Originally posted by tim60 The house is an investment - I get current service from it, but with appropriate maintenance it is an asset which can be sold at an inflation adjusted price in the future, and in a well chosen location, for more than that.
true, but the trick thing is - unless one's going to live in a tent from then on, s/he'll need to buy a comparable or better house and still remain "in the black" (it can't be considered a good investment, if selling it lessens the quality of life). but yes, in essence, we're more or less talking about the same thing here.
if one buys a house with a clear intent to sell it for profit later, or rent it out so in a foreseeable future it will start to earn money, that is clearly an investment.
Originally posted by tim60 The camera is in between. Once I buy a camera and accessories, each will fail or be superseded separately. So I buy the camera and over a period of years collect lenses etc to go with it, and then when the camera needs replacing I need to get a camera that fits the glass. I am like many hobbyists here, precisely because photography is not my business I canno0t run the financial sums such that I can justify changing over the whole kit, so it does matter to me that there will continue to be cameras that I can mount my glass on that offer roughly the optical performance the glass was intended to provide - not some micro sensor with a short registration distance that would make everything telephoto. I have grown to like my wide angle glass now - eg 20mm, which on APS-C is wide but not stunningly wide. I suppose, growing up in the days of film SLRs I thought of my MX as the core box of a set of things I added to it over a period of several years until I had a sufficient set.
at first
, I started to write a statement proving that IMO something that doesn't earn money, can't be seen as investment
.
but on the second thought, let's see what wiki says: "
Investment is time, energy, or matter spent in the hope of future benefits actualized within a specified date or time frame."
it, then, depends on how we define the "benefits". if the benefits are "years of happily pursuing one's hobby" or "many beautiful memories recorded on a particular medium", then yes, it is an investment.
on the third(!) thought, choosing the proper system may help to avoid extra spending in the future, so even by my previous statement it can be seen as an investment, although, technically, it still would qualify as a "lesser liability".
Originally posted by tim60 But my car is freestanding - so when I change the brand I had before does not have legacy impact on what I feel able to choose for my next one. My brand loyalty with cars is a result of nice experiences with two brands and one brand I had a bad experience with. Other electronic stuff like phones, apart from learning a new OS when changing brands, and intermittently with new versions on the same brand, does not have the same accessory cost factor to bind one to go back to the same supplier.
bit of nitpicking: a car usually is not a set of separate elements that can be used interchangeably - at least, not the major elements, like engine or suspension.
well, it can be, in a certain pair of hands, within boundaries and quite often - not without modding, but this is not a common use.
if we compare cars and cameras, I'd say we should compare cars with non-interchangeable-lens cameras.
karro, has invested in a glass of wine, admittedly