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poorgradstudent
ParticipantI’m borderline millenial; I’m too young to be Gen X, but at a Millenial party I’d be the old dude married with a kid.
Doesn’t everyone want quick service that delivers good value? Everone wants stuff that is good, quick and cheap, but in life you really only get to choose 2/3. And having worked in a hardware store when I was 17, I can tell you a lot of Boomer men are they type to want a service person there exactly when they need them, and be otherwise invisible.
On the other hand, I do think millenials are much more comfortable dealing with sales and service people over chat or text. This actually may revolutionize medicine when we’re older; if Doctors are finally able to provide a lot more care through online appointments it could potentially save huge amounts of time and money.
Participant[quote=spdrun]Seriously, other than bad simulations of Europe and legal bordellos outside of city limits, what does Vegas offer that I can’t get within 100 miles of NYC? [/quote]
We can’t drive to NYC from San Diego. The food in Vegas is definitely some of the best in the world, although San Fran can certainly compete.
As for the heat, there’s always the legendary vegas pools and the associate eye candy. Although again, in San Diego we don’t have to drive too far to get a similar experience at the beach.
Vegas is really better for single people than married, settled folks.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler][quote=spdrun]The only thing that’s unique about Vegas these days (in the US) is that it has legal bordellos outside of city limits.[/quote]
Seriously when was the last time you were in Vegas?
You can do a grand canyon Air tour, see a water canon show see Paris, venice the mediterranean sea and then take in a show all in one day LOL.
I know it’s all fake but it’s good for a few days V-Time.[/quote]
It’s also a great place to play poker, especially Friday and Saturday around 10 PM. There’s this lovely window where half-drunk tourists have eaten dinner but aren’t quite ready to go to the clubs happily sit down and drop $50-100 at a poker table in half an hour.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=CA renter]
How much of our “growth” in recent years is simply due to the Fed’s machinations? I would argue that most of it is, in one way or another. And, yes, it is scary.[/quote]What does it matter where the growth comes from? It’s people actually working, trading, doing commerce, exchanging money,… all productive activities.[/quote]
The main area where GDP can be a bit misleading is military spending and activities. Some military spending is stimulative, but waging war is pretty costly. $1m spent on roads has more of a long term boost to an economy than $1m spent on tanks, although both contribute to the GDP equally.
Of course GDP is more of a snapshot than a picture of long term health or investment.
Participant[quote=joec]Generally, I tend to think it’s not as gloom as doom as some of the other posters here, but the idea that the Bank of Japan is just going to throw money at stocks to stimulate the economy sounds a bit strange/scary…
If earnings collapse or slow and governments are buying in “just because”, it seems like this is a last gasp of the market.
There’s no reason to buy, just that the government needs to buy to make the price go up higher…seems like pushing on a string/trying too hard.[/quote]
Japan’s local economy is weird. However a lot of their actions as of late are experimental and motivated more on politics than good policy.
By itself, BoJ can’t move the needle that much in the global marketplace. Japan has very different demographics than most of the world which can make their policies a little different, and their corporations have even more direct control of the government than ours do.
Participant[quote=CA renter]Wondering why you didn’t use the inspection report to negotiate, though. Also, if they see the inspection report and/or were notified of the problems — which they would likely do if you were using it to negotiate with them on repairs/cash-in-lieu/price reduction (my preference because you don’t have to pay property taxes on it as you likely would with cash-in-lieu or seller’s repairs) — they would legally have to disclose this information to any other potential buyers. You can use this to your advantage.[/quote]
This is tricky with “bubble” homes that have very little or no equity in the house, and there are quite a few of those on the market these days. Leveraging $2,000 is a lot easier than leveraging 10,000 or 20,000.
Obviously the seller is going to still have the same problems with future potential buyers, but sometimes they just don’t have any wiggle room and have to hope they can find someone willing to pay enough to make it work.
