Why can't Johnny just give his name to the cashier?
Because when the kid says his number is 8241, that's pretty unambiguous. When the kid says her name is Carie, is that spelled Carie, Karie, Kerry, Kari, Carry, or Care-e (I'm sure some parents can get even more creative these days). Even using soundex algorithms don't always help when dealing with people who refuse to acknowledge the true pronunciation of their name (sorry, but Congressman Boehner's name is not really pronounced Bayner). Foreign names can be fun too (especially when you mix unfamiliar spelling with a strong spoken accent). And all of that is just too much to type when the PIN is only 4 characters (makes the line go much faster).
You may think it's a joke, but I'm sure the many parents who got bills for their kids buying Fish Bucks didn't think it was such a joke. They learned a very important lesson: iOS will cache your itunes password for a period of time, and it will not reprompt you for it even when you try to make an in game purchase. So, your kid finds a game he likes, you login to download it, you give the iphone back to your kid, they play the game and make a bunch of in game purchases, and you get the bill.
You'd also think that someone like you could be less of an asshole. You started chastising people for correcting you after you already posted your correction, even when those people made their post as little as 3 minutes after your correction. Gee...do you think there might be a little bit of delay between the time we load your post, read it and see it is incorrect, hit reply, type up a response, preview it, and submit it?
My post was made only 15 minutes after your updated post. I knew your post was wrong, but it took me a little bit to track down the citation so that I could authoritatively show you what the correct number was. And my reward for trying to give you researched data (instead of just spewing a number out of my ass in my reply) is to get a smug, bitchy response from you. What a jackass.
I've no experience with view cameras, so I have no interest in debating anything you said. However, the point was, somebody suggested DSLRs aren't very capable for doing architectural photography, and that's not true. There are several lenses that make it perfectly suited to that type of work, and there are a ton of people doing exactly that who are perfectly satisfied with the results.
Last time I looked, which waasn't that long ago, there were two DSLR tilt-shift lenses on the market, they cost about $3,000, and the coverage they had was unimpressive.
It must have been a quite a LONG time ago, because Canon has had 3 tilt-shift lenses available for years. The were released in 1991, and are still available today. A few years ago they added a 4th lens to the batch (and updated one of the old models with a new version). So your choices are:
17mm f/4 24mm f/3.5 45mm f/2.8 90mm f/2.8
Also, when I checked a few years ago, the cheapest one was under $1500. Today they range from $1200 to $2200.
And once someone else gets access to your private key, you're royally screwed.
Royally screwed? I thought that's what key revocation was for. With PGP, you just revoke the old, generate a new key, and you are good to go from there on out. But how exactly do you revoke and reissue fingerprints?
Autobot Hound was a military jeep. Also not sure what you would classify Skyfire as, but I would think it would have to be military (despite lack of markings). 4 of the 5 aerialbots are military jets.
As far as Decepticons being military vehicles, you've got the 6 jets (starscream, etc). Later they added the combaticons.
So that's 2-to-1 in favor of the Decepticons. Anything else I'm forgetting?
That seems a bit backward to me. If a 2.0 device will work just fine connected to a 3.0 controller, then it shouldn't matter if the cable between is 2.0 or 3.0. As you have explained it, I will now need to keep 2 separate sets of spare USB cables. One set for 2.0 devices and one for 3.0 devices. I'd prefer if I could just keep one set for all devices.
A while back there was an article posted here on slashdot about LightPeak which mentioned that the LightPeak connector jack would also be compatible with USB, so you could have a single jack that would accept both USB and LightPeak devices. So in that sense, it seems intel currently has no expectation for USB to disappear. Also, it mentioned that the electrical cabling could run along with the optical portion, so a single cable would support both lightpeak AND USB. Thus you'd be able to charge with it. And I think the suggestion made in one of the Intel demo videos was that it would be able to run LightPeak and USB simultaneously, which means you could have a single hub to plug all of your USB and LightPeak devices into, with only a single wire going back to your computer.
Currently used sensors don't capture RGB for every pixel***. Each pixel is one color, and then processing is done to interpolate the other colors from adjacent pixels of those colors. Go look up "bayer filter" for more details.
