It has been a while since my last GlibFin post. Preparations for the new kiddo ate up a lot of free time and, more importantly, mental energy required to type out an article like this.
I’ve discussed how we got into the mess, some of the emotional hurdles, and the plan for digging out. Now for the actual results.
We started the debt payoff journey on April 1st 2017, paying off our $557 Target credit card balance immediately using the excess emergency fund we had (we went from $2500 to $1000 e-fund in compliance with Dave Ramsey’s plan). The rest went against our $10,491 Capital One card balance.
Then came the first gulf. We were only able to put $1500 or so per month against the Cap1 card, so it took 8 months to pay off. That was the forging time for our plan. The first easy win gave us an initial boost, but now we needed to grind away the burrs on the plan. Since we had both contributed to the budget plan and we both had skin in the game this time, it really took, and we were able to consistently pay down the card until we paid it off for Christmas 2017.
This was when the snowball started rolling. We balance transfered $10k of our $13,874 credit union card balance to the Cap1 card and paid that balance off by the end of February 2018 (end of year bonus helped out immensely here… We didn’t even think about it, just dumped it into the credit card). Then it took us another 4 months to pay off $10k on the credit union card (the $3800 from before + ~$6500 in ongoing expenses that we charged and paid off monthly). Our velocity had slowed somewhat ($3800/4months is less than $1k/month), but there were some complicating factors involved (student loans coming out of grace period, some one-time house repairs, 6 month old kiddo). While it was stressful to watch the number sag down a bit, it was also refreshing to see that we could make progress in the face of adversity. Our newly forged financial outlook was being tempered in the fire.
6/22/2018 was our last payment on the credit cards, and we were officially CC debt free. We haven’t carried a balance since, and we have enough money in reserve now that we could pay the entire credit limit in cash if needed. For some reason, that’s important to me. I have the control to pay off the entirety of any conceivable balance, no matter what. Debt is psychological, in part.
Next up were the cars. Wife’s car was first, which had started in 4/2017 with a $17k balance. I didn’t record the exact balance in 6/2018, but I believe it was around $12k. With all of the credit card minimum payments gone and with a renewed vigor from overcoming the hurdles in early 2018, we took off like a rocket when it came to paying off the cars. We were used to doing these 4-6 month sprints to get that “win” from paying something off and this was no different. 4 months later, we had paid off the balance of wife’s car, a roughly $3k/month payoff rate. Now we’re cooking with gas!
My car had starred at $27,769 in 4/2017, but was around $20k when we started in on it in October 2018. We kept up the 4 month trend, paying it off in February 2019. This one was aided by another end of year bonus, but we kept up the $2500-3000/month pace, and were feeling great. No credit cards, no car payments! It’s all starting to pay off!
Let me take a moment to pause and address a few things. First, everything was humming along, but that didn’t mean there was no conflict or change. During the time where we paid all this debt off, we changed course a few times and it took a while for me to come to terms with our less urgent pace. We had just paid off ~$75k in just under 2 years, but we had another $170k or so to go. We were looking at a 4+ year slog, and being only halfway through sucked. That said, we designed our budget to be tight but sustainable. Dave’s gazelle intensity looks very different for an 18 month sprint compared to a 4-5 year marathon.
This was especially important at this point in the process, when we had a single giant $184k student loan staring us down. We had paid off $10k or so through minimums over the first two years, but it was still years of work staring us down. Sprinting to the finish wasn’t an option.
Over the first year of paying on the student loan, we got the balance down near $100k. We were really hammering it, but even $100k is a huge number. We were wavering a bit, but mostly sticking to the plan, so I was happy with the progress. My conservative projections had us paying on it for another 20-22 months, for a total of nearly 5 years of paying off consumer debt, ending in November 2021.
In February of this year, we had hunkered down and planned on embracing the suck for another couple years. We were over the hump, and it was all downhill from there.
Well, long story short, things changed overnight. Almost on a whim (there’s more to the story), we decided to sell the house and move back from Virginia to Texas. We took a gamble on renovating the house so it would sell quickly, and it paid off big time! After paying off the remaining mortgage and the renovation costs, we had ~$140k in proceeds from the house. Rather than use that as a down payment on a new house, we decided to rent for a couple of years and use the proceeds to get us out of debt and to build up an emergency fund. We paid off roughly $265k in 38 months. It was quite a journey from barely being able to scrimp and save to put $1000 into our debts despite a healthy 6 figure income to where we are now.
Actually, there is a wrinkle in the plan. My employer pays some money toward student loans. It’s roughly $300/month until July 2021. Thus, instead of paying the student loan down to zero, I did the math (more complicated than it initially sounds) to make sure that the student loan will hit zero balance on August 1, 2021. Technically, we could write a check today and pay the loan off, but we’d be giving up a few grand in free money.
As of now, we’re down to about $22k in student loans with $27k in the account to pay off the student loans (the rest is the beginning of a down payment fund), we have a 6 month emergency fund set aside, and we’re playing catch up on some of the retirement investing that we missed out on since 2017 (we were only doing the 401k match) while also saving up to buy a house again.
Obviously, the path we took was a bit of a shortcut, but there’s no cheating in personal finance. There’s something to be said about suffering through the consequences of our bad behavior, but I don’t think there’s anything we’d learn in year 4 that we didn’t learn in year 3 or year 2. We made a tradeoff (renting for a few years v. continuing to pay on the debt), and it was the right move. It gives us opportunity to try and time the housing market, and we can also actually enjoy life. After 3 years of being in debt purgatory, we’ve taken a few months to enjoy our income. Sure, we put some away for a down payment. Sure, we are investing aggressively. However, we are debt free!
We haven’t gone hog wild, but we’ll tighten up some of the excesses in the new year. Maybe we’ll stop getting Amazon boxes every day.
Next article will be about how much investing opportunity exists for the average person, and how much you need to make to take full advantage of all of the retirement accounts out there.
As a preview, I make a lawyer’s salary and it’s hard to make the budget work while taking full advantage of all of the investment options.
well, since the last thread will be dead now, I have to bring this field day post over:
Oh dear god yes, the goddamned air vents were always a problem. Those things are dust magnets and it seems like, no matter how much you clean them, there will be more after a few minutes.
I can remember having to remove the shower drain covers to get them nice and shiny with Brasso. There is no earthly reason to do that, but one of the staff sergeants would always specifically look at them.
Okinawa was indeed not so bad. Gunny Morris used to tell us “Just make sure it looks tidy, no trash anywhere, and smells nice, and you’ll pass”. The one exception to that was some real bullshit. His Holiness will appreciate this story….so our squadron had an IG inspection in Oki, which is a massive pain in the ass. They inspect EVERYTHING – your working areas, squadron buildings, barracks, uniform inspections, drilling, everything. Well, we had just gotten a new sergeant major, and I swear the monitor loves sending crusty old grunt sergeants major to the air wing just to piss everyone off. So before he even arrived, he thought we were a bunch of soft air wing pussies and hated us. So on the day of the IG barracks inspection, the general took one look at first deck and immediately failed us. There was just one problem with that – first deck didn’t belong to us. It was Stinger’s deck. We lived on second through fourth decks. Stinger wasn’t getting inspected so they didn’t do shit. Well, this enraged SgjMaj Smalls and we started field daying constantly. Formation outside the barracks at 0430 every morning, go clean. We’d clean until 0600, go to PT, come back and clean more until 0800. Go to work. Get back from work in the afternoon, get chow, have another field day formation at 1800. Clean until 2200. Rinse, repeat. No liberty on any day. This went on for at least two weeks. Even the staff NCOs had to be at the barracks at 0430 in formation, which pissed them off like you wouldn’t believe.
We finished Step 2 in January and then in November (paid off car in Jan, we eliminated PMI on our mortgage as of Dec 1 payment, we considered that part of mortgage to fall under step 2). Step 3 should be done by May. We have 4 done already and 5 is effectively done (we havent followed the Ramsey way exactly, havent always focused on one step at a time). Step 6, paying off mortgage, is a requirement for me to retire, we will be getting on it mid-2021.
That’s Way over my head, 24k mortgage and 1500$ CC debt, of course I don’t make near the money,
Good job on the debt Trashy!
I find this odd, because I’ve yet to see a place where renting was cheaper than a mortgage.
Maybe it’s just the market around here.
True. You have a mortgage that’s half the cost of rent.
But then you have:
taxes
insurance
repairs
maintenance
In our case, the repairs cost us exponentially more than rent would have been and that is not calculating the emotional cost, which, in our case, was vast.
Most houses are not the disaster you ended up suffering through.
My house is still cheaper than my apartment was, and things get fixed faster, because I can just get started instead of waiting for maintenance to finally get around to it.
I always liked that about owning a home. I could fix something myself, have a friend help, or pay extra to get it done faster, which I couldn’t do if I were renting.
