A 27 year old mother (married) with 3 jobs

I talked to her last night. She wanted to join my winter bowling league ($20 a week for 37 weeks).. I talked her out of it because she said she was always "broke"..

During the conversation, it came out..

The REASON she's always broke..

Not her kids
Not her husband... he has TWO jobs
Not drinking'
Not smoking
Not drugs
Not gambling


THREE things

$2000 house payment
$685 car payment and a $450 car payment

she works a 9AM-3PM job Mon-Fri
she works a 6PM-10PM job Mon-Thu
she waitresses Fri & Sat 6PM-midnight

her husband hits the freeway at 4AM and returns home at 7PM Mon-Fri

he moonlights with his father on weekends, doing landscaping

These two young people are spending their days & nights working to support two cars and a house...

They have no time for their families and no "extra" money, so any emergencies have to be "charged"..

they are their way to bankruptcy and/or divorce..

They are not alone..

The "Mom" in me kicked in, and I "suggested" that maybe she could eliminate 2 of her jobs if they got rid of those new cars.:evilgrin:..

I think she's doing some thinking..she admitted that she now hates her new car because all it does is sit there while she works her ass off, and they cannot afford the time or gas to actually go anywhere..

How come families didn't have to struggle like this up until around 20 years ago?

That's what I want to know :cry:

My mom was always fond of saying she was treading water to stay above the poverty line. Single parent, one job, used car (no loan), one mortgage on a $28k home (1974 dollars), and raising 4-5 kids. We were considered lower-middle class, I suppose, or upper-lower class. She worked retail sales (commission).

Today's middle class has expectations of living in a home costing 4-5 times their annual income. That, right there, is completely fucked up. If SCD's friend is paying a $2k mortgage, once upon a time I would have assumed household income of $8k/month. Now, I'm guessing more like $4k-6k.

That's not poverty, that's the result of a nationwide trend of people being lemmings.

Also, for the first 10 years of my life, we were a 1 car family and my parents rented (in communities with the best schools) until they could reasonably afford to buy a house. Of course, there was no stigma to renting at that time - lots of other people did it, too.

I think a lot of people do struggle because they can't make enough money for even the minimum standard of living, but I also think some people have no idea what they want out of life, so they're always chasing after what they think they should have until they get themselves in the sort of situation SoCal describes here.

How come families didn't have to struggle like this up until around 20 years ago?
Reagan took office with the support of the Baby Boomers....... coddled and cuddled by their WORKING PARENTS.

My real father died in late '65. My mom met and married a fine man in '67.

He was a senior design engineer at an aerospace company. You might think he made good money for the time, BUT he was divorced and at the time MOST of his salary went to alimony and support for one of his three children from that disastrous marriage.

My mom had been working at an academic library. She had to keep that job until 1970, when we got the most excellent phone call that my stepfather's ex-wife had remarried. His daughter graduated from college that year too, so no more alimony or child support. My mom was able to quit her job.

But still we were never very well off. My mom had made a very wise purchase of a home in '66 against the advice of everyone in her family - $35,000 for a place that sold a couple of years ago for just shy of a million. House payments were about $160 per month including tax and insurance throughout the '70s. But in spite of her good planning and financial skill we could never afford a brand new car. We got by with creativity and "sweat equity".

My mom's decades of careful investing have left her in a good position. Not wealthy, but financially independent. It took a lot of hard work and brain power.

A lot of the "struggling" I see in younger families now is the result of trying to keep up with the Joneses. The pressure, some of it from their selfish teenage kids, to live in a nicer house and drive a nicer car than they can really afford.

In too many cases, like hers', it's not keeping up with the Joneses, it's just trying to stay alive.

But not everyone has the wherewithall to work at that level.

in the slightest. It's unnecessary.

Buy a used car outright for a couple grand, or even one with SMALL payments.

Buy a smaller house, or rent for awhile so you can save some money.

Move to a less expensive area. $9/hr jobs exist in a lot of places.

Sometimes things aren't worth holding onto.

For the OP's location.

People living in that area who aren't bringing home a certain income level *could* move to a more affordable housing market. But then you'd see employers in that state begging for "immigration reform," as the wealthier citizens demand a population of lower-paid support staff.

Discussing the greater political/socioeconomic situation is just semantics when it comes to one family's real life circumstances - they have to do something differently. They aren't going to be able to start a revolution in Southern California to make things better, so they should leave.

Ideally, this conversation wouldn't even be necessary because everyone would have what they needed to survive and no one would need to work to excess or BUY to excess.

That's just really bad decision making.

that in most places. I wonder what they are paying in child care?

As I mentioned above, my parents rented apartments in neighborhoods with good schools until they could comfortably afford to buy a house.

Unless you lived about 50 miles away from the city, a 1000 sq ft two bedroom, 1 bath house on a city lot went for around $150,000 most urban/suburban areas in Southern California.
Just off the top of my head, from experience, I can give you an idea what housing is like around here.

With excellent credit, someone who bought in late 2001/early 2002 with nothing down is probably paying at least a $1400 mortgage right about now if making regular payments on a fixed 30 year note. If they were paying a fixed 15 year note, they'd be paying around $2K about now. That's with excellent credit.

With regular credit, add about $300 a month. With average or poor credit (could be something as easy as being behind on the hospital bills for the birth of kids, even if you had benefits with your job or an outstanding student loan), add about $500 more. A variable or sub-prime will be even worse.

