By "naked", do you mean a regular tax-deferred annuity that is not wrapped in a trust?
In general I'm not a big fan of annuities, and in any event they do not have the same up-front tax benefit as a 401(k) or IRA. You can't write off payments to the insurance company (unless I've missed something, I'm by no means an expert on annuities, but I did look into them). Once money is in them, they are similar to an IRA or 401(k) in that you get taxed based on the money you suck back out at regular income tax rates.
The reason I didn't chose an annuity (despite having term life insurance for the kids) is that I believe that my money will do better in a standard brokerage account in equities. I try to minimize selling and hopefully my taxes in retirement will mostly be of the much-lower capital gains and dividend variety (except for what comes out of my 401(k), naturally. We also have a significant portion of our assets in our house, which we can sell completely tax free under current law.
Oh, I should add one part that I have run into that is VERY unfair. Retirement plans. As a contractor, I can pack away about $17,000 plus 25% of my net income. If I were an employee I couldn't get anywhere near that unless my employer was extremely generous. As a practical matter, most people can only do the $17,000 if they are in a 401(k) program plus whatever employer matching they get. If they qualify for an IRA, they can pack away an "amazing" (sarcasm alert) $5000.
There really should be just a blanket maximum for any retirement program, no matter how one is employed.
It's not unfair at all. Anyone can incorporate. Funnel your income through the corporate entity and enjoy what the Apple stockholders do - double taxation. Of course, like Apple, you can write off business expenses prior to being taxed the first time. You can also form a pass-through and only get taxed once, which is what I do as a contractor. But at no point can you deduct personal expenses... so just like Apple, you can deduct business expense rent but not your apartment. You can deduct education that is required to keep your job but not education that benefits only you. You can deduct business lunches but not food that you would have consumed anyway. You can deduct electricity used for your business, but not for your home.
Mind you, I think it is all BS and they shouldn't tax companies at all. Tax the money as it comes out - no special rates for dividends or capital gains. Not only would it make the US an attractive place to locate a corporation, it would encourage richie-riches to keep their money in their business. It might even improve politics, since it would be harder to hide corporate welfare in the tax code. Not that I have my hopes up there, since corporations have absolute free speech right now - but now we're on another topic.
It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.
That's very true, but it may well be that Anonymous doesn't have many other weapons. If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole:)
Same here, but I'll add that the Polaroids from the same era seem to have held up a bit better, except for the ones that got some damage and started to crystallize. I haven't seen any seriously faded photos from about the mid-80s on. I don't have much color photos from the 60s, but the ones I do have seem to have faded "differently" from the 70s photos... not as red. Not sure what the chemistry difference is.
Who cares what happens to Crash Plan? I mean, if it disappeared tomorrow there will be a short period where I don't have offsite backup while I set up on of it's many competitors. I'd still have the main drive and the Time Machine backup locally.
IMHO, the terrorists won long ago. PATRIOT Act, Homeland Security, TSA, etc. have stripped away our freedoms.
"Won" what? That wasn't their goal. They wanted us out of the Middle East, the destruction of Israel, and they wanted a return to the days of Islamic caliphate glory.
Instead they have the US as involved or more involved in the Middle East, chaos in a main anti-Israeli power, an apparent move toward democracy in the region, and near-irrelevance in almost the entire region they wanted to themselves.
Really, they could give two shits about how many searches we subject ourselves to.
It is probably fair to say that we over-reacted and gave up too much for a sense of security - but to say that they "won" is silly unless you think that less convenient air travel was their goal.
Agreed on black and white... Black and white will generally outlast the usefulness of a snapshot. I had one stick to the glass in it's frame... stubbornly, but after a whole lot of soaking I was able to coax it off. There was a wallet-sized print that I was able to use to fill in the badly damaged parts.
Also agreed that digital media will not last. Digital data has to be regarded as "living" and as soon as you archive it you risk killing it. My raw video, which I don't really care about that much, is backed up on the original tapes and to DVDs with at least 20% error correction. My completed video projects are always on a spinning disk and offsite. Going forward with ever-cheapening disk space and offsite backup, I no longer intend to offload to DVD and may in fact read in the backups that I did make. Stills are much easier - the entire library is less than 150GB.
This literally means keeping the data "alive" is as simple as keeping it on the hard drive of one of my computers. I run Time Machine and Crash Plan on each Mac and Crash Plan plus cloned disks on the PC. I don't really care if Crash Plan "abandons" me, since I'll just use another (I used to be with Mozy).
