How do people afford to live?

[Simplicity]

Well, look at the lifestyle in question. Do I need two brand new Lexus's, a boat, and swimming pool? Nah. Id live just fine with a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home in a nice neighborhood and that certainly wouldnt cost 200k.

Depends on where you live, I guess. In the San Diego area, very basic single family homes are around $500,000. We're trying to move up to the Bay Area because we both have job opportunities up there. Houses up there (at least the ones that don't give you an hour and a half commute) start around $700,000.

We're not talking 2 Lexi and a swimming pool. We're talking 3 bedroom, 1 to 1 and 1/2 bathroom houses. We're lucky because we both have good degrees, and we can (just barely) look at trying to get a home. But it would be pretty hard to do if both of us weren't working, or if either of us didn't have a good job.

I really don't know how people get by with prices like that. I assume virtually everyone spends hours every day on a train or in a car trying to get to where they work...

 

[Kanegrundar]

A perhaps related phenomena: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050626/ap_on_bi_ge/the_entitlement_generation

I manage a computer lab for the Farm Service Agency in Saline County, Missouri. I've had a lot of people roll through the lab through the last 3 years that i've been in charge, and it's true, kids today feel that they are owed something. It's laughable. I'm 27, so I fall into this "Entitlement Generation", but never once did I feel that just because I am who I am that I'm entitled to be treated better by my employer. I had one guy, who was a few years older than me and who I beat out for the job I now have, that felt that just because he went to college (got a degree in Ag Mechanics that does nothing for him in the GIS field), got married, and had a kid that he should be given a position. Nevermind the fact that he had basically no advanced computer skills, and never bothered to learn anything about the programs we use in our everyday work beyond the basics that you need just to do the job that all the kids do bck there. Even when they bought him up front (the lab is kept in the back of the office away from the farmers coming in to report acres and such) to help out with filing, printing maps, updating the county linework, etc.; he still told the CED (the guy that even I answer to) what he was and wasn't going to do. Most time he sat at his computer doing crossword puzzles on the internet while being angry that he wasn't in charge of the lab or given any other full-time position (the lab workers are all temps except for me). He left finally (he was a day or two from being fired) to go farm for his dad. After all, the FSA didn't appreciate him enough (his every own words).

That was an extreme case, but I see it to varying degrees with all the kids that work for me in the lab. They know when they are hired that they are temporary. That means no benefits other than vacation time and sick leave, but yet they complain about it. The feel that they are essential to the workings of the FSA. Well, they aren't. Heck, I'm not even essential. It aggrivates me that ANYONE feels that they are owed anything just becuase they did some work in college. A degree without continuing drive and determination gets to no further than someone without a degree that also has no drive or determination.

Kane

 

[Kanegrundar]

You'd be happier with $60k/month.

hehehe... I think we all would!

 

[der_kluge]

My fiancee and I make well less than 200K a year by only making around 60K between the two of us. We own our home, have 2 nice Saturns to drive, and a dog. She's going to college to get her Masters in Education and we have some debt on top of that. However, we live just fine. There are times when we have to tighten our belts, but most of the time we have plenty of money to go out to eat or go to a movie. The very idea of owning a vacation home is idiotic. That's rich, plain and simple. We're looking for a new home, and while we can figure on getting a loan for 150K, unless we get away from KC, we're not going to be able to buy much and that means no second home.

I don't know in which part of KC you live, but you might consider looking in Spring Hill (south of Olathe). It's a lot cheaper therer than in Olathe proper, and it's not terribly far away. That's where I moved away from.

KC is also fairly expensive. The property tax rates there are some of the highest in the country.

 

[der_kluge]

Man, why didn't I pay more attention in math??? I have a wife, FOUR daughters, and THREE female cats. No WONDER I can't pay my bills...

Dude, you ARE screwed.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Spring Hill is going the wrong direction for me. I drive to work everyday to Marshall, MO, which is a little over an hour east of KC. We've been looking at homes in Oak Grove, Odessa, Lexington, and Higginsville. That keeps us close enough to KC for her comfort (she's a city girl from StL), but gets us far enough away that the taxes and home costs aren't as bad. Plus, those are much quieter towns, so that suits me (a country boy from rural Marshall) just fine.

The KC Metro area is just too expensive to live. We do just fine here, but we could be living a lot better elsewhere.

Kane

 

[der_kluge]

I read an article a couple of weeks ago talking about how no one was having children in the San Francisco area anymore. It talked about how the cost of living had reached a point to where people had to have two incomes in order to afford a house and there wasn't time to raise a family. Combine that with a large gay population, and you have a city where very few people actually have families anymore.

