Too many of us Americans live in financial la la land…
I live in Palm Desert and work at a very upscale restaurant. This blog caught my eye because many times in the past few years I’ve commented to friends that I have seen an increase of twenty somethings driving 75k cars and coming into our restaurant with friends and dropping $500 on dinner. But since last year I have seen a real drop in these kind of guests. Our business is down about 10-15% and I think the contributing factor is that the “ATM” machine of refinancing has shut down. My partner and I own our house without a mortgage, drive a 2001 Toyota, and have zero debt. We make around 120-150K a year and have 750k saved for retirement. With the income from our portfolio (which we don’t touch) and our savings we put away between 120k and 150k a year. But we don’t live like paupers…we keep a boat in Coronado (instead of buying a overpriced dump at the beach, which we could afford anyways) and have a white trash villa with wheels (a trailer) at the beach in the South of France, where we spend three months a year at, when the restaurant closes. You can have the lifestyle you want,it is all about choices, and I would not trade ours for a big McMansion in a mind numbing boring suburb for the world. It is nice to know that we can sell our condo (we sold our house a few years back and paid cash for this place as a bank repo) and live very well off our investments. We obtained our financial security the old fashion way by working hard and always saving as much as possible. We have seen these bubbles in the past and the people that get creamed are the ones that a few months back were telling you how stupid you were for sitting on all the equity and not pulling it out and doing something with it…well you live your life the way you want and I will live my life without laying in bed at night stressed out about debt.
