patrick.net

I buy a yacht. A nice relatively new 40' one should run less than 200K, which combined with slip fees, maintenance, etc. should be far less than whatever the market climbs to. Speaking of which, anyone here sail?

I have great faith in the ability of the masses to screw up, and in the ability of a few to Do What's Right. Oh, wait, I'm supposed to toss logic/experience/etc. Never mind then...

In theory, nominally it could happen. That means everyone will get paid 1M US peso a year (6.6 Peso Hahas, known as PaHa). Then perhaps we will enter a period of permanent plateau where the average house value of the United States of Latin America will cost around 20 Pahas.

Now, the problem is, how do we deal with the Latin Americanization part that happens as the dollar devalues to peso? If you can survive some random gunshots, robbery, riots, $50/gallon gas, food outage, etc. then I guess we will collectively arrive at the $3M-US peso-home-for-everyone Utopia.

I would go into the used RV and RV park business. Only way for the under 30 set to *own* anything in California.

May I also ask a naive question about the Enron Duos?

How much money do you think they have already stashed away for their family and kids that won't be able to be touched by the court? You know there are numerous ways and places to hide money if one is really diligent at it.

I guess that means the Boomers win. In which case I’m donating the nest egg I’ve saved up to al-Queda.

Allahu Akhbar!

Joe and Whine,

NSA is listening, coming after your ass shortly :-)

I was asked exactly that by a coworker.
I recently sold and am renting, he is looking to buy "before things get out of reach".

My response was "then God bless 'em". I say that whenever I really mean, "then they can fuck themselves". Try it, it works great!

Realistically, I would probably take my savings and move back to NC or at least, somewhar's else.

MovedToAugusta,

If you don't mind my asking, I'm thinking of getting lessons + US Sailing cert from Club Nautique (seems like a good way to build experience). I also saw a "fractional sailing" program (SailTime), but my thinking is that I'm better off getting quality instruction (and seeing how much I end up sailing) before doing something like that. Have you heard anything good/bad about either?

The Revolution will not be televised.

Please be patriotic.

If you think boomers will win, so be it. Design business models to profit from them.

requiem,

I am currently taking courses at Club Nautique and can definitely recommend them. I also looked at OCSC, but they seem more racing oriented. If you want to do coastal cruising or go offshore, Club Nautique seems to be best around.

So you invest in eldercare, and make a killing. Once they find out, they’ll just double your rent. Nice try.

So what?

Do you hate boomers far the sake of hating them? Frankly I see opportunities. If it turns out that the RE bulls were right, we should quickly reverse course and increase RE exposure (I do not see that on the horizon, don't worry).

Moreover, the purchase of a primary residence should be more about affordability and utility instead of market timing.

BTW, I am allergic to whine.

Oops, I meant wine.

Red Whine,

Ultimately, I don't think California will turn into another London or Dubai. There's just too much buildable land and too many moneyed parties that will increase the housing stock long term, if given the opportunity. I don't think NIMBYism alone will permanently bottleneck California's development.

The other half of this equation is the demand. The demand here is much more elastic than in many other countries because America is much more fluid than most other nations, where the big cities are the only places for action.

Here, we can have a pretty good life in NC or TX, if CA is utterly unaffordable. I can tell you that none of my Chinese family would dream of moving out of Shanghai and into a second tier city.

The other thing is, Boomers are largely seen here as self-indulgent and selfish. Great, they'll burn through their cash faster and get things back to equilibrium faster. They might bring the country down with them, but I don't see a multi-generational cleavage btwn haves and have-nots building, yet.

Peter P,

With all due respect, I think this country has been ODing on patriotic platitudes for about 6 years. Having said that, I wouldn't support Red Whine if he truly intends to follow through with his statement. Muslim Extremists' idea of the good life is not something that 99.99% of the reader here would be comfortable with.