Suffering through this right now. We reported a slow pipe leak back in early October. Plumber came out, misdiagnosed the issue, and I haven’t heard from the property manager since.
I agree with you, but when you are renting you dont have debt. On a strictly dollars only measure, renting is usually worse, but some people value things other than money. The funny part is, people accuse libertarians of only thinking about money, but its the non-libertarians who think that way.
1) we traded money over time to reallocate our money now.
2) we’re living in a cheaper place than we’re gonna end up buying.
3) we’re buying a house to stay in for a long while, and didn’t want to do it on a whim.
we’re living in a cheaper place than we’re gonna end up buying.
I think this is the critical thing. A mistake I have made – renting a perfectly decent place, but not renting it long enough and rushing to buy a house (this was right after law school).
I rented once after that when relocating. Since then, we’ve always bought right away. Mostly because I hate moving with the intensity of a thousand suns.
Mostly because I hate moving with the intensity of a thousand suns.
Pfft, only an order of magnitude or two less than my wife. That’s why even though I’d very seriously consider ex-patriating, I doubt I could ever talk her into it.
I bought my first house when I was 48.
So, I rented for 30 years before buying.
I’m in awe of your ability to do that. We simply couldn’t. Too much house, too much debt, too old of cars, not enough income.
Topic-adjacent:
I was wondering one day what we would do if we won the lottery. Other than a new house (not terribly huge, as we’re going to be empty nesters in 4 years), a new truck, family, and some travel, we decided that the only thing we really want is to be able to quietly indulge in our hobbies, which don’t cost much. We would take time to decide what charities to support.
I’m a lot like you. I like my house and cars. I just really want to spend the whole day on my hobbies and spending time with people I care about instead of working.
Right. Not interested in blowing it on stupid things like gold-flaked champagne and mansions. I would like a housekeeper, maybe twice a week, also so I can indulge my hobbies.
I’d like a housekeeper in a French maid’s outfit too.
You should probably be more specific, lest someone suggest something horrifying to you.
I would like a housekeeper, maybe twice a week
While not technically orphans, I would think your children could be pressed into service.
*ducks, runs*
Smart man.
I’d like a bigger house, but not that much bigger. Really, my only major gripe is that this kitchen is tiny. If I could get the kitchen doubled in size, I’d be fine with my current house.
The one thing I would indulge in if I had the means is traveling. There are so many places I wish I could experience that, unfortunately, are prohibitively expensive.
Yeah, like that. I like my Tacoma, and while I could use a bigger house, that’s mostly because I want a garage and a patio. Anything bigger than a 3/2/2-car garage just seems like a bunch of extra housekeeping.
I could quite happily while away the next fifty years between shooting matches, backpacking, reading, and building racing drones. It’s not much of a dream, but I like it…
I personally would also balk at getting new cars until we have driven the wheels off our current ones. I do not want all those bells and whistles that come with new cars and I don’t like having so much MORE dependent on computers. Also, being tracked. *adjusts tinfoil hat*
I like our cars and am satisfied with keeping them until they’re ready for the U-Pick.
Same here. I really, really dislike all the electronic crap they put on new cars. We’ll be driving the FJs for a long time. I could even see us replacing the engines/drive trains to keep them going. Mrs. Dean’s is coming up on 200,000 miles, and has only the most minor rattles. There has been a little non-routine maintenance, but far cheaper than paying for new(er) vehicles.
Our Ram pickup is going on 400,000 miles. Now, we only use this thing to transport stuff (makes buying used off CL a ton easier), and XX is learning to drive it and loves it, but the dash was so brittle it caved in (we’re getting a cover for that). There are a lot of things wrong with it but nothing that involves it actually running and going places and doing productive things.
That’s one of the reasons I bought a Tacoma with a service plan. I plan to put fifteen years worth of road trips on this monster.
Good choice. FJ Cruisers are basically Tacomas under the skin. With the possible difference that FJs were all built in Japan, and I think Tacomas are built here
I just bought a low-miles 2017 Frontier in June, and I plan on driving it as long as I can keep it running, at least 10-15 years.
I bought a new car in 2017 after driving my still serviceable 2006 model for 11 years. I’m usually in the “drive ’em until they club” but I got the itch for a performance V8 car before I either died or they were outlawed. I love all the electronic features on my new buggy – big screen display, bluetooth, USB ports, rear backup camera, blind spot warning system, voice commands, drive modes. Sure you get a few electronic nannies(traction control/advance trac) but they can all be easily disabled.
Same, although I have never won so who knows how I would really react.
A very, very comfortable salary would be $250k/year and you would “only” need $6.25M invested to draw on to make that happen.
Thanks trsh, this was a great article and very timely for me. We are currently going through a rough patch in our marriage, and without getting into details, it has to do with how much each of us puts in financially vs. how much we take out. I’d like to retire early (or at least cut my hours) in the next few years, but without having a plan like yours it’s not going to happen.
The wife and I took the Dave Ramsey class the summer after we were married in April. Best thing for our marriage we have done. We rarely have money fights, at least as far as long term goals and focus.
I’d like to retire early (or at least cut my hours) in the next few years
The hardest conversation topic we have had was around me retiring early. Wife would read in an implied laziness when I talked about my desire to retire early. That got me spitting mad because it started evolving into the “poor beleagured housewife is the only one who puts in effort” trope. Out of all of the financial “discussions” we had, that one was as close as I’ve ever gotten to nuking everything in a huff. It was by the grace of God alone that I didn’t blurt out every hurtful thing circulating in my mind and disappear for a few days.
It’s one thing to not be on the same page about what to do with the money this month. It’s a much more dire thing to not be on the same page about what to do with the money over the next few decades.
Wife would read in an implied laziness when I talked about my desire to retire early.
Your restraint is impressive.
There are some things that I said that I’m not proud of. My restraint wasn’t nearly as impressive as I apparently made it sound.
When we peeled back the layers, it was obvious that we were miscommunicating. I wanted to retire around age 50 with a roughly 35% reduction in our current income. She thought I wanted to retire at age 45 with a roughly 70% reduction in our current income and a hellaciously tight budget in the interim.
Fears of lack of security versus fears of dying at my desk. Fear v. Fear never ends good.
There are some things that I said that I’m not proud of.
Don’t be ashamed to admit you like my music links! 😉
Well, I did blurt those things out, hence the recent visits to the marriage counselor.
I’ve been sitting in front of a computer doing pretty much the same thing for the last 25 years. The thought of doing this for another 15-20 years, or until I drop dead, makes me want to jump off a cliff.
So what you and Tashy are saying is I was better off on the woman angle if I’d stayed on the ‘starving artist’ path?
If I were on my own, say the kids were gone and something happened to Mr. Mojeaux, I’d probably just get a fifth wheel and a truck and go traveling.
Oops. Gilmore’d.
No, not at all!
*surreptitiously nods affirmatively*
In seriousness, it’s about getting on the same page about the whys of it all, not just the whats of it. “I want to retire early” sounds very different to a woman who is relying on her husband for financial security than it sounds to a man who could scrape by on his skills and efforts and ramen if push comes to shove.
Digging into the rationale took us away from “stop forcing me to work to feed your lawyer’s wife lifestyle” to “I want to enjoy life along with you rather than feeling like I’m chained to my desk at work”
This is like looking into a mirror.
I’m down to about 15-16 months, and the thought of even another year of it gives me the urge to drink, very heavily.
24 months, here. Barring economic/financial disaster, of course.
Yeah, I think we can manage a mild downturn, but nothing disastrous – that would change the equation.
*looks at Biden tax plan
*looks at Georgia runoffs
*looks at RC and shakes head
OK, 25 months.
I _feel_ like the GOP should be able to kill the Special Election’s runoff because the Dems only got 30%…. But you never know till you know.
Me too, except I am only 12 years in.
There’s a reason I’m on my 3rd career…
The drawback is I’m likely making much less that I would have been had I stuck with the first career out of high school.
The benefit is I’ve retained (most of) my sanity, as the changes have helped scratch the “I’m bored of this now” itch.
Trade-offs to everything.
The wife and I did marriage counseling about five or so years after the wedding, as we were finding ourselves in dire straights marriage wise (me being laid off in the Obama economy did wonders for us…) It took a couple of years but having a neutral third party really helped get through some issues. One of the best things we ever did.
And we didn’t particularly like the guy.
This article reminded me my car payments is due today, and was ready to pay off my credit card balance (I only use it for purchases I have enough cash for, but not in an account with card attached) But my banks website is giving an error message upon log-in.
I owe less than $9,500 on my car, $30,044 on my house, and a smidge over $400 on the credit card that should be rectified soon. So I am under $40k in total debt.
I have [REDACTED] in savings, and [REDACTED] in deferred comp.
