patrick.net

eburbed and lunapark :

Why don't you look at an automatic investment plan ? A fixed amount - I think Vangaurd allows it to be as low as $50 - per month taken from you checking account. Forget about timing, average it out for next 5+ years.

If you had started that just before the 2000 crash, you would have been in healthy black before 2006 started ! I doubt we are going to see a stock market crash of that magnitude. Personally, I am mildly bullish on stock market for this year - my prediction is a very choppy year, so a AIP is a great way to handle it.

* I AM NOT AN EXPERT

Randy H Says:

> We’re planning to start trying again in February.
> *But* we’re skeptical enough so as to hold onto
> our rights to keep renting here for another year.
> A lot of stuff here in South Marin (in our price
> range at least) seems to have been pulled for
> the winter.

Does anyone know what happened to our friend Marinite from:
http://marinrealestatebubble.blogspot.com/ ?

He has not updated the BLOG in over a month since he posted a South Marin beauty that Randy might able to buy from the bank later this year…

Why don’t you look at an automatic investment plan ? A fixed amount - I think Vangaurd allows it to be as low as $50 - per month taken from you checking account. Forget about timing, average it out for next 5+ years.

Into which of Vanguard's funds might you recommend (NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE)?

I was toying around with buying a few shares of BRK.B - but if Warren dies that'd be really bad :(

after the wife is *done* w/ her graduate school....

MtViewRenter -

We are in similar dilemma, stay here or move to East Coast or move back home to be closer to family.

I do hear the East Coast has better schools - may not be an issue for you, but is for us.

FAB,

LOL! I drive past that POS every day. It has been on the market ever since I moved to Mill Valley. In fairness, it's a mixed-use building, with commercial space on one side (but no parking).

That picture makes it look like a palace compared to the real view. Normally there is a pile of trash, old mattresses, and broken down beach-bum trucks choking that whole area.

No one is going to buy it, even here in Tam Valley. There's a nice little duplex around the corner for sale for the same price, and it has parking...and no one has bought that in over 6 months either.

eburbed :

If you believe in index funds Vangaurd has probably the best offering. Apart from standard SP500, Midcap, Russel2000, International Developed Market etc index, they also offer variety of mixed offerings - look at their lifestyle funds or target retirement funds. These are just combinations of index funds. So you do one step asset allocation as well. (Make sure the allocation is what you want considering you OTHER investments.)

There is an additional benefit. The pure index funds charge a fee of $10 for balances less than $10K (ouch) but these combo funds (a basket of index funds) don't ! (nice)

Claire,

Our first and only kid is only 4 months old. So no, it's not a big issue, yet. We do miss the fact that family can help us take care of the baby, give us a break, etc. He's quite a handful already. Slightly off topic. How did you guys w/ multiple kids resist the urge to strangle them?

I'm not sure you can make the generalization that east coast schools are better overall. I thought it largely depended on which town you're in since the schools there get their funds mostly from the townships. Can't imagine there's that big of a difference between Mountain View High & Palo Alto High. Of course, you probably wouldn't want to send your kid to school in Oakland or Richmond w/o a police escort.

I went to public high school in Boston in the early 90s. It's a good thing it was an exam school where most of the kids actually want to learn. The regular high school next door had metal detectors and fully armed Boston police at all entrances. We didn't have any security personnel. Guess it was still pretty safe since if anything actually happened, one quick call and 20 cops from next door will come right over.

We are in similar dilemma, stay here or move to East Coast or move back home to be closer to family.

I do hear the East Coast has better schools - may not be an issue for you, but is for us.

The East Coast has dramatically better schools. In Long Island, NY - Jericho has one of the best public schools in the nation. Your children won't have to attend a talk by the local PD on the difference between Nortenos and Surrenos (which gangs use which colors) like they do in Mountain View.

Here's a housing comparison:

Cheapest house in Mountain View right now is $689k - 5br/1ba in 800 sqft. (They use the 5th dimension apparently).

http://tinyurl.com/yggsj4

Or, you could a 3br/2ba for $679k on a 7575 sqft lot.

http://tinyurl.com/yf68tp

Now granted there are some draw backs of moving to Jericho, LI
1) They don't have a street that's entirely Thai restaurants.
2) Mexican food there is not very good.
3) I'm ok with winters there, but summers are awful.
4) No tech jobs

Can’t imagine there’s that big of a difference between Mountain View High & Palo Alto High.

