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Malcolm,
How's the Prius in cold weather? My impression is that it doesn't run very efficiently in cold weather.
You know what an insult it is for me to hear the bailout plans for fixing loans at 5.5%? With perfect credit, the best I EVER got was 5.75% on a 15 year fixed. How is this a fair solution? This is not even just a handout, it is preferential treatment, and completely backwards.
skibum: Okay, I came off too cocky there. :)
Anyway, I'm surprised that a young doctor like yourself, what with knocking down $200-400K/year in San Francisco, didn't spot the troll earlier. But as Space Ace points out, that's why engineers are the king of the heap, the cream of the crop, the best of the best. It's our infallible and deeply penetrating minds that push us to the side of society by the commoners who just can't take the (intellectual) heat!
:o
There are times when I purposely don't set upon Confused Marina immediately. First, you never know when a different anxious realtor has found this forum. You want to give them an equal opportunity to hand us enough rope to hang them, right? And second, CR/BB/MP/FR tends to stop posting shortly after being outed. That's just depriving yourself of watching Randy H dismantle her ridiculous arguments. People have been admitting lately that we're a little starved for entertainment... what better gems of mirth than "it always goes up" from the mouth of a true believer?
You know what an insult it is for me to hear the bailout plans for fixing loans at 5.5%?
I do not mind them getting 5.5% so long as they are forced to pay 20 points up front.
Astrid,
The Prius must run ok in the cold. There are soooo many here in Chicago.
Paul
Astrid, we bought it in February so I can't say. We did get 45 MPG actual for strictly freeway driving, so I think it is performing well. They are rated for 50 freeway but I guess that is at 55 MPH on a nice level road.
They are rated for 50 freeway but I guess that is at 55 MPH on a nice level road.
IIRC San Diego has the best roads in California.
They really are fantastic cars, and they even look cool. Mine is charcoal grey, and it looks so sleek, that I can only imagine it is a matter of time before you see some real pimped ones.
Is there a bubble in oil prices Peter P?
I don't know. But chances are that oil prices may rest on a permanently high plateau.
I’m all for bailouts. We pay enough taxes. Moral hazard is a good thing that keeps the economy running smoothly without any hiccups.
The point is that taxes should be lower. Moral hazard is something that keeps the economy running smoothly until it does not.
That's not saying much, some of the roads are pretty bad here. The best roads I've seen for condition would have to be the east coast.
Okay Randy, I give up. I've tried to post 3 versions of an original comment. Please delete all. I will try one more time with additional modifications.
Okay, my original response to “Big Brother†has been hanging up in moderation for a while now. So here’s it is, modified given her ridiculous response to Hi_there and HARM:
How many a$$umptions, exaggerations, and, frankly, talking-out-of-your-a$$ statements can one person make? Apparently many, as Big Brother continues to demonstrate to us.
I can’t comment on the banking field, but I can say from personal first-hand knowledge for both doctors and lawyers. BB’s numbers are very skewed upwards. Doctors CAN make in the range of $300k plus, but that is a exceedingly small minority, limited to subspecialists who perform procedures or high-end practices, especially in areas of doctor oversupply like the Bay Area, which on top of that is dominated by modestly-paying Kaiser.
Lawyers start out at $150K or so out of law school ONLY at top-tier law firms. There is a fixed, almost herd-driven pay increase scale at these firms that NEVER reaches $300k. Lawyers at these firms make that much only at partnership, or in a huge bonus year. And that’s only a miniscule fraction of lawyers, even at these top-tier firms.
Bottom line (to use a TOS technique): Big Brother, you are FULL of $HIT.
You know what an insult it is for me to hear the bailout plans for fixing loans at 5.5%? With perfect credit, the best I EVER got was 5.75% on a 15 year fixed. How is this a fair solution? This is not even just a handout, it is preferential treatment, and completely backwards.
This kind of thing is *exactly* why I made that comment about recklessly overborrowing being economically "rational" behavior. We have rigged the system to reward the corrupt and stupid.
Malcolm,
Thanks. I see a good many of them in DC, but DC is pretty southern.
In the nice southern MD/northern VA suburbs, the roads get resurfaced every year or every other year.
California has great twisty roads though, nothing I've seen on the East Coast compares.
Thank you for proving my point. 150-200K for doctors is pretty much the norm. And in 10-15 years, these doctors will be making 3-6X that amount. Thanks for the example!
This sounds like classic MP/CR/FR style.
