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Re: Taxes
If you're self-employed and therefore paying both halves of the FICA taxes, don't forget to deduct the employer half of it. That should reduce the effective tax rate a bit.
Re: Taxes
Hi, Welcome to the United States of America. You're free here, but you'll need some money. Go get a job. ...Two weeks go by. Here's your pay, but you only get half of it because you gotta do your part. The highest federal marginal income tax bracket is 37% for incomes over $578k/yr--and due to the ...
- Sat Jan 20, 2024 9:35 am
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Windows 11 PSA
- Replies: 17
- Views: 6636
Re: Windows 11 PSA
There's always Linux. :) In KDE-land we're making a push right now to pitch our software to people tempted to throw out their Windows 10 PCs that aren't eligible for the upgrade to Windows 11. I was just interviewed by a journalist last week regarding a deployment in Rhode Island. It's a real option...
- Sat Dec 30, 2023 1:37 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Harry Dent: ‘Crash of a Lifetime’ Coming in 2024
- Replies: 15
- Views: 102432
Re: Harry Dent: ‘Crash of a Lifetime’ Coming in 2024
Is there a reason to take this guy seriously? From what I can tell, here's the reason he gives for his prediction: I didn’t think it would be possible to keep pumping up something [the economy] on pure fumes — just printing money, throwing money into the markets, which keeps the rich, rich and spend...
- Wed Dec 20, 2023 11:53 am
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Optimal Diet
- Replies: 149
- Views: 123581
Re: Optimal Diet
It's not necessarily reducing your food intake. Yeah, I mean in the end it's just calories in and calories out. But my point is that if having fewer of the former and more of the latter were easy, everyone would be slim. In reality what matters most is finding the techniques and tricks that work fo...
- Mon Dec 18, 2023 10:36 am
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Optimal Diet
- Replies: 149
- Views: 123581
Re: Optimal Diet
I think it's fairly obvious that if you want to lose weight, you have to eat less food relative to your energy expenditure. The challenge is doing it, because the body doesn't seem like it really wants you to lose weight! Not an evolutionary advantage for most of the history of homo sapiens, or some...
- Sun Dec 17, 2023 1:24 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Optimal Diet
- Replies: 149
- Views: 123581
Re: Optimal Diet
I found this thread a while ago and it inspired me to try to lose some weight. I wasn't overweight, but I was heavier than I wanted to be by about 15 pounds. In the past, I'd tried all sorts of diets and exercise regimes and nothing really worked, or I couldn't manage to keep it up. So inspired by t...
- Wed Sep 20, 2023 10:16 pm
- Forum: Permanent Portfolio Discussion
- Topic: PP Mistakes
- Replies: 43
- Views: 110999
Re: PP Mistakes
Canada and the USA are exceptionally economically and politically aligned. If Canada is getting nuked, it's probably because the USA is getting nuked too, in which case I think my point still stands. But are we really worried about 1st world countries getting nuked? And if we are, isn't mere surviva...
- Wed Sep 20, 2023 4:34 pm
- Forum: Permanent Portfolio Discussion
- Topic: PP Mistakes
- Replies: 43
- Views: 110999
Re: PP Mistakes
Nah, they didn’t really show up. Neither world war resulted in invasion of U.S. territory like Germany. A nuclear bomb was never dropped on the U.S. like Japan. The Cuban Missile Crisis was similarly peacefully resolved. There’s never been a political coup. The market has never gone to zero like ma...
- Thu Sep 07, 2023 6:17 pm
- Forum: Permanent Portfolio Discussion
- Topic: PP Mistakes
- Replies: 43
- Views: 110999
Re: PP Mistakes
What were your biggest Permanent Portfolio mistakes? I'll go first. I got into this portfolio earlier in my accumulation phase and considered all of my wealth as, "can't afford to lose." This was sub-optimal from a long term returns perspective. If I could do it over, to start with, I wou...
- Fri Apr 14, 2023 3:21 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: How much to save for retirement
- Replies: 101
- Views: 98846
Re: How much to save for retirement
Maddy's "just take me out back and shoot me" comment is similar to a sentiment I've heard voiced many times before by aging people horrified by the notion of losing who they are while becoming permanent burdens on their loved ones. I predict that assisted suicide becomes a major political ...
- Fri Apr 14, 2023 12:06 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: How much to save for retirement
- Replies: 101
- Views: 98846
Re: How much to save for retirement
Some people like us have a chance of being able to save and invest enough to end up (hopefully!) with $1-3M retirement portfolios that we can then spend down on living expenses and high priced health and nursing care, but this is definitely not the norm. I think it's pretty clear that as a system, &...
- Tue Mar 28, 2023 11:22 am
- Forum: Permanent Portfolio Discussion
- Topic: I'M OUT!
- Replies: 64
- Views: 79293
Re: I'M OUT!