Sure there is - I don't think anyone's been stabbed at Palo Alto High.

There's actually a big difference even within Palo Alto ones. There was some controversy earlier about how Palo Alto High and how Gunn High had some ridiculous funding inequity.

Basically Gunn High had a mandatory voluntary (intentional) $2000 cash donation from parents.

Completely not related, Gunn appears dramatically higher in those silly school rankings than Palo Alto High. Or Mountain View. But Jericho (mentioned above) beats them all.

Here's a house from the school district that figure skater Sarah Hughes is from:

http://www.mlsli.com/uniDetails.CFM?MLNum=1811141&typeprop=1&start=1&rpp=20

4br/2ba on a 7695sqft lot. $659,000.

Cheaper than a 800 sqft house in Mountain View. And the schools there were feature in the NY Times for excellence.

@eburbed,

Sure, Vonage is losing money on every transaction, but they'll make up for it in volume. ;-)

Here are the rankings I was referring to:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7723397/site/newsweek/

Everyone says they don't matter, but everyone looks at them.

The first Bay Area one is Monte Vista at 57.
Sarah Hughes went to Great Neck North at 43.
Jericho (listed above) is at 14.
Gunn is at 70.
Mountain View high is at 291.

Sure there is - I don’t think anyone’s been stabbed at Palo Alto High.

Hmm, maybe there's a conspiracy to hide stabbing at PA High so there wouldn't be wide-spread panic? (j/k)

Is there really a lot of difference in the level of education offered, which I guess is actually kind of hard to measure quantitatively, or just the levels of test scores & where the students go to college?

I must confess that I don't really have much clue on the topic of local schools except for general impressions. Hell, until eburbed mentioned it, I didn't even know there's a Gunn or Jericho High.

The first Bay Area one is Monte Vista at 57.
Sarah Hughes went to Great Neck North at 43.
Jericho (listed above) is at 14.
Gunn is at 70.
Mountain View high is at 291.

Hey, that's not fair. Jericho isn't even in this area.

You should read “The Price of Admission”. You’ll discover that your kids will have a better chance of getting into Ivy League if they attend a crap school. Unless they are legacies. Then they have a 50/50 shot no matter what…

Just to be clear, a crap school in a "crap" state. Students from North Dakota are generally considered to be "affirmative action" despite their race.

palo alto renter:

Guess my kid is a shoo-in, if he decides to go that route.

Then again, private colleges are so expensive. It's not even that important for most professions since they need to go to grad school anyway. Think I'll just push him toward a decent public college instead.

Plus, schools like the ones in Palo Alto, Cupertino, Saratoga, etc. have IMO an unhealthy sense of academic competitiveness among students and parents. Many parents are raising their kids to be academic automatons, and it personally gives me pause about sending my daughter into such an environment.

Slightly off topic. How did you guys w/ multiple kids resist the urge to strangle them?

4 months old, you say? Just when you start getting exhausted, frustrated and angry, they start smiling, interacting and being generally cute. It's like an "intelligent design" to keep parents from killing their newborns.

Plus, schools like the ones in Palo Alto, Cupertino, Saratoga, etc. have IMO an unhealthy sense of academic competitiveness among students and parents. Many parents are raising their kids to be academic automatons, and it personally gives me pause about sending my daughter into such an environment.

http://wsjclassroom.com/teen/teencenter/05nov_whiteflight.htm

Gunn is much better than Mtn View High, there's just no comparison between the two, much higher income and education level among Gunn parents. Gunn used to be the most competitive high school in the entire Bay Area (except Lowell in SF, which is a whole different game), until Saratoga High and Monta Vista came along about 15 years ago.

Gunn is always known for its ultra-competitive atmosphere, it's been the defacto prep school to Stanford for years. My wife, who went to Los Altos High, said that it was easy to spot those super-driven, super-hardworking Gunn kids from a distance.

Also, if you're looking for a job in tech in Silicon Valley - Stanford really is the way to go. I think you automatically get accepted into Google.

Plus, schools like the ones in Palo Alto, Cupertino, Saratoga, etc. have IMO an unhealthy sense of academic competitiveness among students and parents. Many parents are raising their kids to be academic automatons, and it personally gives me pause about sending my daughter into such an environment.

