Y2HH

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 11, 2016 -> 04:10 PM) Exactly. Any business owner who employs college students or anybody for that matter and does not pay them a cent under the wink, wink guise of an internship should be thrown in jail. If I were an employer I would feel like the cheapest bastard alive. It in un-American. It is a fricking travesty. Our country should be ashamed of itself. Unpaid internships. I would LOVE to get one of the owners on the phone and give them a piece of my mind over this abhorrent practice!!! It is the American dream to work and be paid for the f***ing work not have the employer get free work out of somebody under the pretence of academia!!!! I did an unpaid internship in college but I received course credit for it. Gave me a bit of exposure to the job market and everyday life in the IT market...so it wasn't the worst thing I've ever done. It also taught me something...the world doesn't owe you anything...including money.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 26, 2016 -> 05:31 PM) I continue to be floored by a couple of things outside of the actual decision: - That major banks and financial businesses did not seem to conduct their own polling to help hedge any leave decision - That there have been no think tanks or teams that have outlined any vision for what the exit may have looked like This HAD been a discussion for 2 years. It's striking to me that it appears as if no institutions bothered to assume leave was a possibility. To hear them talk right now, this is starting from zero. What's hilarious is they actually priced in a market bump because they expected a remain vote...which is baffling in and of itself.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 26, 2016 -> 03:16 PM) Which is funny, because Gold is up a lot this year, and especially after Brexit. By a lot you mean by a lot less than the average stock.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 26, 2016 -> 12:27 PM) But if you sign up for Trump University we will teach you to beat this system! And I'm investing in Gold like the Fox commercials tell me! (Calmly walks away) When a snake tries to sell you oil that's proven to be able to do anything...I'd not just calmly walk away, I'd run.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 25, 2016 -> 09:32 PM) I think another mistake people in their 20's and 30's make it thinking they HAVE to discover the "next big thing," some tech company in Silicon Valley that's going to change the world and the way in which we live. Instead, it would have been easier just to have picked a blue chip company like Johnson & Johnson that manufactures products everyone understands (another Buffet idea, don't invest in something you can't explain in one minute or less) and has had a great rate of return for the last 20-25 years or so. Exactly, that's chasing the million dollar dream. I don't invest that way. Can you get lucky? Sure. Bit odds are against it...and in Vegas we call that gambling.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Jun 25, 2016 -> 08:55 PM) Y2HH said it best: the simplistic way everyone can understand, don't spend more than you have. And what's truly ironic about this is it's the hardest part for most people. Because they compare themselves to their neighbor without knowing the facts. Neighbor just got a new car? I want one too! Never mind the fact that your neighbor doesn't own that car, a bank does. Let's go borrow to keep up with them! No thanks. I have a 2007 and a 2011 vehicle, both bought used, both fully paid for. I don't care that my neighbor drives a nicer car than me...I care that mine is paid for.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 25, 2016 -> 08:08 PM) In terms of winning on individual stocks vs. insiders/institutional investors, there's no way Joe the Plumber can win. It's like Las Vegas or Macau. If we're talking about no-load mutual funds, like Vanguard/Oakmark/Legg Mason/Fidelity, etc., that's fine. Simple rules, 100 minus your age should be in stocks/mutual funds/equities, the rest in bonds. No more than 10% of your money in any one stock/company. Hedge your investments with a small amount of gold/precious metals. No more than 25-30% (tops) going into real estate/mortgage. Living here in China, there's no way in hell I would trust Alibaba, Baidu or any of the SOE's in terms of their numbers...no numbers can be trusted by banks, the government or individual companies. I invested in 500 shares of Tencent and 300 into Taiwan Semiconductor, but that's it, having lived here five years. Everything else is in a basket of mutual funds and individual companies that pay higher dividends, like phone/utility and energy companies...with some gold (Gold Line is a total ripoff, that's one company my father got tricked by) coins, stamps, baseball cards, but mostly in mutual funds (75%) and 25% in individual stocks through Edward Jones (I make all the trades, never have let them buy a single thing, I make all the stock picking and selling decisions). This is Bogelite investing 101. I agree with it to a degree, but I disagree about not being able to win via individual stocks. While I wouldn't put all my money on one, I've done really well picking safe bargain plays over the years with a high number of individual stocks. I've missed on some that I never bought because their fundamentals didn't add up too me, but it's not like I lost money since I never bought them. I've lost on a few, don't get me wrong, but I've made far more than I've lost. I also know what I'm doing, and that being said, I'm not an insider...I just didn't chase the million dollar dream when I was fine with making thousands. And that's the mistake most make...they chase dreams and turn investing into gambling.