If I were able to keep the house I bought for $145K (in 1996, VA No/No,fixed 30 year at 7.25%)and sold short back in 2003 (damn job - cut the hours back so I was no longer full time!), I'd be paying around $1525 a month right now, and I started at $1250. My situation when I bought still is common in Southern California - and I didn't do anything wrong, but still had problems when my employer had a run of bad luck in their contracts and stuck everyone on 3/4 time for a year so they wouldn't jump ship and could still keep their benefits.

Haele

So, my parents rented until they could afford to comfortably buy a house (as I've said now for the 3rd time.)

And they had $5K to put down.

However, mortgage rates have been in the single digits for a long time now, but unlike my parent's generation - and heck, even in my wage earning career, wages kept rate with the cost of housing.

When I bought my house in 1996, it was only a little under 1/3 my income at the time. I actually had savings, I thought, to cover me over any rough times I might have.

Well, inflation and a really crappy job market a few years later ate into my savings - and no, I didn't have a nice new car, nor did I take European Vacations, or have a big screen TV, or any of that other crap. Between 1996 and 2002, the only "expenditures" outside of the regular bills, utilities, food, and gas, were - a reasonable home computer setup (at the time, around $1200 on sale), a major car repair - $2,100, a minor house repair (water heater and rain gutters) - around 1K, a vet bill for a sick cat - $2K, a minor operation (with insurance picking up 80%) - another $2K. Oh, and one week long vacation trip to New Orleans that cost me all of $500 because I was bargain hunting. Oh, and I got married. Only cost me around $250, but afterwards, the cost of merging the households and the additional family members pretty much neutralized any benefits an extra income brought in.
Throw in inflation on insurance premiums, food, and utilities, an unexpected disability that pretty much wiped out the second income, plus two years of 3/4 time - and whoops, there goes savings.

There was a rule of thumb when I was growing up in the 60's that is no longer valid - the "10 dollar" rule. For every $10 a month you bring home, you should pay in final price (not counting interest) no more than 2x that for every month on the note for a car and no more than 4x that for every month on note for the house. If you brought home $500 a month, when you purchased, you you could comfortably buy a $1000 car and a $24,000 house.

However, if you used that rule after Reagan set us on the road to voodoo economy, you would be looking at the average worker who is not bringing home around $2K - $4K a month trying to find one vehicle that is $4K - $8K and a house that is $96K to almost $200K, and in Southern California, good luck. Even 5 years ago, trying to find a decent house for around that price was near impossible.

As for rents, we're paying $1500 a month in San Diego proper for a 2 bedroom, 1 bath with a yard (supplementing our fruits and veggies) that takes dogs over 30 lbs. And for a decent, low crime, easy access to public transit neighborhood and close to my work, that's really cheap.
You can find cheaper, but not in a good neighborhood where you can still have your long-time family pet and put a garden in.

I'm not saying that the family in the original post might not have made "wise" decisions, but even wise decisions can't necessarily save you nowdays while you're hostage to inflation, health, corporations, and wage stagnation. I can easily see where a little indulgence, such as buying a house or a newer car, when they thought they had the cushion to do so could have go horribly south.

The way things are now, if everyone played it safe the way they did in the good old days, no one should be buying a house unless they have the cash on hand to put half in downpayment, even if just putting only a little down would leave you with a mortgage under the 1/3 take home pay rule. The cost of the houses themselves outweigh any benefits of the current low interest.

One job loss, one medical emergency - and you lose the house. That happened to me, even with good planning and a savings cushion.

Haele

of the purchase price of the house as a payment.. AFTER the real down payment, that is..

Our first house cost us $39,500 with $7K down, and our payments were $359PITI..

When the market went berserk a few years later, we had a 15.8% loan with almost $12K down...on a $64,000 El Dumpo house in Denver, and our payments jumped to about $650 (but still within the 10% estimate)

We have always had mortgages with banks though, and they actually make people qualify.. and we have always pre-qualified so we would not even LOOK at houses we could not afford..

It's actually easy to choose between 2 houses.:rofl:... the one that smelled like cat pee or the one with the shitty yard .. That;s the kind of housing choices we have ussually had :rofl:

the teenage kids. I used to tutor high schoolers, and often overheard them begging parents to buy an SUV instead of a minivan or demanding new clothes, exercise equipment and gadgets. The parents usually caved. I worry about the generation that is coming of age now. If they don't abandon their materialism, they will be worse off than any previous gen.

reaganomics and the glorification of greed? ya think maybe?

we bought the least expensive, halfway decent house we could manage. It needed a lot of mostly cosmetic improvements. We could have bought a newer house with a larger mortgage, but we wanted to play it safe and make sure we could make the mortgage payment with only one income. We gradually traded up over the years. We always bought the smallest, least expensive house in a nice neighborhood and fixed it up as much as we could manage. We've always lived walking distance to public transportation so we could commute by bus and/or train if possible.

We've never felt the need to own a new home, or top of the line appliances or furnishings. My house is mainly furnished in Early Yard Sale -- I wait and search and buy nice pieces as I find them, instead of going into hock for crappy furniture at a place like Marlo. We buy used Toyotas because they last longer. We don't own gigantic tvs or other entertainment items. Our vacations, when and if we can afford them, usually consist of renting a modest cottage someplace like Cape Cod or Maine, cooking our own meals with local produce, and doing a lot of sightseeing and beach walking.