If you count my house as an asset for the purposes of the calculation (some don’t) I have a positive net worth.
And as a note, investment gains are finally reliably exceeding deposits as the leading cause of increased deferred comp balances. It’s still not enough to retire on.
Who doesn’t count the value of real estate in net worth?
Trying to find citations for something I was told by somebody years ago is a bit difficult.
Real estate owned as an investment? Certainly.
Real estate owned as a residence? Arguable. Do you count your cars toward your net worth?
Real estate owned as a residence? Arguable. Do you count your cars toward your net worth?
The house and cars can be sold for cash at predictable, non-trivial values. So, yes I count them.
Furniture, household goods, tools (typical home owner stuff, not professional stuff) — these things I don’t count.
Do you count your cars toward your net worth?
Sure. Just because they’re depreciating doesn’t mean they’re not assets.
I’d consider them a non-investment asset. Also, net worth is highly overrated as a measuring stick.
^this. You don’t retire based on net worth. You retire based on secure passive income expectations. That pile of gold you sleep on is definitely net worth and your heirs will love you for it, but it isn’t paying 3.5% dividends.
What is paying 3.5% these days?
Inquiring minds wanna know.
The S&P 500
The S&P dividend yield is 1.8%, the funds paying 3.5% from the S&P are paying out capital gains as income which IMHO is a mistake.
Oops, I missed the “dividend” part.
My goal is to retire with more than current income (not as ambitious as it sounds due to my income being much lower than most posting) and never touch capital again. I will shift assets to a mix of income stock funds and some debt investments (probably private mortgages on decent investment properties rather than bonds of any sort). My goal is a while off.
“never touch capital again”
Our betters will take care of that for you. Just roll up your sleeve there and get your chip now. It’s not mandatory or anything Orwellian. It’s just if you want to use roads, bridges, public transport, or buy or sell anything, or work, or retire, or eat or sleep or take a dump. Otherwise, you don’t have to get it!
I do, but they aren’t really worth anything. I drive a 2008 Civic and a 2002 Ranger. Wife has the fanciest wheels, a 2010 Odyssey.
I doubt my car has more resale value than my computer, so I don’t bother to try to figure out what it’s worth, since I don’t do that math on my computer.
If I owned a classic vehicle with a known auction price higher than original retail, that could be counted.
^^^ This. Plus my car really isn’t that liquid. I guess i could sell it to the chop shop for some dough but other than that, i aint moving that merchandise.
Capital assets you would need to replace if sold are debatable as part of your net worth. Sure, you can rent or lease rather than purchase, but now you’ve increased your cash flow needs. The reason you own rather than rent is likely because its financially better for you to do so.
We don’t count our cars or our house. Although we could certainly clear some cash on the house if we downsized or rented. The guy we use for financial planning does count it toward our net worth, which has led to some interesting discussions about our true ability to support cash flow at a given level after retirement. I suppose its like the gold and silver in the safe (which I also don’t count toward net worth) – its a “deep emergency” asset, to be liquidated only in a true SHTF scenario.
I guess like everything, it comes down to the reason. For what purpose do you track your net worth? Oddly, this past weekend Pater Dean asked me what I thought our net worth was. I told him I really didn’t know, but would guess its around [REDACTED]. Even our finance guy kinda blows past it when we meet with him; for our purposes, we’re interested in assets that generate cash flow, not “use” assets like the cars and the house.
I count my net worth for funsies and morale, because the mere fact that it is positive helps me put the $40k of remaining debt in context.
I have been working towards being debt-free for so long, I don’t know what my next goal would even be.
Splurge on more gloves.
B classification in SCSA?
Yeah. Watching the real estate market around us is a fool’s game. House appreciated 40% in 3 years, which is great, but its not like there’s lower cost housing nearby. We’d have to move substantially far away to make any gains.
I’ve got enough in investments (not just retirement accounts) to pay off my house now, but at a sub 4% interest rate. I’d rather just keep paying the payments, and continue putting money into savings and investments.
I don’t want to say how much cash on hand I have, but I’ve been saving for close to 18 months at this point, and could take a chunk out of my outstanding loans.
The real purpose of the savings was to take my dad on a road trip back around memorial day. That trip has been postponed due to the stupidity, so I’ve just kept adding to the fund.
Another reason I want to increase my walking endurance is so that when we stop to visit places, I’m not severely limited by how far I can wander before huffing and puffing.
Yeah, I go against the pay off the mortgage prevailing wind here. To me, the mortgage is a fixed rent agreement for 30 years. There is no way in the world you can guarantee your rent like that otherwise. Plus there still remains the mortgage interest deduction and property tax deduction on income tax, which will have some meaning on my taxable IRA distributions (and the Roth money is currently projected for me living longer than I expect to).
Itemizing gets me less than the standard deduction these days.
So I can’t help but see the $200,000 in interest I’m not going to have to pay by getting rid of it early.
I compare the interest rate on the mortgage to the gains my investments have made over time. But that’s my personal risk tolerance, and I’m already at the point where the principal portion of the payments are higher then the interest portion.
My investment gains… $0.00
I don’t know of a trustworthy brokerage, and I don’t think I can just call the exchange and buy stocks.
Schwab is fine.
You don’t buy individual stocks. You buy shares in an index fund like the S&P 500.
I’ve been happy with Schwab. If you’re buying individual stocks, there’s fees. But there’s a large selection of mutual funds with no fee to buy, as well as some options for auto-balancing while holding ETF’s for no fee (but a minimum balance).
What about taking your money back out again?
For me, and I’ve only been with them 6 months I think, but Fisher Investments is killing what Fidelity was doing for me.
What about taking your money back out again?
With fidelity (in a regular investment account) its marginally more complex than transferring between banks. 1) select shares to sell, 2) select account to transfer proceeds to. It may take an extra day or two since it’s 2 separate transactions, but it’s not hard and not unnecessarily protracted.
UCS:
Expect a couple of days if the money is invested (you need to sell the investment, and then transfer it). For the auto-balancing ETF accounts, it’ll automatically sell enough to keep up your funds balanced and transfer the funds out.
Eh, to me, its debt. I don’t like debt. Don Escaped and I kicked this around awhile back. There are solid arguments “by the numbers” for having as big and long term a mortgage as you can stand, but I just don’t like that approach.
I’ve had 15 year mortgages forever because the total interest is much lower, even though the monthly is higher. Gets me to no mortgage payment dragging down my cash flow faster.
Which is why I struggle with having a mortgage after retirement. Under the current plan, I will until some deferred comp comes on line, at which I point I will be paying it off. Its all about cash flow. Which, in turn, is why we refinanced to reduce the monthly.
I just refinanced at 2.5 % for 10 years. I am 63 and plan to work till 70. So, I have three years of payments hanging out there after retirement. But I expect to get that paid off before I actually retire.
I’m 60 and had planned to work until 75. I mean I sit at a desk at home, so why not? It’s not like I have the money to just fly around the planet at leisure.
Good luck surviving the new wokeness to be able to stay in the workplace without totally losing it and just saying fuck it I’m done.
If Glibs is still around for that long, I guess we can have a contest to see who lasts longer against the great impending derp.
IMO, it’s about the type of risk, not just the magnitude of risk. When SHTF, I don’t want my house to be at risk.
I figure a big inflation hit is more likely in the next 15 years then anything else. I’ve got a fixed rate mortgage, and inflation would also be reducing the real cost of my payments.
/looks at $908 billion “stimulus” package
Right. “Inflation is good for debtors.” Generally, true. But when inflation spikes dramatically, it causes serious disruptions and it can take a long time for compensation to catch up.
I have no interest in re-living the Carter years (20% misery index == 10% inflation + 10% unemployment) which actually spilled over into the early Reagan years.
It’s nice to have a fix monthly payment on your mortgage, but it’s still no fun to be eating dog food because you income doesn’t cover your expenses.
When SHTF, nothing is going to matter.
There are many sizes of S that can HTF. I want to be prepared to ride out the ones that don’t collapse our civilization.
I think we underestimate just how little it will take to collapse the house of cards we are, economically, politically and socially. Much as the 2007 financial meltdown started from really inconsequential steps, that cascaded beyond all expectation.
Juris, I’m with you on that.
In addition to torching a good chunk of our financial capital since 2008, we have torched a great deal of our social capital. The (intentional) hollowing out of the middle class by our rulers will destabilize both our economy and our society in ways they cannot possibly imagine, much less manage or control.
*goes back to researching expat destinations*
I have a hard time squaring economic fragility with what we’ve been seeing over the last 8 months. If there was ever a time for the entire system to collapse in on itself it would be during a government-mandated depression with 25% unemployment and the greatest GDP drop in recorded history.
If that didn’t set off a cascading collapse of the economy, what possibly could?
