HSBC New Account

Okay I gave in and decided to open a new online savings account. I chose HSBC because they have this online bill-pay which can be linked to the savings account. The savings account pays 5%, which is fine.

The bonus I think is they have this online bill-pay which would be great because I hate transferring money between online and my Bank of American Checking Account. I find it takes 2-3 days to transfer the money then I have to mail my payment off asap all the time, so the amount of time my money is lost in cyberspace has not been worth the effort of the interest. I know others may find it worth it, but we do pay a lot monthly to our mortgage and to DH's tuition.

So we need ready cash during the year. I also don't like scrambling looking for money in 5 different places. Though HSBC doesn't have seperate accounts like ING, it does have a lot of ATMs worldwide. So we travel we'll be able to access our cash internationally without fees. Something I thought about doing before we travelled last time, but we were lazy and didn't set it up in time.

We'll see how it goes. Minimally we have to leave it open for 6 months. Then we can close it.

Couples Money Management

In our marriage DH and I are like the CEO and CFO of a company. But I've found that as the CFO, I manage and pay every single bill. Previously my DH attempted to pay one bill a month, but it was perpetually late, irritating me to no end. Hence I took over the bill paying completely.

When I read about couples who segregate their money I wonder how can they do it? How can they manage 3 different checking accounts for mine, yours, and ours? I have enough trouble staying on top of 1 checking account such that I think I would probably lose all three. Plus how would you delegate who pays the bills from "our" checkbook?

We ended up going with a joint everything because we didn't have enough money to keep things seperate. We made so little as graduate students and our mortgage, etc was so high that it took two paychecks to make ends meet. And if we didn't want our checks to bounce then we needed to pool our resources. We were making $42k gross at the time.

So DH ended up being like a CEO, where he helped make major decisions. But I would pay all the bills, make minor decisions, and oversee our general finances as a CFO of our company. This may not work for many couples. It relies on trust especially on the CEO's part that the CFO is paying all bills on time, and not overspending.

I can see how this could strain a marriage because often time the "saver" in the relationship manages the books, but the spender doesn't care. In our relationship I'm the spender so it's probably a bit skewed that I manage the money. But I think because I do, it curbs my spending tendancies because I know exactly how much money we have.

Hence my suggestion to spender/saver couples, make the spender pay all the bills. They'll soon curb their habits when they start to see the big picture. If you want to get out of debt, make the spender see how the debt is affecting your family finances directly and the point will hit home fast.

Guests Costs

I think we'll be having a wild spending month in September. My parents for 2 weeks, my in-laws for 10 days, my BIL for 1 week, and friends for 4 days all staying with us. Between more food, utilities, eating out, and activities, I have a feeling this will be a ridiculously expensive month. Arrgh.

What are the costs really associated with guests? I've found that besides a little increase in hot water, lights, etc, mostly it's eating out because you are too tired to cook. Increased gas usage from driving to see things or going to do activities. And basically paying for entertainment. Even if you pay for just yourselves, it's money you normally would not have spent on fun activities.

I think my budgeted $75/month fun money will be used up completely. Typically we don't spend it and we mostly use it during snowboarding season. But with this month I'll be going above and beyond in spending. Sadly I've already allocated an extra $1k for spending this month.

I guess I should add that for DH and I because our parents live far (over 3k miles one way), our visits are never weekend visits. And we have to do more and see more during that time. But it is nice to see family, I miss mine a lot so I consciously make a choice of spending more money on trying to see them whenever possible. To me it's just another line item.

I wonder if others spend as much when they have guests?

August Net Worth

We increased our net worth by .24%. Mainly we added $1195 of Credit Card debt buying a sofa in August on a 0% CC. However this weekend I sold our old couch for $230, great deal when you consider we paid $350 5 years ago. I'm going to send the $230 + $100 extra planned payment. I also cashed out of a stock so I may pay off the sofa in full next month because I don't like the idea of the debt weighing me down. I have the money in savings but it's a mental thing.

However overall our mortgage decreased another $685 (.15%). We increased our retirement through investments and contributions $3561 (6.32%), our EF increased $810 (5%), and we decreased our cash on hand by $3545 (22.63%).

Unfortunately we carry a lot of cash on hand at any given time because we're cash-flowing a lot DH's tuition approximately $20k/year. So we build it up and pay it out for 2 semester and 2 summer sessions. Each semester has cost $20k, and each summer session $5k. We did take out an $8500 subsidized stafford loan last year and probably this year as well. The tuition last year was paid Augut $2k, December $2k, February $8k, May $5k, June $8k, July $5k. So we keep the cash in our bank savings account and pay it out as required.