All that said, we couldn't afford to buy our own 1,200 sq foot house today. Real estate prices are outrageous. Our daughters are saddled with huge college loans, and I don't know that they will ever be able to afford homes unless they move to rural areas where jobs are not plentiful.

If I were starting out today, I would do the same thing. I'd scrimp for a few years to save a reasonable down payment, and I would buy a small single-family house that needs some TLC, but not major repairs. We'd fix it up piecemeal, doing whatever we could ourselves. We would go for a conventional 30 year mortgage, not some crazy balloon scheme that could eventually send a person into foreclosure.

It would definitely not be as easy today as it was for us 28 years ago. given the insane prices. On the other hand, our first mortgage had a 9% interest rate. Shortly thereafter, mortgage rates went up to 15%, so we considered ourselves lucky.

astronomical, just average for metro areas.

If you don't, people will laugh at you.

:sarcasm:

Teenagers whining that they can't be seen being delivered to school in a vehicle that doesn't meet their standards of coolness. It's pathetic.

I would be ashamed to raise children who would complain about cars or clothes or any other BS stuff. I make just enough to get by. There have been Christmases and Birthdays with no gifts. My kids have never complained.

People like you describe are raising pathetic leeches who will never care about anything but themselves. Bleh.

Some people should not have children.

they don't like but, I'd be ashamed to say I made a decision based on the hormonal imbalances of my progeny!

I am SO glad to be an empty-nester. And my stepson was GOOD!

:hide:

same thing with property tax

It's not worth it...heaven forbid should they want children if they're working all the time. Keep the house, dump the cars. It's really sad they have to work so much...age quicker that way, or die young. Sad.

where people routinely put 20-30K miles a year on their cars commuting to work, and where $400K will get you a "starter house"..

I think they took the shorter financing so they could pay them off earlier..

I never could understand the allure of a new car.. we pay cash for used ones :)

where I could afford to buy a used one, but if anything of any real cost went up, I was out my money and a car. Happened in my past, I bought a car with what I had, transmission went up few months later and had to go buy a new car to keep my job. Some people have family with money that could bail them out in those possible tough times but that wouldn't be mine.I did by a 9k Kia though, about $200 a month, I understood how to live within my means. Now my current car is paid for and I still like driving it, so no need whatsoever for a new one. I like saving the money. Still no house to call my own, too expensive. Hell a cheap 1 bedroom apartment here in Maryland where I live is around $950-$1000 and this is no special place to live either.

The cost of everything seems to go up every year except our pay rates, its like the raise you get isn't really a raise its just a cost of living increase. And it doesn't help enough with the costs of my living either!

bought this baby at 12 months + 1 week "on the road"..It;s an '05 but was not sold until 12-29-05...we bought it 1-7-07... It sold new for $34K+..we paid $16,500 cash.. and the warranty time will run out before we ever hit the mileage limit..(we don't drive much)..

First few times I saw them I said "whoa, that's a Kia."

You could easily have payments like that with a really high interest rate and little or no money down.

:-)

A lot of people in SoCal are "car broke".

America was built with slave labor and now it is being maintained by the working poor who are basically indentured servants with one thing only to show for it -- a roof over their heads, and in most cases that roof will never even belong to them. What in the world to we have to be proud of?

not if they can afford $1100 a month in car payments. I'm not sure about the housing market. It really sounds almost impossible to live in California unless you are very rich, or moved there 30 years ago.

$2000 a month isn't even a high mortgage payment in Southern CA. I believe it's usually around $3,000 a month.

I would love a $2K house payment. I pay that much in rent! I'm in the bay area, but I grew up in L.A.

Jeez I can't even imagine.

considered outrageous as far as rent goes. There are many executives living here since there are a lot of corporate headquarters located here. My house is very 70's, not upgraded much but has a large backyard. My neighbors house just sold for probably $850k (that's about the average home price here) and was on the market for less than two weeks. It's not fancy by any means. She's got hardwood floors and a pool and that's about it for frills. Otherwise, it's very ordinary and not huge.

I don't really want to stay here, but my husband has a pretty good job 15 minutes from home and we have family about 10 miles away. The main reason we stay is the schools are great, but sometimes it seems like living here is like trying to keep up with the Jones'. That part I really hate. I'd love to move up to Oregon or Washington if I could find a sunny town.

but I don't have an ocean nearby. :)

They'd be so much better off if they'd bought used cars. Since I don't know where they are, I can't comment on that house payment, but if it's California, they'd be better off renting.

What do they think will happen with their kids when both parents are absent during 100% of their waking hours?

This is nuts.

and if you do find a recent model year car with low miles, there's probably something seriously wrong with it.

We're looking for a truck replacement for my husband, & it's hard to find ..

Most of the trucks listed (that we have seen so far) have 75-80K miles on them..

The truck I traded in was old enough to vote and still had a few miles left in it. It needed brakes and a starter, that's it.

Some vehicles last forever. Others are meant to be driven to the end of the warranty and trashed. Research will help you tell the difference.

of what a lot of people live like today.

I myself ended up staying home with my two kids because I figured out that I couldn't make enough to cover the costs of a job. Thank God my husband made enough for us to get by on his salary.

so I waited until they were all in school all day to go back to work..

