patrick.net

Yeah, Panic, thanks.

SFWoman, you honestly believe that the top 15 private schools are better than Lowell?

On the basis of what evidence do you base that belief?

Last I checked, Lowell send more kids to Stanford and UC Berkeley than any school in the state.

Nomadtoons2, why don't you leave? If you hate California so much, why don't you leave and go live in one of the "paradises" you described, in Texas or Tennessee?

Serously, California does not need people like you. The state is overcrowded as it is and you don't have any civic pride, go somewhere else.

panicearly and astrid,

Living below your means is the *only* way to secure your financial future. Either that or starting your own business.

If you are not saving at least 15% of your salary you are in for a miserable retirement. And if you want to improve your standard of living, it should be more like 25%!

I intend to retire at 50 (I am 41 now) and the only way I am going to do it is by living thriftily. I pack my lunch, don't own a car, no cable TV and only eat out at cheap restaurants. I admit that it is easier now that we are making more money, but I have been doing this for over a decade now. It is the only way to get ahead in life.

Luckily I have a wife who feels the same way, even more so actually. I used to eat at nice restaurants before I met her. Now I eat good home cooked meals instead!

Jimbo,
Honestly, I'm making plans now to leave. We have around 150k saved up from busting our asses for 7 years, the last 50k from the last year alone since we upgraded our jobs. The plan has been we stay here another 3 years, and at the rate we are saving, will have 300k saved by the time we leave.If for some godforesaken miracle housing prices crash and burn, and prices came into the 250-300k range, I would consider. Otherwise, the housing costs in TN and TX are still hovering around 100-150k. We'll buy high and clear, put the rest of it in retirement and investment funds, work freelance, and possibly buy a rental house to bring in a steady income that will serve as emergency pay to cover what little costs we will actually have( since the house will be paid for along with our cars) In case the freelance work dries up from time to time.The way I see, it california has great opportunities for those planning on leaving and take advantages of the somewhat higher wages by saving them and moving where the money goes 50% further. Again- I don't hate California. I hate the situtation that has arisen that made me come to the conclusion that it will never be affordable, and coming from a family of hardworking individuals, I want my money to actually do what money is supposed to do- provide for me and my family's well being. How easy do you think it was for me to conclude that all that I have known for almost a decade- business contacts, friends, familiar terrain, and so forth will have to be abandoned? It really, really sucked.It is the hardest decision I will probably have to execute. I don't like the idea of leaving it all, but seriously- I am 28 years old. I meet people who are 40-50 years old around here who STILL are priced out, STILL complain about the costs of living, and are basically miserable.They retard their advancement in society due to some stupid house. I DO NOT want to be one of those people. Sure- I could probably buy a house in another 5 years after I've saved up 50% of the pricetag, but to me life is worth living, not worth spending it all on a mortgage. If I were single, I'd say what the hell- who cares. rent is cheap. But I'm a married man now, and my life with my wife would be far more complete if we could just get on with it without having to try and debate the nonsensical bullshit that encompasses, demeans, and cripples this state.

Jimbo wrote:

> SFWoman, you honestly believe that the top

>15 private schools are better than Lowell?"

Not to speak for SFWoman, but I think she was talking elementary schools San Francisco does not have even close to 15 "top" private high schools (it has only on real good public high school)

> Last I checked, Lowell send more kids to Stanford and

> UC Berkeley than any school in the state.

Lowell has a lot of unbelievably super smart Asian kids who often go to Cal or Stanford (or Harvard or Yale). The rest of the kids are not all that smart since now that less than 10% of San Francisco's elementary students are white you can be a white dim bulb and still get in to Lowell (most SF Blacks and Hispanics want to go to school with their friends in their neighborhoods so like whites almost any black and Hispanic that applies gets it to make the SF PC crowd happy). High School is not just about an education, guys I know that went to SI started networking with the older Catholic guys at the O Club, guys from UHS started networking with the older WASP guys at the SFGC. Years later it is the guys from the private high schools tare the ones running things in the city (Gavin Newsom is an exception, but even thought he was too stupid to get in to SI his Dad who went to SI & Stanford Law school pulled the strings to get him in to politics and his Dad's high school buddy Gordon Getty from SI wrote the checks to pay for the campaign). Years later the most of the Asian kids from Lowell are still super smart but having a tough time paying off their Harvard Med School loans making crappy HMO fixed fees while working at Kaiser...

