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We have enough to keep us soooo busy. We are still rebuilding them from sandy. There are more than a dozen in nassau county. They call them wastewater treatment plants and most towns have their own facility.
Last edited by mathjak107; 03-30-2014 at 07:05 PM..
Talk about a low COL area! I can't sell out and go anywhere. The calculator mentioned earlier had very few places with lower COL (and for some reason, although Hutchinson and Dodge City, KS were listed, they left out Ft Collins, Boulder, a few other places I'd be interested in). I moved here from Pebble Beach, and had I stayed there and "grown up" with the real estate, I could live there. I guess I still could, but would abnegate other things important to me. Brings up many issues; like how much to sink into a house that will never be worth much, etc.
As for the original topic, lots of food for thought. The uncertainty is why, at 67, I'm still working. Had I retired at 62, it would have been a disaster (2008). And I've been 100% equities until my dad died and left me his stash of bonds (about 10% of my invested worth). I figure if I have riskier investments that lose, I'll have to work forever. If I don't risk, I'll have to work forever. Fortunately, I'm OK with that (well, I was 'til the world went to hell.....), but the good news is that if my nest egg grows, I can retire with the financial security that is so important to my well being.
I lived and worked in some very expensive areas (Los Angeles, and Long Island), medium areas (Chicago and Cleveland) and inexpensive areas (Kansas City, Phoenix, and Little Rock). I was better off financially living in the lost cost areas. Salaries were higher in the high cost areas, but not high enough to make up for the difference in cost of living. Also progressive taxes kill you when living in high cost areas. Forget about things like tuition assistance. There is no adjustment for the area of the country.
When I moved from Phoenix to Long Island, I got a 40% increase in income and took a huge step backwards financially. I could barely afford a fixer upper house. Plenty of people here work 2 full time jobs or a full time job and 20-30 hours elsewhere.
i can tell you i live in a rent stabilized apartment in queens and that is exactly my pretax retirement budget .
120k and we live a pretty normal nothing special lifestyle on it..
we do have money beyond what we set as a budget that pays for our hobbies and trips when we do them but we keep it out of the retirement budget for daily living. if i include it we would need even more.
I looked at the link to the article and I understand it as NY requires a salary of 120k as opposed to a Houston salary of 50k for the same lifestyle.
So the same worker lets say a nurse would need that much more to do what she does in NY as opposed to Houston.
A single earning 120k will probably pay 30k more in Federal and SS tax than a salary of 50k.
That's probably part of the difference.
Any thoughts?
We trouble shoot and sell variable frequency drives that control the speeds of big motors on pumps and fans.
We do lots of the sewage treatment plants and water pumping plants in long island . We also custom build the control panels that operate these pumps and fans.
Small world! My lab at work has a "water tunnel", which circulates water in fairly precise conditions through a rectangular section, where various instruments measure loads, speeds and so forth. We just upgraded the pump (axial single-stage impeller) to a 8000 gpm unit. The manufacturer delivered the pump with the clearance between the impeller blades and the case out of tolerance; so, back for repair. We also need to get a VFD for a 30 hp motor.
I looked at the link to the article and I understand it as NY requires a salary of 120k as opposed to a Houston salary of 50k for the same lifestyle.
So the same worker lets say a nurse would need that much more to do what she does in NY as opposed to Houston.
A single earning 120k will probably pay 30k more in Federal and SS tax than a salary of 50k.
That's probably part of the difference.
Any thoughts?
taxes are always a factor and in nyc we have both state and nyc taxes . however our property taxes are some of the lowest in the nation.
Last edited by mathjak107; 03-31-2014 at 04:16 AM..
Too bad there are almost no sewage plants on Long Island. You would have been buried in work.
here is a list of just the ones in nassau county ,suffolk has a bunch too.
City of Long Beach, Jones Beach, Village of Cedarhurst, Village of Lawrence, Village of Great Neck, Port Washington Water Pollution Control District, Belgrave Water Pollution Control District, Great Neck Water Pollution Control District, Greater Atlantic Beach Water Reclamation District, and the Oyster Bay Sewer District. Together, these ten facilities process 15% of the County’s effluent.
Six municipal sewer districts collect sewage and pump it to County facilities to be treated, including the Villages of Garden City, Freeport, Mineola, Hempstead, Roslyn, and Rockville Centre.
the biggest is baypark and glen cove water pollution control, they do the lions share.
During the course of this discussion my oil-fired, hot water heater stopped working. I put in a service call expecting to arrange a repair visit on Monday. Instead the on call tech was driving by the house and did the repair (clogged filter and fuel line) immediately. Less than an hours work and a $7 filter cost me $300. I did not get charged for emergency or weekend coverage because "we are good customers."
Kansas? If you weren't charged for emergency or weekend coverage, your guy basically got $300 an hour. And you're a good customer?
My plumber gets $50 service call and $60 an hour and he's great. I better start thinking about putting him on my xmas list.
we run emergency service for pumps,motors ,vfd's and trouble shooting motor control applications in the same area as jrkliny.
in our business here in long island a saturday call is 225.00 an hour and sunday is 300.00.
our normal hourly rate is around 150-160 per hour . that is billed point to point so customer is charged travel time. we have a 4 hour min charge as well on any calls or start ups.
some calls require so much technical expertise they are billed as a job and not hourly and we can get get as much as 500 bucks an hour when it is broken down.
like the old joke about about the old time mechanic.
he gets called out on a service call. he takes out a hammer , hits the machine 2x and the machine is running fine. he says that is 300.00 bucks.
the customer says can i have an itemized bill?
sure , the mechanic writes down - 2 hits with the hamer 10 bucks each. knowing where to hit with the hammer 280.00 bucks.
our local car dealer gets 135.00 an hour now... my son who is a corporate attorney gets 600.00.
don't ask what the implant surgeon who put in my 6 dental implants got when broken down hourly.
it had to be about 3k an hour.
Last edited by mathjak107; 04-07-2014 at 04:13 AM..
we run emergency service for pumps,motors ,vfd's and trouble shooting motor control applications in the same area as jrkliny.
in our business here in long island a saturday call is 225.00 an hour and sunday is 300.00.
our normal hourly rate is around 150-160 per hour . that is billed point to point so customer is charged travel time. we have a 4 hour min charge as well on any calls or start ups.
some calls require so much technical expertise they are billed as a job and not hourly and we can get get as much as 500 bucks an hour when it is broken down.
like the old joke about about the old time mechanic.
he gets called out on a service call. he takes out a hammer , hits the machine 2x and the machine is running fine. he says that is 300.00 bucks.
the customer says can i have an itemized bill?
sure , the mechanic writes down - 2 hits with the hamer 10 bucks each. knowing where to hit with the hammer 280.00 bucks.
our local car dealer gets 135.00 an hour now... my son who is a corporate attorney gets 600.00.
don't ask what the implant surgeon who put in my 6 dental implants got when broken down hourly.
it had to be about 3k an hour.
I don't understand why so many people think everybody else should work for free, but themselves. Starting at the bottom, they whine about welfare but complain about raising the minimum wage or giving people who work for low wages some benefits to make working pay more than welfare. They complain about teachers and law enforcement getting paid wages in accordance with their education and responsibility. They complain about the cost of a doctor's visit without ever considering that that doctor had to pay for an education and has office overhead to maintain as well as office staff to pay.
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