Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
bearishgurl
Participant[quote=yamashi][quote=bearishgurl][quote=yamashi1] . . . I spend a lot of money a month >$4k on schooling and day care, but again I don’t want to be 65 and paying for college.[/quote]I missed this.
yamashi, IIRC, you posted here earlier that you moved out to a mini-mansion in suburbia in the attendance area of public schools rated a “10.” If you don’t mind my asking, why are you currently paying >$4K month for schools? Surely, it doesn’t cost you $4K month for daycare :-0[/quote]
Probably none of your business, but to enlighten you my youngest and middle total $3,000 for daycare and private preschool, Oldest and middle total $1,000 for after school education, Saturday schooling costs around $400 total for tutoring and language school. This doesn’t include an additional $150-200 a month for piano for both middle and oldest and probably average another $300/month for extracurricular activities such as soccer/swim classes/golf/field trips/ballet and donations. Kids are expensive. . . [/quote]yamashi, this is a breathtaking amount every month to be spending on preschool and elementary school-age children who are attending public school. You claim you recently bought a house and one of you (parents) can quit work any time and you’ll still “be fine” financially. I understand pre-school/pre-K costs more now than when I sent my kids to those programs but sheesh, $3000 month is very, very expensive for two kids who are already potty trained and not confined to a crib where state rules require one caregiver to every four cribs.
I also paid for dance, voice lessons, baseball and scout camp for many years for my school-age children, as well as (very expensive) show choir in middle/HS but none of it was anywhere near as expensive as what you are quoting here! IMO, this is a absolutely a “mind-boggling” list of activities for young children. It sounds as if they are busy 24/7! I hope they don’t burn out early in life :-0
A little “food for thought” here. For $45-$48K per year (a little less than what you are paying now for young kids’ care and activities), you can currently send TWO kids to CSU (different campuses) in URBAN cities in CA (LA and SF bay area) WITHOUT any financial aid! This amount will cover BOTH of their tuition fees, campus fees, books, room and board (campus accommodations or shared accommodations off campus). For off-campus accommodations, your total nut in LA County will be $22,500 to $23,000 year and in SF or SF Bay area, it will be $24,000 to $25,000 per year due to higher rents. This will be true even when CSU tuition fees are slightly raised this fall. It’s even cheaper to send your kid to college in smaller CA cities and rural campuses.
You are spending all this money NOW on kids who aren’t even in school yet! Let me tell that they won’t remember what they did when they were 2-5 years old when they are 18! You will have to show them pictures to remind them 😀
Down the road, you could invest $600-$800 per course on 6-8 week SAT prep courses. THAT’s where the “rubber meets the road” in a child’s life. College admission boards DON’T CARE what your kid did in any grade before grade 9. Public universities in CA don’t even care what extracurricular activities your kid did in HS! My kids were BUSY in HS with a rigorous schedule of performing in HS’s all over the state for YEARS and the CSU mentor (application portal for the CSU Admissions Board) gave them no credit whatsoever for it:
Yes, at least 9 months of pre-K is very, very important when your kid is 4 and expected to enter K the following year. I paid $130 week for my youngest kid (now almost 20) to attend a very good program, and, of course, it was cheaper for their sibling(s). And they had fabulous home daycare situations before they turned 4. And we had a very high household income, even very high by today’s standards!
yamashi, if you have a big enough tree, did you ever think of tying an old tire onto a branch to make a swing? That’s what the caregiver-grandparents do around here for their grandkids … and it’s free if you already own the rope! I’m sure all your kids would love it if you just pushed each of them for a few minutes a day. Just sayin …..
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi] . . . Not sure what your problem with ACA is but employees of small businesses can now have buy insurance through the exchanges. It’s wonderful if the small business did not provide insurance before.
Employers can help their employees with the premiums through pre-tax Flexible Spending Account (FSA)[/quote]FIH, is your current employer in CA, and if so, do they participate in SHOP?