Its papered over with debt. Which works, until it doesn’t. And when it stops working, the steepness and depth of the descent is in direct proportion to the amount of debt used to paper it over.
Specifically, our currency has been devalued, even if the impact of that is not yet felt. It will be. And Trump being out of the White House when that happens may end up being the best thing to ever happen to Republicans.
To me, the mortgage is a fixed rent agreement for 30 years. There is no way in the world you can guarantee your rent like that otherwise.
What happens in year 31 (or year 16 or year 11, depending on the specific loan)?
IMO, viewing the mortgage as a long term rental agreement is the same mistake as viewing a car loan as a longer term lease. You hollow out the best of the advantages of actually owning the thing if you jump back into debt right after paying it off.
To bungle an old cliche, I’m just a temporarily mortgaged debt-free person.
Then it makes more sense to just pay rent on the presumption that your money is better invested earning interest. The idea of sitting on 200,000-300,000 sterile dollars? Or more?
It would be a different story if I’d inherited a house and land that I could otherwise never afford (but could manage the taxes).
We have about 5 years left on the 15 year mortgage at 2.6%. We clear out most of our non-401k savings and pay it off, but that doesn’t seem to make any sense right now. And, being NJ, we’d still owe over $1k a month in property taxes.
LIBERTARIAN MOMENT!!!!!!
Minnesoda Gov “One Man Rule” Walz has proclaimed himself a libertarian!
He gets asked some question about allowing cocktails to go and he replies that he “carved out a pretty libertarian path where adults can make their own choices if it is safe”
Does this prove the adage of “scratch a libertarian and find a fascist underneath”?
I was thinking more “scratch an authoritarian and find an asshole with a total lock of self-awareness”.
Bald signing woman is highly distracting……
She also seems closer than 6 ft and isn’t wearing a mask. What gives? Why wouldn’t she wear a mask if they are so important? It isn’t like she needs to take it off.
Locals have referred to her – unkindly – as Nosferatu.
unkindly
You spelled ‘hilariously accurate’ wrong.
He’ll probably get some cocktail party invites and glowing libertarian certification over at TOS.
Well if they fawn over him enough, they will be able to get those cocktails to go and a seat at the back of the party bus where all the cool kids sit.
A non-financial question:
About 15 years ago, I registered a domain name through Network Solutions simply to get an email address that didn’t change every time that I went with a new ISP. And I didn’t want a “free” email address that came with all the baggage that gmail eventually produced.
So, now Network Solutions performance has gone to crap. I literally cannot get to the webmail log in page reliably let alone actually log into to see my email.
I need to move the domain name to a new host, but I have 15 years of email history that I do not want to lose.
Any suggestions for a new hosting service? And any suggestions on how to save/restore my email history?
thanks
Hover
They can probably help you with the process.
Didn’t take long to find
We started the debt payoff journey on April 1st 2017, paying off our $557 Target credit card balance immediately using the excess emergency fund we had (we went from $2500 to $1000 e-fund in compliance with Dave Ramsey’s plan). The rest went against our $10,491 Capital One card balance.
I love the precision with which you recite your debts from 3 and a half years ago.
I cheated. ? It’s all in the spreadsheet that I used to track the debt snowball. You can see that I lost some data points (for various reasons), as mentioned later on in the article.
That reminds me: I need to update my spreadsheet tracking expenses.
Just got off a call with eldest daughter. She is a hobby farmer that works a Government job and she is having none of this Covid bullshit. Proto-Libertarian in the oven? Gonna send her a video or two. Suggestions? (be clean).
Hat and hair videos can always use more clix, just sayin’…
Anything from the Canadian Mike Rowe
Particularly this one
When I was fresh out of college I learned the hard way about how expensive credit card debt is. I had unrealistic expectations about my lifestyle, had an expensive apartment, drank expensive beer, was always in for one more round, and went out way too often. Once I got serious about paying that down I never since carried a balance. Surprisingly it was my girlfriend who talked sense into me. Of course she wanted me to spend money on her instead of the stupid stuff I was buying, but she was right that I was being foolish with my money.
Though I deferred payment on my student loans from grad school in order to float around Europe for a few years, I paid those back as soon as I could once I got a real job. Now I pay cash for cars and buy used. The only debt I have outstanding is my mortgage which we just refinanced to 15 years at 2%.
The only debt I have outstanding is my mortgage which we just refinanced to 15 years at 2%.
Same here. I think we got 2.25%. Ridiculously cheap money. Took over $1500/month off our mortgage payments, due mostly to refinancing only the amount left after paying a 15 year mortgage for over 7 years.
Well done, Trashy.
My struggle is the CC’s. For likely multiple reasons, I have a lot of trouble not spending on them. I get them paid off, then run the balances back up. Some of it is “justified,” but a lot are things that I should wait to get.
Finally in a place making steady income, but man it’s hard to bite the bullet and just say “no” all the time.
Tried Ramsey’s way years ago, but the one thing for me that made it really tough was all the leftover change from all the envelopes. Ended up just spending it. But, I would note for those that are interested in a digital version that has worked much better for me to check out You Need A Budget. Very similar system (give every dollar a job), but since it’s all digital, it’s much easier for me to roll the leftover from a bucket/envelope/category into another, and has been much more successful.
Again, though – congrats! I’m hoping for another 2 years until totally debt-free, but that all depends on me…
We never used physical envelopes, just categories in GnuCash. And as long as the monthly totals worked out, moving things from one category to another as needed is no problem. Grocery is over by $50? Move $50 out of Clothing.
At the time (late 90’s), I was also trying to do a cash-only lifestyle, so the envelope system made sense. Just had a lot of “bookkeeping” (no pun intended).
YNaB has been great, though.
We only do physical cash for groceries. Even then, we’ve been bad about it for a few months. We tried doing physical cash for everything and it lasted a solid 2 weeks. Way too much online transacting to bother with physical dollars.
I’m half tempted to cut up the CC again. It’s not that we’re outspending our means, but we haven’t put anything towards our down payment fund since August. It’s more my fault than wife’s this time. We used my pay cut as an excuse. Amazon boxes were/are arriving daily on the porch. Fast food coming home 4 or 5 times a week.
We’re committed to cleaning things up in the new year. Come out of December neutral and start regaining traction in January.
We use CCs for everything and pay off in full each month. I like being able to see online where everything is going and what percentage. It makes it very easy to match up with my spreadsheet budget.
The cashback rebates are pretty nice. Off the top of my head, we’re using 3 cards to get 6% at grocery stores and streaming, 5% Amazon, 4% gas and Costco, 3% travel and restaurants.
The exception is I pay cash to anyone helping me out at the house.
Credit cards are great if you have the discipline to pay them off every month, especially if you get cash back. But they can also enable a lot of bad habits that get you into trouble fast.
Aye. It’s actually really enlightening how little control I have with them. How I just rationalize whatever it is I want. Especially given that in other areas of my life, I’m quite disciplined.
Generally it’s a runaway gotta-catch-em-all compulsion: Oh, I’ve gotten into Lord of the Rings, the Card Game? OK, now I must collect all copies of every pack and expansion, no matter if it’s out of print or not.
That sort of thing.
Anyway, no excuses, and it’s something I’m always aware of and trying to work on; just can make for rough sailing, financially.
Sounds like you have multiple CCs? Having only one credit card might help.
True, may help, for sure. At least would get rid of some of the ability to give into temptation.
I was rebuilding credit (after my former career caused income to crater and led to a huge hole), and took the advice to have a number of smaller cards to show many on-time payments.
But, I’ll consider that. Heh, have to pay them off, first, but at least I do have a plan there. Just have to stick to it.
I have this, with books, music, and cross stitch patterns. That shit starts adding up fast.
This is one area that I do believe has genetic pre-disposition. My mother also has this near-compulsion. I actually didn’t see it growing up, but as we kids left home – and the parents had more disposable income – it started to come to the forefront. Her sewing room and craft cottage is amazing, though; looks like she hijacked a couple of semis headed for Michael’s.
And yes, it adds up REALLY fast. It’s an instructive life lesson in keeping me humble.
Oh, yeah. I forgot that one.
OTOH, sometimes I go on a purge and actually sell stuff. A bunch of x-stitch patterns I collected decades ago paid my mortgage one month after I put them on eBay. One sold for almost $500.
Right now I have an Etsy store to clear out old x-stitch fabric left over from when I made a business out of my hobby (#protip: never do that). One file tubs’ worth of stuff made me quite a bit of scratch and I still have the other tub left.
But, as a meme pointed out to me once, collecting craft supplies IS the hobby.
We have several credit cards we use all the time. My wife has told me that use this card at the grocery store or for gas, this card for restaurants and this other card for everything else. All based on various cash back incentives.
