[Chris Vais]

Upon returning from Oregon, my wife and I found a delightful retirement home in Santa Rosa for a bit over $1 million. Sonoma Co. is indeed a delightful area to retire to. The weather here is great, why else would Luther Burbank have chosen Santa Rosa to do his horticultural research. 

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[Rap]

Supply, demand, location and if you have children schools are the determining factors for home purchases. Nothing new here. I live in a great rural area not far from a small city and within 1.5 hours to NY or Phila. Our winters  can be long. While we didn’t get the 12” snow forecast the ground is covered. It’s April. As I age the cold appeals less but not enough to consider moving. Yet. Ds you’re spot on. I can’t figure out where all the wealth comes from although I acknowledge it’s existence. I wonder if these people overspend and exceed the normally accepted housing percentages. I don’t understand how youth go out or order out many nights  a week. Is it all overspending on credit cards with little to no saving? Or is it I want to live and experience now and damn the future? A home one owns has always been the primary financial building block. Sky high prices and mortgages make me wonder if that is still true.

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[ds968]

Bob,  this  “ I don’t understand how youth go out or order out many nights  a week “ is something I have also wondered for many years ;  having been a guest of the insurance industry, which prefers to conduct business with their customers in  “entertainment” settings ( wining & dining ), and as often as possible, at some of the most expensive venues, I have watched in amazement not just a couple of young people here and there, but multitudes of them ( in fact they were the majority ) downing $ 15 to $ 25 cocktails, drink after drink, for hours ..and packing restaurants where you can hardly escape for under $ 100 per person..( and that’s without wine ) .. I can understand Los Angeles / Hollywood / Beverly Hills where I witnessed a lot of this , “ kids “ likely spending their very tolerant and wealthy parents’s money,  but my business associates tell me they see this scene just about everywhere else in the country’s major cities.   Maybe you’re right, it could be “ damn the torpedoes and live for the day “ philosophy , and “ savings be dammed “ , but then somebody has to come up with those massive amounts for the down payments on those million dollar homes so there must be plenty of cash to go around .  I’m well within the “5%” as they call it , and for the first five of the last 10 years even in the 1% class ( but probably not even anyway near the 26% here in Silicon Valley , big to mention Beverly Hills  ) and yet while I feel fairly secure financially, I don’t feel anyway near what one would call wealthy to the point where I could spend a lot of money on going out every other night,  and constant vacations, spending with abandon, and carefree…and I absolutely shudder at the thought of buying a $ 2 million house ..even though if we sell ours, ( which we bought in 1997 ) after all the federal capital gains taxes and state taxes, we might just break even to buy one.   But in this area, now,  I’d have to downsize to nearly half , buy a much older house , and if I’m lucky with 1/4 of the property ( backyard land ) .   

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[Cloud9...68]

Chris,

 

Congrats on finding a great house in Santa Rosa for a fairly "reasonable" price.  I grew up in Marin, and would love to end up in Sonoma, especially with it being the home of Sonoma International Raceway.  The way our house here in Austin has gone bonkers (worth close to 6X what we paid for it in 1995), anything in the $1.0 - 1.5 million range would be highly attainable.

 

I have never understood the "live for the day, and savings be damned" philosophy.  The chances of being healthy and active well into ones 70s, 80s, and beyond improve with each passing year - I'm 62, and am literally in the best shape of my life.  And because I've always saved a large percentage of my paycheck, I can now pursue my life's dream, which is driving race cars (in an arrive-and-driver series at Atlanta Motorsports Park - I will never, ever, ever to the 100th power, own, store, maintain, and haul my own race car).  I could never have done this if I had blown my money on $25 cocktails when I was younger.  There's this absurd prevailing idea that the world is going to end at any moment, so there's no need to plan for the future.  People have been saying this for millennia.  I prefer to enjoy the fruits of what this great life have given us, thanks to the amazing progress made by generations of brilliant people.   

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[ds968]

Amen to that, spending enough to enjoy life is perfectly fine , but doing so recklessly at the expense of your future is foolish , IMO.   By the same token if you sacrifice everything to pack away every dollar for the future is also foolish…you may get hit by a bus tomorrow.    So balance between spending and saving is always advisable.   I know one thing for sure ; I’m not going to buy a house beyond my means to show off   ( I personally know several people who do that, so there may be countless ones out there  ) and become “ house poor “ , not able to enjoy all the other fun stuff in life.  


