Amen, brother.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Next year my mortgage goes away and I'll be debt free, completely. And I'll retire. Coincidence?

Congrats!

Coincidence or well played.... maybe a heaping of both.

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On some nights I still believe that a car with the fuel gauge on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. - HST

1983 300SD - 305000
1984 Toyota Landcruiser - 190000
1994 GMC Jimmy - 203000

https://media.giphy.com/media/X3nnss8PAj5aU/giphy.gif

Whoops, I didn't notice it had been resurrected.

Do you even still have the Odyssey? If so, why, too much trouble to delete it from the sig?

Thanks, Bot. It's been nearly 5 years since the OP and I'm still in the black. Far from comfortable (of course being a pessimist doesnt help) but still out of the hole.

__________________

1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)

Yes, 'cuz it's paid for! Only have about 120K on it (my Suburban has 245K ) so I'm planning/hoping for another 2 years out of it while I save up for its replacement. Probably a 2-3 yo current generation Odyssey with 30-40K on it.

__________________

1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)

Congrats again Bill!


I have nearly been able to pay off my student loans, I should work a bit harder on that. Never had much debt other than that. Truck and boat paid for, CC debt nothing really mostly paid in full every month.

Business lines now...have some mortgages. But interest rates are low and the deals are good so what can you do.

__________________
2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Congrats! Even if it is 5 years late. I work as a credit analyst for a large bank reviewing credit reports all day and the amount of debt out there is staggering.

LOL! Hell, I probably even congratulated you back then!

Another advantage of getting old is being able to enjoy the same story every time you hear it!

Glad it's continuing to work for you.

Bot

Congratulations!

I am too and now it seems easy to stay this way. I wish I had done it earlier.

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Without all the abuses under the credit banner the economy would be finished by now. So it would do us little good if everyone acted responsibly. Or in their own interests.

Credit is a requirement for business. It really was never developed for private citizens and has little upside for the individual by even existing. As a general rule money borrowed at the individual level almost never generates a return. Houses may have been an exception but factoring in true inflation it might not have really even been there...

I have always visualised heavy personal credit use as being on an endless treadmill. Unfortunatly mankind has not learnt that a treadmill can speed up to the point you can no longer be on it. Consumer debt growth is now impacting the banks current credit ratings for example. This is far from a good omen.

Living well within ones means seems to pay off generally. The only downside is there are times when you get to pay off old obligations with newer inflated currency otherwise. You seldom are able to take advantage of that if living in a conservative way.

As for older guys like myself we have our own issues. Trusting a system or individual or company or government to operate for your welfare kind of goes against human nature. Our system is not structured that way. So many of us older couples land up sitting on a lot of cash that at best earns enough to stay with general inflation.

Another alternative to debt is learning how to buy. In my experience few have developed the art form of doing so. It can and has developed into an art form. Many are not truly aware of this.

You can actually learn how to evaluate and engineer how you spend your income. There are societies that have disiplined themselves to spend about half of their income as a national standard. Places like Japan and China come to mind.

It may not be as easy in north america but we attempt to do this. It seems to be enabled by astute buying and perhaps a couple of other things. We still buy what we need and have all the conventional stuff. This was the only way a couple like us got off the treadmill early in life. I had plenty of personal motavation in that I wanted to be free. Or at least able to do what I wanted to do.

Reciently I had to put a replacement car for the wife on paper to get it out of a dealership. I really did not know if I even still had a credit rating. Appears that somehow or other I have excellent credit still.

The stealerships want a kickback from a financial institutions or no sale on a used vehicle. They would take a higher price as compensation though I imagine. So in todays world you never talk cash price in some dealings. Even though I paid the contract out with no penalty apparently the dealer still gets the finance rebate.

Slavery is earning just enough to pay your todays obligations and having enough strength left to repeat it tomorrow. Freedom to me is not having to work to put food on the table. Plus having some personal family security within reason. Total security is a total illusion.

North america has too high a percentage of slaves in my opinion that just do not know any better. Or even realise that is their status basically.

To me it is a carrot and stick type of thing the earlier you get yourself in financial shape. The earlier you can get off the treadmill.

I totally fail to understand why there are not part time evening schools for people to learn different ways of dealing with one of the most important areas of our existance. I do have some suspicions of why that form of education would be frowned upon though.