I'd really like to get out and start working again, but childcare costs turned out to be way too much to make it worth it for now.

..she said she actually makes more at the waitressing job, since it;s mostly cash..

don;t know what her husband makes, but it's probably not all that much..

lots of young people don't see leaving as a viable option.. Grandma babysits too.. and the surrounding areas are pricey these days too..

I'm seriously considering "retiring" to the midwest :)

because financially we would be better off, all i wanted was a yard for my kid and i couldn't afford that in mass, i didn't even want a big yard, just some yard.

...for financial reasons. If the U.S. is founded on the idea of freedom that do not have to be specifically granted, if our freedom to basically live wherever we want is taken away, that's just another failure on our part.

Hawaii comes to mind.. born in "paradise" and forced to leave ...or live in a crappy apartment and take the bus your whole life..

Gorgeous small city in the Adirondack foothills. After the NYC exodus from 9/11, home prices went from an average 45k to 100. But local income didn't go up.

as they first start out.

My generation usually owed nothing..or very little.. we hit the ground running..

OUR kids start out in debt..

It doesn't *have* to be that way, but the competitive nature of the education industry has made it so. State colleges are bargains, but the private schools can charge as much as they do because they know the difference their names will make on resumés - and impact future earnings.

For that reason. Some are living in an area where they make a decent wage but live in an area where only "rich" people can afford to live. Others live in areas with high unemployment or mostly low paying jobs. I know that it is difficult for some people, but that is a reality of it. If you only can make $8-$10 per hour, you better live some place with a low cost of living.

... people took out loans they couldn't pay back.

So many things that shouldn't be the case - and yet they are.

:D

Cheap housing, beautiful lakes and streams, great golf, good living (if you have a job or a good retirement). Both of my parents are originally from CA and moved here in the 60's. They wouldn't move back for anything.

See, it's better in the Midwest! :)

:scared:

No problem. :)

Saline, Solomon & Smoky Hill and there was a hardware store with previous flood markers. I always used to get scared when I saw how deep that muddy scummy river had been in the past..

never flooded when I was there but..:scared:

NO JOBS!

:cry:

The job picture here is NOT very rosy right now.....

living in So. Cal takes a lot of sacrifices. I made the decision to move here 4 years ago, leaving all my family and friends behind to start a new life. This couple needs to move and start a new life or they need to lessen some of their expenses. Seriously, my GF and I have a combined income well over 200k and still would not want to buy a home on the Westside. Choices have to be made.

and then buy for half the selling price in a cheaper area, they just might break even. That is, if they can find a place to rent for under $2K for 6 months after they moved out.

It cost us around $3K to move 20 miles. Probably more, because I don't remember how much gas cost in the 20 or so trips from to shift all the boxed goods old apartment, to the store room, to the new house. And I also didn't count $200 for two months of store room; it was easier to live and move while in the apartment by putting all the smaller stuff in boxes and getting them out of the way. We had to use a mover for the furniture and the heavier boxes - $500 for basically "1.5 bedrooms" going one way, 20 miles. (My back couldn't handle taking all those large items down stairs and out to the street, and DH is disabled.) Throw in the deposits, and there ya go.
They may be able to move cheaper, but a U-Haul still costs a good deal when you're going out of state.

Haele

If they are struggling just to meet their bills, they probably have little or no savings and no extra money to put toward a move.

i totally understand wanting to own a home but there comes a point where you are trading quality of life to be house poor.

... And they're screwed now - can't sell w/o taking a loss.

$269,900

* Status: Active
* Bedroom: 2
* Bathroom: 1
* Year Built: 1947
* Lot Size: 8712
* Square Footage: 768
* List Date: 7/30/2007
* Parking Spaces: N/A
* MLS#: I07111663

not much.

I'm renting in a 3 flat, which for 2 or 3 families (depending on the ground level) can typically go for around from 500-$700k. Actually despite the price the above home looks like it could be cleaned up nice, it has a little yard, a garage out back that can be used as a workshop that I would use.

But granted, the price should be cut in half before our economic system will ever run effectively again.

No one with kids would want to live there..

I'm told of the horrible problem here but, ignoring them seems to work well for me. I guess our gangs are less intense, and a lot more docile. Actually sometimes I wish our streets were a little more dangerous sometimes, and maybe the fake career panhandlers might go away, but I digress...

2 guys refused to be frisked to enter a club, so they shot & killed the security guard.. a 35 yr old guy with 2 kids :cry:

10 pm on the main street of town.. abourt 6 blocks from where we live:scared:

We have a house that is over 2500 square feet, a nice size yard, and live in one of the nicer areas of town. The biggest expense for improving our house so far is painting the outside. We are considering better windows to lower our heating bill in the winter. Other than that, everything is in good condition. Your example house would be around $50,000 here.

Nothing could make me pay that kind of money (or any money really) for that property.

Not even nostalgia.

If they bought 10 years ago on shakey credit when both had decent paying jobs - say, factory jobs when there was still some manufacturing in Southern California, they might have thought that they would be making more when they got to this point.
I've seen that with a lot of the under-educated shipyard workers I used to run in my crews. 4 years in the Navy or a couple ROP courses and a union job that trained, and they thought that was all they needed.
They made good money while there was work throughout the 90's - I've had welders with a high school GED make almost $100K a year for several years in a row between overtime and travel. And they all seemed to have families.
Once the work dried up in the vary late 90's, early 2K's, most of them had some serious budgeting problems with vehicle and home payments. The drop from an average of $80K or so down to under $30K within a year or two is a very frightening one, especially for someone who was not very educated when it comes to fiscal issues.

