Is 2 week vacation enough?

Is 2 week vacation enough for us who are working in America? It defintely is not enough for me, for sure.

I recently had a chat with some folks from europe and our conversation went towards vacation time here in america. Most of them had atleast a month paid vacation per year when they were working back in europe! And they complained about the vacation time here.

I think there is a strong point here, people here work real hard whole year and they only get 2 week vacation. I don't think with 2 week vacation you can relax and clear things from your mind to start everything fresh after vacation.

I personally think that not taking real vacation is some thing that has some serious effect mentally and physically, especially for people who are in software industry.

In general, here in america, people tend to not take enough vacation compared to any other place.

A lot of people i talked say they don't have time for it!

The main reason to work hard and make money is to have a nice life, if you don't have time to take some time off from your work to relax then doesn't that defeat the purpose?

Real estate in bay area is going down for sure!

It's so true that media doesn't give you the real picture of real estate market at all.
All of it is controlled by realtors, most of it is based on their projections that are driven by what they want to say rather than what is actually there.

Housing market is going down for sure in bay area and none of the articles provide you the real picture of situation.

Related info:
- Read Patrick Killelea's blog at http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html for indepth analysis and real picture of bay area housing crash. Thanks to Patrick Killelea.

Bay Area Worries: DotCom in the past - Real Estate now

It feels like yesterday that we have been through the dot-com burst in bay area. And now, i have similar feeling with real estate in this area. Although i don't think it's going to be as bad as stock market, i definitely think real estate is going to have some tough time in coming months/years.
If you are in serious trouble with investments, getting rid of stock type of investments is a little bit easier than getting rid of investment like a house. So this is going to be a very challenging thing for all the home owners who want to sell their homes.

A lot of people tell me that real estate wouldn't crash like dot-com, but point is that it doesn't have to be a big crash but even a little bit of slow down would cause some serious financial trouble to a lot of people in bay area. There is a lot of optimism in those who invested in real estate, they are so confident that it would never go down. It was exactly like this in 2000 time with those who invested in tech stocks when downturn started for dot-com. Everybody talks about how one of his friend made so-and-so money in very short period.

If something feels too good to be true...most likely it is. That was the feeling i got back then where i was in the middle of the dot-com investment madness, and it was in fact too good to be true. I bought some stocks for rediculous price expecting to get 100% returns so fast, and i ended up losing almost all of it.
Now i feel same exact way for real estate. So i'm going to wait until i feel very comfortable.

While companies are in full swing, the real estate is coming to a stage where it would be put to some serious tests. I guess there will always be something to be worried for all of us in bay area.

Related article in Newyork times at:
"Hoping for Best In Home Sales, 2 Sides Sit Tight"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/business/04real.html?_r=1&oref=slogin