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Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

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Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#41

Post by chris_mahan »

a3n wrote: post #19
Asparagirl wrote: post #18

Only 15 emergency shelter beds in all of Palo Alto?! And an estimated 150 men, women, and children competing for those spots every night? That's disgusting. Companies who have HQ's in Palo Alto: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Companies_based_in_P... Not one of those companies, some of which are valued in the billions, could pick up the cost of sponsoring another ten emergency beds? Another five, even?

Possibly, but they'd have to bring in their profits from offshore, and that would be taxed.

Ahhh, but you see, if they were taxed, then Palo Alto would have the money to build more shelters.

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#42

Post by clarky07 »

GuiA wrote: post #38
clarky07 wrote: post #10

I hate to be that guy, and I'm going to sound like an ass, but this is 100% his doing. Software worker in Palo Alto for 30 years making as much as 150k has no excuse. Save some money stupid. Also, when you get fired and can't find another job, perhaps you should move out of your $2150 a month rental. That's enough for 4-5 months or more in other places. $1700 a month SS isn't much, but it's enough to not be homeless…

> It's not enough to live in Palo Alto. MOVE. "He was laid off [...] The next year, his wife died at age 55. [...] He turned down an offer from his brother to move to Illinois. He wants to stay in Palo Alto, he says, because it has been his home for so long and because he feels safe here. [...] He said he stayed in Palo Alto in large part because of the memories of his late wife." I agree with you. But... humans don'…

I can understand the sentiment, but I think it would be more heartbreaking to be homeless...

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#43

Post by Natsu »

fvrghl wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Well if Palo Alto is willing to spend $250,000 they could pave a bit of parking lot and put in a bathroom/shower unit like exists in campgrounds. But that seems a bit extreme. The guy profiled was tech worker for 30 years, but allegedly "not good with money." If you're in your 20's don't be that guy. Live within your means, save for those future days.

As a 20-something, does anyone have any advice me for or know of resources where I can learn about financial management?

I don't know about links, but the basics are simple enough: track what you spend and save some % of what you make. Avoid debt for things that lose value (e.g. cars). Debt for things like houses that retain value can make sense, though. Always keep money in reserve. Pay off the high-interest debt (e.g. 30% APR credit cards) first. If you do buy any complex investments, keep in mind what conditions cause gain or loss. For example, I recently saw an annuity/ETF product where they let you invest in indexes and cover the first 10% of any losses, but you gain at most 10% annually (they get the rest). It took me a while to realize that this means you get a 10% upside and 90% downside.

I'm sure others can give you more common sense advice.

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#44

Post by malanj »

jdmichal wrote: post #23
malanj wrote: post #13

Officials say these bans aim to prevent nuisances that can be created by those living in cars, and most are enforced only on a complaint basis. Nothing scares me more than comments like that from government officials. A law that is selectively enforced is effectively an invitation for police harrasment. Either the law makes sense, or it doesn't. If individual civil servants get to decide when to apply a law, you've g…

It's only an invitation for police harassment if you're breaking the law. And in your version, you would instead have been arrested / fined immediately regardless of anyone reporting you. The bottom line for selective enforcement is that the police recognize that there is a priority structure in laws. They have limited resources and cannot enforce every law, everywhere, every time. While I would rather see this law u…

I see this a closer to something like prostitution laws that are selectively enforced in many countries and lead to large scale police corruption/harassment.

Random rant: my limited experience of police treatment of homeless people in San Francisco leaves quite a lot to be desired. I've spent about one month in total there and I saw police hassling homeless people quite frequently. Anything that makes that easier is bad in my mind. Sure - poor people are an "irritation" by some definitions but they remain people even if their existence is inconvenient to some.

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#45

Post by ChuckMcM »

fvrghl wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Well if Palo Alto is willing to spend $250,000 they could pave a bit of parking lot and put in a bathroom/shower unit like exists in campgrounds. But that seems a bit extreme. The guy profiled was tech worker for 30 years, but allegedly "not good with money." If you're in your 20's don't be that guy. Live within your means, save for those future days.