Both my wife and me went to public high schools that weren't on the top 1000 list. They were probably never on those lists and never will be. Guess we were considered big fish in small ponds. It was good in some respects. We got more respect from the teachers & students, but it didn't help much preparing for the ultra-competitive environment at college.

We haven't decided how we will approach this yet. But I'm sure the solution will depend on the temperament of the child.

eburbed,

Thanks for the WSJ "classroom" link. Interesting stuff, and spot-on.

BTW, re: the great LI NY schools, does everyone there have that LI accent? That would be a downside to sending your kids to school there.

Today, Saratoga High, Monta Vista and Gunn are all sort of the same, feeder school into Stanford and UCB, very competitive academically.

Harker is a good alternative for those who don't live in a good school district. Chambers sends his kid to Harker as well.

What is interesting to me is that competitive students and parents seem to think going to a competitive HS like Monte Vista, Gunn, etc. is a ticket to getting into a top college. I would second Mt. View Renter's point - how many of the "middling" students at, say, Monte Vista get lost in the crowd of overachievers and hence don't get into a top school? If that same kid had gone to a less competitive school, maybe that kid would have been valedictorian.

Moreover, there's the utility of HS as a stepping stone to an Ivy-equivalent, but then there's the utility of actually getting an education. I doubt these top HS's do so much of a better job than the rest. AND, let's not forget actually doing things other than studying, like playing sports, learning about the world and yourself, etc. (other than for the purpose of padding your college application).

I find the competitive HS mindset sad and depressing. What kind of childhood is that?

BTW, re: the great LI NY schools, does everyone there have that LI accent? That would be a downside to sending your kids to school there.

I was going to make a joke about that. Something about "But your daughter may sound like Fran Drescher or Sarah Silverman"

But it really depends on your parents. I certainly don't sound like Tony Soprano or Woody Allen.

Today, Saratoga High, Monta Vista and Gunn are all sort of the same, feeder school into Stanford and UCB, very competitive academically.

That's one of the things that really bugs me about the West Coast - the lack of good colleges. It's always Stanford this, Cal that, UCLA the other thing.

Back in the east there was more diversity: Tufts, UPenn, MIT, Columbia, NYU, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Duke, BU - maybe even (gasp) Penn State.

Here's the other thing I don't understand. It seems like every kid around here is doing everything they can to get into Stanford, Cal, the Ivies, etc. I didn't think this was the case 12 or 13 years ago when I was applying to schools. Sure we cared about going to college. I'd say ~25% of my class got into a top 25 school. but I don't think most kids started actually thinking and preparing for college until the end of junior year.

Did parents just wake up one day and say, hey, I need to push my kid as hard as I can so he can go to Stanford, or at least a top tier school? Is it really that much harder to get in nowadays?

I find the competitive HS mindset sad and depressing. What kind of childhood is that?

I think that's actually a good thing. Given the trend of further globalization, erosion of safety nets, divergence in salaries - my prediction in the future is that you will either be a VP, or be working at the future Century theatre at Valco.

Hint: there won't be that many VP positions.

So better start getting ready to be cut throat and as money/power hungry as possible.

Is it really that much harder to get in nowadays?

Yes. It started about a decade ago. Even "admit everyone" public schools are turning down students now.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114419924978917225-search.html?KEYWORDS=top+colleges&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

Concluding one of the most brutal admission seasons ever, college officials say they are accepting an unusually low percentage of applicants.

Some public universities are also seeing increases in applications. The University of California-Berkeley received 41,700 applications for the fall -- nearly 13% more than last year. It admitted about 24%, or about 9,800 students. That is similar to the number of students it admitted last year.

Everyone wants to go to college now (duh) so it's become even more competitive.

The problem of Bay Area is, there are either the good schools, or the bad schools, very few so-so schools in between that can replicate the experience of an average HS kid in middle America, or elsewhere America. Even the remaining so-so schools are becoming competitive because the mix of the parents is changing.

Saratoga, Cupertino, Palo Alto have competitive schools from elementary to HS, Los Altos has great elem schools. Sunnyvale, good parts of San Jose are following suit, and you see API improvement going on YOY. Parents who got stuck in so-so school districts, like Redwood City or bad parts of San Jose, all send their kids to private schools, so the public schools in these district just stay bad. We are just talking about the west side here, if you venture to east bay, there are tons of REALLY bad public schools that will stay that way. It is not even worthwhile to have your kid become a valedictorian there, because Ivy Leagues don't usually accept kids from a school which has NEVER sent anybody to the college. You also need to worry about the kind of influence your kid will be getting from the bad schools.

