[beanmaestro]

Hey SDR,

The sub-topic is long past, but you might try what I did to undermine my wife’s home-buying urges: we planted a garden. With 500 sq ft of fruits, veggies, and antique varietals (giant bush of the white rose of York), our rented house is a lot more homey, and my wife is making noises about how sad she’ll be to leave the berry brambles and artichokes and strawberries and roses and veggie boxes behind, and maybe we could stay a bit longer… Not sure what the neighbors think of our vegetative front yard, though 🙂

[beanmaestro]

Hey SDR,

The sub-topic is long past, but you might try what I did to undermine my wife’s home-buying urges: we planted a garden. With 500 sq ft of fruits, veggies, and antique varietals (giant bush of the white rose of York), our rented house is a lot more homey, and my wife is making noises about how sad she’ll be to leave the berry brambles and artichokes and strawberries and roses and veggie boxes behind, and maybe we could stay a bit longer… Not sure what the neighbors think of our vegetative front yard, though 🙂

[beanmaestro]

Defense industry… Most folks here get 2-4%. If you “far exceed expectations”, you might get 5%. Plus a 4% raise for promotions every 4-5 years, so it works out to 3-5% annually.

[beanmaestro]

Defense industry… Most folks here get 2-4%. If you “far exceed expectations”, you might get 5%. Plus a 4% raise for promotions every 4-5 years, so it works out to 3-5% annually.

[beanmaestro]

Perfect hindsight, of course, is very convenient. For instance, if they put their $80k downpayment + $1500 a month into the Chinese stock market instead, and made 30% a year for four years, they’d end up with about $340k. Also, they wouldn’t have to move to liquidate their investment.

Now the question is, in early 2003, which horse would you bet on?

[beanmaestro]

Perfect hindsight, of course, is very convenient. For instance, if they put their $80k downpayment + $1500 a month into the Chinese stock market instead, and made 30% a year for four years, they’d end up with about $340k. Also, they wouldn’t have to move to liquidate their investment.

Now the question is, in early 2003, which horse would you bet on?

[beanmaestro]

Muggle, in hindsight you might be right, but that’s because if I’d taken a BS and a job, I would’ve bought a house in 1998, and be probably be making about what I am now (if my job survived the tech crash). On the other hand, I wouldn’t have met my wife, and I probably would’ve ended up in the Bay Area or Boston-ish instead of Santa Barbara. Life could be a lot worse 🙂

[beanmaestro]

Muggle, in hindsight you might be right, but that’s because if I’d taken a BS and a job, I would’ve bought a house in 1998, and be probably be making about what I am now (if my job survived the tech crash). On the other hand, I wouldn’t have met my wife, and I probably would’ve ended up in the Bay Area or Boston-ish instead of Santa Barbara. Life could be a lot worse 🙂

[beanmaestro]

Me: 32 yo PhD Engineer ~100k
Wife: 25 yo Materials grad student ~25k
Colleges: Cornell, UCSB
Rent: $1650 for 2-1 half-duplex
Total Expenses (inc rent): ~50k

We can afford to buy, but it would take most of our assets and most of our future income (especially when my wife takes 5 years off to have kids), and would demolish any hope we have of retiring young. And though I can see that some people can afford to buy at current prices, I seriously doubt that anyone would be able to buy from US in a decade such that we could escape with a reasonable profit. Until that changes, the opportunity cost (in money and flexibility) of buying a house is just too bloody high.

[beanmaestro]

Me: 32 yo PhD Engineer ~100k
Wife: 25 yo Materials grad student ~25k
Colleges: Cornell, UCSB
Rent: $1650 for 2-1 half-duplex
Total Expenses (inc rent): ~50k

We can afford to buy, but it would take most of our assets and most of our future income (especially when my wife takes 5 years off to have kids), and would demolish any hope we have of retiring young. And though I can see that some people can afford to buy at current prices, I seriously doubt that anyone would be able to buy from US in a decade such that we could escape with a reasonable profit. Until that changes, the opportunity cost (in money and flexibility) of buying a house is just too bloody high.

[beanmaestro]

Well, by way of another datapoint (and it’s certainly true that this forum self-selects for the fortunate)…

I’m 32, my wife is 25. I finished grad school in semiconductor engineering in 2003, post-doc’ed for a year, working since then. My wife has a couple years to go in grad school. So between us we make about $125k. Monthly, we pay $1650 in rent, about $400 in utils, $1700 in other stuff, plus my wife has LASIK this year. We drive 10-year old cars that run fine, eschew TV, but spend on hobbies what we would on cable. I’d say we live somewhat frugally, but I hardly feel like we’re missing out on anything… I really don’t understand how you’d ring up $3000 a month on credit cards without kids, but it sounds like many people manage it.

This all comes out to spending $45-50k a year, which lets us max out my 401k, fill both Roths, save $20k more, and donate what’s left. So we pass the savings test pretty comfortably, but I really can’t wrap my head around paying more than half a million bucks for a shitty mass-produced house, and we really don’t want to be locked into our jobs by an obscene mortgage

[beanmaestro]

Well, by way of another datapoint (and it’s certainly true that this forum self-selects for the fortunate)…

I’m 32, my wife is 25. I finished grad school in semiconductor engineering in 2003, post-doc’ed for a year, working since then. My wife has a couple years to go in grad school. So between us we make about $125k. Monthly, we pay $1650 in rent, about $400 in utils, $1700 in other stuff, plus my wife has LASIK this year. We drive 10-year old cars that run fine, eschew TV, but spend on hobbies what we would on cable. I’d say we live somewhat frugally, but I hardly feel like we’re missing out on anything… I really don’t understand how you’d ring up $3000 a month on credit cards without kids, but it sounds like many people manage it.

This all comes out to spending $45-50k a year, which lets us max out my 401k, fill both Roths, save $20k more, and donate what’s left. So we pass the savings test pretty comfortably, but I really can’t wrap my head around paying more than half a million bucks for a shitty mass-produced house, and we really don’t want to be locked into our jobs by an obscene mortgage

[beanmaestro]

NALFX is nice enough to actually list all of the components, but with ~$20k it doesn’t make sense to buy more than 4 or 5.

I’d stayed away from the Wilder ETF because I had read that it invests in a lot of feel-good startup companies that don’t really go anywhere, rather than high-volume blue-collar producers.

[beanmaestro]

NALFX is nice enough to actually list all of the components, but with ~$20k it doesn’t make sense to buy more than 4 or 5.

I’d stayed away from the Wilder ETF because I had read that it invests in a lot of feel-good startup companies that don’t really go anywhere, rather than high-volume blue-collar producers.

[beanmaestro]

I’m not convinced anyone’s DOING anything to prevent RE prices from dropping. The politicians are talking a good game, but DOING nothing. The Fed is considering the effects on the economy, but holding rates steady. The banks/market are tightening lending standards, but only renegotiating loans when it’s in their interest.

My suspicion is that aside from banks waiving refinance fees and granting more forbearances, no one’s going to DO anything of consequence until prices drop another 10-15%, and then probably not until it’s too late

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