Agreeing with Drink Water here. (Sorry, I love most posts at Wise Bread but this one appeared to be one of those articles on the cover of the tabloids.)
It is really discouraging and sad that sex has become a national "sport". No romance, mystique, or intrigue left. Using people is rather sad and pathetic. And we wonder why our children think what they think and do what they do. Maybe it was the crude headline grabbing title: Get Laid?
A really simple formula we learned in Anatomy and Physiology class:
take your body weight, divide it in half, and that will equal the amount of ounces of fluid per day that is a reasonable intake. Of course, if you have medical issues your doctor can best advise you. It is not a good idea to encourage the reduction of water intake.
Thanks for this thoughtful and thought-provoking article. It struck me that I am a good deal happier than I was two years ago, before we bought our home. Sure, the property has lost value, but it's not the economics that are at issue here.
You use the term "standard of living." I more commonly use the term "quality of life." Maybe they're interchangeable to some. Your phrase though seems more strongly associated with finances, while "quality of life," to me has a more general meaning, or possibly a medical (and usually negative) overtone.
Quality of life can be enhanced by having children, developing a better relationship with a spouse, building enduring friendships, acquiring skills that are enjoyable to use, exercising, and by many simple pleasures that aren't directly vulnerable if our incomes should be reduced.
My quality of life went up when we bought our home, and it has stayed up. It's nice to care about the place I live. It's satisfying to be able to make decisions about where I live without consulting anyone else. It's rewarding to have a huge garden, and to gather the apples from the old apple tree that came with the house. These things provide me with a level of happiness every single day that had been missing previously. Maybe it's settled in to a background level of contentment, but it doesn't feel that way to me. I'm grateful to have this life, and mindful of that advantage day by day.
Your article just made me even more mindful of it. Thanks!
I am one of those people who qualified for the full PELL grant for tuition, but I also worked very hard to get merit-based scholarships for college. My merit-based scholarships were based on my test scores, GPA, community work, etc. If a student is willing to work hard and apply for private merit-based scholarships, they should have no problem paying for college. Just one of my private scholarships was $1500 a year for four years. Others were one time payments from essay contests and things like that. I worked two jobs to pay my rent, food, etc. And I think that once you are 18, you are an adult and you should start taking control of your own life instead of depending on your parents for everything. I put myself through college, and I came out of it debt-free. My GPA (3.9) only suffered a little bit because of working the two jobs.
I forgot to post this before. One side effect of this bill will be to further deteriorate the public balance sheet and the value of the dollar. If this goes through, prices in commodities and essentials will escalate further. Interest rates have already been rising in response to the proposal.
At the bottom of this page is a chart of 10 year Treasury yields. They spiked about 9% in one week after the initial Paulson announcement. As government borrowing costs escalate, this will force them to issue even more debt further weakening the dollar in what could become a vicious cycle.
The result for the average American is higher costs in everything from food and gas to mortgages and imports. The middle class could be further weakened as wages will never be able to keep up with inflationary pressures in necessities. The lower class worker will be utterly devastated.
First of all. Bernake and Paulson look like stooges sitting there and Paulson ineptly tries to dodge every question put to him. Is this performance by public officials supposed to inspire confidence? This whole bill is nothing more than welfare for Wall St. and stinks of corruption and payola. Thomas Jefferson warned about the sorts of games bankers play:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
My husband and I took a big cut in income recently, and moved at the same time. We moved for his job, and I decided to take the opportunity to return to full-time student status so I could finally finish my PhD. Unfortunately, we did this just as the housing market seriously began to slump, and we were unable to sell our home (we're now renting it to some friends).
We went from living in a fairly large house to renting a much smaller and fairly crappy apartment. We went from two cars to one. We cut our food budget. We cut our entertainment budget. We cut basically ALL our budgets.
We joked about going back to our college days, but it really did feel just like that. Except that, back then, we hadn't had a higher standard of living. At 19, just having our own apartment was exciting - who cared if the oven didn't work half the time?
It was initially a really, really hard change to make. It helped that we knew it wasn't forever, and that it was a choice we had made. But after a few months, it got easier. And now it feels totally natural. We've decided not to increase our standard of living all that much when I go back to work - most of my income will go to retirement savings, and to paying off our mortgage.
It took a fairly unique set of circumstances for us to make this change, but I'm glad we did.
