[UCGal]

I think Captcha was referring to the time Walmart got busted with a cleaning crew of illegal immigrants. Worse, they’d literally locked them in a store overnight. (Fire safety issue).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48612-2005Mar18.html

I personally don’t shop at walmart because I don’t like their policies towards the hourly employees. Perhaps they’ve fixed it since the book Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, came out… but I was horrified that low paid hourly workers were required to work off the clock, were given info about how to apply to medicare programs, WIC, etc. Why would they provide that information in the employee breakrooms if it wasn’t something the employees qualified for? In other words, many of Walmart’s employees are living at a poverty level. Hard to call that living wages.

I’ve shopped at super-walmarts – mainly when on roadtrips and it was the only thing readily available from the freeway. At home, I choose to shop at Costco – where they pay wages high enough that many employees are still there having started in college. They have their degrees – but like their employer and work enough to stick around for 20 years or more. (Check the badges of the costco workers – it has the number of years.)

It’s a personal choice. Not forced on anyone else. But given options, I won’t shop at Walmart.

[UCGal]

I think Captcha was referring to the time Walmart got busted with a cleaning crew of illegal immigrants. Worse, they’d literally locked them in a store overnight. (Fire safety issue).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48612-2005Mar18.html

I personally don’t shop at walmart because I don’t like their policies towards the hourly employees. Perhaps they’ve fixed it since the book Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, came out… but I was horrified that low paid hourly workers were required to work off the clock, were given info about how to apply to medicare programs, WIC, etc. Why would they provide that information in the employee breakrooms if it wasn’t something the employees qualified for? In other words, many of Walmart’s employees are living at a poverty level. Hard to call that living wages.

I’ve shopped at super-walmarts – mainly when on roadtrips and it was the only thing readily available from the freeway. At home, I choose to shop at Costco – where they pay wages high enough that many employees are still there having started in college. They have their degrees – but like their employer and work enough to stick around for 20 years or more. (Check the badges of the costco workers – it has the number of years.)

It’s a personal choice. Not forced on anyone else. But given options, I won’t shop at Walmart.

[UCGal]

I think Captcha was referring to the time Walmart got busted with a cleaning crew of illegal immigrants. Worse, they’d literally locked them in a store overnight. (Fire safety issue).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48612-2005Mar18.html

I personally don’t shop at walmart because I don’t like their policies towards the hourly employees. Perhaps they’ve fixed it since the book Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, came out… but I was horrified that low paid hourly workers were required to work off the clock, were given info about how to apply to medicare programs, WIC, etc. Why would they provide that information in the employee breakrooms if it wasn’t something the employees qualified for? In other words, many of Walmart’s employees are living at a poverty level. Hard to call that living wages.

I’ve shopped at super-walmarts – mainly when on roadtrips and it was the only thing readily available from the freeway. At home, I choose to shop at Costco – where they pay wages high enough that many employees are still there having started in college. They have their degrees – but like their employer and work enough to stick around for 20 years or more. (Check the badges of the costco workers – it has the number of years.)

It’s a personal choice. Not forced on anyone else. But given options, I won’t shop at Walmart.

[UCGal]

[quote=CricketOnTheHearth]jimmyle, my 401(K) also sucks re precious metals– no such option whatsoever. I looked back in 2007 or so and blast blast blast– no way to move my $ into something more solid. All I get to choose from are various types of “funds”.

So I did the best I could and moved like half of it into bonds-type funds, the closest I could get to T-bills given the options they gave me, and lost “only” 25% in the fall of 2008. As the $#!+ was hitting the fan I boosted my proportions so that nearly half of it is in the “stable value fund” (like a money market account), another third in conservative bond funds, and the remainder in my basket of stock funds. Since then I’ve gained most of what I lost back.

However, I think this stock market rise is a mirage and I don’t trust it. Also my company suspended the 401(K) match. So I cut in half the % of my income that I put into it each month, and have that money wired into my credit union account instead. I figure when the market crashes I will wait til stocks appear to have bottomed, then up my paycheck deduction again enough to “put back in” what I put in the credit union.

