[skerzz]

[quote=bearishgurl]
Thank you for posting this, skerzz. My youngest kid is currently at a CSU majoring in Business Admin – Accounting Option. ALL eight of the CSU business disciplines are worth majoring in, with finance and accounting the most “lucrative” majors, IMO.

Not sure you read this whole thread, but one of yamashi’s 3 kids is in school most of the day. He stated he is paying $3000 month for daycare for 2 kids. The other $1000 month is for “extracurricular activities” for the school-age child.

I have a longtime “doggy daycare provider” which I pay $25 for each “overnight.” She has regular “daycare clients” but I’ve never taken my dog to her unless I’m leaving town and my dog will live with her while I’m gone. So I don’t know how much she charges for Doggy Day Care.[/quote]

No problem. Accounting, while not very “sexy”, can be a pretty solid profession — high demand/job security, many well paying positions in public practice or industry, opportunities to work for yourself, and decent “flexibility” in work schedule. I can’t think of many other professions that would allow someone with a 4-year CSU degree to land a job straight out of college that has the potential to pay $500K+ per year after 10-15 years of (well paying) on the job experience.

Regarding the day care — even two kids at $3K/month, while cheaper options may exist (i.e. live-in nanny), is not overly expensive if you look at the hourly cost (assuming he pays a fixed monthly fee)…. 8 hour days, 20x per week is still under $9.5/hour and if he uses day care 12 hours per day, the cost drops to $6.25/hour; or looked at another way, $75/day per kid. A quick google search of going daily dog care rates in the area is roughly $25 – 30/day without goodies/extras. Considering the above and how much work it is to watch a child, $3K/month for day care for two children, while still expensive relative to a mortgage payment, etc., is not “absurd”. Perhaps I’ve been desensitized and learned to accept the costs since I’ll be paying for several more years. The alternative is to forgo the wife’s income which would significantly increase our effective household “daycare” costs and significantly decrease our forced “contribution” (i.e. tax burden) to the “greater good”.

[skerzz]

[quote=bearishgurl][quote=skerzz]There’s no way I’d plan on having 3 kids with 5-12 years age gap between them. You’d be looking at a minimum of 28 years of kids in the house. I may be biased given I have 2 under 2, but I’d rather deal with diapers, lack of sleep, etc while I am young. I’ll wait 2 more years before having one more, and my diaper changing days will be over before I turn 35. To each his/her own, but IMO having kids close in age is not an irresponsible act, nor is it something isolated to millennial parents. Perhaps it’s a generalization, that at best, can be applied to a certain street in a certain neighborhood within San Diego county.[/quote]I never stated it was “irresponsible,” skerzz. I stated that deliberately having 2-3 kids one after another (all single births) is a recipe for financial insecurity for the family in this day and age due to one parent usually being out of the workforce for several years so close to graduating from college, while their diploma is still “fresh” (assuming they actually did). I just haven’t in my experience seen any of these SAHP’s ever return to the FT workforce, even after their kids are teens and adults! In all practicality, it never happens. The “long-term SAHP experience” stunts a person’s ability to acquire their needed 40 quarters of SS to be eligible for old-age benefits in their own right while they are still young enough to get hired. They are also unable to participate in so many other workplace benefits, including being in line for promotions, vested into a pension program and participating in a funds-matching retirement program, etc.

It’s not about my street or neighborhood which is predominately senior citizen homeowners (but becoming less so every year). Large families with several minor children can be found everywhere, even in $1M+ areas. Oh, and we have two nearby Mormon Wards if that helps you understand things a little better, skerzz.

These millenial-family tenants are just a function of there being more available rental SFR’s around here now due to “flipper invasion” in recent years. SD County has a pretty thin selection of rental SFRs and the rents are more “affordable” around me because the typical rental house tends to be only 1100-1400 sf and we are not close to tech and biotech job centers.

