Here in 'Merica, though, we like everything licensed. So buying the rights to MLB is pretty much like prohibiting everyone else from making a baseball game. At least one that will sell.
The best way to give your children a good shot at being successful in life is to spend time with them. To care for them. Look at all the examples we have of rich, neglected, spoiled children who turn out to be rude, lazy, boorish adults. I see them all the time. My wife and I, however, were raised thoughtfully and lovingly by intelligent and well-intentioned parents. Maybe they could have made more money, but in the end we found a way. And the reason we did is because they were there for us. They spent time with us. They read to us. They rode bikes with us. And when we grew up, guess what? We gravitated towards each other. One of us from Idaho, the other from Hawaii. Raised the same way (without having money thrown at every problem) from polar opposite places in the country. And we found our way to each other and we're happy.
If you think money is an absolute necessity, the only way to raise a child well, then I hope you aren't a parent. Because in my experience as a child of poor parents and from what I've experienced in this world (remember, I went to a rich school), those of us who aren't born to means, but get loving attention tend to appreciate things. We tend to work hard. We tend to carve our own path, even if it isn't the one you think we should. And we end up happy. And that's the bottom line, no?
This post is spot on. See, my wife and I, both came from extremely poor backgrounds. We chose to go to a private school, because we liked that school. And in the end we were lucky because we met each other, so who are we to complain.:-)
But just as we realized how lucky we were to get the chance to rise above our station in life, we also realized that there is a price to be paid (in terms of anxiety, stress, pressure) with thinking you HAVE to constantly push to succeed in the manner the previous poster suggests. It is a hamster wheel. And maybe we jumped off it by simplifying our lives. We still work. We still make money. We just don't let this consume us. We don't let material posessions consume us. We try to make time for each other. Considerable time. We try to be happy. We try to enjoy our time together on Earth.
If that sounds lazy or strange to the previous poster, then he can stay on the hamster wheel. My wife and I are happy where we are. Isn't that what life is about? Being happy? Not storing up bags full of money, building a bomb shelter and running around in body armor "just in case"?
This is ironic to me, because part of the reason my wife and I pay so much in student loans is because she was the daughter of missionaries. I the son of a blind father and a mother who raised us while putting herself through college. So we both went to college extremely poor. I literally worked at Burger King and Dominos to help supplement the student loans, while putting myself through college. So I think I know how to survive. And yeah, they have loans and grants for us po folk.
How did we make a strategic error again? We just learned how to live with less. That doesn't mean we made that a permanent state of being. Right now I think we make around $90,000 a year (not take home) and so we're tearing into our debt with wild abandon. And paying off debt is as good as saving, in my book.
Oh, and there are no kids in our future. Only cats. So we'll be able to roll with it. If one of us gets sick, I think we'll be more concerned about the fact that our soulmate is sick.
Of course. Goes without saying. But we learned that we can strip our lives down quite a bit. Right now, actually, we live quite well. When I was unemployed we still lived well. We didn't have a house any longer. The student loans weren't getting repaid as quickly. But we still managed to have a good life, take dinners out on the weekend, etc. And I attribute that to the fact that we don't own more than 1 TV or computer or expensive PDAs or XBoxes... etc. We've minimalized over the years and especially after the layoff, to the poing where surviving on one salary wasn't only easy, it was comfortable. Now, granted, both of us being out of work would be very difficult. But that goes for everyone. And yes, we consider ourselves blessed. As long as one of us has stable employment (a rarity in the US these days) we'll be okay. Because we know how to live on less and still enjoy life.
Well, the first thing to clarify, since EVERYONE here seems to be having a problem with this is that we didn't TAKE HOME $130,000. I guess I'm crazy, but I thought when one said they "made" X dollars that it was assumed that there was a certain level of taxation involved and that that wasn't take home pay. I have no idea what our take home out of that was. My wife would know better. But it was a ton less. And THEN we had to write a $10,000 check at the end of the year to the federal govt.
So at the time the house made sense. When I got laid off, yeah, it didn't. But most of the money (after all of that), to be honest, was and is tied up in paying off student loans, car loans, paying off credit cards, etc. I think, given the interest rates of all of those and the current stock market, that paying off debt is as wise an investment as putting money into a nest egg. And I've been told as much by financial planners.
