Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn’t have cellphone or internet bills. Financing cars wasn’t really a thing. Trade offs.
Those add up to <$100/mo if you do it right, and you generally shouldn’t finance cars.
Student loans though...
Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
411–420 of 465 posts
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#412Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#413The banks were really eager to repossess houses during the last mortgage crisis (next one coming soon), and they were often quick to do so, but then they discovered - you have to maintain them, pay taxes, pay utilities, keep the grass cut, have people walk them periodically to look for damage, etc. If the market is crashed you had to hold them for long periods until a buyer came along. In the end a lot of banks were wishing they had negotiated instead.
I had a house that I kept vacant for several years thinking I might return and several things I learned is 1) service people don’t like doing business over the phone because they fear not being paid so it’s very difficult to maintain things remotely 2) about half the time people don’t do the work if they think you won’t notice (i.e I paid almost five grand for monthly termite control over three years but when I flew in and inspected the stations it was obvious they had not been maintained for an extended time, the lawn company I hired kept sending me bills long after they stopped coming out) 3) if people think your house is vacant they dump trash there and the city charges you hundreds of dollars each time it happens - plus you then have to pay to dispose it. Having a tons of construction waste someone dumped in your driveway removed is expensive 4) raccoons don’t perceive drywall as a barrier, and if they get in they bring all their friends.
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
Student loans though...
State schools, not living on campus, and community college though. You are going to college to learn, not to party, right?
In state tuition is well into 5 figures in a lot of places. Even Community College is more expensive than it used to be - my local is almost $3k/yr
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#415So what's the least-evil bank that has a network of cash machines everywhere? (Yes, still need cash for certain things) Edit: also with a non-buggy mobile app? My credit union has the worst app. They don't seem capable of improving it... probably outsourced.
Capital One has no-charge partner ATM's everywhere (7/11, CVS, gas stations, there's like 100 in a 10-mile radius of me), some of the best interest rates (currently 3.3%), some of the best credit cards (3% cash back food/entertainment w/ 0$ annual), and best software tech / mobile app (#1 bank app on iOS, 4.9/5 rating). I'm not affiliated in anyway, I just am pleased with all their products for the last 10 years.
Sounds good. I see a location in SF called "Capital One Café", with Peet's coffee. Are there bankers there? Or just baristas?
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You want to fleece your own... but others you let just... walk in ? I don't recall the person you replied to mentioning that. Why is it impossible to levy property taxes on real estate in your own state from people who live somewhere else?
Its not impossible. That's not the point What i mean is real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor to seriously dent foreign or corporate wealth from vacuuming all properties available. 10k year in property tax is a pittance to a Sheik, a shenzen factory owner, an indian tech entrepreneur, your average venezuelan govt bureaucrat, or a REIT. 10k is not peanuts to the average wage earner in the US. The former…
> What i mean is real estate taxes as they are today are not a factor
Right. Which is why the person you replied to specifically mentioned supporting efforts to change those policies.
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is all happening because Obama didn't have the balls to just let the shoddy banks crash and burn, and we continued QE for around a decade to alleviate blowback from 2008. This, combined with other factors (a lax policy w.r.t. foreign investments in real estate), will screw us in the long run. It also happened because most of the FBI agents who worked on white-collar fraud prior to 9/11 were reassigned to count…
This is an interesting take that I’ve never really heard before. It makes intuitive sense, but do you have anything more in depth to read on it? Book or article or longer version of the argument, or a history of some kind? Very curious, thanks.
Check out the Calculated Risk blog, where I learned almost everything I know about the events leading up to the Great Financial Crisis, and the GFC itself.
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
> First, you have a tech industry salary, which is probably at least twice as much as the median wage, if not more. This is exactly his point. If he can't make it with what he has going for him, who can? > You only options are to accept that and adjust your budget/income/location appropriately, or opt to rent forever, which is not at all a bad thing since owning a primary residence is never an investment. (Although t…
> This is exactly his point. If he can't make it with what he has going for him, who can? Presumably they are living in a HCOL area, so definitely not indicative of life in America in general. I know a few folks who live in the mid-west (typically derided as "fly over country") who have blue collar jobs making $70,000 who bought a house in their twenties. You're not going to get too much sympathy from them when you'r…
> You're not going to get too much sympathy from them
Why not? That someone makes much more than someone else and endures a higher cost of living does not establish anything other than that the people who work those kinds of jobs want to live in those kinds of places (or the companies want to be there but it is hard to disentangle the two). Lack of sympathy because someone is in a different situation seems somewhat course considering that there are problems which either party does not experience but are objectively bad and should be remedied. Because they are different does not mean they are less impactful to quality of life.
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it really true that previous generations didn't have to sacrifice to buy homes? That seems patently false to me. Take a look at average home price by year: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-house-price... Now compare that to average wages: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awidevelop.html
Don't forget that until about the mid 90s most people were only buying with one income. And even into the 2000s that second income was often significantly lower. So that graphs never align that well when you look back and try to say 'in the past it was 3x salary for a house, now it is 6x' That is as buyer are now competing for houses with two good salaries to buy with.
To add to this, the low interest rates have added the ability for these joint income purchasers to bid higher to win the property they want.
In the UK at least, the move has broadly been in line with the 3x joint salary with mild adjustment for increased borrowing opportunities, but largely driven by the increase in joint salary.
Re: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B for mistreating customers
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs...if you're wealthy enough, you can afford to distinguish between the two parties; if you're not, the two parties are the exact same.
I sympathize with that view, but nearly every decision you make, every day, at every price level, about everything, is a choice between flawed alternatives.
Sure they're different, my point being people only care about the differences once they've reached a certain comfort level.