Sunny San Diego

[paramount]

[quote=bearishgurl]For instance … among others:

http://www.greatschools.org/maryland/ijamsville/646-Urbana-High-School/

They’re among the best public HS’s in the nation, IMO.[/quote]

Not long ago Urbana was nothing but farmland.

[scaredyclassic]

Temecula in winter is hard to beat. Such relief from all that roasting hot weather.

Probably how minnesotans,feel in spring, reversed.

Saw garrison keillor in SD this weekend. Anyone else there?

[zk]

Just got back from Seattle. It was 48 degrees. 48 doesn’t sound that cold, but I was wearing 5 layers and I was still cold. It sucked. I got back to SD, and 63 degrees never felt so good. I love it here. I am envious of the 30 inches of snow they got back east. A good snowstorm is a wondrous thing. And I miss thunderstorms. But having those things occasionally vs. having good or great weather almost all the time is, for me, not even close to worth it. The myriad outdoor recreational opportunities available year-round in SD totally sell it for me.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=bearishgurl]When young adult residents of TX/OK/AR decide to get married, their main goal in the first years of marriage is to pay off their home and their new truck (if they have a loan on it). Especially if parents helped them build or buy the home.

A LOT of young couples in this region have their homes paid off PRIOR to having kids or at the very latest, by the time their youngest kid reaches school age.

A paid-off first home is a very important goal to this demographic and they’ll work several jobs to do it, if necessary.

Having excessive debt is shunned and this value is hammered into them by both sets of parents from the get go (during their engagement).

And no, they don’t all buy/build mcmansions for their first homes straight out of college![/quote]

I don’t agree with this. If people were this fiscally conservative, we wouldn’t have the dire stats about people not being prepared for retirement.

I think the data show that smaller rural cities are being economically left behind.[/quote]

I’m just not seeing the inability of (boomers?) to “retire” in my world. I know of maybe 2-3 females pushing 60 years old who may end up having a hardscrabble retirement but this was all due to the bad financial decisions they made while younger (reasons: past gambling addiction; squandered settlements they rec’d; and lost their longtime home due to over-borrowing on it). All are reasonably intelligent and still working FT and may yet be okay by the time they are 66 and eligible to collect a full SS benefit. Almost 100% of my relatives (mostly cousins but aunts and uncles as well, some of who are of the WWII generation) paid off their final home in their forties or early fifties or purchased their final home with all cash. Almost ALL have defined benefit pensions for life and several still run (or partially run, with other family members) their long-established family businesses. I’m not even seeing this phenomenon in my neighborhood, which is full of boomers and beyond. Quite the contrary. A good portion of them (some younger than me) are living in paid-off homes they “inherited” and in some cases have been living there for decades (and of course, have a minuscule property tax bill, as well). They’re not going anywhere and I can assure you that they will never be homeless or “destitute” (as long as they refrain from borrowing off their homes).

Pigg flyer has brought this subject up here many, many times but I don’t know what his frame of reference is. I’m just not seeing it in the real world …. at all.

It doesn’t matter to a “retiree” if the “small rural cities (they live in) have been economically left behind” as they are only working PT or not at all. This only matters to the Gen Y growing up in those towns who is (hopefully) headed off to college. After college graduation, this group typically does NOT move back to their (rural) home turf. They take the best FT job they are offered, wherever that may be. That is, unless they have been “pampered” by well-off helicopter parents in a CA coastal community. With this group, determining their actual “motivation to succeed” is a crapshoot. This group could easily end up back home after college graduation, moving into their old (well-appointed) bedrooms and play video games while pretending to “search” for a (local) minimum wage job and invite all their old (local) friends over every other weekend to swim, drink their parent(s) booze and hang out at their backyard built-in BBQ and/or jacuzzi. I mean, why move to “Gritty City” to pay exorbitant rent to accept a “real” job when they can continue to live the “cushy life” on their parents dime (and time)?? :=0

[FlyerInHi]

Snow on the east coast.
How many degrees in San Diego?

http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000004165152/winter-wonderland-in-manhattans-heart.html

[spdrun]

I love the brisk cold weather. It’s nice to feel the seasons change — if I wanted to live somewhere with poozzy-azz weather all year round, I’d move.