As a 20-something, does anyone have any advice me for or know of resources where I can learn about financial management?

All good advice in the peer comments, when I was in my 20's I was putting the maximum I could in a 401k (pre-tax), and putting 10% of my salary into the employee stock purchase program. Before we had kids my wife was putting most of her salary into savings for a down payment on a house. Unlike many of my peers I was bringing my sandwich in for lunch (still do that). I tend to own cars for 5+ years, I don't take annual vacations to places I have to fly to (hiking and camping is pretty inexpensive and easy to do in California) and generally I always try to keep my monthlies (phone, power, tv, internet) under control. Every month payed off the credit card (used for book keeping more than credit) and cook food rather than buy pre-prepared food.

All designed to keep my 'burn rate' low.

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#46

Post by ghaff »

fvrghl wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Well if Palo Alto is willing to spend $250,000 they could pave a bit of parking lot and put in a bathroom/shower unit like exists in campgrounds. But that seems a bit extreme. The guy profiled was tech worker for 30 years, but allegedly "not good with money." If you're in your 20's don't be that guy. Live within your means, save for those future days.

As a 20-something, does anyone have any advice me for or know of resources where I can learn about financial management?

As someone else pointed out, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ is popular although arguably extreme.

This is also a good general post by someone who now writes about business for Bloomberg http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/10-quick...

At the big picture level though, it's mostly about living within your income and putting some money away on a regular basis. (Someone else mentioned at least 10%.) At some level, everything else is keyhole optimization assuming some sane diversification of savings--don't put it in Bitcoin or all in your company's stock. It's useful to get other things right but they're much less important in the big picture than outflow < ~.9 * inflow (after tax).

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#47

Post by overgryphon »

clarky07 wrote: post #10

I hate to be that guy, and I'm going to sound like an ass, but this is 100% his doing. Software worker in Palo Alto for 30 years making as much as 150k has no excuse. Save some money stupid. Also, when you get fired and can't find another job, perhaps you should move out of your $2150 a month rental. That's enough for 4-5 months or more in other places. $1700 a month SS isn't much, but it's enough to not be homeless…

The article specifically picked someone whose problems were clearly his own making and avoidable. I'm going to guess that the majority of people that will be affected by this new law didn't have successful careers in software development.

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#49

Post by jamesaguilar »

fvrghl wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Well if Palo Alto is willing to spend $250,000 they could pave a bit of parking lot and put in a bathroom/shower unit like exists in campgrounds. But that seems a bit extreme. The guy profiled was tech worker for 30 years, but allegedly "not good with money." If you're in your 20's don't be that guy. Live within your means, save for those future days.

As a 20-something, does anyone have any advice me for or know of resources where I can learn about financial management?

This seems somewhat helpful:

esplanner.com

It's, among other things, a consumption smoothing modeler (i.e. make sure that you don't oversave or overspend). It will tell you about how much you need to be saving each year, given a bunch of variables like how much you make, how much you plan to make, etc.

Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car

#50

Post by jdmichal »

mbillie1 wrote: post #39
jdmichal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only an invitation for police harassment if you're breaking the law. And in your version, you would instead have been arrested / fined immediately regardless of anyone reporting you. The bottom line for selective enforcement is that the police recognize that there is a priority structure in laws. They have limited resources and cannot enforce every law, everywhere, every time. While I would rather see this law u…

> It's only an invitation for police harassment if you're breaking the law. Edit: it is often more of an invitation, however, if you are a minority or poor.

If they are going to harass you when you're not breaking the law, then the law itself has nothing to do with it. They could equally harass you for any number of things which no one would argue should be criminal. Making a statement about police harassment and abuse of power is fine, but the topic at hand has little to do with that.
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