FormerAptBroker Says:

Years later the most of the Asian kids from Lowell are still super smart but having a tough time paying off their Harvard Med School loans making crappy HMO fixed fees while working at Kaiser…

That is so true. I'm an MD, and MD salaries in the BA are such that you earn only marginally more than the masses of mid-to-upper-level tech folks. And this is not just at Kaiser. Add on top of that student loans, and I'd estimate most recently minted MD's aren't in any better position than many here buying into this RE market.

Now that all PC barriers have been shattered, I feel comfortable telling everyone that I once went to a Popeye's Chicken in New York City where...

Every single person in the restaurant was white.

Now that was amazing. I expect to go to my grave without ever seeing this again.

That is so true. I’m an MD, and MD salaries in the BA are such that you earn only marginally more than the masses of mid-to-upper-level tech folks. And this is not just at Kaiser. Add on top of that student loans, and I’d estimate most recently minted MD’s aren’t in any better position than many here buying into this RE market.

I have noticed that salaries for all smart people jobs seem to be converging. Doctors, lawyers, and tech people all make about the same salary. It wasn't always like this; for example, lawyers used to make more than engineers, and doctors made more than lawyers. These days, however, it's balancing out. My own clients are mostly tech people, and they all make roughly as much as I do. My college roomate is a doctor, and he too makes roughly as much as the rest of us.

This seems fair to me -- lawyers should not make more than engineers -- but I do wish the doctors made more. They make, you know, life and death decisions. As a lawyer I have a difficult job, but the level of responsibility I have is nothing compared to a doctor's. I wish doctors were paid more.

Astrid,
Nashville's 2nd biggest industry after entertainment is health. My parents pay their own health insurance. It is about 1/2 of what it is here. There are cheap insurance options out there. When I was unemployed, I paid $50 a month for Blue cross "Tonic" healthcare, which basically meant that if I fell off a cliff, or got into a car wreck, All I would pay would be $1000. You also got 5 Dr appointments a year for $10 copay. I go maybe once every 2 years.

Astrid-

LOL! My white trash pedigree is impeccable and even I have never been to Cracker Barrel. It must have been like one of those old Westerns where the guy walks into the salloon and everyone stops -- the poker players, the pianist, the dancing girls, the bartender about to pour a shot of whiskey -- and just looks at the stranger who just walked in the door.

I have noticed that salaries for all smart people jobs seem to be converging.

That's because we're all not really THAT smart - if we were, we would all be flipping houses as we speak (eg, ronin)...

Big Red,
I'll throw my 2 cents worth in the pot. I agree with you that banks fully realize the scope of what is about to happen, and the potential for them to make heaps of cash. The way I see it, if you look at when the Fed lowered rates, it was at the same time that ENRON was going down the shitter. Many of the same banks that are aggresivly taking part in the refinancing/home loan scheme also took part in investing in the numerous eroneous fake companies ENRON set up shortly before the fall. At the time of the investigation, several of these banks were questioned about their involvement and incredulous denial of wrongdoing. Enter Alan Greenspan, who decides, at the advice of numerous financial organizations- perhaps some of these same banks mentioned above- decides it is best to lower intrest rates for a number of key reasons. A: retiring boomers with no savings. B: Lack of spending and a lagging economy after the dot-bomb, and C: A lack of public trust in financial institutions as a result of Enron- something these institutions wanted desperatly to clean up and go away..So... they lower the rates, the ball starts rolling, and the prize at the end of this is a real possibility that with what I cannot see as anything but a predicted crash is millions of Americans defaulting on loans of overvalued real estate- value that just like dot-com stocks is meaningless. Thus banks, lenders, and financial agencies found a seemingly ligitimate way to make billions from people who they did not force to buy anything, but were able to do so anyway by creating an environment of paranoia. My hats are off to them. Ingenious!

