<p>Stock market price is a function money having to be some where. Europe is a scary mess and there is a lot of money flight out of there. People forget what a giant economy Japan is (just smaller than China) and it is another frightening place to contemplate investing. We have a lot of problems but we look like a beacon of stability. </p>
<p>Energy prices are also helping US GDP right now. The higher crude is, the more attractive American coal and gas.</p>
<p>If stock market and real estate are the bright spots, can they be explained away by Fed actions? Hopefully, that’s not all there is.</p>
<p>Economic cycles. We get tired of being poor so we start to make believe that we have money.</p>
<p>lekin I purchased a 1994 Geo Prism in 1994 and a 2010 Hyundai Elantra in 2010 and the sticker price was the same. I can see why people do not do major repairs, add that to leasing and I can see how repair shops would struggle. There seems to have been no auto inflation.</p>
<p>Lerkin, that is good info…you get to see how a segment of the population is doing…</p>
<p>Are people delaying repairing their cars?</p>
<p>Buying on credit for 100 bucks doesn’t sound good.</p>
<p>A guy I know runs a shoe store where the shoes are 11 bucks. Some customers ask him to put the shoes aside until payday because they don’t have 11 bucks. </p>
<p>There is good and bad out there.</p>
<p>“P.S. If you like positive, in addition to my 401K looking great, all my rentals are at 100% occupancy and everyone pays on time. And even though there will be no raises this year at my employer, we were told that there will be no lay-offs and we have open positions”</p>
<p>That is good.</p>
<p>What we noticed is that many people do not do proper maintenance beyond changing oil. As a result, they end up with bigger problems, which are costly to fix.</p>
<p>There are times (not very often), when we can only allow a car leave on the towing truck, because it is dangerous for people to drive in them. For one reason or another people do not want to fix it, but the problem is so big that might die driving a car from our shop to their house. </p>
<p>We see so much stupid behavior from people from all walks in life, it is mind boggling. Not just from customers, from our employees too. </p>
<p>I do hope things will turn around soon.</p>
<p>I was going to say I wasn’t much better than your customers, but I think I am pretty good. I do tend to go by miles rather than months to bring a car into a shop, but I do bring it in.</p>
<p>“Are people delaying repairing their cars?”</p>
<p>I know I do! Every time I bring my car to the mechanic I never seem to get out of there for less than $500 and often it’s more. So, I wait. This week it had to go in because I had a nail stuck in one of the tires and it also needed an oil change and a state inspection. I was emphatic that I did not want him to find ANYTHING wrong with my car and repeated it several times. Amazingly, the whole bill only came to $127 and the only thing extra he did was replace the license plate light bulb. First time ever I got away so lightly.</p>
<p>double post.</p>
<p>When you say bad car problems that requires the car to be towed out of the shop, do you mean mostly engine failures? Because bad alternators/batteries can be easily replaced, right?</p>
<p>I haven’t seen anything really change. Iowa has agriculture. Texas has oil. The plant I work at currently is actually having trouble keeping its people. People are quitting left and right, and it’s becoming harder to keep up with the work demand. It was a quite different situation in 2008 though. I heard they did a mass layoff here in 2008 due to the economic downturn. But I can’t blame the people who decide to work elsewhere. It’s a small town with nothing to do, and a 20 mile commute to a small college town where there’s actually something to do.</p>
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<p>I go by miles too. It is fine. </p>
<p>What I am describing as bad behavior is refusal to change transmission fluid, thinning brake pads, rotate tires, do wheel alignment, etc.</p>
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<p>I am talking about problems that might results in you not being able to stop (because you literally have no brakes pads left) or you in danger of loosing your wheels while driving. People are literally endangering their lives and lives of others.</p>
<p>Ok great… I do those …</p>
<p>Employment up slightly, but homelessness up significantly. I think it is a function of low-end rental rates going up faster than people can afford. Shelters are overflowing - more than four years ago. Food bank doesn’t have enough food to keep up. Higher end real estate doing fine.</p>
<p>that shouldn’t be too hard either. I mean it’s all pretty much loosening/tightening nuts, and making sure they’re torqued right. The parts cost a fraction of the service that mechanics charge. I would much rather give up my weekend to fix my car than blow my monthly income for a problem that I could’ve fixed myself.</p>
<p>I get all scheduled maintenance done at the dealer and do all of the work that they recommend. The new car I have apparently has free maintenance for a year or so so it’s nothing out of pocket for a while. That’s how my car got to 250K. It only got stuck once - for a dead battery - AAA took care of that.</p>
<p>Some Boston business council had a survey on hiring. 57% plan to increase their employee count. 10% are going to decrease. Bio and Tech are booming.</p>
<p>“So Hanna? The public schools are getting better in the cities?”</p>
<p>The worst ones aren’t necessarily better. The best ones are, and there are way more options for empowered families. Here in Chicago, we had one all-magnet public prep high school when I was a high schooler. Now there are 5, and four of them are placing more kids at the Ivies than New Trier. My sister in Queens has her daughter in a charter school. SF has a Korean-immersion public elementary school that wasn’t there 20 years ago, and my SF niece goes to a private Chinese-immersion school there that’s far too young to have enrolled her mother. A number of new private schools have sprung up in lots of cities, and many of the old ones (like the one I attended) have increased the size of the student body. These changes both reflect and enable my generation’s preference for staying in the city after we have kids.</p>
<p>Hmmmmm…</p>
<p>Interesting how things change…
Well… I know some young people in their 20’s in SF. They love it there. I am curious to see how many stay.
I loved it in SF. My wife said we are moving to Marin. So we did. Our kids grew up in Marin. Now they want to live in cities . Now…</p>
<p>Hanna, you live in a city? Chicago, right?
You grew up in a city?</p>
<p>Yes, I live in and grew up in Chicago. My best friend from college grew up in Bethesda and now is raising a child in Brooklyn.</p>
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<p>how new is this car you’re talking about? and the heck did you rack up 250k miles on it? My civic is over 10 years old, and it has less than 100k.</p>
<p>And newer cars are harder to do maintenance on, I’ve heard. They’re making things more compact, and harder to access. I just wish someone would make a car without all the fancy gadgets that people don’t need, with stick shift and 40 mpg. Everyone would want to buy it, because it’ll be cheap, and basic. Too bad</p>