So really, rather than storing 36 bits per pixel, you'd only be dealing with 12 bits. Actually, most likely more than that. Current Canon SLRs capture 14 bit per pixel. But the point is you don't need 36 bits. Lets just say 16 bits, which gives you 240 MB for a 120 MP sensor.
On top of that, there is also compression. When stored in raw file format, there is lossless compression on the data, so it would come in somewhat less than that. My 12 MP Canon XSi is 14 bit per pixel, so you'd expect the raw files to be over 21 MB, but they typically end up being 12-18 MB. Then there's JPEG, which would only store 8 bits per pixel, and compress much more (though lossy), so you'd expect well under 100MB (probably more like 50 MB)
*** There are some sensors that do this, but they were only used in a few less popular camera models, all of which (to my knowledge) are discontinued.
Too bad that income, DUI convictions, rental information**, etc is NOT information that is on credit reports. If you want to be concerned about that sort of stuff being pulled from other sources, that is fine. But your point (the one which I was addressing) was about getting info that is on your CREDIT REPORT, and none of the stuff you are talking about has anything to do with your credit report info. Knowing the criteria used to generate the list doesn't help. A soft pull is incredibly lossy. You get a very vague idea about some very vague topics, but it's impossible to turn that back into specific pieces of your credit report. The only was to get that type of info is with a hard pull, and that's only available to entities you've authorized to do so***.
** Credit reports don't contain rental data, unless you don't pay your rent and it gets sent to collections, in which case the credit report will say that you have been sent to collections, but it won't say things like where the rental unit was located or what the monthly rent was.
*** Well, someone could lie and say they have your permission, but that creates a record on your credit report that you yourself can see for the next 2 years, and you could then very easily sue them under the FCRA and collect punitive damages from them for doing so.
I know that. And they can do it without my permission. That's my point. So WTF is yours?
My point is, you said
A marketer can't pull my credit report without my permission, but if he buys enough of these mailing lists, he will have the same information anyway
. In other words, you think buying these reports will get him the information on your credit report, but that is false. These are generated from credit reports but contain no data other than your contact info. No matter if he buys a million of these reports, he will get no more than the contact info. That's WTF my point is. You said something blatantly false (and then get snarky with me when I point it out and you fail to realize it)
This is not to say that I think people should be deathly afraid of targeted ads. But let's at least recognize the dangers (or even just nuisances) they present.
Sorry, but I'm not quite seeing what the danger or nuisance is. You made a case about how non-targeted are good for building name recognition, which kind of even goes against the idea that targeted ads are so much worse. Everything else you've said basically comes back to the "I'm powerless to resist the calls of advertisers, and that offends me" type of argument.
A marketer can't pull my credit report without my permission, but if he buys enough of these mailing lists, he will have the same information anyway.
Apparently you have no clue about that which you are linking. From the linked page:
We specialize in pulling your leads to meet the requirements of any individual loan program's criteria for funding by using "soft credit inquiries" from the major credit bureaus.
A soft pull IS a pull of your credit report. However, it doesn't give them any of the details of your report, other than that it meets some broad criteria. They ask for all people whose credit score is over 700, have had a mortgage for 3+ years without missed payments, and have less than 10% of their available credit currently utilized. They then get a list of contact information for everyone that meets that criteria so that they can contact those people for offers. Buying these list is not going to get them any other info from your credit reports.
I can understand your concern about the first half, but about the second half....why are so many people always offended by the notion of targeted advertising? People always seem to get mad about the possibility that the ads they see might actually be relevant to them. Why is this so terrible? You'd rather see ads for tampons and the AARP instead of seeing one for a restaurant that is in your area? The only possible reason I can see to be offended is because you have no will power to resist the messages of advertiser, and if they start targeting you with relevant ads then you are going to rush out and buy everything they tell you to. If that's the case, I don't think the biggest concern is targeted advertising.
Around here...the max unemployment wouldn't even cover my rent?!?!
Ok, it would..but there would only be about $100-$200 left over a month from it maybe, and that leftover wouldn't cover power, car payment, insurance...the necessities of life.
