Oh my goodness, MachineGhost - that's... wow.  I had no idea there were bear rescue facilities in Chengdu, but there obviously are.  Thank you for posting that, and thank you for donating.  There are some fantastic folks on this forum, there really are. Dualstow , believe it or not, I *have* seen th...

Wow, guys! Thank you all so much for your kind words! Dualstow - Yes, I think each and every one of us could wake up every morning grateful to not be an animal in China...particularly any animal through which or with which one could make money. For example, the big animal-linked expat outrage while ...

Hi, guys! So... in another thread, WiseOne and Reub both were asking about my time in China (by the way, I live in Japan now). Reub said: "Yes please share your insights on China with us. Did you live in a big city and for how long? Is there any pure capitalism going on there? Is the economy to...

Hi back, Sophie!! We are NOT living in China any longer, thank goodness. We are now living in Japan.  Our lungs barely survived living in China, lol. The pollution was so heinously bad that a normal American truly cannot even imagine the horrors of it. There are a couple things that we miss (the foo...

Hi, guys, I need someone to slap me, please. So my kids (ages 20 and 16) have Vanguard investment accounts. These accounts have basically been funded with grandparent birthday and Christmas checks over the years. They're super small accounts (something like $2,500 per kid) and over the years I've so...

sophie wrote:
Nice to hear from you MomTo2Boys! 

Thank you, Sophie! 

HB Reader wrote:  
I switched from CSRS to FERS in the 1980s. 

May I ask why you switched?

My husband and I often moan and wail because we came in too late to be CSRS and had to be FERS...

I would also encourage most Federal employees to use the TSP Roth option.  I wish it had been around when I was contributing.  It may not offer many immediate tax benefits (if I understand it correctly), but after having done a number Traditional IRA to Roth IRA conversions in recent years I think ...

I second what Sophie says. My husband is a federal employee and has been for 14 years or so. We are contributing the max to our TSP. And, quite frankly, we're doing pretty much a 60 (stock)/ 40(bond) split in that bad boy. It's just easier that way. We're a few years older than you guys - but not wa...

Just so we're all clear, "Justice Department" actually means "FBI."

Carry on...

  Perhaps the fair thing would be for all the tax returns of federal employees to be made public. My husband is a federal employee. You have no right to see my family's tax returns, our address, the names and social security numbers of my children, etc. Many federal employees are law enforcement of...

MachineGhost wrote:
Boobus Americanus

That? Is awesome.

By the way, SORRY to everyone! I had meant to post this under "Other Discussions" and now I see that somehow I mangled where it was supposed to go and inadvertently stuck it under "Variable Portfolio Discussion!"  I'm a moron. Well, and my horrible internet is no help. Sorry! Car...

What does "CB-ITT" mean? "p" is a measurement of statistical significance.  0.03 is within the accepted range (less than 0.05) for accepting that the hypothesis, that CB-ITT is related to malaria risk, is true. Without knowing what CB-ITT is, I can't tell you in plain English wh...

Hello, everyone who is smarter than I am. In researching malaria rates and whether folks in urban Dar es Salaam should use chemoprophylaxis or not... and these sorts of fun topics relating to traveling/living there (anyone been there? Anyone like it or hate it? Or anything?)... I ran across a quote ...

The China cows part is totally 100% right on.

The American corporation is, as well, sadly. I hate how corporate America treats its production animals (for example, debeaking chickens and whatnot).  Although I would far rather be an animal in America than in China.

charliemckelvey wrote: Wouldn't it have been better to have someone on your retirement castle wall to move your assets to safety?

I need to go get me some popcorn and sit down on a nice comfy couch so I can enjoy where this thread is certain to go from here.

So here's the thread I started in November when everything had been down for me for two months: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/http://77.104.139.218/~gyroscop/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=4 Hope I stuck that link in here the right way. ANYHOO, like I said, I started that thread after just two months...

I have only began investing in September 2012 and since then I have always had a negative in my short term gain/loss.  I currently have a negative $2,252 short gain loss.  I realize that I have to wait the storm and keep this in for the long haul, but just starting in the investment allocation and ...

Don't know if you're a buy-and-hold car owner like you are with the PP  :D, but I've owned the same Subaru (Forester) since 2000 and dude, that car is still going STRONG. It has just a touch under 200,000 miles and I swear it will go forever. And I will let it, let me just say. But, then again, I'm ...

My understanding is that the PP allocations take advantage of the fact that the asset classes are not correlated, and that at any given time one or two are up and one or two are down... Is there a good explanation for this? (Maybe that they are trending in different directions?) And I hope we will ...

So I set up a PP in October, and as of today it is down 1.5%. Just want you to know that you're not alone in this. I set up my PP initially last September. I'd been dollar cost averaging in monthly through about November/December. I haven't added any new money lately because there are some other th...

My wife and I began a little dinner ritual a few months ago where we say something thing we're grateful for before we eat and have found it to be a wonderful relaxant and stress reliever. Really helps keep things in perspective. Don't you run out of things to be grateful for?  I would think there i...

Although the idea of a giant trillion dollar platinum coin is hilarious ... They would just stamp "one trillion" on it and call it good... Isn't it?! I read about that trillion dollar coin thing in the news and was pretty much Is this how far we've sunk? Really?! That we're actually discu...

Interesting that China didn't return him. Can't fathom what he had to go through to get from China to South Korea. To exit China? For South Korea? With no documentation - ? IIRC, the border between North and South Korea is a heavily guarded DMZ and would be extremely difficult to penetrate directly...