Haele

The truth is in the middle.

what are they trying to do keep up with the cheney's.

I have a 1300 house payment and a 210 car payment, am single and work one part time job (5 days over 2 weeks - for benefits) in No Calif. Thats 4 1/2 jobs less than they work. I commute 60 miles for the job on the days I work. Pay for lots of gas and insurance on 2 vehicles (one's a truck that's paid for). This just doesn't sound right to me. At some point, they need to analyze where their money is going. They probably spend on things they don't need. Get rid of the new cars and get good used cars and see a financial counselor is my advice. Anyone who can't afford $20 week for bowling is in an extreme emergency situation as far as I'm concerned. She needs help fast. They are putting their kids in jeopardy by living this way.

She gets no sympathies. What ever happened to the concept of starting low and working your way up? Why to 27 year olds feel as if they should be driving Mercedes or BMW? I'm 29 and have a nice Honda Accord that I bought new and pay $300/month. I plan to buy a Mercedes e-class in the future when I have the money.

is a 2003 Honda Civic with 50K on it but it looks and runs like a brand new car! Plus 5 years left on the warranty. You absolutely can't go wrong with that. Getting a used car is not like it was 10 years ago.

It was used and had about 16,000 miles on it. 100k mile warranty. I really lucked out.

for a new Chevy wagon...waaaay back..

Since that car, we have always just bitten the bullet and paid cash for a decent used car :)

Its like being tied down with a child, haha. Seriously though, I don't have any freedom because I don't want the thing repossesed. As it stands, with having had my hours cut, I'm having a hard time. Hopefully I can get a job that can alleviate the financial stress pretty soon. I mean, I don't have a house payment or any other large expenses but the lack of funds is really getting to me.

an excellent deal!

When I get a job (I have a few prospects right now), I think I will come to appreciate the deal even more than I do now.

I was wondering how long it would take for that little gem to be mounted in this thread.

--p!

seriously though..

young people are easily sucked into the car salesman spiel..

It always sounds so "easy" when the saleman's "explaining" it..

We never allowed our boys to go near a car lot :)

It worked for 2 of them :evilgrin:

And I didn't learn it from my parents.

I really don't feel the least bit sorry for people who choose to live beyond their means and get bitten for it (at least when their means are reasonable, I have considerable sympathy for those living in poverty).

I hope she and her husband figure things out and make some changes, hopefully your advice will help.

an intervention immediately. Everyone makes mistakes and they are young enough to fix this. I suspect once it is fixed, they will never let it happen again in their lives and never forget how miserable it was living under such dire circumstances. I hope for the best for this family. Recognizing that there is a problem is a major first step.

It's good to see some reality dosed with compassion on a topic like this! O8)

even required payments.

It's a 7 year old Chevy Cavalier pushing 100,000 miles and we still paid $10,000 for it... of course, that's $340/month for 3 years and we have lousy credit and didn't have a lot for a downpayment. AND we only bought it because we could afford it - novel idea there, eh? AND we share it.

$650/month is more than my rent.

...and now they are realizing that to have $1,000 in car payments and $2,000 in mortgage payments
means that you are slaves to their corporate masters---the people to whom they owe money.

The problem in our society is that people think they need expensive $30,000 cars. They think
they need large houses. They buy into the materialism trap, and follow the Jonses into a
lifetime of debt enslavement.

I do feel for these people. I am not without sympathy. However, America needs to wake up
and realize that saddling yourself with this much debt is completely ridiculous and
irresponsible.

Buy a smaller house. A starter house. Buy used, inexpensive cars. Wait for a great
deal to come along. Be a smart consumer and take control of your finances.

These people are leaving themselves and their children vulnerable. They're not saving
anything. What if an emergency happens? What if one of them becomes ill or disabled
and the lose an income? Then they're homeless.

I say this with hope for these people---they need to examine their life choices and make
some serious changes. We cannot all have a large home with an Escalade and a Tahoe parked
in it, and a gas grill that cooks 100 steaks at a time.

We need to stop this extreme consumerism, and we need to stop killing ourselves as we
attempt to keep up with the Jonses.

The Jonses are broke, they're miserable and they're financially enslaved!

It's a $34K car, but we paid $16,500 cash for it when it had 21K miles on it and it had been on the road 1 year..:evilgrin:

our first house cost us $38K and was only a year old..with all the designer upgrades (wish I still lived in that house )..

It's insane these days.

There isn't anything less expensive! I think the poster said they are trying to pay the cars off faster so they pay more.I guess they just can'tlive in So Cal!

...a $685 car payment plus another $450 car payment.

Geez, do we really live in a society where those high car payments are viewed as "not expensive"?

That's alarming...it what it is.

If you have to borrow so much money, with high payments like that---then you can't
afford THAT particular car. Yes, everyone would like to drive a Porsche, that doesn't mean
that we're all entitled to one--just because the finance companies will allow you to be financially
irresponsible.

