Owing to the vagaries of split families, we celebrated our Thanksgiving two weekends back.
The wife made the traditional feast, with a huge turkey as the centerpiece and, somewhere amidst the festive proceedings, granddaughter No. 2 asked me to share things for which I am thankful.
A loving family including the granddaughters, fairly good personal health for me and the family, and relative security financially were among the items that headed my list.
I might have added having Donald Trump as president, living in interesting times, and finally having reliable high-speed internet at my house (thank you, Elon Musk and Starlink) as other notable mentions.
I wish others might take a break from their constant whining to appreciate their blessings on this holiday of thanks.
Already, in recent days, I’ve seen the traditional holiday staple of network and local broadcasts, the person pumping gas and lamenting the high cost of it all.
For some reason, the gripers always seem to be driving massive pickup trucks or SUVs large and powerful enough to pull a house off its foundation, all while carrying six or more passengers.
If the Bing search engine is to be trusted, the average roundtrip mileage for Thanksgiving visits this year is 549 miles. Not 550, mind you, but I’m going to round up to that number to make the math simpler.
Say the behemoth vehicle being driven only gets 10 mpg, that’s going to require 55 gallons of what the Brits call petrol to get there and back. And, if that petrol was $1 a gallon more this year than last (which it isn’t; actually the cost per gallon is lower) that would mean an extra $55 spent.
I’m here to say if $55 ruins your budget, you’ve got problems beyond Thanksgiving travel.
Consider your apparent financial illiteracy and the similar affliction that seems to affect an increasingly large portion of the nation’s populace.
It seems these people expected economic miracles from Trump; true fishes and loaves stuff.
They don’t understand that even if inflation is percolating at under 3 percent on his watch, compared to Clueless Joe Biden’s peak of 9 percent, prices still are going up on average, and from a higher base due to that 9-percent bulge.
The only way to get prices lower is deflation and, trust me, you don’t want that. Try reading about this country’s Great Depression of the 1930s.
Gen Z types lament hopelessness due to their worthless college degrees, being priced out of the housing market and generally feeling excluded from economic good times.
It doesn’t register with them that guzzling $5 cups of coffee, dining out multiple times a week, leasing high-end vehicles they can’t afford to buy, and indulging in multiple exotic vacations each year might help explain their feeling of being so many paupers.
But, I guess I shouldn’t be so harsh on the general population because Tuesday, on Fox Business Channel’s Charles Payne show, there was a financial guy saying the poverty line should be $140,000 a year of income. He wasn’t kidding.
I never made $140,000 a year, but somehow I’ve accumulated six vehicles, a house and some financial assets.
Just lucky, I guess.
I will give the Gen Z types their due regarding housing. The Federal Reserve’s cheap money experiment — until it looked like Trump was going to win — has sent a gush of money into housing, raising prices substantially and now that the mortgage rates have risen again, pricing out a lot of would-be first-time homeowners.
Still, just as the prices of gasoline, eggs, orange juice and lumber have been coming down, so, too, have housing prices – at least beyond the Greater Johnstown area.
A story on CNBC Tuesday cited several sources that reported an increasing supply of homes for sale, extended listing periods and some listings simply being pulled because, despite multiple price reductions, they did not sell.
Zerohedge.com on Wednesday quoted a Zillow news release in a story telling of record average listing price reductions of $25,000 in October. Beyond the usual housing hotspots of California and New York, Pittsburgh was mentioned as having a high average price reduction per property listed.
Curiously, this phenomenon has not fully hit Johnstown. Take it from a guy who spends too much time browsing realtor.com, area listings are selling quickly and price reductions are minimal.
So, for Gen Z types living outside Johnstown, the trends seem to be moving in your favor regarding real estate. Declining prices and the prospect of lower mortgage interest rates just might bring that house within your reach.
No doubt you will find something else to lament. But, just for today, let’s try to be positive and thankful.
Sam Ross Jr's site 