I know this attempted market timing is kind of cheesy, but I just can’t see putting my 16 raisins into this thing only to see it decline by 25 raisins during the year. It feels like flushing my money down a black hole when that happens.[/quote]

Cricket – you don’t work for a company with 2 CEO’s do you? Your crappy choices and cut 401k sound very familiar. It sucks.

[UCGal]

[quote=CricketOnTheHearth]jimmyle, my 401(K) also sucks re precious metals– no such option whatsoever. I looked back in 2007 or so and blast blast blast– no way to move my $ into something more solid. All I get to choose from are various types of “funds”.

So I did the best I could and moved like half of it into bonds-type funds, the closest I could get to T-bills given the options they gave me, and lost “only” 25% in the fall of 2008. As the $#!+ was hitting the fan I boosted my proportions so that nearly half of it is in the “stable value fund” (like a money market account), another third in conservative bond funds, and the remainder in my basket of stock funds. Since then I’ve gained most of what I lost back.

However, I think this stock market rise is a mirage and I don’t trust it. Also my company suspended the 401(K) match. So I cut in half the % of my income that I put into it each month, and have that money wired into my credit union account instead. I figure when the market crashes I will wait til stocks appear to have bottomed, then up my paycheck deduction again enough to “put back in” what I put in the credit union.

I know this attempted market timing is kind of cheesy, but I just can’t see putting my 16 raisins into this thing only to see it decline by 25 raisins during the year. It feels like flushing my money down a black hole when that happens.[/quote]

Cricket – you don’t work for a company with 2 CEO’s do you? Your crappy choices and cut 401k sound very familiar. It sucks.

[UCGal]

[quote=CricketOnTheHearth]jimmyle, my 401(K) also sucks re precious metals– no such option whatsoever. I looked back in 2007 or so and blast blast blast– no way to move my $ into something more solid. All I get to choose from are various types of “funds”.

So I did the best I could and moved like half of it into bonds-type funds, the closest I could get to T-bills given the options they gave me, and lost “only” 25% in the fall of 2008. As the $#!+ was hitting the fan I boosted my proportions so that nearly half of it is in the “stable value fund” (like a money market account), another third in conservative bond funds, and the remainder in my basket of stock funds. Since then I’ve gained most of what I lost back.

However, I think this stock market rise is a mirage and I don’t trust it. Also my company suspended the 401(K) match. So I cut in half the % of my income that I put into it each month, and have that money wired into my credit union account instead. I figure when the market crashes I will wait til stocks appear to have bottomed, then up my paycheck deduction again enough to “put back in” what I put in the credit union.

I know this attempted market timing is kind of cheesy, but I just can’t see putting my 16 raisins into this thing only to see it decline by 25 raisins during the year. It feels like flushing my money down a black hole when that happens.[/quote]

Cricket – you don’t work for a company with 2 CEO’s do you? Your crappy choices and cut 401k sound very familiar. It sucks.

[UCGal]

[quote=CricketOnTheHearth]jimmyle, my 401(K) also sucks re precious metals– no such option whatsoever. I looked back in 2007 or so and blast blast blast– no way to move my $ into something more solid. All I get to choose from are various types of “funds”.

So I did the best I could and moved like half of it into bonds-type funds, the closest I could get to T-bills given the options they gave me, and lost “only” 25% in the fall of 2008. As the $#!+ was hitting the fan I boosted my proportions so that nearly half of it is in the “stable value fund” (like a money market account), another third in conservative bond funds, and the remainder in my basket of stock funds. Since then I’ve gained most of what I lost back.

However, I think this stock market rise is a mirage and I don’t trust it. Also my company suspended the 401(K) match. So I cut in half the % of my income that I put into it each month, and have that money wired into my credit union account instead. I figure when the market crashes I will wait til stocks appear to have bottomed, then up my paycheck deduction again enough to “put back in” what I put in the credit union.

