The Chinese love buying real estate - this is considered to be a key path to wealth.
My grandfather, who is Japanese and who weathered the Great Depression, also considered Real Estate to be the most reliable source of income (rent). He did well, buying properties at depression-era prices in Hawaii, which ballooned in value from a few thousand dollars, to what probably would be millions today, if they hadn't been sold years ago.
However, at age 58, owning 3 properties, I'm re-thinking whether we want to own anything.
This is probably a good time for a YOUNG person to buy real estate. Although we aren't in a Great Depression, I think this may be a good buy-and-hold time, if you are willing to hold for 20 years.
But for me? I'm not so sure.
We own two houses (one of which we rent out) and a condo. Potential liabilities for the rental properties always hang over our heads. Our residence is 50 years old and thus there are always potential large repair costs.
Worst of all, property taxes for the two houses are very high. Higher, in fact, than the assessments on our Chicago condo, which includes gas heat, water, basic cable, maintenance of common elements, and even some nice door people who buzz us in when our hands are full of packages. Higher than the RENT that our neighbor's son pays for a studio apartment with a terrific location.
I don't think it is worth it.
Yes, we love the space. My husband went through a phase of collecting petrified trees, and somehow, he is comforted by the fact we possess these 300-pound rocks (because yes, they are rocks, even though they were once trees). He doesn't look at them, touch them, or even think about them unless I ask him how he intends to get rid of them (sell them on EBay? But how do you ship a 300 pound petrified tree that takes 2 burly men to lift?). Then he tells me that he loves them and to shut up and leave his stuff alone.
As for me, I recently parted, most reluctantly, with a pair of never-worn Italian leather shoes. It was the perfect color to go with so many work clothes, so simple, so elegant, so classy, purchased at half price from Nordstrom Rack (but still expensive). Never mind that I am no longer working and that my feet have swollen with age so it is painful to stuff them into those shoes.
And perhaps one of our daughters, who wears a similar size, or our niece, ditto, might like them for their career wear?
Fat chance.
So, I recently and reluctantly donated those beautiful shoes to charity. However, that was only one pair out of 40+ sets of assorted footwear.
I don't have very many pairs of nice shoes, but it is amazing how the footwear adds up. Sandals, water socks, spare water socks, assorted "flip flops" (as they call them here), hiking shoes (4 pairs, purchased for amazing prices thanks to my tiny foot size, and I am an avid hiker!)... Did I say 40+? Could be more.
While working, I needed black shoes, brown shoes, grey shoes, white shoes, taupe shoes, white sandals, pink sandals, blue sandals, black sandals to wear with different color outfits for different seasons. For dressy occasions I needed a different kind of shoe, just as I needed water socks for the beach and hiking boots for the mountains and cross-trainers for exercise class, and running shoes for jogging. You get the idea. I am not fashion- or clothes-conscious, but even I am aware that black shoes with low square heels, which look fine and practical with black pants in the winter, would look odd with light-colored summer dresses. And you cannot wear shoes with Hawaiian muumuus (which I wore frequently in the summer), just as you cannot wear sandals during Chicago's winter.
You may sneer at my 4 pairs of hiking shoes, but with my unusual foot size (very short and very wide), I very rarely find shoes that fit me properly. All 4 pairs were found as flukes at different times. I was happy with 3 pairs, but a couple of years ago, I stumbled onto another amazing pair that not only fit me perfectly, but was exceptionally easy to take on and off (no laces to tie!). I recently found 2 more lace-less pairs, but I returned them, figuring that I already have enough hiking shoes to last me for my rapidly diminishing lifetime.
SOOOO... Space is a nice thing to have, yes. But I think that all we need is 2 BR's (one BR can double as a study/guest room), 2 baths (extra bath would be for guests)...
...and a very large storage room with lots of shelves!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Random Thoughts Debut #2 to Celebrate a New Phase of Life!
March 26, 2011
I had another Random Thoughts...but I don't remember how to access it!
