[joec]

I’ve used this link in the past…

http://users.ixpres.com/~gtriphan/

[joec]

Thanks for sharing and bringing this up.

I’ve been looking at good solutions myself as well. Do you have a dog or home alarm system?

I’ve heard of many criminals doing the knocking the door thing and then, breaking in. I know someone who this happened to even though their kid was in the house at the time. They knocked and she ignored it, but they broke in and ransacked everything after no answer. Kid locked herself in her room and they tried to break in that door, but left after some hard, scary attempts at the door. They did mess up the rest of the house and stole many things in a truck.

Currently, we simply don’t open the door at all now figuring like spam, it’s better to not let them know if you are home or not and they can take their chances since you never open the door. If we didn’t have kids, I’d be a much bigger fan of guns at home as well, but that doesn’t help you when you are out. Best solution is to have nothing of thief value at home.

Do you know how long they were in the house? We have a camera as well, but are looking for more and more ways to secure the data since we’re storing it inside the house to a network NAS. Also more seriously considering the home alarm companies, but that doesn’t help since the police are really slow to respond anyways (thieves have at least 10 minutes+). It does help to limit their time if it’s blaring really loudly and they’d rather not bother. I hate how there has to be a monitoring fee and things like ADT say it’s free, but tack on a installation charge.

At this point, I am planning to get more deadbolts and chains (have to cut at least) and more seriously getting those door jam alarms which emit some loud noise when the door opens from the outside (probably a bigger deterrent), my concern if I am out is it keeps blaring non-stop for hours on end.

It’s impossible to keep a home completely secure, but please share ideas. I’m especially interested in the different home alarm companies, though concerned with the home alarm company’s disabling your alarm and robbing you from the inside.

Lastly, we’ve had stuff stolen before as well and the police does absolutely nothing…incredibly upsetting and feel very violated.

The macbook article is interesting. Are there GPS devices you can buy or software for the PC that does the same thing?

[joec]

[quote=Jacarandoso]
I think I deserve to pay my house off with credit cards and then not pay the cards off.[/quote]

Better yet, pay off your student loans which are near impossible to discharge with credit cards or home loans and default on those. 🙂

[joec]

As I understand it or hope how this will eventually work, there is no re-appraising your home as SDR posted about. If your overpriced LV home WAS worth 300k and now, 150k, it’s still appraised at 300k (or whatever the tax rolls say it is), you just get to lower your interest rate (assuming you want to, to begin with) say from 5.75 to 4.25 thereby lowering your payments. If I was in the situation where my property is down 50%, I think I’d just walk if I could. I have family that’s actually doing that now. It makes little business/financial sense to stay in a house if all you get is a lower interest rate. THERE IS NO REMOVING of principal or lowering what is actually owed, only your rate drops.

As for it being “wrong”, the problem is the GSE ALREADY OWNS every loan that this program would qualify for because they already own the loan to begin with.

I really don’t think this program is for folks who are 50% down or some of what people are posting about and folks that are like that should probably walk and not pay for an overpriced asset.

This is for folks who “want” to stay in their homes, HAVE been paying a higher rate on the value of their house/mortgage, and is OK that their home is down 10% or whatever, but want to be able to refi when previously, they couldn’t due to a list of reasons because the mortgage market is messed up. This could be like the article says, someone had a loss on a part-time biz which isn’t even their primary job, self-employed folks, folks with massive assets, but lower income due to time off for family, folks who put 20 or 30% down or whatever, but now, with valuation drops, only have 15% equity and can’t get the best rates…you name it.

The hope is that with a lower monthly payment, these folks who have been responsible with their payments/mortgage will use the money to help the economy a little by shopping, traveling, spending, etc…

A lot of economist like this proposal because it doesn’t add to the deficit and can stimulate the economy by putting more cash in the hands of people who might use it.

Also, if FNM And Freddie already OWN these loans to begin with, I am guessing, but assume they can call the bond investor’s note and re-issue them a new note if they want (the bond investors are the ones getting screwed here and who I see as the “l00sers”). However, the upside is that if the home owner has a lower rate/payment, they are less likely to default so the payments are more secure…Then again, if the GSE own the loans, then maybe that’s their right.

We’ll see what happens, but I don’t think this proposal “hurts” folks without mortgages as much as people make it out to be.

