Tag: money

Photo by Joe WilcoxOct 18, 202310:51 pm

The Most Unaffordable City

San Diego is too prestigious a place. In July 2023, rents exceeded San Francisco. Yikes! Last month, the median-selling price for residences (houses and more) topped $1 million. The city earns yet another distinction: U.S. News & World Report has crowned San Diego as “#1 in most expensive places to live”. Uh, yeah.

Los Angeles is second; broadly, California cities capture seven spots in the top ten. Oh joy. I marvel at how suddenly—catastrophically—was the transition from, quoting the motto, “America’s finest city” to America’s most unaffordable place to live. Four years ago, food, sundries, and housing cost so much less.

Photo by Joe WilcoxSep 16, 20239:17 pm

Six Dollar Gas Returns

Yikes! When I walked by my local Valero two days ago, price per gallon held steady at godawful $5.50—as when I filled up on Sept. 10, 2023. The Featured Image tells the story: 50-cent increase to, gasp, six bucks a gallon! This is typically a bargain station, too.

The photo comes from Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Vitals: f/2.4, ISO 250, 1/30 sec, 70mm (film equivalent); 7:57 p.m. PDT.

Photo by Joe WilcoxJun 13, 20239:19 pm

Got Cash? Go Elsewhere!

Marking a trendy trend among the trendy artisan set, Communal Coffee in San Diego’s North Park neighborhood won’t accept your money for payment. Your credit or debit card is legal tender, even Apple Pay, but keep bills or coins in pocket, purse, or wallet.

The privilege of digital currency comes with a perk—and one some of you won’t want: The tip nag screen that appears during the purchase process. Oh, don’t feel guilt or pressure, with the glaring eyes of the barista bearing down on you with expectation of 20-percent or more gratuity to top off that swank latte with almond milk.

Photo by Joe WilcoxMar 19, 202310:43 pm

Do You Feel Rooked?

If not today, you may soon. The sudden shakeup toppling several banks was long foreshadowed. Classic run ruined Silicon Valley Bank less than two weeks ago. Dominos fell. First Republic required $30 billion bailout to avoid similar fate. Regulators took over Signature Bank, which was besieged by cryptocurrency losses. Over the weekend, 166-year-old Credit Suisse agreed to be acquired by UBS, in a $3.2 stock swap that is a mere pittance.

Long before the SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19 pandemic, I told my wife that too many companies, banks among them, had assumed too much debt during the long period of low interest rates. Wall Street Journal story “First Republic, SVB, Credit Suisse Show How Higher Interest Rates Caught Up With Banks“, dateline today, affirms my hypothesis and gives analysis you want to give some attention.

Photo by Joe WilcoxSep 29, 20228:35 pm

Oh No, Not Again

A week ago, price at the pump was 90 cents less than it is today at my local filling stations. This evening, in North Park, I passed a Chevron sign for $6.60 per gallon, regular unleaded. Oh my, what’s going on with gas going up the cost ladder again?

In the Featured Image, captured using Leica Q2, the Arco across Texas Street (at El Cajon Blvd) seemingly offers a deal for 10 cents a gallon less. But hours later, the station had matched Mobile Mart.

Photo by Joe WilcoxSep 23, 20229:02 pm

The Price of Gas Rose 30 Cents Overnight!

When I drove past the local filling station late yesterday afternoon, a tanker parked and offloaded fuel. I wondered: You don’t suppose the delivery means Valero will charge more? Fleeting thoughts come, go, and never manifest into anything. But on this occasion, I was right to wonder and wish to be wrong. Gas prices had fallen recently and stabilized at $5.30 per gallon.

Ha! And I thought the 24-cent overnight increase, back in February, was a big hike.

Photo by Joe WilcoxSep 9, 20227:42 pm

Not One Crisis, But Two

Two days ago, I looked upon something surprising inside the Grocery Outlet, located in San Diego neighborhood Talmadge: An empty display case for Mexican Coca-Cola. Shall we blame supply chain disruptions that every fear-mongering pundit has blabbered about for months? The beverage, sweetened with cane sugar instead of corn syrup, is popularly stocked by many grocery stores in this area of SoCal.