Any suggetions for a better method than just keeping the cash on hand would be great. But I'm not sure we should invest it.

Bad haircuts...

Well last week Thurday I got a haircut for $35. Unfortunately it was a terrible haircut. It looks nothing like the picture I took into the salon. I've been going to the salon for 2 years and have been very happy with the person who typically cuts my hair. Unfortunately he left, and so I decided why not try someone else?

Well it was bad. Definitely not worth the $35. But then I come home with my butchered hair and my DH says "Why'd you pay $35 for the cut? Why not pay more to get a better haircut?" He says I've noticed over the years that you spend $25-40/haircut on average. However about 25% of the time the cuts have been bad. Why not pay more at a better salon and get a cut?

My answer? I don't know if this is how other women do it, but honestly I would pay more for a cut if I like the hairstylist, but finding a person you go loyally is tough. For some reason, everytime I find a hairstylist I like they change jobs, move after a 2-3 years and then I'm SOL. So I have to investigate and find a stylist other people reccomend, which is how I originally found this guy.

In CA it was the same thing I only found someone by referral. When you test out different places, I've found it's more often a waste. Although I'm typically driven my desperation. I like to wear my hair pretty short, so used to go every 2-3 months.

But now I'm stuck without my regular guy and I am unsure what to do. I don't think the more expensive salons are necessarily better. But I do need to find a stylist who is familiar with Asian hair. Or else. I've found my hair doesn't exactly look right when it's cut by a non-asian because of the texture, density, people are not usually experienced with cutting Asian hair.

But it will grow. However it pains me and my DH to have paid $35 for a bad haircut. sigh. Please don't tell me to cut it myself, because it doesn't work. I have hair that is more than an inch in diameter when in a ponytail. Also it's very fine and oily. It's not easily cut to look nice, although it is cheap to grow long and whack it off ear length. But even then it's too hot to wear with layers and thinning.

Mortgage Mess?

The mortgage industry is in shambles. In a story they feature 4 families in mortgage trouble. Are they really victims? Or do they have a case of wantitis? Where they want the better things in life NOW!

Are the lender predatory? Yes. But is it entirely their faults? No way. These people probably need to take a look in the mirror and acknowledge their desire for new cars, larger homes, etc. The first family refi their home to pay off two new SUVs. The second family wanted a home but didn't care to sell their trailer first. The third family were renting but the landlord selling the home caused them to rush to buy anything. Thus all three families knew they were getting Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM) but none cared. They only cared about getting into the house, then once they were in, suddenly the payments were unaffordable. The fourth family was the only one which claimed they thought they were getting a fixed rate mortgage but it was switched on them at the close.

Um, hello? If you know you are getting an ARM, how can you be a victim? If you know what your payment is and you accept it, and are told it will change why do these people move forward with buying the home anyway? Is it because they just have to have a house now???

I have to admit the first time we bought a house in 2002, we were wet behind the ears. We did it behind our parents back and without telling anyone so we had no advice, no experience, no wisdom given to us. We were fortunate to have a wonderful RE agent who guided us to buying a house within our means. She agreed with our "parameters" for purchasing. She even guided us to a 30 year fixed loan, discussed with us about putting a 10% down payment, and closing costs. I realize looking back we didn't get the best rate or best closing costs because we used a mortgage broker she reccomended instead of a bank, but he was honest.

I wasn't happy with the mortgage we ended up with I think it was 6.25%, 30 year fixed, with no points but it was decent. After that I learned how much cheaper banks/credit unions are. And with our credit scores we could have used either. However we did have a problem with DH's visa status, hence a mortgage broker was willing to put us with a subprimer lender get circumvent the J-1 Status. We weren't married (yes another stupid mistake) so our loan was difficult to push through. When we refinanced with Washington Mutual we took DH's name off the loan.

Anyway we knew what rate we were getting and though it wasn't perfect we ended up better than expected. Thus I feel these people are unfairly crying "victim". How can they really claim to be victims when they chose to purchase homes they knew were expensive? Or were refinancing a house they could afford into something unaffordable?

We've become a nation of wantitis. We want to constantly keep up with the Jonese, without ever considering we don't have the means to.

Paying for College Poll Results

The results from the poll are in.