I know this attempted market timing is kind of cheesy, but I just can’t see putting my 16 raisins into this thing only to see it decline by 25 raisins during the year. It feels like flushing my money down a black hole when that happens.[/quote]

Cricket – you don’t work for a company with 2 CEO’s do you? Your crappy choices and cut 401k sound very familiar. It sucks.

[UCGal]

[quote=CricketOnTheHearth]jimmyle, my 401(K) also sucks re precious metals– no such option whatsoever. I looked back in 2007 or so and blast blast blast– no way to move my $ into something more solid. All I get to choose from are various types of “funds”.

So I did the best I could and moved like half of it into bonds-type funds, the closest I could get to T-bills given the options they gave me, and lost “only” 25% in the fall of 2008. As the $#!+ was hitting the fan I boosted my proportions so that nearly half of it is in the “stable value fund” (like a money market account), another third in conservative bond funds, and the remainder in my basket of stock funds. Since then I’ve gained most of what I lost back.

However, I think this stock market rise is a mirage and I don’t trust it. Also my company suspended the 401(K) match. So I cut in half the % of my income that I put into it each month, and have that money wired into my credit union account instead. I figure when the market crashes I will wait til stocks appear to have bottomed, then up my paycheck deduction again enough to “put back in” what I put in the credit union.

I know this attempted market timing is kind of cheesy, but I just can’t see putting my 16 raisins into this thing only to see it decline by 25 raisins during the year. It feels like flushing my money down a black hole when that happens.[/quote]

Cricket – you don’t work for a company with 2 CEO’s do you? Your crappy choices and cut 401k sound very familiar. It sucks.

[UCGal]

I think you need to differentiate between flippers and people purchasing to rent them out.

Flippers buy, spend some money to theoretically raise the sales price, and sell – in a short time frame. They don’t plan to hold the house, their business model is get-in-and-get-out.

Landlords buy with a different criteria – they look at cash flow vs expenses.

What seems to be the underlying issue isn’t whether they are flippers or landlords – it’s that these houses are being bought by people other than you.

My only advice – keep saving. Keep looking for opportunity to purchase a good value. If you keep getting outbid – perhaps you can’t afford the house. Or perhaps the person who bought paid too much. Either way – consider it a dodged bullet… You don’t want to be in a house that stretches you too much. You don’t want to overpay.

Being resentful to people who see opportunity and take it isn’t going to change the system… just give you a headache or ulcer. Life’s too short to give yourself self induced stress.

[UCGal]

I think you need to differentiate between flippers and people purchasing to rent them out.

Flippers buy, spend some money to theoretically raise the sales price, and sell – in a short time frame. They don’t plan to hold the house, their business model is get-in-and-get-out.

Landlords buy with a different criteria – they look at cash flow vs expenses.

What seems to be the underlying issue isn’t whether they are flippers or landlords – it’s that these houses are being bought by people other than you.

My only advice – keep saving. Keep looking for opportunity to purchase a good value. If you keep getting outbid – perhaps you can’t afford the house. Or perhaps the person who bought paid too much. Either way – consider it a dodged bullet… You don’t want to be in a house that stretches you too much. You don’t want to overpay.

Being resentful to people who see opportunity and take it isn’t going to change the system… just give you a headache or ulcer. Life’s too short to give yourself self induced stress.

[UCGal]

I think you need to differentiate between flippers and people purchasing to rent them out.

Flippers buy, spend some money to theoretically raise the sales price, and sell – in a short time frame. They don’t plan to hold the house, their business model is get-in-and-get-out.

Landlords buy with a different criteria – they look at cash flow vs expenses.

What seems to be the underlying issue isn’t whether they are flippers or landlords – it’s that these houses are being bought by people other than you.

My only advice – keep saving. Keep looking for opportunity to purchase a good value. If you keep getting outbid – perhaps you can’t afford the house. Or perhaps the person who bought paid too much. Either way – consider it a dodged bullet… You don’t want to be in a house that stretches you too much. You don’t want to overpay.