We're middle management workers (non-college grads) who've saved, worked and lived simply for the last 45 years but our standard of living is dropping fast. Maintaining a basic standard of living only works if a) your home is valuable enough to sell so you can downsize; b) your retirement investments haven't crashed just as you need them; and c) the cost of inflation isn't rising just as your best income years are gone.
Right. So, taking into account food and other fluids like soda, 8 glasses of water seems a bit excessive. Then again, that's NOT taking into account all the fluids lost during all that hot, sweaty, morally-decaying, liberal sex I'm having.
I'm of the stance that since every body is different (some people sweat a lot more than others, some people eat a lot more fruit), it's difficult to decide exactly how much of something every single person should ingest. I like to leave that up to individuals. Note that I didn't advise against drinking 8 glasses of water. I personally drink about three liters a day (again with that liberal sex!) - but that's just me.
For the record, I never suggested that teenagers should have sex, although it'd be stupid to pretend that most of them don't; I merely related an age-old urban legend of sorts surrounding clear skin.
At 36, I (+ non-working spouse+ 5 year old) have the house and 2 cars paid off with no debt and about $100k to spare and $4k per month in household expenses. Current gross income is $110k with savings of $40k per year in a job that sucks. What is the earliest that one can hope to retire without jepardizing the future. Definitely, I have a long working life ahead and am lookling for career change options as well.
Yes, many do vehemently agree that this bill is a bad idea. That is, unless you happen to be a homeowner underwater because of poor decision-making.
It doesn't matter - the ruling elite have decided in their wisdom that the bankers and wall street must be rescued. The ruling elite do not care because the American people are sheep.
I blame both Repubs & Dems for this lame-as^$#d flop of a piece of legislation. Conservatism is dead for the foreseeable future, and with it our future, our children's future and our grandchildren's future is in jeopardy.
Why did this legislation promoted by Barney (D) Mass & Dodd (D) CT ever get as far as this?
I can't agree with the recommendation to have sex to look better? especially to teenagers? Come on? Let not further the decay of our morals any more than the failed liberal policies have already done so?
As for Water, you should have picked up a basic physiology textbook instead, such as Guyton’s Textbook of Medical Physiology. If they (those doing the studies to refute drinking water) had looked there, they would have found a section in the chapter on fluid balance that talked about how much water we lose every day under normal conditions:
* Skin (not from sweat)--12 ounces
* Lungs--12 ounces
* Sweat--4 ounces (without exercise)
* Feces--4 ounces
* Urine--48 ounces
* Total: 80 ounces per day. And remember, that’s without sweating due to exercise or high heat and humidity.
The recommended 8 x 8 would provide 64 ounces, and that means we would be 16 ounces short based on typical fluid loss, even before your daily exercise routine. That’s why eight 8-ounce glasses of fluid per day is still a good idea. Notice I said fluid. Tea, coffee, sports and energy drinks, soft drinks, juice--all fluids count toward that total. So does the food you eat.
You wanna cause a depression....pass this bill...dont ask why when the new home industry, mortgage, construction, and all the companies that manufacture materials for homes go out of business. Most builders use these programs because the government programs are jokes. They have too many requirements from the buyers and 95% of buyers never qualify for the programs. Just increase the standards to qualify for them...otherwise you will see how bad the economy can really get...it will be bad....
This is yet another step deeper into fascism - nothing new.
My question is: Where were these leaders when the housing/mortgage bubble was inflating?
Now the dollar will continue to decline. BTW it has declined almost 95% since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was created.
Every task has an opportunity cost attached to it, regardless of how big or small. In some cases, your time would be better spent working, especially if the money you earn is significantly higher than the cost of paying someone to do the task in your place. Sometimes, the opportunity cost is not fiscal at all, but rather something like personal relationships. Some people are so adamant about saving money by doing things themselves, that they neglect those around them. In such instances, it is much better to invest your time with the wife and children and pay someone to what you otherwise would have done yourself. I wrote about a similar subject in my business blog back in December, but the theme applies to both business life just as well as it does to one's personal life.
In the zipcode I live the average price per squarefoot is $641 so a 1000 square foot shack costs $641000. So guess what, I'm not buying because I know it's ridiculous. Even with the DPA, the buyer needs to make over $12k a month to support that loan. You can definitely save some money at that income level. I think the problem is that people with much lower incomes got into these mortgages.
Another great group of people that nobody ever listens to are the economists of the Austrian School, who correctly predicted this awful mess years ago. Check out the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Of course, the Federal Reserve's deliberate debasement of the dollar is almost entirely to blame. The business cycle is not an uncontrollable natural phenomenon, but rather the product of central bank interference in our money.
