One must be on top of one's financial game to be able to apply these principles properly, but they are superior and will result in one being wealthier, if properly applied.
Yeah. A lot of people who advocate that kind of activity in theory might overlook key considerations, like cashflow, potential risk, and the burden of the total amount leveraged. Juggling those things plus all of the above may be worth it for 3%, if you've got a big enough pile that 3% isn't insignificant, but if you've got a small pile, or you're doing it for 1% instead of 3%, etc...
Yeah, that's the obvious one. If two income earners are on different pay schedules, that could easily be 4 months per year. Throw in maybe an annual bonus, and you've got 5 spikes explained pretty easily. Now dips, I don't know.
That's higher than I would have imagined possible. I don't have the numbers for sales tax, gasoline, and utilities, but even being ridiculously generous with those categories, I don't hit 24%. (Married with two kids, for reference.)
Here's one definition for converting: "change (money, stocks, or units in which a quantity is expressed) into others of a different kind".
I think we're getting dangerously close to arguing semantics here, but I'm going to maintain that "my income" is the checks I get. I live off of my income. It pays for food, lodging, utilities, and a whole bunch of other necessities. Plus some luxuries. Plus some savings. Now, I can take my savings and invest it, and then later that becomes investment income. And I could shave off some luxuries for further investment. But I still maintain that the phrase "convert your income" is a too-slick handwave that conflates "your whole paycheck magically becomes investment" with "your savings can be invested." That's why it sounds shifty and too-easy, rather than, you know, the investment most people ought to be doing anyway. I'm all for the principle, but I'm generally wary of catch-phrases, most especially in the financial world, that sound too slick.
Taxation 101: the relative burden. Most people find it fairer or believe it to be logical that those who make more can accept a larger share of the burden. If you make a little, you're taxed lightly; make a little more, you're taxed moderately; those who make the most are taxed at the highest percentages. This is known as a progressive tax system.
There are some who will argue for a flat tax, where everyone pays the same percentage across the board. This also has a certain logic, and many proponents.
Very few people would endorse what you've suggested, that the rich should pay a lower share, and somehow justify it because the dollar numbers are bigger. Take your example to a greater extreme: the guy making $70k pays 50% in taxes, or $35k, and some other guy making a million pays 3.6%, or 36k. Or go more extreme: the $70k guy is taxed at 100% and has nothing, while the millionaire is taxed at 7.1%, paying $71k. It's more dollars, but it's clearly unfair.
For most people, "fair" requires at least even percentages, rather than looking at raw dollars.
You can't convert earned income to investment income.
Sure you can. Take your earned income to buy dividend-paying stocks, rental properties and/or other income producing assets
I don't see how that's converting your income. That's simply investing your earnings. "Converting" your income would be somehow getting your job to pay you in investment vehicles instead of with a check. Like the phrase, "Pay yourself first," I find it to be a catchy but ultimately nonsensical phrase to cover up the reality: "You can't spend everything you earn. You have to save some of it and invest it."
Who said anything about unmapped or dirt? Most small town and rural driving is across paved, mapped roads. My route to work goes along 24 miles of one state highway, and one numbered country road. I'd expect dirt roads to need manual intervention for some time after the paved roads are automated.
That's fine for cities. For those of us who are small-town/rural, I expect to see a self-driving car before there's enough infrastructure that I can take advantage of public transport.
Hah. You and I should be teamed up in the study, because we're diametric opposites. I'm 42, and the last time I woke up and *didn't* recall dreaming, I was in high school. If there are times when I'm not dreaming, that would be a surprise.
... the quiet, stable dude who actually gets stuff done day-to-day without seeking the limelight.... Do we really want to read a book or see a movie about a guy who labored steadily in his office for 40 years and contributed to the company through all his quiet deeds?
This sounds like a challenge. Then I started thinking about it, and the best I could come up with is a scenario with a duo, with one active but ineffective front-man and a quiet but competent support. That's not totally unfamiliar, I realized. Maybe Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Of course, who's still the title character? And even there, I think that's more true in the book, while the play version glorifies Quixote's dream, while the book mocks him more. There's also maybe Inspector Gadget, if you count a sentient dog and a crime-solving pre-teen girl as "boring, normal" people.
