For a Roth IRA, which is probably the simplest one the the US, you put in after-tax money. You are not taxed on the gains. Thus being in the lowest tax braket is an advantage because you don't pay much at the start and you don't pay at the end.
I agree that high schoolers have no clue about where to invest. A personal finance class should be required for all high-schoolers to graduate. Put it into a index fund if you have no clue. Move it when you have a clue if you think you can do better.
High-schoolers usually don't have loans to pay off. If you have educational loans from college you are generally paying a low interest rate on them and you are better off paying them off normally and investing.
I assumed 10% return under two scenarios:
In the first $3000 is invested each year as a 15, 16, and 17 year-old, for a total of $9k put in. Then no more investing is done. At 65 you have $963,381.
Second scenario is starting to invest at 30 and putting in $3k per year until 65. A total of $108,000 is invested. At 65 you have $897,380.
The moral of the story? You can't afford not to put money away when you are young. Sacrifice early for long term gains.
Note that I am not suggesting that you stop after high school. I am suggesting that you start right now and not stop.
Seriously. If you crunch the numbers and look at how much you'll make in interest by investing early, you will see that a Roth in high school will go a long way to paying for retirement. A Roth in your 30s doesn't do much.
What do you mean "always"? Does your definition of the word mean "since Jan 11, 2005"? Also why the past tense on "found"? Does this mean you no longer find it ironic? If we take your sentence literally, it means that from Jan 11, 2005 (mini Mac announcement) and ending on some date that preceeds Jan 19, 2005, you found it ironic, but you no longer do. Do you see how this is confusing?
I am not arguing with you. I ordered my mini Mac last night. My point was that the PC world already has something that it would consider similar to the mini Mac. It was technically fine, but ugly and expensive. As far as I know it isn't a runaway success.
The Cappuchino is pretty close in size to the mini Mac. I have one sitting here and it isn't that cute. However it is well thought out. It has the following ports on it: PS/2 keyboard and mouse, S-video out, RCA video out, VGA out, serial, parallel, modem, 2 usb ports, power in, audio out, audio in, and ethernet (I assume 10/100). It also has a CD drive, a volume dial, and an infra-red sensor. Of course it has ports or switches on five of its six sides, so it is a bit ugly.
Looking at the ports, the designers seem to have had the media PC market in mind, though I've never tried to use it as such. It would probably make a nice MAME machine to sit under the TV.
If there is a transition (and I'm in favor of a slow, conservative one) then there is no way anybody will get "what they've put in" back out for individual investment. You will probably just get a scaled benefit when you retire based on the number of points you earned. However, I would guess that if there is a full transition, then the fund will be dry by the time today's younger workers retire since nobody will be paying into it anymore. It seems more likely that there will be some sort of hybrid plan.
Glad to see that I misunderstood you. Thanks for the clarification.
One additional clarification, SS is not a flat tax. It is actually regressive. You stop paying it after the first $77k or so. So if you make a ton of money SS is actually not much of a drain on you.
This reminds me of a popular technique for selecting a pediatrician. Call the charge nurse for the OB ward of the nearest major hospital and ask who the good pediatricians are. The nurses know, and they aren't afraid to tell you.
If I had to choose, I would ask the docs in the dept who they would have operate on them. When my wife got an epidural she choose a male doctor to put it in. However her second choice (if he had been busy) was a woman. This is based on her observations of who did good work at the hospital.
In any case my point wasn't about individuals so much as that having women on the team makes the entire team better.
BTW, your male surgeon is more likely to blow a cork and throw things during the surgery.
You work for the government and you don't understand how SS works! Wonderful!
It isn't a savings plan. They aren't holding on to it to give to you later. They are giving it to your grandpa, right now. If they were to invest it your grandpa wouldn't get his check. Evil, but true!
I am not talking about saving for your own retirement. I am saying that social security is robbing your grandchildren. It isn't a savings plan or a retirement plan. Thinking that it is leads to bad logic, such as, "I paid into the plan so I'd better get my investment out of it when I retire." You aren't "investing" in social security.
I agree that everyone should save for their own retirement and pretend that social security won't be there. It will be an evil bonus if it is still around.
The money they take out of your check isn't for your retirement. It is for your grandpa's. SS is a Ponzi scheme based on an assumption that population will continue to grow, and because of that it will always be easy to borrow from your children since you'll have lots of them. In truth the US needs to look at what is happening to the population of various european nations and find a way to gracefully transition to a system that doesn't depend on population increase the way the current one does.
If we don't make some sort of transition then someday a generation will be left holding the bag and it will be ugly.
