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Yes. Linked below is a paper from 1790. (middle column first page - Congress gets paid too much and New England is too Arrogant). The more things change...

Yea, they always do that. Then most people under 50 and everyone under 40 ignores them. Social media is what got most people to panic.

Social media blows things out of proportion. In other news, the sun rises in the east. More at 11!

Not only that, we have to stop being dogmatic to diet fads... In the 80s, butter was bad but margarine was good. In the 00s, carbs were bad. Mayo was good - no carbs! In the 10s everyone suddenly had a gluten allergy. Now it's expensive grass fed beef. It's all bs. Eat a balance diet...

The majority of health care spending is during the last 6 months of life, usually for people over 70.

I think that some of the biggest critics of college are ironically people who are making lots of money due to their college education. I absolutely think that college is valuable, and I think that the broader earnings numbers show that this is true. If I could go back in time, I'd force my 17...

We had (NY state standards) - mandatory sex Ed in 4th grade (girls) / 5th grade (boys) -mandatory drug education in 3rd-5th grade -health 7-10th grade. Sex ed was also covered in these classes among development topics, healthy eating / living, and also drug addictions / diseases. -Home ec 7-8...

Where did you all go to school? All of the above were taught at formal classes where I grew up with the exception of 'balancing the check book.' I think that this thread illustrates how writing a standard curriculum to that would be challenging.

You and I are in agreement. What I've been poorly trying to say is that retirement goals vary. A 10 year officer investing 10% of income gets a whopping $22k per year payout at the age of 60. While his ROI might be better on paper, from a practical perspective it's not going to pay the bills...

Mortgage interest doesn't come close to beating the standard deduction. I didn’t increase rent (or house value) to keep everything in 2020 dollars. Rent long term hould expect to increase with inflation just like the value of a home. I'm not sure why you think that I'm forgetting equity. I...

So how would your dad feel financially if he had to pay 3-4x that in rent for the rest of his life?

I think that a lot is getting lost or twisted here. The adage 'a penny saved is a penny earned' applies. Additionally there is a utility factor that's being ignored for pure numbers. Housing is most people's biggest bill, which needs to be paid off to afford a comfortable lifestyle on the...

I never said that a house will' always go up.' I said that on average it appreciates with inflation, which is similar to saying that the stock market returns 7% on average. No, that's not at all what I said. Point 1: Paying the minimum mortgage nets profit on average after 5-7 years due to...

I will reiterate that there are several online calculators for this, and even without aggressively paying down the principal the crossover point is 5-7 years. You're ignoring that property appreciates with inflation. A $300k home purchased in 2010 is worth $400k today, which equates to $80k of...

I would argue that quoting returns from 1915 is completely irrelevant to anyone on this board. Additionally, I don't dispute your personal claim, but if we're talking long term investments it would be very silly not to factor in the time value of money.

You keep going back to investment properties. I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about the fact that renting an equivalent place that I own for 40 years would cost $1.2M. Buying the place and paying it off in 10 years, including maintenance, interest, taxes, and principal costs $500k...

Where are you getting your numbers? https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/learn/average-stock-market-return Adjusted for inflation, the S&P has returned 5.9% average annual returns over the last 20 years. It's returned 5.8% if you go back to 1966.

That wasn't my initial argument at all. What I said was: to get a middle class income from TSP at 59.5, you have to max contributions for 20 years assuming a 7% return from now until then. And then I said it was BS to assume that return during the last 10-15 years of the fund because other than...

Based on your other posts saying that you have an income north of $300,000 annually and you are planning on a cash lump sum purchase of over $600,000 in 2027, I think that your financial profile and net worth can accept more risk than the vast majority of Americans. Just a hunch.

The 7% becomes BS because I haven't seen a single reputable financial advisor tell a 55+ year old to leave the majority of his retirement allocations in the stock market, and that's assuming a retirement age of 70.

Property tax is always rolled into the mortgage as an escrow. You're making up false numbers here. Renting a 3 or 4 BR single family usually means you're paying someone else's mortgage payments, including property taxes, plus some on the top to actually give them income. Here's what you're...

This is where I disagree from a practical perspective. Junior enlisted pay is on the order of $2k a month average take home over the 4 years. If a person was really good with money and saves up half that it's $48k over an enlistment. 75% brings this up to $75k, but I offer that's virtually...

I don't think that $5k saved up in a TSP account over an initial enlistment is going to move the needle on the 'do I reenlist'-o-meter.

I'd be careful about extrapolating your pay and experience in naval aviation to 'most servicemembers.' The average time a person spends enlisted is 6.7 years, and that includes retirees. Needless to say, the 2-4 years of 5% match an E4 / E5 gets (assuming he remembers to adjust his...