And the rest of the money goes to make sure we enjoy our time here. So we go out to eat still. We eat healthy (which costs a smidge more). We exercise, etc. so buy bikes, shoes, gym memberships. Life isn't just rent and food.
I wasn't sure. Everyone has been on my case for some reason, so it's a little hard to tell. I apologize. I understand what you're saying, anyway. I paid for my wife's engagement ring with cash. We were poor, I was just out of college. So it's not a giant rock, but she loves it. We paid for the wedding with cash. And the honeymoon was paid for with cash as well. Of course, we honeymooned down the street on the Oregon coast, but we had a great time and didn't have to worry about money when we got home. Somewhere in the middle there we managed to get some credit card debt, but nothing crazy. And definitely no second mortgages or anything like that. We just pay our bills, try to keep our bills low, common sense. That doesn't leave much for a "nest egg" as others seem to think we should have, but so be it. At least we're happy.
Which was my point (as someone who DOESN'T own an expensive car or house). My wife and I spent some money. Most definitely. We want to enjoy our life. Go out to eat, see movies, things like that. And we certainly racked up some credit card debt, as I copped to in my post. But nowhere in the ballpark you describe. Not even close. We have $60,000 in student loans. We made what we made for 1 solitary year. And that isn't take-home. Take home pay is much much much less, as you probably know. Much less. So after a heap of taxes deducted, massive student loan payments, there isn't much there to waste. But waste it we did for many years, and that's my point. In the end, the solution was to simplify, cut down on the waste, don't believe you have to own an HDTV, more than 1 computer or a house and you can get by just fine on much less money. It's funny to have so many people lecturing me about that, when that's what I was trying to say my wife and I went and did. Strange. Reading comprehension, anyone?
Yes. I never said $130,000 was our take-home pay. Nor did I say $10,000 was our sole tax burden. Silliness. I thought it was pretty clear. It was an afterthought in a post where I was trying to make a point about the importance of money. Ironic that it was totally missed because of people's concern about money.
Of course I mean after withholding. The 10k figure was a mere detail in the midst of explaining WHY we bought a house. Nothing more. Why would I be concerned about taxes taken out of my paycheck? I get deducted what I get deducted. That's what you get when you make money. I'm fine with that. It's the end of the year tax bill I worry about.
I think all of you missed the point. But anyway, regarding the taxes, we're talking about taxes paid in cash AFTER deductions from our paychecks. And we have the govt. take out quite a bit. i.e. no up-front deductions.
That's $10k AFTER taxes already deducted from our paychecks. And it's only a rough figure. My wife knows what the exact number is, since she handles the money.:-)
Well, I didn't say we made $130,000 for many years. Only for one year. That was our zenith. Secondly, you have no idea how much you pay in taxes when you make that much money. If we hadn't have "bought" the house, our taxes would have been in the neighborhood of at least $10,000 (no kids, make too much money to deduct student loans), I believe. Of course, buying the house cost money. Much more than rent. 2 car loans (1 paid off now) and $60,000 in combined student loans and that money disappears pretty quickly.
And, as I alluded to earlier, we spent some money. At one time owning a couple computers, a Zaurus, an HDTV, lots of little toys that add up. That didn't eat up most of the extra money. Student loan payments did that nicely. To the tune of like $1,000 a month.
So this isn't a sob story. The point is that we changed our idea of what we wanted/needed out of life and as a consequence our expenses dropped considerably. Now we're barrelling money into our debt (which is better than putting away a nest egg, IMHO, since we'll have to pay that money back someday) and enjoying the freedom that comes from having a much simpler existence.
One thing to consider is to lower your expenses. My wife and I were in quite the cherry position about a year ago. over $130,000 a year in salary combined, both of us younger than 28, buying our first house and then I was laid off.
Our first step? Sell the house. Then start paying off all our debts. We may not "own" a house now (I put that in quotes because we wouldn't have owned it for 30 years), but our expenses are relatively fixed, in the process of moving into an apartment we downsized and simplified our life considerably. And now, if I get the opportunity I can take a job like the above AND take the reduced salary. Because even though we knew money wouldn't buy happiness before, now we're putting this principle to practice and organizing our life such that we don't need that much money to live on. Our debts are getting paid off and we're happy, and that's what matters.
