Downwardly mobile....

Tantalum said:
Unfortunately that's a by product of capitalism though, no industry in the US is immune to that
Click to expand...
Just making it clear we are not talking about people who buy McMansions that they can't afford.
 
Yup, and pardon the mild thread drift. Figured it was tangentially related since the discussion seemed to drift a little into that ethos
 
Whether right or wrong, many people who were plenty capable of paying their mortgage walked away. While one part of me thinks its a crap thing, the other part of me says, its a business deal. It made better financial sense to walk. I don't think I could do it, but I understand why some did.
 
True now, true then, true always. You can steal more with a briefcase than you ever can with a gun.
 
Tantalum said:
No doubt this is true, and people like to glance over that, but from my personal experience I've found the inverse to be true. My experience as a self-loathing millennial, ugh, is that my peers with the uber-rich parents kind of became (or are becoming) deadbeats... not finishing their free (mom and dad paid) graduate level education or becoming perpetual students and never really landing a job they're happy with. These folks may cruise through life on family money, but eventually that will run out... people like that don't do their future generations any favors.

On the flip side, people I've known who grew up very modestly, didn't go to Ivy league schools, etc., ended up running their own businesses or applying themselves through education and getting decent jobs.
Click to expand...

This repeats every generation. But yeah, I see it in my peers and in yours too. :)

Tantalum said:
Personally I grew up very middle-income, paid my own tuition in college, and am living comfortably now (not rich, but well enough).. sometimes not being given everything can be a good motivator to earn things on your own
Click to expand...

The value of learning to work for things you want, almost can't be overstated with kids. But lots of families forego it, and with predictable results.

Tantalum said:
People shouldn't be house poor - that's not wise.. people who do that look too romantically upon the idea of home ownership. However, at least in my neck of the woods you can easily spend $2K or more per month on relatively mediocre apartment housing. When you write that $2,200 rent check you are doing all of the following:

-Not building equity
-Not actually buying something that is yours
-Not building your credit worthiness (you're not hurting it either)
-Not having a guarantee on your future housing
-Not having a guarantee on your monthly rental amount
-Etc.

On the flip side, if you were instead putting that $2,200 towards a mortgage then you are actually physically buying something that is yours with each mortgage payment and you can use your house as a bank with lines equity credit, you can borrow against yourself, and on a long enough time scale homes are a pretty guaranteed net positive investment. So even in a market downturn if you can keep your job and keep making those payments you can come out the other side

But home ownership is not right for everyone, and people need to think long and hard before purchasing for a myriad of reasons
Click to expand...

Technically, even after you "buy" the house, especially "no money down" or similar, you're still paying rent for a very long time. Folks don't understand amortization schedules. You'll have almost nothing in equity / own almost nothing, for almost a decade on a 30 year loan.

With the average home "buyer" moving houses every seven years...

Tantalum said:
Unfortunately that's a by product of capitalism though, no industry in the US is immune to that

I love the people who spend $2,400 on a Macbook Pro simply to scroll their Facebook and Twitter feeds. A big part of marketing and advertising is how aggressively can you trick the buyer into spending their money on your product
Click to expand...

There's a tad bit of difference there... at least under Apple's old quality levels. You can probably use that MacBook for at least seven, if not ten, years. Barely. $240/year isn't awful for a toy. At least for some budgets.

Mike Smith said:
Whether right or wrong, many people who were plenty capable of paying their mortgage walked away. While one part of me thinks its a crap thing, the other part of me says, its a business deal. It made better financial sense to walk. I don't think I could do it, but I understand why some did.
Click to expand...

I never faulted people for doing it. The neighbors who got ****y and destroyed the house on their way out, they probably deserved some sort of additional penalty or even criminal charges, though. Holes in the garage doors, they stripped the place bare, including light fixtures and wall switches, all flooring, and then put holes in the interior walls and plumbing. Surprised they stopped before breaking all the windows. Sat that way for a long time before the bank could afford to fix it and sell it.

Of course, the former "owners" included the guy who did an oil change on his Toyota in the driveway, drained the oil into a standard plastic oil pan, and then decided he'd try to put the pan in the passenger seat of said Toyota to take it somewhere for disposal... with expected results. I wouldn't put them very far up the "bright" list, and I sure as hell cant imagine their income level matched the house.

