Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
stockstradr
ParticipantI’ll add my 2 cents to this thread.
A few months ago we finally bought a big flat screen. By training I’m a LCD module engineer (Motorola, Nokia) so this was no point-and-click purchase. I do this for a living. I researched the hell out of it, compared countless models side-by-side, but very quickly it came down to one obvious choice.
We bought a 46″ Samsung LN-T4661F, at Fry’s for $1810+tax, and we LOVE this flat screen. I concluded there is no other LCD for less than $2,000 that even comes close to the optics of this set. However, if you have $3,000 to spend there are LCD’s with a finer specifications.
I’m very impressed with the rich saturated colors, deep blacks, even backlighting, build quality, styling, everything. With 1080p signal and these optics, every movie scene looks like high resolution color print film (in motion). Amazing! After I unboxed it I ran solid color test screens (black, red, blue, green) for several hours checking saturation, backlighting consistency, and dead pixels. Not a single dead pixel found, which is quite surprising for a typical 1920×1080 LCD. Also very happy with the anti-reflection film, and the thin frame border allowing this TV to fit places that wider sets cannot. I highly recommend this LCD. My wife complains, “You love that TV more than me!”
Things to know before shopping:
1) There is no LCD vs. Plasma debate, because a good LCD TV is vastly superior.
2) A good anti-reflection film is a must when buying a big screen LCD TV, unless you place it in a room without sunlight exposure, and you watch it in low-light conditions.
3) Dump your cable, go with Satellite. We actually had both cable and satellite feeds coming in, so we could compare them. There is no comparison, especially when it comes to HDTV. Satellite rules with a brighter, far crisper picture.
4) Yes, IF I could afford the bulbs I would buy a high-def digital projector, because they are incredible for showing movies 10 feet wide on your white living room walls. I sometimes borrow projectors from work to see movies at home. Digital projectors are the best, but are still quite expensive if you want a 1080p model.
5) Be sure to READ reviews online before buying. For example, we were considering buying a particular Sony big screen LCD model, because it was on sale previous version model. Online reviews quickly revealed that particular model has a major field return problem with ghosting and inconsitent backlighting.
ParticipantI’ll add my 2 cents to this thread.
A few months ago we finally bought a big flat screen. By training I’m a LCD module engineer (Motorola, Nokia) so this was no point-and-click purchase. I do this for a living. I researched the hell out of it, compared countless models side-by-side, but very quickly it came down to one obvious choice.
We bought a 46″ Samsung LN-T4661F, at Fry’s for $1810+tax, and we LOVE this flat screen. I concluded there is no other LCD for less than $2,000 that even comes close to the optics of this set. However, if you have $3,000 to spend there are LCD’s with a finer specifications.
I’m very impressed with the rich saturated colors, deep blacks, even backlighting, build quality, styling, everything. With 1080p signal and these optics, every movie scene looks like high resolution color print film (in motion). Amazing! After I unboxed it I ran solid color test screens (black, red, blue, green) for several hours checking saturation, backlighting consistency, and dead pixels. Not a single dead pixel found, which is quite surprising for a typical 1920×1080 LCD. Also very happy with the anti-reflection film, and the thin frame border allowing this TV to fit places that wider sets cannot. I highly recommend this LCD. My wife complains, “You love that TV more than me!”
Things to know before shopping:
1) There is no LCD vs. Plasma debate, because a good LCD TV is vastly superior.
2) A good anti-reflection film is a must when buying a big screen LCD TV, unless you place it in a room without sunlight exposure, and you watch it in low-light conditions.
3) Dump your cable, go with Satellite. We actually had both cable and satellite feeds coming in, so we could compare them. There is no comparison, especially when it comes to HDTV. Satellite rules with a brighter, far crisper picture.
4) Yes, IF I could afford the bulbs I would buy a high-def digital projector, because they are incredible for showing movies 10 feet wide on your white living room walls. I sometimes borrow projectors from work to see movies at home. Digital projectors are the best, but are still quite expensive if you want a 1080p model.
5) Be sure to READ reviews online before buying. For example, we were considering buying a particular Sony big screen LCD model, because it was on sale previous version model. Online reviews quickly revealed that particular model has a major field return problem with ghosting and inconsitent backlighting.
ParticipantI’m astounded at the amount of really BAD financial advice doled out in this Forum (Drunkle and others).
I won’t even comment on all the absurdly stupid posts in this thread. I will comment on a bit of the good advice. Michael’s post on this topic was EXCELLENT, as were posts by FormerSanDiegan, ucodegen and others.
a bit of Michael’s post:
….If you want to hedge against this risk some employers are now offering Roth 401k.My wife and I earn over $200k per year. That places us in the 33% federal tax rate. By contributing to our 401k’s our AGI comes in at about $190k, dropping us into the 28% federal tax rate.
