet, host a party, knock down a wall and build an extension, do whatever you like to make your mark on it and the world. It's yours and if you will it, it always will be. It's a level of peace and security that's almost incomparible. There's a reason in most of history there was a distinction drawn between bonded peasants and freeholders.
"People don't say home ownership is important because it's an asset for retirement; if you sold it, you wouldn't have a home in retirement!"
It's very common in the USA. A married couple has some kids and buys a house big enough to accommodate them comfortably. 20ish years later, the kids have moved out and the parents don't need such a big house. They also are about to or have recently retired, and they would like to stretch their retirement money. Sell the big house, make a lot of money, and then buy a smaller, cheaper house. In the USA this pattern is pretty common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA
so I did and got photographed with weird Soviet cameras and shook hands with Gus Hall who was dressed up as Santa Claus and saying "Ho Ho Ho!"
(My wife and I were so antinomian that our hippie outfits got us described as "the strangest people in NYC" in front of the Fox News headquarters, which wasn't hard to do in the conformist 1990s, then we took the bus to Manchester, NH, arrived at 4am and figured there was no reason not to walk out to the suburbs and shocked my mom when we knocked on the door around 7am)
I live in Switzerland where people are so comfortable taking the train they treat it like an extension of their living room.
Only in rare cases do I even book tickets in advance, like when going to Milano… otherwise I just use the Fairtiq app, which is a nation wide system for paying for tickets, including busses and trams…
You swipe right before you step on, swipe left when you step off and the system automatically calculates the best ticket for you.
There isn’t a “fully booked”.
We'd leave our room for the day, have breakfast at a restaurant or coffee shop in the train station, then jump on the train to whatever outing we had planned. At the end of the day, we'd take the train back, pick up some groceries at one of the grocery stores in the station (I saw at least two major grocery stores in our station), and then head to the room and make dinner. I also needed to visit a pharmacy at one point during our stay, and the only pharmacy open at that sleepy hour was at the train station.
The train stations are really major hubs for the towns. Even if I didn't need to take the train that day, I was still likely to make a trip down to the train station for something. It's smart.
Obviously they risk losing views and ad revenue, there's absolutely no "risk" to the public.
Personally I have all phone notifications off. There are a few I might like, but every single app abuses the privilege.
I'll read or listen to the news when it makes sense in my day to do so. I very much do not want to be interrupted because a national level politician did something. If it was important, it will still be important in a few hours when I go over the news.