[earlyretirement]

Man what a circus atmosphere. I went today and it was crazy busy. That Applebee’s has resorted to hiring a security guard and he was literally chasing away anyone that was parking there for H-Mart. He was asking each person if they were going into Applebee’s and if not, he said he was going to call a tow truck to tow them away.

It was very difficult finding a parking space.

I’ve never been to an H-Mart before. Interesting. If you like Korean food then it’s a must visit. They have a cafe inside with Korean food to buy or take out and the line was jam packed with people.

They have a pretty good fruit department and prices are cheap. As someone else mentioned, big Pineapples were only 99 cents each! People were grabbing crates and crates of them. I saw a lady literally take out 35 pineapples. I’m not sure how they can sell them so cheap. I guess it might be a loss leader to get people into the store.

Good addition to the area. Interestingly enough there is some French cafe bakery inside the store. I don’t know if it was any good or not but there was a long line.

I grabbed lots of fruits and picked up 5 pineapples. Plus some marinated meat (beef and chicken).

[earlyretirement]

Man what a circus atmosphere. I went today and it was crazy busy. That Applebee’s has resorted to hiring a security guard and he was literally chasing away anyone that was parking there for H-Mart. He was asking each person if they were going into Applebee’s and if not, he said he was going to call a tow truck to tow them away.

It was very difficult finding a parking space.

I’ve never been to an H-Mart before. Interesting. If you like Korean food then it’s a must visit. They have a cafe inside with Korean food to buy or take out and the line was jam packed with people.

They have a pretty good fruit department and prices are cheap. As someone else mentioned, big Pineapples were only 99 cents each! People were grabbing crates and crates of them. I saw a lady literally take out 35 pineapples. I’m not sure how they can sell them so cheap. I guess it might be a loss leader to get people into the store.

Good addition to the area. Interestingly enough there is some French cafe bakery inside the store. I don’t know if it was any good or not but there was a long line.

I grabbed lots of fruits and picked up 5 pineapples. Plus some marinated meat (beef and chicken).

[earlyretirement]

[quote=spdrun]What about fruit? Veggies?

Moot point anyway. $4.44/day is intended as supplemental aid, not a recipient’s full food budget.[/quote]

Exactly. No way we could come anywhere even close to that budget. Especially with kids involved. But even if I didn’t have kids, no way I could get by on that. We eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and meat and fish.

Heck, my wife eats 1 pineapple each day which would almost take up that budget. LOL.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=bearishgurl]To be clear, I never intended to imply that ER was “foolish” to pay off his MR. If he knows he will own the property more than ten years from the date he paid it off, then he got a BIG discount by doing so. He will save himself ~$6K for every year he owns it past 10 years, until the bonds are paid off (2033? not sure). So the payoff made sense for him and he was able to do it :=][/quote]

Yes BG. I think everyone has to look at their specific situation. It won’t make sense for everyone but in our case it does. We will be in our house for the foreseeable future, our house is completely paid off and we definitely will stick around.

One of the bonds actually wasn’t scheduled to be done until at least 2041. And it seems like there are a few cases where the bonds could possibly get extended out further.

That wasn’t appealing to me. Also, in reading some things online it seemed like the possibility to prepay could be denied in the future. So I wanted to take advantage of it while I could. In my case it will definitely be worth it.

I’m already well diversified in the stock market, real estate and other investments so the money was just sitting around not earning much interest at all.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=bearishgurl]
For you, ~$61K is a little over ten years of paying MR by the month. I guess if you’re SURE you’ll be there at least that long, then you definitely got a discount by paying it off early.

Not sure if your early payoff will affect your resale value, though.[/quote]

Yep. I’m SURE that we will be in the house for at least 15 years. We have the house exactly how we want it and we have accounted for possibly having another child. So it’s plenty big for us.

We did the renovations we wanted to do and have the house perfect how we want it. We definitely won’t move until the kids are out of high school.

I realize that the majority of people probably aren’t in this position to know for sure they won’t move but I can say with certainty that we will be here for the long haul. And I didn’t do this at all thinking about potential resale value.

[earlyretirement]

Just an update. I went ahead and paid off both CFD’s a few weeks ago. The CFD #4 (Poway Unified) came in around $15,000.

And the CFD #2 for Santaluz fortunately came in at the lower end of their previous estimate of $45,000 to $50,000. I had to pay $500 to get an exact payoff and a few days later they emailed me an exact payoff. It came in about $46,000.

It will be a great feeling to be done with these Mello Roos taxes. We definitely will stay in our house for the long run so this seems to be a no brainer.

[earlyretirement]

Congratulations! Heading into the future, I think you will enjoy being a landlord and owning more properties.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=mike92104]I’m a lighting technician for the La Jolla Playhouse, and I have been thinking about going into this sort of business. I’d be happy to take a look at your place and make a proposal.[/quote]

Thanks but I prefer using someone that has been doing it a while, licensed, bonded and insured.

I have someone coming out to the house today to give a quote on it.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=moneymaker]Just thought I’d resurrect this old thread and say I did make a litle money on BAC, now I think the play is HPQ. It will be a long play, so not for the squeamish.[/quote]

Yeah, I did really great on BAC as well. I kept selling the forward month covered call options but it finally got called away last month. I made great money selling the covered call options each month.

My latest stock I’ve been doing that with is NOK. Bought a TON of it very cheap this summer and I’ve been selling the forward month $3 call options. Some months when it was near $3 the covered call option premiums were VERY GOOD. I just keep selling the forward month$3 option and so far it keeps expiring worthless.

It’s been a great investment so far. I realize the technology there and their phones are dinosaurs compared to Apple, Samsung, etc. but people in the know tell me their patent portfolio alone are worth a fortune.

