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

To: Amy J who wrote (18224)	3/7/2004 12:15:51 AM
From: GraceZ	Respond to of 306849

The Richie statement was a joke that wasn't directed at you personally. My personal CPI doesn't count a lot of durables like furniture. You are getting sidetracked by those costs when the original post was basically about expenses that remain relatively the same over years like food, shelter, insurance, utilities, entertainment, travel, household consumables. It wouldn't be useful to track inflation if I counted special purchases that weren't repeating expenses. Most of our durable items have been off budget and I tend to buy more of these now in any given year than I did back when I was starting up, not less. Plus, I can tell you that consumer durables have lagged the official inflation rate not exceeded it so if someone starting out had a salary working in a position which moved up with the official inflation rate then their "start up costs" are lower than mine were as a percentage of income. Second, my comment about the lifestyle in Northern Ca wasn't intended as an attack on you or Californians. It was an observation that people see their rising living standard as price inflation whereas the CPI tends to subtract these various improvements. People everywhere tend to do this, not just CA. I have more than one friend or client who thinks the higher costs are inflation when they are really them constantly buying higher quality goods which natural cost more. I also have several friends who live like monks in CA and have an extremely low costs of living, others who appear to live on a lot more money than they actually do but are extremely efficient in the way that they spend money. I have one friend who everyone thinks has some store of inherited wealth because she lives so well on her small salary (it would be small here and usually one needs to make exactly twice as much to live there as here), but I know how little she lives on because I'm privy to her financial details. She is just relentless about only spending money on those things which are important to her.