We also pay off our cards religiously so it is free money to us. When my wife and I decided to get married, I had a ton of cc debt and was struggling mightily. She was the one who took over our finances and got us (me) out of a hole. I did learn from that though and made sure to never get back into that situation.
I was wondering one day what we would do if we won the lottery.
I’d build a 3500 square foot garage/shop, right next to a 900 square foot house.
In Idaho.
Howdy neighbor! That’s about what I’d do too.
I was wondering one day what we would do if we won the lottery.
Assuming its a big lottery win (north of, I dunno, $50mm?)
(1) Contact a real lawyer on how to claim and structure it for maximum anonymity, tax advantage, and asset protection.
(2) Give notice.
(3) Order Mrs. Dean her AMG.
(4) Have a long ponder on the back porch about what to do next.
1. I built that into my assumptions. Don’t say a word to anybody if you can help it (we’re in a state where your name has to be public). Find a lawyer and an accountant. Fast.
2. I would ask my husband not to give notice for a while. I would want to let it lie for to see how it shakes out with #1 and with health insurance.
Finding a trustworthy lawyer for step 1 is a stumbling block for me. I don’t know where to look.
#3 and #4 are not steps for me because I don’t owe Mrs. Dean anything, and I don’t have a back porch.
I’d probably structure #2 as “I got a job in [other state], so I have to leave as of [date].” Just to avoid suspicion.
(1) Contact a real lawyer on how to claim and structure it for maximum anonymity, tax advantage, and asset protection.
There is a lawyer here in FL who does a lot of these. He basically (as I understand it) forms a corporation of which he is President, sole asset is the lottery ticket, ownership is specified in founding documents. He does the required publicity, sets up investment vehicles and tax structures, etc. and then dissolves the company. I’m guessing he takes on the order of 5-10% percent ownership in the company for that. But you are pretty much not publicly associated with the lottery ticket.
You people are boring. The correct answer is high-end hookers and blow.
I thought it was Oxy and cheap beer.
Boredom is underrated.
Yeah. “may you live in interesting times” is not a blessing.
I’d be dead in a year.
But what a year it would be.
The correct answer is high-end hookers and blow.
What do you think I’m planning to ponder?
I’d build a 3500 square foot garage/shop, right next to a 900 square foot house.
In Idaho.
Very similar, ‘cept I’d build it in Normandy (ancestral home).
Then I could kill myself eating fine French cheese and drinking fine French wine.
And being reamed by fine French taxes and not-so-fine not-so-French rapefugees.
Meh, it’s Normandy, mostly a backwater for the rapefugees problem. Great cider, crème, Camembert and Calvados (the 4 C’s), though.
As for the taxes, mon cousins assure me that tax evasion is practically the national French pastime.
Ooooops. ”Mes cousins”!
Apparently, I’d also be brushing up on my painful French language skills.
And buy a mill and lathe to play with.
Still in for Trump?
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-to-georgias-governor-call-off-election-it-wont-be-needed/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=second
So, your point here is the law prevented them from committing vote fraud, because there is a law?
No, the point is Trump’s team has proven NOTHING with regard to fraud, and is willing to court disaster (losing the Senate) because of his fucking ego. And people want to FEED that?
Word on the street is, losing the Senate is a feature, not a bug. Why bother rewarding the GOP if they wouldn’t back Trump?
Not my view, just something I heard. Keep it under your hat.
they wouldn’t back Trump
I seem to have misplaced my country, this sounds like some parliamentary system. Of ALL of the reasons I could have for hating on any given GOP member – sucking up to Trump’s ass is not high on the list.
duh – NOT sucking up
If the GOP prefers to ignore the widespread election fraud then what’s the point of rooting for the party? The election was rigged. I do not benefit from pretending that it wasn’t.
The GOP that needs to FIX that is the state-level. Fuck this total nationalization of politics – that does not end well for people that believe in limited govt. If rampant corruption rules, then this country deserves its fate and your only sensible option is either carving out a defensible segment of it, or voting with your feet. There is no fixing a broken people – and you are arguing that there is a vast community of them.
If rampant corruption rules, then this country deserves its fate and your only sensible option is either carving out a defensible segment of it, or voting with your feet.
This is why I’m a #collapsitarian
BTW grrizzly – this widespread election fraud delivered VERY GOOD results to the Republican party overall, if not for Trump. So why the fuck should the party commit suicide for him?
ji, you sound like you’re actively pro-fraud when it benefits the politicians you support (the GOP minus Trump).
I wouldn’t be surprised if some Republicans in the country benefited themselves from a bit of election fraud: Dominion voting systems were picked up by both D and R states. That’s why they and their mouthpieces are so hysterical in trying to shut down any investigation.
Not pro-fraud, just suspicious of claims that only ONE GUY was fucked over. Interesting bit of collusion (between Dems and Repubs) you imagine there.
Why? We’ve seen that a lot of establishment GOP types hate Trump.
We covered this yesterday. Statistical analysis is proof. At least enough for discovery. Why do you oppose discovery?
I don’t oppose discovery; I would welcome some real hard evidence, and not just a bunch of story-telling.
Sworn eyewitness affidavits count as evidence in my book.
I’ve won (and lost) cases on expert testimony. Not, perhaps, “hard” evidence, but expert “opinions” do provide a service in putting discrete facts into a larger context, and are certainly admissible as evidence.
At lease some of the evidence so far is of fraud that would not be picked up on recounts, as it is evidence that illegal ballots were introduced into the counting process (in many cases, illegally). Once introduced, illegal ballots recount just like legal ones.
All that said, I’m sure some of the spaghetti being thrown at the wall by the Trumpsters is bullshit.
Not to worry, though. Biden will be sworn in. And Nothing Else Will Happen. Who is going to investigate this? Harris’s FBI? So regardless of whether you are correct in believing there’s nothing to it, or I am correct that there definitely is something to it, the verdict of history will be in your favor.
All that said, I’m sure some of the spaghetti being thrown at the wall by the Trumpsters is bullshit.
Most certainly. If I had the power to start looking for fraud, I’d look in the absentee ballot stacks in the 90%+ participation precincts in the major cities. That’s where rumors of fraud have been swirling for decades.
The Dominion stuff would be too easy to prove with a simple hand recount. Unless there’s some real tinfoil hat stuff going on, the Dominion narrative is a bust.
The highly biased uploads of massive ballot dumps are the red flags. Any competent investigator would get their hands on those ballots and those machines and 1) reconcile the electronic count to the physical count; and 2) pick a few thousand mail in ballots from that pool that are also in the urban high participation precincta and go track down the voter to ensure it was their ballot.
Personally, I think the results would be rather, erm, enlightening.
juris,
It’s better then what the “tea party” leader here in Ohio is saying:
WTPC Calls for President to Invoke Limited Martial Law to Hold New Election and Protect our Vote, in Full Page Washington Times Ad, if Legislators, Courts and Congress Do Not Follow the Constitution
That would be bad precedent. Seriously bad.
Morons with megaphones.
As pithy a description of our ruling class as I have seen. Well coined, sir.
Given that the clock has effectively run out on changing the semi-official results, I’m starting to think that the challenges and claims of voting fraud and irregularities actually are about delegitimizing Biden, since they won’t change who gets sworn in.
I just can’t figure out what the Trumpublicans expect to gain from doing so. Battlespace prep for his 2024 run?
I wouldn’t say it’s too late. I listened to part of the hearings today in Michigan. It’s witness after witness after witness describing massive fraud. Everything was sworn under oath and they face jail-time for perjury. Here are some of the details now coming out.
Freelance IT whistleblower hired by Dominion to oversee tabulators and adjudicators
-Was onsite for 27 hours. During that time saw batches of absentee ballots being run through the tabulators and counted 8-10 times/batch. Normally, there is supposed to be a steel box that collects ballots to prevent multiple counts. These boxes were not attached to the machines and instead stacked to block GOP observers. This was corroborated in sworn testimony by other witnesses.
-Didn’t see a single absentee vote for Donald Trump during the entire 27 hours. 90% of adjudicators were democrats.
-Massive data loss on machines occurred right before a Dominion supervisor headed to a warehouse nicknamed the “Chicago Warehouse” and then a huge dump for Biden immediately occurred
-Claims Department of Elections in complicit in the fraud. She called the FBI and others about the above but was ignored. Also saw the president (I think, may have the office incorrect) of Dominion on the ground in Detroit right before counting started (not fraud but very strange).
Another witness
-Every single absentee military ballot had a birthdate of January 1, 1900. Challenged the ballots and were told no challenges would be accepted.
-Saw machine display 204 ballots for 196 physical ballots fed into machine
Another witness
-All counting machines were illegally connected to the internet with ethernet cables. This allowed external access to the machines.
