This 7% being thrown around is not a real return. Adjusted for inflation you’d be lucky to get 4%, assuming you are not collecting when the market is tanking.
I’m trying hard to save enough for my son so he can be FI when he enters college (If he chooses to). I want him to have the choices I never had - not to spoil but pursue any path he desires without the mounting pressure of having to earn an income. I know this could go wrong if not done right so I hope to do it right by planning far in advance.
The problem with your insider tip is that everyone, dealer included knows about it. I hate when people say be prepared to walk when most of us don’t have a million dealerships to visit. Sure if you’re in Southern California you can visit 6 Honda dealers and waste 1-2 days. You’ll get the quoted price and then they’ll try to stick you the next time you come in. Consumer is at a huge disadvantage here because dealers know they have limited time. It’s no secret dealers make you wait forever so you grow impatient and agree to their bullshit. Some of us don’t want to deal with that kind of crap.
I feel the same. I’ve had stronger urges to buy a car I rented than one I test drive for 10 minutes. You just never get the same level of familiarity, the little quirks and knowing how your body feels after an extended multi-day drive if you simply test drive at dealer. I like to have my cars for a week at the minimum before I can confidently form a strong opinion in regards to purchase.
It’s not so simple. Many couples don’t work in the same place. You could have the wife working in city A. And the husband working in city B 30 miles away. Moving to where they work only works for one and not the other. In other cases they have kids and the school districts in large cities are absolute shit. In that case you move for the school district so that your kids can have better chances in the same rat race you are in.
That’s how it is in other aspects too: unemployed? Must be lazy. Homeless? Must be mentally I’ll or a druggy. Lost the houses? Must have been living paycheck to paycheck. People are quick to judge others until that thing happens to them and all of a sudden the tune changes.
There are no practical means of transit in LA. Sure, there are light rail here and there but it doesn’t get you most places you want to go.
Charging tolls does not fix anything. All that does is enable those with money to have a slightly less stressful commute and add an empty lane to an otherwise crowded highway.
On the drawdown website, refrigeration seems to be #1. Afforestation is up there. Family planning too. But supposedly we have to be doing all of these things on massive scale.
Doesn’t work on my phone iPhone. Hard to read labels. Overall nice effort but as others mentioned this needs to be AND filtered. Perhaps add some anonymous review capability so employees can actually reflect on whether those values are real or bs.
Really? How long ago was this implemented? Last time I was at Yosemite I just bought a pass on the way in and drove all the way in to see things. Is this not the case anymore?
While you have every right to be upset at that dick, you could act more mature by not feeding the troll. There is no victory there to be had. Either way I don’t find this a big deal. The legal assistant email is just asking for it. I’ve dealt with a few of these but some from actual lawyers, you can have some fun with those if you know the law.
The same in Michigan. I remember as a kid we took long trips and our car was absolutely covered with bugs. As an adult I took the same trips and barely any splattered bugs.
I’m in Japan and we have a ton of grasshoppers. I can’t step in the grass near my garden without seeing some jumping around. Mantis are tricky, really hard to see them but when you are so close they look at you like you don’t belong there. Creepy.
I worked at a personal injury law firm in LA and the number of calls we got daily regarding bicycle collisions was disturbing. I knew I would never ride a bike or a motorcycle in LA. It wasn’t a matter of if you got hit but when.
This is the way it should be done. No employee should carry the burden of loading up their own credit or paying for big ticket items up front no matter how trustworthy the company.
Definitely need more pay not less to work remotely. Also, biweekly is better than monthly as another here stated. As for expenses, can’t talk much on that but it’s best if you get them paid up fast or if they are fairly typical in terms of the amount each time, ask for a payment up front to cover the bulk and make up the difference later. Employee does not mean you cannot make demands. Make all the demands you want and if they say no then you can say no too. It’s a 2 way street.
Someone talented enough to work at Amazon has the option of going out on their own. This was the best decision I’ve made and now I have all the time in the world to spend with my child. There was an excellent post on how to be a consultant and charge good rates. It doesn’t matter where you live or your accent if you do it right. Sucks for the poster to be treated the way he was, these companies need to be held accountable for human suffering on all levels but at the same time it’s hard to sympathize when the company is that large and the chance that the CEO can control what one asshole supervisor does is tiny. Bezos probably has no clue about this or has few reasons to care. He rightfully stated that he is making others rich, hence all the more reasons not to keep doing it at other places. Russia is a beautiful country where highly paid developers can live comfortably. I’m not saying he shouldn’t live where he wants (US) but there are means of doing well outside of working for behemoths like Amazon, google or Facebook.
Run some savings calculations, check the kids’ savings, live debt free, top of emergency funds, should be ok. Regretting anything is a waste of time and energy because you just never know where life might have taken you had you made the other choice. Say you accepted the larger pay job but the work environment was poor and you brought work problems home, which then affects marriage and you divorce and lose your kids. Hypothetical sure, but millions of these types of scenarios could play out from a single choice. It’s best not to live in regrets and accept everything as is. Ultimately we have control momentarily and can steer our ship any which way we like but the sea is full of icebergs.