Please enjoy these (enlightening) links in succession, brian:
Covered California releases online small business enrollment for SHOP
http://insuremekevin.com/wpfb-file/2015-shop-benefits-pdf/
http://insuremekevin.com/wpfb-file/certified-insurance-agents-in-shop-resolution-2015-63-pdf/
The above is just the “tip of the iceberg” of CC’s surreal dysfunction from only one certified agent’s view. It gets worse …. MUCH worse. And GOOD LUCK to your employer! Hope they are in NV, lol…
Participant[quote=yamashi1] . . . I spend a lot of money a month >$4k on schooling and day care, but again I don’t want to be 65 and paying for college.[/quote]I missed this.
yamashi, IIRC, you posted here earlier that you moved out to a mini-mansion in suburbia in the attendance area of public schools rated a “10.” If you don’t mind my asking, why are you currently paying >$4K month for schools? Surely, it doesn’t cost you $4K month for daycare :-0
Participant[quote=spdrun]What’s wrong with one spouse working part-time? Or even both being on flex time?
Drive used cars, buy a duplex or 50-year old home, don’t renovate the kitchen/baths if they’re functional, plenty of electronics to be had cheap on Craigslist, etc.
Live like 30 years ago, not like in 2016. If you have any extra money, use it for travel (student style not fancypants) rather than acquiring more useless toys.
SS is no real issue:
40 quarters means 10 years of work with at least $1260 pay per quarter. i.e. 10 1/2 hours of work per week at $10/hr assuming one week off per quarter.Any part-time job should cover that.[/quote]I absolutely agree with this, spd and thanks for your post. Actually, the seniors around me still live like this. (The millenial renter families live in rehabbed homes.) I think its financially prudent for families to live like 30 years ago, no matter WHAT their household income is. When my kids were young, we lived pretty far below our means and always had savings and investments and ALWAYS took road trips with camping gear and/or trailer in tow and stayed “free” at relatives’ homes, cabins and ski lodges (brought lots of “cheap” CA wine to share, lol). Yes, even coast to coast. But most millenials today (whether or not they have kids) want the newest and latest everything. Many can’t even move into a house they just purchased without first taking delivery of all new furniture, and in some cases, appliances. Their level of consumption is just staggering to me. Even my kids actually throw away decent items that they’ve grown tired of (clothing, shoes, accessories, etc).
Participant[quote=skerzz]There’s no way I’d plan on having 3 kids with 5-12 years age gap between them. You’d be looking at a minimum of 28 years of kids in the house. I may be biased given I have 2 under 2, but I’d rather deal with diapers, lack of sleep, etc while I am young. I’ll wait 2 more years before having one more, and my diaper changing days will be over before I turn 35. To each his/her own, but IMO having kids close in age is not an irresponsible act, nor is it something isolated to millennial parents. Perhaps it’s a generalization, that at best, can be applied to a certain street in a certain neighborhood within San Diego county.[/quote]I never stated it was “irresponsible,” skerzz. I stated that deliberately having 2-3 kids one after another (all single births) is a recipe for financial insecurity for the family in this day and age due to one parent usually being out of the workforce for several years so close to graduating from college, while their diploma is still “fresh” (assuming they actually did). I just haven’t in my experience seen any of these SAHP’s ever return to the FT workforce, even after their kids are teens and adults! In all practicality, it never happens. The “long-term SAHP experience” stunts a person’s ability to acquire their needed 40 quarters of SS to be eligible for old-age benefits in their own right while they are still young enough to get hired. They are also unable to participate in so many other workplace benefits, including being in line for promotions, vested into a pension program and participating in a funds-matching retirement program, etc.
It’s not about my street or neighborhood which is predominately senior citizen homeowners (but becoming less so every year). Large families with several minor children can be found everywhere, even in $1M+ areas. Oh, and we have two nearby Mormon Wards if that helps you understand things a little better, skerzz.
These millenial-family tenants are just a function of there being more available rental SFR’s around here now due to “flipper invasion” in recent years. SD County has a pretty thin selection of rental SFRs and the rents are more “affordable” around me because the typical rental house tends to be only 1100-1400 sf and we are not close to tech and biotech job centers.
Yes, no one understands it better than I do (maybe Donald Trump?) how many years (decades) it takes to raise a “spaced apart” family :-0
This is a good argument for why women can’t “have it all” but the truth is that they CAN successfully “have it all” but must be very careful not to have their kids too close together (or just have one child) if they expect to continue working FT without a hitch and not be an “attendance problem” at work after their maternity leaves are over. I DID have a co-worker who had 5 kids all minors living at home but she had SEVERAL relatives living on her street who were providing care for the children.