Do we have HDTV? Not anymore. Do we have a house? Not anymore. Do we have more than 1 computer? Not anymore. But our life is simple. We relax much more. We owe much less and our stress has been halved, both on our bodies and on our minds. Something to think about for those stressing about salaries not being commensurate with skills. Money isn't everything.
Seconded. I'm in the same boat. Almost 30, lots of mileage on my hands and wrists and recently I started to experience extreme arm and hand pain. I sought out the help of an ART (active release therapy) specialist, a chiropractor. She's helping me to get better. I don't know how well this would work for CTS, but I've heard what I have (tendonitis of the arms) is actually worse. And the treatment is going well and actually working. So I think step (A) is to stop writing millions of lines of code and find a job where they at least allow you to leave work long enough to go see a therapist. Ratchet down your hours to a sane work week. That's what I did. Run, jog, get on a bike once in a while. Basically go get a life, don't get on the computer when you get home, let your skills slack a bit. Basically jump off the hampster wheel for a while so you can save your sanity and your hands. And yeah, maybe get the hell out of Silicon Valley.
Seriously. I loved my Zaurus. Used it for over a year. But I just got sick of being a slave to the charger and having to constrain what I used it for during the day because of the battery life.
If you have to carry a battery charger with you (as I did) there's something wrong with your "PDA". So I went back to Palm. Simple, does the basic things I need it to do. Syncs with Linux.
Right, Cocoa. Either way the point is I want learn Objective C with a GUI on a system that *just works*. Especially so it *just works* for my wife. This is so tempting. I might be a "switcher" soon. Why do I feel like I'm cheating on Linux?:(
After years away from Mac (I drifted to Windows then Linux), I might buy myself one of these. It's so small and it fits a simple lifestyle, you know. I assume all the programming tools I need would work on it (i.e. MySQL, Apache, Tomcat, etc), plus I could learn Carbon just for fun. Wow. What a day for Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
Like the trash can. My bad. Disregard first post.
Here in 'Merica, though, we like everything licensed. So buying the rights to MLB is pretty much like prohibiting everyone else from making a baseball game. At least one that will sell.
Mod this up!! Exactly!
The best way to give your children a good shot at being successful in life is to spend time with them. To care for them. Look at all the examples we have of rich, neglected, spoiled children who turn out to be rude, lazy, boorish adults. I see them all the time. My wife and I, however, were raised thoughtfully and lovingly by intelligent and well-intentioned parents. Maybe they could have made more money, but in the end we found a way. And the reason we did is because they were there for us. They spent time with us. They read to us. They rode bikes with us. And when we grew up, guess what? We gravitated towards each other. One of us from Idaho, the other from Hawaii. Raised the same way (without having money thrown at every problem) from polar opposite places in the country. And we found our way to each other and we're happy.
If you think money is an absolute necessity, the only way to raise a child well, then I hope you aren't a parent. Because in my experience as a child of poor parents and from what I've experienced in this world (remember, I went to a rich school), those of us who aren't born to means, but get loving attention tend to appreciate things. We tend to work hard. We tend to carve our own path, even if it isn't the one you think we should. And we end up happy. And that's the bottom line, no?
This post is spot on. See, my wife and I, both came from extremely poor backgrounds. We chose to go to a private school, because we liked that school. And in the end we were lucky because we met each other, so who are we to complain. :-)
But just as we realized how lucky we were to get the chance to rise above our station in life, we also realized that there is a price to be paid (in terms of anxiety, stress, pressure) with thinking you HAVE to constantly push to succeed in the manner the previous poster suggests. It is a hamster wheel. And maybe we jumped off it by simplifying our lives. We still work. We still make money. We just don't let this consume us. We don't let material posessions consume us. We try to make time for each other. Considerable time. We try to be happy. We try to enjoy our time together on Earth.
If that sounds lazy or strange to the previous poster, then he can stay on the hamster wheel. My wife and I are happy where we are. Isn't that what life is about? Being happy? Not storing up bags full of money, building a bomb shelter and running around in body armor "just in case"?
This is ironic to me, because part of the reason my wife and I pay so much in student loans is because she was the daughter of missionaries. I the son of a blind father and a mother who raised us while putting herself through college. So we both went to college extremely poor. I literally worked at Burger King and Dominos to help supplement the student loans, while putting myself through college. So I think I know how to survive. And yeah, they have loans and grants for us po folk.
