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kev374
ParticipantThanks for all the input on this. ATL is specifically a good option for me because:
– Extremely good wages (same or higher than LA/OC) and opportunities in my area, ATL is the largest tech hub in the Southeast
– Many world class tracks nearby for me to ride
– I am huge into hiking/camping so there is good hiking in the Smokey mountains (does not hold a candle to the Sierra Nevadas but it’s something and much better than anything in TX)
– SCUBA is my other interest – very close to Miami/Keys with cheap flights for weekend trips or I could even drive to FL, there is good wreck diving from Tallahassee, Bahamas is a weekend possibility too! Heaven!
– Ridiculously lower cost of living compared to LA
– 9th largest MSA in the US offering a multi-cultural experience
– Busiest airport in the world offers more connections to the rest of the world than LA
– Saving craploads and sh!tloads of money so I could not only buy a PALACE (by LA standards) I could probably afford a NICE car as well 🙂 instead of living like a pauper in LA.. making 6 figures and down and out LOL! Ok..exaggerating a bit but still trying to make a point 😀
Participant[quote=spdrun]And SoCal isn’t a raging, humid, hot rathole like humidlanta. There’s a REASON why prices are higher in CA than in JawhJah.[/quote]
Actually I lived in the South about 2 decades ago and don’t recall it being a humid, hot rathole at all. The weather was fine…many places around the world have such weather, Singapore is an example and even New York City has humid weather. When I go to places like Cancún and Cozumel it’s humid there too but I manage to enjoy myself! That in itself is no reason to dismiss a place, people in CA are just too spoiled! As I said I grew up in the tropics, I can handle it.
I was in Bangkok for a while and THAT place is humid, but I absolutely loved my time in Bangkok despite the searing heat and humidity. Same thing about Miami, it was humid as hell but there were other aspects about the place that I liked which took the focus away from the weather.
I have friends who live in the South, a couple in Tennessee and one in Savannah, GA. They seem to absolutely LOVE where they are living. Californians have this delusion that everyone living outside of CA is miserable!
What is a rathole is the various neighborhoods in LA or OC you would find yourself if you have anything less than craploads of money.
Gang infested sh!tholes like Sylmar and Pacoima or Santa Ana and Garden Grove are now your only options if you don’t have gobs of cash or super jumbo financing! People here only seem to talk about the weather but what about the other aspects that contribute to quality of life? The ability to have money to spend on other comforts on life besides housing? The ability to live in a great neighborhood? The ability to send your kids to good schools?
What good is the weather going to do you if you’re spending half a million dollars, which is a princely sum for even the upper middle class, to live in a gang infested sh!thole?
ParticipantTexas does not interest me, I don’t like the topography of that area – it’s flat as a pancake. ATL is located near the Blue Ridge and Smokey mountains and the landscape is more varied.
As an avid motorcyclist who frequents the track I also have Road Atlanta and Barber closeby which are world-class racetracks. There is virtually nothing in TX. The morons at Circuit of the Americas in Austin have kept the fees so high that nobody does track days there!
Staying in LA/OC is not an option as the numbers simply don’t make any sense. Being financially conservative I want to limit myself to 3x my gross for a home and want to pay it off within 15 years. I also have some minimum standards for a place I buy, 2 car garage, 1500sqft for $400k. When I told my Realtor that, he thought I wanted a mansion for my budget. This is supposed to be a mansion? I think things have gone so out of whack here that there is a total disconnect between what is a basic home vs what is a mansion. And a $400k home is not cheap to me, that’s close to half million. I don’t get the mindset of people in LA/OC, they hardly have $20k in the bank but talk like taking a loan for $500-600k is no big deal. To me that is downright ridiculous and foolish but to each his own.
I could wait for prices to come down but i’ve waited long enough for that, there was a very very brief window of opportunity in 2012 but unfortunately I could not capitalize on that due to some personal circumstances. By the time I was ready the vultures..er..investors were trampling over each other to buy all the homes and before I even blinked the inventory was zero. I know for a FACT Realtors who were taking kickbacks during that time and selling “pocket listings” to their internal clientele…it was too late before I came to know the dirty tricks of the Realtor trade!! Anyway no point bitching about all that now! Let’s just say the LA/OC market is a circus that I no longer wish to participate in. For those that want to, good for you, I wish you luck. As for me time to concentrate on the future 🙂
It is akin to businesses moving out of state, at some point you have to run the numbers and make a decision about the cost vs benefit. I still think Southern California is one of the best, if not the best, places to live but that is only IF one has craploads of money OR one bought real estate during the cheap era. If you are not in one of these 2 categories then living here is infact much worse – you have to settle for substandard homes in substandard neighborhoods, no thanks!