Yes, no one understands it better than I do (maybe Donald Trump?) how many years (decades) it takes to raise a “spaced apart” family :-0

This is a good argument for why women can’t “have it all” but the truth is that they CAN successfully “have it all” but must be very careful not to have their kids too close together (or just have one child) if they expect to continue working FT without a hitch and not be an “attendance problem” at work after their maternity leaves are over. I DID have a co-worker who had 5 kids all minors living at home but she had SEVERAL relatives living on her street who were providing care for the children.

If a SAHP elects to depend upon other individuals in their lives (partners) to furnish their “retirements” for them, that could prove in the end to be a perilous proposition and I wouldn’t recommend adopting this mindset … especially for the degreed individual :=0[/quote]

I know several very “successful” women in my profession (high ranking partners at large international accounting firms) that have had successful careers while also having had multiple children that are very close in age. These women are not part of the older boomer generation, so maybe your misconceived perception is due to the fact that not many boomer women did (or could do) this under the old school “face time”/”seniority” above-all-else work mentality of the good ‘ol days. My wife and I are millennials and had children very close in age; believe it or not, my wife has been successful in her career. Employers seem to be flexible (flex schedules, maternity leave, etc.) with high performing employees/professionals as they recognize the “bottom line” value of top performers and that they need to offer employee flexibility to be competitive by attracting and retaining top talent. Perhaps this is due to the fact that younger are will to change jobs to get what they want/need (“if employer X doesn’t offer needed flexibility, that’s fine, I’ll go work for employer Y that does”). Time to leave the good ‘ol days and expand your narrow view on the way the world works : )

[skerzz]

[quote=FlyerInHi]From what I understand, $4,000 for 3 kids is about right.

$3,000 daycare and private preschool expenses will go away after the kids get older.

What’s wrong with spending money on your kids if you can afford it?

Nothing wrong with aiming high. Piano and language school are wonderful for kids. They learn best at a young age.

Why do you keep on pushing CSU? it’s the path to mediocrity. For example, CSU path won’t allow one to become a federal judge or supreme court justice.[/quote]

We had one child (1 year old) in a day care and the cost was $1,650/month. I agree that 3 kids for $4K month is about right (not overly expensive) for workweek care (6AM -6PM care, as needed , 5 days a week). Assuming 8 hours of care is provided per day (could be up to 12), that’s approx 480 hours of service per month (3 kids x 8 hours x 20 days) or roughly $8.33 per hour. Pretty reasonable when you consider that it costs about half that to put your dog in “doggy day care” for a day or what it costs per hour to hire a gardener to maintain your lawn. With our second child, we found it cheaper (and more convenient) to hire a live-in nanny that not only watches the kids, but also runs errands/performs house keeping duties.

I disagree that CSU is a path to mediocrity. My situation isn’t uncommon in my profession — I used my “mediocre” 4-year CSU education to gain employment at one of the largest international CPA Firms. I get a slight chuckle knowing my “cheap” CSU education landed me the same job as some of my peers that loaded up on student loan debt while getting educated at the more “expensive/elite” universities (USC, USD, etc.). This experience may be unique to my industry, but definitely proves CSU education is not always a guaranteed path to mediocrity.

[skerzz]

[quote=bearishgurl][quote=yamashi1][quote=bearishgurl]we didn’t have them one after another in immediate succession (at least not planned), like I see multiple families headed by millenials do. We couldn’t because FT daycare for 2+ kids at a time (without assistance from relatives) took up too much of a chunk of our paychecks. [/quote] This is more dribble with no fact checking. It might be true, and it might relate to your personal opinion. It makes you sound like you think we are a bunch of irresponsible kids who don’t have fiscal sense. Personally I know a lot of people who space them out, but I think that’s more of a personal choice. I spend a lot of money a month >$4k on schooling and day care, but again I don’t want to be 65 and paying for college.[/quote]yamashi, my kids are millenials but I don’t have any grandkids. My frame of reference are several families who are neighbors. All but one of them are renters and all have children. They range in age from 22-38 and have 2-7 kids and 3 of these families currently have more kids on the way. In all cases, one of the parents has never worked, which doesn’t bode well for being able to send any of these kids to college, but whatever …. There is no way in h@ll that I would ever have 2-3 kids in diapers at once and all too young to even attend 1st grade for the bulk of the day. In my mind, that’s “purposeful entrapment” but to each his/her own :-0.