But they were sure mad when they found out, via foreclosure. Destroyed everything they could.

They also liked to park on the lawn, no kidding. You just look out your windows one nice summer evening and theres the oil stained Toyota parked under the tree in the center of the lawn. Quite entertaining.
 
denverpilot said:
You can probably use that MacBook for at least seven, if not ten, years.
Click to expand...
Yes, Macs are remarkably well built. I have an old Macbook from '08 that still soldiers on... but I still take pause when I see people buy high end computer equipment simply for wanting it, and not necessarily using it for its capabilities (video processing and editing, etc.)

denverpilot said:
The neighbors who got ****y and destroyed the house on their way out, they probably deserved some sort of additional penalty or even criminal charges, though.
Click to expand...
This! It's still not your property and it isn't yours to destroy. There absolutely should be criminal charges for destruction of property, etc., for these folks. And while I do feel for the people who lost their homes, very few people are completely innocent, you still signed a piece of paper that agreed to pay the money back. When you trash the house I lose any sympathy... that's just going to drive the costs up for the bank to refurbish it and make it that much more difficult for the next person to buy it. If you trash the exterior of the house you just ruined everyone else's resale value as well. On the flip side, most people aren't financial experts, in fact a remarkably high number of people have only a very basic understanding of interest rates, etc., so it is very easy to take advantage of these people, and the people who did so aren't innocent either.

*I never did get the whole "park on your lawn" thing, esp when you have a proper garage and driveway, but that's for another time!
 
Everskyward said:
I watched the clip in the OP, and it's about mobile home park owners suckering tenants into buying the unit, then raising the rent on the land. At least that's what I got out of it.
Click to expand...
I didn't watch the clip, but if that's the case, and it's a "mobile" home, I guess they could always relocate (not that it is inexpensive to move a home). Also, reading the terms of a contract is just as important for a mobile home purchaser as it is for anything else, I'd want the land rental rate fixed, or at least any rate of increase capped.
 
SoonerAviator said:
I didn't watch the clip, but if that's the case, and it's a "mobile" home, I guess they could always relocate (not that it is inexpensive to move a home). Also, reading the terms of a contract is just as important for a mobile home purchaser as it is for anything else, I'd want the land rental rate fixed, or at least any rate of increase capped.
Click to expand...
True, but they brought up the fact that it's expensive to move a mobile home, and these are people who are living on the edge, financially. You can always say that someone didn't read the contract thoroughly enough, but you are also talking about people who probably didn't bring a lawyer to the closing.
 
denverpilot said:
There's a tad bit of difference there... at least under Apple's old quality levels. You can probably use that MacBook for at least seven, if not ten, years. Barely. $240/year isn't awful for a toy. At least for some budgets.
Click to expand...

That's not been my experience.

Oh sure, it will most likely power on 7 years later, but I would call it very usable at that point. Certainly not at 10 years.
 
wayne said:
That's not been my experience.

Oh sure, it will most likely power on 7 years later, but I would call it very usable at that point. Certainly not at 10 years.
Click to expand...

I've got an original MacBook here running Linux. Works fine.

Apple abandoned it via their planned obsolescence via bloatware plan for OSX quite some time ago, but the hardware running a quality OS is quite sound.

Also have a Win95 Panasonic Toughbok that's key for programming some old radio hardware that's insecure for web browsing and consumer entertainment purposes. It still does it's three jobs well, including acceding thr FCC website which is so old and broken it needs a version of Java from the Sun days.

You do have to buy top of the line specs to do it, though. And Apples current models are significantly below top of the line performance wise.
 
SoonerAviator said:
I didn't watch the clip, but if that's the case, and it's a "mobile" home, I guess they could always relocate (not that it is inexpensive to move a home). Also, reading the terms of a contract is just as important for a mobile home purchaser as it is for anything else, I'd want the land rental rate fixed, or at least any rate of increase capped.
Click to expand...
The mobile homes are also being sod at a loss so as the lot fees can be raised eventually.
 