ParticipantI would be worried about planes as people are in very close proximity to each other there… a sneeze or cough onto another person could transmit the virus as it takes only a microscopic amount to infect another person…although they say it isn’t possible to spread it through aerosol i’m not entirely convinced it’s impossible..unlikely perhaps, impossible not sure.
The virus is supposed to be very hardy and can survive outside the body for many days.
ParticipantNo way tjete is going to be a 35-50% correction, that would literally be apocalyptic and it has not ever happened in the past!
Participant[quote=Disgruntled Patriot]Love does conquer all, including fear, anger, bias, and greed. It is forgiving, and does not keep score. That said, if you love her, it would be an undeniable truth that would not need the advice of your fellow piggs! [/quote]
so what are you saying? Everyone who divorced never truly loved their partner? Sometimes you may love the other person but that may not be enough to maintain a healthy long term relationship. I think love is certainly a very important component to a relationship but for a relationship to succeed long term there have to be other factors in place as well…
There is a modicum of truth in the saying “one cannot live on love and fresh air alone” 😉
Participantwhat is surprising is how many long time married couples are splitting up these days…
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/30/world/europe/prince-harry-cressida-bonas-split/index.html?hpt=wo_t4
granted these are celebs but I also know a couple friends who got divorced, one after 9 yrs of marriage and the other after 14 years together.
I wonder what motivated these people to divorce. One would imagine that after so much time together they would’ve learned to deal with each others quirks. Perhaps one person suddenly changed for the worse?
ParticipantIt’s not hard in life to avoid baggage. For most people it holds true that if they have baggage it’s due to bad decisions they have made.
People who took out way too much debt for school with no chance of paying it off in a reasonable timeframe.
People who got directly or indirectly scammed (either due to sheer stupidity or greed)
People who lived above their means
People who are in trouble because they co-signed for other delinquents or somehow support the behavior of other delinquents.
People who have serious emotional issues (Borderline personality disorders, Bi-polar etc.)
Now, if you accidently hit a car on the freeway and now are being sued beyond what your insurance will cover then I can maybe sympathize…it’s an unforseeable event and could happen to anyone. If you are being sued because you signed fraudulent paperwork, then claim ignorance and then vehemently deny that any of it is your fault and then expect unconditional support…well, tough luck!
There are guys who are desperate enough to marry just about anyone..my ex ex GF had a student loan balance of $70,000 7 odd years out of school and made only $34k/yr. It was revealed that most of this debt was acquired through extravagant “living expenses” in college and of course she justified it as well. In addition she lived way above her means and had close to $0 in the bank (paycheck to paycheck living)
Just like many women here in Orange County she felt she was just entitled to have an expensive wedding, raise a large family, be a stay at home mom etc. and the expectation was that her mate would pick up the pieces…nevermind the fact that she had not done any diligence with her financial affairs to prepare for all the things that she wanted.
Now, found out she is just engaged to some bloke. Well, what was unacceptable to me was apparently acceptable to him so, there IS indeed someone for everyone I guess…
Participant[quote=Blogstar]Ex-girlfriend? I guess that makes the real question; How much baggage does Kev have to work through before he can be in a healthy relationship, and especially not attract and spend several years with women who are beneath him?[/quote]
well, things have always been great between us. We had great chemistry right from the start, a lot of common interests..we never ran out of things to do together. The reason for our breakup was purely the fact that I did not want the take on the baggage and her opinion was that if I truly loved her the baggage is part of her and I would have to accept it that way.
Countering to that I felt that if SHE truly loved me she would see that it is unfair to put a liability that is not mine potentially on my shoulders. What I expected was for her to say that she would hold on getting married until she sorts things out which I would’ve agreed to. But she wanted kids etc.
Isn’t this pretty common? 50% of marriages end in divorce, surely most of these marriages started out with both believing the other was their soulmate and that things were perfect between them…but what happened? How could things go from perfect to disaster?
And statistically upto 70% of 2nd marriages end in divorce yet I know a huge number of people who have divorced and rushed into 2nd marriages – because I guess the pain of being alone is too much?
