Is your partner happy to live the same lifestyle as you?
LOL. If the answer to that question were "no," then she wouldn't be my partner, now would she?
Will they feel the same in 10 years.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but my relationship isn't polygamous. "They" is the wrong pronoun.
Are your kids going to be happy wearing second hand clothes and doing without the things that other kids have.
Wrong question. The right question is "do I want to teach my kids to capitulate to consumerist culture, or do I want to teach them to be independent-minded and responsible?"
They could build fully automated kiosks where I enter what I want and out comes a packaged burger in the same way I go to an ATM and enter how much money I want.
I'm not single. Moreover, I expect to spend much less than the average on child expenses in the same way I spend much less than the average on all my other expenses. For example, I anticipate using cloth diapers, clothes from thrift stores (or maybe even freecycle), having a stay-at-home parent instead of daycare, etc.
You'll find it takes 20 years to get where you want even saving 50%.
Yeah, to hit it in 10 years my savings rate needs to be closer to 66%. I'm working on it.
I just wish I had the patience and lack-of-laziness to do solid real estate investing
My priority so far has been (1) max tax-advantaged accounts (HSA, 401k, IRA), (2) pay off student loans, then (3) save up down payments for investment property. I haven't gotten to step 3 yet, but I'm working on that too.
Well, that would be an advantage the "tax & basic income" plan has over the "private sector stock ownership" plan.
Otherwise, the unfortunate orphan would have to get one of the non-automated jobs (there will always be non-automated jobs, especially in fields like art and sports where having a human do it instead of a machine is the entire point), or he'd be screwed.
So basically you have a decent paying job (for now)
A minimum-wage job pays $7.25 * 40 * 50 = $14,500/year. That's already above the poverty line ($11,770/year for a 1-person household). By that standard, literally any job is "decent paying" as long as you can get 40 hours/week.
...managed to not be priced out of the housing market for the first decade or so of your working life...
Yep, that was some damn good luck. (On the flip side, the same economic situation that enabled my wife and I to buy the house also caused us to spend a lot of time unemployed. We were never in danger of foreclosure, but that's because we budgeted to live on less than the smaller of our two incomes.)
However, I could still do the same as a renter, or buying a house now. It would just add a little bit of time (less than a year, probably) to the process and I probably wouldn't be living in quite as nice a neighborhood. (It's not as if I can count my home equity as an investment anyway, since if I sold it to fund living expenses I'd be homeless. All that really matters is the difference in monthly cost between my mortgage and what rent would be.)
...and hope to have half a million or so*...
I assume a 4% safe withdrawal rate (SWR), so I'll need about 25x annual expenses. Depending on what I want my expenses in retirement to be, I'm shooting for somewhere between $600K and $1M ($36K - $40K annual expenses).
...before the next crash...
Preferably after the next crash, actually. Sequence-of-returns risk is the biggest danger to my strategy.
can't even see the poverty line if you're putting that much away
My income is high. My spending is (or at least, could easily be if I cut the extras) close to poverty-level. I've relaxed it a little recently, but a few years ago my household budget (not including student loan repayment) really was about at the poverty line.
...still need some serious odds on your side to reach your goal...
Only the odds that the world economy won't permanently collapse (e.g. due to nuclear war or something). Otherwise, 7% average annual stock market growth (note: I said "average," and am well aware that there's a lot of volatility) is actually a pretty safe bet.
To claim that everyone should invest all their money apart from the bare minimum to survive on sounds like a mixture of let them eat cake and striking naivety.
Why? I can do it, so everybody else can too. All it really takes is a little self-control and a shift in perspective. (For example, I'm sitting here looking out the office window at the freeway jammed with traffic, thinking that all those poor saps are fucking insane to be wasting gigantic amounts of money sitting in traffic in their $30,000 steel-and-gasoline cages, while I enjoy the sun, breeze, and un-congested multi-use trail while saving money riding home on my $100 bicycle. But they think I'm the crazy one...)