I love to write. It is therapeutic. It aids my bad (and worsening) memory. I used to keep journals in little 3 x 5" memo books when we went on trips. It was a real effort, but I was always SOOOOO glad to read those journals, some 4-20 years later. These journals enabled me to re-live some wonderful trips, and recall wonderful little details that years and dying brain cells had left in the dust. I still kick myself for all those times when I was "too busy" or "too tired" to write anything down.
My first Random Thoughts (somewhere on this same site) started when I stumbled, on a rare dull evening, upon a high school classmate's blog. I disagreed w/his political stance, and it felt like I was spying on him, but I was fascinated! I always admired this classmate (he was disheveled and rumbled but oh-so-funny and oh-so-smart!), so I read his blogs and surreptitiously caught up with his life with great interest! Noted that his blog was done on this blogger.com, so I started my Random Thoughts!
Not that anyone would be interested in my Random Thoughts, but hey, this is for me!
I am currently 58 years old and embarking on Phase V of My Life.
Phase I = a peaceful & generally happy childhood in Hawaii. I attended Punahou School and it shaped me. Life was simple in early childhood. My parents were self-described "lower middle class." We lived in a small, bare house with two wonderful mango trees (Hayden & Pirie) and a couple of plumeria trees. My parents poured what little they had into our educations, a lesson that stayed with me all my life. We had virtually no toys except for classics such as a baseball bat & mitt, various sizes & shapes of balls, and bicycles. My family ran a bicycle store, but I'm the only one that actually RODE a bike regularly. Hey, this was Hawaii, and Punahou was a great school. No complaints - it was a good life!
Phase II = college. I attended Swarthmore College in PA for two years. I chose it because it was small, co-ed, intellectual, liberal arts, and on the East Coast. I wanted to get as far away from Hawaii as possible! Many of my Punahou classmates were in various colleges out there, so I had a great time catching rides up the East Coast & visiting them. Boston was my favorite place. One of my favorite Punahou people, Anthony Van Niel, was at Harvard, and my best friend during my first semester at Swarthmore, Penhallow Goodale, had a sister & brother (I adored Penhallow's entire family!) who lived in a funky Cambridge apartment. I was young, hitchhiked all over the place and went on all kinds of outdoorsy outings, and just had a blast. But after a year I started to question the purpose of all this study and work (S'more was a very competitive place so I had to work as hard as I played). So, I left for a year to work in San Francisco, just past the zenith of Haight-Ashbury & the Summer of Love. I joined Cathy Cockrell, my fellow Swarthmorean from Seattle, to search for the Meaning of Life. We learned that beating the streets for minimum wage work is no fun, and going on hikes in the beautiful CA outdoors is a lot more fun than getting stoned out of your mind. I saved enough on minimum wage ($1.65/hr!) to go to Scotland and Europe for 6 months. Made some wonderful Scottish friends there, who taught me a thing or two about living a simple and frugal life. Returned to Hawaii and had a wonderful time studying tropical horticulture, soils, ecology, entomology, & botany. Best class I took in my life (recommended by a S'more professor) was Plant Taxonomy - "you can go anywhere in the world and always feel at home." True, so true. Worked two summers at Puna Papaya - oh, so wonderful!!! Worked my last summer at Pacific Tropical Botanical Gdn, thanks to Don Hodel - oh, so wonderful!!! The neighbor islands - Big Island & Kauai - truly were kinder, gentler, friendlier places. The Big Island was intellectually stimulating, too, because there were a lot of scientists that came visiting because of its relatively large populations of endemic flora and fauna (and the volcanoes, of course).
Am I still on Phase II? It lasted a good 8 years. After graduating from UH, I went to UC-Davis to study International Agriculture, but ended up getting my MS in Plant Pathology, just 'cuz it was an easier path to take. I had a great time there, too. Davis is in the middle of flat ag land, but it is a really nice town to live in, and it is centrally located for visiting both the Sierras, and the coast, of Northern CA. I went on all kinds of school outings. Best of all, during my first year, I stayed at UCD's grad dorm and met Se Fok. We had a nice group of very diversified friends. Se Fok & I bought a cheap old VW bug ("Orange Delight") and we went on camping trips all over the place during the summer.