I hate big banks too, but you sorta need them unfortunately and more bank jobs for this, more people who will spend to eat out, etc…

[joec]

Article from WSJ on the “NEW” proposed refinance plan today.

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/113695/home-lending-revamp-planned-wsj?mod=loans-home

We’ll probably try to refinance soon as I clean up some of our accounts/credit items to prepare to refi if even possible.

Downside for us is we’re self employed and we’ve had some years where we dump a lot in retirement and try to keep income low for tax reasons which is a negative against us obviously.

Unfortunately, we’re probably in the minority here in supporting this.

We’ll see how this all plays out!

[joec]

I have family that live in Vegas and after getting used to it, they like it a lot. Tax savings are huge since they are insanely high dual income.

That said, if you are single, no kids/spouse like you say, it isn’t a bad idea since you work most of the week anyways and weekdays are shot to begin with. Weekends, it’s probably even cheaper to drive/fly/crash at a friend’s house or hotel if there is anything going on that weekend/party.

Most of the time, folks are so busy anyways to really see their friends as they get older w/ kids unless they also have kids themselves to do the whole kid party thing.

Depending on your hobbies, you’d probably be just as happy socking money away for a few years and move back later.

Downside maybe harder to keep in touch after you move so your friends won’t be as close anymore if you move away.

[joec]

[quote=flu]

joec,

FWIW: back in February, I was able to get an F10 5 series 100 below invoice in L.A. ….And the F10 was already the new body style…So, you *should* be able to get an E90 way below invoice, because what I don’t think we know is how much incentive the dealer is getting from the factory in terms of meeting their quotas, etc. That stuff doesn’t show up in edmunds, and varies depending on how well (or not) dealer moves cars off the lot…I can tell you, you can cross off the list any san diego dealer and the temecula dealership..There is no way you will get a better price down here versus in L.A. I dealt with all the dealers in S.D. and L.A., and the best dealers could do down in S.D./Temecula was to give me an offer $1200 above what I paid. If you need a referral, I can give you where I went, and who I worked with..He deals directly over email, so you don’t even need to go there.

Also, one big drawback i think with the F30 3 series will be..I believe it will also have electronic steering. It’s alright for a daily driver…But I’m not so sure if it’s going to be so wonderful if you plan on tracking the car…I wouldn’t be surprised if the first thing people try to do is figure out the “how to retrofit a steering rack from an e90 into an F30” mod…[/quote]

flu,

Sure, let me know where you purchased from in LA. I’m not surprised LA prices will be cheaper than here considering more dealers and LA being more competitive. Same for gas too usually I think.

Does your F10 5 series also have the electronic steering? I read a little about it, but we won’t be tracking the car or anything at all. I don’t think I’ll be doing any tracking for another 10-15 years at this point with low funds and small kids to deal with.

We’re considering leasing (for the business) the new 3 since we actually would like to get the new M3, but that won’t be out till 2013 for MY2014 so when the lease is up, maybe we will switch to that instead. I don’t think they have discounts for the M3 though with European Delivery.

Thanks for all your info and time!

[joec]

[quote=earlyretirement]My wife was deciding between an A4 and a BMW 328i. She loved both but it just came down to the Audi not being in stock with the one she wanted and it would have taken 3 or 4 months to order it.

Meanwhile the BMW they found one across the country like she wanted and transporting it here. I was amazed at how motivated the BMW dealerships are. Edmunds.com is the BEST way to buy a car as you have dealerships fighting after your business. We were getting $500 above dealer’s cost, then $250 over then $100 over and then even found a dealer that would give it to us at dealer’s cost which I’ve never before in all my years buying cars have seen.

We were all set to pay cash for the car but then they offered 1.9% financing if we financed it with BMW financing and then to boot, if we did, they rebated another $750 to go through them. So the financing costs very little as we put down a big down payment.

Plus they said we can have free weekly car washes for 2 years…… amazing how competitive they are right now.

Meanwhile, I went to the internet manager at Audi where I recently bought a Q7 to see if he can match BMW’s deal and offer the car AT COST and also got him to agree to it.

So car buying these days is definitely much easier using online sources like Edmunds. Love it..[/quote]

I also check truecar to see what people are paying. As flu said, the new 3-series BMWs are coming out next year so the current gen is being heavily discounted like pretty much below dealer invoice easy.

