Post-25N survival: rent, don't borrow, pack your bags

Post-25N survival: rent, don't borrow, and have a plan B

The European Parliament elections of 25 May 2014 left an uncomfortable map for the two major parties. That day, on a household economics forum, someone published a no-frills manual: if the ship sinks, it said, let's untie the tarps on the lifeboats. More than a decade later, the text has accumulated hundreds of responses and has been resurrected several times to audit what aged well and what didn't.

The message was one: maximum mobility, minimum dependence, zero property. And a corollary that then sounded exaggerated: avoid all real estate investment, including buying a home to live in.

The four scenarios considered for Spain

The diagnosis listed four possible futures, not mutually exclusive. Authoritarianism with economic chaos and daily violence, summarized as 'Venezuela'. Social and monetary collapse, labeled 'Argentina'. Haircuts and capital controls, or 'Cyprus'. And the worst of all: territorial fragmentation and open conflict, 'Yugoslavia'. The proposal was to study the recent history of those countries, 'learn from others' mistakes' and relativize the certainties of the evening news.

It sounds like barricade prophecy. But on the table was also the name of Roberto Centeno, whose blog was cited as a reference because, according to this approach, he had been right in anticipating the bankruptcy of CCM, that of Bankia and the euro problems since 1999. There began to weave a broader thesis: that the official narrative was deceiving.

Why buying housing was discouraged in 2014

The reasoning was crude, but it had an internal logic. The country's trend pointed to worsening: bad economic situation, political deterioration, threats of secession and an inverted pyramid demography. The conclusion: investing in property was like buying houses in Detroit in 1965. Entire neighborhoods, it said, could become 'Detroitized'. Communities that had lived off inter-territorial solidarity could become an unrecoverable rust belt.

The recommendation did not distinguish between buying to speculate, to live or to open a business. Everything fell into the same bag, and whoever bought was left, at best, tied to an asset difficult to sell in a country in decline.

Capital per worker and the date of 2030

Here the text went into detail. A job requires capital. The capital invested in a shoeshiner's job is around 50 euros; that of a Toyota worker, 500,000 euros. Doubling the workforce without doubling capital would force, according to this reasoning, to lower wages or sink the company. That argument extended to the arrival of workers without capital, which according to this thesis dilutes income per worker. It is a controversial claim, much discussed, and part of the debate, not its closed conclusions.

The clock had a date: by 2030, the first baby boomers would begin to retire. And Spain, unlike Germany or Japan, lacked sufficient added value to sustain that burden. In parallel, a side warning pointed to public employees: they would be paid, it said, with 'inflated neopesetas'.

Emigrating was not as easy as it seemed

The point where the manual clashed with reality. Several accounts brought it down to earth. One participant recounted after three years in Germany that he would not repeat it: language, housing, stability and the feeling of paying others' pensions. Another described a long month in Paris, not knowing if he was a tourist or an exile, with French slipping away, Parisians rude and days without sun.

The list of obstacles is longer than any slogan: family, medication dependent on the public system, one's own age. Leaving is cheaper for a young person than for a forty-something with dependents.

What the later resurrection said

When the manual was reposted years later, the reaction was less enthusiastic. One comment summed it up harshly: the recommendation to rent and not buy was, in hindsight, a bad move in several markets. Another recalled that, adding successes and errors, the text had gathered 417 upvotes and several warnings that did hit the mark. The fine calculation of that audit, item by item, is where the trinc-up gets interesting.

There was also the reverse criticism: if everyone packs their bags, the prophecy fulfills itself. And a question no one fully answers: which country is better, if the problem is structural and global?

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With distance, the manual reads as a mix of hits and expirations. It was right about excess confidence and the lack of a plan B. It failed by turning collapse into inevitable destiny. The question remains open whether those who packed their bags in 2014 won or lost. And there, exactly, the analysis gets stuck.