Actually, for a long time I've wanted to write the story of a bunch minions working for a super-villain. The lab rat who is in denial she's doing anything but normal cultures, the welder who keeps his head down and is building the volcano fortress anyway because the hazard pay and benefits make it worthwhile, the professional procurement agent who, frankly, had more difficult and morally questionable assignments working for the dot-com before it went bust... I figured you could put in glimpses of the titanic struggle in the backdrop while showing how much success or failure came down to the efforts of the little guy. (Confession: I'm at least partially inspired by the Scorpio episode of the Simpsons.) Back in the day I wanted to title it Minions, but I think that title's taken now.
I know how you feel. I didn't just make up stories to flesh them out, sometimes I even dreamed about those games. Eventually I even turned it into a novel.
Apologies as I shill my own product, but if you're nostalgic for the old games, you may enjoy The Eight-Bit Bard by Aaron Rath.
Hm. I don't know where "here" is for you, but I stand partially corrected. I've only ever heard of percentage matches, and never encountered or heard of a dollar match. But you learn something every day.
I think they meant it as a general term for "retirement"; if you don't fixate specifically on pension in the traditional sense, it's a true statement. If they're contributing x% of a lower salary, that's worse than x% of a higher salary. If there's a company match, it's a function of salary as well.
How was that? The title seemed promising, but I tried starting it once and didn't make it very far. It seemed kind of dry for a book about extraordinary delusions and madness. Wondering if I should give it another shot.
I loved that whole sextet. #2 is fantastic. #3 extremely good. The trilogy of books 4-6 slightly less so (too many characters, just too long for the payoff), but still really good, and if you're left tantalized by all the mysteries after the first 3 you'll want to read them, too.
What's it like. Not a magic fantasy fan myself so I like to only read great books in that genere.
Not the OP, but I've also read the three books in the series. It's light and funny, moderately silly. There's a technological explanation for the magic that may make the book entertaining for slashdot geeks, even those who don't go in for pure fantasy. It's more like computer-generated superpowers put into an artificial fantasy setting, really.
If you're on the fence, the Amazon preview can be your friend. You'll know within the first few chapters if it's for you.
- The Four Pillars of Investing. Good begginer-to-mid-level book in investing. Slightly dated, because it came out in '02 and is aware of the dot-com bust but not the real estate one. I think the author has an updated book, but I don't think the principles will have changed much.
- The Divide (beta read). A space opera about a war between spacefaring races. Only available on BetaBooks.co, through their beta reader pool. Looking forward to seeing this one in print.
- A Crash Course in Python - just refreshing some python programming skills
- Just finished an audiobook on Brahms, his life and music.
- Just starting an audiobook on Mindfulness.
- I'm also obsessively re-reading my third novel, Stranger and Better, which is due out in the next month, just to catch final edits. Coming of age at Oberlin College, engaging in an impossible search for the meaning of life.
I see one anonymous post like this in every single discussion of employee benefits. I have to assume there's one guy in a cage, but with internet access, posting it the same thing repeatedly. (Often there's a jab that Asian co-workers are granted time but the anglo Americans can't get it, that I don't see here, so maybe there are two such people.)
But seriously? You've been at the same company for 24 years, and never had a full week? In the past two and a half decades you have thrown away 2.5 * 24 = 60 weeks = more than an entire year's worth of vacation? Why?????
Honestly, I find it more believable that there's some insane HR evil genius or gaslighting manager trying to convince all of Slashdot that vacations are disposable, than I do there's a person out there who forewent benefits for approximately as long as it's been since the Cubs last won the world series.
... have a harder time buying a house compared to their piers... I never would have guessed that!/sarcasm
Honestly, no sarcasm, I am flabbergasted that people who own piers don't own houses, but that their piers do. Or is that not what you were docking aboat?
I have never encountered an atheist who has any understanding of philosophy. I wish every atheist would take at least one philosophy and one logic class.
As a lover of logic and philosophy, I'm going to start off by suggesting your premise is flawed. There's little reason to think that atheists as a group have less exposure to philosophy than the general population. Limiting analysis to the sample of those you have encountered is neither representative nor logical. If anything, I would wager the opposite: my guess is there's at least a slight correlation between people who have thought about the world enough to come to an atheist stance and those who have also explored philosophy.