I knew this was a problem in Italy (not the gay population part), but I saw a news article talking about how men there live at home until they're well into their 30s, and women all get careers, and have no desire to settle down. In one Italian town, they talked about closing the elementary school altogether since they only had like 3 students enrolled in kindergarten. Interesting.


Another thing about this "study" that I don't understand is the concept of a vacation home. I've only ever known a handful of people who had a vacation home. The very idea is a strange one to me, and seems more prevalent on the east coast. People from the midwest just don't do this. I'd rather travel the country when I go on vacation. I wouldn't want to go to the same place year after year, unless I'd already been everywhere else, and loved this one place more than any other.


I also don't understand why companies which exist in places like Silicon Valley don't relocate to the midwest. I would think those places would have much happier employees, who didn't have to spend 2-3 hours a day driving into work. That, and I would think they'd have a hard time recruiting people who didn't already live there. I know I'd move to Boise, ID or Pierre, ND before I moved to San Jose, CA. Any. day. of. the. week.


I don't know the secret to making a lot of money with a degree like journalism, or teaching, or social work. Those are hard fields to succeed in. To be successful, you have to be super good at what you do. Charisma and intelligence helps a lot. In my field, you have to find a niche, and it helps if it's in high demand. If you're the only guy that can fit the round peg into the square hole, and companies are all looking for people who can do that, then you can command top dollar. That's true in a lot of fields. IT and healthcare are good fields to make a decent living in. But I think you can be successful in any field if you're willing to take on a lot of risk. I'm not a big risk-taker, but I think for those who are, you can make a lot of money if you're bets pay off.

 

[WayneLigon]

I also don't understand why companies which exist in places like Silicon Valley don't relocate to the midwest. I would think those places would have much happier employees, who didn't have to spend 2-3 hours a day driving into work. That, and I would think they'd have a hard time recruiting people who didn't already live there. I know I'd move to Boise, ID or Pierre, ND before I moved to San Jose, CA. Any. day. of. the. week.

1. Finding qualified people for those companies in those places is going to be much, much harder. They'd have to hire elsewhere and get people to move there. That's not going to happen often because of

2. Quality of Life issues. While Boise did see a remarkable (for it) growth in IT in the 90's, it's still a city that's half the size of the crappy place I live. When you're used to the ammenities a metropolitan area has to offer, it's really really hard to downgrade that far.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I read an article a couple of weeks ago talking about how no one was having children in the San Francisco area anymore. It talked about how the cost of living had reached a point to where people had to have two incomes in order to afford a house and there wasn't time to raise a family.

Yeah, you see this more in Europe or so I'm told. Kids are expensive.

Another thing about this "study" that I don't understand is the concept of a vacation home. I've only ever known a handful of people who had a vacation home. The very idea is a strange one to me, and seems more prevalent on the east coast. People from the midwest just don't do this. I'd rather travel the country when I go on vacation.

Some of these homes have been in families for generations. Think of a $50,000 home on a plot of land worth $500,000. Then of course, is the idiocy factor. One of my Mom's friends has a son entering college. The friend has no idea how they'll pay for college but they just got a vacation home in Stone Harbor, NJ. I bit my tounge when I heard that.

I don't know the secret to making a lot of money with a degree like journalism, or teaching, or social work.

Niether do I. That's why I went into computers.

 

[howandwhy99]

Yuppies don't have college degrees, they have MBAs.

Quoted for truth


RW,

Very few undergrad degrees are going to have the potential of earning $100,000+ right out of college. Back in the 90's my younger brother pulled it off at age 19 and he didn't even have his degree. But that was back when the CompSci craze was over-the-top. Even CS minors graduating from my college were being picked up at 40-50K /year.

What can do it for you now? Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and possibly Actuarial Sciences if you can pass a majority of the certifications. I'm sure there are others, but straight out of college w/ the opportunity to earn that in a few years? You really have to go hard sciences.

The one thing I would suggest to you knowing a little of your background is get a money-maker Masters. You can get another in a couple years after you earn enough to pay for it yourself. But nearly any Masters degree program doesn't really discriminate about what you took in undergrad unless you're looking at a professional degree (med, not law. Law schools tend not to care either).

The secret is most people w/ a background like yours = good grades, ivy league college, do NOT pay for their masters. Even if you apply for a highly competitive program you'll get a package that allows you to pay for it after the fact. Grad. degrees are the ticket to most high skilled/high paying jobs. It just takes time and effort.