-hh
On Apr 17, 6:25 pm, ed <n...@atwistedweb.com>wrote:

On Wednesday, April 17, 2013 4:08:54 PM UTC-7, KDT wrote:

KDT
Words Mean Things. It's quite telling that in a thread titled "Stupidity in motion." *Two* of the biggest idiots who post often don't know what an "asset" is. But on to the point, no one cares what *you* think the definition of a word is. The word "asset" has had a well defined meaning since the 1600's.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/asset

words do mean things. and in financial accounting and legal terms, a car is clearly an asset.

-hh
Which settles the question of definitions.

for household accounting and colloquial use, it's much less clear whether a car should be considered an asset. personally, i don't consider my car an asset for purposes of household accounting or calculating net worth,...

I follow you, but does this then imply that if the car isn't an asset, then the loan on it is?

Sorry Ed, that's a Devils Advocate question,

since they both cant be listed in the same column.

Similarly, even though we can agree that a car isn't a good investment, it is still a colloquial "asset" from the aspect that it is a desirable/useful tool to accomplish certain tasks.

... just as i don't include the value of all my random crap that i could sell on ebay, as the purpose of me keeping track of assets and net worth is to see where i stand long term. bookkeeping the current value of a vehicle (and other assets) that will be worthless in 15 years adds nothing to that view. ymmv.

Ah, but that's a question do appreciation vs depreciation,

as well as to what degree to ignore ankle-biters from the basic motivation of investments. By the same type of logic, you would want to also not include your house, since you always need to live somewhere....right?