[JPJones]

Agreed.  Time to nope out.

[JPJones]

JPJones – Why shouldn’t unemployment be low? It seems to me that what has been going on over the last decade is a steady drum beat of how horrible things are. The news makes more money by printing stories about how bad things are then about good things. Last consumer sentiment was terrible.  But things aren’t terrible. People just listen to what they’ve been told, and they’ve been told the world is heading for disaster. The economy is doing very nicely. People are working and spending. Yeah, fed rate is up to 5%.  That’s not a huge deal, it only seems so because we got used to ZIRP. There’s some inflation but hey this ain’t Zimbabwe. The stock market has been in the doldrums for a while now, but so what. Maybe we do get a recession in the near future, maybe not. But you should stop listening to whomever is convincing you that things are bad and collapse is just around the corner.

I wasn’t trying to say things were bad.  Things aren’t bad, which is pretty sweet, but I thought they might be based on what I was seeing in the numbers.  5-6% interest rates on a mortgage is considered ideal, so yeah, that’s not bad, either.  3.4% unemployment?  That’s too low and is one big reason inflation is still uncomfortably high (4.3%).  It’s also what I see as the biggest reason housing prices are steady or moving up both locally and nationally.

[JPJones]

Sorry, to clarify, I’m at a loss as to why unemployment is staying so low, not why housing prices are staying put or rising.  I said at the start of the year that if unemployment stayed this low, housing prices probably wouldn’t drop, and it looks like that’s what’s happening.

[JPJones]

All of those things are constants and have little to do with why their prices fluctuate.  They were not immune to the ’07/’08 crash and all of those things were true then as well.

[JPJones]

And unemployment went down again!  I still think it’s a terrible time to try and buy, but man, I figured we’d be in at least a mild recession by now with unemployment ticking significantly upward.  Maybe someone savvy than me can try to explain what’s going on.  I’m at a loss, but to be honest, I’m pretty happy to wrong on this one.

[JPJones]

[quote=scaredyclassic]Go for a walk around the lakes in Whistler. Gorgeous paths near lake. No fences. No dogs barking wildly.

Go for a walk in the USA. No beach access. Private property. Fences. Dogs that want to eat you. Owners armed to the fucking teeth watching Fox fucking news. Calling the cops because why the fuck are you walking around, near their houses, anyway. Very suspicious.

I think I might actually need to retire out of the USA.[/quote]

Eh. Air travel sucks and we can just drive up to Mammoth. It sounds like all of your gripes would be addressed by moving to NorCal.

Unless that is you aren’t happy unless you have lots to complain about, in which case you’d best stay put. 😉

[JPJones]

You should buy a place there! I hear housing is cheap. XD

Once you’ve bought a place and moved up, report back after Winter so we can see how well this opinion holds up. No? Still good? Try again after summer. It broke 100 this year and if you think AC is scarce in SD, boy have I got news for you!

Canada isn’t better or worse than the US. It’s just a little different.

[JPJones]

Nominal I think. Whichever one does not account for inflation.

[JPJones]

The Spring 2021 boom, right? 😉

[JPJones]

ARMAGEDDON! (I hope at least someone here gets that reference.)

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/consumer-price-index-september-2022-.html

20% by year end? Booked! Might even push that to 25% with today’s news on inflation. If we get 2 75pt rate hikes between November and December, we could see 30-35% down by y/e ’23.

This is getting weird.

[JPJones]

[quote=svelte][quote=scaredyclassic]So if you have no extra monies and refinance, I agree, it’s all gravy. But if you have a 500k mortgage and much more than that in monies to possibly pay it off, and you refi, you are gambling you can do better than the interest rate you’re paying, after tax.

Gambling. Yep. Not a bad bet, but gambling.[/quote]

Agreed.

I can see both sides of the coin – nobody’s going to get severely burned whether they cash-out refied at a low rate and put that into CDs, or whether they paid off their mortgage and kept expenses low. Both are reasonable courses of action.

And neither course is going to have a major impact on finances. One isn’t drastically better than the other.

But I tend to think that folks who see a big pile of money in their accounts will think they can spend more. So there is a chance that it will get frittered away and the financial advantage (if interest rates continue to rise and there becomes a financial advantage – I don’t believe the numbers work at the moment) would disappear if that happened.[/quote]

Yup! Money burnin’ a hole in my pocket and all that.

[JPJones]

[quote=The-Shoveler]IMO FED moving way too fast, once this starts going south it’s going to snowball in a hurry.

Anyway just my opinion[/quote]

With you here. Unemployment in September somehow dropped again from 3.7% to 3.5%, which means we’ll probably get another .75% rate increase in November. It might just be my inexperience talking, but it feels like our bike has the speed wobbles and we’re about to eat shit hard.

[JPJones]

[quote=an]Or, what about people who were at 4-5% and refi to lock in at <3%? Take all the $ they save and buy a 5years CD today?[/quote]

This was the biggie for our household. For us, it's not about leveraging equity for the greatest financial gain, but rather reducing our monthly overhead as near to zero as we can manage without taking any real financial risks. I know there are faster, more effective ways to get there, but I've never liked this culture of debt the royal we seems so attached to. I think that part of our culture is why our economy seems to go sideways with the slightest imbalance, so I avoid it as much as I can manage.

[JPJones]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Now All Restaurants are Taco Bell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFiDoOgRTpk%5B/quote%5D

unintelligible grunting

[JPJones]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=JPJones][quote=scaredyclassic]Wow. It’s fun.

I think I’m gonna get some skates and skate all the time.[/quote]
Heck yeah! Start doing squats and get a bosu ball to work on ankle strength when you’re home daydreaming about a good skate while all the rinks are closed. Ice skating is my zen thing, but knees and hips are prone to injury without at least a little conditioning.[/quote]

going round and round in circles, hour after hour, till midnight, music on, people weaving in and out, felt like I was in an altered state.[/quote]
And it’s low impact to boot! Great for the core and the spirit! It’s the perfect exercise.

[Author]

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