That’s sound advice. Our total family income is near $200k.
As for us, we obviously each MAX out our 401K contribution every year (2 X $15500 for 2007), substantially reducing our tax load each year.We also “convert” a tax-affordable amount each year from our Traditional IRA (containing funds “rolled” in from our previous employer’s 401K)) into our ROTH IRA’s. I will not rehash the debate on Pro’s and Con’s of that Traditional IRA -> ROTH IRA financial move because I don’t think it is debatable, and it was nevertheless debated to point of insanity in previous thread. I will however, note that you should always talk with a retirement accounts specialist and tax specialist before making these kinds of transactions (and don’t make retirement account decisions based on general advice in THIS forum!).
A few other comments:
1)
The real benefit of maxed 401K contribution is that it forces at least minimal retirement savings habits, which quickly builds a nice retirement nest egg. I know people, including yours truly, who consistently followed this rule starting from Day 1 at first job. The HUGE cumulative benefit is that in only about 10 or 15 years, our retirement accounts grew so much that most (or all) years, our annual appreciation in those accounts EXCEEDS our paid annual salary, which is a real nice position to be in.2)
Anybody on here think that holding a “good” diversified bull market mutual fund is “always” good for your 401K?True Story: retirement accounts financial adviser at my wife’s new employer personally called me up and tried to lecture me because I told my wife to NOT invest in the long market funds the financial adviser suggested. Instead, I told my wife to position her 401K in cash and in inverse (short) market funds appropriate for the current (unusual) market conditions.
I told that financial adviser to go to hell and keep his opinions to himself. During the following 50 days, the overall stock market (and his recommended funds) fell 10%. (So much for idea that “good” diversified bull market mutual funds are “always” the right place to park your money!) My wife’s 401K increased substantially because we ignored that conventional advice.
3) If your US (dollar asset) mutual fund rises 10% next year, are you going to brag about your success if the dollar has meanwhile fallen another 10% (or more) during same year? That is another reason to avoid following the old rule of parking cash into a conventional dollar-asset mutual fun. The dollar is TANKING.
ParticipantI’m astounded at the amount of really BAD financial advice doled out in this Forum (Drunkle and others).
I won’t even comment on all the absurdly stupid posts in this thread. I will comment on a bit of the good advice. Michael’s post on this topic was EXCELLENT, as were posts by FormerSanDiegan, ucodegen and others.
a bit of Michael’s post:
….If you want to hedge against this risk some employers are now offering Roth 401k.My wife and I earn over $200k per year. That places us in the 33% federal tax rate. By contributing to our 401k’s our AGI comes in at about $190k, dropping us into the 28% federal tax rate.
That’s sound advice. Our total family income is near $200k.
As for us, we obviously each MAX out our 401K contribution every year (2 X $15500 for 2007), substantially reducing our tax load each year.We also “convert” a tax-affordable amount each year from our Traditional IRA (containing funds “rolled” in from our previous employer’s 401K)) into our ROTH IRA’s. I will not rehash the debate on Pro’s and Con’s of that Traditional IRA -> ROTH IRA financial move because I don’t think it is debatable, and it was nevertheless debated to point of insanity in previous thread. I will however, note that you should always talk with a retirement accounts specialist and tax specialist before making these kinds of transactions (and don’t make retirement account decisions based on general advice in THIS forum!).
A few other comments:
1)
The real benefit of maxed 401K contribution is that it forces at least minimal retirement savings habits, which quickly builds a nice retirement nest egg. I know people, including yours truly, who consistently followed this rule starting from Day 1 at first job. The HUGE cumulative benefit is that in only about 10 or 15 years, our retirement accounts grew so much that most (or all) years, our annual appreciation in those accounts EXCEEDS our paid annual salary, which is a real nice position to be in.2)
Anybody on here think that holding a “good” diversified bull market mutual fund is “always” good for your 401K?True Story: retirement accounts financial adviser at my wife’s new employer personally called me up and tried to lecture me because I told my wife to NOT invest in the long market funds the financial adviser suggested. Instead, I told my wife to position her 401K in cash and in inverse (short) market funds appropriate for the current (unusual) market conditions.
I told that financial adviser to go to hell and keep his opinions to himself. During the following 50 days, the overall stock market (and his recommended funds) fell 10%. (So much for idea that “good” diversified bull market mutual funds are “always” the right place to park your money!) My wife’s 401K increased substantially because we ignored that conventional advice.