That said: hi. I'm an atheist who not only took a few philosophy classes in school, including one on logic, but also still pursues an occasional book or audio-lecture on the subject. In fact, my college Philosophy of Mind class first really pushed the idea onto me that a supreme being wasn't very probable, and also limited the powers or likely area of interest and involvement of that supreme being to the point that it wasn't really supreme, and possibly not a being.
They never realize that literally ever atheistic argument merely pushes the problem of a necessary first cause back one step.
My understanding was that the fixation on first causes was primarily from the religious side, particularly that a first cause is "necessary" at all. I can't recall much from the atheist side suggesting it's even needed. The current scientific consensus seems to be that a first cause either isn't necessary or may have been an accident, and I think most atheists are comfortable-ish with that. Or at least more comfortable saying they don't know, or calling it unknowable, than saying "I know God did it," as if that explains anything.
Or at least read Trent Horn's Answering Atheism. It would blows their minds.
Always appreciate reading suggestions, always willing to entertain suggestions that come from a different perspective. Obviously I haven't seen anything too convincing yet, or I wouldn't still call myself an atheist, but it never hurts to gather input and improve the discussion.
I've had that effect from a number of games: a few hours of intense play with a simple screen will do it for me pretty easily. It can be exacerbated by other things, like lack of sleep, etc.
Once in college I stayed up until 5 working on a paper. I had class at 8 and decided it wasn't worth going to bed, so I spent the remaining 3 hours playing Doom, and then to keep myself up between classes played more Doom during the breaks. Coming out of my last class of the day I ran into a friend who invited me to take acid with him. Hours later, deep in the trip, every time I closed my eyes I could see the game, running through tunnels, monsters jumping out, me shooting them and moving on, just like playing. I laughed and tried to explain it to my friend: "Every time I close my eyes, all I see is Doom."
This scared the crap out of my friend, who didn't know I was talking about the computer game, and thought I was having a breakdown.
Slashdot Mirror
One must be on top of one's financial game to be able to apply these principles properly, but they are superior and will result in one being wealthier, if properly applied.
Yeah. A lot of people who advocate that kind of activity in theory might overlook key considerations, like cashflow, potential risk, and the burden of the total amount leveraged. Juggling those things plus all of the above may be worth it for 3%, if you've got a big enough pile that 3% isn't insignificant, but if you've got a small pile, or you're doing it for 1% instead of 3%, etc ...
Yeah, that's the obvious one. If two income earners are on different pay schedules, that could easily be 4 months per year. Throw in maybe an annual bonus, and you've got 5 spikes explained pretty easily. Now dips, I don't know.
That's higher than I would have imagined possible. I don't have the numbers for sales tax, gasoline, and utilities, but even being ridiculously generous with those categories, I don't hit 24%. (Married with two kids, for reference.)
I don't see how that's converting your income.
Here's one definition for converting: "change (money, stocks, or units in which a quantity is expressed) into others of a different kind".
I think we're getting dangerously close to arguing semantics here, but I'm going to maintain that "my income" is the checks I get. I live off of my income. It pays for food, lodging, utilities, and a whole bunch of other necessities. Plus some luxuries. Plus some savings. Now, I can take my savings and invest it, and then later that becomes investment income. And I could shave off some luxuries for further investment. But I still maintain that the phrase "convert your income" is a too-slick handwave that conflates "your whole paycheck magically becomes investment" with "your savings can be invested." That's why it sounds shifty and too-easy, rather than, you know, the investment most people ought to be doing anyway. I'm all for the principle, but I'm generally wary of catch-phrases, most especially in the financial world, that sound too slick.
Taxation 101: the relative burden. Most people find it fairer or believe it to be logical that those who make more can accept a larger share of the burden. If you make a little, you're taxed lightly; make a little more, you're taxed moderately; those who make the most are taxed at the highest percentages. This is known as a progressive tax system.
There are some who will argue for a flat tax, where everyone pays the same percentage across the board. This also has a certain logic, and many proponents.
Very few people would endorse what you've suggested, that the rich should pay a lower share, and somehow justify it because the dollar numbers are bigger. Take your example to a greater extreme: the guy making $70k pays 50% in taxes, or $35k, and some other guy making a million pays 3.6%, or 36k. Or go more extreme: the $70k guy is taxed at 100% and has nothing, while the millionaire is taxed at 7.1%, paying $71k. It's more dollars, but it's clearly unfair.
