America’s favorite family outings are increasingly out of reach

No but I can make sure my wife is taken care of. That's what drives me anyway.

 

I don't think "lament" is the correct interpretation of my comments. I simply disagree that things were better in the old days for a lot of reasons, including economic. I know several families currently earning less than 6 figures and they are doing just fine. Of course they don't live in coral gables and rarely take vacations.

My mother did the best she could and lucky for me I was good in both school and sports so I had help along the way unlike some of my neighbors.

As the saying goes "it takes a village" for which I have always been grateful.

 

My apologies. Probably should have used a better word. Didn't mean to insinuate you had a bad childhood or family in any way. Not at all actually.

 

No worries, all good.

Plenty of good memories here, including LL champs, back b4 metal bats and hitting coaches.
No AC in Florida was a character builder tho.

 

My story almost to the T, except I wasnt good at sports. 60's were a tough time to be a single woman raising kids. Didnt get out of Florida other than work until I was 25. Haven't looked back. Travel is essential for me like fishing is so we reserve resources for it. Smaller house, old boat, used cars. Also invest time/effort to churn cc and travel hack to get free airline tix (sans taxes and fees), hotel rooms, etc. Save the $$$ for excursions, food, and things that arent good redemption values. Now spoiled flying up front on long haul flights bought using miles/points.

 

This is some of the reason I never took my kids to Disney despite living in G’ville. It was also the (imo) the hyper artificiality of it not to mention my inability to stand in line as well as not being able to afford it.
Instead we canoed the Suwannee River every spring break camping on sand bars and car camping and day hiking in the mountains every summer. Now that they have their own families they are doing the same kinds of things and I am pleased.

 

Because if it was solely based on price and what people can afford, they'd price too many people out of the market.

If through traffic drops = Price has to drop. What I mean by ideal is the assumption being people don't need to borrow or otherwise accrue debt to buy. Hence the quote marks around it. It's not really a real-world assumption.

 

Revenues drive salaries, not the reverse. TV deals have skyrocketed.
And, I can’t find it now, but I remember a piece a number of years ago now that the single biggest driver of rising baseball ticket prices was stubhub and other resellers. It used to be that middle class people could afford good seats for season tickets, but when clubs, especially those in large markets, saw what those tickets were getting on the secondary market, they realized they were drastically underpricing them. They raised the prices by orders of magnitude in response.

 

Still rolling in the 07 Tahoe and 11 Yukon XL. Will drive them until they die. Put half down on the Tahoe and paid it off in 6 months. Paid cash for the Yukon XL. Bought both new but knew we would drive them until they die. Debt free minus the real estate we practice out of. Could pay it off tomorrow if I wanted to and probably 80% equity now with values here and location. Love Dave Ramsey though I do think some debt at times is okay. That is where he would disagree. But we would not be in the position we are if we did not go into debt to start our practice.

 

I have had luck buying well maintained garage kept vehicles from either older couples or from affluent neighborhoods. Currently in a Mazda SUV with immaculate interior. Had it for 3 plus years now with no issues. Did a lot of research on the year make model and trim and learned about which ones to avoid. I will drive the wheels off of it until the next one. It's actually easier to get into a nice reliable used car these days since many models are known to run for way higher mileage than they used to. Obsolescence may be built into a lot of products these days but engines seem to run longer. Just have to watch out for transmissions and electronics on some cars.

 

Our cars are slowly looking like they are on the final lap of the Daytona 500…amazing what three kids can do to cars over the years. Then add our trip to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge and a bear opening the door to check out the center console (now we have to hold it shut with our arm). All in all they are in good shape. Each had one semi major issue from a leak and age. But they got their tune ups and are running like a champ. Well the Tahoe has a gas mileage issue but we drive it short distances around town. So we deal.

 

How big is that lot? With or without teardown?

 

You just replied to and agreed with your own post.

 

When Michael Eisner took over Disney the first thing he did was double the admission to the theme parks. The reason was people were spending so much on vacation and Disney was the centerpiece of their trip, so why not jack the price up because they would still pay it and maybe cut out something else.

 

Possibly. I'm looking at it more textbook. Again, it's more an "ideal" instead of real world. The price of a good/service is whatever the market will bear. If they can get enough people to bite on a specific price, that's what it'll be sold at.

 

Not a particular lot, just talking in generalities. Its a weird part of Jax. There's nothing really over there. Most of it is pretty rough. And it happens to have a bunch of waterfront homes for relatively cheap for that reason.

 

I'll admit it's been quite a while since I've been there (took my daughter back around 2015) so I probably lack the perspective of what it's like now compared to about 7-8 years ago.