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CA renter
Participant[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=CA renter]Some of these posts of yours make me so sad, scaredy. Childhood is such a precious, wonderful time, IMO.
Keep hanging onto them! :)[/quote]
when they’re gone they’re gone. The kid is no more. I can’t remember when the other 2 disappeared but this might be the pinpt. Moment[/quote]
You trying to throw me into the darkness, scaredy?
Tell me your eldest is visiting more, please.
Mr. CAR and I have been talking about how sad we will be if they all move out. We so love having them around all the time.
ParticipantSome of these posts of yours make me so sad, scaredy. Childhood is such a precious, wonderful time, IMO.
Keep hanging onto them! 🙂
Participant[quote=pencilneck]Speaking of experiments, I’ll quote Leo.
“Inflation has been very mild the entire time. Higher rates, if in the cards, certainly isn’t going to cause inflation.”
I think that our entire outlook on interest rates is pre-global. As Japan and the US have demonstrated in recent years, in global environments low interest rates encourage investment outflow. Not all, but a lot of money goes to work in the areas (countries, in this example) with the best risk/reward, so money flows to countries with perceived low risk and higher interest rates.
Over the past few years we’ve had massive monetary inflation. This hasn’t yet translated into price inflation as capital has largely flowed elsewhere.
Our low interest rates have in effect acted to export a large portion of our monetary inflation to become price inflation in other countries. When interest rates rise, capital previously directed elsewhere will return. I believe we will see price inflation coincident with rising interest rates.
Of course, this belief is contrary to common opinion and 100 years of Fed policy. And comes from a certifiable idiot to boot. So take of it what you will.
To loop this back to the topic, if my theory holds true, the time to invest in silver (and other metals) will be when interest rates start rising. When that will be I have no idea.[/quote]
Interesting perspective, pencilneck.
We’ve had *plenty* of inflation here, IMHO, but it’s mostly been in speculative assets, including housing. Look at most commodities and they are still up from 2008-2010 levels. While many would claim that those prices were artificially low, I believe that prices at that time were correcting to where they should have been after being pushed to artificial highs via the manipulations of the Fed and Wall Street.
But there is no doubt that money has been sloshing around the globe in search of yield. If we get higher interest rates while still maintaining the same faith in our currency, it’s reasonable to expect that money will flow back here, but then interest rates would go down again if money flows to bonds.
Participant[quote=sdsurfer][quote=poorgradstudent][quote=sdsurfer] One consideration is that some people have vision and their own particular style so they would appreciate the credit, but many other people do not have vision and you need to do it for them to see the potential.
[/quote]
We definitely had our own vision when we were looking. There were a few properties where it would note “brand new carpets and paint” and our response was “but they’re ugly!” and we’d pass; as a buyer you feel like you’re paying for it, especially if it’s done “wrong”. Paint is less of a big deal, but a lot of people seem to want to go too dark on carpets.
We also definitely skipped homes where there had been a quick kitchen/bath remodel. You can kinda tell when someone updates the kitchen as their “home” vs. trying to sell it. Again, it was frustrating to walk into a home and see that it had been remodeled sloppily.
Of course a lot of people want “turnkey” homes, and we did see quite a few places that were redone very nicely. Of course those places often wanted to get compensated for the money they sunk into it, which put those places out of our preferred price range.[/quote]
My wife and I have always felt the same way that it really sucks to have to pay for someone else’s remodel when you do not like the style of remodel/materials used. We’d much rather get it for less and do our own work to our preference.[/quote]4th this
When we looked at our house — which hadn’t yet been listed on the MLS; they had just posted the sign and we went directly to the sellers — I told them not to even vacuum the carpets or spend a single cent on anything. We ended up pretty much tearing the house apart and re-doing everything to our liking because we hope for this to be our final house. It would have been a huge disappointment if we had walked in and it was all done-up in flipper “upgrades,” where the seller would want to recoup costs. Their “upgrades” would have been worth ZERO to us.
Livin’ is right about the timing, too. I’ve watched the housing market in multiple zips in SD County and LA County for many, many years. The best “selling season” seems to be right around early February through March. This is when buyers first come out of hibernation, and housing inventory is at relative lows (due to winter doldrums). You might be able to get a higher price a few months later, but you risk having the market turn against you as more sellers enter the market and the most anxious buyers who had waited through winter disappear with those first sales of the late winter/spring season.
IMHO, it’s best to get a somewhat lower price, but sell faster and with fewer headaches.