Our country's sense of materialistic proportion is all out of whack. When a $685 car payment
is seen as normal...then the finance companies, the auto industry and the advertising agencies
have won----because they've convinced us that it's acceptable to buy what we cannot afford
and to willingly allow banks to enslaved you with monthly payments.

It's really sad.

I agree.But they aren't driving Lexus orMercedes! Read below! Perhaps they planned poorly.I also meant that they are probably living in the cheapest possible home in SoCal.

"SoCalDem (1000+ posts) Wed Aug-08-07 10:04 PM
Response to Reply #20
23. She has a Nissan something-or-other and he has a Toyota
I think they took the shorter financing so they could pay them off earlier..

I never could understand the allure of a new car.. we pay cash for used ones
Brave New World"

"Life isn't about having things, it's about being a part of things." ~Chris in the Morning, Northern Exposure

"Time is the essence of our lives." ~Inscribed on a sundial at the beginning of "Gone With the Wind"

"He who dies with the most toys, still dies." ~proverb

Life is good

that we thought maybe it was built on a nuclear waste dump.

at least in most parts. We don't even live there all of the time anymore, but we keep our house because the mortgage payment is so low, even with the high TX property taxes. We can't rent an apartment half the size of our Texas house for anywhere close to our mortgage.

Most of the country is paying way too much for housing.

Once every couple years I'll toss a few bucks in an NCAA basketball tourney pool but that's the extent of my gambling.

I've never felt the need to search for meth or cockfighting places.

Wait, what were we talking about again?

I know we are not exactly forced to live here but we are here and think that there must be some solution to the housing problem, instead of just accepting it and letting rich real estate developers have their way with us.

I can easily see how this young couple got snafued into living a little beyond their means in a city as expensive as So Cal. You don't want to live in a dump and so they were easy marks for subprime lenders. And then when you spend so much time in a car you might go for a nicer one. Sure, the cars are where it's obvious they could economize, but with little public transport you don't want something that breaks down a lot either. You have to be savvy with cars or have a friend who is to get a good deal. I can see how this happened, given the optimism of youth and not much good financial guidance. I don't think it means they are greedy or materialistic more than other Americans. Pretty typical.

With 5 jobs between them I doubt they're doing a lot of excess shopping...

I have nothing but sympathy for this couple. They are going to have to learn frugality the hard way. There is no virtue in being smarter or holier than thou here.

Yes I'm very sympathetic to anyone in their 20's or 30's who's trying to make it now. It's tough. Not everybody can just move to a cheaper place...it's easy to get stuck in this kind of situation.

There are a lot more jobs in larger cities. Therefore more people move to these places looking for work, and that drives up rent and housing costs. Go back and live where it's cheaper, and the job situation sucks. Catch 22.

cars and their weights may have contributed to the Minneapolis bridge collapse. It was designed for 140,000 cars a day and gets 180,000. And those cars are bigger and heavier.

edited for typo

this is in SoCal right? after 10 years in the same apartment they finally priced me right out of it. my son and i are looking at eviction, and i haven't even HAD a car for over a year now. i'm actually seriously considering a move to NC where the apartments are about 1/2 the price and allow pets...but i am 51 years old, single and supporting myself and a 15-year-old, and i have never lived anywhere but southern CA. it just is not a LIFE when almost every waking moment is spent trying to make the rent and wondering if we'll have a roof a month from now...some people believe we're headed for a depression. some people are already in it.

i really hope your friend takes your advice and puts some LIFE back into her life, while she's young enough to enjoy it. the most painful part of this tale to me is that based on the hours she and her husband are spending working, they and their children are probably virtual strangers to each other. that is tragic.

I'd be pissed. Not depressed, mind you, just very angry. Paying for 10 years on something, owning none of it, and then getting kicked out just because times are hard. There is no national solidarity anymore. I actually can't say what I'd do if that happened to me.

because they hit up everyone in the building with a $200/month raise in rent just 1 1/2 years after hitting up everyone with a $150/month raise. that is $350/month in less than 2 years. there is no way in the world that these raises are necessary - it is greed, pure and simple.

my daughter was killed in July 2001, and after 3 years of not working i've been back working since 2004. I have yet to earn as much as i was making the day she died. it sucks. it is not possible for me to keep the apartment i have now, and our options around here run pretty much to the seedy and dangerous parts of town. so like i said, we may just be leaving SoCal. a radical option, but maybe the best choice at this point.

And last year it went up $100. I don't know what we're going to do. Luckily the car we bought last year turned out to be a lemon and so Nissan is buying it back. Hopefully, we'll be able to find something with a cheaper payment to offset the steep increase in our rent.

I'm sorry to hear about your daughter. It's so sad that good people are being forced to make such radical decisions to live.

There's a place called Cherry Valley, that apparently still has "bargains". My friend, semi-retired, bought a very nice mobilehome for under 20K and her $450 space rent INCLUDES water, gas & electric :).. She's a happy camper :)

near LAX

:)

who has lived forever in San Diego shocked me recently by telling me she is moving east because of the costs and the congestion. I thought she'd never leave there for any reason. She's the type that fires and earthquakes do not faze.

You nailed it--the true tragedy of this couples story is the time they spend working just to survive.
It will take a toll eventually.

There are cheaper rent/mortgage payments.

There are cheaper cars.

Gas prices we can't control, but we can control how much we use.