Michigan. And I didn't say my unemployment covered all of that. I said it covered my mortgage. Utilities, food, etc all had to come out of our emergency fund. That's what the emergency fund is there for. So you don't have to touch your retirement account or hope you have enough equity to cash out of your house
So, when are you going to retire? I guarantee it won't be on your schedule. If your schedule and the stock market don't coincide, then you are SOL. If you retired in the last couple years, did you really have a choice of when to dip into the retirement fund? I guess if you were making mad money, and had a bunch of money in the bank, then you're ok. For the rest of the world, you take what's in the retirement funds and cry about it until it's gone.
First, if you get cut loose from your job unexpectedly, that isn't your cue to retire early. A retirement fund is a retirement fund, and you don't touch it until then. You need a secondary fund...the good old emergency fund takes care of this. The idea is that you should have a MINIMUM of 6 months of expenses covered, and you should work towards 12 months. That means if you lose your job, you can pay your mortgage, utilities, taxes, groceries, etc for 6-12 months even if you have no other income. If you get unemployment, that will help you extend your fund out longer. The advantages of an emergency fund are that 1) you aren't dependent on timing your emergency to when the market is good, and 2) you don't pay the 10% penalty that the IRS will assess on your for cashing out your 401K early.
See how the concept works? Money you might need in the near future gets put into safe investments in your emergency fund. Money you won't need for years goes into your retirement account some percentage of that gets invested in the stock market, the percentage dependent upon how close you are to retirement.
Now I know you'd like to say that it's difficult to save up such a fund, but we are talking about personal responsibility here. If you've been working long enough to build up any decently sizable retirement fund, you should have been able to do the same with your emergency fund. If you live responsibly there should not be a problem. That means not buying a home so close to your income limits that you have no money to save for emergency and retirement. And it means when you lose your job and have no other income (or just unemployment), you recognize that you are actually in an emergency and LIVE LIKE IT. Don't use your "emergency fund" to go out to dinner regularly at restaurants and stuff like that.
You don't need to be making "mad money" to make all of this happen. Our family makes less than the national median income. Despite that, our 30 year mortgage is just a few years from being paid off in 15 years. We were able to do that because we decided to buy a home that was significantly less than our finances would have allowed, and we never used it as an ATM. We've been able to save up a good retirement fund and enough cash to cover a year of expenses. We've been able to let my wife quit work (meaning were now even further under the median income), have a baby, and continue putting my wife through college without grants or loans. We even managed to buy a new vehicle every 5 years. At one point, I even lost my job, had 3 months of no employment and 6 months of part time employment. We did alright through that because our mortgage payment was less than my unemployment checks so we only had to use our fund for bills and living expenses.
I'm not trying to brag about how good we are at saving or anything...just showing that what you claim requires "mad money" can actually be done at less than the median income, and we didn't even have to live like we were poor to do it.
You must be not bright. I use a proven and successful strategy for my retirement funds. I watch the talking heads, do huge amounts of research and investigate everything a company does. Then I take my money and buy lottery tickets. That way I will have a well funded portfolio when I retire.
Nice use of sarcasm there. But to be serious, if you don't have the time/interest/inclination/whatever to do the sort of research to which you refer to, there is a much simpler fix. Either let the experts do it for you by buying mutual funds from a highly regarded firm like Fidelity, or invest in index funds. As you get closer to retirement, you shift more of your funds from riskier stocks to safer investments (bonds, CDs, etc).
Many firms even have target-year funds that will do this for you. You pick there year you plan to retire and they will manage the portfolio, shifting from riskier investments early on for maximizing growth, and then gradually shifting more and more money to safer investments (with lower rates of return) as you approach your target year.
Yes, I will definitely argue with you. You are talking about a retirement fund they isn't going to be used as a retirement fund. They are going to cash it out at the low point, YEARS before their actual retirement. The proper approach is to keep investing the same (or more) money at the low points. The market, as a whole, will inevitably go up. It may take a few years but it will happen. When it does, all those purchases in the low years will really help your fund grow much more.
The trick to properly managing a retirement account is 1) making sure your portfolio is diversified enough that you can't be wiped out by a few bad picks, and 2) shifting more and more of your investments to less risky options as you get closer to retirement.
I would much rather have my money in accounts that are safer: Savings accounts and Certificates of Deposit.
