[an]

[quote=SD Realtor]Yep no inflation here. Except that that the food you buy is more expensive and packaged in smaller quantitied. You pay more for water, more for sewer, and more for energy. It has been staring you in the face for the past several years.

Don’t worry though, you can always eat your cheap flatscreen and keep warm by burning your low priced cell phone plan at night.[/quote]
Certain food is more expensive but not all. Same with energy. Sure, energy from sdge is getting more expensive, but energy from solar is getting cheaper every year. I went solar a year ago and my bill over the last year has been between $5-100. It used to be between $150-450.

I’m not saying we’re not seeing inflation. I’m just saying what we’re seeing is not as drastic as you’re making it seem. Maybe it’s the type of food I eat and the source of my energy.

[an]

[quote=flu]So i tried unerasing my bad drive. Nope…

Looks like I’ll be reinstalling afterall..

Ubuntu sure is handy… Heck, OSX sure is handy right now….

Anything but windoze…

Maybe I should bit the bullet and just let Mac manage my pictures and videos instead of picasa.. And for the rare occasion I need windows, run the virtualized windows in a mac….[/quote]I totally forgot that you’re running Windows on a Mac. That there is your main culprit. Why would you do that. If you already shell out the dough to buy a Mac, why not stay in the Mac walled garden? It’s safer that way. I ran Windows on a Mac before and it’s a recipe for disaster.

[an]

[quote=paramount]If you can physically work, that’s the right thing to do IMO. why would anyone want to leave the rat race?[/quote]
Because some of us don’t want to be in the rat race if we don’t have to.

[an]

[quote=flu]Since we’re on the topic of taxes… I got a new scenario for folks to figure out… (I don’t know the answer)…

1. Suppose you borrowed $50k from your traditional 401k…
2. Suppose you also have a Roth 401k….

Now you decided you want to pay back your 401k because you don’t want an outstanding loan… BUT, you really don’t want your total 401k (both traditional and roth account) value to really increase by $50k… (for sake of argument, you feel you don’t want to put $50k back into the stock/bond markets)…

Can you withdraw from your Roth 401k $50k, ALL from CONTRIBUTION portion without incurring a tax (since it was money you contributed after taxes)… and use that money to payback off the outstanding loan on your traditional 401k….[/quote]
It all depends on your 401k. I’m not sure if you can withdraw from ROTH 401k (even if it’s just the contribution part). Maybe your 401k allow it, but mine only allow a hardship withdrawal while I’m still working for the company. However, my 401k rock in a sense that it allow me to be in cash. You might see if that option is for you and you can put in $50k and just leave it in cash if you don’t want to be in the market.

[an]

I wonder what would happen to the early depreciated taxes if the property is foreclosed. Would you still be taxed if you refi to the hilt, then the next time the market crash, you just mail back the key. In essence, you’ve already gotten your tax free gain out.

[an]

[quote=EconProf][quote=skerzz]The majority of W-2 workers that own rental property in California generally will not benefit from depreciation deductions (losses on rental properties). I won’t go into all the specifics, but unless you are a full time real estate professional you won’t be able to offset ordinary income with passive rental losses. There is an exception to this rule based on income limitations — however, those that own rentals in SoCal or the Bay Area are likely making too much money to realize the benefit.[/quote]
Please explain yourself here. A W-2 worker is exactly the taxpayer who can most use the depreciation “expense” that goes with owning rental real estate. While he may have a positive cash flow from rents minus cash expenses, he also gets to deduct depreciation “expense” every year. This lowers the property’s taxable income, maybe even making it negative for tax purposes. The result is lower total taxable income. In fact, the higher his W-2 taxable income, the greater the tax benefit from owning rental properties.[/quote]skerzz is partially correct. You can benefit from depreciation deduction, just like everyone else, but the amount you can deduct decreases when you make >$150k. After $150k AGI, you can no longer apply passive loss from rental property toward your active W-2 income. So, if you make $145k and have $50k “loss” in investment property, your new AGI would be $95k. However, if you make $155k, you cannot apply the $50k “loss” toward your active W-2 income. Unless you’re a real estate professional.

This is another prime example of social engineering. If you’re a couple and one of you make close to $150k, there’s very little reason for the other person to go back to work, especially if you have a few investment properties that net a huge “loss”. It would only make sense for the other spouse to go back to work if the other spouse becomes a real estate agent/broker.

[an]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=AN]This is why I have no empathy for “people” serving time. I also wonder why we’re spend so much on them (much more than we spend on our kids’ education). I would be perfectly happy to build a 50′ wall square in the middle of the dessert and have then deal with it. Kind of like what the Brits did w/ Australia :-).[/quote]

Until your kids are sent there.

Prosecution is for a single event that is provable to win a conviction.

If your kid is unlucky and gets caught dealing drugs to his buddies, he will be sent there along with the rest of them. The system doesn’t differentiate. I know some parents who are heart broken. Too bad you may say.[/quote]Well, my statement is more directed toward hardcore criminals, not your druggies. If I get my way and legalize drug use, then your argument doesn’t apply.

[an]

[quote=flu]I’m sure part of the reason why this is effed up is because I’m in a triple boot environment between OSX, Linux, Windows 8 from a mac mini server that’s running dual SSD’s.[/quote]Why oh why would you want to do triple boot AND store your data on the same disk? All my pix/vids/etc (stuff that are priceless) sits on a RAID 10 external enclosure attached to my media server and being real time backed up to backblaze.com. That way, if the OS ever eff up or my hardware fail, I will never lose my priceless data and just re-install the OS. Also, triple booting on the same HDD is just asking for trouble IMHO. Why not get 3 mac mini to boot 3 different OS. They’re not that expensive and doesn’t take that much space.

[an]

This is why I have no empathy for “people” serving time. I also wonder why we’re spend so much on them (much more than we spend on our kids’ education). I would be perfectly happy to build a 50′ wall square in the middle of the dessert and have then deal with it. Kind of like what the Brits did w/ Australia :-).

[an]

Unfortunately flu, you’re SOL, since you have an upgrade license. Why didn’t you buy a full version back then? It was only ~$20-40 back when it first came out. Full version would let you do both upgrade and full install. But to fix your problem, I have Windows 7 CD you can install, then immediate upgrade to Windows 8 if you want.

[an]

I was thinking the same thing and am thinking of picking up some silver related stock/etf.

[an]

http://www.dailytech.com/Largest+Solar+Thermal+Plant+Ivanpah+Goes+Live+Commercially/article34333.htm
This can power 140k homes and takes up 5 square miles. So, just to power San Diego city alone, you’d need 50 square miles. This project costs $2.2B and it costs 2.6x to generate power as a coal power plant. I’m not sure you’d have enough dessert land to produce power for everyone. Then there are the birds that will die and the animals that have their habitat wiped out. Yeah, this sounds very feasible.

[an]

[quote=paramount]This has gone viral (I think…)

1929 Chart

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/scary-1929-market-chart-gains-traction-2014-02-11%5B/quote%5DI’m freakin’ salivating at that chart.

[an]

[quote=spdrun]Hell, even without the satellites, a worldwide grid based on very high voltage (hench, low loss) DC power would solve a lot of day-night problems.[/quote]Last I checked, AC won out the AC vs DC many years ago. Do we need to repeat the battle?

[an]

[quote=spdrun]Of course, there are other, interesting (for now theoretical) alternatives that may not require as much storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power%5B/quote%5D
I did read about that and that makes a lot more sense. But how likely will we see that in reality anytime soon and at what cost?

[Author]

Posts