So far the risk/reward ratio has been worth it to me.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=ocrenter]I have not seen this at all.

Typically I see the city/school district simply generating new MR for the new constructions.

The only time MR gets reduced is if the city/district is considerate enough to refi to a lower rate.[/quote]

This is exactly what I’ve seen as well. Fortunately some MR’s are actually getting refinanced. My CFD #2 went down almost $1,000 from last year due to them refinancing at a lower rate.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=ctr70]ABQ is NOT my hometown and I have never lived there nor would ever. ABQ is a piece of crap ugly sunbelt sprawl city. I grew up in the Boston area and also in Vermont. New England where I’m from is still a place in the U.S. that has very handsome neighborhoods and has retained it’s character. I am looking at moving back to New England or Seattle WA (especially since NH and WA have no state income tax…I hate giving the criminals in the CA democratic legislature almost 10% of my income). San Diego bores the living sh*t out of me and has no architectural character and I hate the culture here. If you think SD has well groomed 80 yr old neighborhoods you either have no taste at all or need to get out more. Go visit some of the neighborhoods outside of Boston, Minneapolis, Seattle, NYC. San Diego’s neighborhood are ugly as sh*t. Either souless, sterile, cookie cutter stip center north county or ghetto east, central and south county

I also do not have kids and if I did I would never, ever raise them in the cultural wasteland of San Diego. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, etc… have the best public schools in the U.S. They have the highest test scores in the U.S. It is just generally a much “higher” culture back there then “Ghettofornia.[/quote]

Wow. If you really feel that strongly against San Diego, you should definitely move out of it. Life is too short to be miserable or not happy in the city you live in.

I don’t see San Diego the same way you do. I think it’s one of the best places you could raise a child if you can comfortably afford it.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=UCGal]There’s a lot of talk about this on both earlyretirement.org and bogleheads.com.

For folks with extra bandwidth in their savings – it’s a good way to start transferring their wealth ahead of time. .[/quote]

There are a lot of different chains of thought on this. I guess there are advantages and disadvantages of the various options.

We opted to set up a custodial account (UTMA) for both of our kids at birth. You can legally gift tax free $13,000 a year if you’re single or $26,000 a year per child if you’re married.

I easily set up an account for each of them in a Custodial account where I manage it. I’m not as conservative in it since they have a long time horizon but not too aggressive either.

My strategy has mostly consisted of buying stocks and selling covered call options on the stock each month. Fairly conservative play which has generated great returns. (Both of them have been averaging over 13% a year for the past 4 years).

The true power of compound interest is amazing. Fun to chart out on a spreadsheet from age 1 to 21. I figure every parent should be taking advantage of the power of compound interest if they can.

The proceeds are going to be used for college and grad school if applicable. At the rate they are going, they probably both should have very significant balances by the time they are graduating high school.

Something appealing to me when setting it up was that the parent can determine how to invest the funds and when to spend it on the child. You can pull out funds as long as it’s being spent on the child that owns the account. (We’ve never pulled out funds from their account and don’t plan to but I liked that aspect in case we needed to for any reason).

I figure that when they turn 16, they will get a nice car and it will be funded by their funds in their accounts. If they get a full academic scholarship (which is every parent’s dream) I’ll encourage them to use the funds to purchase their first house.

I have friends that were in this position and their kids got a full ride and they used the funds (with their kids consent) to purchase an apartment in the city where they were going to University so they lived rent free the 4 years they were in School). It worked out beautifully and turned out to be a great investment to boot.

On the serious downside is my kids from the time they were born have had to fill out tax returns each year! That isn’t fun. They have been generating good returns so they have had to pay taxes each year since they were born.

Also, once they turn 21 the funds are theirs. We don’t plan to tell them about the funds until they are older. I believe California also allows the transfer to be delayed until as late as 25 years old if you structure it properly.

Of course you have the possibility that your kids could end up as serious losers and squander the money but I am a glass is half full type of guy and hope for the best case scenario with my kids.

I’m sure many disadvantages and advantages can be given for all the various structures (529, Coverdell ESA, Custodial, etc).

[quote=carlsbadworker]I would. But my kids are too young for anyone to believe that they have earned income. They need to at least start potty training first.[/quote]

Exactly! A Roth IRA for them was impossible as they are only 4 and 3 years old and no way to justify income until they are probably in their early teens.

And some of the “salaries” for jobs that people are mentioning would probably be questionable by the IRS if an audit came up. I didn’t want to have to worry about those hassles.

[earlyretirement]

Congrats! Sounds like it was worth the wait. I also waited 8 years from the time I sold my properties in 2003 to when I bought again in 2011.

I couldn’t be happier with my purchase. I agree with flyer that San Diego is one of the best places to live not only in the USA but the world.

My wife and I own several properties around the world and I’ve lived abroad but nothing tops San Diego for us. It’s an incredible place to raise your family.

And if you ended up in RSF you did great. It’s a wonderful area!

[earlyretirement]

[quote=squat250]also keep in mind. 4 young kids tuition could be 750k in 20 y at uc.

buy a house for a million. put a million aside for school…[/quote]

Yep. I have two young kids and I’m budgeting half a million bucks + for their college tuition by the time they enter college. Sad to think about spending that kind of money on a college education.

I self financed college through working and college loans. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone let alone my kids.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=spdrun]If someone has 2MM cash, why the hooting hell would they want to spend all of it on a single property?![/quote]

My guess is that if he is buying a house for $2 million cash then he has plenty more in reserves.

Money is all relative. $2 million to one person is like $20 to another.

I have friends/clients that have a high net worth (I’m talking tens of millions of dollars and in a few cases over $100 million). And I’ve seen them spend over $15,000 in a night at a bar treating everyone to drinks. Personally I find it completely crazy but it’s all relative….

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