11% (3 people) said No way to paying for college
23% (6 people) said Yes, Unconditionally paying for college
30% (8 people) said Yes, but with grade conditions
34% (9 people) said Maybe, depends on finances

Very neat and interesting. I am pretty sure we're going to pay for college for our kids 100%. But it will require certain grade conditions be meet. DH is firmly that college is their job, like it was for him. Mine were conditioned on grades but my parents paid and I had a job to pay for my own expenses.

If I had to answer the poll though, I'd say maybe depending on finances. I think right now we'll be able to afford it, but who knows what the future holds. We could die, become disabled, or ill. So I would really like to help my children and I've already started saving a small amount for them, but I do realize that you can't plan out your life so thoroughly.

A disturbing trend...

Twice in one week very strange experiences happened. Something that makes me wonder about the trends of debt in the US. I once wrote that it my CC would have to be pried out from my cold dead hands. I still think that, but I'm wondering if Americans aren't getting worse about CC debt and we shouldn't be forced to take basic money management classes in high school and college?

First we went out to dinner on Friday at a Chinese Restaurant. It was a nice place, pretty reasonable $30 for the two of us. Anyway we were sitting next to this family of 4, who I think were travelling. Anyway they were out of money and had trouble paying for the bill. They began to ask the waiter (who didn't speak english well so we helped to translate), to split the bill on to 3 CC and put down some cash. The cash from was from their two children. The conversation was rather startling, that they could only charge $10 on this card, then $10 on another card, and $10 on another card and $20 in cash. It was very confusing. I thought well maybe they overspent on vacation, but still it was bit surprising.

Then last night I was waiting to pay for my groceries in the express line. It was surprisingly busy, but the woman in front of me couldn't pay for her groceries. She also split a $14.07 bill on to $5 one CC, $5 next CC, and $5 cash. It took forever and the cashier was grumbling a bit because she swiped more than just 2 cards which did not go through before finding cards that worked.

These two experiences were eye-opening. What is going on? I don't recall the last time I saw someone splitting the cost of something on different CC. Or even trying to put things on a CC which was rejected. Personally I rarely notice so I wouldn't know if it were a debit card versus a CC (who can really tell because debit cards are used as CC a lot when you are given a choice). But is abuse of CC getting worse? Are people spending more than they have?

Betting on the Market

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR/INVESTOR NOR AM I RECCOMENDING BUYING ANY OF THESE STOCKS....



I decided to jump into the market right now. I put a bit of money into starting a new portfolio for fun. This is to see if DH is right that stocks pay more than mutual funds or try to prove him wrong that mutual funds do better in general than the average investor. I've mentioned this before that DH is dead set that investing in stocks pays bigger dividends than picking mutual funds. I think index mutual funds are the way to go and I prefer mutual funds in general over individual stocks.

DH's current fun money portfolio isn't doing so well right now around 5% but his 401k and our Roth IRAs which are in mutual funds are doing about as well. Last year our mutual funds for the 401k and Roths crushed his stock portfolio which had a terrible year considering the great market.

So my goal now is to see how the last 4 months of the year goes and revamp our entire portfolio at the end of the year. I don't know if we'll position ourselves more into individual stocks or into mutual funds but we'll see. After all being married is compromising and sometimes people just have to learn the hard way about investing. FWIW, DH is getting more into index mutual funds after being burned last year with his stock picks.

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR/INVESTOR NOR AM I RECCOMENDING BUYING ANY OF THESE STOCKS....

What I decided to do was buy these 10 stocks SBUX, TNH, BQI, ELON, POT, PKX, ZOLT, BBY, PNRA, and RL. I'll update the blog periodically on how I'm doing.

Dental Update

Ugh...Followup after my letter to them the dental office responded. The dental office said they had no documentation about my change in insurance providers. Obviously my word is not good enough so I am having a letter from BCBS and Delta stating the date of coverage termination and initiation. It will be pretty obvious that we changed 6/30/07 coverage as I told them over the phone.

Second they said that they DO NOT get preapproval of work done from the insurnae provider. They said I was misinformed by the DD representative (word for word from the letter). DD representative said that a pretreatment form should have been submitted and both the dental office and myself would receive copies of the coverage. Thus I would be aware of the charges and it would be approved. However this is for Delta in-network providers only. Thus the dental office was correct in stating they didn't need to because they were not in-network providers. However they should have informed me they were not an in-network provider.

Thus I had a broken an appointment and they were charging us for broken appointment $350. And the carryover fee was to be applied to future visits so they did not have to return the money to me from 2 years ago.

