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Because of budget cuts my local public library is only open on a short schedule. It opens at 10am and is only open past 5pm on Wednesdays. A working person won't get to use much internet will he? The computers in there are usually occupied whenever I go.
The cost of living without phones is high when everyone else has them. It's hard to communicate without them - people communicate through facebook messages, text, etc... People don't call anymore. No one in my generation has a home phone that I know of. None. I never had a home phone.. the last landline phone I had was in my college dorm room it came with the room. Seriously, cell phones have been around for a couple decades now. I have a friend who resisted getting a cell phone and when he had a car break-down out in the middle of nowhere he wished he'd had one.
Ballpark estimate for what I've spent for cell phone service in my lifetime... around 13k. About 75 a month * 15 years. I never buy premium phones, just choose from the ones that come with the plan. I pay more now but for both my wife and I; it's still around 75 per person. I pay for cable when I can afford it, cut it when times are tough. It's not driving us broke.
Sure back in the 80s when I was a kid, my dad only paid 35-40 for one phone for the household. But when we wanted to make just one long distance call it would add $5.00. When we needed information it would add $0.75 or something per inquiry. Now long distance is not even in people's vocabulary and the kind of information I can find on my phone is exponentially more than I could get by calling the old information line and having them charge me per call.
To put this into terms that might have made sense in the past, trying to live without a cell phone today would be trying to live without an automobile after the 50s. Before the 50s they had streetcars in most cities. You didn't really "need" a car. After the 50s the cities tore their streetcar lines up and paved over them. You could still survive without a car but you were going to live a limited life. Or only using telegraphs & letters because you refused to get a home phone... imagine how hard communication would have been.
Now, can you live and breathe without a cell? Of course. Homeless people are living and breathing, for the moment. Hermits who live out in the boonies live and breathe without it. But you will not be full participant in modern life, I guarantee it. If you are going to build a social network and participate in society on its current terms, you need one. You miss out. The same way people missed out in the 50s if the only way they communicated was by letter.
I carried a pager for work for a long time... it worked everywhere... and changed the battery once over 4 to 6 weeks.
Cell Phones are my frustration... I can be in the building where I work and the phone goes to voicemail... this is a company furnished cell phone... it also doesn't work where I live.
Having a Cell has caused no end to grief... if it goes to Voicemail it means I have no coverage or I'm driving... I don't own a personal cell but I have had the same landline phone for 35 years...
I understand that seller financing is my only option; but I regard that and 'incredible opportunity' to be mutually exclusive. In Portland you could put a gutted shell on the market and a bidding war would commence within hours.
Location, Location, Location...
I just read the Jeep headquarters building in Detroit may be razed... it was used until 2009 when Jeep was sold.
The property is 35 acres and 1.4 million square feet of building...
Let me say this again... 35 acres and 1.4 million square feet of building...
There was one single bidder last year with a bid of $500... yes, $500 and that bid was withdrawn at the last minute...
1.4 million square feet of building on 35 acres would not even bring $500
Wrong, just wrong. Kato Kaelin was able to live in Brentwood; if you have the right connections you can live in lofty environments without a boatload of money or even owning anything.
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." -- Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
When my wife and I were first married, we bought an uninhabitable house on 5 acres. We lived in a 14 foot travel trailer for 3 months while I placed a used single wide mobile home next to the house. Then I went to work evenings and weekends completely gutting the house, rewiring it, replumbing it and refinishing it. Eight years later we sold it for 3x the purchase price, which made a 25% down payment on our current home, leaking roof, limping water system and all. Our first summer I rebuilt the roof, repainted the house and repiped the water system. It cost us a lot of movie nights, when I was too tired to do anything but fall into bed, but it was a way of getting something I didn't have the money to pay for.
A starter home is going to be a dump. New home owners need to shop distressed property, not model homes.
This is pretty standard where I live. The way you get your foot in the door is to buy a house for the value of the land it's sitting on and put in the sweat equity to turn it into a functional house.
I think an awful lot of people who grew up in nice middle class homes somehow expect to be able to buy that same home as their first home. It's never worked that way.
so a person renting a room in the Bay Area can have no money left after paying room rent and be NOT POOR at the same time.
yeah, that makes sense.
But that same person can pick up and move to, say, Buttonwillow or Compton or California City or San Bernardino and then have plenty of money left after paying room rent.
That same person would not be rational if, being a total economic failure, they voluntarily elected to stay a total economic failure.
And yet my mom has done just fine without ever having access to a cell phone or internet for the past 89 years.
"Doing just fine" needs to be defined. I could not function in life without email and a cell phone. Obviously my life is quite different than your mother's life. Whether consciously or not, your mother is accepting certain limitations; they are easy to accept if that's always the way you lived. If you've never had indoor plumbing, using an outhouse will not seem unusual.
And yet my mom has done just fine without ever having access to a cell phone or internet for the past 89 years.
How many non-menial jobs and how many rentals has she applied for in the modern internet age? (i.e. say the past 20 years)
I would have a hard time finding a job or a room today if I did not have daily access to CL. Rooms for rent and menial jobs here are often posted to and removed from CL in lass than a full morning or afternoon.
I bought a FHA home in a bad area... the sellers wanted out after two break ins... all I had to do was assume their loan... total costs for a 3 bedroom 2 bath home in Pittsburg CA was about $1000 and I was the owner... they lived their 6 weeks and the pregnant wife went to live with the in-laws... that is how upset she was...
Immediately moved in and put bars on the windows and a security system... so it was basically as close to a zero out of pocket purchase of a single family home in California and the home was nice and had passed a rigorous FHA inspection... just a bad neighborhood for a few years.
FHA assumption did not require credit scores... or approval.
I benefited from seller financing and assuming a loan in 1980 when interest rates were unbelievably high. Those were the good old days when loans could be assumed but that has, for the most part, come and gone. The S&L crisis in the early 1980's changed the ballgame.
Seller financing is still a viable option but I don't hear much of it these days. I think it is a viable way to earn a decent fixed-rate return for a seller willing to carry paper but I would want at least some decent down payment money and that is the problem for many; no down payment money.
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