15% tips, now we tip 20% as a standard except for my barber who gets 33% (he always tells me I'll never go bald).:D

We have given up on the idea of buying a condo in Florida. Last year we were thinking about buying a place to spend some time in the winter. Now we are just happy that we paid off our house a few years ago instead of invested the extra money in the market.

Why give up your dream of owning a Condo in Florida. With housing tanking, I would think that if your job is secure you should be able to pick up a foreclosure bargain.

I wish I used the money that I was putting in my 401 account to pay off more of the principal in my house.

Well it depends on where you believe things are headed. For me, I think that things will get worse before it gets better the next 2 years.

Pay off all mortage. I could not get a return on the market greater than the cost of my mortage, so that makes sense to pay off interest bearing debt over investing in market.

But leave enough access to cash to snap up any bargains there are. This is a tough one, you have to konw what you are buying and have an outlet to liquidate it when you need to. For me, i know Japanese swords, vintage watches and some Chinese art well. In the long term these things tend to hold value well but have poor liquidity in down times.

Not giving up much, i did not live a very grand lifestyle before the down turn and do not intend to do so moving forward. I will however be more conservative when buying non-liquid assets.

Thrift & Industry. Those are the 2 basic principles to live by financially in these times.

A co-worker of mine flew down to Naples, FL this weeked to look at condos. HIs sister is a realestate agent and has been feeding him all the decent foreclosures she could fine. He had a handful of 2-3 bedroom condos on the water for $70-$100K to look at. not sure if these were any good but there are obvious deals if you have the cash.

I was in a Starbucks in Manhattan this week and the guy before me ordered a venti, caramel, soy , chai something, something, and it was over $5.00!!!!!

I gladly grabbed my $2.00 double espresso and laughed at him while he dumped a handful of "sugar in the raw" into the thing.

The problem is I retired a couple of years ago and I'm living off my investments. I'm 52 now so whats left of my money has to last awhile. I have enough to make it without having to tap my stock investments for 7 or 8 years, but all my cushion is gone.

I was all set to buy a 914 to add to my garage until my job security came into question with a notice of possible redundancy... now I'm hanging in the balance, 914-less, waiting for the other shoe to fall. What fun! Not...