Phase III was the Family Phase. Se Fok and I married in 1977, a little hastily because his visa expired and he was about to be deported. Best thing I ever did!!! It wasn't Love At First Sight, but it started as a good and respectful friendship which deepened and changed as the school year went on. We were perhaps both ready to settle down, too. Se Fok, a chemical engineer, had lots of problems with his job hunting because he was stateless and had no passport, no green card, nothing. His father was a refugee, and Se Fok was born in China which was persona non grata to most of the world at that time. All he had was a Hong Kong identity card. However, UOP in the Chicago area, IL was very experienced with people like Se Fok so they understood that his working for them would not be a problem, thanks to our marriage. They were the only company to offer him a job, but they also were the only company that Se Fok really wanted to work for!
So, we lived for two years in the Chicago SW suburbs (an OK place at best). Our oldest, Keala, was born in 1980, just before we went "on the road" for UOP for 5 years. Alex was born in a small town outside of Shanghai in 1985, and Anela was born in Beijing in 1988.
While on the road, we lived in parts of the U.S. that we never would have dreamed of visiting: Robinson, IL, Lake Charles, LA, Port Arthur, TX, Beeville, TX, Hobbs, NM. Se Fok finally got some overseas jobs in 1983: Indonesia, Egypt, China (Shanghai). He then went back to China (Beijing) to open UOP's first office there in 1987, and we lived in Beijing for 3 years. We returned to the U.S. in 1990 and I raised our children in AH - cub scouts, brownies, music lessons, carpools, volunteering. I use the singular because Se Fok was away almost all the time, constantly traveling to China, sometimes for over two months at a time (he tried to save UOP money by combining trips). I LOVED raising our children. They were very good children, well-behaved, funny, observant, smart, creative, and talented, and I was immensely proud of them! Because of Alex, I was involved in Cub Scouts, and we had many fun outings and activities. I loved Anela's friends and their mothers. And our family camping trips were so much fun! Keala, who was a model child during, and in spite of, all our family moves in the first 10 years of her life, ironically became very rebellious after we finally settled down in the U.S. However, she always remained responsible and dependable when it counted - and fiercely independent.
Phase IV = work for me. After getting a taste of teenage behavior with Keala, I decided that it was time to make my own life. I went to the local community college to take accounting courses and took & passed the CPA exam in 1997. Soon after that, Se Fok noticed a UOP accounting job posting that looked like a good fit - which led to 13+ years at UOP's accounting. Se Fok left UOP soon afterwards for what seemed to be an even better job at BP, but I stayed on. I LOVED working, I liked UOP, and I liked most of the people that I worked with! There was a hiccup of a year or so with one bad boss and a few catty women, but they all left, and the rest of my time there was fine, until Honeywell bought UOP in very late 2005. The two companies have very different cultures. UOP is an engineering company, run by intelligent, hard-working, practical engineers, with a long-term focus, because the plants built with UOP processes cost tens of millions to build, and take years to get up and running. But if all goes well, the rewards are huge: they can generate decades of immensely profitable licensing revenue, and pull in more product, equipment, and technical sales. Honeywell, under its current management, is a short-term company, and its people are focused on their own careers and resumes rather than on their company.
Luckily for me, it takes awhile for corporate culture to change, so the first couple of years under Honeywell were fine, though a lot of accounting people lost their jobs, and many of our engineering friends quit (snatched up by other companies!). However, it became increasingly unpleasant and stressful to work there, as more and more UOP accounting jobs were outsourced to India. Our accounting group, once ca. 45 people, dwindled to about a dozen people after the latest round of layoffs.
Luckily for me, I only worked for the interest, and not for the money. I wanted to get out, but I was holding out for severance and unemployment.
Finally in mid-November, I was informed that my position was t/b moved to India, effective Feb. 3, 2011.
Freedom at last!!!
So now, I am at the start of Phase V!!! Severance is still coming in and will do so for another 2 months. Unemployment has started rolling in too. I earned enough in 2011 to contribute the max to my 2011 IRA. Life is Good!
I had another Random Thoughts...but I don't remember how to access it!