In the letter the office did not state that I had to pay the $350, though they did state they had a right to charge for a failed appointment. Thus they charged for 2 hours of time at $175. Does this mean I owe them the $350? I plan on determining exactly what I should pay for the cancelled appointment. I wonder if I keep arguing with them they'll just let it go? Or if it's already been let go?

Comparing Housing Costs

I'm going to check out my sibling's homes these next few weekends. One lives in OH, the other in VA, and the last one lives in HI. So our lives vary and our homes vary as well.

I decided for fun to put our homes into Zillow to get an estimated price and find some details about the homes. I think it's neat to see what you get depending on where you live. So 2 of us live in townhouses, and the other two have single family homes. Of course the younger two are the ones in townhouses. Also my older two siblings have 3 kids each and live in the single family homes, while I have none and my brother only has one child. So it appears lifestyle plays a role in housing choice.

Starting out west in Hawaii, my sibling has a 5 bd/3 ba, 2801 sq ft house with a 7637 sq ft lot (.18 acre). It is estimated to be valued at $968,976. It is worth $346/sq ft. Pretty good deal when you consider that it's a single family home. By the way my sibling got it for substantially less because he worked for the builder.

The second sib's home in OH has a huge single family home with 4 bd/2.5 ba. It is 4514 sq ft with a 49057 sq ft lot (1.1 acres). The house is estimated to be worth $447,373, making it worth $99/sq ft. Of course having seen the location and the neighborhood, I'd have to say it's a much more beautiful home than the HI home.

My other sibling's townhouse in VA is 3bd/2.5ba and 1400 sq ft. There is no yard and it is estimated to be worth $399,642. This works out to $286/sq ft. The house is cute, but not well laid out it's a split-level townhouse with psuedo three stories. However this particular sibling bought 10 years ago for less than 1/3 the price and almost a paid for home. Unfortunately they've been trying to sell it for 2 years now and no bites. The market is terrible unfortunately, but they haven't leap into a single family and tried to sell while already buying another place is a smart move.

This is a pretty nice comparison of the different places to live in the US. Would I live in OH? No but I'd considered in VA. Definitely HI. I wonder what would happen if I picked more places to examine. Of course there are many other factors such as school district, lot size, etc that should be built into a regression model to determine price of the houses, but that would take more time and analysis. So if you are thinking of moving there are many variables which cannot be measured like proximity to family, lifestyle, jobs, etc.

Where would you live?

Vacation Time

I read that the US has the lowest amount of time off in the westernized countries. The average time off is 13 days/year. However most people start out with an average of 8.9 days/year. This is about half what most European countries allow their workers.

I get an uncounted number of days off a year being a student. I make my own schedule, as long as my work gets done and I'm not abusing the system. However DH gets I think a pretty generous amount of time off.

In his last company he got 4 weeks or 20 days/year. Currently however he gets 15 days or 3 weeks/year with an opportunity to take 5 days or 1 week unpaid. The 1 week is deducted off his salary with every paycheck and if he doesn't use the 5 extra days it's paid out at the end of the year. I think he's super fortunate to be able to even take 20 days/year. However he is only allowed to rollover 5 days/year or else he loses the vacation days.

Also DH gets a very generous 4 personal days a year as well. These are use it or lose it type of days. He also gets I believe 12 days of holiday as well. So basically he gets 15+4+12 = 31 days year. Plus unlimited sick days, with anything longer than 3 days with a doctor's note.

Also he gets 2 weeks of paternity leave. I thought this rather amusing. But very generous. So in all I think DH gets a very generous amount of time off considering the typical corporate vacation policies.

What do most people get?

Guest Bloggers

I'll probably be on 2 weekend trips with family in September. Hence I'm looking for some guest blogger to write a post. Anything financial would be great. I'll happily link back to your site and add you to my blogroll. Email me at livingalmost@gmail.com

Thanks...

Priceline

I wonder if I'm one of the few people who enjoys using priceline for hotels and car rentals? Most people I've talked to won't use priceline because they hate not knowing which hotel they will get. But I've found it makes it a bit more interesting not knowing what you'll get.

Last night I booked a hotel for the weekend in Washington DC. It was $60/night for a 3 star hotel which turned out to be a Hilton. The place looks nice, is 5 miles from my brother's house and seems convient. When I had checked out hotels in the area using orbitz, hotels.com, expedia, etc most were running $100/night. I'm not hotel loyal and we don't travel enough to make it worth being brand loyal to earn points.