PS: I love Cracker Barrel. They sell fried Okra, which I doubt many of you even know what it is.- a southern delicacy!

Sorry I missed the Troll fest last night. If anything still needs moderating let me know. Also, taking suggestions for new thread ideas.

Sunnyvale_Renter,

Yeah, and you forgot to mention that they eat their own babies, too.

Other Threadmasters: Have any others banned Shmend Rick, or has he trolled your threads?

Big Red,

I think we'll get plenty of examples to work with in 2006. Had the buyer put down say 5 or 10% the bank would have even more of a cushion. WHAT I'll be interested in seeing is when the "collateral" has gone down by 15 or 20+% then we'll hear the lenders crying big time. I had heard stories from folks that work in loss mitigation saying that when things were "rock and roll" the banks didn't really want to work with the "homeowner" b/c they KNEW they could just let it slide into foreclosure and then sell for well above what was owed. As that option closes my guess is that the lenders will be bending over backwards to work with the debtor. Many have already fallen behind on their taxes as well!

Big Red,

Ordinarily the anti-deficiency laws and "one form of action" rules preclude a deficiency judgment after foreclosure on a single-family owner occupied purchase money loan. The lender is relegated solely to the security.

Astrid-

Whatever you do, don't try the Hometown Buffet. I was very enthusiastic about that place when it first arrived in our neighborhood. One day my dad and I went there for lunch. The horror! Let's just say that there is a good reason why the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet is only $5.95.

I have had the same experience, from different POV, many times. My wife goes to this Nicaraguan festival every year where they have...it's hard to discribe, these big dancing straw dolls speak in double entendres and are accompanied by the beat of a drum. I swear it is like watching an anthropology show on the Discovery channel. The Nicaraguans who attend the festival are mostly Indians from the hills, and these rituals are probably tens of thousands of years old. They open the event by singing the old Nicaraguan national anthem (the pre-Sandanista one) and saluting the flag...man, it is weird. I always feel really out of place.

It's funny, thoough, living in Cal you really become cosmopolitan. For example, a few months ago my wife and I were at the outlet mall, in a store that sold expensive handbags. This couple in their 30's said, out loud, "every single person in here is Asian" -- while looking directly at us! I'm a corn fed Midwesterner with a crew cut, my wife is Nicaraguan and Mexican, but since we live in Alhambra (pop. 70% Asian) we are now suddenly officialy Asian, even in the eyes of total strangers. It's something else!

SFWoman Says:

I think with doctors this is probably happening, with doctors who can bill the client directly (plastic surgeons, etc) earning several multiples of what a pediatrician or internist earns.

Yes, but this is less pronounced in the BA and CA in general, based on economics. The dominance of Kaiser drives down salaries for those MD's on salary. Except for particularly lucrative private practices (more a rarity in CA, despite what you see on Dr. 90210), this effect percolates through much of the medical system.

Joe Schmoe Says:

> That is so true. I’m an MD, and MD salaries in the BA
> are such that you earn only marginally more than the
> masses of mid-to-upper-level tech folks.
> I have noticed that salaries for all smart people jobs seem
> to be converging. Doctors, lawyers, and tech people all
> make about the same salary.

There is a difference between "smart" people and "intelligent" people...