If the system collapses (especially with the US as the worlds reserve currency) we’re all fucked no matter the portfolio. Exactly. There's no point in worrying about your financial portfolio in these kinds of scenarios because they will all be wrecked. Even financial portfolios that are more physic...
- Thu Mar 09, 2023 11:25 am
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Apple Sucks, Doesn't it?
- Replies: 73
- Views: 36638
Re: Apple Sucks, Doesn't it?
Hah, bot-driven blast from the past.
My interest in target user groups hasn't waned, and you can see a more recent set of thoughts on the topic at https://pointieststick.com/2021/11/29/w ... arget-user. It's written for a KDE audience but should be generally comprehensible.
My interest in target user groups hasn't waned, and you can see a more recent set of thoughts on the topic at https://pointieststick.com/2021/11/29/w ... arget-user. It's written for a KDE audience but should be generally comprehensible.
- Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:31 pm
- Forum: Bonds
- Topic: When is it time to load up on bonds.
- Replies: 40
- Views: 42111
Re: When is it time to load up on bonds.
FWIW I'm not actually planning to buy any bonds unless a clearly amazing opportunity arises. My plan is to just keep buying 100% stocks. Last year offered some great discounts!
- Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:22 pm
- Forum: Bonds
- Topic: When is it time to load up on bonds.
- Replies: 40
- Views: 42111
Re: When is it time to load up on bonds.
I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want to get into LT bonds if you believe rates will fall? The underlying would go up significantly as rates drop. Rates will definitely fall, but the Fed will tell us when they intend to make it happen. Today Powell told us he intends to continue raising rates. More sl...
- Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:14 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
- Replies: 131
- Views: 67186
Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
I agree, PHEVs are pretty great. They're not optimized for mechanical reliability with their more complex dual powetrains, though. They're also not optimized for zero tailpipe emissions. They still need oil changes. They still have sludgy automatic transmissions. They still need fuel, which means tr...
- Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:27 pm
- Forum: Bonds
- Topic: When is it time to load up on bonds.
- Replies: 40
- Views: 42111
Re: When is it time to load up on bonds.
My view of the inverted yield curve situation is that the market thinks high inflation is just a short-term blip, so that interest rates will fall again within just a few years, dashing hopes of 30-year treasuries that return more than 3% and change. As a result I don't anticipate getting back into ...
- Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:24 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
- Replies: 131
- Views: 67186
Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
That's marketing talk. :) A company selling PCs with only 2 GB of RAM could try to justify it by promoting the idea that "unused RAM is wasted RAM" but people who understand computers can see through that kind of nonsense. Toyota wants people to buy PHEVs because the bread and butter of th...
- Thu Jan 26, 2023 8:07 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
- Replies: 131
- Views: 67186
Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
+1 for a wood stove, for sure. We have one of those too. We got religion during a winter power outage back while we still had a gas furnace and ICE vehicle, and despite the availability of natural gas, the furnace didn't work because its blower and electronics needed electricity. No generator, no ba...
- Thu Jan 26, 2023 11:52 am
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
- Replies: 131
- Views: 67186
Re: Renewable electricity sources are now a no-brainer
Looks like your project is coming along nicely. The ground-mount array idea sounds like it makes a lot of sense! Also notable that replacing old electric appliances with new ones delivered such a massive energy savings. Some things do get better over time. :) I've said it before but it bears repeati...
- Sat Oct 22, 2022 12:02 pm
- Forum: Politics
- Topic: Mosler on current inflation...the MMT response
- Replies: 6
- Views: 2724
Re: Mosler on current inflation...the MMT response
I think it's quite clear that a lot of the inflation we see today is caused by shortages in labor and materials. Practically every business is complaining about this. But all the money printing during the pandemic definitely goosed demand. Tons of evidence for that as well. The war in Ukraine has al...
- Tue Oct 11, 2022 5:02 pm
- Forum: Permanent Portfolio Discussion
- Topic: Are most people here sticking with Treasuries?
- Replies: 341
- Views: 175346
Re: Are most people here sticking with Treasuries?
Has anyone here actually purchased anything with gold directly, or accepted payment in gold for delivery of goods or services? I can say that I have not. I have on the other hand participated in money-like transactions using cryptocurrencies before, in which they were exchanged for goods or services...
- Sat Oct 08, 2022 1:40 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Linux, continued
- Replies: 44
- Views: 13064
Re: Linux, continued
I have always preferred KDE since the early days of SUSE but am now wondering if my computer is too slow. I have an i5 processor and 8 gigs of memory which I could upgrade. Should be totally fine; KDE Plasma is quite lightweight these days. At the moment my favorite KDE distro is Fedora KDE, which ...
- Sat Oct 08, 2022 1:38 pm
- Forum: Other Discussions
- Topic: Linux, continued
- Replies: 44
- Views: 13064
Re: Linux, continued
GNOME and KDE are the big kahunas of the open-source software world, but neither have huge offices of people working on them--mostly geographically dispersed volunteers plus some sponsored work from companies that use them or find them to be strategically important. This is something I'm working on ...