Also note that we are quickly getting to the point where even a massive (amateur) photo library will fit on a cheap USB thumb drive. This is how the apocryphal "my grandmother" backs her machine up, and honestly the risk of both the thumb drive and the main drive losing all of their contents is probably acceptable for home users. I'm sure "it happens", but so do home fires, tornadoes, roof leaks, and flooded basements.
Sure prints *could* get lost due to say fire or flood, but the family photo album doesn't need any more maintainance than stuffing in the bottom drawer.
My mother did this for decades and what she has are a bunch of ripped, faded, moldy, stuck-together, dusty, and color-shifted photographs that eat up a lot of my time scanning. Even the ones that she was careful with and put in albums - some of those stuck to the clear plastic and scan horribly.
The current problem with digital photos is that they need ongoing ACTIVE maintainance to not be lost
I'm not sure that I'd consider keeping all your photos in one folder to be "active", but I get your gist. A one-time setup of CrashPlan, Mozy, etc. is no more "active" than the one-time act of printing out the photos and putting them in a drawer.
ensure the bill gets paid after your death
If someone doesn't care about the photos once I'm dead, then why should I? I have several boxes from my recently-deceased grandmother full of photos that no one in the family can identify. Some of them are keepers, but most of them are useless to anyone. That is the fate of your photos, too. Eventually, no one will care.
(only containing best photos)
That's an excellent use for digital photos:) We also end up putting them into frames... how quaint:)
Exactly. I just went the other way. The photos that my mom had from 30 years ago are all washed out and color-shifted. I'm sure the inks/pigments/whatever has improved, but with the cost of digital storage trending downward I see no reason to make paper copies.
Backup is important, though. I have used Mozy in the past - I currently use CrashPlan (in addition to a local backup). I also periodically burn them to DVD and send the DVDs to grandparents. The point is get some copies offsite, because a house fire will wipe out the local digital copies AND any physical prints.
I know, I was thinking give them alternating days or something. Kids will complain, fight, and fuss no matter how much you capitulate, so you might as well set the bar extremely low. If you think buying two of everything will prevent headaches, you are completely wrong - they just won't fight over that particular thing.
Yeah, I feel like a tool because I was paying $100 after taxes for 2 phones with a shared 1000 minutes (data and texts on one phone) on T-Mobile. This was reinforced because other people told me what a good deal I had. Then someone showed me that they had Boost unlimited everything for $45/month, and it goes down to $35/month if they make on-time payments.
That shocked me into changing my plan, and while I didn't go with Boost I did change to T-Mobile prepay where they have a $30/month plan with "unlimited" data and texts but only 100 minutes, but extra minutes are only 10 cents... perfect for anti-social me. My wife is on a 1500 minute and text plan (with very little data) for the same $30. So on average I save about $40/month (I use extra minutes each month, but we'd also go over on our old 1000 minute plan which cost 29 cents/minute for extra minutes).
It also made me re-examine my need for a fancy $600 Android phone and I'm happy as a clam with a $200 Exhibit II 4g. I'm actually happier about the smaller screen size - though it could do with more on-board storage and the camera is pretty old-fashioned.
Wait, is $400 an expensive bike? I feel like that's what I paid for mine almost 20 years ago and it had no suspension or fancy features - just a regular chromoly steel mountain bike.
It still works, by the way. It's had a few sets of wheels, chains, and cabling - but it still works.
In order to be in international waters, the ship would be what, 200 miles out from shore?
They said 30 minutes, so they are probably talking about the 12 nautical mile territorial boundary. A cruise ship can probably do 24 knots if it really is going all-out, so while this is a bit of a stretch it is technically correct.
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I read my own comments and it sounds like I insured my kids :)
My wife and I are insured and our kids are the beneficiaries...
By "naked", do you mean a regular tax-deferred annuity that is not wrapped in a trust?
In general I'm not a big fan of annuities, and in any event they do not have the same up-front tax benefit as a 401(k) or IRA. You can't write off payments to the insurance company (unless I've missed something, I'm by no means an expert on annuities, but I did look into them). Once money is in them, they are similar to an IRA or 401(k) in that you get taxed based on the money you suck back out at regular income tax rates.