How did we make a strategic error again? We just learned how to live with less. That doesn't mean we made that a permanent state of being. Right now I think we make around $90,000 a year (not take home) and so we're tearing into our debt with wild abandon. And paying off debt is as good as saving, in my book.
Oh, and there are no kids in our future. Only cats. So we'll be able to roll with it. If one of us gets sick, I think we'll be more concerned about the fact that our soulmate is sick.
Of course. Goes without saying. But we learned that we can strip our lives down quite a bit. Right now, actually, we live quite well. When I was unemployed we still lived well. We didn't have a house any longer. The student loans weren't getting repaid as quickly. But we still managed to have a good life, take dinners out on the weekend, etc. And I attribute that to the fact that we don't own more than 1 TV or computer or expensive PDAs or XBoxes... etc. We've minimalized over the years and especially after the layoff, to the poing where surviving on one salary wasn't only easy, it was comfortable. Now, granted, both of us being out of work would be very difficult. But that goes for everyone. And yes, we consider ourselves blessed. As long as one of us has stable employment (a rarity in the US these days) we'll be okay. Because we know how to live on less and still enjoy life.
Well, the first thing to clarify, since EVERYONE here seems to be having a problem with this is that we didn't TAKE HOME $130,000. I guess I'm crazy, but I thought when one said they "made" X dollars that it was assumed that there was a certain level of taxation involved and that that wasn't take home pay. I have no idea what our take home out of that was. My wife would know better. But it was a ton less. And THEN we had to write a $10,000 check at the end of the year to the federal govt.
So at the time the house made sense. When I got laid off, yeah, it didn't. But most of the money (after all of that), to be honest, was and is tied up in paying off student loans, car loans, paying off credit cards, etc. I think, given the interest rates of all of those and the current stock market, that paying off debt is as wise an investment as putting money into a nest egg. And I've been told as much by financial planners.
And the rest of the money goes to make sure we enjoy our time here. So we go out to eat still. We eat healthy (which costs a smidge more). We exercise, etc. so buy bikes, shoes, gym memberships. Life isn't just rent and food.
I wasn't sure. Everyone has been on my case for some reason, so it's a little hard to tell. I apologize. I understand what you're saying, anyway. I paid for my wife's engagement ring with cash. We were poor, I was just out of college. So it's not a giant rock, but she loves it. We paid for the wedding with cash. And the honeymoon was paid for with cash as well. Of course, we honeymooned down the street on the Oregon coast, but we had a great time and didn't have to worry about money when we got home. Somewhere in the middle there we managed to get some credit card debt, but nothing crazy. And definitely no second mortgages or anything like that. We just pay our bills, try to keep our bills low, common sense. That doesn't leave much for a "nest egg" as others seem to think we should have, but so be it. At least we're happy.
Which was my point (as someone who DOESN'T own an expensive car or house). My wife and I spent some money. Most definitely. We want to enjoy our life. Go out to eat, see movies, things like that. And we certainly racked up some credit card debt, as I copped to in my post. But nowhere in the ballpark you describe. Not even close. We have $60,000 in student loans. We made what we made for 1 solitary year. And that isn't take-home. Take home pay is much much much less, as you probably know. Much less. So after a heap of taxes deducted, massive student loan payments, there isn't much there to waste. But waste it we did for many years, and that's my point. In the end, the solution was to simplify, cut down on the waste, don't believe you have to own an HDTV, more than 1 computer or a house and you can get by just fine on much less money. It's funny to have so many people lecturing me about that, when that's what I was trying to say my wife and I went and did. Strange. Reading comprehension, anyone?
That's been part of my problem, definitely. Bad posture, no breaks.
Missing the point. Missing the point. Am I the only one that has taxes deducted from my paycheck?
Yes. I never said $130,000 was our take-home pay. Nor did I say $10,000 was our sole tax burden. Silliness. I thought it was pretty clear. It was an afterthought in a post where I was trying to make a point about the importance of money. Ironic that it was totally missed because of people's concern about money.