For most people, "fair" requires at least even percentages, rather than looking at raw dollars.
You can't convert earned income to investment income.
Sure you can. Take your earned income to buy dividend-paying stocks, rental properties and/or other income producing assets
I don't see how that's converting your income. That's simply investing your earnings. "Converting" your income would be somehow getting your job to pay you in investment vehicles instead of with a check. Like the phrase, "Pay yourself first," I find it to be a catchy but ultimately nonsensical phrase to cover up the reality: "You can't spend everything you earn. You have to save some of it and invest it."
Who said anything about unmapped or dirt? Most small town and rural driving is across paved, mapped roads. My route to work goes along 24 miles of one state highway, and one numbered country road. I'd expect dirt roads to need manual intervention for some time after the paved roads are automated.
That's fine for cities. For those of us who are small-town/rural, I expect to see a self-driving car before there's enough infrastructure that I can take advantage of public transport.
Hah. You and I should be teamed up in the study, because we're diametric opposites. I'm 42, and the last time I woke up and *didn't* recall dreaming, I was in high school. If there are times when I'm not dreaming, that would be a surprise.
... the quiet, stable dude who actually gets stuff done day-to-day without seeking the limelight. ... Do we really want to read a book or see a movie about a guy who labored steadily in his office for 40 years and contributed to the company through all his quiet deeds?
This sounds like a challenge. Then I started thinking about it, and the best I could come up with is a scenario with a duo, with one active but ineffective front-man and a quiet but competent support. That's not totally unfamiliar, I realized. Maybe Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Of course, who's still the title character? And even there, I think that's more true in the book, while the play version glorifies Quixote's dream, while the book mocks him more. There's also maybe Inspector Gadget, if you count a sentient dog and a crime-solving pre-teen girl as "boring, normal" people.
Actually, for a long time I've wanted to write the story of a bunch minions working for a super-villain. The lab rat who is in denial she's doing anything but normal cultures, the welder who keeps his head down and is building the volcano fortress anyway because the hazard pay and benefits make it worthwhile, the professional procurement agent who, frankly, had more difficult and morally questionable assignments working for the dot-com before it went bust ... I figured you could put in glimpses of the titanic struggle in the backdrop while showing how much success or failure came down to the efforts of the little guy. (Confession: I'm at least partially inspired by the Scorpio episode of the Simpsons.) Back in the day I wanted to title it Minions, but I think that title's taken now.
I know how you feel. I didn't just make up stories to flesh them out, sometimes I even dreamed about those games. Eventually I even turned it into a novel.
Apologies as I shill my own product, but if you're nostalgic for the old games, you may enjoy The Eight-Bit Bard by Aaron Rath.
https://www.amazon.com/Eight-B...
Second recommendation (not my product): The CRPG Addict. He's playing through lots of old RPGs, documenting and commenting on the experience.
Hm. I don't know where "here" is for you, but I stand partially corrected. I've only ever heard of percentage matches, and never encountered or heard of a dollar match. But you learn something every day.
I think they meant it as a general term for "retirement"; if you don't fixate specifically on pension in the traditional sense, it's a true statement. If they're contributing x% of a lower salary, that's worse than x% of a higher salary. If there's a company match, it's a function of salary as well.
How was that? The title seemed promising, but I tried starting it once and didn't make it very far. It seemed kind of dry for a book about extraordinary delusions and madness. Wondering if I should give it another shot.
I loved that whole sextet. #2 is fantastic. #3 extremely good. The trilogy of books 4-6 slightly less so (too many characters, just too long for the payoff), but still really good, and if you're left tantalized by all the mysteries after the first 3 you'll want to read them, too.
Gah, I can't quote properly.
Also, I'm reminded for the fortieth time I need to read Redshirts.
What's it like. Not a magic fantasy fan myself so I like to only read great books in that genere.
Not the OP, but I've also read the three books in the series. It's light and funny, moderately silly. There's a technological explanation for the magic that may make the book entertaining for slashdot geeks, even those who don't go in for pure fantasy. It's more like computer-generated superpowers put into an artificial fantasy setting, really.
If you're on the fence, the Amazon preview can be your friend. You'll know within the first few chapters if it's for you.