Another witness
-Absentee ballots all followed sequential numbering, which is impossible unless manufactured. When GOP challengers objected, they were thrown out. While being escorted out, most in the counting room stood, applauded, and jeered the GOP objectors.
There were many more witnesses who came forward to testify. This is just a small recap for a few.
There’s much more here:
Some of it is direct testimony of very questionable practices by election officials. Some of it is statistical analysis of significant anomalies (which, BTW, if put forward by an expert witness, is admissable evidence).
When I say its too late, I assume that there is sufficient credible evidence in hand, but I don’t think (1) any legislature or court will reverse the results currently in hand given that (2) there is very little time left to process the enormous amount of testimony, etc. through various fora to support reversing the results currently in hand. In effect, the cheating was too big to fail.
Myself, I think it likely that there was unprecedented fraud, likely enough to flip at least a few states. And I think Biden gets sworn in.
Also in the news today: Dominion is financed, once you get through the cutouts, by, wait for it . . . the ChiComs.
I saw that too about the ChiChoms. Still waiting for verification but crazy if true.
Myself, I think it likely that there was unprecedented fraud, likely enough to flip at least a few states. And I think Biden gets sworn in.
I’m riding this train, too. I’m pre-primed to believe these stories people are telling because they match almost exactly what people have been whispering to me about election fraud for the last 3 election cycles.
Urban machines strong-arming the observers and running fraudulent absentee ballots through the machines unchecked. That has been the MO I’ve been hearing about since at least 2008.
If he concedes despite the massive obvious evidence of fraud, that fraud is rewarded and encouraged. Whether Trump wins or not is secondary to restoring some trust in elections. Without a restoration of trust, political will be settled with firearms in the near future.
It was by the grace of God alone that I didn’t blurt out every hurtful thing circulating in my mind and disappear for a few days.
I have had a couple of girlfriends who were apparently disappointed by my steadfast refusal to “have an honest
conversationfight”.“Some things can’t be unsaid” was never a satisfactory answer, for some reason.
“I regard the ability to not say every single thing that crosses someone’s mind as a sign of civilization.”
And often (not always), what we want to say in the moment isn’t what we really think when examined with a calmer perspective.
Civilization has largely been shaped by warfare. So that can go either way.
Dresden really got shaped by warfare.
Sad that my mind went to Jim Butcher rather than WWII…
I find those sorts of moments the funniest when I run into them.
Back in my college days, they handed each student a planner, and on the calendar part there were occasional historical events listed. I spotted the out of context line of “Fat Man Destroys Nagasaki” and my first mental image went to something like a kaiju attack instead of a mushroom cloud.
Ha! Ya, it is funny when that happens. I should have asterisk’d my “sad”
Like Pope Jimbo’s “I love you so much” meme that he went oops on yesterday. Gotta say, I haven’t laughed out loud like that in a long time, as I could see myself doing the exact same thing.
So of course, I immediately sent it to my son, who didn’t catch it at first. And then did.
I was torn about that I Love You meme yesterday.
It made me laugh, but I’m a sick person. It also made me wince once I had stopped laughing. I was worried that it was over the line and I’d offend someone here.
I really would feel bad if that hurt someone’s feelings on here.
Well, of course you know that part of the reason I laughed is because I knew that you hadn’t seen it before posting. I may or may not have done similar things, so can sympathize.
Oh, I knew what I was posting. I can’t claim any sort of victim status in this one.
I’m just going to roast in hell.
Well, then, I’ll pray for your soul… THIS MUCH!
*snort*
I’ll save you a seat in the hot tub full of brimstone.
And-
Very well done, trashy!
A couple of comments here have mentioned cutting up or eliminating credit cards altogether.
As someone who does not yet own a house and has “ok” credit at the moment (big negative will fall off in 2023), is this a good thing?
Everything I’ve read says to not get rid of CC completely, but certainly to keep the balances low/paid off. Of course, most of the literature comes from entities that benefit somehow by people carrying revolving debt.
Can one build and maintain great credit without them?
Cut up =/= cancel the account.
What we did back when we cut ours up was make a few autopay bills charge to the card and then pay the bills off each month by paying the money to the card instead. The actual physical card was in 50 pieces at the bottom of the local landfill.
Gotcha. That would mean I’d have to have the discipline to delete the #’s out of LastPass and BitWarden so as not to make it possible to spend on them. But, that’s on me, and back to the whole discipline thing.
delete the #’s out of LastPass and BitWarden so as not to make it possible to spend on them
Do it! We dont store ours in lastpass for that exact reason. If I’m making an online purchase, I need to track down the card and punch in the numbers manually. It’s enough of a barrier to entry to prevent some of those moment of weakness buys.
Let me also shill for my earlier GlibFin article on budgeting. Having a purpose for every dollar before the paycheck arrives acts to add another layer of accountability. Instead of spending out of a big pot of fungible cash, you’re taking away dollars that were earmarked for something else. Now it’s a huge PITA to figure out which category that money is coming out of. After a few times of papering over your spending indiscretions, you get really sick of eating ramen because $50 of your grocery money went to [insert fun purchase here].
This strikes to the heart of what I struggle with. I do give each dollar a job. That’s why it’s so easy to use the CC, as I don’t have any $ available for the fun…
So, what I am starting to do is take some money and actually dedicate to a fun/spending/waste budget bucket. That way I can still do my impulse spending (although trying to get less), but not wreck the overall budget.
Thanks for the encouragement. Embarrassing that I have to deal with this as a well-into-adulthood person, but it’s a great opportunity for humility.
So, what I am starting to do is take some money and actually dedicate to a fun/spending/waste budget bucket.
Probably a good approach, as long as you stop spending on fun when the bucket runs dry.
That’s correct, you don’t want to get rid of them. Part of your score is length of credit history, so you need some old active accounts. Another part is total credit available and percent of balance used. So having cards with a high limit and zero balance definitely helps. And finally, it’s a plus to to have a variety of credit sources.
Building Credit without a credit card is possible, but _much_ slower, and probably not attainable. The way Creditors look at your credit is look at a) How much credit you have extended to you, b) the percentage of the credit you use, and c) How often you pay it off.
Having a small credit card (my only CC has a 4k Limit (and that is after they raised it from when i originally got it). I treat it like my Debit card, which means, i only spend what i know is in the bank account already. I usually only end up spending 25%-50% of the limit before making a transfer from the checking account to the CC to pay it off each month.
Creditors like to see that you not only have credit, but that you use it and then pay it off.
As Trash says, don’t cancel credit cards because it 1) lowers the ammount of credit you have been extended, and (more importantly) 2) usually lowers the “average time” your credit accounts have been open. creditors like to see long running accounts, rather than new ones.
OK, so my info has been good. It all comes back to discipline. But, hey, that’s part of being an adult. Just gotta keep making (small) steps.
Thanks for confirmation, all.
With regard to hearing different things, yes, you eventually express your assumptions and adjust accordingly. Her = “You want to put me in the poorhouse when you die?” Him = “I don’t want to slave away for the rest of my life for nothing.”
With regard to saying things that can’t be un-said and other moments of marital strife, consider: She probably has just as many things to say as you do and she’s holding back too.
Also, it’s never about that. It’s about Inciting Incident X, which you will have to dig to find out.
Also, it’s never about that. It’s about Inciting Incident X, which you will have to dig to find out.
Yes, and that exact thing gets me so very ragey. I spent my teenage years living with my single dad and 2 brothers. Indirect communication either goes over my head or pisses me off. Thankfully, wife (who spent her teenage years with her single mom and 2 sisters) is willing to spell it out idiot-style for this lunk head.
I remember conversations here a few months back about women having a social/emotional part of the brain that men don’t have. I’m most definitely one of those stunted men.
I grew up with 3 sisters, both older and younger – so was lucky to understand _some_ of what women are indirectly getting at.
But i still miss a lot.
Likely it’s been fought over many times and neither of you recognized it as such. The problem is sometimes she DOESN’T KNOW WHY she’s so pissed off, but she is, and the heat gets turned up or down depending on the immediate situation.
There is one of those in my marriage that finally got hammered out last year (once I figured it out) but it took a heavy toll on us and our kids, and that can’t be retrieved. I didn’t know for years why I was so pissed off.
having a social/emotional part of the brain that men don’t have
Yeah, and the comment earlier about spending expanded free time with people you like, and I’m huh, that’s an extremely limited circle in my case.
I spent my teenage years living with my single dad and 2 brothers. Indirect communication either goes over my head or pisses me off. Thankfully, wife (who spent her teenage years with her single mom and 2 sisters)
Here’s the story, of a lovely lady….
(1) Contact a real lawyer on how to claim and structure it for maximum anonymity, tax advantage, and asset protection.
The first thing I’d do is go rent a safe deposit box and put the winning ticket away for at least six months, in order to do the rest of those things.
Oooh, that’s a good idea.