I love to write. It is therapeutic. It aids my bad (and worsening) memory. I used to keep journals in little 3 x 5" memo books when we went on trips. It was a real effort, but I was always SOOOOO glad to read those journals, some 4-20 years later. These journals enabled me to re-live some wonderful trips, and recall wonderful little details that years and dying brain cells had left in the dust. I still kick myself for all those times when I was "too busy" or "too tired" to write anything down.
My first Random Thoughts (somewhere on this same site) started when I stumbled, on a rare dull evening, upon a high school classmate's blog. I disagreed w/his political stance, and it felt like I was spying on him, but I was fascinated! I always admired this classmate (he was disheveled and rumbled but oh-so-funny and oh-so-smart!), so I read his blogs and surreptitiously caught up with his life with great interest! Noted that his blog was done on this blogger.com, so I started my Random Thoughts!
Not that anyone would be interested in my Random Thoughts, but hey, this is for me!
I am currently 58 years old and embarking on Phase V of My Life.
Phase I = a peaceful & generally happy childhood in Hawaii. I attended Punahou School and it shaped me. Life was simple in early childhood. My parents were self-described "lower middle class." We lived in a small, bare house with two wonderful mango trees (Hayden & Pirie) and a couple of plumeria trees. My parents poured what little they had into our educations, a lesson that stayed with me all my life. We had virtually no toys except for classics such as a baseball bat & mitt, various sizes & shapes of balls, and bicycles. My family ran a bicycle store, but I'm the only one that actually RODE a bike regularly. Hey, this was Hawaii, and Punahou was a great school. No complaints - it was a good life!
Phase II = college. I attended Swarthmore College in PA for two years. I chose it because it was small, co-ed, intellectual, liberal arts, and on the East Coast. I wanted to get as far away from Hawaii as possible! Many of my Punahou classmates were in various colleges out there, so I had a great time catching rides up the East Coast & visiting them. Boston was my favorite place. One of my favorite Punahou people, Anthony Van Niel, was at Harvard, and my best friend during my first semester at Swarthmore, Penhallow Goodale, had a sister & brother (I adored Penhallow's entire family!) who lived in a funky Cambridge apartment. I was young, hitchhiked all over the place and went on all kinds of outdoorsy outings, and just had a blast. But after a year I started to question the purpose of all this study and work (S'more was a very competitive place so I had to work as hard as I played). So, I left for a year to work in San Francisco, just past the zenith of Haight-Ashbury & the Summer of Love. I joined Cathy Cockrell, my fellow Swarthmorean from Seattle, to search for the Meaning of Life. We learned that beating the streets for minimum wage work is no fun, and going on hikes in the beautiful CA outdoors is a lot more fun than getting stoned out of your mind. I saved enough on minimum wage ($1.65/hr!) to go to Scotland and Europe for 6 months. Made some wonderful Scottish friends there, who taught me a thing or two about living a simple and frugal life. Returned to Hawaii and had a wonderful time studying tropical horticulture, soils, ecology, entomology, & botany. Best class I took in my life (recommended by a S'more professor) was Plant Taxonomy - "you can go anywhere in the world and always feel at home." True, so true. Worked two summers at Puna Papaya - oh, so wonderful!!! Worked my last summer at Pacific Tropical Botanical Gdn, thanks to Don Hodel - oh, so wonderful!!! The neighbor islands - Big Island & Kauai - truly were kinder, gentler, friendlier places. The Big Island was intellectually stimulating, too, because there were a lot of scientists that came visiting because of its relatively large populations of endemic flora and fauna (and the volcanoes, of course).
Am I still on Phase II? It lasted a good 8 years. After graduating from UH, I went to UC-Davis to study International Agriculture, but ended up getting my MS in Plant Pathology, just 'cuz it was an easier path to take. I had a great time there, too. Davis is in the middle of flat ag land, but it is a really nice town to live in, and it is centrally located for visiting both the Sierras, and the coast, of Northern CA. I went on all kinds of school outings. Best of all, during my first year, I stayed at UCD's grad dorm and met Se Fok. We had a nice group of very diversified friends. Se Fok & I bought a cheap old VW bug ("Orange Delight") and we went on camping trips all over the place during the summer.
