[trollbridge]

Yes. It’s relatively straightforward to work on a fixer upper house during which time you are drawing no salary relative to that, and then you can turn around and sell it (or just enjoy being in a nice house which otherwise would have cost hundreds of thousands).

[alistairSH]

But if you're not drawing a salary/wages, how the heck are you buying groceries or paying the mortgage? You'd need to turn houses over very quickly/regularly for this to work...?

I'm not debating that tradespeople can make good money - that absolutely can. But, that's the exception not the norm...

The average plumber or electrician in the US earns about $65k/year... that's about 2/3 (or less) of an entry level programming job. Even if that isn't capturing side work/income, that's still less than a mid-career developer (earning $150-$200, more if they're on the west coast on NYC).

Put another way, even at retail consumer prices, I can buy a lot of plumbing or electrical service and still be money ahead on my fairly average engineering manager salary.

[trollbridge]

Live off of savings and then sell the house for a profit, thereby acquiring more savings. Then do it again.

(I know some people who basically do this - buy a non-habitable house, do a few weeks of work to make it habitable, live in it 2 years, do an entire house remodel themselves, then resell it. Up to $500,000 of profit is tax free.)

$200k mid career developer jobs are very hard to find and basically don’t exist outside of a few major cities.

[bloppe]

Someone with savings could take advantage. Medicaid is not actually means-based. It's income-based. In many states like California, so is SNAP. So a multi-millionaire can actually get free health care and $300/mo for food as long as they don't have income that year. Spend that time working on something that won't pay off for a few years, and you get a ton of benefits, even though you're already rich.

It's pretty bonkers.

[trollbridge]

Someone who had a business which is producing little or no income gets full coverage from the Medicaid, snap, etc safety net.

I don’t see a problem with this. I know people whose businesses produce a small profit or no profit at all and pay themselves a small salary. They also employer other people, who make a lot more than they do in wages. The government wants to strongly incentivise this kind of activity.

[notrustincloud]

Except for the fact that the application paperwork requires disclosure of assets, even an insurable collection qualifies against a 'lack of income', and will need to be declared. Failure to disclose risks committing fraud, subject to recovery of assistance and prosecution. So, no, not really.

[trollbridge]

No, it doesn’t. You can have a million dollar home and it doesn’t count.

Passive interest income needs to be declare, or dividends, but just owning a depreciating asset doesn’t count. The one exception is qualifying for Medicaid nursing care in old age - that does require liquidating assets except for 1 car and a primary residence.

[bloppe]

I can assure you that I asked this question explicitly to the Medicaid case worker I spoke to on the phone. "Are you sure my bank account does not matter?". They said no. I don't like it either.

[xhkkffbf]

And this is often taxed at capital gains rates which can be lower.

[trollbridge]

Yes, up to $125k per year per person excluded from capital gains.