Another beautiful day. Cool, then warm, and sunny and clear. Like yesterday. It did get to 80F and the sun was warmer, of course, but still a very nice day. I would like the same today. Unfortunately, this is like the 5th week without rain, so we are having a drought. Some of my potted saplings dried up before I noticed.
Yesterday’s work output was a mixed bag again. Small jobs, and one big one got done, so that was good. I cleaned more of the outdoor shelves that used to have food and cleaning supplies on them. That has been neglected for far too long. The bottom shelf is about half eaten through with rust too. That was the shelf with 6 gallons of bleach bottles sitting on it. Even without real leaks, the chlorine plays holy heck with steel. I’m betting a little got by the cap seal when the contents expanded and contracted with changes in temperature. That and the wet goo from the failed cans of fruit combined to eat the shelf. I’ll just swap the shelf for another one, since I have them. I’m glad I didn’t put the bleach on the top shelf.
The failed fruit cans are why I keep the cans in plastic bins in my main storage area. If a can fails, it doesn’t contaminate everything else on the shelves, only what’s in the bin. It also keeps dust, dirt, and rat poop off the cans. This is something to think about if you are using my milk crate system to organize cans. I think they better have a plastic layer between crates to protect the cans below.
After cleaning the shelves, I started clearing a path into the garage, so I could swap out the 7cuft chest freezer with the fridge I bought a couple of months ago now… It’s been running in the driveway like some hillbillies live here. Since my jobs are fractal, with every job involving several other jobs first, it took a while. Eventually though, I got the way clear for the chest freezer to come out and the fridge to go in. Then it was dinner time…
Today I’ll see about emptying the chest freezer into the other freezers and the top of the fridge. If I could, I’d find a place for the chest freezer too. Although it IS nice to have the freezer as a backup. If someone gave me a deer or a pig, I wouldn’t have room for it without using the backup, or if the backup was full.
After getting that sorted, I’ll do some more cleaning and organizing. Maybe a bit of repair on the auction item. It’s got a noisy fan that is either the processor fan, or the PSU. I think it’s the PSU, which is easy enough to fix as I have a stack of PSUs…maybe. Fingers crossed.
Then I have to get some stuff listed for sale. It’s been too long since I had money coming in, and there have been a lot of outflows… and I’ve got some big ticket items waiting to sell.
And now that I have most of a path into the garage, I’d like to get our normal Halloween decor out. I haven’t decided on the big display yet, but the smaller stuff can get set up. And maybe that will be enough this year. Dunno. We’ll see.
There might even be some stacking involved.
There should be.
nick
Definitely still around – I read it daily. Not what it used to be, though…
– – – – –
The discussions on Saturday about growing up poor, and the kids knowledge and reactions, got me to thinking about my family history, especially my mother’s side. She grew up on a ranch during the depression and then WWII. Money was tight. The running water was in the barn, not in the house. The kitchen heated the living room, but the bedrooms (Texas Panhandle) were just…a little bit chilly in the Winter. Baths were rare, and not fun in the Winter. She hated the dirt, and the work (she handled the chickens), and the whole lifestyle of her childhood.
When she grew up, got married, and ran a household, she went to the opposite extreme. The household was spotless. Towels washed after every use. Kid (me) kept squeaky clean in a perfect house. A completely understandable reaction to the way she had to grow up, but I was an overprotected, wimpy kid.
When we had kids, we let them run around outside, let them get dirty, and didn’t wash them down the instant they came inside. My mother, after one visit, wrote us a teary letter about how we let our kids look like orphans. I wonder what traumas we inflicted, that they will react to in their turn?
No clue. I only know about the operation because my wife’s transgender patient in Florida asked her several times to do the procedure on an outpatient basis in the office since she (the patient) went outside the US to Canada to get the first surgery and could not afford a second trip north for the follow up.
The patient wanted the work done for the cost of copay.
Yeah, right.
My spouse passed on the “opportunity”.
Slashdot was regarded as being unhip for a while.
One of the management chain at the tolling company gave me grief one day when he saw I had the page up, implying that Slashdot was for “old” people.
The manager was well north of 30, pushing 40, but he was chasing a bl*w job from the 20-something Baylor Music Ed major so maybe he felt that qualified him to look down on my taste in web content.
60F at 600am. That’s borderline chilly!
