Excellent post - you're exactly right. Investing in high-yielding stocks is an excellent way to generate a (passive) income stream without investing too much time and effort in to the selection process.
My mother-in-law likes to buy us all themed socks at each holiday. I hope she's not reading this, because I'm about to make a confession: You can always tell when I'm behind on my laundry if you see me wearing a pair of socks with gingerbread men, hearts, shamrocks, etc.
The taxes are no harder with a dozen treasury notes than with one. You get one combined statement with the total of all your interest payments, which is all you need to do the taxes.
The only advantage to getting a few, larger notes instead of many smaller ones is if you're keeping track of everything manually, and have to enter all the small interest transactions by hand.
I'd be inclined to go with buying a note everytime you have some extra cash. For one thing, you're less likely to get hung up on whether you're getting the best rate. (Worrying about that sort of thing can drive you crazy.) Also, if you have just a few notes, your income can change a lot each time one of them matures and you reinvest the money (getting whatever the interest rate is then). With many smaller notes, the effect of falling interest rates would only hit your income gradually, giving you time to adjust.
Your entry has given me food for thought. I have not really explored the idea of investing in dividend stocks or treasury bonds. Most of my investing is for retirement and dividends are automatically reinvested. However, I would not mind a few extra dollars every six months or so. Thanks for giving my financial thoughts new directions.
Whenever I need storage bins of any size, post-holiday is the time to stock up. Just because something has a "red lid" makes it Christmasy? I don't think so. Sometimes it's rather garish, but if it's just for storage in your attic, does it really matter when it's 75% off?
I went to school years ago on federal loans and didn't know what FAFSA was, but that didn't impair my ability to get the gist of the piece.
What isn't mentioned that I wish I had known is that you don't get the full amount of your principal. For every $1K I was awarded I paid upfront costs for things like processing and default insurance to the tune of a couple hundred bucks. Later, of course, I got to pay back the full $1K plus interest. That's one major factor in feeling like the loans have more heft when you pay them off than when you spend them.
I paid off my loans, but haven't seen the dollar-for-dollar return on that investment. On the other hand, I can see how I have choice and social cache. CNN recently reported that my children should be steered to jobs that can't be outsourced. That's pretty much service and vocational work.
I bought next year's holiday cards ... 30 cards for $1.50. I keep a selection of greeting cards that I buy cheap as I see them for different occasions and keep them in a box that I can easily access when I need them. This also saves me a trip to the store last minute for b-day cards.
I also will admit that I have some light purple flannel pj pants with reindeer on them that I wear throughout the year. Who cares if you're wearing Holiday pj's when it's not the right holiday of the year (heck, pick up some St. Patty's pjs after the holiday for cheap and wear those all year too!) I can't say the same for holiday socks though. :)
my grandpa has this problem, only so far the only thing we dont have control of is the home shopping network. he is constantly buying things and making my mom (since he can't drive anymore) ship them back when they are not what he wanted and/or needed. he lives next door, so my mom has been disposing of all the publisher clearing house envelopes (coming or going) and such whenever she notices one. it just gets very hard because they grew up and lived in a time where most people tried to help and were for the most part honest. nowadays, no one in businesses try to help. its about the dollar and the scam and older people (for the most part) dont understand that.
With all due respect to the commentator, if you don't know what FAFSA is then you aren't and have never been (at least in the last fifteen to twenty years) a college student, presumably the writer's target audience. The acronym is the primary name for the form in the higher education culture for practical reasons.
Furthermore, it's common for even the most professional web writers to leave acronyms undefined because of easy-to-use quick reference resources like google and wikipedia.
As someone who lives in Las Vegas I have seen people chase jackpots at casinos only to lose substantial sums of money. For several years I worked for a Fortune 500 company in Vegas and witnessed a great many employees request transfers because they couldn't seem to control their desire to gamble. And I also saw a couple of people embezzle funds to gamble with who ultimately lost their jobs, their reputations and even their freedom for a breif period of time.
The allure of getting rich fast, of hitting the big one, of easy money will always enitce people into making poor decisions. Greed burns eternal and human nature will never change on that front.
Thanks everyone for your encouraging comments. I had not thought of parallels to caring for a child with special medical needs or mental disability so I appreciate your mentioning those. I could add learning disability to the list.
I also tried the grocery shopping service that friends have mentioned. I had tried it when my kids were younger but there were quite a few nuances in the interface that made it difficult to shop. I was surprised at how well the newer design worked: you can check what's on special and the price comparisons were simpler than analyzing bar codes at the stores (I can never tell whether the price per ounce is for the regular or sale price); and impulse buying is definitely curtailed.
