[UCGal]

[quote=ltsdd]las cuatro milpas – it’s a hole-in-the-wall, but serves the best tacos (pork) this side of the border.[/quote]
No – their tamales are better!!!

Love that place. And it’s been there forever. I first went there 30 years ago – and it had been there forever, even then.

When a friend moved to NYC in the early 80’s, he had me ship (w dry ice and overnighted) 2 dozen tamales. Couldn’t get anything comparable in NYC at the time.

[UCGal]

CAR – my family sounds a lot like yours. We’ve had loans between family members on both my side and husbands side. But they documented with signatures, and were not in any way considered gifts by any of the parties.
Interest rates were typically even or near even with market rates.

One family member, on my side, defaulted. Then he got upset with the parent involved would not issue a new loan. He didn’t get much sympathy from other family members when the parent presented a copy of the signed loan agreement of the previous loan – including payment records showing when it defaulted. He got over it because he knew he was in the wrong.

As long as ALL parties know it is not a gift. Have scheduled payments, an amortization schedule, etc… It can work very well. The problems arise when one party thinks it’s a gift, because the terms aren’t well defined.

[UCGal]

I thought “pride in ownership” was referring to the fact that owner occupants are more likely to maintain and care for their home than renters or investor owners. Not that they’re proud of the fact they own the house – but that they want to maintain their investment because a) they live there, b) they are financially tied to it’s resale value.

[quote=squat300]

I’d rather owe 250000 on a place worth 800000 than own a 250000 place outright. I’d be prouder to have the debt. A free and clear deed would not bolster my pride.
[/quote]
Don’t you mean you’d rather owe $250k on a place worth $800k than owning a $550k place outright? (The way you stated it makes it a no brainer that you’d want to be in the higher equity position… $550k vs $250k.)
Sorry – the nerd in me was perturbed by that.

I’m with CAR – I think you’ll live longer than you seem to think – and also that you’ll end up mortgage free. We’re nearing the point of just writing a check for the balance of our mortgage. (Nearing… not quite there). At some point the lump sum payoff is small enough that it makes sense to take a monthly expense off the table. When you get down to $20k… are you really going to keep paying monthly payments, even when you aren’t getting much of a deduction because interest is so low at the tail of the mortgage?

[UCGal]

That made me chuckle.

[UCGal]

[quote=paramount]I wonder if there is a correlation between Brown’s statement and the fact that my paycheck today was about $180 less than it was 2 weeks ago?[/quote]
I suspect the sun setting of the payroll tax holiday is the main reason. You’re now paying 2% more in ss than you did for the past two years… Bug this was always supposed to be temporary. You’re not paying more in fed taxes unless you make over 450k as a household. The CA taxes also effect high income earners more…except the sales tax… which doesn’t effect your paycheck.

[UCGal]

Wonder how much correlates to bonus season.
But I’m cynical.

[UCGal]

[quote=AN]
To me, early retirement does not mean I’ll be quitting my job. For me, retirement is the day I have enough FU money. It just doesn’t mean I have to use that FU money. I’ll probably find an easy job that have health insurance and work part time. My wife right now works 4 days a month and her company is still paying for her health insurance.[/quote]

That’s not early retirement. That’s financial independence. You need FI in order to ER… but if you still need a job to make it work, you’re still working. What you describe is semi-retirement. Something I’m considering.

Having enough FU money changes your BS level… in other words – once you have enough FU money, you may not tolerate the BS anymore… or it may roll off your back more. It’s interesting how different people discuss it. One of the descriptions I heard was that you carry two buckets – one is the BS at work, and the other is the money you’re saving for retirement. Once the money one is full enough – it’s easier to drop the BS bucket.

[UCGal]

[quote=no_such_reality]UCGal is that the old FIRE community or is that another retire early community? I haven’t been on FIRE in a long while but your comment about it basically breaking into two groups the self investors and the LBYM groups is what I remembered. Healthcare was the big uncertainty and fear for most of them.

They are very informative and particularly spent a lot of focus on determine how much do you really need.

There-in comes the hook to another, IMHO, shyster, Timothy Ferris or 4 Hour Work Week fame. At the root of the four hour work week is a very simple premise, again, a single concept worth gleaning from the few hours it takes to read the book. That premise is literally, figure out how you want to live. Then figure out how much money a month it takes.

Ironically the FIRE community and TF, actually, end up saying the same thing. It can be surprisingly little particularly if you’ve got the freedom to change your locale and focus on the experience and not the material.

Or you just stay in coastal suburban SoCal and quadruple that perceived amount.

[quote=UCGal][quote=AN]I agree, divorce is the one thing you can’t really plan for. So, I’ll concede on that point. However, death can easily be planned by with a large enough life insurance plan.

WRT health problem, of course if you’re self-employed, you’d have to pay for your own medical insurance. Which is why freelancers make more than W-2er. Why do you have to get HDHP? Why can’t you get a HMO? WRT to $8k/year. I save more than $8k/year ever since I start working.[/quote]
Non-employer Health insurance (for the moment) is very expensive if you have a pre-existing conditions. That will hopefully be mitigated in 2014.