The point is, my "massive luck" will allow me to retire super early. However, even a below-average person working a shitty McJob should still be able to have some non-zero level of savings, if he structures his lifestyle carefully and stays away from TV commercials. He won't be able to retire at 30 like Mr. Money Mustache, but "regular" early retirement at 50 or so should be doable.
To be clear: my claim is that, if we had to, my wife and I could live fairly comfortably on $15930 per year ($1327.50/month). Our budget would break down as follows:
Mortgage (PITI): $673.04
Utilities (electricity, natural gas, water): $200
Telecom (two cellphones, home cable internet): $70
Food: $200
Transportation (one transit pass; gas, insurance and maintenance for one infrequently-driven old car; maintenance for bicycles): $150
Savings & miscellaneous: $34.46
It'd be tight, but those budget numbers are realistic for a two-person household in Atlanta.
In actuality, since my income is much higher than poverty level, we spend more such that our total real budget is closer to $2,000/month + student loan repayment (which doesn't need to be included on the poverty-level budget because the income-based-repayment plan payment would be $0):
+$200 on fancy food and/or eating out (this is too high; I'm working on bringing it down)
+$25 on Netflix and local newspaper subscriptions
+$100 on expenses for two other old cars (one infrequently driven and one project car)
+$30 pet expenses for one cat
+$100 hobbies
+$200 frivolous shopping
Granted, people who are actually in poverty would have a harder time of it than I would. Because I have savings, I can afford to do money-saving things like buy in bulk, own a home instead of rent, etc. Also, the same education and intelligence that allowed me to have a good job also helped me learn how to budget properly, cook from scratch, and avoid disastrous mistakes like payday loans. And, of course, I'm not a single parent -- which would really screw things up even despite the EIC and such, because day care is incredibly expensive. Still, the fact that I could do it proves that it's possible.
First of all, only an idiot tries to live off "interest" from "savings" -- at today's interest rates, that's unsustainable. Living off "returns" from "investments," on the other hand, is entirely reasonable. The key difference is that you accept risk and own productive assets with higher returns (e.g. stock index funds with a long-term average return of 7% or so).
Third, I'm living in option 4: a three-bedroom house in a middle-class neighborhood in a normal American city (albeit one I bought cheap in the middle of the housing crash). I bike to work, keep food expenses low, don't have cable TV (which means I don't watch commercials and am therefore not tempted to buy tons of consumer shit) and generally keep spending to a minimum.
No, we create massive value by building robots to do all the work. Then we distribute the value by having every citizen own shares of it.
(By the way: yes, I am aware that most people aren't foresighted enough to invest like that. That's why in reality we'll end up with the government acting as a middle-man, taxing the robot-owners and distributing the proceeds as "basic income" instead. Not that there's anything really wrong with that, as long as we minimize the administrative costs...)
There is also evidence that despite the presence of carcinogens in the smoke there is are also anti-carcinogens in marijuana smoke and over a long term no increased incidence of cancer.
What about other methods of ingesting it? Could you, for example, eat cannabis brownies and get the anti-carcinogenic benefits without having them canceled out?
The easiest thing to do would be to ground all the airline flights going to/from Brazil. It won't stop everybody (people could still go by boat, or fly to Paraguay and drive), but it would significantly reduce the number of carriers returning with the virus.
There's always the "plan B" of moving the games to some other city that's hosted before and therefore already has the infrastructure (e.g. Los Angeles, which I use as an example because they didn't build new stuff last time).
Everybody with a household income over the poverty line has been "paid enough" to invest. If they fail to do it, that's because they have a spending problem.
Charles Dickens showed us the math:
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
Owning the means of production creates value, and stock is fractional ownership. Therefore, owning stock (not "buying" stock) creates value.
In other words, if the robots are doing all the work, then the profits go to the guy who owns the robots -- so be that guy!
stock returns won't happen if everyone just sits around waiting for their stock to go up
Who gives a shit what the price of a stock is? That only matters if you're some kind of idiotic day-trading speculator.The purpose is to own the company, and selling would defeat that purpose. If the underlying company is producing value, it will return that value as dividends.