If a SAHP elects to depend upon other individuals in their lives (partners) to furnish their “retirements” for them, that could prove in the end to be a perilous proposition and I wouldn’t recommend adopting this mindset … especially for the degreed individual :=0
ParticipantIf the Piggs will recall, none of my kids currently reside here in their hometown and don’t plan to move back.
There are very good reasons for that, which become more and more apparent to my kids every time they come back during holidays and visit their “brethren” they grew up with who stayed here and never left :=0
Participant[quote=yamashi1] . . . BG not sure where you live, but I’m sorry that this is the sample of Millenial that you are exposed to. If I were in your position, I would feel the same way about our generation as you. Trust me, this is NOT a good representation.
Most people that I associate with either own their home, or rent and CHOOSE not to. They either have 1/2 kids, but don’t know many that have 3 and NONE that have more.[/quote]Well, it didn’t used to be like this, yamashi. Starting about 2008, “buy and hold” flippers began coming in here and buying and rehabbing longtime rentals and leasing them out. I was glad to see this, actually, because these rentals were getting really run down (50 yo roof, etc). Some had been purchased as “investments” during the “loose lending” era, never had any improvements made to them and were subsequently lost in foreclosure (or about to be lost) when acquired by the flipper teams. In the past ~5 years, 3 longtime (50+ yrs) remaining homeowners died, leaving the home to their “heir(s)” who lived across town or in another county and who came in with their crews and tools, rehabbed the parent’s home and immediately leased it out (these homes had avg tax bills ~$500 yr pursuant to Prop 13 so it cost them practically nothing to keep it). So we have now have families headed by millenials occupying these smallish rental homes who are likely paying $1600 to $1800 month for them. The largest family is the one that owns their home and that home is quite large (2700+ sf).
Participant.
Participant[quote=yamashi1][quote=bearishgurl][quote=The-Shoveler]OK, but I find it hard to see how flex time and flex location in most occupations other than tech would even work.[/quote]Bingo, shoveler! Admitted millenial yamashi1 stated he worked in finance. (Please correct me if I have this wrong, yamashi.) Does he actually see his employer’s clients in his home office? I could see him being able to log into his work servers from home and maybe put together some charts and reports from his home office but that’s where it ends. What about meetings, customers and clients? Am I missing something here??[/quote]
Yes, I believe that I said that perception has changed. Although meeting clients face to face is nice, it is no longer necessary as this perception has changed. I am able to use facetime/Skype/teleconferencing in place. My company loves it since I spend less on air and hotel expenses and the client likes it cause we can communicate effectively and able to get things done quicker.[/quote]Yes, I didn’t realize that your “clients” are actually companies that may or may not be located in CA.
Participant[quote=yamashi1][quote=bearishgurl]we didn’t have them one after another in immediate succession (at least not planned), like I see multiple families headed by millenials do. We couldn’t because FT daycare for 2+ kids at a time (without assistance from relatives) took up too much of a chunk of our paychecks. [/quote] This is more dribble with no fact checking. It might be true, and it might relate to your personal opinion. It makes you sound like you think we are a bunch of irresponsible kids who don’t have fiscal sense. Personally I know a lot of people who space them out, but I think that’s more of a personal choice. I spend a lot of money a month >$4k on schooling and day care, but again I don’t want to be 65 and paying for college.[/quote]yamashi, my kids are millenials but I don’t have any grandkids. My frame of reference are several families who are neighbors. All but one of them are renters and all have children. They range in age from 22-38 and have 2-7 kids and 3 of these families currently have more kids on the way. In all cases, one of the parents has never worked, which doesn’t bode well for being able to send any of these kids to college, but whatever …. There is no way in h@ll that I would ever have 2-3 kids in diapers at once and all too young to even attend 1st grade for the bulk of the day. In my mind, that’s “purposeful entrapment” but to each his/her own :-0.
The one family that owns their home bought it with in-laws on title because they could not qualify for it by themselves.
Participant[quote=yamashi1][quote=The-Shoveler]OK, but I find it hard to see how flex time and flex location in most occupations other than tech would even work.[/quote]
You will be surprised how many fields flex time and/ location works. For instance, I’ve even heard of flight controllers who direct traffic that are able to do their job in remote areas off Miramar road for airports in Burbank and Long Beach.
