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speedingpullet
ParticipantTo a certain extent rankandfile I’d agree with you.
Historically the USA has been the powerhouse of the Western World. Many countries, including my own (The UK), looked to the States for its energy and ‘go-to-it-iveness’. The US certainly helped raise the standard of living in many European countries and despite the ‘America-bashing’ you hear sometimes, many countries like you and remember what you did for them post WWII. Its no accident that the UK is still one of the countries that supports you almost unquestioningly.Unfortunately, that was then and this is now.
World perception of the States is that you’ve lost control of that thriftyness and entrepeneurial spirit and replaced it with mass consumerism at any cost.
When others see you driving around in huge gas-guzzlers, living in enormous inefficient houses, running ridiculously oversized, well, everything, they wonder what happened to you.As to ‘people want better’, well everybody wants better.
You consume far more energy per capita than any other country on the planet, but yet it never seems to be enough, and you never seem happy.The worrying thing is that many developing countries use the US as a model, want the consumerism that goes with the ‘American Lifestyle’. If you’re already running into trouble (energy consumption and personal debt just being two of many problems), what’s going to happen when China and India really get into thier stride? Take oil away from the US and we’ll truly see WWIII…
I’m not trying to slate the US, on a personal level it has many fine people and places, and I for one an happy to be here. I just think that sometimes America as a whole loses track of how others see it.
As to the granite counters vs roof insulation, give me insulation any time!
Granite countertops tell me that the seller is trying to ‘improve’ thier home cosmetically, while insulation tells me they’re trying to do it practially. With the money I save from my cooling/heating bills, in a year or two I can buy my own granite countertops!
ParticipantI don’t know much about biodiesel (except that its not possible to have a private company that ‘harvests’ reastaurants/fast foods, for some reason…), but I do know a guy who installed solar heating for his swimming pool last year, which has already paid for itself.
I’ll see if I can get some figures and contact numbers for you.ParticipantSimple things to use less gas:
Don’t buy/lease a new car every year.
Get a car with a minimum of 30mpg on surface roads.
Get rid of the SUV, unless you have over 4 children, work on a farm, or work at speculative geology in Alaska for a living.
Buy a bike and do your errands on that if you’re just going to the store for a quart of milk etc..
Turn your airco thermostat up a degree, turn your heating thermostat down a degree. You won’t notice the difference and even a degree more/less will lower your bill.
Slightly less simple, but do-able:
If you own a home, look into getting your roof/attic insulated. The UK has had homeowners incentives and regulations for years, and most homes have seen considerable heating reductions (heating being more important than cooling in Britain), by laying 4 inches of insulation in roofs and attics.
Another thing homeowners can look into is solar powered water heating. Solar panels have had a technological surge in recent years, and are twice as effective as they used to be. In a state (CA) that gets over 250 days sunshine a year, it’s money for old rope. IIRC, the state even has incentives to help homeowners convert to solar heating.
If you’re willing to shell out some serious cash, you can even convert your house to run completly on solar power. The downside being that its intially expensive. The upside that, once converted, your house may very well put energy into the Natonal Grid, and your DWP bill will be a credit, rather than a debit.
Look into getting a Grey Water septic tank – you can irrigate your yard using shower water/dishwasher water, etc…you’ve already bought the water, so why not use it again?
Consider converting some of those 100’s of sq ft of water-intensive lawn into a vegetable garden. Nothing fancy, in fact you could even grow herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, potatoes etc.. in containers if you love your lawn too much to give it up. Not only almost free vegetables, but you’ve just saved the cost of transportation (average distance 1500 miles) for food that can be easily grown in your yard.
Don’t get me started on this 😉 Maybe its something to do with growing up in London, where every square foot is precious and gas has cost $5 a gallon for decades.
I know that the US was once a thrifty and frugal place, but it seems in recent decades the whole place has thrown that out the wndow and replaced it with The Culture of Bling.
ParticipantSimple things to use less gas:
Don’t buy/lease a new car every year.
Get a car with a minimum of 30mpg on surface roads.
Get rid of the SUV, unless you have over 4 children, work on a farm, or work at speculative geology in Alaska for a living.
Buy a bike and do your errands on that if you’re just going to the store for a quart of milk etc..
Turn your airco thermostat up a degree, turn your heating thermostat down a degree. You won’t notice the difference and even a degree more/less will lower your bill.
If you own a home, look into getting your roof/attic insulated. The UK has had homeowners incentives and regulations for years, and most homes have seen considerable heating reductions (heating being more important than cooling in Britain), by laying 4 inches of insulation in roofs and attics.
Another thing homeowners can look into is solar powered water heating. Solar panels have had a technological surge in recent years, and are twice as effective as they used to be. In a state (CA) that gets over 250 days sunshine a year, it’s money for old rope. IIRC, the state even has incentives to help homeowners convert to solar heating.
If you’re willing to shell out some serious cash, you can even convert your house to run completly on solar power. The downside being that its intially expensive. The upside that, once converted, your house may very well put energy into the Natonal Grid, and your DWP bill will be a credit, rather than a debit.
Look into getting a Grey Water septic tank – you can irrigate your yard using shower water/dishwasher water, etc…you’ve already bought the water, so why not use it again?