Of course I mean after withholding. The 10k figure was a mere detail in the midst of explaining WHY we bought a house. Nothing more. Why would I be concerned about taxes taken out of my paycheck? I get deducted what I get deducted. That's what you get when you make money. I'm fine with that. It's the end of the year tax bill I worry about.
I think all of you missed the point. But anyway, regarding the taxes, we're talking about taxes paid in cash AFTER deductions from our paychecks. And we have the govt. take out quite a bit. i.e. no up-front deductions.
That's $10k AFTER taxes already deducted from our paychecks. And it's only a rough figure. My wife knows what the exact number is, since she handles the money. :-)
Pseudoscientist?
Anyway, I'm getting better AND I'm still programming and playing video games. So yeah, it's working.
Well, I didn't say we made $130,000 for many years. Only for one year. That was our zenith. Secondly, you have no idea how much you pay in taxes when you make that much money. If we hadn't have "bought" the house, our taxes would have been in the neighborhood of at least $10,000 (no kids, make too much money to deduct student loans), I believe. Of course, buying the house cost money. Much more than rent. 2 car loans (1 paid off now) and $60,000 in combined student loans and that money disappears pretty quickly.
And, as I alluded to earlier, we spent some money. At one time owning a couple computers, a Zaurus, an HDTV, lots of little toys that add up. That didn't eat up most of the extra money. Student loan payments did that nicely. To the tune of like $1,000 a month.
So this isn't a sob story. The point is that we changed our idea of what we wanted/needed out of life and as a consequence our expenses dropped considerably. Now we're barrelling money into our debt (which is better than putting away a nest egg, IMHO, since we'll have to pay that money back someday) and enjoying the freedom that comes from having a much simpler existence.
One thing to consider is to lower your expenses. My wife and I were in quite the cherry position about a year ago. over $130,000 a year in salary combined, both of us younger than 28, buying our first house and then I was laid off.
Our first step? Sell the house. Then start paying off all our debts. We may not "own" a house now (I put that in quotes because we wouldn't have owned it for 30 years), but our expenses are relatively fixed, in the process of moving into an apartment we downsized and simplified our life considerably. And now, if I get the opportunity I can take a job like the above AND take the reduced salary. Because even though we knew money wouldn't buy happiness before, now we're putting this principle to practice and organizing our life such that we don't need that much money to live on. Our debts are getting paid off and we're happy, and that's what matters.
Do we have HDTV? Not anymore. Do we have a house? Not anymore. Do we have more than 1 computer? Not anymore. But our life is simple. We relax much more. We owe much less and our stress has been halved, both on our bodies and on our minds. Something to think about for those stressing about salaries not being commensurate with skills. Money isn't everything.
Seconded. I'm in the same boat. Almost 30, lots of mileage on my hands and wrists and recently I started to experience extreme arm and hand pain. I sought out the help of an ART (active release therapy) specialist, a chiropractor. She's helping me to get better. I don't know how well this would work for CTS, but I've heard what I have (tendonitis of the arms) is actually worse. And the treatment is going well and actually working. So I think step (A) is to stop writing millions of lines of code and find a job where they at least allow you to leave work long enough to go see a therapist. Ratchet down your hours to a sane work week. That's what I did. Run, jog, get on a bike once in a while. Basically go get a life, don't get on the computer when you get home, let your skills slack a bit. Basically jump off the hampster wheel for a while so you can save your sanity and your hands. And yeah, maybe get the hell out of Silicon Valley.
My suggestion would be to get a palm....
Seriously. I loved my Zaurus. Used it for over a year. But I just got sick of being a slave to the charger and having to constrain what I used it for during the day because of the battery life.
If you have to carry a battery charger with you (as I did) there's something wrong with your "PDA". So I went back to Palm. Simple, does the basic things I need it to do. Syncs with Linux.
Well.... come on. :-)
Right, Cocoa. Either way the point is I want learn Objective C with a GUI on a system that *just works*. Especially so it *just works* for my wife. This is so tempting. I might be a "switcher" soon. Why do I feel like I'm cheating on Linux? :(
After years away from Mac (I drifted to Windows then Linux), I might buy myself one of these. It's so small and it fits a simple lifestyle, you know. I assume all the programming tools I need would work on it (i.e. MySQL, Apache, Tomcat, etc), plus I could learn Carbon just for fun. Wow. What a day for Apple.