What are the disadvantages to borrowing money for energy conservation measures / solar panels?
"If you sell the property before the ten years are up, the panels might have declined in value more than the amount you owe declined.  In the original post's situation, this is a negligible risk. Suppose (for the sake of argument) that each year's panels are 10% better than the previous year's panels.  Even if the panels lasted forever, and even if the price you could sell the power for stayed the same, then the value of your panels should decline 9% per year.  If the panels are financed at a 4.5% APR for 10 years, your principal should decline by 8.1% in the first year. A second risk is that the solar panels might be ugly, or might go out of fashion.  When selling a home, ""curb appeal"" matters.  If potential buyers do not like how your home looks with the solar panels, you might not be able to get as much money for the house if you have to sell it. A third risk is that the loan might harm your credit rating, or otherwise restrict your ability to borrow.  Even though this deal does not impinge on your disposable income, a bank might think that it raises your debt-service-to-income (DTI) ratio.  This could theoretically prevent you from refinancing your home, or raise the interest rates on potential loans you might want to take out. A fourth risk is that the installation process might damage your home in a way that causes expensive damage.  Water leakage and electrical fires can potentially destroy homes.  You need to have the solar system competently installed. A fifth risk is that the solar power system might make it harder to maintain or replace your roof.  Will your roof need to be replaced during the life of the solar power system?  If so, consider options that do not force you to throw away the solar power system prematurely." "Depending on the details of your solar panel setup, the monthly savings may change depending on changes in the law or utility company policy.  This could change how long it will take for the solar panels to ""pay for themselves"".  So your bullet point about the ""payback period""/""break even point"" is not fixed at the moment you buy the solar panels; it depends on costs you will incur over many years, and those costs could turn out to be different from what you originally thought. At least in the US, home solar installations typically work by selling excess power back to the power company.  The power company can change the amount that it pays you for that power.  There is also typically a minimum charge for being connected to the grid, and the power company can raise that charge.  (This article mentions one such possible change.)  The power companies want to keep making money, and as more people start adding solar panels, the power companies may change their rate structure to make that less financially feasible. You can avoid many of these issues if your solar panels are not connected to the public electricity grid, and you, for instance, store power with your own battery.  However (at least in the US) this is very uncommon because it is more complex and expensive."
"A quick online search for ""disadvantages of defence housing australia investment properties"" turns up a several articles that list a few possible disadvantages. I can't vouch for these personally because I'm not familiar with the Australian rental market, but they may all be things to keep in mind. I quote verbatim where indicated." "Would the net effect *really* be worse, though?  If everyone stopped paying back loans, and banks stopped lending, people would have to live within their means.  Prices would fall, and nobody would be in debt slavery for the rest of their lives.  As for allocating capital to new businesses, there would still be the option of a Kickstarter-like model, plus both private and public equity (and the rules could be changed so there could be more than 500 investors without being forced public).  A lot of options currently on the table would disappear, sure, but on balance, would it actually be worse?  As both government and Wall Street say it's bad, that seems to automatically suggest the opposite.  There has been a push to make it a crime to walk away from a mortgage, even though banks get the house back!  The fact that they desperately tried to paint it as ""morally wrong"" to walk away from a mortgage is a big red flag.  In any case, this is all going to be reshuffled in the near future, because of automation.  There won't be a need to borrow when your material needs are automatically met; and there won't be much of a point to promising your labor when machines are doing the jobs already.  The transition to a post-scarcity economy over the next 20 years is going to be interesting." "It may seem like you cannot live without this trip, but borrowing money is a bad habit to get into.  Especially for things like vacations.  Your best bet is to save up money and only ever pay cash for things that will decrease in value.  Please note that while it is a bad idea to borrow money for things that decrease in value, the ""opposite"" is not necessarily true.  That is, it is not necessarily a good idea to borrow money for things that will increase in value; or, will earn you income. False assumptions can cloud our judgement.  