Posted on 08/24/2015 12:14:08 PM PDT by Enlightened1
There are times when excessive attention to monthly data reporting what’s up, what’s down, can be allowed to obscure underlying structural changes in an economy.
With the game of what-will-Yellen-do-next in full flow, this is one of those times.
No, the proverbial tectonic plates are not shifting, whatever that phrase might mean when applied to an economy other than one in the throes of an irreversible Margaret Thatcher-style revolution.
But there are significant trends underway, trends that are unlikely to be reversed and which, as they play out, will result in an American economy considerably different from the one we have today.
Perhaps the most notable is the change in how Americans choose to live.
We seem to be in what might be called “the full-closet era.” No more stuff. More “experiences.”
Consumers are spending more but department stores, from Macy’s, a dominant player in that sector (sales at stores open at least a year down 2.1 percent), to Kohl’s (sales flat, profits down), are watching those dollars pass them by as consumers use their money for gym memberships, to dine out, travel, buy apps, and find more and more unfree uses for their cell phones.
Perhaps the only sector in which stuff trumps experience is the booming auto sector, but even there much of the increased revenue and profit is coming from the experiences consumers want their cars to deliver in addition to getting them from here to there: videos in the back seats to reduce the incidence of the famous question, “Are we there yet, mommy?”; Apple CarPlay in the front to provide the driver access to unlimited musical entertainment; heated and air-cooled steering wheels.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Good point. You see all these stories trying to put a happy face on the fact that younger people don’t have stable work environments, don’t get insurance, don’t have other benefits, can’t buy houses, can’t buy cars, can’t buy other big ticket items. And the press spins it as today’s youth not caring about things like that, or being socially conscious. Its a load of BS. The young are poorer due to taxes and regulations pricing things out of their reach.
We’re in the same situation as you except that our house is some larger and newer and our a/c bills are eating our lunch. It takes almost $20,000 a year to live in our part of Texas for just the basic necessities not including food or any medical expenses. No way we could ever afford to obligate ourselves for a car payment again.
One of the ladies at our church just sold her home and moved into a Holiday Inn close to the beach. $900 a month covers all her costs - twice a week cleaning, cable TV, utilities, taxes and insurance. Her bedroom is separated from her living room by a partial wall. Everything except for food, meds and clothes. Sounds like a wonderful solution.
I’m with you on that!
I own everything I have personally and in my own business. I owe no businesses or individuals anything.......except......TAXES on my property (real and personal) and the Insurance needed due to the failure of tort reform and for hurricanes and natural disasters.
However, these taxes have risen dramatically over the past 15 years and insurance costs have gone through the roof...even though that roof is getting older and older each year.
We are truly having our financial blood sucked away by businesses and entities that exist for no other reason than the government will let them get away with it...and of course...the government is the worst offender.
I’m old enough to realize that I don’t have many years left and lay awake at night thinking of the spectre of my wife trying to live in our house, drive our vehicles and pay all of these taxes and fees plus maintenance on both.
It hurts to know that eventually she will not be able to afford these things and have to liquidate them and move into an apartment. What a shame!
My favorite saying to someone who does not actually own property is: “If you think you own your property and house, don’t pay your taxes and you will soon find who actually owns it!”...and it won’t be you.
We’re kind of in the same situation as you. Nice large home in a country club neighborhood in California and paid for. House was built in 1978 so we have been doing major updating...granite in kitchen, sprinkler system revamp, new doors and windows. Redid the pool 5 years ago, air conditioner last year and all appliances in the last 4 years. Our electric bill is still eating us up and now with the drought the water rates are going up. Now we have termites......sheesh...and will probably have to be tented.
My plans are already made if hubby goes before me. I’m moving to a big ole baoat on the water in Ventura. I’d do it now except hubby refuses. Sick of home ownership.
Powers that be like this, it helps with agenda 21 housing goals.
Sorry about your termites. We’re having our quarterly battle with red ants. I, too, am sick of having to take care of a home - it’s always something that needs fixing. My dil gave me a tee shirt which says “So much to do and so few to do it for me”.
I need one that says....Its always something.
It just never ends here.
True. Between your state government in California and your real estate, I’m sure you are always battling something.
Don’t know if you already own your own boat since you mentioned retiring on one. We used to have one and found that it was, indeed, a hole in the water in which you could continuously put all the money you could amass.
This is what I find shocking about the cost structure today. Governments have put so much on the backs of home owners and the ‘regulation’ of banking has made the cost of getting a home so high along with the associated risks of ownership from the short term perspective it makes more sense to rent.