Phase III was the Family Phase. Se Fok and I married in 1977, a little hastily because his visa expired and he was about to be deported. Best thing I ever did!!! It wasn't Love At First Sight, but it started as a good and respectful friendship which deepened and changed as the school year went on. We were perhaps both ready to settle down, too. Se Fok, a chemical engineer, had lots of problems with his job hunting because he was stateless and had no passport, no green card, nothing. His father was a refugee, and Se Fok was born in China which was persona non grata to most of the world at that time. All he had was a Hong Kong identity card. However, UOP in the Chicago area, IL was very experienced with people like Se Fok so they understood that his working for them would not be a problem, thanks to our marriage. They were the only company to offer him a job, but they also were the only company that Se Fok really wanted to work for!
So, we lived for two years in the Chicago SW suburbs (an OK place at best). Our oldest, Keala, was born in 1980, just before we went "on the road" for UOP for 5 years. Alex was born in a small town outside of Shanghai in 1985, and Anela was born in Beijing in 1988.
While on the road, we lived in parts of the U.S. that we never would have dreamed of visiting: Robinson, IL, Lake Charles, LA, Port Arthur, TX, Beeville, TX, Hobbs, NM. Se Fok finally got some overseas jobs in 1983: Indonesia, Egypt, China (Shanghai). He then went back to China (Beijing) to open UOP's first office there in 1987, and we lived in Beijing for 3 years. We returned to the U.S. in 1990 and I raised our children in AH - cub scouts, brownies, music lessons, carpools, volunteering. I use the singular because Se Fok was away almost all the time, constantly traveling to China, sometimes for over two months at a time (he tried to save UOP money by combining trips). I LOVED raising our children. They were very good children, well-behaved, funny, observant, smart, creative, and talented, and I was immensely proud of them! Because of Alex, I was involved in Cub Scouts, and we had many fun outings and activities. I loved Anela's friends and their mothers. And our family camping trips were so much fun! Keala, who was a model child during, and in spite of, all our family moves in the first 10 years of her life, ironically became very rebellious after we finally settled down in the U.S. However, she always remained responsible and dependable when it counted - and fiercely independent.
Phase IV = work for me. After getting a taste of teenage behavior with Keala, I decided that it was time to make my own life. I went to the local community college to take accounting courses and took & passed the CPA exam in 1997. Soon after that, Se Fok noticed a UOP accounting job posting that looked like a good fit - which led to 13+ years at UOP's accounting. Se Fok left UOP soon afterwards for what seemed to be an even better job at BP, but I stayed on. I LOVED working, I liked UOP, and I liked most of the people that I worked with! There was a hiccup of a year or so with one bad boss and a few catty women, but they all left, and the rest of my time there was fine, until Honeywell bought UOP in very late 2005. The two companies have very different cultures. UOP is an engineering company, run by intelligent, hard-working, practical engineers, with a long-term focus, because the plants built with UOP processes cost tens of millions to build, and take years to get up and running. But if all goes well, the rewards are huge: they can generate decades of immensely profitable licensing revenue, and pull in more product, equipment, and technical sales. Honeywell, under its current management, is a short-term company, and its people are focused on their own careers and resumes rather than on their company.
Luckily for me, it takes awhile for corporate culture to change, so the first couple of years under Honeywell were fine, though a lot of accounting people lost their jobs, and many of our engineering friends quit (snatched up by other companies!). However, it became increasingly unpleasant and stressful to work there, as more and more UOP accounting jobs were outsourced to India. Our accounting group, once ca. 45 people, dwindled to about a dozen people after the latest round of layoffs.
Luckily for me, I only worked for the interest, and not for the money. I wanted to get out, but I was holding out for severance and unemployment.
Finally in mid-November, I was informed that my position was t/b moved to India, effective Feb. 3, 2011.
Freedom at last!!!
So now, I am at the start of Phase V!!! Severance is still coming in and will do so for another 2 months. Unemployment has started rolling in too. I earned enough in 2011 to contribute the max to my 2011 IRA. Life is Good!
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