I’m in finance and work with companies on both coasts and can work with international clients if necessary.
In a previous job I worked with a developer who never left his home and he was able to manage a large portfolio of commercial real estate properties by having people email pictures of sites.
A lot of this has to do with the change of perceptions. Obviously face-to-face contact is better, but Skype/facetime/teleconference is acceptable and just as effective in many cases. This is the same as handwritten letters vs. emails.[/quote]Just saw this, yamashi. I thought you might be a financial advisor of some sort (have an individual client-oriented customer-service position).
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]OK, but I find it hard to see how flex time and flex location in most occupations other than tech would even work.[/quote]Bingo, shoveler! Admitted millenial yamashi1 stated he worked in finance. (Please correct me if I have this wrong, yamashi.) Does he actually see his employer’s clients in his home office? I could see him being able to log into his work servers from home and maybe put together some charts and reports from his home office but that’s where it ends. What about meetings, customers and clients? Am I missing something here??
Participant[quote=yamashi1][quote=bearishgurl]
That’s it, in a nutshell. The “expectations” of most young adults today (esp those with college degrees) are through the roof and completely unrealistic. Especially for residents of crowded, CA coastal counties with a HUGE well-established “captive audience” of deep-pocketed, lifetime residents, many who have been in the local workforce for 40+ years. In my mind, millenials can’t possibly “compete” with all of these factors and shouldn’t be expected to. They must be satisfied with what they have currently attained, stay humble and keep “showing up,” keeping themselves as “visible” as possible at work. They need to “pay their dues” if they want to be able to compete for future promotions. As worker-bees with 0-15 years experience, they can’t have everything NOW![/quote]Like I said about your previous post, you are a very biased individual who has personalized many things I have written and spit them out for your personal biased agenda.
A lot of the things you say that you are refuting is not the nature of what I intended. In addition, you continue to rant about how millenials feel entitled to everything for doing nothing. To be honest nothing could be farther from the truth.
The one thing you are correct about though is the “pay their dues” theory. Like I said before, we are results oriented people who believe in a just and meritocratic society. We believe that you don’t deserve a job because of the color of your skin, the amount of gray hair you have, or the amount of hours you sit in front of your computer. We believe in the bottom line, how much $ you bring into the company, how much impact you have to the bottom line.
Not sure why you are so against it, but it seems like you were ousted by someone younger who may have made more money for your company. Either way, not my concern in the slightest. BTW, I asked my boomer coworkers where they live and a few live down the street from me, and the rest live in Carmel Valley, Bird Rock, and Coronado. Not sure where you were going with that question, but just answered it since you asked.[/quote]Regarding my FT work, the vast bulk of it was for a local government, from which I “retired.” I was never ousted by younger-anything. We had a “merit system” and were “represented” employees (yes, even the “professionals”). In my field, I worked in the private sector FT for ~7 years and in food service for ~6 years when I was young. I’ve been working out of my home in my field as an “independent contractor” for the past ~9 years.
If your boomer co-workers reside in “Bird Rock” and “Coronado” in residences which they own, then they must have been very highly-paid at the time they purchased them as those areas have always been among the SD communities with the highest-priced RE. Either that, or they “inherited” their residences. If they actually purchased them by qualifying for a mortgage using their wages at the time, then you have quite a “hill” to climb to attain their positions, IMO, especially of they purchased their Bird Rock residence long ago.
I’m not buying the story that you say boomer-workers are telling their co-workers in that they can’t retire yet because their stocks are decimated. If they’re referring to the crash of 2008, we recovered from that long ago. Perhaps they’re just using that as an “excuse.” I feel that some of the real reasons for ~65 yo straggling boomers still in the FT workforce are that they are still assisting their youngest kids through college. Room and board, both on and off campus, can be very pricey today, depending upon campus and locale. When we were having kids, we didn’t have them one after another in immediate succession (at least not planned), like I see multiple families headed by millenials do. We couldn’t because FT daycare for 2+ kids at a time (without assistance from relatives) took up too much of a chunk of our paychecks. My large group of co-workers and I had them about 5-12 years apart. That’s why we’re now seeing boomers ~60+ years old with college-age kids. There are a lot of us out there.