I know a guy from undergrad who was "super intelligent" after he got a math degree he got his masters in math while working as a math teacher at SF State then went back to Cal to get a PhD in math. I ran in to him a while back on Union St. in SF and met his wife (a FOB Chinese gal) and kid. He was actually bragging to me how "great" things are for him he said he has a new job working as an actuary at an insurance company making $85K and he just bought a condo in the Richmond Marina Shores area. Last winter I ran in to a "smart" guy from undergrad at Vail who also was a math major. He never went to grad school, but after a few years on Wall Street he mentioned that his bonuses for the past few years have been in the low seven figures (and he was dating a gal that looked like a super model)…

Someone posted that they are saving money by making lunch every day. I grew up with this mind set and have "intelligent' parents (who still make lunch every day even though they could afford to hire a live in cook), but I have learned that it is "smarter" to try and figure out how to "make" more money than trying to figure out how to "save" more money. A classic example in my line of work is that my Dad would leave an apartment sitting vacant so he could "save" a couple hundred dollars and paint it himself. Today I’ll hire a painter and figure out how to improve the apartment so I'll "make" a couple hundred in rent from the unit every month going forward...

Randy
I signed off by 10:30 because of the troll. He entered with a flame about my son...

Bojangles sort of went out of business in my neck of the woods a long time ago, but some are in other states- like NC. We used to think the food was disgusting. I can recall as a young college student, working at a truck stop diner, the cook there absolutly hated the manager. So he began serving double everything. If you ordered a hamburger, you got a double hamburger with extra fries, 2 pickles, and the largest drink possible. His goal was to make her go bankrupt, and the name of the scheme was called" operation Bojangles".

Linda in LA-LA-LAND

I signed off by 10:30 because of the troll. He entered with a flame about my son…

Linda, I just found that original Troll. For me, that is sufficient grounds for banning, which I'm going to do now. It'll be permanent unless any other admins or regulars make a case for it to be lifted. Keep in mind, bans aren't foolproof, so he might come back with a different account.

Sorry about the insult. Many people can't resist the temptation to become uncivilized with the shadow of internet anonymity. Think of it as Tragedy of the Commons.

FormerAptBroker Says:

There is a difference between “smart” people and “intelligent” people…

You bring up 2 good points. Your 2 friends from school exemplify to me the theory of multiple intelligences, ie, it takes more than book smarts to succeed. Your second point RE: "saving" vs. "making" money sounds a little Kiyosaki-esque (Rich Dad/Poor Dad), but I see your point. To bring it back OT, it's just not sensible to use the RE asset class to do this at this time.

New thread: The “housing discussions only, no rude comments about Indians, Mexicans, Arabs, etc.” thread

Randy H,

I would note that Sunnyvale_Renter and Schmend were egging each other on in a duel of "who's the bigger racist." And I'm fairly sure they're not RE bulls, just bigots.

May I ask, are real estate bull-defenders (people who have a LOT to lose as the market turns) so crass as to post racist comments on boards such as this? Do people purposefully do that to get people to stop reading the boards?

Very possible.

- A Stock Market Crash (400+ pts)?

George, 400pt in Dow is less than 4%. The drop will be significant, but it will not do much.

Thanks HARM. Shoot me a how-to-ban FAQ when you get a chance. For now, I deleted the worst comments from the stream, if only to spare those who may come here later and read things through after the fact.

(Believe it or not this actually happens. We're still getting posts to old threads many weeks or months after they have gone dormant.)

Garth Farkley,

Sunnyvale_Renter has been pretty well behaved, in most of my threads at least. So I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. I'm pretty permissive of bigotry and such in this forum because I tend to think it's good for people to see what others think and say, even if it's ugly. Especially if it's ugly, actually. I draw the line at specific, personal attacks intended to directly hurt someone, like what Schmend said about another commenter's son.

In other forums like my own blog I moderate much more heavily, but the discussions there are specifically not intended to be Hyde Park Soapbox debates.

I agree completely. The remedy for hate speech is not less speech but more speech.

By the way I love your web site, also the wierd picture of the Glockva head or whatever it is. Where can I see a higher res?

Thanks Garth,

Clock DVA was a innovative techno-industrial group in the 80s with distinct computer-hacker flavor. They're still around actually, but that distinct pure electronic sound has long since past.

There aren't higher res versions sine these are scans from CD liners.

http://www.sonic-boom.com/clockdva/man.amplified.html

Found it. Clock DVA. There is no such thing as a question that is too dumb to be Googled.