It's a shame that these people (about my own age actually) value material goods over time with family.

Not much you can do about that house price, since that's just unfortunately the area. But they can get better cheaper cars.

I haven't had a car payment since 2002 and I still drive that 1997 Cavalier . . . the one Consumer Reports frequently shat on throughout it's make. It'll be at it's 230,000th mile before year's end.

I wouldn't buy a new car nowadays unless I won the lottery, and maybe not even then.

I assume she has kids. At age 28, the kids are likely still elementary age.

I really cannot imagine. I hope you are able to continue talking some basic financial sense into the woman. As others have already said, a used car is a good thing.

I drive a used car - 10 years old. My dh has a truck (not usually driven anywhere) that was made about 20 years ago. We clearly don't have car payments - used car people all the way.

I cannot imagine a $2k a month house payment. When dh and I started dating about 14 years ago, his house payment was all of $400 a month. That was our starter home, which we remodeled and turned a hefty profit on - then bought a more expensive home in a nice neighborhood. Together, we sat on that first home for nearly 10 years.

Even now, my house payment on my home is under $1500 a month. But we can afford that - dh is making 2x what he was making when we were first married. We could not have done that immediately. Ya got to work your way up (or better yet, stay with a smaller home!)

The emotional decision-making often throws rationality out the window.

A $2000 a month house payment is really over the top. I have a beautiful 3 bedroom house in Florida and pay less than half that. What kind of freakin' cars do they own? My car payment is way less and I got it without a down payment. Maybe they are living just a little beyond their means. The kids will be fine with less junk and more time and attention from their parents.

:shrug:

I talked her out of it.. When people start the season with money troubles, they usually end up costing their team money, and then they quit anyway:)

that I also haven't seen a bowling alley around here in years. That too gave me a laugh , since it's something I also associate w/ midwesterners...:rofl:

All the steel mills were still going strong, and the shift workers needed something to do aftre work:)

I spent the summer as a pinsetter from 9pm-3am @ a dime a line. I learned a lot from the second shift factory crowd... LOL !

Times have truly changed. :)

:D

But then maybe she -needs- a little R & R.....but I'd think an evening with her kids would be more appropriate...

here you can find homes for 50k-75k and even ones like this for
Status Open/Pending
Type Resale -Single Family Detached
Price $9,900
MLS# 0712632
Beds 3
Baths 1
Sq.Ft 1,660
Highlights
Living/dining room combo
WBFP
3 bedrooms
24 x 215 lot

Features
Rooms' Dimensions
BEDROOM 2: 10x14
BATH: 8x16
KITCHEN: 12x9
BEDROOM: 16x10
BEDROOM 3: 10x12
LIVING/DINING: 24x23

n/t

A small, old house here will set you back $250,000 on a good day.

Which is why I am refusing to even consider buying a house here.

(MA)

Alleghany National Forest area.

Seriously though, we live in a smallish not-so-great city in Massachusetts and prices are ridiculous. In nicer areas, it's beyond my ability to comprehend.

I'm tempted to keep renting where we are now, save some money, and then move to the best combination decent/cheap place we can find for our money.

Sheesh, what kind of a castle do they live in??

Don't know whether it's Crips or Bloods territory, but probably one of them
....

PITI for this gem comes in around $2k


$269,900

* Status: Active
* Bedroom: 2
* Bathroom: 1
* Year Built: 1947
* Lot Size: 8712
* Square Footage: 768
* List Date: 7/30/2007
* Parking Spaces: N/A
* MLS#: I07111663
..........................................................................
Down Payment: $0.00
Amount Financed: $270,000.00
Monthly Payment: $1,706.58
(Principal & Interest ONLY)

Since you are putting LESS than 20% down, you will need to pay PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance), which tends to be about $55 per month for every $100,000 financed (until you have paid off 20% of your loan). This could add $148.50 to your monthly payment.
Monthly Payment: $1,855.08
(Principal & Interest, and PMI)

Residential (or Property) Taxes are a little harder to figure out...The average resedential tax rate seems to be around $14 per year for every $1,000 of your property's assessed value.

Let's say that your property's assessed value is 85% of what you actually paid for it - $229,500.00. This would mean that your yearly residential taxes will be around $3,213.00 This could add $267.75 to your monthly payment.
TOTAL Monthly Payment: $2,122.83
(including PM

You can get a really nice house here in a nice neighborhood for that price. That house would be around $100K here.

They could get two decent used vehicles and save thousands a year. Also a reduction in insurance costs.

Not to mention working less and spending more time with their KIDS!!!

Everyone has told me that I'm not building equity, that I'm missing out on tax deductions, bla-bla-bla.

The secret is not to be enamored of houses and cars. I have to have a car where I live now, sad to say, but it's a 1990 beater that I got free from my mom. I pay less than four figures for a spacious 2-bedroom apartmen in one of the most pleasant and convenient neighborhoods in the Twin Cities.

Sure, I could buy a condo for what I'm paying in rent...IF I moved to some ugly, treeless, inconvenient tract on the remains of a former farm, but what would be the point in that? What's the point of moving to the country to live in an apartment?.

It is absurd the way former small towns are being swallowed up by ugly, oversized houses.

If I bought a condo, I'd have to pay property taxes and association fees, and that would wipe out all the tax "savings."