That said, I agree with other posters that the real problem is the budget deficit. It makes SS look like peanuts.
Perhaps those differences simply make women approach science in a different way, and the current scientific culture having been established by men doesn't provide room for a different approach.
My wife is a doctor, and I have read studies on the influence of women in medicine. The basic conclusion is that after the male dominated culture makes allowances for women's differences (by not forcing them to act as males) that having women as doctors not only improves care for the women's patients, but when working in teams seems to make the male doctors better doctors as well. The difficulty is the initial effort to overcome the medical culture that has been created by men.
Basically being different doesn't mean better or worse on its own, but when different approaches work together you can get better results.
It isn't clear from the photos that it would be possible to remove the innards without removing the the controls. It seems that the On/Off switch is pretty easy to remove and then replace. The other controls are another story. In any case, please explain how it is possible to slide the innards out without removing the controls when the controls protrude out from the case. Thanks!
Most new cheapo DVD players will play CDs or DVDs that simply have a bunch of JPEG files loaded onto them. You could put thousands of photos on a single CD, and even more on a DVD.
My grandma gets a big kick out of watching photos on the TV.
I get the sosumi joke. Given that I am posting with my real name, I am not going to say how I know this info, because I am not willing to say sosumi for myself.
They are afraid that they would be the big target and that the owners of the mp3 patents might think that Ogg Vorbis violates some patents. I am not saying that Apple believes there is a valid claim, but they don't want to get sued.
Apple knows that Ogg support is possible. The reason Apple doesn't implement the Ogg support is that they think they might get sued for it. They have no desire to be a test case.
I would much rather that browser makers support JPEG2000 compression and make it a standard than that they support compression of JPEGs in the manner being discussed here.
Why, you ask?
Because it reduces bandwidth considerably more than this method. For comparable image quality, JPEG2000 images are much smaller. The savings is greater than the 30% being discussed here. Closer to 60%. Also decompression is fast, about as noticable as normal JPEGs. Also, you don't have to have all the data to decompress a full sized image. If you have 20% of the data, you can decompress and the image just won't be as detailed. In fact, if you want to make a JPEG2000 file smaller, you can just cut off the last half of the file, and it will still be viewable. A webserver under heavy load could decide on the fly to simply send the first half of all images to save bandwidth. No processing would be required, just only send the first half of the file. Oh, and don't forget that it is a superior format that supports things such as alpha channel that JPEG doesn't have.
But the real reason that I want browsers to support JPEG2000 compression is so that camera makers will feel pressure to support it. Imagine being able to take 4x the pictures with your existing memory card. Also, imagine having a full card, and then using the bit slicing technique mentioned above to slightly reduced the quality of some of the photos in order to take more photos.
When you look at the benefits of JPEG2000 compared to this method of compressing a JPEG, it is pretty clear which one browser makers should be looking at.
how is that? It is more expensive to provide massive bandwidth to a bunch of people all at the same time than it is to have people download the same amount spread out over a week or so.
I agree that CS people should take a variety of courses. I also think that it is becoming increasingly vital for non-CS people to take an intro to programming course. Why? Because even though they will never program, they will probably have to interact with IT people or programmers at their jobs and it is helpful to have some sort of clue about what they do.
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I agree that high schoolers have no clue about where to invest. A personal finance class should be required for all high-schoolers to graduate. Put it into a index fund if you have no clue. Move it when you have a clue if you think you can do better.
High-schoolers usually don't have loans to pay off. If you have educational loans from college you are generally paying a low interest rate on them and you are better off paying them off normally and investing.
I assumed 10% return under two scenarios:
In the first $3000 is invested each year as a 15, 16, and 17 year-old, for a total of $9k put in. Then no more investing is done. At 65 you have $963,381.
Second scenario is starting to invest at 30 and putting in $3k per year until 65. A total of $108,000 is invested. At 65 you have $897,380.
The moral of the story? You can't afford not to put money away when you are young. Sacrifice early for long term gains.
Note that I am not suggesting that you stop after high school. I am suggesting that you start right now and not stop.
Seriously. If you crunch the numbers and look at how much you'll make in interest by investing early, you will see that a Roth in high school will go a long way to paying for retirement. A Roth in your 30s doesn't do much.
What do you mean "always"? Does your definition of the word mean "since Jan 11, 2005"? Also why the past tense on "found"? Does this mean you no longer find it ironic? If we take your sentence literally, it means that from Jan 11, 2005 (mini Mac announcement) and ending on some date that preceeds Jan 19, 2005, you found it ironic, but you no longer do. Do you see how this is confusing?
