Platitudes

Over the past few weeks Aviva and I have been talking about home school, suburban life, AI, and homeownership.

For context:

• we do not have any kids
• we own a small house in the suburbs of Chicago
• we invest in real estate in Wisconsin
• a couple people we really admire recently decided to home school their kids
• we are both in tech and are heavy users of AI
  • it writes a ton of the code for my job
  • it helps me analyze rental properties
  • it helps Aviva put together presentations
  • Aviva uses it as an on-demand therapist

Our discussions led to a couple questions:

• could home schooling give our kids a better education than regular school? We live in a very HCOL area with high taxes and amazing public schools (which we both attended). Would it be weird not to take advantage of this? Could home schooling provide our future kids a more worldly, well-rounded education less focused on grades and more on learning?
• do we want to live in the suburbs of Chicago our whole lives?
• will AI replace a lot of workers? If it does replace a lot of knowledge workers in our sort of jobs in 10-20 years, what will happen to home prices in our area?
• should we ever buy a big, nice house? Maybe we should rent one instead of buying and use our presumptive down payment to invest in Wisconsin instead?

We talked with a bunch of people about this and were kind of surprised that the normal reaction to our questions was to spout off a bunch of platitudes.

• "Home schooled kids are weird"
• "Kids need the socialization of school"
• "School teaches you how to learn"
• "You're not going to want to stay home and school kids all day"
• "The suburbs are so nice here"
• "It's nice to live around family"
• "AI won't replace people"
• "House prices always go up in the long-run"
• "A house is a good investment"
• "Rent is throwing money away"
• "Max out your 401k"

We feel like we've heard these sayings from everyone growing up – but this time it kind of hit different.

Like... how do you know? Where do these things "facts" come from? Most of the folks we talked to hadn't really lived these life experiences, and instead of thinking with us about these questions we were met with these sayings.

Why is this the case? Maybe it's easier than the alternative of challenging the norm?

Talk soon, Mitch