The one family that owns their home bought it with in-laws on title because they could not qualify for it by themselves.[/quote]

There’s no way I’d plan on having 3 kids with 5-12 years age gap between them. You’d be looking at a minimum of 28 years of kids in the house. I may be biased given I have 2 under 2, but I’d rather deal with diapers, lack of sleep, etc while I am young. I’ll wait 2 more years before having one more, and my diaper changing days will be over before I turn 35. To each his/her own, but IMO having kids close in age is not an irresponsible act, nor is it something isolated to millennial parents. Perhaps it’s a generalization, that at best, can be applied to a certain street in a certain neighborhood within San Diego county.

[skerzz]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Nurses, Doctors, Police, fireman, Grocery, Plummers, Judge, Road workers, construction, anyone who has to interface with the public … 90% of the jobs out there.

Pilots and Air-traffic controllers often complain about their tough schedules actually.[/quote]

Nurses, police, and firemen have mostly adopted flex schedules — do you know anyone in these professions that work a standard 5-day workweek? According the the 2014 BLS data (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm), 18% of jobs are in the financial activities and business/professional services sector. These two service sectors alone (18% of jobs) provide significant opportunity to implement flexible working arrangements/schedules. I can tell you from first hand experience that the largest employers in the business/professional services sector are in fact aggressively moving towards more flexible work arrangements.

[skerzz]

[quote=bearishgurl][quote=yamashi1][quote=flyer]Yes, BG, I have posted the points you made above, and, yes, those are the facts, but the purpose of my recent post was to illustrate the point that, as Millennials like to point out regarding their options in life, many of us, as Boomers, were also in a position to choose how we lived our lives–in direct opposition to common myths floating around about our generation.
[/quote]

Flyer, seems like you have had a great life so far and one that I am personally trying to achieve. Regarding your statement above regarding “options in life” I don’t think us Millennials feel that we have more options per se, but instead more open to the idea of flexibility in our current jobs thanks to technology and the way we think. If using the 80’s as an example, someone in finance such as myself would be required to work in the office during a set time and others would view working remotely or leaving early and logging in later negatively. I think my generation is significantly more understanding and open to this idea as our ideas of work has shifted. A lot of old timers don’t understand this new work environment (my father included), and for some reason equates this to leaving work early to less productivity. Our generation would instead look at this much more positively as we really dislike micromanaging, and value a positive work/life balance.[/quote]We disliked to be “micromanaged” as well. As a matter of fact, we hated it with a passion. But if we didn’t follow the “rules” regarding tardiness (on arrival and back from lunch hour) and excessive absences, we would have so much leave bled off our “books” piecemeal that we would never get to take our vacations cuz we would be “out of time.” Many parents couldn’t help it and were never able to take vacations (just occasional 3-4 day weekends). A very large portion of employees never kept more than 8 hours sick leave and 8 hours vacation on the books at any given time, regardless of accrual rate. They weren’t able to, due to kid and elderly parent obligations. This was especially true of single parents.

If millenials are now coming and going as they please in most office settings and still taking their full vacations and collecting their full pay, then they have absolutely NOTHING to complain about.

An employee has no control as to who is currently occupying the positions above them. Even if that position vacates, they have no control in whether they are chosen for it … or not. There could easily be 12 internal applications for said position. You can always look outside of your firm or organization for promotional opportunities elsewhere and if successfully hired, vote with your feet.

No worker is ever “guaranteed” continuous internal promotions. This has always been the case.[/quote]

And you used to walk to work barefoot in the snow up hills both ways…

Many employers still have strict working hours policies as you describe above. However, the most competitive and cutting edge companies realize that old school thinking you describe is flawed. These companies are adapting to the generational changes in the workforce and recognize that in order to attract and retain top talent, they must offer the flexibility younger workers highly value.

