Suze and Me

My Mom loves watching Suze Orman. I do not love Suze Orman, mainly because I am of the mind that people who are over the age of forty should not attempt to use "hip kid" phrases or dress like said "young people" and Suze Orman does both these things. I also didn't like that she threw her "it makes good financial sense" endorsement behind a certain car company a few years ago since that made a major conflict of interest in my mind. In any case, I do own her book for the hip kids, and when my Mom watches her show when I'm home, I'll watch with her.

Saturday's show was about buying real estate. Suze gave a rough guide to inform viewers when they should consider buying a house. The formula she gives is monthly rent, times twelve, times twenty. So, take your yearly rent, multiply it by twenty years, and you should be looking for a property for about that price. As an experiment, I did this this morning, and it turns out I could afford a house/condo that costs $150,000.

Yeah, okay.

Then I decided to see what's going for $150,000 on craigslist in Boston. The results are not pretty. The first ad that comes up is an ad for online forclosed property auctions. Uh-huh. Another choice listing is a two-bedroom trailer in Ayer. My personal favorite is an ad for literal shacks for sale on the South Shore.

If you step outside 128 and head for my home state, things get a little better. A cute 2-bedroom in Providence. But then I'd have to invest in a car and a huge T Pass, so that shoots down all the money I'd save anyway.

I'd also like to know what these people who call Suze do. One girl called, and she was 24-years-old and owned a condo someplace, and she's making about $80,000 a year. What is she doing? How do I get in on that action? I could afford to pay my student loans AND a mortgage with that kind of money.