LOL. The people who build their retirement on CoDs are the ones who need social security to pay their retirement. You are talking about the difference between a $50K/year vs $10K/year when you compare stocks vs CoDs. CoDs don't earn you enough to make a solid retirement fund unless you make a lot of money or can set aside a very sizable portion of your income.
But that's a proven risky retirement plan. It's a huge gamble to make with your quality of life during the years when you will have the greatest need to be comfortable. Retirement money in the stock market is just crazy. You should invest in assets with more guaranteed returns.
You have it totally wrong. Retirement money in the stock market is not crazy. In fact, the entire history of the stock market proves that wrong. Over a span of 30 or more years, you always do pretty good. There are only a few times in history when you could have invested and over the course of the following 30 years done poorly overall. Yes, you are susceptible to everything tanking at the very end, but that's why any sensible investment strategy advocates gradually moving out of stocks and into safer investments as you get closer to your retirement date.
And as far as "huge gamble to make with your quality of life", it's not really a gamble. With the type of interest rates you get on safe investments, there's no gamble because you are ensuring up front you will have little money to retire on. The power of compounding in great, but only really amazing when you have a great rate of return, and you really only get that in non-safe investments.
stocks are tantamount to gambling by people who are just far too greedy in the first place
WTF? Excuse me for wanting to have a decent retirement and not having to work until my dying day or depend on social security to keep food on the table. The stock market is integral to the retirement plans of almost everyone who is not putting all their hope into social security (or is independently wealthy). Whether your retirement is coming from a 401k, IRA. pension, etc, chances are you are highly invested in the stock market for retirement.
Actually, it's a quote from the movie National Lampoons: European Vacation where the family drives around the roundabout over and over, never able to get out, and each time, Clark (the dad) points out the monuments to his family...over and over again.
Slashdot Mirror
Why can't Johnny just give his name to the cashier?
Because when the kid says his number is 8241, that's pretty unambiguous. When the kid says her name is Carie, is that spelled Carie, Karie, Kerry, Kari, Carry, or Care-e (I'm sure some parents can get even more creative these days). Even using soundex algorithms don't always help when dealing with people who refuse to acknowledge the true pronunciation of their name (sorry, but Congressman Boehner's name is not really pronounced Bayner). Foreign names can be fun too (especially when you mix unfamiliar spelling with a strong spoken accent). And all of that is just too much to type when the PIN is only 4 characters (makes the line go much faster).
You may think it's a joke, but I'm sure the many parents who got bills for their kids buying Fish Bucks didn't think it was such a joke. They learned a very important lesson: iOS will cache your itunes password for a period of time, and it will not reprompt you for it even when you try to make an in game purchase. So, your kid finds a game he likes, you login to download it, you give the iphone back to your kid, they play the game and make a bunch of in game purchases, and you get the bill.
You'd think you people could read.
You'd also think that someone like you could be less of an asshole. You started chastising people for correcting you after you already posted your correction, even when those people made their post as little as 3 minutes after your correction. Gee...do you think there might be a little bit of delay between the time we load your post, read it and see it is incorrect, hit reply, type up a response, preview it, and submit it?
My post was made only 15 minutes after your updated post. I knew your post was wrong, but it took me a little bit to track down the citation so that I could authoritatively show you what the correct number was. And my reward for trying to give you researched data (instead of just spewing a number out of my ass in my reply) is to get a smug, bitchy response from you. What a jackass.
I've no experience with view cameras, so I have no interest in debating anything you said. However, the point was, somebody suggested DSLRs aren't very capable for doing architectural photography, and that's not true. There are several lenses that make it perfectly suited to that type of work, and there are a ton of people doing exactly that who are perfectly satisfied with the results.
Last time I looked, which waasn't that long ago, there were two DSLR tilt-shift lenses on the market, they cost about $3,000, and the coverage they had was unimpressive.
It must have been a quite a LONG time ago, because Canon has had 3 tilt-shift lenses available for years. The were released in 1991, and are still available today. A few years ago they added a 4th lens to the batch (and updated one of the old models with a
new version). So your choices are:
17mm f/4
24mm f/3.5
45mm f/2.8
90mm f/2.8
Also, when I checked a few years ago, the cheapest one was under $1500. Today they range from $1200 to $2200.
this rig is supposedly in 2500 feet of water.
