[ltsddd]

He’s the lowest of the lowest life form in my book. I could understand the competitiveness and the desire to have an edge (read cheat) over the competition. However, to use your power and fame to bully and to intentionally destroy other peoples’ life and livelihood (a teammate of his for many years?) when you know you’re in the wrong is not something that any decent human being would do – let alone an alleged “hero” in so many people’s eyes.

This may sound cruel, but one has to wonder if his “cancer” was a also a lie and a fabrication. What are we supposed to believe after all these lies and deceits from him? Investigators familiar with the case have already said that he lied to Oprah’s face regarding his assertion that he didn’t dope in 2009 and 2010. Supposedly, his blood samples seem to indicate otherwise.

I think the guy out-conniving himself. This thing is going to blow up in his face big time. Karma is a bitch.

[ltsddd]

las cuatro milpas – it’s a hole-in-the-wall, but serves the best tacos (pork) this side of the border.

[ltsddd]

Californians are fleeing the state to MM to avoid higher taxes.

…or folks are mistaken MM for Mexico.

[ltsddd]

[quote=squat300]one of the terms of my mortgage to my kid is he must come over every friday night for dinner.

well, i see flu’s point.

it would be cool if I were ina position to someday help my kid.

one big problem i see is with having different kids in different life situations. I might think one of them is an idiot for buying a house ina particular situation, while another one is extremely stable and sharp and ready.

one of the worst things parents can do is play favorites. it is very very damaging. ibelieve in fairness amongst kids,a nd it would be difficult to achieve utter fairness as a lender.

what if my kid started haggling with me over his laon rebate cause his appraisal came in high?

therefore i think this should only be done in single kid families or where loans are freely available at all kid’s discretion.

but then would you get to shoot them down if the third kid wa sbuying too much house in your opinion?[/quote]

What if your kid complained that the value of the house is a lot less than what he owes on the loan and wants to default?

[ltsddd]

birmingplumb,
If you’re not sure where to invest your money then just park it in a saving account or short-term CD for now until you have figured out the proper investment vehicle for your $$. FWIW, I have Janus Flexible Bond T (JAFIX) in my portfolio for the last several years and am extremely happy with it.

As for the idea of loaning the $ to your kid to purchase a house. Just about everyone will tell you it’s a bad idea so I won’t get into that here. Strictly from the investment perspective, 3% may sounds decent today but in a few years you might hate yourself for having that big chunk of money locked down for such a long time with such a low return. Besides, the “borrower” may default down the road and you might be stuck with a house that you never wanted in the first place.

Good luck.

[ltsddd]

[quote=UCGal][quote=squat300]expenses on funds matter a lot[/quote]
I agree with this.

Vanguard, in general has the lowest expense ratios… but Schwab and Fidelity have some funds that come close.

Vanguard is definitely a DIY oriented fund company… but heaven help you if you need customer service. They lost paperwork (death certificates) 3 times before they finally were able to transfer my dad’s accounts per the executors wishes. And then couldn’t correlate the same death certificate over to the 529’s… so more lost copies before that got transferred over. I still have Vanguard accounts – but STRONGLY prefer Schwab’s customer service if anything non-standard comes up. And the expense ratio’s are very close for similar index funds.

If you want a good idea on asset allocation and how to set up a simple approach – look over at the bogleheads forum for the lazy portfolio or couch potato portfolio…
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_Portfolios
http://assetbuilder.com/couch_potato/couch_potato_cookbook

You don’t have to do Vanguard funds – any low cost INDEX funds will work – from the proper asset class.[/quote]

+1 for the lazy portfolio. I would recommend using Vanguard’s total bond, total stock, total int, plus may be one more (inflation adjusted). Keep it small and simple to no more than 4 funds. Rebalance at least once a year.

[ltsddd]

3 women killed by gunman in Swiss village

Link

One interesting note from the article is that voters rejected a proposal to tighten guns laws in 2011.

