Plays Well With Others

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Just when Americans thought they’d cornered the market on being fat, here come the Mexicans all trying to overtake us. I guess if they get too fat, we won’t be needing that wall afterall. 0 #
This lady spent two years in the bathroom and after sitting on the toilet for so long, her skin grafted itself to the crapper. The seat had to be surgically removed at the hospital. Let that visual soak in. Ugh. Her boyfriend claims that he tried to coax her out to no avail. Two years. Like what finally made him dial 9-1-1. Honey, the guests need to use the toilet. 0 #
This guy says that while under his kitchen sink to fix a leak, he ended up traveling forward in time and met himself. I don’t know if he was fixing a pipe or smoking one, but I think he’s full of crap. 0 #
Santa Claus delivered an early Christmas gift to the White House—37,000 copies of the Constitution for Bush to read. If only he knew how to read. 0 #
Guy donates sperm to a coworker “as a friendly gesture” and is ordered to pay child support. Typically I bring baked goods to work as a friendly gesture. 1 #

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The Review…

Monday, March 24, 2008

Just a week or so after writing the “Corned Beef” entry about the differences between the small, statewide company I now work for and the large, global financial organization I used to work for, I’ve found one more difference.

Just days ago, I received a sort of performance review, nine months in. The review was fairly typical—all good nothing bad. Nothing that I should do better at or improve upon. Just “keep doing what you’re doing”.

At the last company, they reviewed a little differently. Basically, it was like being graded on a final exam and then being told that you’ll never be able to get higher than a C. Everyone got C’s. If you got a D or an F, then you should be fired. If you got an A or a B, then you should be promoted. They didn’t like to do either, so no matter how hard you tried, you’d never get more than a C. And then they’d bullshit with you and tell you that a C is great—it means you’re doing your job satisfactorily. Ugh.

Along with my review, I was informed that they’d be adjusting my salary. To give a little background on this, when I interviewed at this smaller company and they asked me what I’d like for my starting salary to be, I told them I’d think about it over the weekend. That weekend, I came up with a number that was much larger than my salary at the global, financial organization and figured that I could rationalize it because I’d be losing some “perks”. Those perks weren’t really that big of a deal, but when you’re negotiating a salary, they become golden nuggets. I let the HR person know what number I’d come up with and she replied that it was in at the top of the range they’d planned on paying, so she’d be fine with it. Whoa.

So last Friday, during this performance review, I’m told that they’d be adjusting my salary. They’d done a review of people that perform the same job that I do and what salaries these people make and determined that I wasn’t making enough. Let me repeat that. I’m not getting paid enough. I’m getting paid too little.

So, they’re going to raise my salary to the level it should be at. Where that is, I don’t know. It could be very little, or it could be a lot more. Something tells me that they wouldn’t go to this much trouble if it’s just a cost of living increase.

Anyhow, did I just fall asleep and wake up in a dream?? Come on now. The last company probably wouldn’t have ever told me.

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Hitting Homes…

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

I was just reading this story on CNNMoney.com about folks having a hard time making ends meet. Their stories tell of financial hardships due to fuel costs, mortgages, etc. As I read through them, I find that in a few cases, maybe they were living a life that they couldn’t afford in the first place. Others seem to be on the right track.

“As for me, I’m moving out of the dorms and into an apartment with some friends to save money, and instead of taking an internship in Washington, D.C. this summer like I had planned, I’m going to have to stay here in Chicago and work full-time to pay rent and save money for next year. “

This girl is a student at the University of Chicago. Her parents are considering selling their home and living in an RV. I actually applaud the fact that, instead of taking an internship, she’s doing the right thing by getting a job to make some money to finance that education of hers. I don’t happen to be one of these people that feel like their parents owe them a college education. Working your way through college won’t hurt you.

“We have two kids we are TRYING to keep in private school. [Like] most working couples, we want the best education for our children, because not just “the rich” deserve private school. … We don’t own a house. We are about to lose our vehicle.”

I have a problem with this. Sure, private school is nice, but if you’re about to lose your car and can’t afford a house, do the kids really need to be in private school? It’s not just for the rich, but it IS for the people that can afford it without living on the street in a cardboard box. Send the kids to public school and spend a little extra time with them outside of school educating them about the real world.

Gas is on average $3.25 a gallon here in North Florida. The prices at the grocery store are getting outrageous. My husband and I have a combined income to only place us in the lower middle class so there is no help in sight for the people in my class. … We have five children between us and it is hard to live paycheck to paycheck.

I’m sure you can figure out where this is going to go. Five children. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck and can barely scrape two dimes together to afford groceries, maybe some family planning should have been put into place. Sorry, but I’d rather have one kid that I can spoil than to have five that get hand-me-down clothes and some ramen for dinner. People get it into their minds that they have to have lots of kids—they want a big family. Yet, they can’t afford it so everyone ends up suffering.

My home went on the market in one of the worst housing markets I’ve seen in my lifetime. The funny thing, though, is it was a good year. I’m extremely grateful that I had the retirement account, the equity in my home, the credit available and the supportive friends to be able to tap into when immersed in a desperate situation.

Even though she had to sell her home in a bad market, she’d obviously done some planning ahead. Having a good retirement account, some equity and some credit available are all things that help ride out a tough economy. Just live within your means and you’ll be alright.

People are still lining up to purchase entry-level properties, and paying absurd amounts, up to $700 per buildable square foot. And this is not an ocean view, just plain Main Street type land. When I ask them why, they still say it’s the Palisades and it can’t go down.

People are stupid. They want to live in a glamorous area and make all of their family and friends think that they have it all going on—that they are yuppies. I don’t understand what people are thinking. What makes that 2-bedroom house worth $700K??

