What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

I grew up in the hills of WV, where Charlestown was the capital and largest city in the state with 50,000 people lol. When I moved to east Tn I was scared to death to death in Knoxville with over 300,000 people. I’ve since driven thru Nashville, Atlanta, Miami, Louisville and several other large cities. Oh yeah not to forget... I’ve driven a bus in downtown NYC, oh how I hated that, so much traffic, no place to park a bus while waiting for the group so just constantly driving around in gridlock hrs on end Give me the country, the mountains, and the wide open any day, I’ll be happy if I never ever have to make another trip up north specially into the big cities

 

Most people are renting now, which is the only way most can afford to live here...but that's going to prove to be a big problem in the future for a lot of folks out here when they get older. Especially when over 1/2 of most people's monthly income is going to their rent, no one is saving any money. The same radio segment also stated that less than 20% of anyone under the age of 26 out here had more than $1000 in a savings account. That's just plain nuts to me.

Anyhow..not sure how we got on this topic lol. Something about sway bars.....

 

You welcome lol!!!

 

My neighbor is making a killing of renting their house out. It was spec'd by the builder as a 4 bedroom 3 bath house. Somehow they made it into a 6 bedroom 4 bath house with about 10 people living there. The house is worth about $1.2 Million and the mortgage, last time I checked, is about $5,000 a month. He rents the master bedroom out for $2,000 and the rooms w/ a shared bathrooms for an average of $1,500. You do the math, he's making more than the mortgage costs a month.

There was this whole Airbnb conservatory in San Francisco where all the housing was being rented out violating some housing laws. There's just too many people here and not enough space.

You know California has a great population than the entire country of Canada? It's 39 Million in California vs. 36 Million in Canada. We have a bigger GDP than entire countries. That is just insane to me.

Speaking of sway bars... I went to a trade show over the weekend expecting to come home with a nice lift and instead I came home with some floormats and a tow strap. Guess I gotta wait until Black Friday. Lol! I mean they had a 6' FabTech lift for $300, but it was this awful body-like lift where you had to cut the differential crossmember and drop the differential, so you weren't really gaining any ground clearance.

 

I know that red/yellow line very well. I travel to San Fran 3x a year for business and take the BART from SFO to Powell Station. Always stay at the Parc 55 across the street.

I love the city but couldn't imagine living there.

 

If he wasn't he'd be the dumbest businessman alive.

 

Love Powell. That's where all the fun is! And homeless people, lots and lots of homeless people. I hate to say it but our homeless have made a name for themselves.

Come back in two-three years, we ordered an entire new fleet of BART cars. They're actually still using the original rolling stock from the 60's. Why? Because it uses some rare Indian-Gauge track which is narrower than you standard railroad track so we can't use off-the-shelf trains. We have the only train system in the world that uses that gauge of track. I mean that's what you get when you have an aerospace company design a train system.

 

Dang I just became more thankful for living in east Tn. I closed on a house and 5 acres a few years and and was only making $12 an hr at the time. I couldn’t handle the stress of dealing with financial things out there

 

Yeah lots of entertainment right around that station. And the homelessness is alarming. You have Mission St(?) with all the high end retail on it with people sitting outside the stores holding there two kids who are clearly very hungry and homeless. Breaks my heart.

I always buy food and give it to the kids.

 

Anyone living in CA who isn't famous in the entertainment industry, a big shot lawyer or doctor, or trust fund kid has only a few hopes of actually being able to live here and "succeed"...and real estate is one of them. With the renting market the way it is right now, it's easy money especially if you inherited property that you don't live in personally. Easy money right there.

That, or getting into the tech industry (with the right company). Also, there's a huge demand out here right now for welders. I've thought about going to my community college to get trained/certified in it as a supplemental income, or backup career sort of thing.

 

People who live there are sketchy, to say the least. He let that house fall into a terrible state of disrepair and just does not maintain it at all.

Funny he actually has a 1st gen, this old 5-lug he uses to haul trash around.

 

ok I need to step away from this thread before I become clinically depressed. 3 years ago I was making $22/hour and I could barely rent a $900/month room in another person's house.

 

Right now with the local economy how it is people that have a house rent out don’t make any money. They still have to pay out for pocket for the house payment or whatever but it’s better than having to pay the whole thing.

When the economy is up again they’ll do good though.... dang oilfield always controlling my town...

 

Tech industry is huge here, obviously. I'm going into that field so shouldn't be too terrible to make a living here.

You know what's lacking here? Workers for Commercial and blue-collar jobs. I took an auto tech class at a local college and we were getting job offers left and right. Their welding students were making more out of a two year community college than most people I know who went to a four year university with an MBA or even an Engineering degree. You get into the right industry here and you will live comfortably. We have enough venture capitalists and businessmen, but we're running out of good mechanics, plumbers, and welders.

 

Maybe it's that way where you live but not here. It's all dependent upon the market.

My mortgage is $1000/mo and I could easily rent my house for $2500/mo. Probably $2750/mo honestly.

 

Oh right, I was just stating what it’s like here.

I’d be happy to just go be a hermit in my family’s cabin if it didn’t get snowed in during the winter....

 

Yup, these days it's becoming less about what our parents (or at least mine) drilled into our heads as kids: you have to go to college and get a degree to get a job. That's still true for certain industries, but skilled trade is coming back in a big way. I wish I had known that as a kid, before I racked up the student load debt that I did...but that's another story. It worked out okay for me, but many of my friends and peers are stuck paying $1000+/month in student loans for the next 25 years on an education that they can't find work related to.

 

My GF makes 6 figures and still can't buy a house here. I'm trying to convince her to buy property outside of the metropolis area and to sit on it. Like 30 acres worth.

Then when life allows me to sell this place, I'll cash out and be able to build a great place on that property and just kick back until I kick the bucket.

 

I keep telling my daughter that a trade is a great way to go about it. You can automate manufacturing until there's no jobs left but a robot isn't going to come in and plumb or wire your house.

 

oooooo nice! Lets start a pool for how long it takes for me to be on there!