Not according to this article:
http://www.pnj.com/article/20100902/NEWS10/100902013/Coast-Guard-Offshore-oil-rig-in-Gulf-of-Mexico-explodes
"The platform is in about 340 feet of water"
And once someone else gets access to your private key, you're royally screwed.
Royally screwed? I thought that's what key revocation was for. With PGP, you just revoke the old, generate a new key, and you are good to go from there on out. But how exactly do you revoke and reissue fingerprints?
The decepticons were also the military vehicles.
Autobot Hound was a military jeep. Also not sure what you would classify Skyfire as, but I would think it would have to be military (despite lack of markings). 4 of the 5 aerialbots are military jets.
As far as Decepticons being military vehicles, you've got the 6 jets (starscream, etc). Later they added the combaticons.
So that's 2-to-1 in favor of the Decepticons. Anything else I'm forgetting?
That seems a bit backward to me. If a 2.0 device will work just fine connected to a 3.0 controller, then it shouldn't matter if the cable between is 2.0 or 3.0. As you have explained it, I will now need to keep 2 separate sets of spare USB cables. One set for 2.0 devices and one for 3.0 devices. I'd prefer if I could just keep one set for all devices.
A while back there was an article posted here on slashdot about LightPeak which mentioned that the LightPeak connector jack would also be compatible with USB, so you could have a single jack that would accept both USB and LightPeak devices. So in that sense, it seems intel currently has no expectation for USB to disappear. Also, it mentioned that the electrical cabling could run along with the optical portion, so a single cable would support both lightpeak AND USB. Thus you'd be able to charge with it. And I think the suggestion made in one of the Intel demo videos was that it would be able to run LightPeak and USB simultaneously, which means you could have a single hub to plug all of your USB and LightPeak devices into, with only a single wire going back to your computer.
http://slashdot.org/story/10/05/04/1539206/Intel-Shows-Off-First-Light-Peak-Laptop
Currently used sensors don't capture RGB for every pixel***. Each pixel is one color, and then processing is done to interpolate the other colors from adjacent pixels of those colors. Go look up "bayer filter" for more details.
So really, rather than storing 36 bits per pixel, you'd only be dealing with 12 bits. Actually, most likely more than that. Current Canon SLRs capture 14 bit per pixel. But the point is you don't need 36 bits. Lets just say 16 bits, which gives you 240 MB for a 120 MP sensor.
On top of that, there is also compression. When stored in raw file format, there is lossless compression on the data, so it would come in somewhat less than that. My 12 MP Canon XSi is 14 bit per pixel, so you'd expect the raw files to be over 21 MB, but they typically end up being 12-18 MB. Then there's JPEG, which would only store 8 bits per pixel, and compress much more (though lossy), so you'd expect well under 100MB (probably more like 50 MB)
*** There are some sensors that do this, but they were only used in a few less popular camera models, all of which (to my knowledge) are discontinued.
Too bad that income, DUI convictions, rental information**, etc is NOT information that is on credit reports. If you want to be concerned about that sort of stuff being pulled from other sources, that is fine. But your point (the one which I was addressing) was about getting info that is on your CREDIT REPORT, and none of the stuff you are talking about has anything to do with your credit report info. Knowing the criteria used to generate the list doesn't help. A soft pull is incredibly lossy. You get a very vague idea about some very vague topics, but it's impossible to turn that back into specific pieces of your credit report. The only was to get that type of info is with a hard pull, and that's only available to entities you've authorized to do so***.
** Credit reports don't contain rental data, unless you don't pay your rent and it gets sent to collections, in which case the credit report will say that you have been sent to collections, but it won't say things like where the rental unit was located or what the monthly rent was.
*** Well, someone could lie and say they have your permission, but that creates a record on your credit report that you yourself can see for the next 2 years, and you could then very easily sue them under the FCRA and collect punitive damages from them for doing so.
I know that. And they can do it without my permission. That's my point. So WTF is yours?