The golf course mansions up the street from me start at a million$$ ++. On any given day, more than 1/3 of them are in foreclosure.
The same company sells them, holds the mortgages, forecloses on them, then resells them over, and over and over.
All kinds of agencies have been investigating them for years, but the owners of the company are all NYS politicians and family members.
 
Shepherd said:
The golf course mansions up the street from me start at a million$$ ++. On any given day, more than 1/3 of them are in foreclosure.
The same company sells them, holds the mortgages, forecloses on them, then resells them over, and over and over.
All kinds of agencies have been investigating them for years, but the owners of the company are all NYS politicians and family members.
Click to expand...
which "family" ?
 
azblackbird said:
Were you in that game?
Click to expand...

No. But I was close enough to see it happen and not wealthy (or gutsy) enough to take advantage. It is what we called the Wall Street Sausage Machine. Dump bad loans into the hopper, turn the crank, and "good" loans come out the other end. We called the end product "Triple A Junk" and in most cases it was just that! The miracle of over-collateralization doesn't work when it all goes down, and by that time the overall leverage is horrendous.

-Skip
 
I live in a rural community with a lot of poor-lower middle class folks mixed in with a few land rich(and usually cash poor) farmers along with a smattering of successful professionals. Wages are low and most stores and restaurants in town barely stay open... actually most of them don't stay open but a few make it. I don't know of many people who went from dirt poor to rich but quite a few went from poor to middle class. Most people around here who made a good effort have done alright... the ones who didn't are quite predictably in jail, dead, or essentially run out of town.

Anyway a really common thing to do around here for couples or even single people just starting out is to buy a fixer-upper home... you see them on the market for as little as $20-30k all the time. Then they move in and over the course of several years renovate one room at a time in their off hours, acquiring the tools and skills as they go. Not many trailer parks around.... who would rent a trailer when you can get a home and mortgage for less?
 
cowman said:
I don't know of many people who went from dirt poor to rich but quite a few went from poor to middle class
Click to expand...
The dirt poor to super rich is rare, but the dirt poor to middle class... and then your future generations hopefully move middle to upper, etc.
 
cowman said:
I live in a rural community with a lot of poor-lower middle class folks mixed in with a few land rich(and usually cash poor) farmers along with a smattering of successful professionals. Wages are low and most stores and restaurants in town barely stay open... actually most of them don't stay open but a few make it. I don't know of many people who went from dirt poor to rich but quite a few went from poor to middle class. Most people around here who made a good effort have done alright... the ones who didn't are quite predictably in jail, dead, or essentially run out of town.

Anyway a really common thing to do around here for couples or even single people just starting out is to buy a fixer-upper home... you see them on the market for as little as $20-30k all the time. Then they move in and over the course of several years renovate one room at a time in their off hours, acquiring the tools and skills as they go. Not many trailer parks around.... who would rent a trailer when you can get a home and mortgage for less?
Click to expand...

A buddy of mine did just that - bought a worn out, beat up house, and is fixing it up as he goes. He's single, so being without certain amenities fora period of time is an inconvenience he can live with. Interesting thing, he had a LOT of problems finding a house in the price range he was looking for. Flippers would snap them up, sight unseen, using their real-estate contacts before he'd even find out about them being for sale. His other big problem was finding a company to insure it for him with all the existing problems.
 
Tantalum said:
Unfortunately that's a by product of capitalism though, no industry in the US is immune to that

I love the people who spend $2,400 on a Macbook Pro simply to scroll their Facebook and Twitter feeds. A big part of marketing and advertising is how aggressively can you trick the buyer into spending their money on your product
Click to expand...

I love people who camp out on the iStore sidewalk so they can be among the first to replace their perfectly good and functioning iPhone with a newer iPhone. I just cannot relate to that mentality.

The ONLY time you will ever find me camping is beside the airplane at Oshkosh.
 
GRG55 said:
I love people who camp out on the iStore sidewalk so they can be among the first to replace their perfectly good and functioning iPhone with a newer iPhone. I just cannot relate to that mentality.

The ONLY time you will ever find me camping is beside the airplane at Oshkosh.
Click to expand...

Both types of campers want to feel like they're part of something bigger. :)

(I also don't get the camp for gadgets thing, but it's the same underlying need to belong to something that drives both.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top