———–
Sarah Hoyt has been writing about how stuff propagates down thru the generations lately on her blog. Our kids are likely to be dominated by the 2 years of wuflu restrictions and the changes to schooling that brought. If they aren’t dominated by the coming economic collapse, or WWIII.
The “nepo baby” meme online shows a bit of the difficulty wrt raising kids into the family business. Bill Gates and other rich guys talking about how little to leave their kids shows another aspect of it. The book “Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson is mostly about the problem of raising kids to be successful, when your own success takes away the conditions that made YOU successful.
Poverty isn’t a virtue, and many people do not escape it. But the tools to rise out of poverty, hard work, discipline, morality, and belief that the future is mostly in your hands, those are the things we value. Could be selection bias, as we are the product of those things…
But objectively they lead to a better society and culture, where more people have more wealth, and more opportunity.
n
@Bob Sprowel: Might be overkill for your shop project: https://youtu.be/4RWNuhBpTck
We weren’t particularly poor as I was growing up. On occasion Mom’s household budget ran out before the month did and she’d get creative with meals: box noodles on waffles might be dinner. Pretty good, if a bit starchy. Dad was an up and comer with GE, Allis Chalmers and a heavy machine tool company, so we’d move house every couple years all over the Northeast and Midwest. I was the skinny, buck toothed, crew cut, new kid in the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 8th grades. Wore my 10 year older cousin’s out of fashion hand me downs mostly. Made me the bookish nerd I am today. 😛
OTOH, Mom’s mother, Grandma Stephanie, Eastern Europe immigrant, raised 4 daughters and a son on her own during the Depression. Never met my Grandpa as he’d succumbed from alcohol sometime around then. Frugal is the polite description for her outlook, When we’d visit during the 60’s, she still raised chickens behind the garage and the backyard was completely planted in rows of veggies on her city lot. Her son, my Uncle Joe, never left, so the 3rd bedroom was piled high with spare cast off clothing and the central furnace was more expensive than the oil heater in the dining room used as a living room of the duplex she owned.
Like everything else, Gates is full of gas on that topic.
The wife will take care of the kids. She seems like a weirdo too, but she has done a decent job with the offspring considering the freak show she married into.
My high school years were in a house that was built in 1900. A mill was brought on the property, trees cut, milled into lumber, and the house built from that material. Actual 2″x4″ lumber. Sawdust for insulation in the lower level walls. Upper floor had no insulation. Electrical was added, and done poorly, with too few outlets and overloaded circuits. Two wire of course thus no ground. Fusebox. Plumbing was limited, one bathroom and the kitchen.
Water was from a well with limited capacity. Baths were in about 3″ of water and only every 3 days in the winter. In the summer baths were taken in the creek after a hard day. Basically swimming with a bar of soap.
Both my aunt and uncle went through the depression and it really affected their use of resources. Back then I thought it was foolish with the skimping and reusing of stuff. Today I think they were correct in some cases that should still be practiced. The one I really did not understand was straightening bent nails and reusing the nails.
They both worked hard. Not only the ranch, but they both had full time jobs. My uncle taught school, the aunt worked for the phone company. The aunt did the cooking, the laundry and cleaned the house. It was not always perfect and I understand why. There was a lot of dirty clothes from the ranch and two hungry teenagers.
My brother and I worked hard with all the stuff that needed done. Taking care of 100+ head of cattle was a job. Irrigation of the fields in the summer. Fences that needed mending. Fixing stuff the cattle broke. Feeding some of the animals twice a day.
The heating for the house was a gravity feed oil stove in the kitchen and a fireplace in the living room. There was no heat upstairs. The fireplace would die down at night. On the really cold nights a glass of water placed in the room would freeze. A lot of blankets were needed to stay warm at night. I did sleep well covered up except for my nose.
We did not have much money during that time. The expense of the ranch consumed a lot of money. There were not many extras. We had food, clothes and necessities. There was not a lot of time for extra activities so it was not a big deal.
Fuel was from a commercial delivery service into large (500 gallon for gasoline, 250 for diesel) fuel tanks. Delivery was every month in the summer months. It was farm gas, no tax, so about $0.09 a gallon. Legally it was not supposed to be used in highway vehicles, but we did anyway.
