My property taxes are based on the $157.5K purchase price 20 years ago, not the current $500K+ CMV. Yes, California has state income taxes, unlike TX, NV and probably a few others. But then I don't get hit with lots of weird "personal property taxes" that I've been told are used in some other states (VA I think).
HaHa, I'm three blocks from Ocean Beach at the end of Golden Gate Park, so I guess SF must be the "world's best place".
But the surfers wear wetsuits the year around - that's cold water!
Mister Bill, I was born in OK (but really only been there for visits with relatives), lived for a short time in Baja Oklahoma (in Houston), and spent about 18 months in northern Lousiana, and I'm very willing to cede my spot in the SE to anyone who wants it. I mostly grew up in Albuquerque, and feel more at home "out West".
Hi Donner, thanks for the long post. Feel free to drop "The Other" - I generally use just my name when registering at a forum, but "Michael" was already taken here as it was at the other place where I picked this screen name.
We've looked at the home insurance periodically, though we haven't analyzed it in depth. We do carry the state earthquake insurance and both run us about $2400 a year. If/when there's another major earthquake that causes significant damage we've got some expectation that the insurers will find a way to default on paying out much money. But for $1200 a year, we figure we'll hope on recovering something to make it worthwhile. If I had my druthers, we'd just keep paying the insurance and never get the quake.
We're not married, and after almost 27 years that doesn't seem too likely to change. We've both got FEGLI. We're taking the full CSRS annuity - no survivor's reduction. With similar incomes and the house paid off the survivor shouldn't have a problem getting by on his/her full annuity, savings, and the savings of the dear departed. The FEGLI is just for a bit of a parting financial boost. 60 is still a ways away, and we'll have to evaluate the life insurance situation when we get closer to it. We share the joint expenses (whether for fixed costs or for fun), but other than that we don't commingle finances. This isn't to say that we wouldn't watch out for each other, we just don't throw all the money into a pot. This is probably why she's got significantly more savings than I, while I have significantly more motorcycles and machine tools than she does.
I don't see you as a gloom and doomer, probably because I'm not too optimistic about the outlook either. That old saw about stocks always outperforming anything else for any given long term period has never rung true to me. It may be true in a macroeconomic analysis when performance is looked at for long enough periods, and with a big enough aggregation of stocks. But even in boom times people lose their money with wrong choices. And if you deal yourself in at the beginning of a long term drop when your life expectancy is starting to look more short term, and then compound that with some ill-advised choices, well . . . .
I've got a friend who put all of her TSP into the C fund and decided she just wasn't going to watch it any more. That's too much of a crap shoot for my peace of mind. The extent of gambling for me is emptying the loose change from my pockets into the slot machines before boarding the airplane out of Vegas. Nothing ventured nothing gained, but then again nothing lost too.
cheers,
Michael