For a great introduction to this topic, check out Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done To Our Money?. No equations and dense mathematics- I promise!
in places like Southern California good luck finding a decent condo for much less than $300k for a family and those are usually fixers. Even now single family homes are still over the half million dollar mark if you want anything that has good schools and is in a decent neighborhood. I would love to see the prices be comparable with most of the rest of the country, but it just isn’t realistic in places like this.
$300,000 is 50% above median in the United States. It's a really cheap house here in the Bay Area, but the mortgage would cost quite a bit. If you get a $300,000 loan at 6.5% fixed for 30 years the mortgage is $1896 a month. Additionally there are taxes,insurance, utilities, and utilities. So if a family has to reasonably afford that home they should be making more than $6000 a month. I don't think it's very hard to save $10,000 if you're making $6000 a month and renting for a couple years. The logical reason why these families absolutely CANNOT save is either 1) they don't have income 2) they don't manage their finances well 3) they have a lot of other debts. All three reasons would be contributing factors to a higher foreclosure rate.
The funny thing is. Nearly everyone I talk to think the bailout is a bad idea no matter if they're liberal or conservative. I live in the Bay Area so it's more liberal. Then when I looked in the news the only people applauding this bill are Realtors and bankers. Every other news report seem to say that it is a pretty bad idea. Even though it is anecdotal I feel like MOST Americans think that this bailout is a bad idea. So how come their representatives don't agree with them? I thought this was a democracy? Oh right, democracy is only accesible to those with lobbyists in Washington.
What kind of first time home buyers are purchasing $300,000 homes? That's quite an aggressive step. My first home was $65,000. Not my dream house, but my first house I could comfortably afford.
You are seriously wrong if you are trying to convince people they need to buy "the home of their dreams" as their first home purchase.
Agreeing with Drink Water here. (Sorry, I love most posts at Wise Bread but this one appeared to be one of those articles on the cover of the tabloids.)
It is really discouraging and sad that sex has become a national "sport". No romance, mystique, or intrigue left. Using people is rather sad and pathetic. And we wonder why our children think what they think and do what they do. Maybe it was the crude headline grabbing title: Get Laid?
A really simple formula we learned in Anatomy and Physiology class:
take your body weight, divide it in half, and that will equal the amount of ounces of fluid per day that is a reasonable intake. Of course, if you have medical issues your doctor can best advise you. It is not a good idea to encourage the reduction of water intake.
Marion
Thanks for this thoughtful and thought-provoking article. It struck me that I am a good deal happier than I was two years ago, before we bought our home. Sure, the property has lost value, but it's not the economics that are at issue here.
You use the term "standard of living." I more commonly use the term "quality of life." Maybe they're interchangeable to some. Your phrase though seems more strongly associated with finances, while "quality of life," to me has a more general meaning, or possibly a medical (and usually negative) overtone.
Quality of life can be enhanced by having children, developing a better relationship with a spouse, building enduring friendships, acquiring skills that are enjoyable to use, exercising, and by many simple pleasures that aren't directly vulnerable if our incomes should be reduced.
My quality of life went up when we bought our home, and it has stayed up. It's nice to care about the place I live. It's satisfying to be able to make decisions about where I live without consulting anyone else. It's rewarding to have a huge garden, and to gather the apples from the old apple tree that came with the house. These things provide me with a level of happiness every single day that had been missing previously. Maybe it's settled in to a background level of contentment, but it doesn't feel that way to me. I'm grateful to have this life, and mindful of that advantage day by day.
Your article just made me even more mindful of it. Thanks!
I am one of those people who qualified for the full PELL grant for tuition, but I also worked very hard to get merit-based scholarships for college. My merit-based scholarships were based on my test scores, GPA, community work, etc. If a student is willing to work hard and apply for private merit-based scholarships, they should have no problem paying for college. Just one of my private scholarships was $1500 a year for four years. Others were one time payments from essay contests and things like that. I worked two jobs to pay my rent, food, etc. And I think that once you are 18, you are an adult and you should start taking control of your own life instead of depending on your parents for everything. I put myself through college, and I came out of it debt-free. My GPA (3.9) only suffered a little bit because of working the two jobs.