Being resentful to people who see opportunity and take it isn’t going to change the system… just give you a headache or ulcer. Life’s too short to give yourself self induced stress.

[UCGal]

I think you need to differentiate between flippers and people purchasing to rent them out.

Flippers buy, spend some money to theoretically raise the sales price, and sell – in a short time frame. They don’t plan to hold the house, their business model is get-in-and-get-out.

Landlords buy with a different criteria – they look at cash flow vs expenses.

What seems to be the underlying issue isn’t whether they are flippers or landlords – it’s that these houses are being bought by people other than you.

My only advice – keep saving. Keep looking for opportunity to purchase a good value. If you keep getting outbid – perhaps you can’t afford the house. Or perhaps the person who bought paid too much. Either way – consider it a dodged bullet… You don’t want to be in a house that stretches you too much. You don’t want to overpay.

Being resentful to people who see opportunity and take it isn’t going to change the system… just give you a headache or ulcer. Life’s too short to give yourself self induced stress.

[UCGal]

I think you need to differentiate between flippers and people purchasing to rent them out.

Flippers buy, spend some money to theoretically raise the sales price, and sell – in a short time frame. They don’t plan to hold the house, their business model is get-in-and-get-out.

Landlords buy with a different criteria – they look at cash flow vs expenses.

What seems to be the underlying issue isn’t whether they are flippers or landlords – it’s that these houses are being bought by people other than you.

My only advice – keep saving. Keep looking for opportunity to purchase a good value. If you keep getting outbid – perhaps you can’t afford the house. Or perhaps the person who bought paid too much. Either way – consider it a dodged bullet… You don’t want to be in a house that stretches you too much. You don’t want to overpay.

Being resentful to people who see opportunity and take it isn’t going to change the system… just give you a headache or ulcer. Life’s too short to give yourself self induced stress.

[UCGal]

a couple of comments relative to this thread…

As far as busing: SDUSD does do busing in some cases.
– Children may be bused for magnet schools. My sister teaches at Spreckels – which is a magnet. A large percentage of their kids are from the neighborhood or choiced in (no bus) but even with budget cuts a good percentage of Spreckels kids are bused in.

– For students who live in the boundary of a failing school (no child left behind). They can choose to attend another school of their choice, within the district – and the district pays to bus them there.

As to Scripps elementary… I learned an interesting nugget the other night. It is one of 3 schools in SDUSD that chooses NOT to have a GATE program. Obviously, their test scores are good and one can presume they have a decent percentage of GATE identified students. But they’ve chosen not to have a program. I don’t think that should be a deciding factor, but it is something I just learned. (Another is Barnard, and I forgot the name of the third.) Again – I don’t think the GATE thing is a deciding factor in any way. The teachers there may do a fine job of differentiation, etc… and not want the hassles. The budget allotment is NOT a motivating factor for schools to have a GATE program.

[UCGal]

a couple of comments relative to this thread…

As far as busing: SDUSD does do busing in some cases.
– Children may be bused for magnet schools. My sister teaches at Spreckels – which is a magnet. A large percentage of their kids are from the neighborhood or choiced in (no bus) but even with budget cuts a good percentage of Spreckels kids are bused in.

– For students who live in the boundary of a failing school (no child left behind). They can choose to attend another school of their choice, within the district – and the district pays to bus them there.

As to Scripps elementary… I learned an interesting nugget the other night. It is one of 3 schools in SDUSD that chooses NOT to have a GATE program. Obviously, their test scores are good and one can presume they have a decent percentage of GATE identified students. But they’ve chosen not to have a program. I don’t think that should be a deciding factor, but it is something I just learned. (Another is Barnard, and I forgot the name of the third.) Again – I don’t think the GATE thing is a deciding factor in any way. The teachers there may do a fine job of differentiation, etc… and not want the hassles. The budget allotment is NOT a motivating factor for schools to have a GATE program.

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