I'll also mention that the book Two Old Women (an Alaskan legend) has helped me to see limitations/disabilities differently from the perspective of helping and being helped.
I think When you plan to go for a long road trip, don't forget two things GPS gadget and your favorite audio books.Because There are unexpected things along the roads such as bad cops,winding roads, weird laws such as in Cleveland it is illegal to drive while sitting on another persons lap [from http://www.turtlezen.com/weirdlaws.html] .... etc. Those things can make you go crazy and the accident will happen. I think travel audio books can calm you down and make you stay focus on the road, especially audio books about the places you 're going to. You will feel like someone telling you a story.
Somehow this post slipped past me. I came back to it and read it today and I am glad I did. I find myself feeling guilty when I don't "give it my all" but really I don't have the time or energy to do my best with every single task. I like the approach of "doing it with respect" much better. Thanks for the change in perspective!
If you add additional sugar to the must (in the form of apples, for example), you can cut down on the amount of white sugar you add by that amount. I'm not sure how to calculate the right amount, though.
And, yes, wood alcohol is made a completely different way. Yeast won't make it. (I think most wood alcohol poisonings must have been from industrial methanol that was passed off as moonshine by unscrupulous people who didn't know or didn't care that it was poison. They couldn't have made it by mistake.)
As far as your still not blowing up, that's a matter of not letting it get clogged up. (One advantage of just fermenting sugar water is that there isn't much there to clog up the still.) I don't think where you keep it is going to make any difference.
Thank you for taking on a difficult subject in such a positive, constructive manner. My disability is mental, not physical (I'm bipolar), but a lot of the advice applies to me, and I will definitely put it into practice. It's also important to remember that when you have a disability or are a caretaker, you have an invaluable opportunity to teach people that the mentally ill (for instance) aren't monsters and have a lot to contribute. In addition, I've been amazed at how kind and accommodating my coworkers and workplace have been when given the opportunity. People love to help and be helped. It's part of human nature.
Hi, I was just caught by the title of your post and was sorry to see how familiar your whole story was to me. My grampa slowly developed Alzheimer's and gave away his entire life savings over the last ten or fifteen years without any of the family knowing about it until the last few years. He was very secretive and defensive about his finances. Also very sad when he was aware of the scams and felt hurt by my mom and aunts trying to take over when he wasn't too cognizant. Luckily (?), his Alzheimer's had progressed to the point where my mom and aunts were able to take over his finances legally (and his mail, to hell with the law..! : ) But even with some time to work on it, they only managed to get to the point where his everyday expenses were half covered and when he passed away this summer, we all still ended up splitting the funeral costs, but there was no more debt (my mom and aunts were VERY aggressive with anyone claiming he owed them). There definitely needs to be some laws in place to protect our elders, but I guess I don't know where to start either. I guess for me, I see it as at least if we are aware of this problem with our grandparents, we can make plans with our parents for when they are that old. One thing I'm still dealing with is anger at those people for increasing my grampa's sadness/confusion when the illness was already taking so much from him. Again, really glad I stumbled upon your post and I'm really sorry to hear about your grandma's situation.
Happy New Year,
My name is Polly I am a Consulting / Distributor.
This is my goal going into businessto become a seamstresses this year, I have this talent that is waiting to be used. I would love to help you grow your clothing line. This is what I want to do. Please call me or email me back. I live in Pittsburg, CA. only 45 min away from San Jose.
Please call me 925 522 1437
I don't think a good decision can be made about this without considering what kind of education. Are you taking out thousands of dollars in loans that you would never be able to discharge even if you went bankrupt, in order to major in Philosophy? Art History? Anthropology? English or History but you don't want to teach? I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who has degrees in a low-paying field. Fortunately, I was able to work some, get grants and a fellowship, and end up with a minimal amount of loan to pay back after grad school. I was just barely able to pay back what little I borrowed. I had fun in school, loved almost all the courses, and gave little realistic thought to the money I might make in my field. I enjoy the work, but having a lot of debt would have sunk me. Taking out big loans would have been a fatal mistake.
Excellent post - you're exactly right. Investing in high-yielding stocks is an excellent way to generate a (passive) income stream without investing too much time and effort in to the selection process.
My mother-in-law likes to buy us all themed socks at each holiday. I hope she's not reading this, because I'm about to make a confession: You can always tell when I'm behind on my laundry if you see me wearing a pair of socks with gingerbread men, hearts, shamrocks, etc.