The reason I didn't chose an annuity (despite having term life insurance for the kids) is that I believe that my money will do better in a standard brokerage account in equities. I try to minimize selling and hopefully my taxes in retirement will mostly be of the much-lower capital gains and dividend variety (except for what comes out of my 401(k), naturally. We also have a significant portion of our assets in our house, which we can sell completely tax free under current law.
Oh, I should add one part that I have run into that is VERY unfair. Retirement plans. As a contractor, I can pack away about $17,000 plus 25% of my net income. If I were an employee I couldn't get anywhere near that unless my employer was extremely generous. As a practical matter, most people can only do the $17,000 if they are in a 401(k) program plus whatever employer matching they get. If they qualify for an IRA, they can pack away an "amazing" (sarcasm alert) $5000.
There really should be just a blanket maximum for any retirement program, no matter how one is employed.
It's not unfair at all. Anyone can incorporate. Funnel your income through the corporate entity and enjoy what the Apple stockholders do - double taxation. Of course, like Apple, you can write off business expenses prior to being taxed the first time. You can also form a pass-through and only get taxed once, which is what I do as a contractor. But at no point can you deduct personal expenses... so just like Apple, you can deduct business expense rent but not your apartment. You can deduct education that is required to keep your job but not education that benefits only you. You can deduct business lunches but not food that you would have consumed anyway. You can deduct electricity used for your business, but not for your home.
Mind you, I think it is all BS and they shouldn't tax companies at all. Tax the money as it comes out - no special rates for dividends or capital gains. Not only would it make the US an attractive place to locate a corporation, it would encourage richie-riches to keep their money in their business. It might even improve politics, since it would be harder to hide corporate welfare in the tax code. Not that I have my hopes up there, since corporations have absolute free speech right now - but now we're on another topic.
It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.
That's very true, but it may well be that Anonymous doesn't have many other weapons. If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole :)
OK good. I'm not on board with video games being anything but a luxury unless they stop selling playing cards. :)
Same here, but I'll add that the Polaroids from the same era seem to have held up a bit better, except for the ones that got some damage and started to crystallize. I haven't seen any seriously faded photos from about the mid-80s on. I don't have much color photos from the 60s, but the ones I do have seem to have faded "differently" from the 70s photos... not as red. Not sure what the chemistry difference is.
Who cares what happens to Crash Plan? I mean, if it disappeared tomorrow there will be a short period where I don't have offsite backup while I set up on of it's many competitors. I'd still have the main drive and the Time Machine backup locally.
OK, cool - that's what I thought. Those things at Wal-Mart... heaven forbid you leave one in the rain. And I would never trust those brakes.
as I recall Bin Laden wanted to send the US broke.
As a means to an end.
When you allow yourself to be terrorised the terrorists win.
That's something like a platitude - sounds nice, but doesn't quite capture the reality of the situation.
The terrorists "win" when their objectives are met.
IMHO, the terrorists won long ago. PATRIOT Act, Homeland Security, TSA, etc. have stripped away our freedoms.
"Won" what? That wasn't their goal. They wanted us out of the Middle East, the destruction of Israel, and they wanted a return to the days of Islamic caliphate glory.
Instead they have the US as involved or more involved in the Middle East, chaos in a main anti-Israeli power, an apparent move toward democracy in the region, and near-irrelevance in almost the entire region they wanted to themselves.
Really, they could give two shits about how many searches we subject ourselves to.
It is probably fair to say that we over-reacted and gave up too much for a sense of security - but to say that they "won" is silly unless you think that less convenient air travel was their goal.
"Hotties in the scanner and the drinks are on me!"
Agreed on black and white... Black and white will generally outlast the usefulness of a snapshot. I had one stick to the glass in it's frame... stubbornly, but after a whole lot of soaking I was able to coax it off. There was a wallet-sized print that I was able to use to fill in the badly damaged parts.
Also agreed that digital media will not last. Digital data has to be regarded as "living" and as soon as you archive it you risk killing it. My raw video, which I don't really care about that much, is backed up on the original tapes and to DVDs with at least 20% error correction. My completed video projects are always on a spinning disk and offsite. Going forward with ever-cheapening disk space and offsite backup, I no longer intend to offload to DVD and may in fact read in the backups that I did make. Stills are much easier - the entire library is less than 150GB.