Not really they generally expire and 6 months is a common expiration. Can you imagine spending 6 months planning out your investments and trust set up only to discover that the ticket expired the day before you got it out of the safe?
I am assuming that P. Brooks and I are capable of finding out when it expires and adjusting the safe-deposit-box term accordingly.
It shouldn’t take more than a month to get your plan for immediate acquisition and disposition squared away. Maybe two, at the very most. I mean, its not like you’re setting up an international gun running and money laundering syndicate.
Although . . . .
It has occurred to me.
Then the thought sank in that tragic boating accident.
Of course, you can’t win if you don’t play, and I don’t.
I’m most definitely one of those stunted men.
#METOO
Hence the “never married” on my cv.
they generally expire and 6 months is a common expiration.
I was under they impression they expired in a year. You’d probably want to check on that.
Apparently it varies State to State from a low of 90 days to one year.
I have less than 20K in debt, all what’s left of my new (1 year old now, less than 6K miles still) SUV to pay it off. I want to buy a property, just waiting out my lease so I can get back in debt. Or maybe not, after the great tax hikes of 2021 no one may be able to afford except for billionaires.
Social media is asshoe.
Call me optomistic, but i foresee some “bad luck” for a marketing platform that bans it’s customers.
I doubt it is banning the Chinese scammers, and based on the ads I see that is Facebook’s main revenue stream.
Well they were meant for each other.
I thought their main revenue stream was selling your data.
But is it banning customers who matter?
And how much is it getting paid to do so?
Of course, large advertisers are going to get exempted from those moderation bots because they would give Facebook a good reaming if their ads got blocked.
*sigh*
One of my tasks at work is to come up with questions to ask to vet the technical competence of potential vendors. I’m having trouble because while I know we can’t take their say so, I also assume they’re cheating swindlers who will falsify their “how much experience” types of answers and go to the internet for the technical ones… but we’re being told to keep them to high level questions. Since these is a questionnaire that we would send to them, we have no way to verify how they filled it out.
Should I stop stressing over catching every fraud and just look for the biggest red flags?
You should stop stressing because the people who are going to pick the vendor in the long run will not understand your questions or the vendors’ answers to those questions.
The final vendor selection committee will choose a vendor based solely on how fancy each vendor’s Power Point deck was. Or which vendor had the best happy hour after their presentation.
That’s not the criteria used.
It’s which one offered the best kickbacks.
Time honored approach.
I knew a guy who was a brilliant guy at setting up data centers. Give him and empty room and he’d have a world class operation running in six months. Kept getting fired over and over again because he couldn’t resist taking kickbacks from vendors. Happened at several places (usually after he had the data center up and running).
The troubling part was that the kickbacks weren’t that massive or even cash. For example he had a penchant for Sun hardware and had a basement full of Sun servers. The Sun rep would give him one of the newest and best servers and this guy would place an order for 200 servers.
*pictures scene from Better Call Saul where the expert German engineer digging the industrial meth lab is, err, terminated from employment*
What kind of skills are you looking for?
I think you are always set to look for the biggest red flags, but honestly i do Python Programming but if someone asked me something like “What are the arguments to the builtin `filter` function” i would tell them i don’t know, i’d have to look it up, but i could tell them what the function does.
I don’t think I can go into details. But it’s peoplesoft work.
Anything with a vendor bid in my office is peoplesoft work.
We are the “PeopleSoft Center of Excellence”. Which is why we don’t know much about peoplesoft. That and everyone jumping ship after the IT consolidation.
Isn’t PeopleSoft one of those big software packages where you can make some good coin if you get certified on its use? I think that way back in the mid-’90s we had a PeopleSoft practice at Andersen Consulting. They would train you and get you certified, but you had to sign some sort of contract saying you would work at AC for 5 years or so. They did that because if you had the right certifications, you could go make six figures a year on your own.
PeopleSoft is an Oracle product. As such, prepare to get financially reamed when you need anything more than the disks it’s delivered on, oh wait, you probably have to pay extra for those too…
Which end of six figures? Because I’m almost there as is.
Are these only written questions/answers, or could there be verbal discussion?
I ask because one question I’ve used in doing similar evaluations that is most effective when the communication is verbal is to ask “In what circumstances or use case(s) would your product/skillset be less than ideal or contraindicated?”
If a vendor cannot explain why they shouldn’t be used in certain cases, then that’s a solid red flag for me. Any honest contractor or vendor should recognize that while they want to make the sale, their services cannot solve all problems all the time, and honest evaluation of that is key.
Perhaps that could also be done in writing, but seems to be more awkward.
And the “how much experience” part is always sketchy. After all, is it 20 years of experience where furthering skills is emphasized, or 1 year of experience 20 times because there’s no growth?
Only written. I don’t think my group will even talk to anyone from any vendor until after a selection has been made and they’re ready to show up onsite.
I see. Well, perhaps a statement proving other work they’ve done in order to vet that way (don’t know exactly what skills or services you’re looking at, of course).
Ultimately, it usually does come down to “who makes the best pitch,” irrespective of technical competency.
That is a good question.
I have found it effective, but the reason I prefer in-person or at least verbal communication for it is that in writing you can really come off as a jerk.
And even in person, you have to be careful. I had one sales engineer get really offended when I asked (and I always do with a smile and attitude not of “gotcha” but “I really want to know”), but his technical partner smiled and said just that: “Good question.”
Agreed. One of my questions when dealing with Big Data/Machine Learning vendors was “Can your product find the gold nuggets by itself, or will you need to use my staff’s time up helping you find those nuggets?”
I’d try to state it in a way that made it seem as if I didn’t want to have to waste the time of my subject matter consultants. The good vendors would say well of course we need time from the subject matter experts. Our product can dig through anything, but we need experts to show us where to dig and what we should be looking for.
Bad vendors would assure you that their tools are so awesome that they can find the gold nuggets all on their own.
We’re not looking at a new product. We’re sticking with the same great big pile of shit we’ve locked all our data in.
We just have a grand total of three technical state staff, so any great big plans the people calling the shots want to implement requires hiring vendors.
Given it is NY, I’m glad that incompetence and corruption will be the standard that guides it all.
Peoplesoft vendor question: List the number of clients who have not had substantial rework beyond your original price and scope to complete the project.
It looks like you need some lessons on how to be a good Deep State Operative.
1. Do you have an opinion on which company should win the bid, for any reason? If so, gear the questions to make it more likely they will win the bid.
2. If you don’t have an opinion on which company should win, find out which one your manager wants to win, then repeat step 1.
3. If no one has a preference, who gives a shit about the quality of the questionnaire? Everyone in your food chain gets paid the same in the end, unless they are in on the kickbacks.
At least some of you are directly involved in the vendor/software selection process. At my place of employment a WMS system that was designed to integrate with a very specific WIndows based ERP system was purchased. Even though we don’t use that ERP system. Why was that system chosen? It was cheap and the vendor promised that it could be made to work with a few “modifications”. As you can imagine it turned into a massively expensive clusterf*ck.
Given that the clock has effectively run out on changing the semi-official results, I’m starting to think that the challenges and claims of voting fraud and irregularities actually are about delegitimizing Biden, since they won’t change who gets sworn in.
I just can’t figure out what the Trumpublicans expect to gain from doing so. Battlespace prep for his 2024 run?
That’s pretty much where I am. I don’t know if it’s even so much about delegitimizing Biden as just a bunch of poor loser whining. Where were they six months ago, if they knew this was coming?
I can’t see Trump running in ’24, but what do I know?
If he could focus his energies on a coherent message, he might be able to do some good in the next few years, but he’ll probably fall in with a bad crowd, like the Chamber of Commerce Republicans.
Sore looser on Trumps Part, and Turnabout on the part of the GOP base. If the leftists are going to screech for 4 years about “NOT My PRESIDENT!” then delegitimizing the current occupant of the white house is what is going to happen from now on.
Yep, and the Democrats will be left with saying “but it was different when we did it”, and nothing more.
Which, of course, has never stopped them from getting their frothing rage on.
And I’ve gotta say that I don’t have much of a problem with that anymore. Used to, but I’m past that idealistic stage. Now I see it as a great way to teach the other side “Me today, you tomorrow.”
Assuming anyone on the other side’s capable of learning that lesson, that is.
Nope. Don’t give a fuck. I hope Trump pulls the exact same bullshit that Hillary! has for the past four years. Maximize the lunacy!
delegitimizing the current occupant of the white house is what is going to happen from now on.
If it results in gridlock, a collapse of the Imperial Presidency and its accompanying sycophancy, and a greatly reduced popular reliance on the goodness of government, that wouldn’t be the worst imagineable outcome.
gridlock
Matters not to our rulers in the administrative state.
collapse of the Imperial Presidency and its accompanying sycophancy
Those are driven by our ruling class, which cares not what the lumpenproles think.
greatly reduced popular reliance on the goodness of government
Those people are either cashing checks from the government, in which case they don’t care, or have some psychological need being met by the government, in which case they don’t care.