DO clean the house, even hiring professional cleaners to do a VERY thorough cleaning. Have someone come in every couple of weeks to touch things up, if you can’t do it yourself. Touch up the yard (especially the front) and hire a weekly gardener, if you don’t already have one. Do some painting if there are scratches, marks, etc. on the walls (inside and out), and have the carpets professionally steam cleaned (if you have carpets). If the carpets are gross, it might be worthwhile to put in some cheap carpets, but I also like the idea of offering a credit (we did that with one of our houses, too). And, as you probably know, nothing will sell a house faster and better than a good pricing strategy.
Sounds like you’re making the right decision on the timing because of the tax exclusion on gains (and you never know if that will be repealed at a later time, if you should decide to keep the house and try again later) and your employer-paid closing/moving expenses. Well done.
Good luck on your sale!
ParticipantYes, as posted above.
[quote=CA renter]
Again, these numbers will fluctuate depending on the opportunity costs and contributions provided by the SAH spouses (a parent who is a nurse who can care for a child with a severe illness, a teacher who can work with a learning disabled child, someone from the financial industry who can make more money by managing the family’s investments him/herself, etc.). It will depend on the larger, and local, economies, too, depending on the field a parent is in, or whether it would cost more to hire someone from the outside to fulfill these tasks. And the value received by the family will fluctuate over time within any given family depending on how many children are in the house, how old the children are, whether or not they are helping to care for elderly parents or other relatives, and how the parents value having a parent watch over the kids vs someone hired from the outside.[/quote]
Every family’s situation is different, and every family will have to decide what works best for them. The point, of course, is that they should actually run the numbers to see what the second income-earner is *really* making, and then decide if that is worth all of the additional stress and strain on the marriage and family. For some, having a SAHP will be the best decision; for others, having both parents in the paid workforce will suit them better. There is no right or wrong here.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]The article says China ana Europe will cause global recession. Not was said about the “sins” of the Fed[/quote]
It is all connected.
ParticipantMaybe that’s it. 🙂
But war…you’d be surprised how many men support war, whether or not they’re signing up to fight the war themselves.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=CA renter] In a family where the primary earner has irregular days/hours (like salespeople who travel at least two weeks/month, for instance), is it better if they have a parent available to both that spouse and the children whenever it works best for them? There is no right or wrong answer here, it depends entirely on the beliefs and desires of the individual families.
[/quote]I can understand irregular hours.
The problem for workers who don’t have set hours, is that labor laws are screwed up. Unless workers have unions representing them, the employers would almost always require their employees to be on-call all the time, but only pay them part-time.
Employees should be notified of their schedules well in advance so they can plan and not have to wait around without getting paid.
See, I’m not anti-union at all. ;)[/quote]
IIRC there is some energy behind legislation that would require employers to give employees their schedule at least a week ahead of time. Haven’t followed up on it much, but have heard about it.
Still, some people have such irregular hours that, even if they know in advance, they would not be able to find someone who would also be “on call” to respond to their schedule changes.
A person who’s taking care of the children of someone who has an irregular schedule cannot take classes, work, participate in activities of their own, etc. if those activities take place on a particular day of the week…unless they try to hire someone else who can cover these times. The problem keeps getting pushed to someone else down the line.
Participant[quote=zk][quote=UCGal]
Generalize much?[/quote]
There are times, though, for generalizations. Do women, generally, let their emotions control them more than men do? I think they do. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Is generalizing about it a bad thing? Only if you apply it to an individual woman.[/quote]
I was going to agree with your original (stereotypical) assertion, but what about things like war for the sake or asserting power/control/ego, or the crazy infatuation so many men have with sports — something that doesn’t affect their lives one iota, but something that they will sacrifice their families for (football widows, and all that)? That’s not logical, that’s emotional. It just looks different, perhaps, from how women show their emotions.
As for women, my guess would be that women are wired differently because if we were 100% logical, humans would have died out a long, long time ago. It’s hormones and emotions that make a woman want to care for her child…and probably hormones that make a man want to do so, as well, though they often need some prompting from religion and law to make it happen to the same degree. Most women don’t need traditions, religion, and law to make them want to devote themselves entirely to their families.
Wealth and power mean a great deal in tradition, law, and religion. That might explain why men tend to be more driven than women. It probably is more logical, but there are emotions involved, too.
Participant[quote=zk]Being of high intellect is, really, almost worthless by itself. It’s rarely what determines how far you get in life financially. It’s more likely to hinder than help socially. Chicks don’t necessarily dig it. What’s it good for? Inventing stuff, maybe. I don’t know. Not much.