3) If your US (dollar asset) mutual fund rises 10% next year, are you going to brag about your success if the dollar has meanwhile fallen another 10% (or more) during same year? That is another reason to avoid following the old rule of parking cash into a conventional dollar-asset mutual fun. The dollar is TANKING.
ParticipantI’m astounded at the amount of really BAD financial advice doled out in this Forum (Drunkle and others).
I won’t even comment on all the absurdly stupid posts in this thread. I will comment on a bit of the good advice. Michael’s post on this topic was EXCELLENT, as were posts by FormerSanDiegan, ucodegen and others.
a bit of Michael’s post:
….If you want to hedge against this risk some employers are now offering Roth 401k.My wife and I earn over $200k per year. That places us in the 33% federal tax rate. By contributing to our 401k’s our AGI comes in at about $190k, dropping us into the 28% federal tax rate.
That’s sound advice. Our total family income is near $200k.
As for us, we obviously each MAX out our 401K contribution every year (2 X $15500 for 2007), substantially reducing our tax load each year.We also “convert” a tax-affordable amount each year from our Traditional IRA (containing funds “rolled” in from our previous employer’s 401K)) into our ROTH IRA’s. I will not rehash the debate on Pro’s and Con’s of that Traditional IRA -> ROTH IRA financial move because I don’t think it is debatable, and it was nevertheless debated to point of insanity in previous thread. I will however, note that you should always talk with a retirement accounts specialist and tax specialist before making these kinds of transactions (and don’t make retirement account decisions based on general advice in THIS forum!).
A few other comments:
1)
The real benefit of maxed 401K contribution is that it forces at least minimal retirement savings habits, which quickly builds a nice retirement nest egg. I know people, including yours truly, who consistently followed this rule starting from Day 1 at first job. The HUGE cumulative benefit is that in only about 10 or 15 years, our retirement accounts grew so much that most (or all) years, our annual appreciation in those accounts EXCEEDS our paid annual salary, which is a real nice position to be in.2)
Anybody on here think that holding a “good” diversified bull market mutual fund is “always” good for your 401K?True Story: retirement accounts financial adviser at my wife’s new employer personally called me up and tried to lecture me because I told my wife to NOT invest in the long market funds the financial adviser suggested. Instead, I told my wife to position her 401K in cash and in inverse (short) market funds appropriate for the current (unusual) market conditions.
I told that financial adviser to go to hell and keep his opinions to himself. During the following 50 days, the overall stock market (and his recommended funds) fell 10%. (So much for idea that “good” diversified bull market mutual funds are “always” the right place to park your money!) My wife’s 401K increased substantially because we ignored that conventional advice.
3) If your US (dollar asset) mutual fund rises 10% next year, are you going to brag about your success if the dollar has meanwhile fallen another 10% (or more) during same year? That is another reason to avoid following the old rule of parking cash into a conventional dollar-asset mutual fun. The dollar is TANKING.
ParticipantI’m astounded at the amount of really BAD financial advice doled out in this Forum (Drunkle and others).
I won’t even comment on all the absurdly stupid posts in this thread. I will comment on a bit of the good advice. Michael’s post on this topic was EXCELLENT, as were posts by FormerSanDiegan, ucodegen and others.
a bit of Michael’s post:
….If you want to hedge against this risk some employers are now offering Roth 401k.My wife and I earn over $200k per year. That places us in the 33% federal tax rate. By contributing to our 401k’s our AGI comes in at about $190k, dropping us into the 28% federal tax rate.
That’s sound advice. Our total family income is near $200k.
As for us, we obviously each MAX out our 401K contribution every year (2 X $15500 for 2007), substantially reducing our tax load each year.We also “convert” a tax-affordable amount each year from our Traditional IRA (containing funds “rolled” in from our previous employer’s 401K)) into our ROTH IRA’s. I will not rehash the debate on Pro’s and Con’s of that Traditional IRA -> ROTH IRA financial move because I don’t think it is debatable, and it was nevertheless debated to point of insanity in previous thread. I will however, note that you should always talk with a retirement accounts specialist and tax specialist before making these kinds of transactions (and don’t make retirement account decisions based on general advice in THIS forum!).
