by Sandy Sand
It’s no secret that the economy is bad for most of us, while others have fallen into a black hole of debt.
Where yesterday they could pay their bills; today they can’t, even after selling off everything of value that they possess.
That is…until they remember that long forgotten, dusty deed to a burial plot.
From ashes to ashes; from dust to dust, and for some the dust on the deed is a safety net to buy them a little time to recover from their economic ills.
So it is in Southern California where the price of land has always sold at an inflated premium.
More and more people in California, as well as across the country, are selling off their burial plots make ends meet or to keep their heads above drowning in indebtedness.
Like all over-inflated acreage, burial plots in Southern California before the economic downturn were selling for between $3,000 and $21,000, with a mean price of $12,000.
The average plot is 6-feet by 3-feet or 18-square-feet, and there are 43,560 square feet to an acre, which if laid side by side and not allowing for walk-around room, means every acre could accommodate 2,420 plots.
If the plots were to sell for the average price of $12,000, each acre would be worth $2,904,000.
In any man’s pocketbook that is a lot of money.
In a bit of irony, for one Los Angeles woman, who found herself suddenly evicted with the distinct possibility of being forced to live on the street, her grave situation was her lifeline, but at a heavy cost in the deflated value of all real estate.
According to Baron Chu, owner of Plot brokers, plots are selling for 25-cents on the dollar.
The burial plot she owned was originally purchased for $6,800, which she sold for a paltry $500.
“ But,” Chu said, “it allowed her to move into a hotel for a month where she can live and look for work. It kept her out of Skid Row."
There was no follow-up in the Daily News story, so there is no way of knowing if a month and $500 was enough time and money to allow her to dig her way out of her financial mess.
For her sake, and the thousands of Americans like her, who managed to be productive citizens up to now…let us hope so.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11364444
Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Bad Economy Trickles Up; Good Economy Does Not Trickle Down
by Sandy Sand
Aaaaaw. Isn’t that just too bad.
Even the wealthiest are tightening their belts.
Welcome to the real world.
According to SpendingPulse, luxury sales dropped nearly 35 percent at the beginning of December as compared to the same week last year, and were also down 23 percent for the five previous weeks.
High-end stores and the manufacturers of the brands they carry are feeling the pinch, too. It’s not like no luxury items aren’t being purchased; they are. The wealthy are just buying fewer of them.
Tuff. Things are rough all over.
I lived through Ronald Reagan’s trickle down economics and all I saw was greed, the wealthier getting richer, prices go up, companies swallowed up by mergers and acquisitions then chopped up and sold off and a huge loss of jobs.
All that was really swell for most of us.
That led to global economics, outsourcing of jobs, the death of our manufacturing base, rise in prices and even more loss of jobs.
I never understood why companies like Nike and Mattel outsourced all their manufacturing to cheap labor countries, yet the prices of their good never came down; in many cases they went up.
Global domination is nothing new in the diamond market either.
While diamonds were never a girl’s best friend regardless of what the song said, they were the best little pals of De Beers Group, which is also feeling the pain of the tanking economy.
I can’t begin to say how much my heart goes out to De Beers, which has artificially controlled the price of diamonds worldwide for years. Diamond-rich Russia has vaults filled with billions of the little gems from the precious to the industrial.
If Russia were to released even a small portion of them, a diamond would have less value than a zircon on the open market, which are their real value anyway.
Although the rich haven’t stopped spending altogether, they’re buying fewer pieces of jewelry, yachts, furs, cars or whatever their little hearts desire.
Don’tcha really feel sorry for the Vanderbucks of the world?
They may be making do with fewer diamonds, but they’ll still never have to worry about paying the mortgage; taking their kids to the doctor; choosing between cheap hamburger or a prescription; giving up faithful Fido because they can no longer afford to feed or vet him; choosing between turning on the heat or A/C and freezing or boiling to death; or any of the little financial decisions most of us have dealt with on a daily basis for most of our lives.
No. They’ll never have to make those choices.
Welcome to our world. It’s about time you, too, learned the lessons of frugality and a little less materialism in your lives might make you wake up and smell a little reality.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11292189
Aaaaaw. Isn’t that just too bad.
Even the wealthiest are tightening their belts.
Welcome to the real world.
According to SpendingPulse, luxury sales dropped nearly 35 percent at the beginning of December as compared to the same week last year, and were also down 23 percent for the five previous weeks.
High-end stores and the manufacturers of the brands they carry are feeling the pinch, too. It’s not like no luxury items aren’t being purchased; they are. The wealthy are just buying fewer of them.
Tuff. Things are rough all over.
I lived through Ronald Reagan’s trickle down economics and all I saw was greed, the wealthier getting richer, prices go up, companies swallowed up by mergers and acquisitions then chopped up and sold off and a huge loss of jobs.
All that was really swell for most of us.
That led to global economics, outsourcing of jobs, the death of our manufacturing base, rise in prices and even more loss of jobs.
I never understood why companies like Nike and Mattel outsourced all their manufacturing to cheap labor countries, yet the prices of their good never came down; in many cases they went up.
Global domination is nothing new in the diamond market either.
While diamonds were never a girl’s best friend regardless of what the song said, they were the best little pals of De Beers Group, which is also feeling the pain of the tanking economy.
I can’t begin to say how much my heart goes out to De Beers, which has artificially controlled the price of diamonds worldwide for years. Diamond-rich Russia has vaults filled with billions of the little gems from the precious to the industrial.
If Russia were to released even a small portion of them, a diamond would have less value than a zircon on the open market, which are their real value anyway.
Although the rich haven’t stopped spending altogether, they’re buying fewer pieces of jewelry, yachts, furs, cars or whatever their little hearts desire.
Don’tcha really feel sorry for the Vanderbucks of the world?
They may be making do with fewer diamonds, but they’ll still never have to worry about paying the mortgage; taking their kids to the doctor; choosing between cheap hamburger or a prescription; giving up faithful Fido because they can no longer afford to feed or vet him; choosing between turning on the heat or A/C and freezing or boiling to death; or any of the little financial decisions most of us have dealt with on a daily basis for most of our lives.
No. They’ll never have to make those choices.
Welcome to our world. It’s about time you, too, learned the lessons of frugality and a little less materialism in your lives might make you wake up and smell a little reality.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_11292189
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