Let me just say (I have like 4 versions of this statement in moderation as we speak) that BB is full of $hit. 150-200K is for Las Vegas, not the Bay Area. The salary increases over the years not as a default. You have to work your butt off to build a practice. On top of that, a doctor's salary is supposed to be the "middle class" norm for buying in the Bay Area? Where is the logic?
skibum,
I have "liberated" your comments in moderation and deleted the copies.
Looks like the older comments just came out of moderation - thanks Randy.
skibum,
Do not attempt to resist. You will be assimilated.
In five years' time, SF's economy will be entirely composed of VC and HF managers with a minimum networth of $25 million.
BigBrother,
I read.
But I'm jumping ahead. If we're suppose to assume SF is crammed full of doctors and lawyers making between 3 and 9 Ha Has, why not just jump ahead to people making 50 or 100 Ha Has a year?
Then maybe, just maybe, it's time to bring the Solarians into the equation.
It is your perogative that you think doctors with 10-15 years experience don’t make 300K. At any rate, continue.
It's not perogative, it's fact. Again, I won't deny that MDs in certain subspecialties make that amount, but most MDs, who are generalists, do not even come close. Stop making $hit up.
I think I’m in love with Kathleen Pender.
I have been waiting all ^@%$ing day for your comment :-)
You know, I think most people on this forum are envious of the young investment bankers making $200K/year to start. And what about the MBAs who got their degree at the University of Phoenix? $400K/year minimum.
Thanks for proving a point, skibum! You're just a jealous, bitter doctor taking things out of context. What do you have against hedge fund managers in Las Vegas? These senseless attacks are kind of like when Randy H comes to me, begging for help finding Alpha. And I'm like, look Randolph (I call him that to sound more official), I don't have time to help you find your dog. I'm tracking my shitbox appreciation on Zillow.
Just keep following the herds, kids. One day you'll be one of the Ass Effluent, just like me.
That’s not saying much, some of the roads are pretty bad here. The best roads I’ve seen for condition would have to be the east coast.
I've heard that I-95 in Georgia is absolutely horrible. No proof though. Something about a big dispute between the state and the feds over taxes...
By the way, I think it's hilariously funny that the rest of you get stuck in moderation while surfer-x and I are free to swear like sailors. :)
Well, how much oil should be is all dependent on how beaten up USD will get. It is just a way of staking the value. I believe oil will shoot up to $100 not because oil will get expensive, but because USD will lose value, and lose its status as the world's only reserve currency in which oil is traded.
However, housing won't go up due to a weakening dollar. The last time I checked, all of us working in the US are paid on USD. If you can find a deal that you can be paid in Euro, or better yet, barrels of oil, let me know cos I'd like to join that program too.
I stand corrected on my US Wealth Distribution stats.
Nonetheless, my original point remains in tact. So instead of $25m putting one into the top sub-fractional percentile, it just puts one in the fractional percentile.
OO says: I believe oil will shoot up to $100 not because oil will get expensive, but because USD will lose value, and lose its status as the world’s only reserve currency in which oil is traded.
Aren't the OPEC nations trying to diversify away from the U.S. dollar? If a parallel exchange based on the Euro takes strong root, we could definitely see nasty trends in U.S. oil prices.
Not Investment Advice.
My favorite quote from a relitter was when I was considering a house that have been on the market for almost a full year. New construction, nice quality, all the extras......but it wasn't selling. There had to be some reason so I was going to watch it for a while. The relitter said "Won't last long at this price". Honest to Housing Bubble.....she actually said that with a straight face. A few minutes later, and too late, the perfect response came to me....."What's long....three years....four?"
My family doctor, an excellent one with almost 30 years of practice and constantly voted as one of the top doctors in BA, is making $340K in his business income filing. He may be hiding his income somewhere but I highly doubt it. I know about this because I found his business tax filing info.
BB is also exaggerating the pay of IB. Associates, VPs, Directors don't make that much in base (comparable base to doctors, big-firm lawyers), but may rake in big bucks in bonus in good years. You don't start making anywhere even close to a million, including bonus, until you become a MD. How many MDs are there in each bulge bracket bank? And they are mostly located in NYC, not SF.
BigBrother, who is full of shit, wrote:
Do you guys really doubt that salaries of ‘300K-1.5million’ is not common in consulting, finance, etc after 10-15 years experience? Kids nowadays right out of business school at 28 years old are making 300K in investment banking for example.
I just looked at the Financial Times business school survey, which tracks salaries for the top business schools averaged over 1-3 years out of MBA.
You are so f-ing full of shit. $300K? Lol.
The school I graduated from ranks in the top 5 salaries, coming in at about $150K. That's for those 28 year olds you refer to, but when they're *31*.