Hard work will get you more than intelligence. Social skills will get you a hundred times more in life than intelligence.[/quote]
Absolutely agree with this.
Participant[quote=zk][quote=FlyerInHi]
I want a stoic daughter of a tiger mom.[/quote]
To each his own, I guess. I wouldn’t want stoic. My wife is lively and fun and sparkly, and I love it.[/quote]
She sounds awesome! 🙂
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=CA renter]I think things will continue to gradually slow, with some bounces along the way, until 2016/2017. At that point, I think that the current bubble has the potential to collapse…and take everything else with it.
[/quote]can you please elaborate what “everything else with it” means?
GDP has grown since 2008. Where would a collapse as you predict it set us back to?
In general, a mild recession (2 quarters of negative growth) is nothing much to worry about.[/quote]
Everything else: housing prices, stock prices, bond prices,* commodities, wild currency fluctuations, etc. And jobs will be lost, too, IMO.
You don’t need to have NINJA mortgage loans to make a bubble. It’s the level of leverage and speculation that causes a bubble. How that speculation and leverage manifest themselves does not really matter.
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Margin debt:
http://www.businessinsider.com/nyse-margin-debt-scary-zone-2014-7
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Derivative contract volumes are at or above 2008 levels:
2008 (page 5)
http://www.bis.org/publ/otc_hy0811.pdf
2013
http://www.bis.org/statistics/dt1920a.pdf
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Federal Reserve’s balance sheet:
(click on all data)http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm
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Federal Debt:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Jut
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Household debt:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ny-fed-q1-2014-household-debt-2014-5
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I’ve probably forgotten to list some of the things that have stood out to me over the past few years, but that should at least give an idea of why I (and a few others) are concerned. And this is all the result of the Federal Reserve’s manipulations…and the government’s support of those manipulations.
*Bond prices could go either way, depending largely on the global position of the dollar and faith in fiat currencies.
Participant[quote=svelte]
I think that’s a perfectly reasonable approach to life. One parent staying home until the youngest is in preschool or 1st grade.We have friends married to each other who were both execs in this town for companies you all know and love. They decided he would stay home the first few years (she made way more) and then return to work part time, which he has. Worked out very well for them.
Was thinking the other day about the disagreement on “most” women seeking out men to support the family. I think maybe it all has to do with what folks think the question is that determines the answer.
If it were rephrased “are you looking for a spouse to support you entirely, without you working, through your life” I think the “yes” percent would be low for both men and women. (most women in the US work)
If the question were “are you looking for a spouse to HELP support the family, with you working when it makes sense” I think the “yes” percent would be high.
Hell, I would have answered “no” to the first and “yes” to the second…and so would my wife.[/quote]
This is where things get interesting. When you say that one spouse is relying on another spouse supporting them entirely, you’re suggesting that the SAH spouse isn’t *also* contributing to the household.
I’ve shown earlier on this thread how many women are working for a negative income (and that’s working full-time!), especially if they have young children or if the second income-earner makes a low wage. Still waiting to hear from BG about her findings…
And even if the second income-earner is making *some* money after paying all the expenses related to working outside of the home, is it $500/month, $1,500/month, or $2,000/month? And is it worth the extra stress and strain on the marriage and family relationship? In a family where the primary earner has irregular days/hours (like salespeople who travel at least two weeks/month, for instance), is it better if they have a parent available to both that spouse and the children whenever it works best for them? There is no right or wrong answer here, it depends entirely on the beliefs and desires of the individual families.
You can also look at the links that show how the monetary value of a SAH spouse’s contributions can be calculated.
Again, these numbers will fluctuate depending on the opportunity costs and contributions provided by the SAH spouses (a parent who is a nurse who can care for a child with a severe illness, a teacher who can work with a learning disabled child, someone from the financial industry who can make more money by managing the family’s investments him/herself, etc.). It will depend on the larger, and local, economies, too, depending on the field a parent is in, or whether it would cost more to hire someone from the outside to fulfill these tasks. And the value received by the family will fluctuate over time within any given family depending on how many children are in the house, how old the children are, whether or not they are helping to care for elderly parents or other relatives, and how the parents value having a parent watch over the kids vs someone hired from the outside.
As for the majority of households with children having both parents working outside of the home, it is a majority, but not a large majority. And this includes people who work PT.
The share of married-couple families with children
where both parents worked was 59.1 percent.ParticipantIt would probably work better than what we’re doing now!
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