In the winter it was not uncommon to lose power for days from downed trees. An oil stove that required no electricity a necessity. There was a hot plate on top that could be used to fix meals or heat some water for a very limited bath. One time we lost power for 7 days.
We were cash poor but rich in other ways. I just did not know it at the time.
I no longer am frugal with items and when something is passed it’s prime it gets tossed.
I didn’t grow up poor, though when my parents were starting out, money was definitely tight. Dad would travel fairly regularly for work. I remember Mom had an old wine jug (5 gal?) that she stored spare change in. When Dad was out on a trip, we would use that money to go out to eat somewhere. I never went without anything, so no complaints.
Looking back, I do see where Dad was, and still is, very tight with money. I definitely inherited that trait. I’ve been fighting it more lately. You can only save so much. As long as I’m meeting my saving goals, which I am, now is the time to spend a little more. As I’ve recently gone past the half century mark, I don’t want to wait until retirement to travel. That’s why we are going to the UK next year. After that, probably one big trip a year with multiple smaller trips. 2025 will Hawaii again, and we’ll be taking our son along as a graduation present. I can see another Europe trip in 2026, but that is a ways out yet.
I can very much relate to your scenario. My aunt and MIL suffered the same issue having both been through the depression. I have been reluctant to spend almost my entire life. I am now suffering from the same affliction. Looking for special deals, not buying something because of the cost, not taking that trip because it costs money.
It is difficult to change one’s spending habits. I am slowly loosening up but it is difficult. We have booked a cruise in May from Vancouver Canada to Alaska and back. Getting to Vancouver and return I decided that I am flying 1st class. Cost is about $1,000 more for the seats. It is a long flight from Atlanta to Seattle where we change planes. I figured it was time to stop penny pinching and spend a little more for some comfort.
It becomes more difficult when a person retires as there is no longer that income stream. Yes, there is SS but it is a significantly reduced amount. It was scary when I first retired as I would have to rely on savings, SS and VA. Which all together were significantly less than my salary.
My financial advisor says I should be spending about 4% per year of my investments. One because of the RMD that I will be experiencing this year. Two because I need to stop, for lack of better term, hoarding. The wife and I saved, and earned premiums, on the money for years. It is there to enjoy, not just sit on some spreadsheet.
Good luck as based on my experience it is a difficult habit to break. The stupid spending and financial
uncertaintystupidity of the US government is not helping.I sat my oldest son down one day when he was about 10 or 11, and told him the following facts:
It wasn’t until I was in counseling twenty years later in 2010 that I learned about acceptance of the past, and that both in my parents’ lives and my own, we “made the best decisions we could, with the tools and knowledge we had available at the time”.
As I have stated before, I was never poor. I recognize how forturnate that made me.
However, my relationship with money is not healthy. I was never forced to earn my money as a child, and I didn’t have high school or college jobs. I am not stupid, and I was taught a lot about theories of money and value by my depression era parents and my older Business major brother. But I spent a lot of my young adult years living off profits in real estate sales, and skimping and saving while looking for my next flip, or rehabbing houses which meant investing my capital in the house, not myself. Back in those days, we didn’t call it “flipping”. It was buying the worst house in a good neighborhood, and doing rennovations yourself, and selling for a profit.
By the time that changed and I went to a real job, I was full-time into husband and father mode. So all my wages went to that, none to me. My wife did not share my hobbies, and would not leave our children for vactations, and didn’t want to see Europe like I did. I worked 50 to 60 hours a week for decades, pluse commute time.
I divorced in 2009-ish, and after a while recovered my financial losses. I moved in with my new girlfriend, paid off my debts, and even took her to Germany, Austria, and Holland. I can spend pretty much whatever I want now, within reason.
But I’m 70 years old, and as I look back I see so many missed opportunities. I had the money, I was just afraid to spend it on myself. I had the wrong partner. I didn’t have the fortitude to plan what I wanted for myself, and to get it.
There’s a youtuber called Prepper Princess. She’s one of the OG prepper/frugality YTers, and she’s even more damaged psychologically than I am. It’s partly due to her own history of family poverty. Her relationship with money is so unhealthy it makes her unable to relate to normal people, and I’m not sure she sees just how bad it is.