I also used priceline to get a rental car for the weekend. We got a full-size car for $15/day which turned into $25/day including taxes. That's not bad considering taxes are 10% for rental cars and 15% for hotel rooms.

All in all my experiences with priceline have been excellent. I'll report back on the hotel, but in June when we went to Toronto and Niagara Falls we used priceline and got great hotels for the price. The locations were fantastic and the quality of the hotels were superior to what we would have booked based on price.

Online Bill Pay

Why does online bill pay take so long? I'm frustrated because banks say to have a date to deliver by but it never happens. For every single bill I pay using Bank of America I have to make sure it occurs immediately because there is always problems.

Apparently they still mail actual checks to companies. What sort of companies? Like CC, utilities, cell phones, anything. I can't believe they mail out an physical check 5-6 days before the delivery date.

This really confuses me as to why this happens? Why isn't everything electronic? Why aren't the banks just zapping the money over immediately and it appears that day? A money transfer between two banks (ING and BofA) takes 2-3 days? Do you ever wonder how and why? Or when you roll money from one investment account to another? It takes 10 business days to allow things to happen.

Do you use online banking? Do you find it is convient or inconvient? I find it convient in that I don't have to write checks, but that waiting for the company to actually cut a check is sometimes more frustrating. It feels like for all progress we have made in technology we still haven't done anything in the banking industry.

Calculating my Retirement Number?

I've thought a lot about this, the problem is I'm not sure what we really need because I'm not working and earning an income so our living is based mostly on one income. Will we scale up our lifestyle later? Will we have more income use to save? Or will our needs change with kids? This is too difficult to predict. So I just picked a number and decided to use the 4% rule.

What's the 4% rule? It's where you withdraw 4% a year from your portfolio and you approximate how much you need. So for example I decided $100k/year in todays dollars would be adequate. I then though why not 30 years until retirement at 58 and 60. So using a 3.5% inflation rate, I calculated that I will need $280680/year in order to match $100k in today's dollars.

This number multiplied by 25 gave me the amount I would need at retirement to live off of 4%. I will need 7.0 million dollars in 30 years in order to maintain a lifestyle of $100k. That is a lot of money.

According to my current savings rate for retirement of $23k/year @ 8% rate of return I will only have $3.3M. This is a bit worrisome. So what do I need to be saving? I should be saving $54k/year. That's probably a bit much right now and possibly even later.

So what should I do? Well I guess it might be easier later to save more as our income increases. I don't know what else to do. Well I guess I'm better off shooting for the moon and hoping to land on a star than not trying at all. After all if a ton of people are saving nothing for retirement then why am I worried? Something is better than nothing.

Depreciation of Cars?

I was wondering what is the depreciation costs of cars really? Is it worth to buy used? I think it is, but how used? Is it worth it to buy a 1, 2, or 3 year old car or more? What depreciation hit has our two cars taken?

First I bought a 1999 Toyota Corolla VE brand new. It was $11k when purchased, and current resale according to KBB private party sale good condition $4895. Hence the depreciation was 55.5% over 8 years equalling 6.94%/year. That's not terrible, but most of the depreciation was probably done in the first 1-3 years rather than a set rate each year.

Our second car is a 2000 Ford Focus which was purchased for $14k and is now worth $4775. It took a 65.9% depreciation hit over 7 years. That equals 9.4%/year. Which shows a difference between american and japanese cars.

I was told we don't drive very fancy cars, but the truth is that I can't seem to justify even buying a used car because it'll cost too much. For instance a used Toyota Highlander is probably what we would get. But don't worry this is probably 2-3 years out if not longer.

Right now according to KBB if we bought a new 2007 Highlander it would cost $23.5k, but a 1 year old used 2007 would cost about the same. Ridiculous. Why would anyone buy a 2007 model when the 2008s are coming out and the new 2007 costs the same? I did the exact same models and trim of SUV.

So I thought maybe the older models. A 2006 Highlander according to KBB should be $19805 or a 15.7% hit for one year. A 2005 Highlander would be $16675 or 28.6% less, while a 2004 Highlander would be $14510 or 38.2% less. And so forth until 2001 when the Highlander was first introduced.

I plotted this on a graph and determined the slope of the trendline was -8.76%, so the car depreciated on average about 9% a year. But the biggest slopes were in the first 2 years, after that it appeared to depreciate at the same rate.

