The new American Dream... One meme to rule them all!

a reply to: reldra

I climbed Colchester Castle once. I was twelve. They have not deported me to my home planet yet!

Hehe!

The good thing about the UK from a geography point of view, is that it is small. This means that one can usually work out where one is, and where one ought to be, with very little preparatory information.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: reldra

I climbed Colchester Castle once. I was twelve. They have not deported me to my home planet yet!

Hehe!

The good thing about the UK from a geography point of view, is that it is small. This means that one can usually work out where one is, and where one ought to be, with very little preparatory information.

I got a Buckingham Palace guard to smile.

I might be done for.

I was 5 when I did all this.

I remember a talking parrot in the restaurant, I think in Treganna Castle, I got it to say bad words.

Yeesh and I though that 540.00 a month on a Mortgage on a 4 bed room 3 bath 2 living room here in texas was bad.

a reply to: onequestion

Can you relocate to another state? My brother lived in CA ( Rancho Cucamonga) and went broke. He then had to come and live with me here in the Dallas, Texas area and found a great job after a few months. Rent may not be the cheapest but you can get a nice, big place for around $800 (depending on the area and amenities you want)

Moving can be scary but the rewards are wonderful if you choose wisely.

Where I live we had a similar problem,, many people moving from interstate and internationally for work
Now the bottoms fallen out of the mining industry, house and rental prices have crashed
3 bedrooms and a bathroom house, $1000 a month
Use to be @ $1500 a month

Happy about that

a reply to: onequestion

Just give up on Cali.

Hell. I work in a peanut factory, in a little Texas town. I am buying my 3 bed 2 bath for less than 800 a month. I bought the land it is on for 3000 bucks back in 07. Yea, it's a boring existence. On the bright side, I have a hell of an internet connection, my own geek room to game to my heart's content, I drive an old car that I love the hell out of. California would have it crushed just for crossing the state line in it.

It's not for everybody, but what is? Just remember, you are only as stuck as you want to be.

Good luck nonetheless.

Around here (Portland, Maine) in the city almost anyone under 30 is living in apartment buildings that went up anywhere from 1800's to 1960's, 4+ room-mates to a rental.

There's no good paying jobs for the average person- and nowhere for them to live.



They're also mostly the types of people cheering on banning firearms, increasing welfare, and increasing minimum wage to the point that it would force the closure of all local businesses (and therefore removing the last of the "good" low paying jobs from the area)

They should be in the streets with torches and pitchforks.

originally posted by: Bobaganoosh
a reply to: onequestion

Just give up on Cali.

Hell. I work in a peanut factory, in a little Texas town. I am buying my 3 bed 2 bath for less than 800 a month. I bought the land it is on for 3000 bucks back in 07. Yea, it's a boring existence. On the bright side, I have a hell of an internet connection, my own geek room to game to my heart's content, I drive an old car that I love the hell out of. California would have it crushed just for crossing the state line in it.

It's not for everybody, but what is? Just remember, you are only as stuck as you want to be.

Good luck nonetheless.

I'm in a 2 bed one bath 820sqft home sitting on .18 acres- costs me about 1500 a month just to wake up here. Add heat in the winter, some cooling in the summer, eating, maintaining my two older vehicles, the various things you just have to own to live here...

Last year, my running expenses came to just over 3700 a month. Only 250 a month of that was 'optional' home improvement costs, as I'm trying to sell this place as soon as possible.

So far this year, my running average on home improvement is $880 a month- more than you're paying for a whole home. A pretty skewed number since I'm wrapping up an expensive project right now and we're only 2.5 months in, but still... a staggering number.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: reldra

Well, for reference, the river Thames, which runs through London, has a mouth which faces into the English Channel. It runs from West to East. So I am on the Eastern side of the U.K., on the North shore of the Thames Estuary.

Your friend lives a good bit North of me, in Yorkshire, whereas I live in Essex.

Boooo

The cool side is the south side of the estury

a reply to: crazyewok

Hehe!

Oh really? Tell me, what can you see from the South side of the estuary, when you look north? The lights of the arcades? Southend Peir, jutting out a mile and a quarter into the Thames? The Casino at Westcliff, or the Cliffs Pavilion theatre?

I only ask, because all I see when I look out over the water, is chimneys spouting who knows what into the atmosphere, and streetlights!

Greetings-

Have You tried looking for a single room rental from a private home? When attending College in SoCal in the mid 80s I was able to find a nice place w/pool for a pittance of what an apartment/condo would cost.

You might also look into a "Night Auditor" position at something like a HolidayInnExpress™ or "handyman" for an elderly couple, these usually include lodging.

namaste

P.S. You know 'think outside of the box'. Have You also done any 'manifestation meditation' to get some help in that area?

originally posted by: texasgirl
a reply to: onequestion

Can you relocate to another state? My brother lived in CA ( Rancho Cucamonga) and went broke. He then had to come and live with me here in the Dallas, Texas area and found a great job after a few months. Rent may not be the cheapest but you can get a nice, big place for around $800 (depending on the area and amenities you want)

Moving can be scary but the rewards are wonderful if you choose wisely.

I'm considering moving to Texas.

a reply to: onequestion

Texas would be a good choice if you can find a job. Beautiful thing about Texas is that one of the primary industries here is the Texas Department of Corrections, Institutional Division, i.e., the Prison system. Texas is known as "The Incarceration State, "'We've Built One For YOU!'" Anyway, the Prison system is ALWAYS hiring. Beauty of that is, that while they don't pay all that well, the Prisons are located all over the State and usually near smallish towns with cheap housing.

