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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (18217)	3/6/2004 7:16:32 PM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Grace, If you got all your furniture free from friends and roommates (and if you didn't compensate them) and if you haven't bought your own furniture, then I would concur with your math. Otherwise, a household starter item from Goodwill still doesn't mean you didn't spend money. All of it needs to be counted up, added, and a total is determined. Call this total startup cost = S. Unless you are buying a new kitchen table every year, this should be a one-time startup cost (unless you're into buying many new kitchen tables, which it doesn't sound like you are). If your CPI-Grace is essentially the same whether you include S or not, then your math is correct. But the question is, is your personal CPI understated by high startup costs (it sounds like you own a lot of stuff, and by startup costs, it means the costs of the appliances/furniture you own today.) You can't transparently say your costs haven't gone up if you're diluting your lifestyle increase by your startup costs. RE: "You have any idea how many times I've walked around in someone's Northern California ...heated Italian tile floors " I wouldn't judge the rest of the world by whom you associate with. Not everyone in Northern California is like this. When you post to me, please try to remember this. RE: "The problem is people want these freakin European washer dryers with every option, six thousand dollar" But we weren't talking about other people, we were talking about you. Our conversation is about your CPI calculation. I'm wondering if your personal CPI is hiding an increasing lifestyle that's understated by the dilution of startup costs. Our original topic was, CPI isn't a good measure for local geographies (for the reason the BLS has noted). I reread your post and noticed you actually said this same thing (I missed that on the first read.) RE: "only to have them tell me that they can't save any money because prices in CA are out of control.....it's them that's out of control. Of course they can always point to Richie's ex-wife and feel like they are being conservative in their spending." Since I pointed you to Richie's ex-wife, is your statement an attack on me? Am surprised your reply wasn't more like your PMs, where we both share an annoyance with wasteful spending. You seem to put all Californians into one bucket - spenders. Recall you said areas outside of CA have lower wages and lower expenses, and you said CA has higher wages and higher expenses. What you aren't factoring in, are those people that live in CA, who take advantage of the higher wages but intentionally live in a lower-expensed environment, and pocket this profit. It's the best of all worlds. It makes it a bit easier to save 50% of ones take home pay, for those that don't mind a low-expensed environment (certainly a struggle to find in CA and challenging for those with children), and you have to be very disciplined, particularly in CA where the costs are indeed much higher. I think you have to acknowledge that there are some people in California that don't fit your spend-it-all bucket. Some actually save a reasonable portion of their salary. But our original discussion was about CPI and whether or not your calculation is understating your lifestyle increase by diluting startup costs. Regards, Amy J