Our system needs slaves under any guise to enable what is. Propaganda decieves the masses in many ways. You might have to be a slave for awhile to get out from under. It is still a persons choice if they want to remain one. Spending money smarter seems to always pay some form of dividend.

A couple of reasonable examples. Your income indicates you can qualify for a house valued a x dollars. So you seek out a house at that price point. You may have just brought yourself into economic slavery. The price of the house in relationship to your earnings has been manipulated by credit availability in general anyways. True value is an obsolete concept other than under certain circumstances it can catch individuals.

You need a car as we all do. You buy at the top end of what you feel you can afford. You have just purchased a rapidly depreciating item. An almost total liability that is going to cost you dearly compounded by finance charges etc.

Instead buy what you can truly afford or some deal that is less punishing. You will still lose in general but at a rate that is far more comforatable and perhaps affordable.. My own current daily driver is been in my possession for about three years. It is reliable and has cost little in maintenace.

Cost less than the sales tax on a new vehicle when I aquired it. Sales tax here is 15 percent but includes one hundred percent paid for medical care. The car will probably still remain reliable for another year. Because used car prices have escallated so much in that period of time I might get most of our purchase cost of that car back. It was an auction house purchase.

The replacement is in sight. The money saved by buying a one year old toyota for the wife with less than five K total miles on it. Instead of brand new. Pays for an older jetta tdi with lowish miles for the year.

The toyota was cheap because you could get a car with no apparent interest charges for about the same if the toyota was financed. In otherwords not an easy proposition for a dealer to move. so the low price reflects that.

People do not stop and think that the interest on the new car is just hidden in the price. Certainly it is historically low but it is still there. Otherwise on brand new purchases there would not be a fifteen hundred dollar rebate for cash or more.

I do not need the tdi car right now as a daily driver but am working on aquiring it. The wife will accumulate little milage on that toyota over the course of the next two years. So we will still possibly see most of our low cost back at that time. We tend to buy brands as cheap as possible that have known good residual values at the end of our ownership. That is in comparison to the majority of brands.

Keeping us in low cost reliable daily drivers is not an absolute requirement. Still if it can be done with a little effort so why not? We far from penny pinch and some costs of living are almost fixed.

Not all that many though if you get into it. Our high speed internet is part of a package that includes phones and the televison. After a year they always boost it up to 180.00 a month. My wife goes to work on them and always gets it reduced to 99.00 per month for another year. Fifteen minutes or so of her time nets a savings of 960.00 a year after tax. You hit your hydro cost if high in your area by simple household changes. The way I do it has a high cost reward ratio.

Keep most your real estate out of high cost areas is good for valuations. A simular house to our main one is worth substantially more three miles out of the town limits. Simply because the taxes are perhaps twenty percent or less of what they are in town. We save aditionally by having no metered water or sewage hook up as ongoing costs as well.

I have developed a habit of sourcing consumables for projects from offshore sources. This saves a bundle over time as well. Some items I have to stock because I will need them yesterday.. Overall though gives me a many thousands of dollar savings over the year. There is no quality issue as they are the same products sold in north america anyways. Some I have local retailers sell as well to drive my actual costs of what I require even lower.

I canot get into all we do but suffice to say it is at least the same as at least doubling our income. It is rare enough that amoungst all the people we know there may be one other person practicing these forms of economy even near our level.

This methology has not evolved for us by being smart. Perhaps the wife is but I am not. I simply clued in when it became apparent that I was little more than becoming an economic slave to the system when young.

There is nothing wrong with working. I still do by choice at seventy in a way. Doing just what I want to do and enjoy. Just make sure to maximise the worth of what you do for yourself.

Spending intelligently can get you off the treadmill faster than any other way I can think of. Once an individual gets totally familiar with the concept it becomes a hard habit to break even if the need is no longer there. I have always suspected that we have a few members on site with pretty much the same habits in one form or another..

To get clear of consumer debt as the thread starter is doing means he already is on some kind of different road. This can be the start of a completly different existance over time. The effort so far is to be commended.