- The Four Pillars of Investing. Good begginer-to-mid-level book in investing. Slightly dated, because it came out in '02 and is aware of the dot-com bust but not the real estate one. I think the author has an updated book, but I don't think the principles will have changed much.
- The Divide (beta read). A space opera about a war between spacefaring races. Only available on BetaBooks.co, through their beta reader pool. Looking forward to seeing this one in print.
- A Crash Course in Python - just refreshing some python programming skills
- Just finished an audiobook on Brahms, his life and music.
- Just starting an audiobook on Mindfulness.
- I'm also obsessively re-reading my third novel, Stranger and Better, which is due out in the next month, just to catch final edits. Coming of age at Oberlin College, engaging in an impossible search for the meaning of life.
Yeah, yeah. As soon as I hit submit, I realize that "previously" would have been better than "last" but what are you going to do?
I see one anonymous post like this in every single discussion of employee benefits. I have to assume there's one guy in a cage, but with internet access, posting it the same thing repeatedly. (Often there's a jab that Asian co-workers are granted time but the anglo Americans can't get it, that I don't see here, so maybe there are two such people.)
But seriously? You've been at the same company for 24 years, and never had a full week? In the past two and a half decades you have thrown away 2.5 * 24 = 60 weeks = more than an entire year's worth of vacation? Why?????
Honestly, I find it more believable that there's some insane HR evil genius or gaslighting manager trying to convince all of Slashdot that vacations are disposable, than I do there's a person out there who forewent benefits for approximately as long as it's been since the Cubs last won the world series.
... have a harder time buying a house compared to their piers ... I never would have guessed that! /sarcasm
Honestly, no sarcasm, I am flabbergasted that people who own piers don't own houses, but that their piers do. Or is that not what you were docking aboat?
He could also sell wood chips, but call the shop "Would Chip's?" Not that it makes a lot of sense, but it's no weirder than Tuesday Morning.
and the count is an amount
and the bird is the word
I have never encountered an atheist who has any understanding of philosophy. I wish every atheist would take at least one philosophy and one logic class.
As a lover of logic and philosophy, I'm going to start off by suggesting your premise is flawed. There's little reason to think that atheists as a group have less exposure to philosophy than the general population. Limiting analysis to the sample of those you have encountered is neither representative nor logical. If anything, I would wager the opposite: my guess is there's at least a slight correlation between people who have thought about the world enough to come to an atheist stance and those who have also explored philosophy.
That said: hi. I'm an atheist who not only took a few philosophy classes in school, including one on logic, but also still pursues an occasional book or audio-lecture on the subject. In fact, my college Philosophy of Mind class first really pushed the idea onto me that a supreme being wasn't very probable, and also limited the powers or likely area of interest and involvement of that supreme being to the point that it wasn't really supreme, and possibly not a being.
They never realize that literally ever atheistic argument merely pushes the problem of a necessary first cause back one step.
My understanding was that the fixation on first causes was primarily from the religious side, particularly that a first cause is "necessary" at all. I can't recall much from the atheist side suggesting it's even needed. The current scientific consensus seems to be that a first cause either isn't necessary or may have been an accident, and I think most atheists are comfortable-ish with that. Or at least more comfortable saying they don't know, or calling it unknowable, than saying "I know God did it," as if that explains anything.
Or at least read Trent Horn's Answering Atheism. It would blows their minds.
Always appreciate reading suggestions, always willing to entertain suggestions that come from a different perspective. Obviously I haven't seen anything too convincing yet, or I wouldn't still call myself an atheist, but it never hurts to gather input and improve the discussion.
I've had that effect from a number of games: a few hours of intense play with a simple screen will do it for me pretty easily. It can be exacerbated by other things, like lack of sleep, etc.
Once in college I stayed up until 5 working on a paper. I had class at 8 and decided it wasn't worth going to bed, so I spent the remaining 3 hours playing Doom, and then to keep myself up between classes played more Doom during the breaks. Coming out of my last class of the day I ran into a friend who invited me to take acid with him. Hours later, deep in the trip, every time I closed my eyes I could see the game, running through tunnels, monsters jumping out, me shooting them and moving on, just like playing. I laughed and tried to explain it to my friend: "Every time I close my eyes, all I see is Doom."
This scared the crap out of my friend, who didn't know I was talking about the computer game, and thought I was having a breakdown.