There is the camp that believes that people who end up divorced were blinded by love and ignored red flags in the pre-marital relationship, then there are others that say that it is a gamble and hard to tell where the marriage will wind up…just a chance you have to take.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
My husband’s father is an absolute piece of dirt, but my DH won’t associate with him. IMO, that makes it okay, maybe even better than okay, because my DH recognizes bad character and chooses to disassociate with those people. [/quote]This is the key. I was not convinced that my ex GF was not close to her mom, infact I am convinced of the opposite. Even if she showed that she was mad at her mom for entangling her in the scam she did not mention that she was going to cut off contact.
I mean, her mom made her sign some papers that faked a release of a property by a bank and that document was filed with the county). That in itself is a felony. Someone bought said property cash relying on the county records and the bank is now foreclosing as the amount owed was never paid. The buyer is now suing for fraud, damages and amount owed. Both my ex and her mom are claiming that they are now victims of a foreclosure scam. Yes, people claim they are victims when they are caught.
While I DO believe my ex did it to help her mom out I also think both knew it was something shady.
They way I look at it, when you don’t pay your bills and believe that somehow you can get rid of what you owe then you bloody well know that what you are doing is a FRAUD, no matter how you slice it.
And her mom is so sleazy that she made her own daughter sign the doc and throw her under the bus. Should someone stay in contact with such a person?
And all I told my ex is that I want to hold off on marriage and kids until this thing blows over…that is all I asked. This was unreasonable for her, she wanted me to marry and have kids regardless of the outcome of the suit and in her own words “if I have to pay this much money off then it’s a sacrifice that you will have to make to be with me”.
Of course, I chose the EXIT route. I live my life very cautiously and carefully. There is no 100% guarantee of anything but from my side I try my best to be financially cautious, save, live well below my means and not get into any issues. I am very financially stable but my condition reflects my choices in life. This also means I don’t have too much stress and I want to keep it that way.
Participantyeah, definitely hard to believe. She says she was also scammed once in her early 20s by her ex BF for $30k which she paid off working 3 jobs. Now entwined in a scam again ? I don’t think she is a bad character actually – quite generous, caring etc. but I definitely think she can’t stand up to pressure from her mom.
Her bro is also a delinquent type – no job, education or anything but drives a Mercedes. Where does he get the money, nobody in the extended family knows anything which is too suspicious to me. He may be selling drugs…who the heck knows? The bro also hs shown violent behavior by punching the walls in the mom’s home (who the F does that?) and has called the mom and my ex the B word etc. Horrible guy… oh and btw he got some girl in a club pregnant, had a grand old baby shower and then when the baby was born the DNA test revealed it wasn’t even his LOL!
Man, this is material for Jerry Springer or what…geez! I tried not to hold all this crap against my ex GF as I felt it wasn’t fair to judge her for the behavior of her mom/bro but when I thought of it she is still influenced by them…and that is what was scary and made me leave.
Participant[quote=scaredyclassic]Her parents’ character matters. A lot.[/quote]
that’s what a lot of people tell me. That no matter what, unless she is estranged from the mother, she is going to be influenced in the future like it or not.
Her mother is a fraud artist and con in my opinion but when I went back and saw some pics on my ex-GF’s Facebook it has comments about her mom like “My mom is an amazing woman” which really bothered me.
Participant@bearishgurl, I don’t think that was me as I was never engaged.
My situation is as described in the previous post but I already broke up with her after a lot of thought and discussing it with various people who told me that marriage has it’s own stresses and challenges in it regardless of how perfect the union and chemistry is and adding more baggage to it at the outset is only going to add that much more stress to the equation.
I guess i’m just trying to find solace in the fact that I did break up with someone I loved for what I think are justifiable reasons but sometimes I have some self-doubt and guilt if what I did was a bit superficial although a huge number of people tell me that it’s quite reasonable to not want to take on a burden like that since I am debt free.
Participantwhat if the financial liability was from a real estate scam that was orchestrated by her mother? And she committed misrepresentation and is thus being sued along with her mother but claims innocence in the whole thing saying she trusted the mother who said all was legit?
So Blogstar, you’re saying you would be ok marrying someone who had $90k student loans and earns $35,000/yr? After marriage what if she decides that it’s best for her to be a stay at home mom while you have to slog your behind off not only to support a family with one income but also pay her $90k in student debt off.
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