The two highest ranking salary schools are Harvard and Stanford, at $161K and $166K respectively. Again, those are salaries *3* years after graduating.
Reference: http://rankings.ft.com/rankings/mba/rankings.html
Oh, and what BigBrutha isn't telling you about the investment banking track is that pre-mba kids don't get paid squat. Not much better in management consulting. And if you factor the amount they get paid per hour worked it scores much lower than corporate jobs. It's not uncommon to find analysts barely making $120K in very expensive markets like SF and NYC. They only get the big coin
(a) after completing their top-ranked MBA
(b) after making through the big weed out in the associate levels. reference our friend "theotherside" who didn't make the cut, and now either sells real estate or at least crows about the virtues of real estate ownership as much as someone who sells real estate.
I read somewhere a while back that's like 5% of IBs make it that far. Most end up in corporate jobs before that, in things like Corporate Development roles or other currently in-demand finance roles. Those jobs usually pay $150K-$250K at big companies. The top of the top, VP level (or Senior Director level at huge companies) might earn $300K-$400K, plus get generous options.
So who are these "mass affluent" again? I agree with others, I think your mouth runneth effluents.
Oh, if you want to do some research on how much the people BigBruder check out:
(copy and take out spaces, spam filter avoidance)
www . vault . com
www . glocap . com
Both have PDFs you can buy which have proprietary salary data for all the high finance industries. I have last year's Vault guides to Venture Capital, Private Equity and Hedge Funds. I see very little which would qualify as BigBrudda's "mass affluent". I'd like to see where he gets his info.
Short of that, as they say, STFU. (I'm attempting to remedy GC-trollbot's accusation that I am understated.)
http://rankings.ft.com/rankings/emba/rankings.html
EMBA graduates from top schools, who are experienced professionals usually already at Director or Senior management levels, and usually aged 35 or older:
(US only)
Wharton: $263K
Kellogg: $220K
Chicago, Columbia: $201K
These programs and the others all cost over $100K in tuition. Graduates usually got to these salaries by experiencing 75%-100% salary jumps in the years after graduating, meaning they were only making $150K-ish before hand.
So again, where are these "mass affluent"? They're not coming from the B-schools as you posited. Maybe they're coming from Uranus. Dunno.
Footnote: only VPs and SVPs at Fortune 500 companies make $300K plus. There numerous smaller companies in the BA with VPs and SVPs making somewhere around 200Ks, or even less.
Even the one I know who did make $1M in the good years in high finance needed to take out mortgage to buy a $3.5M home because he didn't have enough cash at the time of purchase. These guys have extremely high operating cost. This guy and his wife go on vacation with their nanny.
Brand,
Yup. You nailed it. I'm just a JBD (jealous bitter doctor)!
This fascination with salary, again, reeks of MP/FR/CR. I get a distinct sense of deja vu here with this conversation.
OO
Dead on. I'd say there are certain hot compliance-related and M&A related finance jobs where Senior Directors at F500 are pulling in over $300K; maybe $350K tops. But those are very few. Like companies that have a separate Chief Accounting Officer or red hot M&A. I'll bet there aren't 500 of those jobs total in the entire BA.
And OO hit it squarely when he pointed out that investment banking is cyclical.
Eventually the binge on corporate liquidity will end, and then M&A will dry up. IBs will hit the streets in droves. Very very very few will ever find jobs making anything in sight of their old salaries. Most good ones will settle into corporate roles for 50-70% of their IB salaries. Most of the average ones will have trouble even getting those jobs, as there will be a glut of overeducated finance guys who're light on quant and heavy on schmooze.
Randy H says: I’ll bet there aren’t 500 of those jobs total in the entire BA.
But are there even 500 houses on the market in the $2.0-3.5M range? If every one of those people was new to the Bay Area this year and bought a house, that would mean all those houses are going to move. Some of them at a premium, because the schools are better or they have water views.
And why focus on only one industry? There is plenty of ass effluent across the spectrum of the diverse Bay Area economy. In the last few years, a lot of it pooled in real estate!
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As Suggested by Muggy:
Post your most ridiculous realtor quotes. Even better if they're from the web and you can post a link. (It's a good chance to practice using TinyUrl while you're at it).
FAB (FormerAptBroker) gets us started with:
He also said that all "normal professional people" in their 30s are easily earning from $300K to $1.5M. Really, I'm laughing on the inside.
That sets a high bar. But if you can top "Big Brother's" ridiculous quote, have at it...
Randy H
#housing