Jeff S.

Thanks so much for the friendship...

Hi Jeff, i am more than halfway through Total Money Makeover (and im a SLOW reader) and i would just like to thank you for suggesting it to me. I am hard at work on my budget right now, and with my tax return (due in tomorrow) i will have my "baby emergency fund" as well as a few of my smaller debts paid off.

Thanks for the push in the right direction! You are doing good work here on gather. there are many here that could use your advice.

Thanks again!

-Ryan Reid

They finally held still long enough for me to accept them. Sorry about the question -- I don't know if you were editing them repeatedly or if gather was having an attack of hiccups or what, but I wanted to check with you if they were actually meant for GSE.

OK, Dumb question. Are you trying to submit several articles to Gather Spirituality Essential? They keep appearing and disappearing like blink dogs...

Thanks for the friend connect. Cheers, Don

Hi, Jeff, and thanks for the friend request. Sorry for the late response, though. I've been very busy lately and haven't been on Gather often this week.

I've never lived in Michigan, so I wasn't sure if you were befriending the right guy, but I see the space program connection, so I guess I'm your man, after all. Always glad to have another friend.

My brother is a Financial Advisor, too, in California.

I like your approach -- living within our means is such a simple concept but so profoundly important. I chalk a lot of our problems today up to all the so-called experts who were telling people for years that debt is cheap. I think the idea was permanently rolling it over into infinity, but we've all see where that landed us, eh? The buck stops here, and when it does, it stops hard.

I don't know how Japan is going to come out of this in the end, smelling like a rose or at the bottom of the sewer.

Thanks for the response, and I certainly wasn’t offended. Intrigued actually, as I prefer the company of people who just come right out and say what’s on their mind.

I am always curious about how things are in other parts of the world. I live in Ontario, GTA (greater Toronto Area), and the average price of a single detached family home is around $400 thousand. The further north you go from Toronto the lower the prices are, but wages are also lower and populations dwindle. A lot of our government offices are located in remote communities to bring jobs and resources to underpopulated areas.

We pay CMHC fees on high ratio mortgages with less than 20% down, same idea as in US. Maximum mortgage is 95% ltv on residential property and 80% ltv on rentals. Our utilites aren’t nearly as high, but we pay both provincial and federal tax on almost all goods and services in every province except Alberta, who has no provincial sales tax.

During the global credit crisis, Canada somehow made it to the spotlight as an example of how to handle finances. True, we are quite strict about lending guidelines, and our banks are so well protected it’s impossible for them to fail. The other side of the loonie is we don’t get high returns on our investments either. Therefore, most Canadians have little or no savings or retirement funds. Most retirees from the baby boomer generation are using their homes to finance retirement, so now the push is on to educate the younger generation about savings.

In my (less than humble) opinion, the surge of debit cards and credit cards in the last thirty years or so have been the biggest detriment to consumer patterns and habits. I think everybody forgot what money is because it’s all plastic. Automatic payroll deposits, direct debit payments at the cash register...it has all changed the way we look at money and debt.

Sorry for the ramble, I could go on for hours...

I appreciate your insightful comments on Gather.com. I hope you don't take offense at my sometimes sharp commentaries on financial concepts, as I have been highlighting the way Americans have been abusing credit in my other posts. I believe truly that credit abuse is rampant in our country. I would like to see American consumers to:
1. Live within their means without excessive borrowing
2. Building up emergency fund, and not rely on credit card to bail them out, and
3. Saving up retirement fund

I am a Certified Financial Counselor, and I've been training people to get out of debt, and building wealth.

Now, to answer your question.
Where I live (Texas), the housing industry is doing relatively well. Prices did not recede as much in the last two years because prices did not go crazy during the housing bubble experienced by other states like California, Florida, and some East Coast states. In our region, an average house would be priced around US$150,000 for a 2,000 sq ft home. This is slightly lower than average home prices for the rest of the country. Property tax in our state is very high – since Texas does not have state income tax, and taxes levied on oil industry brings in a lot of state revenues. I pay around 2.3% of the assessed value for our property tax. I know some residents in other neighborhood

One unknown is the impact of BP oil spill. Many of the petroleum related industries are based in our region. The long term impact of the drilling moratorium may have a negative affect on our economy, and as a result, housing prices may follow the local economic trend. We may also see a rise in foreclosures as a result.

The other unknown is a potential change in our country’s immigration laws. If we see a comprehensive modification to correct many inequalities in our immigration rules, and treat undocumented workers as legalized residents, we may see an influx of migrant workers in this area.

I hope this sheds a little bit of light in your questions.

Just out of curiosity, what is the housing market like in your part of the country? Property taxes, selling prices and so on. We get all kinds of fluff on the news but nothing that really states actual dollars and cents kind of scenarios.

Jeff, I think you need to add more groups to your posting list. Many of your articles would fit in on the various economic/political ones here in gather.