[ltsddd]

[quote=flu][quote=ltsdd]I am also pretty sure 40 years from now, the average adult will be complaining about how the “younger” generation are lazy, ungrateful, and have this sense of entitlement.[/quote]

Yeah, but short of the generation that came before Baby Boomers, I’d say that’s the majority of america right now, including baby boomers.[/quote]

What makes you believe that’s the case? The younger generation has more work cut out for them not because of their lack of motivation and laziness but rather due to the increased in competition both internally, due to population increase, and externally from other countries that only in recent years began to shed itself the effects of decades of wars and colonial rules.

During the 50’s what and who did we really have to compete against? Japan, Russia and Europe were in rebuilding mode after the war. China was still fighting a civil war. Korea was a backward third-world country in the midst of a civil war. India just barely got its independence. Most of the rest of the world were still under colonial rule.

I don’t want to take away the accomplishments of our previous generations. But at the same time let’s not be too harsh and sell the younger generation short, either.

[ltsddd]

I am also pretty sure 40 years from now, the average adult will be complaining about how the “younger” generation are lazy, ungrateful, and have this sense of entitlement.

[ltsddd]

Guns sure make it a lot deadlier and more efficient at killing people. On the same day this happened, a crazy man in China stabbed 22 children. Same intent, different weapons, different results.

Link

[ltsddd]

[quote=EconProf]In response to Itsdd:

Your last line contradicts some of your other numbers. And we’d love to have that 7% or 5% growth in US GDP that you show.
I also googled Mexico GNP and got a confusing array of results, so what should be easy–determining Mexico’s GNP growth rate over the years is not easy. Nominal or inflation-adjusted? Per capita or total? Adjusted for PPP (purchasing power parity) with US dollar or not?
But by the fairest measurement, and by the most sources, it has been running about twice ours in recent years, about 4% vs. 2%.[/quote]

My bad. The last line should look more like below:
YOY Growth (Mex vs US): 7.2% vs 5.2% & 5.5% vs 4.1%

After further examining the charts, I agree that since 2006 (except for 2009) Mexico has a better growth rate than that of the U.S.

That said, do you really believe what you have seen is enough for the migrants flow to reverse?

[ltsddd]

[quote=EconProf]Californians are also fleeing to….Mexico.
CalWatchdog.com, a site I would recommend to all Piggs, has great articles specific to CA’s economy and politics.
It has a current piece about how Mexico’s economy is so thoroughly outperforming America’s by many measures. Unemployment of 5% vs. CA’s 10%, for starters (though probably tainted by measurement differences)
[/quote]

Mexico’s 5% unemployment rate sounds impressive until you dig a little deeper. This will help put it in perspective.

“Historically, from 2000 until 2012, Mexico Unemployment Rate averaged 3.7 Percent reaching an all time high of 5.9 Percent in May of 2009 and a record low of 2.2 Percent in November of 2002.”

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/mexico/unemployment-rate

I agree with you that the measurement systems are different.

[quote=EconProf]

A GNP growth rate in recent years about double America’s. [/quote]

That’s not what I am seeing according to this chart

chart

Mexico’s GNP: 1.52T(’09), 1.63T(’10), 1.72T(’11)
US’s GNP: 13.9T(’09), 14.63T(’10), 15.23T(’11)

YOY Growth (Mex vs US): 5% vs 7% and 6.5% vs 5%

[ltsddd]

[quote=squat250]my kid was telling me about a film he saw in ap bio about baboons and status — where the higher status baboons are actually healthier and have better developped genitalia as a result of their status.
[/quote]

Could it really be the better “hung” baboons got more inherent strength to be on top (pun intended).

[quote=squat250]
Humans too are healthier if they have higher status[/quote]

Better access to better health services will do wonder to one’s health

[ltsddd]

[quote=no_such_reality]How bad was it last year? I haven’t a challenge finding parking at any mall or store we’ve gone to yesterday or today.
[/quote]

All depends on when you showed up. My experience is that if you showed up after sunrise all the great deals (door busters) are pretty much gone and so is the crowd. The last time I did a BF was when Circuit City was still around. Showed up around 9:00 a.m., didn’t have trouble finding parking, but all the great deals were gone by then also.

[ltsddd]

[quote=paramount]I think there is a middle ground: I’m going to drastically reduce dining out, no discretionary purchases.

In general I’m going to reduce my expenditures.[/quote]

Adaptation. Adaptation.

[Author]

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