She owns 2 houses outright, has a good income from investments, on the order of $100k. She gets a lot of her power and transportation from review units, she gardens and hunts/gathers, eats about 1 meal a day. She worked minimum wage jobs in spite that until recently, because she won’t touch her investment income. It also involved dumpster diving during her lunch periods.
She also makes her own cleaners, only uses laundry detergent every other load, eschews all disposable paper products, and other such corner-cutting. Up until the last year or so, her spending was below the poverty level, and it still would be except for health insurance.
Still, if things go south after the election, maybe we need to study her.
Heh, we are planning the same cruise for April.
Royal Caribbean? Serenade of the Seas?
I have never been on a cruise before, the spousal unit has. I get seasick very easily so I am somewhat concerned. Others have told me the ships are very steady with the computer controls in all but really bad weather. We booked one additional excursion. A person I used to work with now lives in Ketchikan and had volunteered to show us around when the boat docks.
We book an exterior cabin in the middle of the ship on the next to the top deck, deck 9 I believe. We also opted for a larger room and will have a balcony with two chairs and a small table. We opted for the soda package so that gets us stuff beyond coffee, tea and water. We declined the extra meal package and chose to grovel at the buffets like the rest of the swine.
Total cost of the cruise is about $3,500 with the soda package and one excursion. Made the down payment with the final payment due in a couple of months.
I booked early to get better rates. Well according to Royal Caribbean, who may just be conning us.
We fly in the day before and leave the day after. I need to find a hotel that is close to the boat pier. I have no idea how to do that beyond calling the cruise line direct and getting their recommendation.
It was strange booking the flight. I wanted to cruise out of Seattle. Booking on Delta there are no non-stop flights from Atlanta to Seattle as they all change planes in Salt Lake City. However, when booking from Atlanta to Vancouver the flight from Atlanta to Seattle, where we change planes, is non-stop. Strange routing. Something to do with how Delta allocates resources.
The plane from Atlanta to Seattle only has 5 coach seats left, for a trip in May. 1st class is wide open. All this according to the Delta seating chart.
I just watched a couple of auctions close with what I can only describe as a price collapse. Stuff is going incredibly cheap in some of the sales.
I think people might just be out of money and unable to deny it any more.
This Christmas is going to be a retail bloodbath.
n
(unless everyone just goes “F it, one last hurrah.”)
When I was younger I would walk past First Class seating on the way to my Coach Seat and was just wowed by all the “rich” people that got to sit in First Class. Then, I got older and realized that the majority of people in First Class are there on free upgrades. They travel for work and so are Extra Super Platinum Diamond Travelers (or whatever) and so if there is an open seat in First Class they get auto-upgraded for free (and often their traveling companions too). Some get it as a perk of their high annual fee credit card. Others are airline employees getting the hook-up. Throw in people using various reward points and miles from any one of a thousand loyalty programs to get upgraded. If after all that there are any First Class seats left, then they can be purchased at the gate for as little as $75 per flight leg. Once you realize that, First Class loses its magic. 🙂
Disney. My first cruise was two years ago on the TMC Classic Movie Cruise, which was also a Disney ship. I didn’t have any problems with seasickness.
It is on the Disney Wonder.
This year will be the shortest Christmas shopping season possible using the current calendar system, a little more than three weeks. Holiday sales were already going to be ugly.
I believe a lot of layoffs are being held until after the election.
One person’s asset is another person’s debt. Any 2%-er currently working is going to have zero experience with a real bear market, even the few who are decent.
My son’s friend graduates from a B-school “computer science” program this semester, and the only job he’s been offered so far is a chair and a desk at a big 2%-er firm for a year of cold calling people to offer financial advising services.
People have been doing that for over 15 years with the printing presses rolling in the basement of the Eccles Building.
Once you realize that, First Class loses its magic
– when I was traveling for work I would get the business class upgrade when it was available. Someone walked by, and got shirty with a sotto voce comment about “what do I have to do to get up here?” To which I replied out loud, spend 100-200 days a year away from your family, friends, and loved ones. He didn’t look too thrilled by my answer.
Also ‘be good enough at what you do that someone will pay you to do all that travel’. One year I got Platinum on SEGMENTS which meant I’d flown more than 90 segments that year. 92 flights iirc. Most people that aren’t flying twice a week only make it if they have long international flights.
