I guess SF probably would seem reasonable compared to Hong Kong. And yeah, to young people with a decent job and no stuff (no cars, kids, no space hogging hobbies such as art or woodworking, etc.). And also to people who bought houses in the 70’s or early 80’s and still live in them. When we first moved to Berkeley, and were paying $400/a month to live in the basement of a house as students, our neighbors said they felt bad because that was their mortgage payment, and they had bought their house, I think, only a couple of years earlier. That was in 1980, when inflation was rampant, and when housing prices were going up so fast they were doubling every three to five years.
My main worry as to affording retirement? The cost of health insurance. We are not 65 yet, so can’t do medicare. H has been looking for a job – lost his corporate job a while back, and the health care insurance expense is the one thing we can’t seem to cut by much at all. We can move to a cheaper house, we can eat rice and beans, we can get rid of the car, but not much one can do about the price of health insurance. And we are healthy. I worry that it is going to eat up all of our savings in a short time, paying for health insurance . . .
I’ll bend over to pick up even a penny or a nickel. Remember the saying, “Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.” I guess I’m a little superstitious thinking if I get to the point I’m too good/too rich to pick up money lying on the ground, I risk having bad luck with money.
Wowie – $1,000/ft! Berkeley Hills? And thanks. H is a young still, even though he is considered old. He doesn’t look as old as many his age. His brain still works. Some company would get a good deal if they hired him. Gotta keep him in shape . . . Just heard that Prince died. 57 years old. Younger than both of us by a couple of years. Shocking.
My friend’s place is near Cedar in Northern Berkeley. Not in the Berkeley Hills. The house is in the flats. You can wall to the Gourmet Ghetto, and the Cheeseboard from his house.
The SF bay area is a strange place. People are property rich, income and cash poor.
A friend of my mother’s is 80. Lives in Burlingame. She lives in a townhouse. Maybe its worth $1.5 million. She lives with a man. Besides social security, I don’t see where her income is coming from. I know every night she unplugs almost everything.
She may have a reverse mortgage. That would not surprise me.
She did try living in Vegas but I guess she didn’t like Vegas. Her 3 kids live near her. Maybe that keeps her in Burlingame.
Frankly, her whole family should move. I think they are all struggling. This doesn’t sound like a great retirement.
In HI, it is VERY common to be property rich and cash poor, since properties are VERY expensive and the cost of living is high (and wages are generally low). It makes for an uncomfortable combination and a lot of homes that house multiple generations or multiple families. Yes, there are lower cost places to live, but many want to live with or near loved ones and HI really IS a special place.
“Yes, there are lower cost places to live, but many want to live with or near loved ones and HI really IS a special place”
I think I need to get a loved one in Hawaii, so I can have a good excuse to live there. However, I don’t love that many people, hmm, maybe I can talk one of my kids into moving there. You are giving me ideas, here!
Wow. Opened a piece of mail from Schwab. IRA rollover - “we will no longer report a security in your account”. Wow. Time to play Prince’s 1999. This stock was a gamble; the other stocks are doing fine.
^ I’ve had a few of those. Anyone remember Atari? I rode that one right into the ground. CML (makers of NordicTrack exercise ski machines), Ag-Bag (giant storage bags for agricultural harvests), there have been others.
I still have two that show up as no value in my account - Acrodyne (maker of digital broadcasting transmitters) and the Argentinian phone company.
Well, technically the phone company stock is Telefonica Argentina, or something like that.
I don’t know that CML was a pump and dump thing, it was a legitimate company that at their peak had something like $500 million in sales, and a large market share. They couldn’t adapt fast enough to changing taste in the fitness industry and couldn’t get their costs under control, and I got wiped out when they went bankrupt.
I had my share of winners along they way, but most of them wound up getting acquired which short-circuited a really large run-up.
“I’ll bend over to pick up even a penny or a nickel. Remember the saying, “Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.” I guess I’m a little superstitious thinking if I get to the point I’m too good/too rich to pick up money lying on the ground, I risk having bad luck with money”
Wait, so maybe if I just start picking up money again, I might actually start choosing stocks that don’t completely suck? If only I’d known that was my problem!
Of course, you probably know not to pick up the pennies if they’re showing tails, right? Funny thing how superstitions go. I used to always pick up money, now even if I want to, I get that uncomfortable feeling that it isn’t mine (unless it’s on my property, of course).
“Well if we all become best buddies, we could start a CC housing swap, a month at a time”
You might be surprised how many best buddies you might have, then, when it came to a housing swap!
We’ve often thought about doing something like that. We have a house that people would really enjoy in the summer, but we’ve been turned off by the thought of someone we didn’t know anything about moving into our house. And all the cleaning involved.