Wow, there were some fatalistic and defeated responses here from some lost souls drowning in a sea of self doubt and frustration-
my god, have some vision , the only person who holds us back is OURSELVES!
happiness and fulfillment aren't "out there" - YOU have to BE happiness and success - YOU are the creator
those defeated souls have it all backwards - life is only a mirror of YOU and what you habitually feel,think,act and project
success, wealth and happiness can be REAL for YOU - but YOU have to create it
atrophy, mediocrity, lack of vision, unhappiness, self defeatedness = weakness
be strong- want more , get more , give more, live more, be more
http://financialpetition.org/
I forgot to post this before. One side effect of this bill will be to further deteriorate the public balance sheet and the value of the dollar. If this goes through, prices in commodities and essentials will escalate further. Interest rates have already been rising in response to the proposal.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/index.html
At the bottom of this page is a chart of 10 year Treasury yields. They spiked about 9% in one week after the initial Paulson announcement. As government borrowing costs escalate, this will force them to issue even more debt further weakening the dollar in what could become a vicious cycle.
The result for the average American is higher costs in everything from food and gas to mortgages and imports. The middle class could be further weakened as wages will never be able to keep up with inflationary pressures in necessities. The lower class worker will be utterly devastated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFDlOzJGriI
First of all. Bernake and Paulson look like stooges sitting there and Paulson ineptly tries to dodge every question put to him. Is this performance by public officials supposed to inspire confidence? This whole bill is nothing more than welfare for Wall St. and stinks of corruption and payola. Thomas Jefferson warned about the sorts of games bankers play:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
My husband and I took a big cut in income recently, and moved at the same time. We moved for his job, and I decided to take the opportunity to return to full-time student status so I could finally finish my PhD. Unfortunately, we did this just as the housing market seriously began to slump, and we were unable to sell our home (we're now renting it to some friends).
We went from living in a fairly large house to renting a much smaller and fairly crappy apartment. We went from two cars to one. We cut our food budget. We cut our entertainment budget. We cut basically ALL our budgets.
We joked about going back to our college days, but it really did feel just like that. Except that, back then, we hadn't had a higher standard of living. At 19, just having our own apartment was exciting - who cared if the oven didn't work half the time?
It was initially a really, really hard change to make. It helped that we knew it wasn't forever, and that it was a choice we had made. But after a few months, it got easier. And now it feels totally natural. We've decided not to increase our standard of living all that much when I go back to work - most of my income will go to retirement savings, and to paying off our mortgage.
It took a fairly unique set of circumstances for us to make this change, but I'm glad we did.
If you live below your means, you are able to consciously raise your standard of living as you gain more wealth.
The key is finding a balance.
We're middle management workers (non-college grads) who've saved, worked and lived simply for the last 45 years but our standard of living is dropping fast. Maintaining a basic standard of living only works if a) your home is valuable enough to sell so you can downsize; b) your retirement investments haven't crashed just as you need them; and c) the cost of inflation isn't rising just as your best income years are gone.
Great article! :)
Excellent article and great points, Philip. I accidentally subscribed to your blog, but I'm glad I did.
I'll check them out
Right. So, taking into account food and other fluids like soda, 8 glasses of water seems a bit excessive. Then again, that's NOT taking into account all the fluids lost during all that hot, sweaty, morally-decaying, liberal sex I'm having.
I'm of the stance that since every body is different (some people sweat a lot more than others, some people eat a lot more fruit), it's difficult to decide exactly how much of something every single person should ingest. I like to leave that up to individuals. Note that I didn't advise against drinking 8 glasses of water. I personally drink about three liters a day (again with that liberal sex!) - but that's just me.
For the record, I never suggested that teenagers should have sex, although it'd be stupid to pretend that most of them don't; I merely related an age-old urban legend of sorts surrounding clear skin.
At 36, I (+ non-working spouse+ 5 year old) have the house and 2 cars paid off with no debt and about $100k to spare and $4k per month in household expenses. Current gross income is $110k with savings of $40k per year in a job that sucks. What is the earliest that one can hope to retire without jepardizing the future. Definitely, I have a long working life ahead and am lookling for career change options as well.
Yes, many do vehemently agree that this bill is a bad idea. That is, unless you happen to be a homeowner underwater because of poor decision-making.
It doesn't matter - the ruling elite have decided in their wisdom that the bankers and wall street must be rescued. The ruling elite do not care because the American people are sheep.
I blame both Repubs & Dems for this lame-as^$#d flop of a piece of legislation. Conservatism is dead for the foreseeable future, and with it our future, our children's future and our grandchildren's future is in jeopardy.
Why did this legislation promoted by Barney (D) Mass & Dodd (D) CT ever get as far as this?
Corruption.