SFWoman-

That is a very interesting point, one I thought about a lot lately when I decided to change jobs.

I agree that legal incomes are stratafied, but I think this has always been the case, it is just a little bit more pronounced today. The big firm lawyers doing M&A have alaways made more than the sole practicioners hanging out in the hallway during Traffic Court. This makes sense, and it has worked this way for a long time. These days it is getting more pronounced, but it has always been like that to some degree.

There are two huge changes that, from what I can see, really are unprecedented. The first is the demise of the "mid-sized" law firm. There used to be dozens of firms of 50-100 lawyers that did sophisticated work, served big clients, and paid well. They are almost all gone now. First the bigger mid-sized firms disappeared, and now the smaller ones are going. The firm I left had only 14 lawyers but by the time I left we were really hurting. It wasn't a question of quality, either -- we had two Ninth Circuit clerks, a Harvard Law Review editor, a woman who graduated first in her class from UCLA, etc. -- and did the most sophisticated work around (antitrust.) But we just weren't making it.

The second phenomenon is the disappearance of the junior partner. This has been getting harder over the years, but now it is essentially impossible. The partnership track used to be 5-7 years. It was highly competitive but if you worked hard and were good you still had a good chance of making it. If things didn't work out at one firm you could go to another and take another shot. In the late 70's - early 80's, the partnership track suddenly started getting longer, 8-9 years. By the early to mid 90's it was next to impossible, if you made it back then you were really something. Today there really isn't any partnership track and no one is making it. For example, I got out of school about 10 years ago. I keep in touch with 6 or 7 of my classmates. Through them I have a vague idea of what probably 30 people are up to. Of my 30 classmates, exaclty one has made partner. No one else is even close; i.e. no one is on the brink. And I went to a top five school, no incompetents or slackers here. Everyone else I have met is in the same boat. Of the people I have met who have made partner, about half are really exceptional lawyers, true rising stars. The other half are basically steady and reliable but do not seem particularly special, they appear to have basically gotten lucky.

Now, interstingly, I think this situation will play out exactly like the housing bubble will. A lot of your big firms have probably 5-10 partners in their 50's for every junior partner/senior associate in their mid-to-late 30's. The 50 year-olds are going to retire someday, and when they do there will not enough replacements within the firm. This means that opportunities will open up. Interestingly, this is not just reflected in partnership, but also in things like trial experinece. I interviewed at a law firm where the big star had tried 100 cases to a jury; the next-most-senior woman had tried five. What happens when the big star, now in his early 60's, retires? Someone (or several someones) with less experience will have to replace him.

At present, I am preparing for these anticpated changes in the same way that I am preparing for the burst of the housing bubble. I am saving cash to purchase a house once the market crashes, and I am trying to get experience and cleints in order to further my career once an opporutnity opens up.

I also suspect that the same demographic factors are behind both trends. Frankly, I also think that attitudes play a role. Anyway, I just thought you might be interested in this discussion, probably not as interested as me, but your past comments have indicated that this is something you find interesting.

Returning to Bay Area Says

"I can’t speak for other cities or towns, but Norfolk is a slum. Local businesses make no efforts to maintain their buildings or update their signage. It is a regular event to see run down strip malls with half of the buildings empty and the other half looking like they have not been painted in 20 years. The entire area reminds me of the nastiest, worst parts of Rochester. There is no comparable in the Bay Area. Nothing as rundown. Richmond is gorgeous by comparison. If you care how your town looks, then beware of Norfolk and visit any other cities that you consider relocating to. I don’t know whether Norfolk is representative of the South, but it was shocking for us to drive around in the first few weeks after we arrived. Many tears flowed."

