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March 23, 2015 at 10:13 AM in reply to: State of the economy and affect on housing in S California #784104
jeff303
Participant[quote=rockingtime]Cash in chase investment account and their conservative model pay almost 4-5%/year, their moderate model pays almost 7%/year.
The money is liquid.
One can always argue there are better options but I am not aware of any. I chose chase as I bank with them primarily.[/quote]What’s the minimum investment?
ParticipantRubio’s original fish taco, $1.50 after 2:30PM every Tuesday.
Participant[quote=poorgradstudent]
There definitely is a strategy to proper CostCo shopping. I’m not sure if you’re married with kids; Buying a house with a garage, getting married and having a child who now eats a decent amount of food definitely made CostCo more “worth it” for me.There are things like Toilet Paper and Paper Towels where there are cost savings as long as you have a place to store them, with the bonus of running out of TP less than you might otherwise!
Obviously my family of 3 goes through eggs and milk a lot faster than I did as a single guy. Their organic food prices are quite good, and with three of us in the house we always go through a full bag of apples, bananas or organges.
The downside is it’s very hard to buy 100% of your grocery needs at CostCo. Some things you just don’t want or need in bulk.[/quote]
This is all quite true. For many people, there can be that one item that makes membership worth it. Could be coffee, jeans, whatever. For my family, it’s the Nature’s Domain dog food. Huge bags of grain-free food at a far lower cost than a comparable retail product.
Also, from my experience, their produce is actually a terrible deal. We almost always find better prices (and at smaller quantities, obviously) at Northgate Market, to give one example.
I’m mildly annoyed at the upcoming credit card switch, mostly due to another credit hard pull just to switch from the Amex->whatever they come up with. I suppose I’ll still do it as long as the 2% executive member cashback transfers somewhat seamlessly.
Participant[quote=AN][quote=spdrun]That’s not due to Lollipop itself, but some “customization” shitware that the manufacturer chose to ram down your throat.[/quote]Yep, I have no idea why OEM do this kind of stuff. Makes no sense to me.[/quote]
The reason is simple. It makes them money. They can get paid by bloatware software publishers per installation sold. If the carrier itself appears to be the publisher (ex: “AT&T Navigation”), then you can be sure the motivation is the same. It’s either an add-on service they sell or a way to tie into 3rd party offerings.
ParticipantThat’s interesting. My question to HLS was admittedly a naive one, but it seemed to touch a nerve. Anyway, what I’m really trying to figure out is, how can a borrower determine which scenario is better for them? Is it possible to work with someone (buyers agent, bank, other lender, whoever) who can “run the numbers” on both scenarios relatively easily? Or does one have to apply for two different loans in order to see the difference?
Participant[quote=HLS]
They always use the middle credit score of the 3 bureaus, the highest & lowest are ignored.
If 2 people are needed to qualify, the use the lowest borrower’s middle score.In many cases this presents a problem, but if a borrower’s income is not needed to qualify I suggest considering only 1 person on the loan, spouse can still be on title which is the ownership part.
[/quote]Are banks willing to run both scenarios for comparison? I.e. add spouse onto loan (higher income, lower credit score) versus not?
Participant[quote=biggoldbear]Just in case anyone runs into a “informed” anti-vaxer, some vaccines can cause adverse reactions in a small number of people (From CDC) http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00046738.htm
But this argument is similar to saying that some people would be better off not wearing a seat belt because sometimes they trap people in a burning car.
Except not getting vaccines is worse, because of the already mentioned effect on herd immunity. You are not just putting yourself and children at risk, you are putting others at risk too.
The problem is that for some diseases the risk of the vaccine is actually greater than the risk of getting the disease, but this is only because the vaccine works so well. If people start to avoid the vaccine, this math changes quickly (as we all can see clearly now).[/quote]
Furthermore, for the benefit of those who do have a legitimate bad reaction to vaccines, it’s extremely important for everyone else to get vaccinated. That way, herd immunity can be retained despite the very small population of individuals who can’t get the vaccine.
Participant[quote=AN]Why the distinction? If democrats have super majority in both house and senate and the presidency, what make you think it’ll be anything different than CA?[/quote]
Because no concrete proposal exists to retroactively nerf Roth IRAs or 401ks, only politically motivation supposition and innuendo? Because doing so would be massively unpopular across the spectrum and would amount to political suicide?
ParticipantIf you don’t mind buying online, and maybe waiting for a deal, you can take advantage of something like this: http://slickdeals.net/f/7253854-us-mattress-columbus-day-sale-simmons-beautyrest-mattresses-adda-plush-queen-269-amp-more-free-shipping
You can always set up an alert on that site (or other deal sites) for the next such sale.
ParticipantAs of 2011, toddlers and furniture were each more likely to cause an American’s death than terrorism. I wish I was kidding. Unless ISIS increases that by at least three orders of magnitude, it doesn’t make sense to even spend a moment thinking about it.
Participant[quote=edna_mode]I’m curious — why does the DJIA still hold so much sway as a valid metric anymore? It’s 30 stocks; how is such a small sample representative of a country/sector/economic/company/policy/regulatory environment in such a way that you can make decent predictions about anything?[/quote]
Inertia, basically. There’s a great Planet Money podcast covering all its shortfalls: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/12/174139347/episode-443-dont-believe-the-hype
Participant[quote=doofrat]I actually read a book about Ebola long ago. I forget the title, but it went into the Ebola (and closely related virus like Marburg) outbreaks in Africa and the United States (Yes, there was an outbreak of Marburg in the US). In it’s present form, Ebola has a strange contagion profile that they didn’t understand back then, maybe there’s more info now, but it seemed to not be as contagious as you’d think. Even when gobs of the virus were around, it wasn’t always easy to catch. IMHO, I think the virus is more amenable to the living conditions in Africa where someone gets it and people don’t realize and hygienic conditions are a little more lax.[/quote]
There’s a book called The Hot Zone, not sure if that’s the one you’re thinking of but it might be. That book happened to dramatize real events (surprise, surprise) and faced criticism from real experts (details on that book’s Wikipedia article).
As to the original question, I think it’s about 80% hysteria. We definitely know a lot more now than we did in the earlier cases from ’89-’90. And I trust some of our government experts (I know, blech) when it comes to containment of it, at least as much as I trust anyone in the world. Ebola, dramatizations notwithstanding, is a seriously scary disease. The good (?) news is that the really deadly strains tend to kill the host before they can spread it too far.
ParticipantSo do you just not believe the data that shows the deportation rate is at an all-time high, or what?
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Quite frankly, if the employers were forced to use E-Verify, it would significantly cut the flow of illegal immigrants across the border.
[/quote]Precisely. Mandatory E-Verify would curtail the problem very significantly. The fact that there seems to be no serious mainstream political traction (from any side) for this is very telling, IMHO.
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