Train-wrecks

[jhetley]

Watching the stock market with wry amusement.  Might be even funnier if that wasn't our retirement fund making a swirling noise as it circles the toilet bowl . . .

Once upon a time, I worked as chief designer for a builder of panelized homes.  A large part of our market consisted of FmHA, HUD, and VA loan home-buyers.  Subsidized mortgages.  I recall telling the guys in the sales department that building houses for people who couldn't afford houses was not a good long-term business plan.  And son-of-a-bitch, the place eventually went bankrupt.  Having a thief for an owner didn't help, but the basic economics just didn't work.

And bankers used to be such cautious people.

Well, if you have any extra cash floating around, now would be a good time to buy.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Well, if you have any extra cash floating around, now would be a good time to buy.

I'm telling myself that for the foreseeable future, I'm putting 20% more toward my retirement than usual.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

That's easier for those in this world who are not, already, over 60 . . .

[sci-o-biscuits.livejournal.com]

In earlier years, there was no way I could save for retirement. There just wasn't sufficient income to cover critical expenses and stuff cash away for many decades. I finally started saving, but it wasn't for retirement; rather, it was for my children's college educations. I do have some retirement cash in the toilet bowl, as you say, but I'm mainly worried about getting my son through college if the banks collapse. His college education depends on the toilet bowl jamming and refusing to flush.

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

I bought a home just before I retired from the Air Force. It's a small house but we figured when the kids were gone it would be about as much as we could handle. The Realtor kept insisting we could have a home twice as big easily. We decided that a house payment of less than half my retirement pay would insure we could weather out an economic downturn. We were wrong. We hadn't counted on everything to go up at the same time as we lost jobs.

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

The Czarina and I are holding off for another two years: by the beginning of 2010, we should be in a place where we can afford to do so, and the market should be a little more stable by then. Right now, anybody doing any sort of housebuying is knife-catching, and we have no interest in self-inflicted wounds.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Luckily, our offspring are beyond college. Although relocating Younger Son to California for post-doc research has proved expensive . . .

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

We would like to transform this ancient and drafty pile of recycled lumber into something smaller and easier to heat, with wiring that wasn't installed by old Tom Edison himself. However, it's paid for.

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

This is why we're glad we're renting our current pile of sheetrock. If we'd actually bought the place before we saw the termite swarm flying out of cracks by the front door this last April, I'd have despaired.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Every now and then I wonder if we really should have sold off Mom's house down in Georgia. It was a lot newer than this one, in a warmer climate.

Then I remember termites.