I’ve had this battle with myself and my purpose for as long as I remember. I even try to convince myself that somehow what I do improves lives but frankly I could give a shit. I am not talking as a privileged white male although that’s who I am, I grew up in poverty and know what hunger feels like and know what hard work is having done a fair bit of manual labor. At the end of the day I have to look at the broad picture and say to myself “well if I didn’t do it, someone may not have had a pleasant time when they were trying to do X on this website, I helped make their experience less stressful”. I realize that experience is just encouraging consumption or lining pockets of rich fat cats but I don’t know how else to feel good about myself. I really shouldn’t. There are times where I envy real jobs, but the. I look at how real jobs treat people and I have to be thankful for the situation I’m in. Who gets to work from home on their terms, their time and not have to put up with asshole bosses? Who gets to chose when they work? Not many people. Do I deserve it? Probably not, but I figured out that life is but a set of constraints on an otherwise limitless mind. You can do anything you want and yet people don’t. I’m always amazed at the power that is choice and which is easily available to most people in most circumstances, they just make the wrong choices or conjure up reasons why something can’t be or must be this way only. I think about these things all the time- like what if I decide this right now instead of that - where will life take me? The number of possibilities is mind boggling. Sorry for ranting, I’m not really sure where this is going. Well, I am staring at a screen :(
I don’t know if they are legit, but I was shocked by the number of furniture “liquidation” sales when I first moved to Southern California. It seemed every furniture store was closing and selling off inventory. After living in one area for a while it became clear liquidation was just a means of selling crap and reopening under a different name.
I’m curious to know what’s happening with our supermarket ice cream discounts. Every Friday all ice cream is 50% off and as you’d expect a lot of people buy their ice cream on a Friday. The rest of the week it’s full price. Does that mean they are taking a profit hit on Friday just to move inventory or is the ice cream marked up higher than their ideal selling price which would be the standard profit margin they expect on Fridays? Not sure...
Personally I go with whatever brand taste we like best. Of course I consider the nutritional value when looking at taste. These days we deliver most of our food to our house and the local supermarket that offers the service will have organic options of the same product but only to delivery subscribers. It’s weird but we are in Japan where things are weird. I can get sausage links with food coloring to make them more appealing or without but looking much less desirable. I don’t know if the prices differ since wife does all the ordering.
Branding and perceived high quality due to high price works ridiculously well too. My wife will always want to buy the higher price item because “it’s probably better”. I’ve looked at pricing and anchoring extensively and know better but at this point I gave up trying to convince her. Now marketers take our money and I won’t blink an eye, just cry inside.
Some people can not afford food. I grew up in a single parent household, 2 boys who ate like horses. My poor mother could not keep up feeding us working her $12/hr job. We ate food from a store where products go before they go to trash (I believe).
So odd how not even a few hours ago my wife went through my closet and made me throw away old clothes. I had this jacket I’ve worn over 10 years that to me still looked nice, but she insisted it looked worn. The jacket had sentimental value to just from all the places I wore it and the memories I had with it. This wasn’t the first time she made me part with an item dear to me. I had a Hollister t-shirt I wore as a teen - the same one the day we met. Some 18 years later the shirt was still in my closet, ripped and washed out, practically a rag but it had so much sentimental value that I thought about keeping it forever. Nope, she insisted it be gone. This article made me think about my shirt and my jacket. I know they are just items but I’m not sure if I’ll ever get over losing them.
The workplace is a means of exhausting humans with mundane labor that enriches a few while making the rest suffer. If you work 9-5 a 5 day week or longer, consider yourself a hamster on a wheel. Business does not share the same values us humans share. To see change you must be the change. Personally, if I ran a company or a startup I’d mandate a 3 day work week - Tuesday to Wed if we absolutely had to meet. Otherwise it would be fully remote and you choose your work days.
When I first went out on my own, the line between weekends and workweek melted so I always felt like I was working even on weekends. As time went by I realized that I did not share that feeling the author mentions and it feels great! I can go shopping any time, see a movie at 11 am if I want to on a Monday and skip the crowds when everyone is out doing the same things on the same day.
Modern workplaces are not built for productivity- they are places where you go to waste time, time that could be spent on yourself.
I used to think business would not compete on a shorter work week but then I looked at how I spent time at work - most of t was idle time once you count the breaks, lunch, chit chat, browsing when you’re fried. All of this added up to a significant amount of time no matter the position I occupied. It gets worse when you are in a managerial position. Why on earth anyone would want to subject themselves to wasting time at work instead of enjoying it at home (unless they had problems at home) is not clear. I think we are stuck in this perpetual need of having to outwork the other. To show that we are hard working and will do anything to provide for our families. Except, in many cases more time does not directly result in more money. Sure, you spend more time sitting on your butt and claiming working hours or because your boss demands it, but are you really getting more done? In an office environment I can tell you with absolute certainty the answer is no.
So if you are a manager, a CEO or anyone in a position to do something about this insane self-infliction, please evaluate your values, how you think employees spend their time and be the change.