Since the Covid hoax began not only have residential resales been a crazy market but also high end custom construction has been too. That's a niche product we offer and have over 600 of them going. I'm 65 and I've been shocked at the number of people my age who have built or are talking to me about building houses 2 or 3 times the value of the houses they'll be selling. One told me the kids inheritance will be this house. Hopefully they live about 20 more years because they're borrowing 80% of the project cost. I live in a 1,300 SF TH and cannot even imagine the idea of a 5,000 SF new build with a pool, etc.

I don't assume someone is well off until I dig into their finances. A lot of people who make the impression of people who have it made are pay check to pay check. Big pay checks mind you but they have no air if something goes wrong even short term.

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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It's astounding to me how much some of y'all know about your friends' and inlaws' finances.

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Some people will share more than others....

Just a month or so ago we were casually chatting with some neighbor friends at the park while our kids played. I made a joke about bitcoin getting crushed & next thing you know they basically said "Yeah, we have been looking into investing, what do you recommend?"

Within 5 minutes they revealed they have no 401ks, no brokerage, no college accounts for the kids, nothing other than whatever sits in their bank account at any given time... And the worst part of it they didn't seem the least bit bothered by it as if that was normal.

This couple is upper 30's. They just bought a ~4K sq ft home with a pool, drive nice (nothing crazy) cars, 3 little kids, etc.. No idea if they have any debt outside of mortgage as we didn't get into that but wouldn't surprise me knowing how financially illiterate they are.

I've never had conversations like that with my friends/neighbors and can't imagine doing so.

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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It's astounding to me how much some of y'all know about your friends' and inlaws' finances.

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How I picture every guy at the center of every housepoor story shared on here. This is around midnight after his wife and kids have gone to bed about 2-3 hours prior and he's stayed up drinking. At this point, he is looking into the deep end of the pool as a feint cast of light from the landscape uplights on the trees cascades across his face.

Probably 1 out of 3 homes around me right now.

TwoMarksHand said:

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I've found myself in that situation. Neighbor/friend started discussing investing a little. I didn't really elaborate much, especially after he said he was dabbling in crypto.

I found out his dabbling turned into day trading. He ended up losing 20k over a year, which was pretty much all of their non-retirement savings. They are not high income earners to begin with. His wife nearly divorced him.

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And yet online gambling remains illegal in much of the country, but "day trading" is wide open!

MAS444 said:

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I've never had conversations like that with my friends/neighbors and can't imagine doing so.

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Really? My neighbors are not sophisticated enough to talk to. My friends and I share all regarding investing and money.

We talk a lot about investing - but never how much anyone has in the bank, retirement, debt (other than real estate/rates/mortgage type stuff), etc.

Some of the most curious posts I've ever seen on Texags involve posts giving details on rate of savings, portfolio of investments, make and model of car driven, square footage of their home and then asking if they should look at refinancing their loan which is at X%. The rate of the loan would have been information enough.

chris1515 said:

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TwoMarksHand said:

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I've found myself in that situation. Neighbor/friend started discussing investing a little. I didn't really elaborate much, especially after he said he was dabbling in crypto.

I found out his dabbling turned into day trading. He ended up losing 20k over a year, which was pretty much all of their non-retirement savings. They are not high income earners to begin with. His wife nearly divorced him.

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And yet online gambling remains illegal in much of the country, but "day trading" is wide open!

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Not to be obvious, but gambling involves games of pure luck.

I'm going to post this and then be done. Having gotten into the banking business in 1979 I've got "is everyone in debt" stories that would run the thread to 100 pages. Some favorites though.

Guy tells me he has great credit, no debt and makes $250K. I guess he doesn't think he might have his credit checked or income verified in order to get a mortgage or construction loan. Run his credit, charge offs, delinquent student loans, chapter 7 and then a W-2 for $48K. I ask him about it and he says he doesn't know anything about the 14 negative items on his credit and he was just guessing at his income.

Guy applies for a loan and he's self employed. Says his business does 7 figures each year. He gets over his skis and puts a house under contract. We request his tax returns and he hasn't filed since 2018 and wants to know why we can't go off that.

My favorite one here. Guy applies for a refinance loan with what he says is his wife. He's an attorney which is important to this story. We gather his documents and find they're actually divorced. I ask him about that and he says they got back together and still live together and are both on the loan. During the process we come to find out about Dusty who we then find out he is legally married to the attorney. This is a community property state so we let the title company know and they back off insuring the transaction and we send out an email to the attorney, his ex-wife and Dusty. He hits the ceiling because the ex-wife who he says he lives with knows nothing of Dusty, blames us for ruining his life, etc.

Wow I actually like hearing these stories and wish you would continue.

I agree please share more that first guy is a riot

Don't forget a lot of retired military with disability payments. I know a guy that retired from the military at 40 then started a new career after separating. He's late 40's now and pulls about $120k. Wife is a teacher. But on top of that he's probably pulling $4k a month in pension and another $3,800 a month because he's 100% VA disabled. Also pays zero in property tax because of the disability rating.

I actually think it's a good think when people talk about this because those that do have their **** together can hopefully guide or point their friends/family in the right direction. Now, you can't make them make a good decision, but personally I think having open conversations about these can encourage better saving/purchasing behaviors.

jja79 said:

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I'm going to post this and then be done. Having gotten into the banking business in 1979 I've got "is everyone in debt" stories that would run the thread to 100 pages. Some favorites though.

Guy tells me he has great credit, no debt and makes $250K. I guess he doesn't think he might have his credit checked or income verified in order to get a mortgage or construction loan. Run his credit, charge offs, delinquent student loans, chapter 7 and then a W-2 for $48K. I ask him about it and he says he doesn't know anything about the 14 negative items on his credit and he was just guessing at his income.

Guy applies for a loan and he's self employed. Says his business does 7 figures each year. He gets over his skis and puts a house under contract. We request his tax returns and he hasn't filed since 2018 and wants to know why we can't go off that.

My favorite one here. Guy applies for a refinance loan with what he says is his wife. He's an attorney which is important to this story. We gather his documents and find they're actually divorced. I ask him about that and he says they got back together and still live together and are both on the loan. During the process we come to find out about Dusty who we then find out he is legally married to the attorney. This is a community property state so we let the title company know and they back off insuring the transaction and we send out an email to the attorney, his ex-wife and Dusty. He hits the ceiling because the ex-wife who he says he lives with knows nothing of Dusty, blames us for ruining his life, etc.

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Thank goodness I didn't make the list here [2 time customer or jja79]

The backdoor Roth IRA seems to get legendary status on these boards but there's lots of scenarios where they don't make sense.

jja79 said:

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I'm going to post this and then be done. Having gotten into the banking business in 1979 I've got "is everyone in debt" stories that would run the thread to 100 pages. Some favorites though.

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tease