[bibsoconner]

@jeeman   No, I haven’t done anything yet.  Like I mentioned in my first post, I’m a “foot dragger”.  Possibly the fact that it involves my own mortality makes me even more of a foot dragger!  Sounds like you’re further than me. I haven’t even figured out if revocable, or non-revocable trust is the way to go.

I did look into some firms and they wanted $4000-$6000 which seems steep.  Adding to the cost is the fact that the firms that charged that amount said they wouldn’t/couldn’t deal with foreign property.  I’d need some other sort of special attorney for that.

[bibsoconner]

@gzz, Congrats on insurance. Can you say which company? State Farm?

[bibsoconner]

Hmm @gzz  I get that much more of the value is caught up in land not property, but I’m guessing (and just guessing) it would cost over 1/2 million to rebuild from scratch. That’s not chicken feed.  What’s a robust estimate of rebuilding per square foot for the Pt. Loma coast?  But along those lines, I do wonder if there is a policy that basically covers nothing except a complete disaster or close to it.  Like, a 100K or 200k deductible.

Knock on wood, no mold damage for me!  Perhaps I need to move to Arizona or Utah so that never happens 🙂

[bibsoconner]

I feel your pain. I’m in the OB/Pt. Loma area.   My house insurance has been going up a lot in the last few years.  I’m curious, if your house were paid off (as mine is), what would you do?  It seems extremely risky to drop insurance completely.  Perhaps there is a very high deductible plan or some such thing?

For the car insurance, I’ve been too lazy to look into it, but my understanding is that it’s not technically required to have insurance, but you have to be able to prove you have readily available reserves to use in the event of an accident.

My house (and car) insurance is through State Farm btw. I’ve tried to shop around and get quotes from other companies, but couldn’t find any that would insure my house.  The last company that approached me several years ago was AAA.  After their house inspector claimed “of course we’ll insure this house – it’s fantastic!”, I got a form letter saying they declined to cover it due to it being (1) old, and (2) multi-level.  I’ve found cheaper car insurance but not really once you take into account the State Farm Discount for having multiple policies.

[bibsoconner]

Thanks all!

I’ll keep my eye/ears open. I probably need to put boots on the ground and start scoping out neighborhoods and get a feel for local conditions so I’m ready to pounce on the day that Rich (or his SLO equivalent) says “this is the bottom” 🙂

I’m fairly liberal but have generally found you can find a like minded group of people in most places so I’m not particularly worried what the average is as long as there is some spread in beliefs. I’ve met very conservative folks from San Francisco and Boston that I enjoy teasing with “Hey, aren’t you suppose to be a far left liberal?”. Heck, in my own Ocean Beach, which folks including myself describe as full of “drugged out hippie children”, we have a not insignificant conservative minority.
Thank you all.

[bibsoconner]

Ah, but caffeine has been associated with lesser risk of Alzheimer’s: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20182054/

Tumeric and marijuana have been similarly classified.*

Thus I put tumeric in my coffee in the morning, and smoke a joint with it for good measure.

*You can Google this all and do your own research. In all seriousness, the evidence for all three seems scanty at best. On the other hand, having watched my mom die from this horrible disease, I’d swallow bleach if I thought there was a reasonable chance it would prevent it.

[bibsoconner]

Thanks for the responses everyone.
For better or for worse, I didn’t get a a chance to invest today. The powers that be actually expected me to work today on various computer programming emergencies. The nerve of some bosses! :).

A couple more points….
Where is info on Shiller PE10 Ratio? I was actually trying to determine if the P/E ratio was decent.
Another reason I was looking was I noticed the NAV value of some of these funds (example VGK) seemed to be quite a bit higher than the asking price. I’m getting this from finance.yahoo.com which may or may not be the best source.

[bibsoconner]

Thanks for the comments everyone! I think sdrealtor and others have convinced me that selling (at least right away) is a bad idea. As I self analyze myself, I’m definitely getting sick of corporate engineering*, but I’m convinced that’s a separate issue from whether to remain in San Diego or sell the house. I didn’t mention it initially, but my wife’s parents are getting old, so that’s another motivation to spend at least a year in St. Thomas.

ScaredyClassic’s description of a carefree life as a busboy smoking pot by the dumpsters certainly does have it’s allure… Not sure I need marriage counseling when I have your free advice though. Seriously, I my wife and I are closer in our assessment of our kids that I let on. She could be convinced to use our daughter as the property manager, and I could be easily convinced not to use her. Another factor is that she’s suppose to be studying hard, so dealing with tenants and broken dishwashers might not be the wisest choice.

Finally, if anyone else has recommendations for property managers, please send them my way. Again, I’m biased, but I think it’s a high end house (large, large amount of land, pool, ocean view, etc.) and should be marketed as such or at least the property manager should have experience with that type of house. Nobody chimed in with long term rental vs. short term.

Thanks all!