So I guess if I were to buy a car I'd buy a used car of at least 2 years. Although you never know, so I'll address it when we have to buy a car.

Subprime Mortgage Fallout

Last week Federal Bank President William Poole commented on the state of the subprime economy. He stated that the subprime mess had not yet necessitated an interest rate cut nor was it harming the US economy. He was of the opinion that unless the economy took a major dive a rate cut was unnecessary. He also stated people needed to realize the fallout of the subprime mess was bound to happen.

I wonder whose to blame in all this mess? Is it the borrowers? The lenders? Should the Federal Government step in? And if so will it really work or will it be a band-aid solution?

I am going to comment on my mini-poll. There were 49 voters, and it appears that 62% of borrowers spend less than 20% of gross income on housing. Another 20% spend between 20-30%, 8% between 30-40% and 10% between 40-50%. So if this were representative sample of the population, one could say that the people who fall in the 30-50% range are probably subprime or risky loans.

But that represents ~20% of the population. So out of that 20% the question would be why do they have such loans? Are they able to easily manage it? What made them choose such a large mortgage?

I think that a lot of responsibility for these subprime mortgages needs to fall on the borrowers. Much like credit cards people need to realize that buying a home is the single biggest purchase you'll ever make. How can you spend less time choosing a house/mortgage than buying a couch? Or TV? Or anything? Buying a house without being educated is crazy.

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe people shouldn't bother to even read information before buying a house. Maybe it completely is the lenders fault. However I wonder if you see the mortgage number on the line, how can you believe you can afford it? If it's already 50%+ and an ARM how do people justify it?

Financial Update

Hmm.....I guess I should a few things. One I don't like spending money more than the another person. So I like to complain about it here on the blog because I wouldn't do it in real life. Money talk is weird in real life.

Two, couple of misconceptions also need to be cleared up. I did not finance furniture because I couldn't afford it. I can but I wanted to use a coupon and I had to use the store CC to do it. They gave me 0% financing for 1 year so I decided to use it. I haven't made my first payment yet so maybe I'll pay it off since I have so many people online whining about it.

Second, my DH goes to a private MBA because where we live there are mostly private universities. This costs part-time $30k/year, which is what we spent for 2 semesters and 2 summer sessions. Yes we borrowed $8500 but we paid the rest cash out of pocket. And yes we're borrowing another $8500. So maybe I should be exceptionally frugally and not eat out again until the day he graduates and stretch our food budget thinner. But to be honest I don't want to.

What is the financial plan? Well miraculously I've been thinking about that, if we paid the school loans at the same rate we're paying for his tuition now we can pay off his school loans in less than 1 year. Chances are we might be in the position to pay them off within 6 months.

I'll know more as we both get closer to graduating and our real income is known. What I do know? We max out retirement savings, we eat out, we try to carefully buy furniture and big ticket items, and we try to care for our condo so it doesn't fall into shambles. We make a nice income but we also live in a very expensive area.

We're trying our best together to move forward and get ahead. I have no idea if we'll make it and I don't think it will be easy certainly. But at least we're trying. Maybe debt free lifestyle would be best, but I think that we're setting ourselves up to get jobs that make us happy and fufilled and will provide a stable financial basis.

Parental Condo Update...

I'm a little nervous because my parents are buying another condo. Yes this is without selling either of their other homes. It makes me nervous because they are taking out a mortgage at their age. I'm really frustrated and banging my head on the table.

I just don't get it, they don't like the house I grew up in because they let it rot. So it needs a lot of work and my parents hate doing home maintanence. So they just would prefer to sort of leave it behind and move into something new and worry about it later.

It's just financial decisions like this that worry me. Poor financial planning. One example the condo they almost purchased in Februaryof this year was $377k for a 1 bedroom on the 30th floor. Now they are purchasing a 31st floor 1 bd for $349k. I was constantly yelled at over the phone by my mom (she's going through late menopause), about how much they wanted to buy that condo.

Now when I bring up they almost paid $30k more for a condo 1 floor below she says "Oh the market's coming down." And yet they still are interested in buying. She says things with a serious disconnect that if they had to flip it they could sell it breaking even. Also that she had to rent for 8 months at $1500/month so she lost money renting. Nevermind that the condo lost almost that much in value.

I haven't quite figured my parents out yet but one day...by the way after talking with my mom I nearly reached through the phone because she said "well the housing market can't go down, all the realtors say it's an island. When does RE go down?" Well I hope things work out.