I can't agree with the recommendation to have sex to look better? especially to teenagers? Come on? Let not further the decay of our morals any more than the failed liberal policies have already done so?
As for Water, you should have picked up a basic physiology textbook instead, such as Guyton’s Textbook of Medical Physiology. If they (those doing the studies to refute drinking water) had looked there, they would have found a section in the chapter on fluid balance that talked about how much water we lose every day under normal conditions:
* Skin (not from sweat)--12 ounces
* Lungs--12 ounces
* Sweat--4 ounces (without exercise)
* Feces--4 ounces
* Urine--48 ounces
* Total: 80 ounces per day. And remember, that’s without sweating due to exercise or high heat and humidity.
The recommended 8 x 8 would provide 64 ounces, and that means we would be 16 ounces short based on typical fluid loss, even before your daily exercise routine. That’s why eight 8-ounce glasses of fluid per day is still a good idea. Notice I said fluid. Tea, coffee, sports and energy drinks, soft drinks, juice--all fluids count toward that total. So does the food you eat.
You wanna cause a depression....pass this bill...dont ask why when the new home industry, mortgage, construction, and all the companies that manufacture materials for homes go out of business. Most builders use these programs because the government programs are jokes. They have too many requirements from the buyers and 95% of buyers never qualify for the programs. Just increase the standards to qualify for them...otherwise you will see how bad the economy can really get...it will be bad....
This is yet another step deeper into fascism - nothing new.
My question is: Where were these leaders when the housing/mortgage bubble was inflating?
Now the dollar will continue to decline. BTW it has declined almost 95% since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was created.
Every task has an opportunity cost attached to it, regardless of how big or small. In some cases, your time would be better spent working, especially if the money you earn is significantly higher than the cost of paying someone to do the task in your place. Sometimes, the opportunity cost is not fiscal at all, but rather something like personal relationships. Some people are so adamant about saving money by doing things themselves, that they neglect those around them. In such instances, it is much better to invest your time with the wife and children and pay someone to what you otherwise would have done yourself. I wrote about a similar subject in my business blog back in December, but the theme applies to both business life just as well as it does to one's personal life.
In the zipcode I live the average price per squarefoot is $641 so a 1000 square foot shack costs $641000. So guess what, I'm not buying because I know it's ridiculous. Even with the DPA, the buyer needs to make over $12k a month to support that loan. You can definitely save some money at that income level. I think the problem is that people with much lower incomes got into these mortgages.
Another great group of people that nobody ever listens to are the economists of the Austrian School, who correctly predicted this awful mess years ago. Check out the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Of course, the Federal Reserve's deliberate debasement of the dollar is almost entirely to blame. The business cycle is not an uncontrollable natural phenomenon, but rather the product of central bank interference in our money.
For a great introduction to this topic, check out Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done To Our Money?. No equations and dense mathematics- I promise!
in places like Southern California good luck finding a decent condo for much less than $300k for a family and those are usually fixers. Even now single family homes are still over the half million dollar mark if you want anything that has good schools and is in a decent neighborhood. I would love to see the prices be comparable with most of the rest of the country, but it just isn’t realistic in places like this.
$300,000 is 50% above median in the United States. It's a really cheap house here in the Bay Area, but the mortgage would cost quite a bit. If you get a $300,000 loan at 6.5% fixed for 30 years the mortgage is $1896 a month. Additionally there are taxes,insurance, utilities, and utilities. So if a family has to reasonably afford that home they should be making more than $6000 a month. I don't think it's very hard to save $10,000 if you're making $6000 a month and renting for a couple years. The logical reason why these families absolutely CANNOT save is either 1) they don't have income 2) they don't manage their finances well 3) they have a lot of other debts. All three reasons would be contributing factors to a higher foreclosure rate.
The funny thing is. Nearly everyone I talk to think the bailout is a bad idea no matter if they're liberal or conservative. I live in the Bay Area so it's more liberal. Then when I looked in the news the only people applauding this bill are Realtors and bankers. Every other news report seem to say that it is a pretty bad idea. Even though it is anecdotal I feel like MOST Americans think that this bailout is a bad idea. So how come their representatives don't agree with them? I thought this was a democracy? Oh right, democracy is only accesible to those with lobbyists in Washington.
Tom,
What kind of first time home buyers are purchasing $300,000 homes? That's quite an aggressive step. My first home was $65,000. Not my dream house, but my first house I could comfortably afford.
You are seriously wrong if you are trying to convince people they need to buy "the home of their dreams" as their first home purchase.