ParticipantWe walked from a house for less (bad roof that the owners didn’t have the cash to pay to fix). It’s why you do the inspection. As others noted, some of these things are things you now know to check when you see a house and are considering making an offer. When you view a house, by all means, flush the toilet, check to make sure there is hot water. Foundation issues are tough for us lay-folk to detect, but if there are a lot of little things that suggest poor upkeep, that’s the smoke that suggests a fire.
Assuming your loan was approved, you should be able to apply that same loan application fee to future purchases. Obviously some lenders or brokers vary in their policies, but most want your business enough to cut you some slack in cases like these.
Participant[quote=spdrun]Retail is a hard business to be in. Locations close, open, and move all of the time. Not a sign of anything ominous, necessarily.[/quote]
Mall stores are also struggling all around as part of a long term trend. Malls still get tons of foot traffic around the Holidays… and very little otherwise.
I’m personally slightly sad to hear about the Fashion Valley C&B closing only because my wife and I did one of our wedding registries there.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]The most interesting thing about the vote yesterday to me was that in almost every state with a higher minimum wage measure it “passed”.
Even in red states.
I think that sends a pretty clear message.
Top down did not work, time to give bottom up a try.And Silver dropping again, I got stopped out yesterday so I am out ![/quote]
I thought last night sent a pretty muddled message. Essentially the American voter wants legal marijuana, a higher minimum wage and doesn’t favor restricted abortion rights… and also voted Republican?
Participant[quote=spdrun]1) Only if there are other willing buyers of gov’t debt at the prices the Fed pays
2) Sure, but there isn’t a prayer of a GOP House raising min wage significantly. At this point, it’s a state matter, practically speaking.[/quote]We’re actually in the process of running an incredibly interesting minimum wage experiment in this country, as some states and cities are jacking up their wages while others are sticking with the low Fed minimum. In a few years we’ll have some nice data that either shows the higher wages do in fact cause inflation and don’t help the little guy at all, or a higher minimum wage reduces the poverty level.
… (or the truth will lie somewhere in between, which will keep the waters nice and muddy).
Participant[quote=CA renter][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.[/quote]
It’s been my experience that women, and people in general, like cleverness and wit, which can come when you add social skills to intellect. People don’t like to be made to feel stupid or inferior, which was something I didn’t understand as a cocky teenager. Using your brains to create something interesting is attractive, but constantly using it to show everyone how smart you are is not (One of my wife’s friend’s husband is pretty awful in this regard).
Intelligence is like a generator. On it’s own it isn’t especially useful, but it can certainly be harnessed for useful application.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]I still got a good vibe feeling going for USA,
IE economy starting to ramp up these days (fastest growing economic area in California now).
L.A. ports at record volume.
Manufacturing being on shored now.
Feels good to me.
I think I will buy a little silver just because (nearing 5 year low).[/quote]
I feel like some of these are lagging indicators. It really depends if you want to take a current snapshot of the battleship (economies can’t really turn on dimes, so a boat is a better analogy than a car) or look ahead where that battleship is heading. We’re in pretty good waters right now, but there is some reason to worry we’re heading into trouble down the road.
I’m far less doom and gloom than some of the posters in this thread (Piggington has a history of drawing in PermaBears), but there really is a lot of concern the global economy will drag us down. As noted in this thread several times, low energy prices could provide a bit of a buffer in the middle-term. Consumer spending was down last quarter largely because Americans are spending less at the pump. Some of those saved dollars are going to trickle into other areas.
ParticipantI noticed that dip yesterday. Gold has fallen quite a bit this year too.
I’d wait for a true bottom (don’t try to catch a falling knife), but on the first sign of life it’s probably a good time to buy.
Participant[quote=scaredyclassic]
i’m plannign to spend a lot of money on some wood floors for part of the house that has icky carpet. is that considered a loser or does the floor retain some value? i want really expensive salvaged barn wood floors from old barns where happy animals lived productive lives.[/quote]I have an irrational love of wood floors, so I’m not objective there.
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