Yes. Here’s Warren Buffett’s take on this. (Includes a hearty lol at the WSJ for completely missing his point.)
Right. I don’t have a big opinion as I’ve never researched it. Do the counter-proposals have a way to keep grandma on a fixed income from having to sell - (the original intent of the law)?
I mean, grandma on a fixed income is rich as hell because she’s living in a hugely-appreciated home. She should take out a reverse mortgage to pay the bill or let the unpaid property taxes accrue as a debt attached to her home.
The intent of the law was not to prevent grandmas from losing their homes, the intent was to keep wealth in the hands of the elderly. Call me calloused but I have zero sympathy for grandma who bought her 1.2 million dollar house for $40,000 and a handshake.
Our small company pays 100% of employee insurance plus 50% for dependents. The cost is basically a function of the plan you pick and the age.
On our current plan, the cost to the company for a 52yo (oldest insured employee) is $615/month. For a 29yo is $350/month. In the premium plan, the cost is about $200/month higher, but if you pick the premium plan the employee pays the difference with the standard plan.
The company also pays for dental and vision, which is probably $50/month per employee.
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Location: Eastern Iowa
Rent/Utilities: ~1k/mo for 1600 sq ft house in older working class neighborhood. One car garage which the wife gets. Makes me die a little inside every day but it is what it is.
Car: 350/mo payment + ins
Internet: $90/mo (fuck mediacom)
Phone: 40/mo split family plan
Entertainment: I don’t really know, 300/mo
Healthcare: 30/mo for family. Government work, very lucky here. Plan oop would be ~2k. It’s the reason we have a bunch of fossils wandering around the station
Going out: pre covid probably 400/mo, now virtually nothing
Food: ~700/mo for me and the wife
Debt: Just the mortgage and the car. Paid off the credit card after a bbj bink earlier this summer
Everything else: I like nice stuff. Clothes, golf stuff, etc.
Overall not killing it or anything but comfortable. Extremely lucky and extremely privileged. Need to start forcing more savings since the family looks to be going +1 in May
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Congrats on the +1!
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Thanks! We’re pumped
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I also eat $100/mo in nicotine lozenges from Costco. It’s the “healthy” way to be addicted to nicotine. Gotta work on that, but when I drink I buy smokes because I LOVE smoking while drinking. Nicotine addiction is a serious leak.
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Superb. Definitely one of my top 10 favorite of all time ads.
Re: healthcare, I gotta look at my paystubs but I pay like $40 a paycheck for a $1000 deductible PPO.
A plus of working for a tech company I guess. The benefits are nice.
Location: A small city in a non-coastal state. Population between 25K and 200K. I’m not willing to be more specific.
Rent: a bit under $900 for a bit over 1000 square-foot apartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, washer/dryer, a one-car garage, and an external entry.
Utilities: $70-80/month
Car: bought used for cash, around $80/month insurance. During the pandemic, I might spend $25/month on gas. Pre-COVID, it was probably the same because I got a lot of gas cards from the casino.
Food: Somewhere between $200 and $300/month.
Cable/internet/phone: $200/month, but I don’t pay it all. I only have cable because of my father, who spends part of the year with me, hence the second bedroom. He pays the cable for the entire year and I’m an extra line on his phone plan.
Healthcare: $20/month for some medication. I was going to address the insurance thing this year, but…
Going out: Let’s be generous and say $20/month pre-COVID. When you play poker Friday/Saturday night, there’s not much room for a social life.
Location: Rural Western Japan
Rent/Utilities: 0 rent. My wife and I live in the abandoned home of my wife’s neighbor, who now lives in Tokyo. She allows us to live here in exchange for upkeep and utilities. Not sure of square footage but it’s about the size of a medium-sized American home, which means it’s gigantic by Japan standards. When built during Japan’s bubble era, this was a $1 mil+ plus home, but both the home and region have seen better days and now it’s worth but a fraction of that. Utilities average out to about $100/month or so. Insulation is poor so it can be about 3x that amount to keep the place heated and even then it’s freezing throughout the winter.
Car: $0. Paid for in cash. Insurance/gas about $100/month
Internet: $60/month
Phone: $50/month
Entertainment/travel: About $600/month when taking into account liberal travel during non-corona years. Less than half of that nowadays.
Healthcare: $50/month for me and wife. In Japan, cost of insurance is marked to income. Since most of my income is offshore, our insurance is cheaper than it otherwise would be.
Food: $300/month for two.
Debt: $0. Paid off school loan a few years ago. Debt free ever since.
I should probably contrast this low cost of living in rural Japan with my previous life in San Diego, but just reference the other SD residents and you’ll get the idea.
I must say I’m shocked at the cost of rent/mortgage throughout the U.S. I knew SD was expensive, but it seems everywhere else is too.
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Yea ok, I want to move into the rent free million dollar estate with you and your wife. I don’t do butt stuff, please reply. I HAVE AN EXTRA CAR!
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Rent is high everywhere worth living now. It’s one of the reasons why more adults are living with their parents than ever before. Your setup sounds pretty awesome.
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I’m curious why a luxury home was built without proper insulation. Is this common in Japan?
Yah, especially if you want to live near the center in a vibrant city. Some of the places I looked were Austin, Denver, Portland, Miami, Chicago, etc. and all seemed absurdly expensive.
Between much higher rent and health care costs as well as needing a car, my monthly budget probably triples. I play online poker, so it just wouldn’t make sense without any type of increase in salary (although if live PLO were an option, there might be a little bump).
It helps that my whole family are deplorables apart from a brother and his partner. Makes it a lot easier living abroad, although my mom’s new pasttime seems to be constantly guilt tripping me into moving back to the USA.
Now that I’m really serious w/my Mexican girlfriend (she’s moving in with her dog later today), it adds an interesting politic dynamic to the convo.
“You should visit for a while with your girlfriend”
“I looked into it but Trump’s admin has made it extremely difficult for Mexicans who aren’t really wealthy and own property in Mexico to get a visa, so she’d probably have less than a 10% of getting approved (all true). Almost every country in Europe as well as Canada will let Mexicans visit visa-free, so we’re visiting Canada instead.”
Which is all true. I was wanting to travel around the USA a bit with her and stay with family a couple weeks, but then just said fuck it, we’re going to Montreal instead. That was until it became obvious we weren’t going anywhere b/c of corona.
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This is essentially what we pay in Roseville for a 3br
I think it’s part of late stage capitalism. It’s very difficult to save up to buy a home, younger generations have been crushed from accumulating wealth by recessions, and people will be pretty inelastic in their demand when trying to avoid living at home with their parents. As a result, rents tend to settle around the maximum people could possibly afford.
Oh geez my mother spent years doing that when I began living outside of America in 2009. To be fair, eventually moving back to America and settling was the plan. The whole thing with living overseas was supposed to be something I do in my 20s before becoming a proper adult and going back home. As those chances were fading, my mother was kind of passively trying to pull me back to America (note that this was before Trump). It’s kind of what parents do I suppose.
I’ve learned enough to never say never. However, the likelihood of me going back to permanently live in America in the near future of my own free will is very slim. I don’t see any scenario where moving back to America leads to an increase in my quality-of-life.
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