The real question is already the theme of this entire board--how do we get at Denny's money? Meanwhile, if you have a truckload of hard rock candy delivered to your house, it only costs a penny per piece.
Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker, "A man is not a financial plan." I'll pay off my $100,000 college loans in my 20s. In my 30s I'll save $500,000 for a house. In my 40s I'll save $200,000 for my kids' college. In my 50s I'll save $500,000 for my retirement. I'll retire early at 60 and travel around the world. Then I'll die and--forgot to save for the funeral. Well those little brats can pay for something. You know what caused this? The minimum wage is too high. Why do we have to subsidize the poor people?
You'd be shocked, then. Having several family members that work in the mortgage industry, they re-fi'd all our friends and family down there, and/or helped with financing a new purchase, none of which appraised for, or cost, more than $1million (which is what you said you need to find a reasonable house in a safe neighborhood). All of the houses are at least 1400 sq. ft. (but most closer to between 1600 and 2000 sq ft.). Maybe it's all semantics, and what not.... And I'm not sure what type of house you're talking about, or how you classify "starter" homes, and I don't know everything about SoCal, but there are some nice houses in safe LA neighborhoods to be had for under a $1million.
only house between 500-700k for sale in my city on Realtor.com. http://www.realtor.com/realestatean...rldom-Ave_Playa-Del-Rey_CA_90293_M18070-49049 :MARIS61:
My cousin's house is close to LAX (and an extremely quick drive to Manhattan Beach). Not the best neighborhood, but not bad at all (it looks more like an older SE PDX neighborhood), but I've never had any issues all while staying there and I know my cousin hasn't had any issues or heard anything bad from his neighbors. It's a nice house on a quiet street, hard woods throughout. I know they did some basic remodeling in the house after purchase, but they probably paid $650-700K. Not trying to oversimplify, but I do know that (3 years ago) when the market was down, some of those neighborhoods dropped pretty significantly in price (like anywhere else).
How much do you think a family should bring in with two children and two parents in order to comfortably afford a $650k house?
You can't get a house in Palo Alto for less than $1M. Perhaps you have a different idea of getting by and raising kids that most do. Most families have to rent places, but they can raise kids on less than $200k.
I'd imagine renting for a family of four would be, at a minimum $2500 a month (3 bedroom apartment). Sure, you can also feed children cup of noodles every night too I suppose and shop at goodwill for all their clothes. I'm talking 2 cars, 3 bedrooms, eat decently and healthy and put away money for college and save, entertain and stay debt free. In Palo Alto, its very hard to do for $200k a year, which is why people there make so much.
That seems to be a huge leap from to 2 cars, 3 bedroom house, eating well and saving for college also. I would say MOST people aren't raised that way. Lots of families need to cut costs where they can when they have kids, whether it's not eating as nice, not as much on entertainment, stretching out cars until they die, renting versus owning, etc.
it's just completely off from your original statement, from just raising kids under that amount to having a perfect life. Yeah, nobody can own a million dollar home, send their kids to private school, eat filets every night with a 50 dollar bottle of wine, vacation for 3 weeks in Europe every summer, and only make 200K
its not a perfect life. its just one where you can pay for where you live, afford what you buy and want to buy, and save a little money. The "american dream". Sure, in Oregon, $200k is a lot of money if you decide to live in the burbs, but out here in LA or in Palo Alto, its really not that much money at all. But people were living on less than that and getting into massive debt, using their houses as ATMs, taking out strange mortgages and we are where we are.
Geez. Palo Alto is one of the most elite neighborhoods in the country. You can buy a house in nice neighborhoods nearby, like Santa Clara or San Mateo for 1/3 the cost of a home in Palo Alto.
You're describing a scenario that really has never existed for most people in the country. So by saying people can't do it today, you really aren't making much of a point. I think you have some idea where parents will live the lifestyle you live... living in a hipster loft, eating out every night, spending money on drinks at the club several times a week, buying any new gadget you ever want, etc etc all while sending their kids to really expensive daycares, or hiring nannies. Do you really think our grandparents were brought up like that?
Palo Alto is the center... everything gets cheaper as you move further north or south from there. But the demand for Palo Alto is unbelievable. They had no idea there was a housing market crash.
School is fast becoming the next housing bubble. If you look at it, it has a lot of the same issues. Government guaranteed loans, little regulation and declining value in receiving an education. These kinds of issues reduce the free market approach to pricing and allow schools to price hike exponentially. Eventually the value of an education will be less than the cost and that point will be soon. One thing that keeps the bubble going is the Conventional wisdom that when times are hard you get more education to secure a better future. As the OP shows this is leading to highly educated servers and unemployed with ridiculous debt. To make matters worse even bankruptcy will not forgive student loans. I've lived in New Zealand and Japan, and I’ve been to most of Europe and South America. In a lot of these countries not only is school free (or cheap) but you actually receive an allowance from the government for going to school and maintaining good grades. It may be a socialist attitude but at least they are investing in their future as a country, as we keep living off our past.
An excellent post. I fully agree with the first paragraph. As to the second, sadly, we're in no position to do this given our sad state of affairs for a variety of reasons. Too much fraud, waste & abuse in the social services sector that sucks money away from things like education is just one of the problems.
$200K is a lot anywhere in Oregon, really. And people in Oregon were doing the same things (people everywhere were doing that), it's simply that the cost of living is higher in some places (and so are wages/salaries).