A few other comments:
1)
The real benefit of maxed 401K contribution is that it forces at least minimal retirement savings habits, which quickly builds a nice retirement nest egg. I know people, including yours truly, who consistently followed this rule starting from Day 1 at first job. The HUGE cumulative benefit is that in only about 10 or 15 years, our retirement accounts grew so much that most (or all) years, our annual appreciation in those accounts EXCEEDS our paid annual salary, which is a real nice position to be in.2)
Anybody on here think that holding a “good” diversified bull market mutual fund is “always” good for your 401K?True Story: retirement accounts financial adviser at my wife’s new employer personally called me up and tried to lecture me because I told my wife to NOT invest in the long market funds the financial adviser suggested. Instead, I told my wife to position her 401K in cash and in inverse (short) market funds appropriate for the current (unusual) market conditions.
I told that financial adviser to go to hell and keep his opinions to himself. During the following 50 days, the overall stock market (and his recommended funds) fell 10%. (So much for idea that “good” diversified bull market mutual funds are “always” the right place to park your money!) My wife’s 401K increased substantially because we ignored that conventional advice.
3) If your US (dollar asset) mutual fund rises 10% next year, are you going to brag about your success if the dollar has meanwhile fallen another 10% (or more) during same year? That is another reason to avoid following the old rule of parking cash into a conventional dollar-asset mutual fun. The dollar is TANKING.
ParticipantI’m astounded at the amount of really BAD financial advice doled out in this Forum (Drunkle and others).
I won’t even comment on all the absurdly stupid posts in this thread. I will comment on a bit of the good advice. Michael’s post on this topic was EXCELLENT, as were posts by FormerSanDiegan, ucodegen and others.
a bit of Michael’s post:
….If you want to hedge against this risk some employers are now offering Roth 401k.My wife and I earn over $200k per year. That places us in the 33% federal tax rate. By contributing to our 401k’s our AGI comes in at about $190k, dropping us into the 28% federal tax rate.
That’s sound advice. Our total family income is near $200k.
As for us, we obviously each MAX out our 401K contribution every year (2 X $15500 for 2007), substantially reducing our tax load each year.We also “convert” a tax-affordable amount each year from our Traditional IRA (containing funds “rolled” in from our previous employer’s 401K)) into our ROTH IRA’s. I will not rehash the debate on Pro’s and Con’s of that Traditional IRA -> ROTH IRA financial move because I don’t think it is debatable, and it was nevertheless debated to point of insanity in previous thread. I will however, note that you should always talk with a retirement accounts specialist and tax specialist before making these kinds of transactions (and don’t make retirement account decisions based on general advice in THIS forum!).
A few other comments:
1)
The real benefit of maxed 401K contribution is that it forces at least minimal retirement savings habits, which quickly builds a nice retirement nest egg. I know people, including yours truly, who consistently followed this rule starting from Day 1 at first job. The HUGE cumulative benefit is that in only about 10 or 15 years, our retirement accounts grew so much that most (or all) years, our annual appreciation in those accounts EXCEEDS our paid annual salary, which is a real nice position to be in.2)
Anybody on here think that holding a “good” diversified bull market mutual fund is “always” good for your 401K?True Story: retirement accounts financial adviser at my wife’s new employer personally called me up and tried to lecture me because I told my wife to NOT invest in the long market funds the financial adviser suggested. Instead, I told my wife to position her 401K in cash and in inverse (short) market funds appropriate for the current (unusual) market conditions.
I told that financial adviser to go to hell and keep his opinions to himself. During the following 50 days, the overall stock market (and his recommended funds) fell 10%. (So much for idea that “good” diversified bull market mutual funds are “always” the right place to park your money!) My wife’s 401K increased substantially because we ignored that conventional advice.
3) If your US (dollar asset) mutual fund rises 10% next year, are you going to brag about your success if the dollar has meanwhile fallen another 10% (or more) during same year? That is another reason to avoid following the old rule of parking cash into a conventional dollar-asset mutual fun. The dollar is TANKING.
ParticipantMy advice is forget real estate and focus on the following, because I’m currently making a killing in these areas:
1) Short the market, buy puts on the indexes, buy 2X leveraged inverse bear funds
2) Short oil sector, short oil (this is a short-term recession play. Long-term oil is obviously going straight up in price)
3) Buy gold
4) Dump the dollar and buy European currencies, and if you have the option obviously buy the Yuan.
5) If you must play real estate, do what I did: buy overseas properties in Asia. I specifically bought China mainland properties when I dumped my USA properties in mid 2004. I’ve made a killing on those China properties.
6) For CA region, I think we are not at the bottom yet. There are only some bargains available in select areas (high desert, and down in riverside , temecula). Even those areas have farther to fall.
There are some moments in life where I make predictions, place my bets and then every single one of those come in and I’m hitting on all cylinders on various investments. That’s the feeling right now.