Even if the article is a dupe, deleting it is not a good thing if there are unique comments attached to it!
One of the best features of Slashdot compared to just about every other comment system on the Internet is that posts are (supposed to be) immutable and accessible forever, perhaps modded down but never deleted.
As far as trademark law goes, the way I see it is that Google is not a political candidate and Googe is not a technology company, so they don't conflict.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL. If the answer to that question were "no," then she wouldn't be my partner, now would she?
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but my relationship isn't polygamous. "They" is the wrong pronoun.
Wrong question. The right question is "do I want to teach my kids to capitulate to consumerist culture, or do I want to teach them to be independent-minded and responsible?"
See, that proves my point: deleting a comment was so exceptional that it was newsworthy!
Wendy's is already doing that.
If it's pre-made in both cases, why does the restaurant-bought version taste better than the freezer-aisle version?
Everything old is new again!
I'm not single. Moreover, I expect to spend much less than the average on child expenses in the same way I spend much less than the average on all my other expenses. For example, I anticipate using cloth diapers, clothes from thrift stores (or maybe even freecycle), having a stay-at-home parent instead of daycare, etc.
At the Federal poverty level, one should be eligible for Medicaid.
For my budget, I forgot to include it because it's a payroll deduction (and copays would go in "misc").
Yeah, to hit it in 10 years my savings rate needs to be closer to 66%. I'm working on it.
My priority so far has been (1) max tax-advantaged accounts (HSA, 401k, IRA), (2) pay off student loans, then (3) save up down payments for investment property. I haven't gotten to step 3 yet, but I'm working on that too.
Well, that would be an advantage the "tax & basic income" plan has over the "private sector stock ownership" plan.
Otherwise, the unfortunate orphan would have to get one of the non-automated jobs (there will always be non-automated jobs, especially in fields like art and sports where having a human do it instead of a machine is the entire point), or he'd be screwed.
A minimum-wage job pays $7.25 * 40 * 50 = $14,500/year. That's already above the poverty line ($11,770/year for a 1-person household). By that standard, literally any job is "decent paying" as long as you can get 40 hours/week.
Yep, that was some damn good luck. (On the flip side, the same economic situation that enabled my wife and I to buy the house also caused us to spend a lot of time unemployed. We were never in danger of foreclosure, but that's because we budgeted to live on less than the smaller of our two incomes.)
However, I could still do the same as a renter, or buying a house now. It would just add a little bit of time (less than a year, probably) to the process and I probably wouldn't be living in quite as nice a neighborhood. (It's not as if I can count my home equity as an investment anyway, since if I sold it to fund living expenses I'd be homeless. All that really matters is the difference in monthly cost between my mortgage and what rent would be.)
I assume a 4% safe withdrawal rate (SWR), so I'll need about 25x annual expenses. Depending on what I want my expenses in retirement to be, I'm shooting for somewhere between $600K and $1M ($36K - $40K annual expenses).
Preferably after the next crash, actually. Sequence-of-returns risk is the biggest danger to my strategy.
My income is high. My spending is (or at least, could easily be if I cut the extras) close to poverty-level. I've relaxed it a little recently, but a few years ago my household budget (not including student loan repayment) really was about at the poverty line.
Only the odds that the world economy won't permanently collapse (e.g. due to nuclear war or something). Otherwise, 7% average annual stock market growth (note: I said "average," and am well aware that there's a lot of volatility) is actually a pretty safe bet.
Why? I can do it, so everybody else can too. All it really takes is a little self-control and a shift in perspective. (For example, I'm sitting here looking out the office window at the freeway jammed with traffic, thinking that all those poor saps are fucking insane to be wasting gigantic amounts of money sitting in traffic in their $30,000 steel-and-gasoline cages, while I enjoy the sun, breeze, and un-congested multi-use trail while saving money riding home on my $100 bicycle. But they think I'm the crazy one...)
The point is, my "massive luck" will allow me to retire super early. However, even a below-average person working a shitty McJob should still be able to have some non-zero level of savings, if he structures his lifestyle carefully and stays away from TV commercials. He won't be able to retire at 30 like Mr. Money Mustache, but "regular" early retirement at 50 or so should be doable.
