The hand outs continue

[mrsleeve]

you honestly have enough saved to pay your mortgage and bills for 9 to 12 months?

YES I have at minimum 8 months of expense at my current life style (get below this anymore and I am flipping out). I can cut all unnecessary spending and things I dont need, like my sat plan, smart phones, watch my power usage, going out to eat, hobbies, cutting down on expensive food at the grocery store ect... and stretch that out to 11-12 months with out a dime of income.

Right now there is closer to a 18 months of expenses at our normal spending habits in the general accounts. I got into some issues with being illprepared after a couple of long lay offs a while back. I had a modest savings then and it was not even close to being enough. I learned a very important lesson then and have vowed to never ever be in that position again. Anyone can have this kinda money in the bank it just takes some time and self control for a while to get there

[z31maniac]

Anyone can have this kinda money in the bank it just takes some time and self control for a while to get there

I wish that you guys would accept that the general population doesn't necessarily have incomes like some of us on this forum.

I'm not saying it's not their fault, but there is not a $50k+ a year job for everyone. Someone has to take the shit jobs that don't pay well. Hell the average salary in this country is something like $35k per year.

You can get by on that here in OK, but we have an absurdly low cost of living, one of the cheapest in the country.

[GDA]

^ granted in some peoples cases it might take 2 to 3 years to slowly build up to a 9 to 12 month rainy day fund but think that over the course of their life they might only have to dip into it just a couple times. Seems like the smart thing to do (live very frugally for a couple years) given it covers your backside for the next 50 some odd years.

[mrsleeve]

buddy: I lived on 28-35k for many many years, and still was able to save 4-6 months of expenses up with in a relatively short time. little over a year or so IIRC, but like the guy above this post said, anyone can do it, just have to willing to make the sacrifices for a little while to do it.

[CorvallisBMW]

allowing people to grow accustomed to support from the federal government is slavery.

paying people to be poor will only gurantee more poor people. and paying people/companies for their stupidity/greed thru programs like no mortgage payments/bailouts gurantees more of the same behavior. there is no downside to failure anymore. bailing out GM/Chrysler and the housing industry makes everyone poorer.

eliminate the possibility of failure eliminates the chance of success.

how about we try something different? as in job creation? create wealth? create opportunity? quit bankrupting the country and my children?

this president is so beholden to his political views he cannot see the forest for the trees. nor does he learn from history that the economic solutions his admin is supporting have never worked, here or around the world. FDR reied to spend his way out of a depression and unemployment never fell below 14%, and infact was headed much higher before WWII started.

yet letting capitalism have a chance is somehow the problem with the O-man. and central planning is the answer. no matter history.

this pres deserves to be out of office, as of today

So helping people equates to making them slaves? :loco:

Interesting how you blame Obama for all these things, yet the large majority were started by GWB. How short the memory of the idiot is...

[mrsleeve]

So helping people equates to making them slaves? :loco:

I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. - Ben Franklin

Interesting how you blame Obama for all these things, yet the large majority were started by GWB. How short the memory of the idiot is...

Key word started.................most of us were pissed off about that too.

Was QE1. QE2, Most of TARP, take over 90% of the mortgages in the country, Obama Care, threats of higher taxes, threats Cap and trade, Climate legislation, ect... all boosh doing too. you cant keep blaming boosh like the idiot in the white house dose for the 0 continued polices and decision making

[BraveUlysses]

you honestly have enough saved to pay your mortgage and bills for 9 to 12 months?

what percentage of your annual take home salary do you have in available savings? and do you have a mortgage?

i can't imagine how anyone with a mortgage wouldn't have at least 6-12 months of savings, it's asinine not to.

[z31maniac]

^I guess that's part of the problem for me, the last few years in this sucky economy, I've focused on plowing money into my 401k vs savings. So I can take advantage of compound interest and the eventual turnaround of the stock market.

[mrsleeve]

^

Nothing wrong with that, as you still have access to that, if you really need it. But yeah I would much prefer 6+ months in the bank in Liquidity.

[joshh]

People forget when buying a house that they have to pay to upkeep it. I learned this first hand. A savings to that amount just wasn't possible.
Being in an apartment we've been able to save quite a bit faster. Even with me only working part time.
But from what I've seen most people are about spending what they have thinking their job will continue on forever. Specially when they know they have Government to lean on if shit goes down hill.

[gwb72tii]

So helping people equates to making them slaves? :loco:

Interesting how you blame Obama for all these things, yet the large majority were started by GWB. How short the memory of the idiot is...

orvallis, you apparently know jack shit about history. TARP was started by GWB. all the other shit is obama's. the stimulus didn't get a single repub vote. or don't you remember? get real and get educated if you want to argue here instead of resorting to the left's favorite last resort, name calling.

nobody objects to helping others
but programs like obamacare are DESIGNED to give something for nothing, to get people ensnared by the government and ensnared by the democrat machine so they'll vote democrat

and if you can't see that than you're the pot calling the kettle black (can i say that?)

obama doesn't give a shit about the unemployed. he cares about them voting for him. if he did care he'd try something to create jobs.

but i will admit this.

the O-man is the single best thing to happen to this country in along time.
without him it would have taken another 10yrs for this great country to be as fucked up financially as it is today thanks to obama.

he pushed the pedal to the medal.

as a result a lot of people are paying attention to issues that historically never did. and they're pissed. and they're going to banish the left and its political machine to the outside for a long long time in 2012.

and it cannot come fast enough.

[Wiglaf]

what percentage of your annual take home salary do you have in available savings? and do you have a mortgage?

i can't imagine how anyone with a mortgage wouldn't have at least 6-12 months of savings, it's asinine not to.

I make about $40k. The mortgage is just under $1200, that's 1 of my 2 paychecks. Bills on the other one, I get ~$400 left over to live on.

I have no other debt, no credit cards.

I try to pack away $100/month but it only happens when I get some overtime, I burned through it fixing the place up. Still lots of work to do here.

It was easier when the GF was here helping me out. Instead now I go out drinking in search of poon, for months now I've been in a place where missing 1 paycheck will get me screwed.

At the rate I've been saving, salting away $10k to pay the mortgage for 8 months would take me about 8 years. To do it in 1 year would take $830/month, literally impossible on my budget. If I spent nothing on food, etc, no life.. I could do it in 2 years.

I still have enough left on my mortgage that paying $100 extra to the principal saves me thousands in the long run, trying to do that do. It feels like a smarter way to save money, but of course that is no help for a rainy day.

[z31maniac]

I make about $40k. The mortgage is just under $1200, that's 1 of my 2 paychecks. Bills on the other one, I get ~$400 left over to live on.

And I would argue that you spent too much on a house.

My wife and I combined gross approx 3x that.

We bought a house with a payment of $800.

[Wiglaf]

yeah. My previous job I made more, the mortgage was more like 1/3 of my money. And then the market cratered... I probly could have paid 2/3 of what I did for this place. Also I'm talking out of pocket, with the tax escrow and all that, not just the bank note.

Overall fairly depressing but there's no way to sell it until I at least finish the remodeling. And houses on my street have been on sale since '07.

[z31maniac]

Same here that's insurance/taxes/P&I.

That sucks big time.