I make around $60k, so not rich, and I live in Boston proper. That being said, I'm also rather frugal, and I live in a studio apartment -- I definitely couldn't afford most of Boston on my salary either. I have no kids, but if I did I would definitely need to move out further.

So generally speaking, if you're a normal consumer user of tech, deleting a file just deletes a record on your hard drive that points to where the memory address that locates your data is. The data itself isn't actually deleted unless you do a memory wipe. It will eventually be overwritten, because any memory that isn't reserved by a set of records is considered "free" to the OS to overwrite, even if there was previous data there, but until that point that data still exists there.

You can truly delete a file by wiping the memory (usually done by taking the set of memory for the file and overwriting everything to some empty state). But the default that happens when you delete a file doesn't do this because it's computationally expensive to do this when there's no real reason to.

As a security tip, if you're ever trying to actually delete data from a computer in a way that ensures it's not accessible, you want to do a memory wipe and overwrite the entire drive to an empty state. Just "deleting" the files will actually leave all the data there and just delete the records that say where the data is. Anyone good with computers can recover all of that unwiped data despite there not being a stored record for it because the data is never overwritten. Always fully wipe your drives before transferring ownership of computers with sensitive info.

This is good advice but if you're at all nervous about the concept of sharpening blades you maybe should just get someone else to do it. It's not that expensive compared to a hospital bill because you don't get safety intuitively. Sharpening blades isn't hard but there is some dumb stuff you can do (e.g. touching your eyes without washing off the metal bits on your fingers) that is probably more likely to happen if you're super antsy about these things.

The one on the left is 1000 points. The one on the right is a QR code. You're welcome!

A few reasons:

1. You probably can't afford it right now
2. If you can only afford it for a while but not sustainably, you run a big risk of getting foreclosed on before the market normalizes
3. Your financial situation (credit, etc) might change and refinancing later may not be as fruitful as you think
4. Your asset is very likely to reduce in value (at least relative to the overall market) if you're expecting prices to drop
5. Always buy low, sell high, never buy high unless you have to. Even if you're not selling, your heirs might need to.

No we aren't cool with it, but that's just a reality of the market right now. Prices across the board have been inflating like crazy (in and out of the housing market), and the federal reserve has been jacking up interest rates to combat inflation. This is going to have an effect on the interest rates you can get on mortgages, which is making housing historically expensive right now. There are of course other problems with housing, but this is one of the worst times to be buying real estate right now. You will basically guarantee you need to refinance later on because these interest rates will eat your cash up.

There are of course other cheaper neighborhoods, but imo I would avoid buying a home at all until interest rates drop to a more reasonable level. This is especially true if your credit isn't amazing.

$1550/mo for a studio in Beacon Hill