No envy about it, I sold a house in San Jose in 2004 I owned for 6 years, so I made my housing score and am very thankful for it, it enabled me to pay mine off here. People entering the housing market now have to sign of for 10 times their salary to buy it, and that is if they can swing the down, this guy bought a house for 1.5 times salary and could even be more aggressive than a person today. Houses were cheap and plentiful in Eugene back then, jobs were scarce, he had one. and could capitalize, but laments over how much he gave up by working for the School District.  My dad worked for SUB and made 21k in the late 70's, so my figures are not far off. We could have bought a house for 13k on 12th and Piedmont in Springfield for 13k that is now probably 200k. The main point I am trying to make is this guy had a stable job and would most likely not get laid off, would enable him to be more aggressive than the average person. Don't accuse me of boasting, you brought up the envy thing.