I accepted a job in February 2007 that required relocation so we packed up and moved to Alabama. We had not gone through this before. We purchased another home in Alabama and we were sure that our house in Three Rivers, MI would sell. Not the case. Not only could we not sell our Michigan house but my husband could not find work in Alabama. So we made the decision to have him go back to Michigan to work as a temp in September 2007.

So they bought a new house before they sold their old one. Erm. And why would you do that? Why not rent an apartment until the old house sold? God forbid you live in an apartment. You’re homeowners, not apartment people. Ugh. Now you own nothing. There are so many things wrong here.

With huge energy bills in our house that almost equaled our monthly mortgage payment, my husband and I had to let our house go last year. We’ve lost our house and canceled our vehicle insurance.

I don’t know that background here, but what kind of house has energy bills that are equal to one’s monthly mortgage. We used to wrap ourselves in blankets and burn wood for heat at times growing up. I know that energy bills are going up, but something doesn’t quite seem right here.

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Flipped…

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

As I read the news every day on the economy and the slumping housing prices, I have to say that I’m not all that surprised. How many people were oblivious to the fact that banks can’t continue to give away money for free and that eventually people wouldn’t be able to pay their mortgages and would start walking away from these homes that they never put money down on in the first place.

Everyone got excited about the fact that they could buy a home with no money down and live the life of a homeowner, paying the bare minimum. Some even got excited about buying homes and flipping them before the mortgages reset, allowing them to make a ton of cash off depressed property.

Unfortunately, the saying “what goes up, must come down” is a reality. In California, housing prices have been out of control. When you can’t even buy a 2-bedroom cottage for less than a million dollars, you know that something is wrong. When five couples are having a bidding war over that 2-bedroom cottage, you should really know something is wrong.

We have some friends that recently purchased a house. My advice during their search was to choose a good location because when the inevitable fall happened, they’d be in better shape. They didn’t listen. They didn’t want to “waste their money on a condo” and, instead, bought a house across the Bay. Their home is a 2-bedroom home that is smaller than our townhouse and in an area that could be called “undesirable”. Think about it. Every home in the Bay Area sells for more than $650K and they find one for $500K. Um. Ever think that something may not be quite right.

First, in this area, a 2-bedroom house is undesirable to most couples or families. Families typically look for 3-bedroom homes so that they have room to grow. Second, the only way to actually get to their house is through this kind of seedy, ghetto type of area. They’ve admitted to hearing gunshots and have bars on their front door, which I’m not exactly sure screams “homey”.

Had they taken my advice, with the market the way it is, they’d only be down maybe $30K or so. As of today, they are down about $70K. The hope is that they’ll get back into the black before their interest-only loan resets. My prediction is that they’re in for a tough time.

The real estate market has hundreds of these stories. People wanted to live the high life and compete with the Joneses. They wanted homes they couldn’t afford and are now paying the price. My advice at the time was to just buy what you could comfortably afford and to make sure you had plenty of money left over after paying all of your expenses. If you can get buy with a 2-bedroom condo, why buy a 4-bedroom house with a family room?

As I move forward with the reconstruction efforts with my HOA, I continue to hear people saying that they’re going to have to foreclose… that they’re going to lose their homes. We’re talking about an extra $250 a month. If that’s going to send them into foreclosure, then I can’t help but to think that they’re already headed there. You shouldn’t buy a house if you can’t do it and not have any extra cash in your budget.

I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been warned. The news of a housing and credit bubble has been around for a few years. They’ve warned us that it would burst and that housing prices would reset to where they realistically should be. It’s really no surprise. It is unfortunate. But maybe this is a lesson to everyone that we should all remember to live within our means and not to try and constantly keep up with everyone else. Maybe everyone else is also living outside of their means and when they fall, we’ll all fall.

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Corned Beef…

Monday, March 17, 2008

Working for a large, worldwide corporation, I’m finding, really didn’t mean that much. It’s kind of funny, but when you tell people that you work for a worldwide financial organization, people start listening. They get a little impressed. Like, wow, that’s a great company to work for.

I have to say, they had some benefits that were nice. But honestly, I can buy my own tickets to the amusement parks, or pay the extra couple of bucks to get into the museum. I don’t really go that often anyhow. Other than that though, it’s kind of an isolating, lonely type of experience being a drone in a sea of drones walking the hallways like zombies, rarely receiving a hello or goodbye.

That environment made me extremely unhappy and I’d have left a long time ago had they not been providing me a steady paycheck and medical benefits that we can’t live without these days. Most of my days were spent staring at the walls or ceiling, waiting for work to come my way. And when the work did come, I was typically done with it in less than a few minutes.

When I made the change in mid-2007 to a smaller—much, much smaller—statewide company, I knew things would be different. Way different. It’s strange going from a company where the department you work in has more people than the new company you’re going to work for. The biggest change was actually having a steady stream of work to do. My first couple of months, I was totally under water trying to keep up with the work and learn the process at the same time. Eight months later, I’m falling into the groove. It’s less structured, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

At the old company there were days I didn’t even know if my supervisor was in the office; at the new company the CEO comes by a few times a week to greet us “good morning”. It’s really the small stuff that makes coming to work so much better. Today is St. Patrick’s Day and they served us corned beef and cabbage—all free, just because. They did the same thing for some of the other holidays, along with the week between Christmas and New Year’s off.

I’m guessing that I’m just not a “big company” type of person. I do better in a smaller atmosphere where I can share my opinions and ideas and see them come to life. You can’t get that in a corporate atmosphere. It just won’t happen, unless you’re kissing the right asses.

And I don’t kiss ass. I do, however, like the corned beef.

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