The taxes are no harder with a dozen treasury notes than with one. You get one combined statement with the total of all your interest payments, which is all you need to do the taxes.
The only advantage to getting a few, larger notes instead of many smaller ones is if you're keeping track of everything manually, and have to enter all the small interest transactions by hand.
I'd be inclined to go with buying a note everytime you have some extra cash. For one thing, you're less likely to get hung up on whether you're getting the best rate. (Worrying about that sort of thing can drive you crazy.) Also, if you have just a few notes, your income can change a lot each time one of them matures and you reinvest the money (getting whatever the interest rate is then). With many smaller notes, the effect of falling interest rates would only hit your income gradually, giving you time to adjust.
Can anybody recommend a good getting started book for income investing?
Would a person's tax return be too complex if he owned a lot of treasury notes that are small in size?
Is it be better to save until you can afford $10,000 notes? Or, is it be better to buy a $1000 note every time you have some extra cash?
Your entry has given me food for thought. I have not really explored the idea of investing in dividend stocks or treasury bonds. Most of my investing is for retirement and dividends are automatically reinvested. However, I would not mind a few extra dollars every six months or so. Thanks for giving my financial thoughts new directions.
Whenever I need storage bins of any size, post-holiday is the time to stock up. Just because something has a "red lid" makes it Christmasy? I don't think so. Sometimes it's rather garish, but if it's just for storage in your attic, does it really matter when it's 75% off?
I went to school years ago on federal loans and didn't know what FAFSA was, but that didn't impair my ability to get the gist of the piece.
What isn't mentioned that I wish I had known is that you don't get the full amount of your principal. For every $1K I was awarded I paid upfront costs for things like processing and default insurance to the tune of a couple hundred bucks. Later, of course, I got to pay back the full $1K plus interest. That's one major factor in feeling like the loans have more heft when you pay them off than when you spend them.
I paid off my loans, but haven't seen the dollar-for-dollar return on that investment. On the other hand, I can see how I have choice and social cache. CNN recently reported that my children should be steered to jobs that can't be outsourced. That's pretty much service and vocational work.
I bought next year's holiday cards ... 30 cards for $1.50. I keep a selection of greeting cards that I buy cheap as I see them for different occasions and keep them in a box that I can easily access when I need them. This also saves me a trip to the store last minute for b-day cards.
I also will admit that I have some light purple flannel pj pants with reindeer on them that I wear throughout the year. Who cares if you're wearing Holiday pj's when it's not the right holiday of the year (heck, pick up some St. Patty's pjs after the holiday for cheap and wear those all year too!) I can't say the same for holiday socks though. :)
my grandpa has this problem, only so far the only thing we dont have control of is the home shopping network. he is constantly buying things and making my mom (since he can't drive anymore) ship them back when they are not what he wanted and/or needed. he lives next door, so my mom has been disposing of all the publisher clearing house envelopes (coming or going) and such whenever she notices one. it just gets very hard because they grew up and lived in a time where most people tried to help and were for the most part honest. nowadays, no one in businesses try to help. its about the dollar and the scam and older people (for the most part) dont understand that.
With all due respect to the commentator, if you don't know what FAFSA is then you aren't and have never been (at least in the last fifteen to twenty years) a college student, presumably the writer's target audience. The acronym is the primary name for the form in the higher education culture for practical reasons.
Furthermore, it's common for even the most professional web writers to leave acronyms undefined because of easy-to-use quick reference resources like google and wikipedia.
Most worthwhile idea I've read in a while Phillip.
I love it!
As someone who lives in Las Vegas I have seen people chase jackpots at casinos only to lose substantial sums of money. For several years I worked for a Fortune 500 company in Vegas and witnessed a great many employees request transfers because they couldn't seem to control their desire to gamble. And I also saw a couple of people embezzle funds to gamble with who ultimately lost their jobs, their reputations and even their freedom for a breif period of time.
The allure of getting rich fast, of hitting the big one, of easy money will always enitce people into making poor decisions. Greed burns eternal and human nature will never change on that front.
Thanks everyone for your encouraging comments. I had not thought of parallels to caring for a child with special medical needs or mental disability so I appreciate your mentioning those. I could add learning disability to the list.
I also tried the grocery shopping service that friends have mentioned. I had tried it when my kids were younger but there were quite a few nuances in the interface that made it difficult to shop. I was surprised at how well the newer design worked: you can check what's on special and the price comparisons were simpler than analyzing bar codes at the stores (I can never tell whether the price per ounce is for the regular or sale price); and impulse buying is definitely curtailed.