Norfolk is not typical of Virginia, as Norfolk is a town built on welfare. I know this because I manage a company that runs a 154 car taxi fleet in that city. The overwhelming part of our Norfolk business is the welfare payday crowd, followed by the Navy when an aircraft carrier pulls in. Being a welfare town, Norfolk has large areas of run down businesses whose owners are doing their best to make a living. However, these owners must deal with low patronage, high taxes, low work ethic employees, and poor education in those employees that do want to work. Also, part of the welfare town mentality is the attitude toward schools. In that frame of mind, schools exist mainly to employ marginally qualified teachers and administrators. Any suggestions that rules such as "can't fail a student more than once during the 12 years" be changed, or any accountability for school staff are dismissed as "racist." The welfare mentality accounts for the blighted parts of Norfolk that brought you to tears. However, if you drive around a bit more, you will see that Norfolk has many well kept neighborhoods of working class houses (1000 - 1200 sq ft 3 bd, small carport or garage). These folks are not rich, but they obviously have pride in what they do own. It also has several more middle income places like Ghent and Glen Gariff, and several high dollar areas like downtown condos, Lafayette, and East Beach.

You may recall from an earlier post of mine that I have made a few HaHas selling of my accumulated Peninsula rental properties during this housing bubble. I live on the Peninsula myself, which is a higher house cost area than Norfolk, but I make do with with my what must be in your eyes sub-par ("nothing decent under $400,000") $300,000 house. That is, a built in 1995, 2400 sq ft 4 bedroom 2.5 bath 2 car in a nice area. $300,000 will get you that kind of house in any city in the Norfolk vicinity. It seems elitist to me that you sneer at any home costing less than $400,000 in this area. I know many rich people, some who earned it themselves and some who had rich parents. The ones with rich parents have an attitude like yours. Just in case you think I have a case of academic envy, I also have an MS and I taught business courses (Quant, Econ, Finance) at Hampton University 1995-1998. For me to advance in teaching, I would have had to get a PhD. I did not want to be a student again, so I moved on. My point is that I know the pay scales, and you seem to have a high standard of living expectation for a community college instructor. I can only assume such an attitude was tempered by growing up in an affluent household.

Other Threadmasters: Have any others banned Shmend Rick, or has he trolled your threads?

Use your instinct.

nomadtoons2, you seem to be doing very well to me. I did not even graduate college until I was 28. I failed out of Caltech and then had to do a stint in the Army to afford to pay for school. I also had to work part time, so it took me a while to finish up.

So by the time I was 28, I had $5000 in student loan debt and had just been rejected from medical school.

I ended up in high tech though and am probably a lot happier and perhaps even more successful for it.

If you think you would be happier in Tennesse than obviously you should go for it. I personally lived like a college student for another decade and saved up enough for a down payment on a house here. And I just had my first child at 41. But if you are in hurry to do such things, then you will probably need to be somewhere else. I have a friend who left the Bay Area for Nashville and is very happy there.

But if you have been able to save $75k by your age, you will probably be able to afford a house here if you really want it in just a few years. There is no way they will get down to $300k, but it is all a matter of what your priorities are. I personally have lived in Southern California, Wyoming, Montana and North Carolina and visited 40 of the 50 states and there is no where else I would rather be. The traffic is horrific here, but I just deal with that by not driving except when absolutely neccesary.

The old "38% of your salary on housing" rule really doesn't apply in a place like the Bay Area. Since salaries are higher, you can spend more on your dwelling and still have plenty left to live on.

Though I have to admit we spend less than that. Much less if you cound tenant income (we have a duplex).

Have you looked into a duplex? It can make ownership much cheaper, though even duplexes are too expensive right now. We bought back in early 2003, the last time the numbers really penciled out.

Somehow my browser just killed the half hour post I typed in about cheap places to eat in San Francisco.

Sigh.

Maybe we can start a thread? I promise to post!

I heard an interview with Fred Barnes last night. It was astounding how the man seems to never question himself and doesn’t seem to actually reflect upon anything.

Scientists once found that when they decorticated a fish so it was effectively brain-dead it would just swim in a straight line without wavering. All the other fish in the school started following it because it seemed to know where it was going...