My point is, you said
A marketer can't pull my credit report without my permission, but if he buys enough of these mailing lists, he will have the same information anyway
. In other words, you think buying these reports will get him the information on your credit report, but that is false. These are generated from credit reports but contain no data other than your contact info. No matter if he buys a million of these reports, he will get no more than the contact info. That's WTF my point is. You said something blatantly false (and then get snarky with me when I point it out and you fail to realize it)
This is not to say that I think people should be deathly afraid of targeted ads. But let's at least recognize the dangers (or even just nuisances) they present.
Sorry, but I'm not quite seeing what the danger or nuisance is. You made a case about how non-targeted are good for building name recognition, which kind of even goes against the idea that targeted ads are so much worse. Everything else you've said basically comes back to the "I'm powerless to resist the calls of advertisers, and that offends me" type of argument.
This is what I really hate:
http://www.exactsalesleads.com/mortgage-lists.html
A marketer can't pull my credit report without my permission, but if he buys enough of these mailing lists, he will have the same information anyway.
Apparently you have no clue about that which you are linking. From the linked page:
A soft pull IS a pull of your credit report. However, it doesn't give them any of the details of your report, other than that it meets some broad criteria. They ask for all people whose credit score is over 700, have had a mortgage for 3+ years without missed payments, and have less than 10% of their available credit currently utilized. They then get a list of contact information for everyone that meets that criteria so that they can contact those people for offers. Buying these list is not going to get them any other info from your credit reports.
What? It is enabled by default?
Again?
When is Facebook going to learn?
What?
You actually thought facebook was going to reasonable in their actions regarding privacy?
Again?
When are you going to learn?
I can understand your concern about the first half, but about the second half....why are so many people always offended by the notion of targeted advertising? People always seem to get mad about the possibility that the ads they see might actually be relevant to them. Why is this so terrible? You'd rather see ads for tampons and the AARP instead of seeing one for a restaurant that is in your area? The only possible reason I can see to be offended is because you have no will power to resist the messages of advertiser, and if they start targeting you with relevant ads then you are going to rush out and buy everything they tell you to. If that's the case, I don't think the biggest concern is targeted advertising.
Just curious..where do you live?
Around here...the max unemployment wouldn't even cover my rent?!?!
Ok, it would..but there would only be about $100-$200 left over a month from it maybe, and that leftover wouldn't cover power, car payment, insurance...the necessities of life.
Michigan. And I didn't say my unemployment covered all of that. I said it covered my mortgage. Utilities, food, etc all had to come out of our emergency fund. That's what the emergency fund is there for. So you don't have to touch your retirement account or hope you have enough equity to cash out of your house
So, when are you going to retire? I guarantee it won't be on your schedule. If your schedule and the stock market don't coincide, then you are SOL. If you retired in the last couple years, did you really have a choice of when to dip into the retirement fund? I guess if you were making mad money, and had a bunch of money in the bank, then you're ok. For the rest of the world, you take what's in the retirement funds and cry about it until it's gone.
First, if you get cut loose from your job unexpectedly, that isn't your cue to retire early. A retirement fund is a retirement fund, and you don't touch it until then. You need a secondary fund...the good old emergency fund takes care of this. The idea is that you should have a MINIMUM of 6 months of expenses covered, and you should work towards 12 months. That means if you lose your job, you can pay your mortgage, utilities, taxes, groceries, etc for 6-12 months even if you have no other income. If you get unemployment, that will help you extend your fund out longer. The advantages of an emergency fund are that 1) you aren't dependent on timing your emergency to when the market is good, and 2) you don't pay the 10% penalty that the IRS will assess on your for cashing out your 401K early.
See how the concept works? Money you might need in the near future gets put into safe investments in your emergency fund. Money you won't need for years goes into your retirement account some percentage of that gets invested in the stock market, the percentage dependent upon how close you are to retirement.
Now I know you'd like to say that it's difficult to save up such a fund, but we are talking about personal responsibility here. If you've been working long enough to build up any decently sizable retirement fund, you should have been able to do the same with your emergency fund. If you live responsibly there should not be a problem. That means not buying a home so close to your income limits that you have no money to save for emergency and retirement. And it means when you lose your job and have no other income (or just unemployment), you recognize that you are actually in an emergency and LIVE LIKE IT. Don't use your "emergency fund" to go out to dinner regularly at restaurants and stuff like that.