Home ownership is the American mirage. Along with car ownership, it's a way of keeping people slaving away at jobs they hate. The responsibilities are huge, and the tax "advantages" don't make up for the extra expenses.

Yet people condemn themselves to two-hour commutes in cars they can't afford just so they can be house-poor.

I do not get that mentality at all. Just another way I'm at odds with Middle American culture.

I know several young families in the same boat - no concept of delayed gratification, savings, budgeting. They want what they want and they want it now. Oh well half the population has an IQ of under 100 and here goes your proof.

Actions have consequences.

I know it costs money to move, and I know people don't like to move away from family and friends, but sometimes hard choices have to be made. I couldn't afford my hometown after I stopped living with my parents either. It was a pretty, touristy ski town and I loved it, but I couldn't pay $1500 a month in rent on the $8 salaries offered. Yes, it sucked, but I dealt with it. Sometimes life is that way.

After moving around for a while, I finally settled in Pittsburgh, PA. Here's a sample of what $250K will buy in Pittsburgh, PA:

http://www.prudentialpreferred.com/property/index.cfm?fuseaction=propertymls&MLS=680787

4 bedrooms, 2 bath, in a terrific kid-friendly neighborhood, feeding into a decent high school.

I just bought a house in Pittsburgh myself this year. My mortgage payment is ~$675 + taxes. I live in a so-so neighborhood that borders 2 fancy ones and which seems to be on its way up. My house is a gorgeous 1925 carriage house with the original woodwork intact and 4(!!!) garages. It needs some cosmetic work and we are doing that ourselves this summer. I couldn't ask for a better starter home, and yet this house is not unusual in Pittsburgh. We looked at a number of beautiful old houses in our price range, many of which had lovely details like original stained glass windows and wood built-ins. No suburban tract crap homes for us!

One and a half years ago, we bought our first new car ever in our lives (we are in our 30s and both of us had kept several cars well over the 200K mark before buying this one). Although we were both very excited about being able to buy a brand-new car, we restrained ourselves a bit and went for cheap and reliable rather than flashy and expensive. Our car payments are $300, but we have paid $500 a month or more since we bought it to save on interest and get it paid off faster. We should have it completely paid off sometime next year, 3 years early, and while it is still a relatively new car so we can enjoy _really_ owning it. And yes, we only own one car. That is one of the benefits to living in a city with decent public transportation. I can take the bus to work instead of the second car we would otherwise have to make payments on, pay insurance, gas, and so forth for. It's a nice change for me, coming from the west where if you wanted to survive at all everyone had to have a car.

Both of us make more than $8 an hour. But if we did make $8 an hour, we could still pay our bills without having to work 3 jobs each. As things stand now, we have more "extra" money from our paychecks a month than our house and car payments combined. We've been putting a lot of it into the house along with our sweat equity, which is enabling us to have a truly beautiful residence without accumulating any extra debt at all. This is all because we live in an low-cost-of-living area, and we made a sensible choice when we looked for a house and car by refusing to spend as much as the financiers told us we could.

No, Pittsburgh isn't Southern California. And it's not my pretty mountainous home town. But it's nice in its own way. And the low cost of living here more than makes up for any cultural opportunities that we might be missing by not living in Los Angeles or San Diego.

Oh, I almost forgot. Pittsburgh was also rated the #1 most liveable city in America this year by Rand-McNally. :-)

I'm not trying to be smug. I'm really not. I do understand some of the cultural and social forces that drive people to find themselves in the position of your friends. It's hard to make good decisions when society tells you that you're crap if you don't have the newest lawn gadget or fanciest kitchen. Even I'm not immune to that. Very few people can completely resist the siren lure of buying your way to social status. But I do also think that sometimes people have to make choices in life which may not be "perfect" or which may not afford them the luxury of the social status they would like. Sometimes life is hard, and you have to deal with it. And sometimes keeping up with the Joneses isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I bought a used car a few years back. I had to bring all the will power and internal strength i could muster to get that purchase to happen. First two dealerships I stopped at, the sales people literally refused to sell me used. They tried to steer me towards the new cars.

This young couple may have gone to the dealer with the thought of leaving with a 20K car and left with a 40K car.

then when we go inside.. we unload a big ole pile of cash and say "out the door"..nothing more.. as they pooh-pooh our price, we start to load the cash back into the bag..and they usually say...okay..

This last time, though, I shopped online to get the right priceline and then found the perfect car at carmax..no haggling..but the car we wanted for a fair price..

the pile o' cash usually works :)

WTF? I drive a pretty new truck, my note is 285, my wife drives a 1 year old SUV and her note is 327.......

Both our notes together are less then their one note.......WTF are they driving?

Edit: those were the car note numbers, wife just reminded me we paid them both off with the last of my reenlistment bonus.......

A program like this would help the economy.

No thanks, I would rather have my tax dollars go to help truly needy people otherwise I want a social program that will install a large screen, flat panel, HD TV in my home with cable, free of charge.

... can do themselves. It's not obvious that's the case here.

she hasta work three jobs period.
regardless of what its for.

she should be able to have cars and a home without having to work that much.

just further shows the false state of the economy.
rich gettin richer and the poor trying and doing everything they can to not live in poverty.

Damn, 1100 a month on car payments? She is sacrificing the important things in life for a couple of shiny trinkets on wheels parked in the employee parking lot.
They are one bump in the road away from financial ruin.