*I think I am just tired of corporate engineering, but another thing I’ve noticed which I wonder is just unique to me is this: either I’m getting dumber, or the folks coming out of university are getting much smarter. Not to brag, but I always thought of myself as not top talent, but definitely in the top 25%. Now I feel like bottom 50% or bottom 25%. Rather than a negative, I suppose the positive way to to look at it is this: the country is in good hands and things will only get better.

[bibsoconner]

Thanks sdrealtor. I’d forgotten about the 2 year rule. It also reminds me that I should make some attempt to get my home improvement receipts together. As I recall, beyond the 500K cap you can avoid taxes by offsetting profit on house with money you put into it. Unfortunately, I’m not great at keeping receipts, especially for all the small stuff that ads up! And if current prices hold or increase, I’ll definitely be above 500K.

Feel free to post or PM me “good local property manager”!

Thanks!

[bibsoconner]

The original post asked for “rigor” and “thoughtfulness”. Here’s my attempt at that:

It all ends sooner than people expected. The world returns to normal. The markets recover. Slowly but surely, unemployment goes down. A concerted effort by the world’s nations is made to monitor for outbreaks of new diseases. The only unexplained phenomena is that for 2 months or so there is a rash of toilet papering houses the likes of which the world has never seen before. It’s as if millions of people suddenly found themselves in possession of more toilet paper than they could possibly use in lifetime.

[bibsoconner]

Myself, I like to hear the end of a story so I thought I’d post what I think is the last chapter in this saga. I file a complaint against Bosch with BBB. If you look them up, you can see many others have done the same and they have a ‘D’ rating! So, without much hope that it would help, I filed a complaint. BBB got back to me to say that Bosch hadn’t bothered to respond and that was all they could do. I resigned myself to writing it off as a loss and went and got a KitchenAid at Costco. I had no interest in taking them to court (although I think I had a strong case).

Out of the blue, Bosch called me, stated that upper management had reviewed the file, and they wanted to give me a new dishwasher! I felt sort of bad returning the KitchenAid to Costco. My wife pointed out that the KitcheAid didn’t wash dishes as well as the Bosch. I replied, “how could you say that? The Bosch didn’t work at all. Oh! you mean when the Bosch was working!”. In any case, KitchenAid is returned, and we have a new Bosch. We shall see if it lasts more than 3 1/2 years. My out of pocket cost is the $155 I paid to have a Bosch representative come out initially and spend 5 minutes to say, “yep, it’s leaking from the tub”. Of course, I’m out a heck of a lot of time.

I guess the moral of the story if there is one is be persistent. Or perhaps it is to use BBB. I’m not sure if that’s what did it or not. They didn’t ask me to amend my complaint so I’m not sure.

[bibsoconner]

I wouldn’t mind making 500K/year. I can tell you firsthand that software engineers in San Diego don’t get that. I think some young people have the perfect idea: go work in SF and live in your car – wrack up a huge nest egg.

The-Shoveler: Not sure I’d want to live in SF (primarily because of the prices) but it sure is nice to visit. Reminds me of Paris. I suppose all the homelessness bothers some people. I live in OB, so it doesn’t phase me.

[bibsoconner]

Image of SF Case-Schiller/CPI

[img_assist|nid=26930|title=San Francisco Case-Schiller/CPI – Notice we are back in a peak even adjusting for inflation|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=39]

[bibsoconner]

Thanks Rich. I played with the site a bit. Adjusting for inflation, San Diego was much more expensive in early 2006 than it is now. Somebody really should start a website about that 🙂

Seriously, if I did the graphing correctly San Francisco is about as expensive now as it was in 2006 even adjusted for inflation. Maybe I can get FRED to show me the least expensive and most expensive cities relative to their ~2006 peaks.
Finally I note that Honolulu and Hawaii and many other cities are not listed cities. Honolulu is about 350,000 folks so not trivial.

S.F graph:

[bibsoconner]

UPDATE

So, I went ahead and shelled out $155 to have a Bosch certified repairman come out and look at it. My reasoning was that there is a life time warranty on the tub itself for “rust through”, and my own amateur efforts indicated it might be leaking from the tub. Also, I’d spent enough time looking at it, that I wanted to see what the problem was and it was worth $155 to the engineer in me. I kid you not, he came and spent about 10 minutes looking at it and declared, “it’s leaking from the tub” and on the bill wrote “tub leaking / welding problem”.

I’ve called Bosch and they are dragging their feet replacing it saying, “we acknowledge the weld is bad but how do we know it is because of rust?”. I pointed out that they could have spent more time looking at it and they are being nit picking. It’s been about 2 weeks since the repair guy came and I’m about to buy another unit. I’ll consider reporting them to BBB. There “lifetime warranty” does not cover the $155 nor does it cover installing a replacement. Given that it only last 3.5 years, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to take delivery of a replacement if it’s going to cost close to $400. That’s assuming they offer a replacement.

Needless to say, I don’t advocate buying Bosch. I thought what you got with a higher end unit is something that lasts AND that comes with better service. Lesson learned 🙂

Dave

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