Once when I checked availability of an upgrade on a flight from Alberta to Houston (a commuter flight in the oil industry) I was told there were more than 30 Platinum or above in line ahead of me… that Friday evening flight was my (and their) weekly commute.
n
Pre BellAtlantic merger, Delta out of DFW on a Friday afternoon would be filled with GTE employees, particularly any flight to LAX, Tampa, or Atlanta.
Delta effectively shut down the hub in Dallas post-merger
“Dave Ramsey: Trump v. Kamala’s Economic Plans, & the Diabolic Tricks Banks Use to Scam You”
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-dave-ramsey
“Dave Ramsey is the founder and CEO of the company Ramsey Solutions, where he’s helped people take control of their money and their lives since 1992. He’s also an eight-time national bestselling author, personal finance expert and host of The Ramsey Show. After battling his way out of bankruptcy and millions of dollars of debt, Dave set out to change the toxic money culture for good—making it his company’s mission to provide biblically based, commonsense education and empowerment that give HOPE to everyone in every walk of life. Learn more here: https://ter.li/xy2fik”
Ramsey is not wrong about debt. Debt is very dangerous but it can be used carefully.
When the credit cards get out of the control. it’s just poison. Been there.
Like, your bank pays whatever interest on your savings. Compounded monthly.
Credit cards compound DAILY. Include late fees and they jack the interest up a lot. Yeah, that 8% card is suddenly 26%. And growing. That little five grand card balance is all of a sudden pushing 20 grand.
Been there. Not proud of doing the bankrupt thing. But house and land payments take priority. Same for groceries because kids need to eat and the electric bill.
Credit cards are unsecured dept. After they charge your account off, it’s off of your credit report in seven years.
I’ve sent money via Zelle.
How does it work if I receive money? Do I have to check my bank balance or do I get an e-mail?
My wife’s MA in Florida drove the second most expensive Hyundai model off the dealer lot less than a year after a Bankruptcy Court decision which wiped out $30k in Capital One credit card debt spent mostly on clothing, new kitchen appliances, and a ski trip to Ober Gatlinberg in Tennessee.
It wasn’t like she had to use the cards to eat.
The emphasis on maintaining tithing while executing the plan is what I find disturbing about Ramsey.
Otherwise, Americans could do worse than to follow his plan.
>> The big ball vises get expensive quickly. And I might suck at engraving, or never get around to trying… so a cheap start is essential.
If it’s all the same, I’ll keep mine away from all the vices
If you don’t tithe to a church, give to charity. The tithe pays for the ‘good works’ that are supposed to be happening before commies moved charity to the .gov and made it mandatory.
n
>> Dish soap, Simple Green, and 80% alcohol hand sanitizer along with scraping and vigorous scrubbing seem to work, eventually.Dish soap, Simple Green, and 80% alcohol hand sanitizer along with scraping and vigorous scrubbing seem to work, eventually.
@nick, power washing?
– what ” pandemic-era savings”?? Even if there were “savings” somewhere by someone, that was two years ago. The payout was a couple of grand at the most, who kept that until now?
n
@nick, power washing?
– that was my initial plan, and I still might give it a blast, but I REALLY REALLY didn’t want that splashing back on me….
n
I subsidized the other adult in my household practicing private general medicine for nearly 20 years, writing checks even when I was unemployed and had to sell my collectible things on EBay to make a rent payment and buy the kid school clothes.
I’ve done my bit for charity.
Kamala Harris ‘Town Hall’ With Liz Cheney Blows Up on the Launch Pad, and Just Gets Worse From There
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/10/21/kamala-harris-town-hall-with-liz-cheney-crashes-and-burns-n2180889
January 2025: 50-State Open Box Season on RINO’s with Exploding Arrows Legalized discovered in Omnibus Spending Bill
New YouTube Channel “ChefFake” features AI-generated avatars of dead chefs making cutting edge recipes straight from the headlines
Episode 1: Juliuh Child demonstrates how to make wildlife-safe suet from Toxic RINO’S by separating the evil.
“Dave Ramsey: Trump v. Kamala’s Economic Plans, & the Diabolic Tricks Banks Use to Scam You”
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-dave-ramsey
“Dave Ramsey is the founder and CEO of the company Ramsey Solutions, where he’s helped people take control of their money and their lives since 1992. He’s also an eight-time national bestselling author, personal finance expert and host of The Ramsey Show. After battling his way out of bankruptcy and millions of dollars of debt, Dave set out to change the toxic money culture for good—making it his company’s mission to provide biblically based, commonsense education and empowerment that give HOPE to everyone in every walk of life. Learn more here: https://ter.li/xy2fik”
Ramsey is not wrong about debt. Debt is very dangerous but it can be used carefully.