Bot- what are the property taxes like in LA? I am also debt free, and own 2 houses, but the property taxes in California are rising every year despite the drop in property values. They keep adding "fees" and I don't see how I will be able to keep up if I ever retire. I was 42 when I realized my dream of owning a home outright, and thought I would never have to worry again, but 8 years later I am not so sure. I currently pay over 8K a year in property taxes, and with the democratic majority in both houses of the Ca. legislature, it looks like the sky is the limit on new "fees". Recently we got hit with a new "fire prevention fee" of $150 per habitable dwelling for properties in rural areas. This "fee" is supposedly for "fire prevention", but it goes into the states general fund! As I am a Firefighter myself, I am fully aware that my department will never see a thin dime from this "fee", nor will any of the other rural departments in Ca. From what I can see, It is only a matter of time before the state of Ca. basically says "hand over your wallet". Other than the humidity I really liked Louisiana when I was stationed there.

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1984 300TD 1981 240D

Excellent post. I can remember back in 1988 when we were considering purchasing a house. We went to a bank to get pre-approved for a mortgage. I was astounded at the amount the bank qualified us for. It was 3 or 4 times more than what I was willing to pay or what we needed to spend. Real estate agents simply assumed without question that we would spend that total amount and that we would want to spend that much. When I kept directing them to houses at 1/3 the amount they would look at us like we were deranged. Lucky for me I had been raised in a community of religious wackos so appearing deranged didn't bother me in the slightest. We ended up paying cash for a house with the amount that the bank and real estate agents expected us to use as a down payment.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

We have what's called a "homestead exemption" which deducts the first $125k (IIRC) from taxation except within municipalities which vote to withdraw the exemption. In California exempting $125k or so may not seem like a big deal but our mean housing prices are less than half of California's. So homeowners don't pay much tax unless they live in a city.

Businesses pay the brunt of the property taxes, but not forestry or agriculture as those too have hefty deductions and exemptions.

Every couple of years some genius in the legislature suggests repealing the Homestead Exemption. Then a bolt of blue lightning strikes him dead on the floor. The other legislators walk away whistling loudly like they thought the suggestion was dumb.

Incidentally, the Homestead Exemption was instituted under Huey Long because the oligarchy that ran this state from New Orleans was bleeding the remains of the middle class and the huge number of poor people in order to pay for their bribes and kickbacks and brother-in-law projects. Long used the blatant abuse of the rich against the poor during the 1927 flood as a cause celebre in his run for governor. Long promised and delivered a lot of debt relief on the middle class and poor by shifting taxes onto the wealthy and onto major businesses.

Long built more public schools than any previous Louisiana governor and built schools for "colored" (African Americans) from public funds. He campaigned for black votes -- unheard of!

Long also built a lot of bridge and paved a lot of roads. Not a big deal in most states, but when you live in a state dissected by swamps, rivers, bayous and marshes .... bridges are a godsend to the poor people who cannot get their farm produce to market. Who got it to market before Huey Long? Why, the plantation owners.

"Plantation owners? Didn't they disappear with the Civil War?"

No. After the Civil War carpetbaggers moved south and seized the plantations from the previous owners. Particularly hard hit were the plantations owned by the "Creoles of Color".

The carpetbagger plantation owners were some of the biggest proponents of Jim Crow. Their descendents' depredatious behavior brought Louisiana Huey Long.

But I digress.

Louisiana taxes are burdensome to business, heavy on wealthy and light on the poor. The current governor is arguing to do-away with income tax and go to some sort of VAT. To me, a VAT is thoroughly disingenuous -- the buyer never knows the true cost of the tax. But that's a story for another time.

You have to average the trend of yearly increases in your area and add on what way you think the wind will blow. This increasing property taxes tendancy in many juristictions as I have too noticed is far from funny.

That many areas have expanded their local governments or they have taken on too much debt in our names. Well aware that we property owners are a captive audiance.

You could approach the powers that be and find out if any contigency plans are in place for older or retired property owning people. Our towns locally are being hit hard. Out in the county where we live increases are very moderate. For us retired folk all personal property assesments are capped for years now until the next purchaser gets the properties.

The mill rate can move around but so far is staying pretty stable in our county. We pay less than twenty percent of the towns taxes. Perhaps three miles down the road. The town tried to annex this area but failed. It is felt they would like to try again but at the same time would still expect to fail again now. The county put up a real battle to keep our tax base area. The town is now fully cognizant that the battle would occur again.

The other obvious solution is to find a way to increase your retirement income. Or move to an area that you would feel more financially comforatable in. This problem that has errupted has far from run it's course in my opinion. If our house was inside the local towns limits we would give serious consideration to selling it.