Though probably to a secondary Caribbean country, not to San Diego. San Diego is too organized and Americanized for my tastes.

[FlyerInHi]

Yeah, but can you get a high paying job in the Carribean? (Internet enabled jobs don’t count).

The people there are slakers. They’re always in slow motion.

[spdrun]

^^^

That’s a feature not a bug. Work-life-fun balance is a good thing.

And actually, I’ve met (dated in some cases) quite a few West Indians who, while not the most hard working, were shrewd businesspeople. Invested in real estate, owned small businesses in NYC, and the like. Not to mention smart, well-read, and generally interested in the world.

Being wedded to a career at the expense of life is way over-rated.

[FlyerInHi]

Maybe America is what turns immigrants into enterpreneurs. I once met an old man who came as a tourist to visit his friends and relatives. He says he was amazed that a young woman he knew was now driving her own car, owned her own home and obtained a college degree. Nobody in the home country thought she’d be anything but a seamstress.

True, the USA is more about working and consuming.
Last night I was remarking to a friend how America is so convenient for buying stuff at Costco, Home Depot, Walmart, etc.. and bringing all that stuff home. So wonderful for business activity, in a clean organized environment.

If Sanders remakes America more like Europe, won’t we suffer slower economic growth? And immigrants are not that successful in Europe because the policies there are more nativist, protecting the established workers. We could lose the economic dynamism that made us the envy of the developed world.

I think that for money and wealth, you do have to sacrifice a slower lifestyle with more human connections (if people don’t have jobs, sure they have more time to meet up and laugh).

[spdrun]

Re: Sanders. I don’t see national insurance or higher ed subsidies killing entrepreneurship in Australia or New Zealand. Rather, they afford people more of an opportunity to become enterpreneurs, irrespective of background.

The problem with immigration in Europe is that many countries exclusively follow jus sanguinis with respect to citizenship, with naturalization being next to impossible. Families can live in a country for generations and still not become citizens.

In the US, we do jus soli as well, and the right is protected by the Constitution. If you’re born here, you’re a citizen even if your parents are not. Helps integration over the long run.

My point is that a lot of the West Indians I know manage to work smart and maintain a work-life balance vs just working hard. Even after coming to the US.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=spdrun]
My point is that a lot of the West Indians I know manage to work smart and maintain a work-life balance vs just working hard. Even after coming to the US.[/quote]

Same goes for Hispanics and Asians or any immigrants who come from countries where mutigenerational living in the norm or necessity. If they continue that lifestyle here, they can afford more and become successful faster because each person makes relatively more money since salaries in the US support nuclear households.

My family is pretty close, but we never have parties with extended family. We may meet our cousins one on one every so often.

I’m amazed at people whose families have “big Greek” parties all the time. They are very close; but after one or 2 generations, the kids and grand kids move away and start their nuclear families.

I have some Indian neighbors who work at Qualcomm. Grandma took 3 month leave from public job in India to come take care of granddaughter. When grandma goes back, grandpa comes. The grand parents on both sides take turns. No wonder people have more time and more money for relatives and friends.

[spdrun]

I’d say very different from the stereotype of Asian Asians(*), in the sense that there’s not that sense of needing to work the entirety of one’s free time.

(*)- there are of course both East and South Asian communities in Caribbean countries.

[FlyerInHi]

I’m back in SD… and I’m so out of touch.

I never watch local news or weather so I never know if there will be rain. I was a little surprised by the rain today, and people are telling me we should have rain for the next 4 to 5 days.

The nice part of living in sunny climates is that you can be blissfully ignorant of weather conditions/predictions.

[mixxalot]

Weird weather with lot of thunder storms and crappy weather this past few weeks in San Diego due to El Nino!

[FlyerInHi]

So much humidity today. It’s like Florida!
Thank God AC. the best invention ever!

[Author]

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