Eh they can manage security for royals and Presidential children who go to university. And there are no other private schools in the area? Further, the are many school system as bad as the DC system which is why people want to move out of them.
Jimmy Carter sent his daughter to a public school. I know in our state the governors send their kids to the public schools.
Actually I’ve always found it interesting that the politicians who vote against vouchers almost always send their kids to private schools.
On the other hand, there’s Rolling Stone and all the other journalism fixtures that went with the UVa gang rape hoax.
See above.
See above. And apparently real journalists either just ignore the whole thing or print a microscopic correction on page 17.
They do, but when people reach that state they disappear so you no longer see them.
Just because you CAN spend $1,000 on your housing doesn’t mean you HAVE TO or you SHOULD.
The two times the spouse and I looked into home ownership (because we have considered it) we became very frustrated with real estate agents constantly pushing us to buy more house than we wanted or felt we needed. Because you CAN spend X!!!
Well, we don’t have kids (so schools not such a concern, nor extra bedrooms) and the spouse has a disability and always faced a higher than normal risk of unemployment. Thus, we wanted a small house (yes, they do exist) and pegged to just one income, not two. Heresy!
So, at a time we could have spent $1500/month on a mortgage according to various calculations we choose to rent at $600/month. We even invested some of the difference. Some of it we just socked into readily-liquidated savings. Which, for us turned out to be the right decision because, if we had bought a home, we would have lost it around 2009. We still wound up in dire financial straits but escaped foreclosure, bankruptcy, and debt. Having reliable transportation to either look for work or get to work was hugely important those years (and still is) but we might not have been able to pay off the vehicles if we had had a large mortgage and might have lost those, too.
Now, if we had been two able bodied adults with 2 kids the equation would have been very different.
That’s a point that seems lost on some folks - while home ownership is often a good choice, it is not always so, nor is it the only option. Home ownership is ONE investment you can make, it’s not the only one nor, do I believe, should it be the only one.
Then there’s my sister in Buffalo who decided to purchase a 3,000 square foot home in a very upscale neighborhood with excellent schools - good for her. It was a stretch, though, even for a doctor (her) and a business owner (him) but, instead of getting the huge house in the excellent district AND playing keep up with the Joneses they made conscious decisions to economize in other areas to enable them to afford the home. When the Great Recession hit they got slammed by the business folding, and they still have medical school loans to pay off, and the large mortgage, but the situation was manageable - unlike for some of their “wealthy” neighbors who, in addition to the fancy houses insisted on new cars every year, boats, other motor toys, yearly (or more) European/Asian vacations, and so on who lost everything.
It’s the same problem, different socio-economic group. People spending beyond their means, not making priorities in their lives but grasping at everything, unsustainable debt, and so on.
That, and my sister’s income does give her more leeway to make mistakes than I have. If an expense comes up they can “eat poor” for a month, or have some assurance that they be able to pay off an additional $1,000 in debt within a year, or the like. Me? Not so much. I’m already eating poor every single day, I can’t guarantee I’ll make the rent on time, much less pay off an $1,000 in debt in a year if I have to get the car fixed or whatever. For people with more money, financial mistakes are less likely to result in disaster. For poor people, any financial mistake may be irrecoverable.
We’ve survived, my spouse and I, by being extremely cautious. Same thing with the cars - we’ve purchased “less car” than we could (often 1/3 or eve 1/4 of what we could have), and we put money down to lessen the loan payments. And sometimes we had to search for a dealer who wouldn’t keep trying to push us into more than we wanted. Why? Because one of us was always at high risk of unemployment due to health problems and thus we did our calculations based on one income even when we had two, and bought what we needed than what we theoretically could. It was almost brutally practical, but it’s what worked for us. There was one and only one extravagance we ever indulged, and that was my getting a pilot’s license and flying - which we did only while we could pay all bills, still save some, and not using credit. As soon as that was no longer possible the flying stopped. Could we have spent that money on something else? Well, yeah - but we didn’t fall into that spending, we made a conscious choice and accepted the trade offs.
Past results are no guarantee of future returns. No, housing prices are not guaranteed to go down. Real estate is NOT a guaranteed investment.
That works IF you have direct deposit - of the last four jobs I’ve had, only 1 even offered direct deposit. The lower you go on the food chain the less likely you are to have direct deposit as an option.
I’ve posted (and ranted) about this in other threads. In our experience they end up sponging off their more disciplined and frugal relatives. We’re still facing a “visit” from one of our formerly profligate kin during the holiday break. It’s an obvious shopping trip for new digs, since we’re empty-nesters with a 4Br house in the nice 'burbs. Wife and I had a long talk about it and we’re in agreement that Casa Pullin is officially closed. We’ve worked too long and hard to end up supporting vagabonds after finally getting the kids launched. We like our big empty house the way it is.
