It’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a triangle of power.

Right, every single character on that show was disposable, except for Jack. If you were lucky, you got a silent clock to mark your passing. But Jack was shot, shocked, poisoned, drowned, had his heart stopped, and everything else in the book, but just kept popping up like a cartoon character.

Back in the heyday of 24, I’d have watch parties with my friends. And usually somewhere around hour 20 or so, Jack would find himself in some situation that he couldn’t possibly escape from. And, without fail, someone at the watch party would yell, “THIS IS THE ONE WHERE JACK DIES!” (Spoiler: he doesn’t.)

UESP’s Asset-Based Fee structure has two parts:

Except for one savings-account type plan that’s barely going to grow at all, none of these plans offer anything with less than 0.1% expense ratio. California’s ScholarShare offers a boring index fund with a 0.08% ER, and gets left out of the article entirely. Which makes me wonder what the heck these experts are…

Make a budget. And when you first make a budget, don’t go too nuts trying to trim all the fat from it. Just try to come up with a realistic estimate of how you expect to make/spend money each month, and then track your actual income/expenditures against it, and see how you’re doing. The “make changes to the budget to…

I grew up only ever knowing boiled corn on the cob. Which meant that, in the middle of summer, with the grill fired up, my mom would get a HUGE pot of water boiling, making the kitchen 8 million degrees with 100% humidity. Now I grill corn just to manage the heat. And also because the corn tastes better.

It seems really weird that borderline players didn’t know the procedure for filling out the draw. Like, there are 128 people in the draw for every major tournament, a handful of scratches are always gonna happen. A first-round loss in a grand slam event can easily be the biggest prize money a Challenger Tour player…

they’re fundamentally very different

My 529 (California Scholarshare) is invested in TIEIX, so I’m basically getting index returns minus 0.05% in fund expenses and 0.03% in plan fees. 8 basis points is more than an index fund will cost you in a taxable account, but not exorbitantly so. I shopped around when I opened the plan in 2014, looked for a plan…

Ah, you know what? I think I forgot to include reinvested dividends in my math.

I think it depends on the amount of money in question. I was fortunate enough to have my parents pay for undergrad, and I was frugal enough (and worked enough hours) that I graduated with about $10k in the bank. This was enough that I wasn’t tempted to take out a loan, but it still forced me to make frugal decisions.…

Congrats on the windfall, but those results aren’t typical. If you’re earning S&P 500 returns, your money would have roughly doubled in 18 years. Even if you measure from the lowest point in the last 20 years to the highest, you get something like 4x returns.

It depends on your income. You might have better options in an IRA, but if you make more than $63k, it’s not as straightforward as “an IRA is better.” It gets kinda complicated. Not so complicated that you can’t figure it out, but complicated enough that you shouldn’t be basing your decision on kinja.

When a deus ex machina cousin oliver addition is the bright spot, it’s not a good sign. We already had the addition of Joe, but at least that was a significant plot arc for an entire season. A hasty transition from “money is tight” and “our existing child is a burden” to “let’s decide, on the spot, to turn this…

I had this philosophy for a while, and then I started thinking about having kids. I was content with being child-free at 25. At 35, I’d be less so. (Obviously, this varies person to person.)

It depends. If you’d like to maintain the lifestyle a $140k income provides, then yeah, you’re behind. If you’d like to maintain the lifestyle a $60k income provides, then you’re in good shape.

Serious question for the cricket folk out there: what do they do in this situation? Wait around a while while they send someone to go get the ball back? Start a new ball? In another sport, a new ball would make sense, but as I understand it, managing the condition of the ball is a key part of the strategy of the…

I guess I’m thinking in terms of what I like/dislike in a job. I like using my skills to solve tricky/high-value problems that other people can’t solve. I dislike being on call at all hours, dunning clients, and resolving problems with “who values their time less” contests.

“It will suck at first” doesn’t sound like a “rich” lifestyle to me. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with your general philosophy, I was also on the stack-up-my-pennies side of things in my 20's. But I think you’re conflating “rich” with “financially independent.”