Up, Up, Up and Outta Sight

As a precaution against winter blues, I recently gave some thought to extending my time away this next winter and going off for a few weeks before heading to my spot in Santa Barbara mid-February to the end of March.  (A Minneapolis woman has it before then.)  But in looking on-line, I came up with big sticker shock.  Of course, Key West, which is walkable and colorful (good photos), was totally out.  But so were St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa Fe, San Clemente, the Caribbean, etc. all with plenty of nice places for $200 and $300 a night.  Even the tiny accommodation I had in Hawaii only four years ago had gone up by a good $1000 a month.  (And a friend said her place there went from $1900 to $2800 a month in just a year's time.)  I always wonder:  how can people pay that!

Where I stayed

And then people seem to justify such high prices by saying, "Well, things keep going up," as if that was news I'd never heard before. I can tell you one thing that doesn't keep going up and that's income.  Mine, yours, most people's.  In looking around, I wanted a place that was warm, sunny, where I didn't need a car (just more expense) and could walk to town for groceries.  Also, a place I could reach by train or plane.  (Since I wouldn't be taking my car.)  Just for the fun of it I started pulling place-names out of an internet hat to see what the world offered.  I didn't try Moldavia or Bulgaria which I figured were cheap, but I did look at Split, Croatia, which I know nothing about but which turned out to have "reasonable" accommodations, meaning under $100 a night.  As did Nicosia, Cyprus, where I stayed once--guest of a friend.  An interesting city, half Greek, half Turkish.

Of course, that would mean paying air fare to Europe (as well as going through that highly unpleasant experience these days of flying) ... plus transportation from here to Logan Airport in Boston.  Only a very few years ago hiring a driver from here to Boston cost something like $150 one way plus gratuity.  Now the price is $320 one way.  Sticker shock!!  I remember one year when I flew across the Atlantic for less than it cost me to get to Logan.

Then (same subject, different example) I recently read that the minimum wage required to rent a two bedroom apartment in this state is $20.68 an hour ... and that 40% of the households in this town do not make that much.  We used to say that one paid a quarter of one's income on housing.  No more, my lads and lassies.  I could easily move to an apartment in town that would take 100% of my income.  (And they call that good housing for seniors?)  (Maybe they figure you won't mind using up all you made by selling your house, but, I ask, what happens when you get to be 83, you've reached the bottom of the pile, and they turf you out?)

Well, as we're gradually bumped out of one market after another, let's acquire a few flexibility skills.  For instance:  it would seem to me that not all these vacation rentals are full all the time.  So rather than being empty, why not fill them by really decreasing the price!  What do you say to that!