To be clear: my claim is that, if we had to, my wife and I could live fairly comfortably on $15930 per year ($1327.50/month). Our budget would break down as follows:
It'd be tight, but those budget numbers are realistic for a two-person household in Atlanta.
In actuality, since my income is much higher than poverty level, we spend more such that our total real budget is closer to $2,000/month + student loan repayment (which doesn't need to be included on the poverty-level budget because the income-based-repayment plan payment would be $0):
Granted, people who are actually in poverty would have a harder time of it than I would. Because I have savings, I can afford to do money-saving things like buy in bulk, own a home instead of rent, etc. Also, the same education and intelligence that allowed me to have a good job also helped me learn how to budget properly, cook from scratch, and avoid disastrous mistakes like payday loans. And, of course, I'm not a single parent -- which would really screw things up even despite the EIC and such, because day care is incredibly expensive. Still, the fact that I could do it proves that it's possible.
First of all, only an idiot tries to live off "interest" from "savings" -- at today's interest rates, that's unsustainable. Living off "returns" from "investments," on the other hand, is entirely reasonable. The key difference is that you accept risk and own productive assets with higher returns (e.g. stock index funds with a long-term average return of 7% or so).
Second, I'm not living off investments yet. I've only been working for a couple of years, and at my >50% savings rate, have maybe 10 years of accumulation yet to go.
Third, I'm living in option 4: a three-bedroom house in a middle-class neighborhood in a normal American city (albeit one I bought cheap in the middle of the housing crash). I bike to work, keep food expenses low, don't have cable TV (which means I don't watch commercials and am therefore not tempted to buy tons of consumer shit) and generally keep spending to a minimum.
No, we create massive value by building robots to do all the work. Then we distribute the value by having every citizen own shares of it.
(By the way: yes, I am aware that most people aren't foresighted enough to invest like that. That's why in reality we'll end up with the government acting as a middle-man, taxing the robot-owners and distributing the proceeds as "basic income" instead. Not that there's anything really wrong with that, as long as we minimize the administrative costs...)
What about other methods of ingesting it? Could you, for example, eat cannabis brownies and get the anti-carcinogenic benefits without having them canceled out?
The easiest thing to do would be to ground all the airline flights going to/from Brazil. It won't stop everybody (people could still go by boat, or fly to Paraguay and drive), but it would significantly reduce the number of carriers returning with the virus.
There's always the "plan B" of moving the games to some other city that's hosted before and therefore already has the infrastructure (e.g. Los Angeles, which I use as an example because they didn't build new stuff last time).
Everybody with a household income over the poverty line has been "paid enough" to invest. If they fail to do it, that's because they have a spending problem.
Charles Dickens showed us the math:
Owning the means of production creates value, and stock is fractional ownership. Therefore, owning stock (not "buying" stock) creates value.
In other words, if the robots are doing all the work, then the profits go to the guy who owns the robots -- so be that guy!
Who gives a shit what the price of a stock is? That only matters if you're some kind of idiotic day-trading speculator.The purpose is to own the company, and selling would defeat that purpose. If the underlying company is producing value, it will return that value as dividends.
No, the drones do the farming. What you do is buy stock in the drone farming company to support yourself and your family.
Even if the article is a dupe, deleting it is not a good thing if there are unique comments attached to it!
One of the best features of Slashdot compared to just about every other comment system on the Internet is that posts are (supposed to be) immutable and accessible forever, perhaps modded down but never deleted.
All my (computing) problems are either big or already solved. : /
As far as trademark law goes, the way I see it is that Google is not a political candidate and Googe is not a technology company, so they don't conflict.
Wait, the BBC decided to continue Top Gear with new hosts? Why?!
(see subject)
Exactly. The question is, "does Google's trademark extend to political candidates?"
(If the answer is "yes," of course, then the logical follow-up is "which office is Larry Page or Sergey Brin planning on running for?")