<p>The economy in my neck of the country is definitely picking up. To lerkin’s point, there are always industries that act contrary to the broader trends. In general, however, we’re seeing restaurants opening up and the number of house foreclosures has plummeted.</p>
<p>I hear that Brooklyn is a happening place. </p>
<p>My daughter may stay in SF. Career wise it makes sense. SF or the South Bay.</p>
<p>Town where H teaches has announced plans to lay off almost 20% of the teachers, because real estate taxes, other aid, etc are down (and probably some mismanagement too–no, not probably, definitely.) Property owners are bailing, but housing prices are plummeting. </p>
<p>Would have thought that H would be bulletproof as an MD with a teaching certificate teaching science, but no one is hiring teachers in NJ.</p>
<p>Truly scared for the first time in 20 years.</p>
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<p>I bought it last September. I could have kept the old car running for at least another 50 K miles. The wheels and tires had some minor annoying problems for a few years. I’d guess that the new owner is happy with it.</p>
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<p>13 years old so 20K miles per year. Obviously highway miles but we took lots of long trips in the car to Canada, Chicago, the Carolinas, basically the Eastern US and Canada.</p>
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<p>I would hope that the automakers had serviceability engineering departments. This was part of my job description many years ago - basically you put in serviceability requirements to represent customer service that the engineering folks have to provide so that your organization can properly service the product.</p>
<p>I cleaned my car last night and noticed that it was far easier to clean then my previous car. The surfaces were a lot simpler, fewer curves, nooks and crannies for dirt, crumbs and stones to hide in. I don’t know whether or not my car is hard to work on but I don’t work on it so it’s not a major concern for me at this time.</p>
<p>The car comes with a ton of electronics and this was on the base model. I’ve discovered that I actually like a lot of the electronic features and they promote safety and convenience from my perspective.</p>
<p>I think that modern automatic transmissions can beat humans in MPG these days. You have six-speed automatics. I don’t think that I could shift that much to do as well as a modern automatic.</p>
<p>My old car got 27. My new one gets 34. My previous to the previous got 25. The new car was about less than my previous car and includes a year or more of service. My old car was a little bigger and sometimes I miss the room but sometimes I like the smaller car.</p>
<p>Carmakers are making what people want. There’s a ton of choices out there and those that make what people don’t want are going to either go out of business or discount heavily.</p>
<p>Not sure whether I posted it on CC but there’s an article out saying that more people are moving into NYC than moving out for the first time in 60 years.</p>
<p>[More</a> move in than out of NYC; 1st time in decades - seattlepi.com](<a href=“http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/More-move-in-than-out-of-NYC-1st-time-in-decades-4354786.php#ixzz2NX957sKp]More”>http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/More-move-in-than-out-of-NYC-1st-time-in-decades-4354786.php#ixzz2NX957sKp)</p>
<p>BTW, there is an absolute ton of bad and doom and gloom news out there. It’s hard not to run into it. I subscribe to a Gold email list and it’s bad news all the time. I’m on financial sites where there is story after story about bad news. I’m trying to trade and invest and want an unbiased or balanced approach. I know about the bad stuff - but there’s good news out there too. You just have to read it.</p>
<p>^^ you weren’t born in 91… were you?</p>
<p>and I thought you bought a new car as in a 2012 model. That makes more sense that you bought a new used car, because 250k in a year is like a trip to the moon. lol</p>
<p>No, I’m a geezer.</p>
<p>my mistake</p>
<p>I bought a brand new car in 2012. Dealers don’t usually provide full maintenance for a year on used cars.</p>
<p>Garland, I am sorry to read your post. Not a pretty picture. Any ideas on what you two are going to do? </p>
<p>All we hear about is a need for math and science teachers…,</p>
<p>^Well, we hope he won’t be one of the ones cut. But he is one of the last hired in Science, so I dunno. He’s looking around, and I am increasing my adjuncting to five classes a semester, will do more if I need to. We could try to sell our house in North Jersey to cut costs, but housing prices in town are plummeting (I don’t know if we’d get what we paid 20+ years ago right now), and there are no jobs with bennies in Cape may, so moving down there without one would be scary. </p>
<p>The science and math shortage seems to have disappeared, or they just learned to live with it; I’m not sure. But the jobs are not there, particularly for bio, which is what he is certified in.</p>
<p>garland are you in Bergen County?</p>
<p>Why is nj having issues? </p>
<p>20 years with no increase in home prices is pretty bad. </p>
<p>Does your husband just teach biology?</p>
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<p>I think that this is generally true. It may be people leaving other mathy areas that have tried to get into teaching or schools cutting back on teachers. In my area, districts have been using fewer teachers because of declining enrollment. There was a big baby bubble that moved through and there are far fewer kids coming through the system today.</p>
<p>I’d guess that the teaching jobs are moving to wherever people who are giving up on the northeast are going to.</p>
<p>I’m going to try not to be more specific (fudged some of the details to be non-explicit here.)</p>
<p>Dstark–five years ago, we would have gotten twice the original price. Our area is declining (especially with the schools being basically destroyed.)</p>
<p>There’s a lot of supply in biology majors. Just ask UCBAlum.</p>
<p>can’t they retire some old teachers? that’s what they did at my old school</p>
<p>NJ has a higher unemployment level than the country. I don’t want to get political, but perhaps the governor has different ways of doing things than I would, or different goals.</p>
<p>I’m sure Sandy did help the state either, even though I’m not in one of those areas that were worst hit.</p>
<p>That is a big home price decline over the last 5 years…
Sounds like nj is a mess.</p>
<p>Maybe not the whole state. Our town is in flux right now.</p>