You don't need to be making "mad money" to make all of this happen. Our family makes less than the national median income. Despite that, our 30 year mortgage is just a few years from being paid off in 15 years. We were able to do that because we decided to buy a home that was significantly less than our finances would have allowed, and we never used it as an ATM. We've been able to save up a good retirement fund and enough cash to cover a year of expenses. We've been able to let my wife quit work (meaning were now even further under the median income), have a baby, and continue putting my wife through college without grants or loans. We even managed to buy a new vehicle every 5 years. At one point, I even lost my job, had 3 months of no employment and 6 months of part time employment. We did alright through that because our mortgage payment was less than my unemployment checks so we only had to use our fund for bills and living expenses.
I'm not trying to brag about how good we are at saving or anything...just showing that what you claim requires "mad money" can actually be done at less than the median income, and we didn't even have to live like we were poor to do it.
You must be not bright. I use a proven and successful strategy for my retirement funds. I watch the talking heads, do huge amounts of research and investigate everything a company does. Then I take my money and buy lottery tickets. That way I will have a well funded portfolio when I retire.
Nice use of sarcasm there. But to be serious, if you don't have the time/interest/inclination/whatever to do the sort of research to which you refer to, there is a much simpler fix. Either let
the experts do it for you by buying mutual funds from a highly regarded firm like Fidelity, or invest in index funds. As you get closer to retirement, you shift more of your funds from riskier stocks to safer investments (bonds, CDs, etc).
Many firms even have target-year funds that will do this for you. You pick there year you plan to retire and they will manage the portfolio, shifting from riskier investments early on for maximizing growth, and then gradually shifting more and more money to safer investments (with lower rates of return) as you approach your target year.
Yes, I will definitely argue with you. You are talking about a retirement fund they isn't going to be used as a retirement fund. They are going to cash it out at the low point, YEARS before their actual retirement. The proper approach is to keep investing the same (or more) money at the low points. The market, as a whole, will inevitably go up. It may take a few years but it will happen. When it does, all those purchases in the low years will really help your fund grow much more.
The trick to properly managing a retirement account is 1) making sure your portfolio is diversified enough that you can't be wiped out by a few bad picks, and 2) shifting more and more of your investments to less risky options as you get closer to retirement.
I would much rather have my money in accounts that are safer: Savings accounts and Certificates of Deposit.
LOL. The people who build their retirement on CoDs are the ones who need social security to pay their retirement. You are talking about the difference between a $50K/year vs $10K/year when you compare stocks vs CoDs. CoDs don't earn you enough to make a solid retirement fund unless you make a lot of money or can set aside a very sizable portion of your income.
But that's a proven risky retirement plan. It's a huge gamble to make with your quality of life during the years when you will have the greatest need to be comfortable.
Retirement money in the stock market is just crazy. You should invest in assets with more guaranteed returns.
You have it totally wrong. Retirement money in the stock market is not crazy. In fact, the entire history of the stock market proves that wrong. Over a span of 30 or more years, you always do pretty good. There are only a few times in history when you could have invested and over the course of the following 30 years done poorly overall. Yes, you are susceptible to everything tanking at the very end, but that's why any sensible investment strategy advocates gradually moving out of stocks and into safer investments as you get closer to your retirement date.
And as far as "huge gamble to make with your quality of life", it's not really a gamble. With the type of interest rates you get on safe investments, there's no gamble because you are ensuring up front you will have little money to retire on. The power of compounding in great, but only really amazing when you have a great rate of return, and you really only get that in non-safe investments.
stocks are tantamount to gambling by people who are just far too greedy in the first place
WTF? Excuse me for wanting to have a decent retirement and not having to work until my dying day or depend on social security to keep food on the table. The stock market is integral to the retirement plans of almost everyone who is not putting all their hope into social security (or is independently wealthy). Whether your retirement is coming from a 401k, IRA. pension, etc, chances are you are highly invested in the stock market for retirement.
Actually, it's a quote from the movie National Lampoons: European Vacation where the family drives around the roundabout over and over, never able to get out, and each time, Clark (the dad) points out the monuments to his family...over and over again.