Consider converting some of those 100’s of sq ft of water-intensive lawn into a vegetable garden. Nothing fancy, in fact you could even grow herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, potatoes etc.. in containers if you love your lawn too much to give it up. Not only almost free vegetables, but you’ve just saved the cost of transportation (average distance 1500 miles) for food that can be easily grown in your yard.
Don’t get me started on this 😉 Maybe its something to do with growing up in London, where every square foot is precious and gas has cost $5 a gallon for decades.
I know that the US was once a thrifty and frugal place, but it seems in recent decades the whole place has thrown that out the wndow and replaced it with The Culture of Bling.
July 18, 2006 at 4:14 PM in reply to: US Dollar Held Up by Confidence, Not Reality: Peter Schiff #28757ParticipantLOL! llndismith, you can count me as a third.
I grew up in London, and while the UK is a First World country, it seems (until fairly recently) that there wasn’t that sort of consume,consume,consume mentality.
Even now, while people have a lot more disposable wealth than they did a few decades ago, people tend not to live ‘beyond thier means’. Lenders are a lot more conservative over there, so its harder to get in over your head.Not saying its impossible, and they are having a housing boom too, but in most cases mortgage companies won’t allow you to borrow over 3.5 times your annal salary (or 3 times main earner + 2 times secondary earner).
Of course, the UK and the Us are very different from each other, have different histores and economies. I’m not ‘having a go’ at Americans, far from it, i live here now after all, but I have to admit at being shocked at the consumerism over here.
Regarding the TV, my favourite ads are still the perscription drugs they sell on TV, where they won’t even tell you what it is . Apparently, if they name the drug on TV, they also have to tell you the side-effects. So, its easier to say “talk to your doctor about XYZ” and leave out what its for…still makes me chuckle
ParticipantSage advice SD Realtor.
SDLaw06:
I’m also going to be a first time buyer within the next year, but from the good advice I’ve gleaned from reading Pigginton’s I won’t be rushing into it.OK, I’m in LA not SD, and the bubble doesn’t seem to have burst here just yet, but it will. It’s still more cost effective to rent and commute 30 miles a day than it is to try and buy nearer to work.
As SD Realtor says, learn about your area and watch it for a while: I’ve saved about 50 homes on ZipRealty – some are affordable now, some very unaffordable- but I’m going to track them for the next year and see what happens.
Just like your wife, we don’t want to be renters forever. What we’ve done is put a little bit aside every month into a high-interest account, so that when the time comes we’ll be able to afford a 20+% deposit, points, closing and moving fees and to swing a 15 fixed on a house that’s affordable.
Resist the hype 🙂
We had three different Realtor businesses touting thier wares on our street on sunday (everything from flags planted on our lawn to ice cream trucks giving away popsicles with a free Realtors card…).
There’s a sea-change going on, even here in LaLaLand.Up until a few weeks ago my husband and I felt like fools for not buying in 2000, when we could just about afford it. Now, looking at some of the things our co-workers have had to do to get on the housing ladder, we’re glad we were late to the party.
Anyway, as always, I’m light on data but heavy on anecdote 😉
ParticipantIs this the one?
ParticipantWoopsie, my bad 🙂
Still, even better, then.
I’ve actually heard up to 100mpg, but I believe that’s with the UK gallon, rather than the US one.Once my 1997 70K miles Nissan Sentra has finally gone to the Great Scrapheap In The Sky, I’m definately looking into buying one myself. I’d even consider importing one from the UK if it wasn’t too ridiculously expensive.
ParticipantIf you can hang on until next year, Daimler-Chrysler are planning to import these into the US:
http://tinyurl.com/a73k8They’re already huge in Europe, where gas is typically $5+ a gallon.
Cute, and well over 30mpg too.ParticipantYes, I have to admire the logic: “The Deficit this year is XYZ less then projected”.
Which gives everyone the general impression that they’ve done very well…although the Deficit is still twice what it should be 😉
ParticipantOK, figured out the problem…..once again I am blinded by science 😉
The MLS searcher on Zip expects numbers with underscores, while the MLS numbers from Realtor come with hyphens.
If only everything else in life was so easy…
ParticipantThanks for that SD. I just assumed that an MLS number would be the same for a house, regardless of which website you were using.
I’m not really at the ‘looking for agents’ stage just yet, as we’re not planning on buying until this time next year.
i just like doing my own research online, seeing what’s coming down, what’s staying the same…purely voyeuristic at this point 😉
ParticipantThank you !
Yeah, I’ve tried typing them in by hand and also removing the hypen in between, but no joy so far.
ParticipantActually, I sort of understand why the median was used – it can tell you quite a lot of things – but only in conjunction with the minimum and maximum data points, and number of data points used.
Sure, it will churn out a number, but if you can’t compare that number to the highest price (max) versus lowest price (min), then you have no idea whether the prices are skewed towards the bottom (ie a few very low prices pulling the median down) or positively skewed (more prices at the top pulling it up). Having the number of data points also allows you to calculate the other two ‘averages’ – mode and mean – which will give you a much clearer picture of whats going on over time.
Stuff like this is a bit of a bugbear for me – I spent many years of my life teaching Basic Math and Statistics at community college – unfortunately many people (and I don’t include the posters on this forum 🙂 ) don’t know the differences in the three averages, so just take a number (any number) as Gospel.
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