The Early retirement board I mentioned earlier – this is a big discussion point… people retiring before medicare age – need to account for health insurance… and if there are pre-existing conditions it can be a reason to stay with an employer well after you have the means to leave the work force… One guy who posts there has a wife who was dx’d with cancer. They are getting quotes on the order of $3k/month for insurance for her. He’s staying at work because of the health insurance.[/quote][/quote]

Yep – the FIRE community. I guess it started on a motley fool message board originally. I like the fact that for the most part there aren’t a lot of trolls, people offer their opinions and it’s up to the asker to accept them or not.

I’ve gotten some great advise over there and learned a lot about things I hadn’t considered. SS claiming strategies for example. Different ideas on safe withdrawal rates. How different retirement calculators are good for different analysis (firecalc for historical market returns, quicken lifetime for deterministic, i-orp for the best tax advantaged withdrawal strategies…

It’s to financial planning for retirement that piggington is to San Diego real estate and bubble markets.

The discussion on Obamacare was very good. They have a strict no politics rule – so when people started forming into tribes and lobbing unfounded accusations, the mods would get it back on track. It was 10’s of pages of very interesting discussion of the good and bad of Obamacare…. and again, I learned nuances I didn’t know.

[UCGal]

I was curious so I went to CT homes website to see what they were up to.
http://www.cthomesllc.com/home/homes-for-sale/

Looks like they’ve been busy busy busy in San Diego.

http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Diego/5375-Adams-Ave-92115/home/5466602

http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Diego/4421-Felton-St-92116/home/5323551

It appears they took on the risk of one of the homes in the La Jolla landslide area.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/La-Jolla/5748-Desert-View-Dr-92037/home/4940718
http://www.cthomesllc.com/home/homes-for-sale/desert-view-drive-la-jolla-ca-92037/

[UCGal]

[quote=AN]I agree, divorce is the one thing you can’t really plan for. So, I’ll concede on that point. However, death can easily be planned by with a large enough life insurance plan.

WRT health problem, of course if you’re self-employed, you’d have to pay for your own medical insurance. Which is why freelancers make more than W-2er. Why do you have to get HDHP? Why can’t you get a HMO? WRT to $8k/year. I save more than $8k/year ever since I start working.[/quote]
Non-employer Health insurance (for the moment) is very expensive if you have a pre-existing conditions. That will hopefully be mitigated in 2014.

The Early retirement board I mentioned earlier – this is a big discussion point… people retiring before medicare age – need to account for health insurance… and if there are pre-existing conditions it can be a reason to stay with an employer well after you have the means to leave the work force… One guy who posts there has a wife who was dx’d with cancer. They are getting quotes on the order of $3k/month for insurance for her. He’s staying at work because of the health insurance.

[UCGal]

I’ve read a lot of the folks listed’s books. (checked out from the library, because I’m cheap.)

I think Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey serve some value to the masses… You know the folks who feel entitled to spend, even if they don’t have the income to support it. They’re both (especially Ramsey) about paying down your debt, living within your means. And they are good at dumbing it down to platitudes that the less bright can understand.

The rich man/poor man guy puts too much emphasis on real estate… but his premise of using your money to get more money is good.

I read over at the bogleheads forum some. There are some very astute folks over there. But like any public message board (including piggington), you need to read, filter out the bs, and make your own decisions.

I read a lot more over at the early-retirement.org message board. They are totally about educating yourself to invest your own money. Some are active investers, some are strictly passive investors… but the boards leanings are to two philosophys – do it yourself investing to save on advisors fees. And living below your means (LBYM) is the best way to amass a nest egg to allow yourself to retire early.

I’ll continue to read these types of books. My favorite for overall financial advise (not just investing) was The Wealthy Barber. I’ll continue to check them out from the library rather than purchasing them because I’m practicing the LBYMs lifestyle. LOL

[UCGal]

Hopefully you’re all done as I type this.

The prep is FAR worse than the procedure.

I have kaiser permanente and they insist on giving me colaid (sp?) for the prep – a gallon of nasty tasty fluid that tastes like sweat. Friends with other insurance have been lucky enough to get little 8 oz bottles of sweet stuff.

I’m on the 5 year schedule – which is bad enough. (Polyps found and removed 10 years ago). Better safe than sorry.

[UCGal]

The dad, Rand, can’t get too upset. Didn’t he have issues with pot and the whole aqua buddha thing when he was at Baylor?

Like father, like son?

[UCGal]

I think my husband may have witnessed some of that. He was flying TO Kentucky on Saturday and said there was some bru-ha-ha at the Charlotte airport when he was getting ready to board his flight to Lexington. I’ll have to check into the timing to see if it matches up.

[UCGal]

[quote=squat300]expenses on funds matter a lot[/quote]
I agree with this.

Vanguard, in general has the lowest expense ratios… but Schwab and Fidelity have some funds that come close.

Vanguard is definitely a DIY oriented fund company… but heaven help you if you need customer service. They lost paperwork (death certificates) 3 times before they finally were able to transfer my dad’s accounts per the executors wishes. And then couldn’t correlate the same death certificate over to the 529’s… so more lost copies before that got transferred over. I still have Vanguard accounts – but STRONGLY prefer Schwab’s customer service if anything non-standard comes up. And the expense ratio’s are very close for similar index funds.

If you want a good idea on asset allocation and how to set up a simple approach – look over at the bogleheads forum for the lazy portfolio or couch potato portfolio…
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_Portfolios
http://assetbuilder.com/couch_potato/couch_potato_cookbook

You don’t have to do Vanguard funds – any low cost INDEX funds will work – from the proper asset class.

[Author]

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