So do teachers, for a variety of reasons.
[QUOTE=monstro]
Being a homeowner is just as much a symbol of fiscal responsibility as being a car owner or throwing expensive parties. In both cases, an individual puts down a big chunk of money and borrows a shitload of even more money. Sorry, but this is not a major feat of responsibility.
[/QUOTE]
Do you understand the difference between borrowing money to buy a house vs. borrowing money to buy a car or throw a party? Because you can usually sell a house for more than you paid for it, whereas you usually cannot sell a car for more than you paid for it, and you cannot resell a party at all.
One of the major problems with these kinds of discussions is the bizarre exaggerations people seem to get sucked into. “Buying a house is usually a good financial decision” leads to “no it isn’t. It is no different from borrowing money to throw a party” which is mildly ridiculous.
Regards,
Shodan
This one is key. I’m finally ready to stay put for a while. The idea of a house that requires both of us to maintain current income is frightening. But real estate in the sub-$0.5M range that doesn’t leave one party with a ludicrous commute (very easy here) is scarce. The math is complicated, so we’ll see.
Seriously, we bought a condo in 2010, and when rates went down, I did the math and realized what an opportunity it was for us - not to buy a bigger house (although someday I would like to live in a single-family house), but to refinance to a 15-year loan and build equity much, much faster than we were doing with the 30-year loan.
That’s the much better long-term plan for us, because although I would love to live in a single-family house someday, it would have meant some unpalatable (for us) choices - the single-family houses we could afford that met our requirements for location (in a reasonably safe neighborhood, within walking distance of a direct train to work so we don’t need a car to commute) were major fixer-uppers. And we couldn’t afford any $10k repair surprises, and although we were preapproved for a mortgage 30% higher than we took, we both place high priority on having more wiggle room in the budget - for emergencies, and if there are no major emergencies, for things like travel.
Also, our mortgage payment is at a level that if we had to relocate, we could rent out our place for about what the mortgage + taxes + insurance are currently costing.
Like herding cats this bunch is.
Welcome to the Straight Dope.
And how resistant people are to it. I used to manage a business which paid everyone cash, oh how they grumbled when I weened them onto cheques and the uproar when I started direct deposit, but a few weeks into it everyone was commenting on how they finally had savings in the bank. This was a restaurant and all the staff went home with cash tips every night, I don’t know what they were doing with it before because everyone was completely broke by payday, but after the direct deposit thing they started valuing the tips and living on them.
Way to miss the point there. You are confusing “status symbol” with “symbolic achievement used in an argument to represent good financial decisions”. The original statement, which was “I lived frugally then and now own a house” could just have easily been “I lived frugally then and now have saved up enough money to retire. rent a condo, and spend my days writing My Little Pony fan fiction.”
Do you honestly not understand the difference here?
Do you not know what a status symbol is?
How does a car not represent the same thing? Or an expensive watch? Or a $4000 designer bag? Or an expensive wedding? If I told you that my ability to go on a cruise every summer is a symbolic achievement representing my good financial decisions, would you agree with me? Or would you say, “Um, no.”
I think all of us know non-frugal people who bought a house they can’t really afford. And plenty of people can make a downpayment on a house without actually saving for it (especially if they don’t put a lot of money down).
Middle-class people may think owning a house is an important symbol, and I agree that property does symbolize success. But that’s what all status symbols do. Poor people like their spinning rims for the same reason. That doesn’t mean spinning rims are actually indicative of anything.
Putting stock in symbols over substance and utility is what causes people to make poor financial decisions, IMHO.
[QUOTE=monstro]
How does a car not represent the same thing? Or an expensive watch? Or a $4000 designer bag? Or an expensive wedding? If I told you that my ability to go on a cruise every summer is a symbolic achievement representing my good financial decisions, would you agree with me? Or would you say, “Um, no.”
[/QUOTE]
I would say that all those things are depreciating assets, and that a house is usually not.
Regards,
Shodan
If you are claiming that “I can go on expensive cruises and not experience night sweats over how to pay for it”, then yes, they are equivalent arguments. If you’re running up multi-thousand dollar credit card bills and just paying the minimum every month, then I reserve my right to judge your financial acument.
I wouldn’t even call the expensive wedding or the annual cruise an “asset.”
True. I should have been more precise in my statements.
Regards,
Shodan
A cruise can pay far more dividends in lifetime recollection, especially shared ones, than a new car or living room set that’s eventually worn out and discarded. Financial thriftiness need to be limited to the strictly practical and asset valuations.
I would have trouble saying the same about a wedding that cost 4-5x what the same event on a simpler scale would have. The event will be remembered. The $1500 cake, $2000 photographer, $3000 dress and $200/plate dinner will not.
The view and much of the experience on a cruise is the same whether you have a top-deck penthouse or a lower inside cabin.