This literally means keeping the data "alive" is as simple as keeping it on the hard drive of one of my computers. I run Time Machine and Crash Plan on each Mac and Crash Plan plus cloned disks on the PC. I don't really care if Crash Plan "abandons" me, since I'll just use another (I used to be with Mozy).
Also note that we are quickly getting to the point where even a massive (amateur) photo library will fit on a cheap USB thumb drive. This is how the apocryphal "my grandmother" backs her machine up, and honestly the risk of both the thumb drive and the main drive losing all of their contents is probably acceptable for home users. I'm sure "it happens", but so do home fires, tornadoes, roof leaks, and flooded basements.
Touche!
Sure prints *could* get lost due to say fire or flood, but the family photo album doesn't need any more maintainance than stuffing in the bottom drawer.
My mother did this for decades and what she has are a bunch of ripped, faded, moldy, stuck-together, dusty, and color-shifted photographs that eat up a lot of my time scanning. Even the ones that she was careful with and put in albums - some of those stuck to the clear plastic and scan horribly.
The current problem with digital photos is that they need ongoing ACTIVE maintainance to not be lost
I'm not sure that I'd consider keeping all your photos in one folder to be "active", but I get your gist. A one-time setup of CrashPlan, Mozy, etc. is no more "active" than the one-time act of printing out the photos and putting them in a drawer.
ensure the bill gets paid after your death
If someone doesn't care about the photos once I'm dead, then why should I? I have several boxes from my recently-deceased grandmother full of photos that no one in the family can identify. Some of them are keepers, but most of them are useless to anyone. That is the fate of your photos, too. Eventually, no one will care.
(only containing best photos)
That's an excellent use for digital photos :) We also end up putting them into frames... how quaint :)
Exactly. I just went the other way. The photos that my mom had from 30 years ago are all washed out and color-shifted. I'm sure the inks/pigments/whatever has improved, but with the cost of digital storage trending downward I see no reason to make paper copies.
Backup is important, though. I have used Mozy in the past - I currently use CrashPlan (in addition to a local backup). I also periodically burn them to DVD and send the DVDs to grandparents. The point is get some copies offsite, because a house fire will wipe out the local digital copies AND any physical prints.
I don't know if you play games or not, but your funny bone is dysfunctional! :)
I know, I was thinking give them alternating days or something. Kids will complain, fight, and fuss no matter how much you capitulate, so you might as well set the bar extremely low. If you think buying two of everything will prevent headaches, you are completely wrong - they just won't fight over that particular thing.
Yeah, I feel like a tool because I was paying $100 after taxes for 2 phones with a shared 1000 minutes (data and texts on one phone) on T-Mobile. This was reinforced because other people told me what a good deal I had. Then someone showed me that they had Boost unlimited everything for $45/month, and it goes down to $35/month if they make on-time payments.
That shocked me into changing my plan, and while I didn't go with Boost I did change to T-Mobile prepay where they have a $30/month plan with "unlimited" data and texts but only 100 minutes, but extra minutes are only 10 cents... perfect for anti-social me. My wife is on a 1500 minute and text plan (with very little data) for the same $30. So on average I save about $40/month (I use extra minutes each month, but we'd also go over on our old 1000 minute plan which cost 29 cents/minute for extra minutes).
It also made me re-examine my need for a fancy $600 Android phone and I'm happy as a clam with a $200 Exhibit II 4g. I'm actually happier about the smaller screen size - though it could do with more on-board storage and the camera is pretty old-fashioned.
Yeah, he shouldn't be playing with kids in their parents' basement, he should be playing with adults playing in their parents' basement.
Wait, is $400 an expensive bike? I feel like that's what I paid for mine almost 20 years ago and it had no suspension or fancy features - just a regular chromoly steel mountain bike.
It still works, by the way. It's had a few sets of wheels, chains, and cabling - but it still works.
Food and a roof over your head keeps you physically healthy, entertainment keeps you mentally healthy.
Please tell me that it would incorrect to paraphrase the above as "the poor need video games"...
In order to be in international waters, the ship would be what, 200 miles out from shore?
They said 30 minutes, so they are probably talking about the 12 nautical mile territorial boundary. A cruise ship can probably do 24 knots if it really is going all-out, so while this is a bit of a stretch it is technically correct.
That is interesting data, and I'm sure if the method can be verified it will get incorporated into the models.
Sure he's blaming the AGW antics, but deep down Diageo is just upset that a Democrat implemented the HI health plan.