The housing bubble and the stock market crash of 1929 are two examples, but there are many others." Personally, I'd use my emergency fund first. It is unlikely (though possible, of course) that I will entirely lose my income at the same time I need to replace my roof or my furnace. I'd rather pay my emergency fund back with installment payments than pay off a HELOC to my bank. The lost interest on my emergency fund, which, after all, should be in cash, is much less than the cost of the loan. I could even set up an amortization schedule in a spreadsheet and charge myself interest when paying back into the emergency fund. That said, if I didn't have the cash in my emergency fund, I'd rather borrow against the house than finance with a contractor. If they'd even do that, which is unlikely--I've never dealt with a roofer or heating contractor that required anything but full payment at time of service. Home equity borrowing is generally the cheapest kind. I'm firmly in the camp of those who look at home ownership as a consumption decision rather than an investment. If the value goes up, great, but I just build in about 1% of the cost of building a new house (excluding the land price) into the housing budget each year, right along with mortgage interest, property taxes and basic utilities. Usually, that's enough to cover the major wear-and-tear related repairs (averaged over 3-5 year periods, anyway). Banks should be risk averse by default. They make loans to people and businesses after measuring their ability to repay.  After they approve a big project loan like an apartment building, they don't give all the money to the builders upfront. They give money as progress is made and they make sure the funds are not being used inappropriately. There's no reason they couldn't do all this while owning the project, but that would also open them to lawsuits later on if anything wasn't built to code. By keeping the project at arm's length, they avoid future liability. First, your references are only tangentially related to your claim.  &gt; If you have twice the generation capacity in renewables (wind/solar) and can store 20% of your yearly consumption, then you are fine.  Right. If you do that, you're fine to run your hospital off-grid with no backup generators without significant risk of the life support systems going offline.  The requirements for a grid-connected single family home are much lower. Generating 100% of your power needs and having one powerwall (for half a day of storage) will drastically reduce your electricity demand.   Home solar doesn't need to completely replace grid power - a 70% reduction in demand would be sufficient to reduce generation requirements to only existing hydro / wind / nuclear plants. Firstly, the banks are far less risky than the people they lend to. Most of the interest banks charge borrowers covers defaults, but banks rarely default to the fed, especially those able to borrow from the Fed.  Secondly, most banks borrowing is in the form of overnight loans to cover short term reserve fluctuations; they are not borrowing dollars to lend to you.  Thirdly, if govt does it's job of keeping some competition in the banking sector, then the rates offered you and me should be near the actual cost to service such loans, so are the true value of those loans. Since there are a significant number of banks that I can borrow from with a multitude of options in how to borrow, there is likely still decent competition for my business.  Finally, the Fed funds rate is not currently 0%, so the banks are not getting interest free money. I would use student loans and avoid credit card debt if debt is your only option.   Here are the advantages I see:   Disadvantages: In the short term, this question is pretty simple: Are occasional use grid-scale natural gas plants economically viable compared to distributed gas generators?  Home solar is an amazingly good deal now. Economically, the question isn't whether it'll take over most home power generation, it's how fast that will happen.  Currently - at least where I live - the grid is still a good deal for backup power. If that changes, then people will stop using it.  You can get a gas generator to cover a normal sized home installed for ~$4000. In places with piped gas, the price for running the generator looks comparable to grid power per kWh.  So no, I wouldn't pay triple the price for grid power or buy a ton of extra storage. I'd get a natural gas generator and handle solar downtime locally. It's good that you can still use the area solar panels are placed because the space requirements will be extremely large compared to nuclear.  Recycling solar panels makes a lot of sense though.  Not saying they are a bad idea. Energy storage is a tough problem to crack though. This article is 100% incorrect. The governments main concern is to PREVENT depositors and tax payers from losing funds in the case of bank default.  How?  By having debt holders being forced to converted into equity to create a capital buffer to keep a bank solvent which will help protect depositors and prevent tax payers from having to bail the banks out.  Please ask me more questions on this as I have done a lot of work on this topic as of late. No Drawbacks. One day, the bank might decide to kick you out. Typically, they send you a letter and warn that they will close it if it stays unused, and then you have to decide if you move some money into it or have it cancelled. Assumptions 1 & 2 are correct. Plus you will improve on credit score. The only disadvantage is if you get lax about it and overspend beyond your limit ... Plus a small risk of fraud of card transactions ... In some places.   Solars challenge will always be the scaling to a national grid. It can be cheap as chips and still present insurmountable technical obstacles in large scale.   I would be all for it as a supplement to a robust nuclear program. They're trying to, but ratepayers and state governments are fighting back, especially in progressive states.   The big issue is the degree to which you can bank your summer power surplus to offset your winter deficit. You'd think that since you're generating power for the grid in summer you'd get equal credit for that to use in winter when the sun shines less, but power companies do their best to prevent this, so state governments have to mandate it.