[skerzz]

[quote=The-Shoveler][quote=skerzz][quote=FlyerInHi][quote=bearishgurl]Of COURSE, seniority means everything! It DOESN’T MATTER if millenials “think” they are smarter than their superiors because they were “educated” and “know how to dive for data.” They aren’t getting paid as much because they don’t deserve it …. yet. That’s what the “merit system” is in place for.
[/quote]

That’s not merit, it’s bullshit. It’s old protectionism.

In a creative economy, it’s all about what you bring to the table (revenue you generate).

BG, I have what I consider 4 jobs… I have 1 job which I would call “normal”. But the other 3 jobs are about my own creativity (one is finding innovative/smarter ways to invest in real estate) and a schedule that I make. I’ve been really busy lately and I haven’t able to travel (I should because the Dollar is strong), but I hope to take time off once I get all my ducks in row.

What bothers me is the “establishment” non-stop talking about hard-work and merit, but they don’t do shit. It’s all talk.[/quote]

I agree. The working for the appearance of working, unnecessary “facetime”, etc. old school “establishment” view on how to approach work is garbage. Why work away the most physically capable (youthful) years of your life in exchange for the chance, assuming you survive the rat race without major health problems, that you’ll reap great benefits during your “retirement” years. Instead, why not use technology to eliminate most unnecessary/inefficient “work” and free yourself to enjoy more of life today? If results are there, an organization shouldn’t care where/how the work is getting done.

As Timothy Ferriss lays out in his book the four hour work week, abandon the “Deferred Life Plan” and join the New Rich. This outlook doesn’t typically sit well with Boomers since they’ve already bought into/committed to live the “Deferred Life Plan”.[/quote]

Sounds great on paper, but realistically probably only 5-10% of workers can work like this and have modern society you know things like electricity, water, roads, Food etc… function.

Yes there are Boomers who live this life style too, maybe 5% or so.[/quote]

Agreed – Not everyone can live this way, that’s why they are referred to as the “New Rich” (emphasis on “Rich”, i.e. not everyone can afford to do so). As a professional that bills by the hour, I’m still working out the details of how I can put this into play myself. I have some ideas, but haven’t quite built up the courage make the leap.

[skerzz]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=bearishgurl]Of COURSE, seniority means everything! It DOESN’T MATTER if millenials “think” they are smarter than their superiors because they were “educated” and “know how to dive for data.” They aren’t getting paid as much because they don’t deserve it …. yet. That’s what the “merit system” is in place for.
[/quote]

That’s not merit, it’s bullshit. It’s old protectionism.

In a creative economy, it’s all about what you bring to the table (revenue you generate).

BG, I have what I consider 4 jobs… I have 1 job which I would call “normal”. But the other 3 jobs are about my own creativity (one is finding innovative/smarter ways to invest in real estate) and a schedule that I make. I’ve been really busy lately and I haven’t able to travel (I should because the Dollar is strong), but I hope to take time off once I get all my ducks in row.

What bothers me is the “establishment” non-stop talking about hard-work and merit, but they don’t do shit. It’s all talk.[/quote]

I agree. The working for the appearance of working, unnecessary “facetime”, etc. old school “establishment” view on how to approach work is garbage. Why work away the most physically capable (youthful) years of your life in exchange for the chance, assuming you survive the rat race without major health problems, that you’ll reap great benefits during your “retirement” years. Instead, why not use technology to eliminate most unnecessary/inefficient “work” and free yourself to enjoy more of life today? If results are there, an organization shouldn’t care where/how the work is getting done.

As Timothy Ferriss lays out in his book the four hour work week, abandon the “Deferred Life Plan” and join the New Rich. This outlook doesn’t typically sit well with Boomers since they’ve already bought into/committed to live the “Deferred Life Plan”.

[skerzz]

[quote=spdrun]”Moslem center types” HA HA HA!

Are you really saying that all people who attend mosque are more dangerous than the more radical Christians?