Unfortunately that short term perspective is all a lot of millennials can afford for two different reasons:
1: The job market for entry level jobs is terrible (who would have thought that given how much they are flooding the country with foreign nationals) So smaller and smaller shares of us can even afford the now much higher down payment.(Thank you Washington)
2: The Jobs we are geting tend to be a lot more transitory and unstable, gone is the days of staying with a company your entire life and that means Millennials are looking at the prospect of moving more often just to keep working.
Owning a Home is Great if you can guaranteed you have a job for years and decades to come. But it becomes a liability the more your likely to have to move to new jobs. Moving to new Jobs is what the market is like going forward.
If that wasn’t disincentive enough with the housing market crash in the late 2000’s we aren’t even garrenteed to make money on the ‘home investment’ or be able to sell it equability. These financial realities make home ownership even more expensive.
The unstable job market unfortunately creates one more problem for the Millennial marriage, If both parents have to work then unstable jobs means difficulty finding work due to narrowing field of locations.
Women today generally demand you live near their family and are not as willing to follow you where your work goes(they have their own careers that take priority to them). Thus a larger share of millennial men are likely to be single and/or under or unemployed. Gone are the days when its easy for families to stick together. Of course the family is a major reason to buy a home and with that out of the picture the bachelor drifting life is a lot more likely if you can afford it.
All of this also point to why people are moving to the cities, as the cities are always where there are the most opportunities(or really anything) within traveling distances and thus also the highest likelihood of finding a new job to replace the old one without having to move.
“If I ever move again, I’d definitely rent. Or take cheap cruises full time.”
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http://999thepoint.com/86-year-old-woman-lives-full-time-on-cruise-ship/
Lee Wachtstetter, an 86-year-old widow, has been living on a curries ship for almost seven years. “Mama Lee” has been living on the luxury cruise ship Crystal Serenity, since her husband passes away. When he was alive, Lee and her husband had gone on 89 cruises during their 50-year marriage. When her husband passed, she sold her five-bedroom, 10-acre Fort Lauderdale home and moved onto the ship permanently. Since then, she has lived on the ship longer than most of its over 650 crew members and has almost tripled the number of cruises she had gone on with her husband and has gone around the world 15 times.
According to the APP, Wachtstetters “stress free life” costs her $164,000 a year. The cost covers her “single-occupancy seventh deck stateroom, regular and specialty restaurant meals with available lunch and dinner beverages, gratuities, nightly ballroom dancing with dance hosts and Broadway-caliber entertainment — as well as the captain’s frequent cocktail parties, movies, lectures, plus other scheduled daily activities.”
Read More: 86-Year-Old Woman Lives Full-Time on Cruise Ship | http://999thepoint.com/86-year-old-woman-lives-full-time-on-cruise-ship/?trackback=tsmclip
We already have a 40 ft sailboat and yes we just put a bunch of money in it when we put it in the yard. Not counting everything we do to it ourselves. Our problem is we have both. A huge house to maintain and a boat. Hubby won’t get rid of the house and I won’t get rid of the boat.....so we are stuck. Lol
Oh well, you can’t take it with you and both of us gotta be happy.
And oh yeah...
Break
Out
Another
Thousand
Ain’t it the truth!
It is no surprise home ownership is down if they are no longer giving loans to poor people and illegals (Clinton and Rubin’s low income housing program) who have no income nor assets to afford the mortgage. That loan scam and the resulting false high market it created, broke much of the middle class in America. Many did not have a clue. It was so deceitful and underhanded...
George Bush almost did something about it when he realized the scheme was going to crash the real estate market, but he was shouted down as a racist by Barney Frank and he backed off. He could have saved a lot of people who refinanced based on a false house value.
Thank you.
Both of my kids want to get married and own a home. But neither of them see it in their future.
Right now, hubs and I are shopping for our retirement home and my daughter and her boyfriend have made us a deal. But a place with enough land, let them put a trailer or a small house on a corner, and they’ll help us put in a fence, do landscaping, do property maintenance and pay their part of the taxes. (They’re planning on getting married next year)
They’ve been looking at national trends and the cost of home ownership in different areas of the country and have discovered that they simply cannot - and will not ever - be able to afford to buy in most cities. When you look at the cost of a house vs the income of that place, it doesn’t add up.
Neither of them have a TV. They both have the cheapest cell phone plans out there and neither have a house phone. My daughter shops at goodwill and my son wears his clothes until they fall off. Neither plays video games.
Our kids have no future and they know it.
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