ParticipantMy advice is forget real estate and focus on the following, because I’m currently making a killing in these areas:
1) Short the market, buy puts on the indexes, buy 2X leveraged inverse bear funds
2) Short oil sector, short oil (this is a short-term recession play. Long-term oil is obviously going straight up in price)
3) Buy gold
4) Dump the dollar and buy European currencies, and if you have the option obviously buy the Yuan.
5) If you must play real estate, do what I did: buy overseas properties in Asia. I specifically bought China mainland properties when I dumped my USA properties in mid 2004. I’ve made a killing on those China properties.
6) For CA region, I think we are not at the bottom yet. There are only some bargains available in select areas (high desert, and down in riverside , temecula). Even those areas have farther to fall.
There are some moments in life where I make predictions, place my bets and then every single one of those come in and I’m hitting on all cylinders on various investments. That’s the feeling right now.
ParticipantMy advice is forget real estate and focus on the following, because I’m currently making a killing in these areas:
1) Short the market, buy puts on the indexes, buy 2X leveraged inverse bear funds
2) Short oil sector, short oil (this is a short-term recession play. Long-term oil is obviously going straight up in price)
3) Buy gold
4) Dump the dollar and buy European currencies, and if you have the option obviously buy the Yuan.
5) If you must play real estate, do what I did: buy overseas properties in Asia. I specifically bought China mainland properties when I dumped my USA properties in mid 2004. I’ve made a killing on those China properties.
6) For CA region, I think we are not at the bottom yet. There are only some bargains available in select areas (high desert, and down in riverside , temecula). Even those areas have farther to fall.
There are some moments in life where I make predictions, place my bets and then every single one of those come in and I’m hitting on all cylinders on various investments. That’s the feeling right now.
ParticipantMy advice is forget real estate and focus on the following, because I’m currently making a killing in these areas:
1) Short the market, buy puts on the indexes, buy 2X leveraged inverse bear funds
2) Short oil sector, short oil (this is a short-term recession play. Long-term oil is obviously going straight up in price)
3) Buy gold
4) Dump the dollar and buy European currencies, and if you have the option obviously buy the Yuan.
5) If you must play real estate, do what I did: buy overseas properties in Asia. I specifically bought China mainland properties when I dumped my USA properties in mid 2004. I’ve made a killing on those China properties.
6) For CA region, I think we are not at the bottom yet. There are only some bargains available in select areas (high desert, and down in riverside , temecula). Even those areas have farther to fall.
There are some moments in life where I make predictions, place my bets and then every single one of those come in and I’m hitting on all cylinders on various investments. That’s the feeling right now.
ParticipantMy advice is forget real estate and focus on the following, because I’m currently making a killing in these areas:
1) Short the market, buy puts on the indexes, buy 2X leveraged inverse bear funds
2) Short oil sector, short oil (this is a short-term recession play. Long-term oil is obviously going straight up in price)
3) Buy gold
4) Dump the dollar and buy European currencies, and if you have the option obviously buy the Yuan.
5) If you must play real estate, do what I did: buy overseas properties in Asia. I specifically bought China mainland properties when I dumped my USA properties in mid 2004. I’ve made a killing on those China properties.
6) For CA region, I think we are not at the bottom yet. There are only some bargains available in select areas (high desert, and down in riverside , temecula). Even those areas have farther to fall.
There are some moments in life where I make predictions, place my bets and then every single one of those come in and I’m hitting on all cylinders on various investments. That’s the feeling right now.
Participant“No, you’re suffering because YOU, yourself made a bad choice. Don’t blame it on other people. You didn’t have to sign on the dotted line. You have a brain just like everyone else. You bought in an overinflated market, you should have known the risk.”
I absolutely agree with the member who posted that response, AND I do NOT agree with other member who claimed that post was overly harsh.
Now, to the original poster who asked “should I walk away?” my answer is that YES I would walk away if I was in your shoes. You do it because you can get away with it; additionally, it makes financial sense, and it is legal. Now it may not be a mark of good character, but who gives a shit. Cut your losses and run like the wind.
Participant“No, you’re suffering because YOU, yourself made a bad choice. Don’t blame it on other people. You didn’t have to sign on the dotted line. You have a brain just like everyone else. You bought in an overinflated market, you should have known the risk.”
I absolutely agree with the member who posted that response, AND I do NOT agree with other member who claimed that post was overly harsh.
Now, to the original poster who asked “should I walk away?” my answer is that YES I would walk away if I was in your shoes. You do it because you can get away with it; additionally, it makes financial sense, and it is legal. Now it may not be a mark of good character, but who gives a shit. Cut your losses and run like the wind.
-
AuthorPosts