It will just result in the continuing search for a Savior.
Anyone heard from Gina Haspel?
Cracks me up that it’s still going on the twit place.
She’s not hear… this game of where’s
WaldoGina is going to be fun.Biden is keeping her on. That was the last I heard. I think the WaPo said something along the lines of “Vagina!”
The rumor mill has her dead in a shoot-out for the Dominion servers, in GITMO facing treason charges, helping Trump’s election investigation, or died of natural causes.
She hasn’t been seen in a week or so.
I like to think that she died in that Kurdish genocide that never happened, but was totally going to
Maybe the Syrians got her with the nerve gas?
2021 Biden Administration
Defense Secretary (but with a vagina, so it’s all good): We need to stay in Syria, because… *spins wheel*…. gender pronouns.
Media: If we don’t stay in Syria all the pronouns will die!
In today’s bit of wokeness….Ellen Page has declared that she is no longer a lesbian, but a man named Elliott. Best part is, though…”Page, 33, said he will use he/they pronouns.”
He/they??? The fuck is with the “they” if you’re just a bloke? You’re not stunning and brave enough if you just use ordinary ol’ masculine pronouns, I guess.
LOOK AT ME!
A has-been getting one last hit of publicity.
Pretty much, yeah. Roles dried up as she got older, so gotta do something to get the spotlight back on her. The lesbian bit worked for her for a short while, but lesbian or, at least, bisexual actresses are a dime a dozen, so it was time to kick things up a notch.
*surveys field of fucks to give
*finds it a stony and barren place
“bloke”
It’s not acceptable to use English slang just because you’re upset. Control yourself, mate
Been watching too many British crime series on Netflix, I guess. My apologies.
Why are there so many of those, anyway? Aren’t they always bragging about how they don’t have all the murder we have here because we’re crazy cowboys who all are heavily armed?
My favorite is when they do a historical piece and Roman Emperors, along with Egyptians, all seem to have British accents.
I can’t watch a film that involves Romans unless they have British accents. It just seems off now.
Ellen WHO?
https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1333728322874986498
Find yourself someone who loves forced vaccinations as much as anyone from CATO and Reason. The absolutely weirdest thing to attack Massie about.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Shapiro is in the “opinion” business and so is his employer.
Brown is a malicious retard.
You would think I could no longer be embarrassed by financially supporting Reason in the distant past. But, they always find a way to keep me feeling freshly embarrassed.
We just lost the world’s largest radio telescope because nobody could be bothered to perform maintenance. Says a lot about us and 2020.
Yeah, the main suspension structure (which held up the equipment building) collapsed this morning. Arecibo’s done:
https://www.space.com/arecibo-radio-telescope-collapses
2020’s turning out to be quite the year.
It was done quite a while ago. It was probably salvageable for parts before the hurricanes hit, but that was it. It needed a complete rebuild — making something out of steel mesh in the tropics has a built-in expiration date.
I think the Chinese now have a bigger one, or will soon.
Also i thought the breaking was a freak accident?
I think the Chinese now have a bigger one
That’s not what I heard . . .
Oh, you mean radio telescope. Could be.
There’s 1.4 billion of ’em. Statistically speaking, they’re going to have more outliers.
A cable snapped 3 months ago, but they decided not to fix it because. That stressed the rest of the structure.
Ahhh. I see.
“Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope to close in blow to science”
You know who else was a blow to science?
Deborah Abromowitz, in Debbie Does CERN?
Pshaw, radio astronomy is so 20th century. All the cool kids are into
pogsgravitational waves now.And scientists are like anyone else, they engage in motivated reasoning too.
That thing has been out of operation for quite a while though hasn’t it?
Myself, I think it likely that there was unprecedented fraud, likely enough to flip at least a few states. And I think Biden gets sworn in.
And nothing else happens.
There should be serious prison time involved, but my expectation is zilch will come of this, other than some giant “election security consultant” contracts will be awarded to insiders.
Other things will happen and they’ll be very unpleasant.
People will no longer consider elections fair. That will be a big problem.
And yet a guy that SHOULD know doesn’t seem to agree.
It’s ok, you don’t have to be afraid. Trump is not getting a second term.
No one with a college degree who doesn’t live within the vicinity of the Middle East should be afraid of a Biden term
Got it — Barr is another deep state counter-operative. A brilliant one, because he got Trump to appoint him to AG.
Reminds me of a Dilbert strip. Catbert the evil HR Director cut employee pay and vacation time. When asked about the reception he says: “I haven’t listened to a single complaint.”
Bringing a thread down here because its only slightly related:
I am in favor or a long, slow, detailed election onvestigation. It wont change Biden being Prez, regardless of result, but that isnt the point. The primary point is to send people to jail for long periods of time. Secondarily, to clean up the system.
Some may think the 2nd is most important, nut O think the first is s requirement.
Hey, we may only find 1000 or so fraudulent votes, not nearly enough to overturn the election, but still enough to have people rot away in prison.
Stupid phone, I cant even figure that out.
I struggled nut O agree. People need to go to real prison, not country club prison, pour encourager les autres.
The primary point is to send people to jail for long periods of time.
The current system is all reward and no risk.
More than anything else, people need to go to prison for fucking around with the election.
Anyone who fucked around with election process deserves to go to prison – just got to prove it in a court of law, not kangaroos.
Did I say otherwise?
Nothing gets to court unless a prosecutor brings it. The idea that Harris’s FBI will go after voter fraud is laughable.
I suppose state prosecutors might. Oh, wait, the states most at issue are run by Democrats. Never mind.
*pulls tinfoil over head, checks out window for black helicopters*
Copper Farraday cage. Tinfoil is not reliable.
https://twitter.com/michaelmalice/status/1333782477521895429
Ooof Michael laying it down on the LP
Nick Sarwark is CIA
Please elaborate
All the cool kids are saying it. It’s the only thing that makes sense considering his absolutely ass backwards positions and strategy. May or may not be true, but it’s cathartic to think of him as a Fed.
You sound like half my Facebook feed when they’re talking about Trump.
It’s a joke
What’s a joke?
What kind of absolute idiot would spend a nickle infiltrating the Libertarian Party? Why? So they can undermine a political party that has delegates to its national convention dance naked on stage? and not attractive female delegates, male deleagtes built like me. The party whose VP candidate endorsed the Democrats in 16? The party that thinks decriminalized marijuana is important, but free association, gun rights, and cutting spending are too contraversial to push?
I could see the FBI doing it.
It’s always good to have a some morons around to conveniently pin the blame on.
A party that spurned the chance to have McAfee as their presidential candidate?
McAfee would have had hot stripper delegates. Not fat beardo stripper delegates.
I don’t know about that, but i have heard that things that the LP did and the way certain people on the JoJo campaign acted was intentionally done to put off right-libertarians in an attempt to posion the well for the Mises Caucus types.
Wouldn’t doubt it one bit. Once she started spouting BLM bullshit and “it’s not enough to be passively not racist, we must be actively anti-racist”, I was done with her shitty campaign. Hell, I even voted for Gary in ’16 despite the appalling presence of William Weld, but a man has his limits.
I actively hate the LP at this point. I will not give them a vote. If what they are selling is libertarian then I am not.
My favorite is when they do a historical piece and Roman Emperors, along with Egyptians, all seem to have British accents.
Just finished a BBC “Musketeers” series. Frenchy swashbucklers with English accents.
I saw the changing of the guard at The Citadel in Quebec. Soldiers in scarlet with bearskin hats barking orders en Francais hurt my brain.
Also, apparently Queen Vicky gave them a goat once, so they decided that must be a great honor.
I wonder how they decided who got to spend which night with it.
Undoubtedly someone from the Welsh Guards.
Gotta love the government:
VDH is the worst. I worked on an interagency project with them and it was alternatively hilarious and maddening.
I thought you were saying “Victor Davis Hansen” at first.
Victor Davis Hansen (he/they/them)?
I’m on hold now. The best part was the completely mangled “Poor S-PAN-YOL presso numero one”
And just got the reason why after an hour on hold.
My $12 check for processing didn’t have my home address on it.
YHGTBFKM
Marine hosting Tottenham in the FA Cup 3rd round is a great story. Marine is a tier 8 club. They won the previous round with a goal in 120th minute.
Even with covid limited crowds, Marine is struggling with the logistics of hosting a PL team.
What’s even more hilarious/stupid is that Marine aren’t playing any league games because they’re a non-elite club. BUT, they can play FA cups games because it’s an elite competition. So, the virus can figure out which football matches are elite and which aren’t. That is one smart virus.