But far more unsettling is the price. Mexican Coke, sold in glass bottles, is perennially priced 99 cents. A buck sixty-nine puts inflation and rising food/beverage prices into piercing perspective. That’s a 70.7 percent increase, by the way. Yikes!

Photo by Joe WilcoxJun 21, 20229:18 pm

The Unhappy Meal

Before June 17, 2022, I hadn’t been inside a McDonald’s since before SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, on March 11, 2020. My daughter needed a ride, and on on the way back to her residence she asked for fast food. I grumbled and pulled into McD’s.

Whoa, what happened to prices? The current $5.99 for a Quarter Pounder is about a buck less when I last bought a combo meal, which is now $10.49 for a burger, fries, and drink.

Photo by Joe WilcoxJun 10, 20229:12 pm

A Good Reason to Work From Home

At one of the pricer area filling stations, located where Fourth and Washington meet in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood, the price of gasoline approaches mountaineering heights. Grab your gear and head for the summit of cash required to fill the tank. For context, rounding to the nearest buck, customers paid $6.60 per gallon on May 27, 2022 and $4.94 on Oct. 15, 2021 at this location.

On the same day as the Featured Image, June 8, 2022, at my University Heights-located Valero, I filled up a half-tank for 30 bucks at $6.09 a gallon around Noon. Lady driving an Acura in the queue before my car paid $69 and some change. When I drove past a few hours later, posted price had jumped to $6.16.

Photo by Joe WilcoxMay 27, 20229:13 pm

The More You Pay, The More You Will Pay

Funny the things you long for. On Oct. 15, 2021, I shared a photo showing the cost of gasoline as $4.94 a gallon (rounded up) at the Fourth and University Shell station in Hillcrest. Fast forward to today and you pay $6.60 per gallon (again, rounded up). That $1.66 more than the old price—high for the time—seems oh-so affordable now. By the way, cost is 33 percent more than before.

Several large hospitals surround the station, and I got to ask: Is this why medical services—like ambulance—cost so much in San Diego? Yeah, the question is facetious. That said, unless the arm is severed and shooting blood, wrap a tourniquet and drive yourself to Emergency—and hope none of the doctors and nurses treating you filled up at this Shell. Somebody has to pay, and that could be you. Yuck. Yuck.

Photo by Joe WilcoxApr 29, 20229:42 pm

Fenced Out of Affordable Housing

My daughter rents storage space at one of the local facilities. From my infrequent trips to the place over the years, I have observed stark changes. For starters: An increasing number of people, many of them clearly employed, living out of a vehicle and storing their stuff. With the cost of housing so incredulously expensive in San Diego, these working nomads are not surprising to find. What shocks is how many more I see compared to 18 months ago.

Since a new report about residential renting released this week, I will focus on that topic and let be soaring home selling prices for another time. (If you can’t wait: “Pop Goes Another Housing Bubble” and “Simply Stated: San Diego Unaffordable Housing“.) According to Zumper, rents rose 31.3 percent year-over-year in April 2022. “As a result, San Diego has leapfrogged San Jose and Los Angeles to become the nation’s fifth most expensive city”. Ugh, and I know it’s a fact from watching rents relentlessly rise.

Photo by Joe WilcoxApr 10, 202210:23 pm

Pop Goes Another Housing Bubble

The current housing bubble—and there absolutely is one—bears only modest resemblance to the previous catastrophe, which I warned about in a lengthy August 2005 analysis. Rising mortgage rates already are deflating the 2020’s-decade bubble, but the pop is unavoidable without fundamental changes in the actual market or the myths used to explain existing dynamics.

Since before anyone heard of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19, which economic and societal disruption super-inflated the housing bubble, I had warned about a dangerous trend that ignores common sense observation of national demographics: Among the two largest segments, Baby Boomers are dying off and Millennials aren’t having many kids. As population growth stalls, there will be less demand for housing because there will be fewer people to buy. Meaning: All the babbling about not enough inventory has set into motion an overbuilding frenzy that is sure to deflate home values in the not-so-distant future. Before pandemic lockdowns, I had thought within 10 years. I now expect less than five—if we’re lucky.