I am not arguing with you. I ordered my mini Mac last night. My point was that the PC world already has something that it would consider similar to the mini Mac. It was technically fine, but ugly and expensive. As far as I know it isn't a runaway success.
Looking at the ports, the designers seem to have had the media PC market in mind, though I've never tried to use it as such. It would probably make a nice MAME machine to sit under the TV.
If there is a transition (and I'm in favor of a slow, conservative one) then there is no way anybody will get "what they've put in" back out for individual investment. You will probably just get a scaled benefit when you retire based on the number of points you earned. However, I would guess that if there is a full transition, then the fund will be dry by the time today's younger workers retire since nobody will be paying into it anymore. It seems more likely that there will be some sort of hybrid plan.
One additional clarification, SS is not a flat tax. It is actually regressive. You stop paying it after the first $77k or so. So if you make a ton of money SS is actually not much of a drain on you.
This reminds me of a popular technique for selecting a pediatrician. Call the charge nurse for the OB ward of the nearest major hospital and ask who the good pediatricians are. The nurses know, and they aren't afraid to tell you.
I know this isn't what Bush is proposing, but it is what the poster I responded to wanted to do. There is no way to implement such a sudden shift.
In any case my point wasn't about individuals so much as that having women on the team makes the entire team better.
BTW, your male surgeon is more likely to blow a cork and throw things during the surgery.
It isn't a savings plan. They aren't holding on to it to give to you later. They are giving it to your grandpa, right now. If they were to invest it your grandpa wouldn't get his check. Evil, but true!
I agree that everyone should save for their own retirement and pretend that social security won't be there. It will be an evil bonus if it is still around.
If we don't make some sort of transition then someday a generation will be left holding the bag and it will be ugly.
That said, I agree with other posters that the real problem is the budget deficit. It makes SS look like peanuts.
My wife is a doctor, and I have read studies on the influence of women in medicine. The basic conclusion is that after the male dominated culture makes allowances for women's differences (by not forcing them to act as males) that having women as doctors not only improves care for the women's patients, but when working in teams seems to make the male doctors better doctors as well. The difficulty is the initial effort to overcome the medical culture that has been created by men.
Basically being different doesn't mean better or worse on its own, but when different approaches work together you can get better results.
It isn't clear from the photos that it would be possible to remove the innards without removing the the controls. It seems that the On/Off switch is pretty easy to remove and then replace. The other controls are another story. In any case, please explain how it is possible to slide the innards out without removing the controls when the controls protrude out from the case. Thanks!
My grandma gets a big kick out of watching photos on the TV.
Apple using it as the native format for Pages would (ok, might) be the tipping point that would force other apps such as Word to support it.
I get the sosumi joke. Given that I am posting with my real name, I am not going to say how I know this info, because I am not willing to say sosumi for myself.
They are afraid that they would be the big target and that the owners of the mp3 patents might think that Ogg Vorbis violates some patents. I am not saying that Apple believes there is a valid claim, but they don't want to get sued.
Apple knows that Ogg support is possible. The reason Apple doesn't implement the Ogg support is that they think they might get sued for it. They have no desire to be a test case.
Why, you ask?
Because it reduces bandwidth considerably more than this method. For comparable image quality, JPEG2000 images are much smaller. The savings is greater than the 30% being discussed here. Closer to 60%. Also decompression is fast, about as noticable as normal JPEGs. Also, you don't have to have all the data to decompress a full sized image. If you have 20% of the data, you can decompress and the image just won't be as detailed. In fact, if you want to make a JPEG2000 file smaller, you can just cut off the last half of the file, and it will still be viewable. A webserver under heavy load could decide on the fly to simply send the first half of all images to save bandwidth. No processing would be required, just only send the first half of the file. Oh, and don't forget that it is a superior format that supports things such as alpha channel that JPEG doesn't have.
But the real reason that I want browsers to support JPEG2000 compression is so that camera makers will feel pressure to support it. Imagine being able to take 4x the pictures with your existing memory card. Also, imagine having a full card, and then using the bit slicing technique mentioned above to slightly reduced the quality of some of the photos in order to take more photos.
When you look at the benefits of JPEG2000 compared to this method of compressing a JPEG, it is pretty clear which one browser makers should be looking at.
ps Just because YOU don't understand this post doesn't mean it is off topic!
how is that? It is more expensive to provide massive bandwidth to a bunch of people all at the same time than it is to have people download the same amount spread out over a week or so.
I agree that CS people should take a variety of courses. I also think that it is becoming increasingly vital for non-CS people to take an intro to programming course. Why? Because even though they will never program, they will probably have to interact with IT people or programmers at their jobs and it is helpful to have some sort of clue about what they do.