Ramsey said that some guy called in to his radio show and blamed everything on his “Starter Wife”. Tucker almost lost it, he was laughing so hard.
$1.9 Trillion student loan debt.
Wow, the early voting at our early voting place, an old old SBC church, was wild today. I drove past the church three times and the 50 car parking lot was always full plus the people parking out in the street in the ditch. I will go vote when it slows down.
Student loan payments resumed in November of last year, but the enforcement with penalties such as wage garnishment has not started.
The penalties were set to kick in this month until Corn Pop extended the moratorium on enforcement. Interest will still accrue, however.
This has been a sad two days for my wife and I. My wife’s BFF from 5th grade onward has three daughters. The BFF’s youngest daughter, age 27, got some heroin Saturday night and overdosed after being on methadone (socalled sober) for three years. She passed away this afternoon. All I can remember is feeding this girl apple splices when she was 2 years old when my wife and her BFF were fixing our two families supper back in 1999 or so.
They are taking out her kidneys right now and giving them to another young lady in Fort Worth who does not have a working kidney who has been on the transplant list for eight years. Hopefully some good will come out of this disaster.
Highly recommend reading this article at AoSHQ and the Forbes story it links to:
THE MORNING RANT: An Outstanding Essay on How to Destroy a Company with Mercenary, Cost-Cutting Executives
—Buck Throckmorton
”For two generations, American companies have been run to maximize short-term financial returns instead of to produce great products. In the long run, this approach fails disastrously at both.”
That is the thesis embedded in a great piece I just stumbled upon, written by a gentleman named Gautam Mukunda.
It is also a subject I repeatedly revisit in my writing, but Mr. Mukunda’s piece may be the best I have read about the destruction being wrought on once-great corporations by executives obsessed with cost cutting to bring about short-term stock gains. There is one corollary he didn’t touch on, which is the damage being done to corporations by green and ESG distractions. I’ll briefly touch on that, but first here is a sample of Mr. Mukunda’s outstanding piece. I encourage you to link it and read the whole thing.
“From 737s To Sneakers, It’s The Same Sad Story” [Forbes – 9/21/2024]
Boeing and Nike are given as examples.
Mr. Mukunda goes on to discuss how CEO Donohoe was so oblivious to the products Nike sold, that several years into his tenure he referred to Nike’s proprietary “ZoomX foam” as “Zoom 10 foam.” But in the circles where Mr. Donahoe comes from, there is no difference between a widget and an airplane and a tennis shoe.
read the rest at:
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=411978
_____________
Unfortunately, I can’t recommend Mr. Throckmorton’s story. Click on the link and you get the “View Cookie Settings” notice. But it’s not “standard”–you have no choices at all: Targeting Cookies and Social Media Cookies are “Always On”. LOLGF. Bu-bye, BlazeMedia”
Sarah Hoyt has been writing about how stuff propagates down thru the generations lately on her blog. Our kids are likely to be dominated by the 2 years of wuflu restrictions and the changes to schooling that brought. If they aren’t dominated by the coming economic collapse, or WWIII.
The “nepo baby” meme online shows a bit of the difficulty wrt raising kids into the family business. Bill Gates and other rich guys talking about how little to leave their kids shows another aspect of it. The book “Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson is mostly about the problem of raising kids to be successful, when your own success takes away the conditions that made YOU successful.
Poverty isn’t a virtue, and many people do not escape it. But the tools to rise out of poverty, hard work, discipline, morality, and belief that the future is mostly in your hands, those are the things we value. Could be selection bias, as we are the product of those things…
But objectively they lead to a better society and culture, where more people have more wealth, and more opportunity.
My dad remarked today to me and my middle brother that he is amazed how well we have done in life, particularly financially. Both of us worked hard all the time, inspired by our Dad’s work ethic.
This Christmas is going to be a retail bloodbath.
Ramsey said that a big change in his lifetime, he is 64 like me, is that people used to start saving money in January for Christmas. Now people borrow money for Christmas and pay it back with interest.