I'll also mention that the book Two Old Women (an Alaskan legend) has helped me to see limitations/disabilities differently from the perspective of helping and being helped.
I think When you plan to go for a long road trip, don't forget two things GPS gadget and your favorite audio books.Because There are unexpected things along the roads such as bad cops,winding roads, weird laws such as in Cleveland it is illegal to drive while sitting on another persons lap [from http://www.turtlezen.com/weirdlaws.html] .... etc. Those things can make you go crazy and the accident will happen. I think travel audio books can calm you down and make you stay focus on the road, especially audio books about the places you 're going to. You will feel like someone telling you a story.
If you're interested,just check out this site
http://astore.amazon.com/listentoaudiobook-20
Take care.
It is called The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyzyn.
Somehow this post slipped past me. I came back to it and read it today and I am glad I did. I find myself feeling guilty when I don't "give it my all" but really I don't have the time or energy to do my best with every single task. I like the approach of "doing it with respect" much better. Thanks for the change in perspective!
They were marked down before Christmas, but they are REALLY marked down now. Cool post.
They were marked down before Christmas, but they are REALLY marked down now. Cool post.
If you add additional sugar to the must (in the form of apples, for example), you can cut down on the amount of white sugar you add by that amount. I'm not sure how to calculate the right amount, though.
And, yes, wood alcohol is made a completely different way. Yeast won't make it. (I think most wood alcohol poisonings must have been from industrial methanol that was passed off as moonshine by unscrupulous people who didn't know or didn't care that it was poison. They couldn't have made it by mistake.)
As far as your still not blowing up, that's a matter of not letting it get clogged up. (One advantage of just fermenting sugar water is that there isn't much there to clog up the still.) I don't think where you keep it is going to make any difference.
Thank you for taking on a difficult subject in such a positive, constructive manner. My disability is mental, not physical (I'm bipolar), but a lot of the advice applies to me, and I will definitely put it into practice. It's also important to remember that when you have a disability or are a caretaker, you have an invaluable opportunity to teach people that the mentally ill (for instance) aren't monsters and have a lot to contribute. In addition, I've been amazed at how kind and accommodating my coworkers and workplace have been when given the opportunity. People love to help and be helped. It's part of human nature.
You have taken a very positive approach to something, some people may spend a lot more time bellyaching about.
You have also listed some really simple and useful ways one can use to overcome the feeling of self defeat that comes with a setback.
Thanks
Hi, I was just caught by the title of your post and was sorry to see how familiar your whole story was to me. My grampa slowly developed Alzheimer's and gave away his entire life savings over the last ten or fifteen years without any of the family knowing about it until the last few years. He was very secretive and defensive about his finances. Also very sad when he was aware of the scams and felt hurt by my mom and aunts trying to take over when he wasn't too cognizant. Luckily (?), his Alzheimer's had progressed to the point where my mom and aunts were able to take over his finances legally (and his mail, to hell with the law..! : ) But even with some time to work on it, they only managed to get to the point where his everyday expenses were half covered and when he passed away this summer, we all still ended up splitting the funeral costs, but there was no more debt (my mom and aunts were VERY aggressive with anyone claiming he owed them). There definitely needs to be some laws in place to protect our elders, but I guess I don't know where to start either. I guess for me, I see it as at least if we are aware of this problem with our grandparents, we can make plans with our parents for when they are that old. One thing I'm still dealing with is anger at those people for increasing my grampa's sadness/confusion when the illness was already taking so much from him. Again, really glad I stumbled upon your post and I'm really sorry to hear about your grandma's situation.
Happy New Year,
My name is Polly I am a Consulting / Distributor.
This is my goal going into businessto become a seamstresses this year, I have this talent that is waiting to be used. I would love to help you grow your clothing line. This is what I want to do. Please call me or email me back. I live in Pittsburg, CA. only 45 min away from San Jose.
Please call me 925 522 1437
I don't think a good decision can be made about this without considering what kind of education. Are you taking out thousands of dollars in loans that you would never be able to discharge even if you went bankrupt, in order to major in Philosophy? Art History? Anthropology? English or History but you don't want to teach? I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who has degrees in a low-paying field. Fortunately, I was able to work some, get grants and a fellowship, and end up with a minimal amount of loan to pay back after grad school. I was just barely able to pay back what little I borrowed. I had fun in school, loved almost all the courses, and gave little realistic thought to the money I might make in my field. I enjoy the work, but having a lot of debt would have sunk me. Taking out big loans would have been a fatal mistake.