Anyway, if you're determined to stay in Cali, I wanted to fill you in on a "Texas Oil Patch" housing solution. Many times we have the "oil" boom, (followed on of course by the oil bust) and housing gets real scarce in the areas where the most drilling is going on. As a result, a lot of guys buy travel trailers and park them at RV parks and live out of their Trailers as they work the Drilling Rigs.

So.....I dunno if they have RV parks in Cali or not or whether any would be close enough to where ever you're working, but you might want to look into that as at least a temporary solution to your housing problem.

a reply to: onequestion

Heh,

Here you can rent a room in a 2-bedroom place for about $800. A one bedroom will set you back about $1,100...and NOT in a particularly nice part of town. So, roommate is needed if you want to have a roof over your head for under a grand a month.

The minimum wage here is $8.75 ... but most places (retail for example) will pay more. So, lets say you make $12/hr ... if you work a 40-hour week, that's $960 a paycheck or $1920 a month ... assuming NOTHING is taken out of that. If you made $12/hr that comes out to $23,040 a year.

For 2015, someone making that would fall under the 15% tax bracket:



So, 15% of their annual income of $23,040 is $3,456.

$23,040
-$3,456
-----------
$19,584 - per year net income

Now, divide that by 12 months, and you get $1,632. Further, divide that again by 2 to get what each paycheck would look like, and you get: $816.

Now, we've established that just a room to sleep in with a toilet and someplace to prepare food will cost anywhere from $800-$1100 minimum, that looks like half of your yearly take-home income. Then we have to add other expenses:

-food
-utilities (electric can run $50-$70 a month here for an apartment)
-gasoline
-car insurance (Anchorage has an abysmal public transit system, a car is pretty much required)
-student loan debt?

So if half your monthly income is going to rent, you'd be left with about $816, which comes out to $204 a week to live off of, or $30 a day. Now, if you are really pinching pennies you can do it ... but what happens if something unexpected happens?
The above is of course assuming you are a single person with no kids.

I'm also being rather conservative. Gas can run you $40 every two weeks if you live in town just for to/from work (it's what I pay) ... Rent is probably going to be higher than $800 too. Let's run those numbers with some conservative expenses:

So, roughly $80 in gasoline a month...$60 in electricity a month...$50-60 car insurance per month...that's $190 a month. So let's take our monthly income of $1,632...

$1,632
-800 (rent)
-80 (gas)
-60 (elect)
-50 (insurance)
-------------------
$642 per month left over, or $160 a week to buy food, clothes, toilet paper, soap. And food prices? Ha!

Here's a snip from this week's grocery store flyer here in Anchorage, AK. Let's see...



Yes, that really does say $6.49 for a pound of ground beef. $4.99 for a pack of hot dogs. Orange juice?



$3-$6.99 a container.

That's insane. I just ran that fictional person through the SNAP calculator. With no outstanding child support, a car worth $2,000, an apartment of $800/mo, with a checking account as an asset of $100....

Not eligible for food stamps. I kind of expected that, but that person is still one misfortune from homelessness. I also checked, as a single person with no children, that person would also not qualify for an earned-income tax credit from the IRS. The cut off for a single wage earner without kids is $14,820/year gross or less.

Look, even if everyone had a masters degree..someone would still have to stock our shelves like our fictional retail worker.

And all of this isn't even someone making minimum wage here in my city! This is someone making $3.25 MORE per hour.

It's getting harder and harder out there each year...

originally posted by: lordcomac
increasing minimum wage to the point that it would force the closure of all local businesses (and therefore removing the last of the "good" low paying jobs from the area)

How can a job be considered "good" if it only pays $7.50 an hour? That doesn't make any sense.

SoCal is belongs to illegals. Walk home pay is untaxed, government handouts in housing, food, welfare,healthcare, insurance premiums ect.

You pay for that. I don't hate immigrants but the system with illegals is beyond ridiculous. It's not the fault of the illegals, everyone takes advantage of what they can get, it's our politicians. Democrats want the votes, which they're now registering illegals in Cali to do since they just made it voting registration automatic with the license they give them. Republicans want to keep cheap labor for the businesses that fund them. They're all full of # which is one of the many reason's I'll roll the dice with Trump. We need to worry about helping the people here before we worry about everyone else.

We need Rental Pods like they have in China.

I'll take a safe place over space.

www.apartmenttherapy.com...

How about "coffin" apts in Japan?

kotaku.com...

originally posted by: EightTF3
SoCal is belongs to illegals. Walk home pay is untaxed, government handouts in housing, food, welfare,healthcare, insurance premiums ect.

I am not an illegal.

And I very much enjoy the mix of my neighborhood.

a reply to: onequestion

Have no idea why you are in California. The flight from there has been on wholesale since 2009. And with it, the opportunities.

In Texas, meanwhile, they have come to set up shop. Unemployment is low (5% statewide), with everyone I know from across the state telling me that labor is their number 1 problem.

If you prefer a more "liberal" political climate, Austin is your place. You like more southwest culture? San Antonio. Like stuffy suits? Dallas. Etc, etc, etc.

We literally have it all. Except skiing. We borrow Ruidoso from our New Mexico neighbors for that.

originally posted by: onequestion

originally posted by: 727Sky
As much as I used to like California their taxes on top of the cost of trying to find a place to live just ruined it for me and that was back in the late 80s. Good luck !

Oh I'm getting over it really quick.

It's low on opportunity and high on cost.

Then stop trying to become a famous actor!