We’re in the same boat and considering the new 3 as well as Lexus (weak performance though). With BMW, you can also consider taking European delivery which will save you about 12% I think. That translates to about 5k or more which will cover your whole vacation to Europe. You can also join BMW CCA (club) for another 500-1000 discount depending on model…as well as loyalty cash, and sometimes, they have discounts for driving events, etc…

[joec]

Congrats on buying and I wouldn’t worry too much about the exact bottom. You gotta live somewhere after all. 4S ranch houses rent for about 3400-3500 I saw on craigslist. With 20% down and tax benefits, I think it’s sorta a wash even with the MR and tax.

At least you can now enjoy other things in your life and not waste gobs of time looking for housing. It’s very time consuming to visit houses and check for them online all the time. The loan portion is stressful too with how things are now.

I don’t know, for me, I think I actually like dinky lots. Less to pay in landscaping and maintenance and I’m rarely, if ever out there.

So far, the only thing I’ve done in my backyard is mow the lawn and used the grill a few times. Maybe this will change when my kids are bigger…

Enjoy!

[joec]

Sad article on people in poverty now:
http://news.yahoo.com/behind-poverty-numbers-real-lives-real-pain-151738270.html

I think short of some massive upheaval (world war, mass riots/killings/crime, aliens), I don’t think much will change. We’ll just bump along the bottom here.

There simply aren’t enough “do with your hands” jobs which pay a decent amount. In a service/information global society, just unlikely these jobs will be back.

Tough thing for a lot of the folks is if you have kids, you’re sorta screwed since no affordable daycare to allow you to work. Best bet I think for these folks is give the kid up for adoption, but that probably wouldn’t work for the older kids.

[joec]

[quote=SD Realtor]One thing that you will eventually learn being a landlord is that sometimes it is worth your time and effort to deal with issues like this and sometimes it is not. Moving on may be the best thing. Also owning properties that far away may dictate that hiring a property manager would be worth the money.[/quote]

For something as complex as this, will a property manager even know what to do?

[joec]

I think the hourglass has more to do with how we spend. People will still spend a lot on things they really like or hobbies and be cheap in other areas they don’t care about.

People in CV spend for stuff they don’t care about at 99 cent stores, but will still buy nice Lexuses, send their kids to private schools, property investments, fine dining, trips, etc…on the high end.

Like I use cheap 1 dollar shampoo and wear mostly cheap/free shirts. A $10 haircut is $10 too much. But I don’t mind spending on a lux car or nice tech toys…

[joec]

I’d have to agree with AN, having LIVED in the city (SF), it’s great if you have the time/money/disposal income to go out all the time and stuff, but once the kids come, I think the majority will move for more space and quiet in the suburbs.

I don’t have to post it, but there are tons upon tons of articles about SF not having any families at all. Also, when you have kids, do you really even WANT to go out and party? You’re usually too old for that and have so little time. All IMO of course. I hate cities with their pollution, noise, vandals, partiers every thursday night coming home friday morning at 2am, etc…

Glad to live in the suburbs.

Also, I think women tend to like living in the city more than men. Men like garages, cars, don’t care about being seen as much (after marriage and kids of course) so the “city” offers very little…IMO again. I’m sure you can find 1 “guy” who likes the city, but most would rather spend the money on other things IMO. Cities tend to also be more expensive to live.

Gotta admit dining is a lot better, but take a baby to any fine dining place and it’s a nightmare in stressful dining. Take out baby!

[joec]

You can get pretty fancy with some of these things. I am doing research now and saw a vid of someone hooking up his generator to power his house and he switches on and off the specific rooms/appliances he needs. This way, you don’t have to plug “only the stuff downstairs” and just manage it at the switch box level.

Really nice and I doubt I could or want to deal with it myself since I’ll probably get fried. 🙂

But that would be really convenient since it’ll happen again for sure.

There was one at Costco for 699 for the ETQ 7250 just after the blackouts. Sold out now. But you’ll need various other pieces I believe to make it all work.

[joec]

Generally, use a credit card vs. funds in paypal or if it’s directly attached to your bank. You get points like other people say and with some cards, you also get additional benefits like extra warranty, rental car protection, etc…

Using a credit card in PP is sorta the same as credit card though.

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