I don’t know any boomers who are heavily indebted (secured or unsecured) and thus would need to keep working FT to pay off debt.
Participant[quote=yamashi1] . . . The days of the majority of Americans able to get into top tier schools, then graduate and find a middle class job, buy a decent home on one salary, retire at age 65, and collect a pension and social security and ride off into the sunset are gone. . . . [/quote]
yamashi, I agree that it was easier to be accepted into “top tier schools” the ’70’s and ’80’s and will add that many of those schools were more “affordable” in relation to prevailing wages back then because there were far less foreign student applicants to compete with and far less types of financial aid available at that time and the aid that was available maxed out at about $4K per year (not enough to help with room and board). The private sector had not yet entered the student loan racket. (Yes, SL’s ARE a “racket,” folks.)But the rest of this post is a whole lotta misinformation. It might have been true for the Greatest Generation and WWII Gen but did you ever ask your parents if the above was the case with them? Well, I was there and can tell you that vast majority of boomers DID qualify to buy their first and subsequent home with TWO incomes, NOT ONE! I believe there were FAR MORE dual income families prior to the mid-nineties than there are today, in spite of the increase in population since then. I’m speaking of two parents BOTH working FT and each on the seniority/promotion track.
The REAL reason boomers were more successful in RE investment than the millenials ever will be is that they started their adult lives much younger (whether graduated from college … or not) and thereby invested in RE much younger (early-mid twenties) by buying whatever they could afford, condition and location be dammed. Millenials are way, way too picky in what they will accept for their first home and for the most part, REFUSE to DIY. And they reject outright properties which need two weeks to two months of cleanup/rehab in order to occupy. This group wants everything “perfect” in their first property prior to COE and are willing to go into tremendous debt for it and we boomers, as a group, weren’t willing to do this. We understood how the “system” always worked in coastal CA, wholly accepted that nothing has changed in that regard, and wanted to buy and sell and “move up the property ladder,” little by little. This concept is completely unpalatable to today’s first-time homebuyers. They would rather rent for a decade or more than do that, (unwisely) banking that CA coastal RE values are somehow going to go down in their targeted coveted (“move-up”) neighborhoods :-0
If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is ask your boomer co-workers where they live and how long ago they bought their current residence. Since you stated you work in downtown SD, you will very likely find that most of them live in SD metro and south and east county in established neighborhoods and have owned their latest residence 15-35 years. A good portion of them probably live within 10 miles of dtn SD in communities such as Serra Mesa, College Area, Birdland and Linda Vista. If you ask them, they may tell you they raised their kids in the house they currently reside in and that their houses are 1600 to 2200 sf and an average of 55 years old. And if you ask them what kind of shape their house was in when they bought it and what kind of improvements they have made to the property over the years, you might be shocked.
The vast majority of CA coastal boomers didn’t raise their kids in “mini-mansions” in outer-suburbia (like you say you are)! That’s a millenial (and Gen-X) preference. It seems many millenials feel they must have a 3000 sf (preferably brand new) house for their first home, two late model or brand new vehicles and a “top-mgmt rung” gig all before the age of 35! Really? And if they grew up in Cali, they feel they “deserve” a well-paying gig in a CA coastal county for their first FT job and are unwilling to relocate to get some experience and that every “oldster” in their way at work should just “go away” NOW so they can be considered for that position. They feel they “deserve” all this because they are “educated.” This mindset is what is causing depression in many of them, causing them to resign themselves to living with parents and quit applying for career-track positions while working a PT retail or food service job.
That’s it, in a nutshell. The “expectations” of most young adults today (esp those with college degrees) are through the roof and completely unrealistic. Especially for residents of crowded, CA coastal counties with a HUGE well-established “captive audience” of deep-pocketed, lifetime residents, many who have been in the local workforce for 40+ years. In my mind, millenials can’t possibly “compete” with all of these factors and shouldn’t be expected to. They must be satisfied with what they have currently attained, stay humble and keep “showing up,” keeping themselves as “visible” as possible at work. They need to “pay their dues” if they want to be able to compete for future promotions. As worker-bees with 0-15 years experience, they can’t have everything NOW!
-
AuthorPosts
