Eyes on housing

Coming to you live from 32.717625,-117.143281

I brought my eyes in yesterday for their 3-month-post-zap-checkup. Everything seems OK so far. Right eye is around 20, left is closer to 15. Would be nice to have them the same, but I’m happy anyway. Judging the signed photograph and the entertainment tonight clip looping in the waiting room, my doctor zapped Jessica Simpson’s eyes as well. Whoopidiedoo.


E-filed our fed taxes this morning. I was wrong, it only costs money to efile state taxes with them. So as long as you only do fed, its all free. Gotta love free. Now I just have to efile the CA taxes on the CA FTB site, also for free. Did I mention I love free?


I found this msn money article interesting. It is supposed to tell you not to bite off too much of a house, but living in San Diego it seems almost like a suggestion to never buy one in the current market:

* Inflation. Rapidly rising prices in the 1970s and early 1980s meant you could count on hefty annual raises. Today, you can?t rely on double-digit income boosts to make your mortgage payment less of a burden each year.

* Two-income couples. A generation ago, single-income families were more common. If the breadwinner lost a job, the other spouse could go to work to save the house. With more two-income families needing both paychecks to make the mortgage payment, there?s no one on the sidelines to take up the slack — unless you put the kids to work.

* The lending industry. Thirty years ago, it was pretty tough to get a mortgage for more than you could really afford. Today, it?s fairly commonplace. More lenders have loosened their criteria, knowing that the vast majority of their borrowers will do whatever it takes to pay their mortgage — even if it means trashing the rest of their financial lives.

* Retirement. A much bigger proportion of the workforce was covered by traditional, defined-benefit pensions 30 years ago — which means they didn?t have to save massive amounts of money on their own to have a decent retirement. Today, the onus is typically on you to carve enough out of your budget to fund 401(k)s and IRAs.

Of course I am overreacting here, but it does seem like everyone in this town is betting on the housing game, even though the rules have changed.