 

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[Cloud9...68]

Amen to that, spending enough to enjoy life is perfectly fine , but doing so recklessly at the expense of your future is foolish , IMO.   By the same token if you sacrifice everything to pack away every dollar for the future is also foolish…you may get hit by a bus tomorrow.    So balance between spending and saving is always advisable.   I know one thing for sure ; I’m not going to buy a house beyond my means to show off   ( I personally know several people who do that, so there may be countless ones out there  ) and become “ house poor “ , not able to enjoy all the other fun stuff in life.  

 

Agree 100% - it's possible to go too far to either extreme, neither of which is good.  But I see too many people using the ridiculous "the world is ending soon anyway" argument to justify a lifestyle that's way beyond their means, only to be shocked to discover that Armageddon didn't actually come. 

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[Rap]

Cloud what a dream world . Arrive and drive. I wish I could do that. It’s becoming onerous loading and hauling. 

unfortunately those of us who have saved and managed our lives will end up paying for those that haven’t. This is a train screaming down the tracks with no ability to stop before it plunges off the broken bridge. Just like the probabilities of uprisings in food insecure countries this year someone has to pay the piper. All the usual arguments and name calling will be used to justify it.

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[Cloud9...68]

I finished my first season last summer doing this:

 

https://primalracing.com/learn-to-race/p...ng-series/

 

Shockingly affordable, actually (for racing, anyway).  It was definitely a rude awakening, though, as I discovered there is a vast chasm in terms of driving talent between the DE world, and the wheel-to-wheel racing world.  I was pretty fast by local DE standards in my 968, but was consistently bringing up the rear in the series.  I've been spending the off season teaching myself how to actually drive a race car, and I have a private lesson at AMP the day before the first race of the new season on April 30, so I hope to suck a little less this coming season.  I can't imagine trailering my own race car.  All the respect in the world for those who do it, but I would vote for a Putin/Trump ticket before putting myself through that agony.

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[ds968]

That looks awesome !! 

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[Cloud9...68]

Yeah, it's definitely exhilarating.  The best description I can come up with of driving the Radical SR1's we rent is looking up at a live electrical wire that's detached itself from a utility pole, climbing up said pole, jumping off and grabbing the wire, and hanging on for dear life.  They make my 968, which is quite nicely race prepped, feel like a Buick Roadmaster.

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[ds968]

Haha, that’s funny but yes, I can certainly understand the comparison / analogy . 

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[Rap]

That price looks very affordable compared to what I am now paying. Does that include traveling to Atlanta?

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[Cloud9...68]

Sadly, I wasn't able to convince Primal Racing to cover my airfare (or my hotel or rental car)  :glare: .  Delta has direct flights from Austin to Atlanta, which were dirt cheap in 2021 (typically right around $200 roundtrip), including a free checked bag when purchased with my Delta AMEX card, but airfare has roughly doubled in 2022, which can't be explained by just the price of fuel, so that's been a hard pill to swallow.  I always use Turo for my rental car, and stay in an inexpensive hotel.  I bit the bullet and paid for the entire 8-race series for 2022 up front, which gives a 10% discount.  It's still probably slightly more than driving your own race car, but I'm convinced that owning, maintaining, storing, and hauling your own race car is something the CIA has come up with to use against enemies of the state, now that waterboarding is frowned upon...

 

This one also looks very cool:

 

https://racenow.com/about-the-series/

 

It's a little more expensive than Primal Racing's series, but it's run on more tracks, and the cars look really cool, although they're probably actually a little slower than the Radicals.  I may start doing this one as well, if I make enough improvement in my driving from last year.  I know what I need to do, and have made significant strides in my lap times in my 968, but it remains to be seem if this will translate to the actual race cars.

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[Rap]

Well paying for the entire series certainly commits you. I do like to pick and choose events. This year I’m going to focus on WGI. It’s a relatively easy drive, if hauling a race car is ever easy, and it’s my fav track. The new truck takes away some concerns including getting 9mpg on trips. As anyone who has hauled knows not every station is user friendly. The costs have increased dramatically over the last couple of years to where one could purchase a beach front home for similar outlays. But you can’t beat it once you’re on the track.

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[ds968]

 The costs have increased dramatically over the last couple of years to where one could purchase a beach front home for similar outlays. But you can’t beat it once you’re on the track.

Ah, back on the thread topic ..   .     Which beach would that be ?   Somewhere in Haiti ?    

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[Rap]

Beaches for me on at the outer range, if that, of an ev range. Jersey.

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