Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

@daf: You sound like a smart successful reasonable person.

@cjy: He is not including college costs as a recurring cost. He simply is stating that he has kids to put through college before he retires.

@qbc: He is not whining about his property taxes. Again, he is simply stating what they are. Seems to me that @daf knows what he can and cannot afford. He can afford the $1.1 million dollar house. He is prioritizing his kids education and his own health while affording his nice house. If he can afford all this, then what is the problem? He's not ready to retire yet, but he knows that for him, he needs $5 mil for that. And somehow by reading his posts, I believe he will get there and probably retire early. Good for him/her. Don't we wish we could all be that successful.....I know I do.

So I say, good job @daf. Sounds to me that you've got life pretty well figured out!!

Who said anything about whining about property taxes? I just merely mentioned it is one of cost item out of many. I personally don't like to cut my budgets that close and not be working when I have kids still to send to college. But that's just me. I guess that's why if I do get laidoff, I am not nearly as screwed as many people that cut their budgets so close, which is apparently a lot of people on this country.

So while it isn't exactly a big fk you amount. It also still is a fvk you amount.

BTW Beaverton is a nice place. When I was temporarily up there on assignment back in 2003, I bought a house up there. Pretty cheap relative to CA. Rent is positive cash flow, and appreciation has worked out pretty well. But I guess Oregonians hate people like me, because I guess we partly contributed to driving up home prices there after we saturated CA.

And no, silicon valley home prices never corrected more than 20% per boom/bust cycle. And in the following cycle, it always came roaring back and then some more. Its been like that for the past 40 years. Those that made it can afford to stay. Those that haven't end up leaving during the bust cycle, and go elsewhere. And then in the next boom cycle, new money (VC , tech, startups ) come in and the process repeats where some people win and some people lose.

@hjo sounds like a troll, but I'm pretty sure he is a typical californian. I have known several just like him.

Listen up @hjo , sell that mcmansion and GTFO of cali before the bay area tech bubble collapses.

Buy a nicer house for half the money somewhere like colorado and relax. No worries.

@hjo

You can afford a 1.1mil dollar home yet whine about the property taxes on it. Then you go on and on about how you NEED to send your kids to a good public school or an Ivy League school, your pre-existing medical condition, how investing in expensive extra curricular activities for your kids is important to you etc.

Seems to me that you cannot afford a 1.1mil dollar house given these other factors. If you were sensible, you'd downsize immediately and prioritize your kids education and your health. But then again you won't because you need a place to ogle over, not a place to live

College expenses are only for 4 years so you should not include them as recurring cost. 32*2 = 124 . for two kids it's 250k.

@H9eUV6I-tdk.

Lot's of reasons.

1. Property taxes are around $12k/year on a $1.1 million home. Downsizing is an option, but we like where we live, and frankly we can afford it.

2. The price of a good college for a kid these days is around $32k/year for something like UC Berkeley public school/in-state, or around $45-50k for a private college like the Ivy's. We can rule out financial aid and need based scholarships.. And those prices are last year. College tuition on average increases about 4% per year, and my kids have a long way before they get there.

3. I also opted my kids to enjoy a pretty fulfilling life, which means my kid's expenses for sports/science/extra curricular activities isn't exactly cheap. I think my burn rate for each kid is around $10-5k/year (including daycare/enrichment).

4. Medical insurance would be extremely expensive for me, since I have a preexisting condition. And no, obamacare would not help lower that cost. My total maximum out of pocket medical bill would be around $10k/year in the worst case scenario with an Obamacare PPO plan. Which is still much better than if I had to pay completely of pocket considering some of my treatment is like $5000 per incident (multiply by 6-7 treatments). No, I am not fat, no I don't have heart disease. I'm actually pretty fit and healthy, just born with bad genes.

5. And this is living a relatively modest lifestyle (you don't see me driving around a Ferrari or Porsche).

6. I haven't factored in if my kids end up wanting to go to medical school/dental schoo/etc. Yes, I understand that most parents would basically make there kids pay for their own way to something like medical school. But let's be realistic. If they actually took out a student loan to pay for medical school or any sort of profession, it would be a long time before they ever get started with their life.

One of my neighbors owns his own dental practice and he sees a lot of graduates with $400k+ in debt. And the sad part is, short of inheriting a practice from their parents or, they won't be able to start their own practice for a long time because no bank is going to loan them money to start or take over their own practice if they already have $400k+ in student loan debt. Furthermore, as a dentist/doctor, if you work for someone else, you really aren't doing that well financially, which makes it that much harder to pay off that $400k+ debt.. Chicken/egg problem. It's actually quite said. When I bought my primary when I was 30, some of my friends that are doctors (general practice) were asking me how the hell I was able to..Well, I didn't have $400-500k in student loan debt. Fast forward 10 years...Many of them still aren't homeowners and still haven't paid off their loans.

The way it is in this country, if you have no money, you probably have a lot of social/need base benefits. If you are filthy rich, you never need to worry about it.

But if you're in the middle, particularly the upper middle class, you end up with very little social benefits, and yet, you end up paying the majority of the taxes, because chances are you are on W2 with very little tax shelters and yet you make a decent paycheck to be taxed as if you are considered "rich".

I guarantee someone that isn't on W2 that makes $150-$200k/year is not paying 20%-28% in taxes. They have so many writeoffs to reduce their effective tax rate.

For the guy who has 3 million with paid off home : why can't you retire. ? Your yearly expenses will not be more than 70 k since you don't have any house payments. You can easily get 70k inflation adjusted yield on 3 million investment (3 % - taxes)

But you do bring up a few good points OP.

Most engineers are terrible when it comes to figuring out how to make more money elsewhere. Analysis to paralysis. The way you got to look at it is as follows. As a engineer, you're probably smarter than 70% of the american population...And yet, of that 70% of the dipshits out there, probably 1/2 of them have figured out a way to make a heck of a lot more money than you slaving away at your W2 salaried job, which eventually is taxed anywhere from 20-28% (Federal). So if you can't, it probably means you are making it much harder for yourself them it really is. After all, there are a lot of dipshits out there that are doing just fine.

I have almost $3million with a 3000 sqft home paid off in CA. Sorry, that's not really a "fk you, fk all of this" amount of money in CA.

It's more like a "fk you, I can go work for someone else that pays less with better work/life balance", or "fk you, I'd rather go work for a startup that gives me more stock options" or "fk, you I'm not staying late every friday evening, but you can if you want".

You probably need about $5million to retire comfortably in CA, especially if you have 1.5 kids that you haven't put through college yet. That amount needed will be around $8million in about 15 years.

I would say 3 million in SF area. You can then say fxxk you anytime to the employer