He said the average person in the USA has $37,000 in credit card debt at 20+% interest. Yeesh !
He also said you cannot afford to buy a new vehicle until you have a net worth of $1,200,000. Otherwise you should be buying a used vehicle.
Ramsey also talked extensively about his bankruptcy in 1988. He had $4,000,000 in houses that he was renovating and flipping in 1986 secured by $3,200,000 in ninety day bank loans. The bank got sold and called all of his loans, forcing him to liquidate the properties he was flipping. He thought he was wealthy so he had just bought a new Jaguar car.
$1.9 Trillion student loan debt.
When my wife and I got married in January 1982, she stopped her schooling to live with me in College Station as I finished my last semester at TAMU. Both sets of our parents counseled us to both finish our schooling first but we ignored them as we knew better.
When my wife did not go to UofH in January 1982, that triggered payments on her federal student loan of $3,000 at 3%. I was not informed of the debt and got mad at the new payment of $35/month because we had very little money. I look back on that now and realize how much of an idiot I was (and still am).
“Trump’s genius McDonald’s stunt will fry Kamala at the ballot box”
https://nypost.com/2024/10/21/opinion/trumps-genius-mcdonalds-stunt-will-fry-kamala-at-the-ballot-box/
““Even if you flippin’ fries at McDonald’s,” Oprah Winfrey once said, “if you are excellent, everybody wants to be in your line.””
“I thought of this quote when Donald Trump turned up yesterday at a McDonald’s restaurant in suburban Philadelphia to work a shift making French fries, then handing bags of food to drive-through customers.”
“As political stunts go, this might have been the best I’ve ever seen, because it served two very powerful purposes in the presidential race.”
Yup.
How would you like to be the 16 year old teaching the 78 year old former President how to make french fries ?
“Overload (Kelly Turnbull/Peoples Republic)” by Kurt Schlichter
https://www.amazon.com/Overlord-Kelly-Turnbull-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC/dp/B0CK3PWJQ9?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number eight of an eight book alternate history series. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Kurt Schlichter in 2023 that I just bought new on Amazon. The author says that there will be another book in the series in 2024 but it has not been released yet.
In an alternate universe, the USA split into two countries in 2022: the People’s Republic (the blue, the west coast and the northeast) and the United States (the red, flyover country). Initially people can cross the lines easily but that gets more difficult as the years go on. The blue gets bluer and the red gets redder as time goes on.
This book is set in 2034 after the United States successfully invaded California and occupied it. But the occupation is not going well and the four star general in charge was plotting a coup to take over the red country. His coup failed and now he is in a federal prison in Texas. But his followers in both the red country and the blue country want him to reunite all the states together.
My favorite caliber is .44 Magnum.
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (1,435 reviews)
Lynn
Thanks for the link Nightraker. I’m borrowing several ideas from it. Will make a much easier and better project.
Overlooked a couple of things in my last post. Trimmed my back door that had not closed properly since I purchased the house. The wooden door seemed to be swelling. I used a sander on both the door and frame and also a chisel to rework the latch area to get it to open and close without sticking. I will be painting it tomorrow.
I also installed some old cabinets and pegboard in the wood shop area of my shop.
Today I flushed the 1999 Ranger’s radiator. It was very brown and had not been changed in 15 years. Also picked up a crankshaft from my storage unit to make sure my design for their storage was sized correctly.
Replaced the Maverick’s rear lug nuts. Rearranged some shop storage and got rid of a couple of boxes sitting on the floor and found the paint for the back door. Based on the link referenced above I redesigned my work bench for the clean room/office. Tomorrow I will start building it. I need to take some before pictures of my car projects.
Took me a long time to get my student loan debt paid off. Many dunning calls. Many deals. But I did. Never fell for the consolidation/capitalization of interest and fees though. That really sets people back.
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I’m going to try to get to bed. I fell asleep in the chair for a while, so IDK if I’m tired or not.
n
@bob, There are other guys on yt that do very similar cabinet projects, using that same idea of the bottom of the drawer being the slide as well… I think I’ve watched several other vids by that Witt guy, and liked them but they are def a “working ON your shop” not “working IN your shop” kinda thing. Which is fine for the guys who like to do the former rather than the latter…
And now I’m off to bed.
n