I’m betting that in the last 25 years, even counting 9/11, many more people have been killed by self-identified strict Christians than by self-identified Muslims on US soil.[/quote]

If you are referring to killings/terrorism in the name of the religion, you are wrong and I would take the other side of that bet. According to politicfact, as of January 2015, “right wing” extremists (not necessarily Christian) have killed less than 40 people on US soil since September 2011 . Do you really think there were thousands of people killed by Christian extremists in the 10 years leading up to 9/11? Now, If we’re talking “killings” in general, I would agree with your statement, but it’s statistically misleading and not relevant to the discussion (ex. A Christian kills someone in a DUI vehicle accident or a husband/wife carry out a murder suicide).

[skerzz]

You should consult your CPA regarding #3. Depreciation must be claimed based on standard depreciation tables provided by the IRS. If you don’t claim it, you lose it (“allowed or allowable” rule). Depreciation taken decreases passive income and/or increases your passive loss. If you sell the property, your gain is based on your adjusted basis (generally original cost basis + improvements – depreciation allowed/allowable). Assuming a net gain, you’d first recapture the depreciation previously taken as ordinary income and the rest of the gain would be capital in nature. Your passive losses carry forwards generated in the past years can be used to offset the depreciation recapture and (I believe) the capital gain. This is general info regarding the treatment and is not intended to be tax advice. Consult a CPA

[skerzz]

[quote=spdrun]I disagree — why not come in as a tourist or to Canada then across the border? The two year vetting process for refugees would make coming in as one like performing brain surgery while wearing a blindfold and ski gloves.

As far at the Internet — I think it amplifies hatred. It provides a forum for people to spread their hatred and for others not yet radicalized (yep, said it) to follow in their footsteps.[/quote]

I don’t think the two year vetting process for refugees would necessarily be a deterrent for potential terrorists. The jihad being waged against Western civilization is a long-term battle, not something to be won overnight. The female San Bernardo shooter arrived in the US roughly 19 months before her attack on civilian targets, the NY Times reports the suspects in the February terrorist attack in France had “plotted terror for 11 months”, and the attacks on “Charlie Hebdo” were reportedly “the culmination of two men’s decade-long quest to wage holy war”.

I do agree that entry through the Canada or Mexico border is very possible and likely. However, IMO entry into the US as a refugee allows a potential terrorists to “legitimately” reside in the US where they can integrate into society while spending months/years planning an attack.

[skerzz]

[quote=harvey][quote=skerzz]That is a poll of Muslim Americans.[/quote]

A poll with results that you used to come to a conclusion about Muslim Americans.

If we asked all Americans the same question, would the results be any different?

Would you come to the same conclusion?

But we don’t really need to conduct the poll. We already know that a significant number of Americans, Muslim or otherwise, believe that violence against civilian targets is justified to defend America from its enemies.[/quote]

How would that question be relevant to the original topic of this thread? We are discussing if there is any additional risk or negative impact of purchasing a home buying next to an Islamic place of worship. You would need to ask all Americans if violence against civilian targets is justified to defend [enter religious affiliation here] from its enemies and then compare results across religions to see if one population is a higher violence risk than others.

[skerzz]

That is a poll of Muslim Americans.

[skerzz]

An interesting Pew poll and relevant to the discussion. “More than eight-in-ten American Muslims say suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets are never justified (81%) or rarely justified (5%) to defend Islam from its enemies”.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-app-a/?beta=true&utm_expid=53098246-2.Lly4CFSVQG2lphsg-KopIg.1&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pewforum.org%2F2013%2F04%2F30%2Fthe-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview%2F%3Fbeta%3Dtrue

I would have expected the number responding “never” justified to be much higher. Extrapolate the data across the entire US Muslim population and I can see why there is concern/fear — “rarely, sometimes, and often” respondents totaled 13% and another 6% refusing to respond. 13% of Muslim Americans (or roughly 234K adults) believe violence against civilian targets is at least “rarely” justified and 8% (144K adults) believe the violence against civilians is at least “sometimes” justified.

[skerzz]

[quote=Clifford][quote=north park girl]- …banks are starting to call in collateral on loans …
[/quote]

Can you elaborate on this ?[/quote]

I’d like further elaboration on this rummer as well.

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