Public school in the Bay Area is a mere reflection of the wealth distribution in this area. You have the rich people, and the poor people, we do have some middle class, but they are disappearing. So you either struggle to join the rank of the rich, or get stuck with the poor. It is hard to obtain an "average" educational experience here.

My wife who went to the "average" public schools here in the 80s will not send our kid back to the same "average" schools, because these presumably average schools have either deteriorated in quality or soared in competitiveness. She had a great time with her average schools, but that sort of experience cannot be replicated today.

The good news is that a lot of this phenomenon is due to the echo boom demographics. Being Gen-X, I was lucky enough to have applied to college near a population nadir. The Bay Area, specifically Cupertino and similar towns have the added effect of educated and competitive immigrants from countries where incessant testing, studying and cramming pretty much define childhood. I would never have my children grow up in such an environment.

eburbed:

You forgot Cal Tech. So yeah, that's 4 top schools on the west coast. Maybe that's why it's so competitive here? I don't know...

When I was applying to college. Just in the Boston area, we had BU, BC, Tufts, Harvard, MIT in the top 25. Brandeis and Northeastern were also ranked relatively high.

The problem of Bay Area is, there are either the good schools, or the bad schools, very few so-so schools in between that can replicate the experience of an average HS kid in middle America, or elsewhere America.

By average HS kid in middle America, do you mean "HS Football is the most important thing in my life"? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_Night_Lights

OO,

One point to add - the "reflection of wealth" breaks down in some ultra-wealthy enclaves, like Woodside, Portola Valley. Good K-8, but lousy HS's. Generally these folks all send their kids to private schools.

So better start getting ready to be cut throat and as money/power hungry as possible.

If my only "options" in life as dictated by the powers-that-be are: a) try to become a high-rolling back-stabbing greedbag CEO, or b) scraping bubble gum off the floor of run-down movie theater 'til I'm 70, then my choice is NEITHER.

Luckily, there are still some other alternatives out there, some of which don't even center around illegal activities. The key thing to me is to be flexible & open-minded in shifting careers, stay out of (unmanageable) debt and LIVE BELOW YOUR MEANS.

In case people here are not aware, a lot more countries are joining the competition for getting into Ivies than before.

There are prep classes in the most affluent parts of China for rich kids aiming at the Ivies. A friend of my wife's classmate from undergrad went to China about 12 years ago as an independent freelancer, and then started a business coaching local kids on their essays, SAT scores, activity profile to get into top American colleges. He also started a bunch of other businesses, but this Princeton Review-equivalent is flourishing big time. This outfit even hooks up existing students at Ivies with Chinese applicants brushing up their essays and resumes for a fee. In fact, international applicants may receive more favor because they appear more "exotic". Also, as long as the applicant has stellar SAT scores, it is much easier to pedal other extra-curricular stuff since it is harder to verify, yes I am talking about the grey areas of - fraud.

Welcome to the globalization of everything.

Welcome to the globalization of everything.

You guys are depressing me. What a way to start the weekend.

Surfer-X,

Why yes, I do have experience with the MCC (Mortgage Credit Certificate) program. It's funny you asked because I intended to ask if they have it in SF. I was recently reviewing the program in Chicago. It's funny because after you have not owned for 2 years you will be considered a first time homebuyer. I'll explain the program and my experience for those who care.

The MCC gives you a Fed. Inc. tax CREDIT for a percentage of mortgage interest paid each year that you live in the property FOR THE LIFE OF THE LOAN! When I had one in the early '90's it was for 35%. So, if I paid $3,000 interest in a year I had a income tax credit of $1,050 that comes right off your tax bill as it is a credit and not a deduction - Awesome.

In order to qualify you either need to be a first time homebuyer (read not owned in the last two years) or buy in a "targeted area". In addition, your income must be below certain thresholds. These vary by number of persons in the household, type of property purchased, etc.. I actually met all of the criteria when I applied. The location part is funny because I was buying on the edge of what is called the Gold Coast but the trageted areas were determined decades ago so, the area was considered blighted, etc. and thereby a targeted area. I recently looked into this again and most of the city is still a targeted area.

Here is the link-

http://tinyurl.com/y5hjo6