Rental cost is not far lower than living costs in most areas. Where I live my mortgage + taxes is about $500 lower than I'd pay in rent for a similar property. If you're Dink then that's one thing, but finding a 3-4 bed single family for the kids runs a pretty penny. The real equalizer is...

'Getting' 1% is a misnomer. The pay system automatically deducts 1% unless the SVM adjusts it. Match doesn't kick in until 2 years of service. There's a bonus kicker at 12 years to make up the difference and serve as a retention tool. Given two people who invest the same % of income into TSP...

Judging NY/NJ/MA as failures is just yellow journalism. I'd expect nothing less from the Post. Ditto for Sweden. What this suggests for NY/NJ/MA is two fold: first, that actually following mitigations is virtually impossible in densely populated cities. Second, that the disease will continue to...

Look, we're in agreement on that point. The disagreement is when you keep posting pages of graphs using incomplete or immature data to draw a conclusion that the COVID-19 mitigations adopted are ineffective at slowing the spread of disease. It's indisputable that, on the whole, the mitigations...

No, I said it works because it lowers the reproduction factor in affected populations. Please try to follow along. You can't just use total positive test results at this stage of the game. Maybe 18-24 months from now.

Lockdowns aren't supposed to snuff out the virus. They're supposed to slow the spread, primarily to avoid overwhelming healthcare. Fun fact: it works. You can argue that the economic cost wasn't worth it or that the hospitalization rate was over-estimated, but the data clearly shows that...

Why wouldn't you just refer to the official Swedish government website?

1) The most densely populated city, Stockholm, ranks with Atlanta, which is 37th in the US. 2) Swedes are actually following a lot of social distancing guidelines. The national government just isn't strictly enforcing them. Despite these two facts, Sweden's population fatality rate is 14%...

Fair enough, but in this case I know for a fact that unions in several districts in the NE have taken surveys. The verdict is most teachers want to do remote learning.

The science outlines the risk. Teachers by and large have decided that the risk is too high. This risk assessment is undoubtedly fueled by two factors: -They collect full pay and benefits when working remotely for a fraction of the time. -They have the training and education to effectively...

No. The unions work for the employees. They're only fighting against opening schools by majority vote from actual teachers.

One has teachers unions and labor contracts, one doesn't. The large majority of teachers are against opening schools.

8GB is 4x the recommended specs for windows 10. 2GB should be more than enough to run the programs listed.

This is how I vote in person: I stand in line for an hour until I can get into the local elementary school gym. I sign next to my name (no ID required - that's racist for some reason). I walk into a booth, pull some mechanical levers, then a gigantic lever to 'register' my choices. Then someone...

It's the year 2020 and the wealthiest nation on the planet can't figure out how to do online voting. Also, the DMV just now discovered the concept of appointments.

This is what a current COVID-19 'hot spot' looks like according to national news. Notice any difference from 4-6 weeks ago? Me neither. Deaths are even more flat.

Other parts of the country have one half to one quarter the PFR of the states I listed. What 'resources' are you talking about? No, it isn't.

There are several states that meet criteria by all publicly available models to fully open back to normal, including schools, because they were hit early and hard (PFR > 0.06%). Most notably Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and DC...

The President is limited by the Constitution. Allowing him to issue stay at home orders and enforce it with federal police would have our founding fathers rolling in their graves. He put out guidelines through the Dept of HHS that governors have largely adopted. The reason you can't get a test...

The part where the public doesn't understand civics 101 is when they blame POTUS for policies that state and local government crafted. However, there's been substantial mission creep going on. We were originally supposed to just ensure that hospitals could have ICU space to treat people. I...

PFR is a cumulative statistic; it mathematically cannot go down.

Again, messaging. You still are clinging to the false assumptions that elimination is feasible and that the pandemic is over this year. This virus is here to stay permanently. It doesn't just vanish. People are still getting swine flu. Without a vaccine, COVID-19 will continue to spread until a...

For elimination to be effective, it has to occur worldwide. Otherwise you're delaying the inevitable. The 'many countries' you speak of just haven't had an outbreak yet. Some of them - because of their geography, population density, or global economic roles - can continue to isolate themselves...

Some people look at a 0.04% population fatality rate that is heavily skewed toward senior citizens and people with chronic illnesses in urban and dense suburban areas and say 'meh.' Others are ticked off that their lives are impacted in a significant way for what they see is a minuscule risk to...

To some people, a 99.96% population wide survival rate (and 99.90% predicted) constitutes 'fine' and 'not as terrible as they make it out to be.'

Why do so many people praise Sweden's response? So far their population fatality rate ranks 5th in the world and is not far from Italy. The US ranks 8th and is constantly criticized, but Sweden's fatality rate is 25% higher.