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 25, 2016 -> 05:26 PM) That said, as far as SS goes...how many Americans can really be trusted to manage their own investments, if they just ended that program (more than likely, phased out) and privatized it? 25%? Is it even that high? Do we want the government actively investing that money in the stock market (like here in China) to go for a higher rate of return instead of Treasuries/bonds? It's also an area a lot of people don't learn enough about (money management, in general) in either high school or college. There is a huge problem with this country/world when it comes to personal finance. I personally believe it should become part of a required curriculum in high school to equip people with some basic knowledge to be able to invest in themselves in the future. The bigger problem isn't that people can't be trusted to do it on their own, it's that we trust a clearly incompetent government to do it for us. And no, I don't want to government lifting the rules of what they can invest in. Oh, they'd love to do it, because they'd disappear that money real fast if allowed too...it'd go the same way all that money for the Chicago pensions went...into the ether. Oops! Our bad! The other issue is the media has brainwashed people into believing the markets are fixed and that the little man doesn't stand a chance. Which is utter bullocks. Are there things every person should know? Absolutely. Which is why we should be teaching them to everyone. And it starts with debt. Do NOT borrow money. If you can't afford something, don't buy it. And this is outside the realm of some medical condition you have no say so in. I'm talking about the broke guy that lives at home, has no savings but somehow owns a brand new Lexus and complains about how the world is rigged against him. No, it's really not. You're rigged against yourself by comparing yourself to others instead of worrying about yourself. If you try to keep up with he Joneses you'll someday find the Joneses were just as broke.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 25, 2016 -> 04:55 PM) I'm actually kind of playing devil's advocate here. My father was born in 1936 and my mother in 1929 and they both experienced the Great Depression and WWII, especially my mom. She's 87 now and would have a tiny government pension (she worked 20 years) if not for getting 60% of my father's. The most he ever made was $44,000 in one year as a GS tech writer at Rock Island Arsenal. Yet somehow he was able to save quite a bit (I didn't realize how much until he passed away and I had to help my mom with investments) and that was with my mom not working except part-time at Hardee's and Bishop's Buffet (just for fun and to socialize with people). He always paid for EVERYTHING in cash, didn't believe in debt of any kind (except mortgage, which was paid back early)...and he also pushed me to study econ and started a retirement fund for me (Nicholas Funds out of Milwaukee) when I was in my early 20's. I majored in English and minored in history and political science but didn't go to law school. My two best friends went to Northwestern, and I felt a bit disappointed but didn't push going there or Notre Dame because I felt it would be a waste of money, since Iowa's English program was one of the best and I also wanted to stay close to my g/f at the time. Now that I understand how the world works and what my father was trying to teach me. I don't regret not going to one of those fancier schools because my whole life, I've worked as a teacher, non profit program director, for the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor league team in the SALLY League and for an NFL football player's charitable foundation. I've never made more than $50,000 one year in my life, but I've still been able to save money (despite traveling to 40 countries and living/working in six)...enough to get married twice, have a 16 month old baby at age 46 and have a pretty fulfilling life, all things considered. (Well, except for the White Sox, haha, minus 2005). But yeah, I never took out a student loan in my life, and that was for my first wife from Russia to help her with her schooling (co-signer). And that was 50% about having a good credit history as much as really needing to take out a loan. I think I must have spent the same amount on 9 years of university (two Master's degrees and certification in American Humanics, which is non profit management) as my Chinese international prep school students spend for ONE year of education in high school, $15-17,500 USD. You sound like a well disciplined, rational person in that case. You sound like you were raised very similarly to me. The only debt I have now is a 15yr mortgage which I just refinanced. I live below my means and my wife doesn't work (stays home with the kids). You don't have to be rich to be successful in this country, which a lot of people seem to believe these days. We're both living proof of that.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 25, 2016 -> 11:02 AM) Well, you plan on holding all the members of Congress and presidents personally responsible for paying off those debts? Well, fortunately, something like $13-14 trillion is owed by America to its own citizens, so the situation is not as dire as it would at first seem. Agree. Agree. Disagree. The idea they don't owe anything? Absurd. They worked 30-40 years to earn that money AND paid taxes upon making it, spending it, or giving it away in various ways, such as property tax, sales tax, charitable contributions, etc. To pretend all of that money was just given to them and they "gave nothing back" is purely false. They already paid what they owed...it's not their fault the government squandered it on defense spending or whatever pork projects they had in mind when they got elected. Disagree. Speaking as a 40 year old, no, I don't feel responsible to "passing off a worse country than how we found it", because it's not actually worse. I see more opportunity around today than ever before. People just aren't seizing on it because they want to play the role of starving artist like most young dreamers. It's time we started waking up to the reality that is the world, instead. I wanted to go to an out of state university like most of my friends at the time did...when I visited them I was like, "YES! This is what I want!" The truth is, however, I had no idea what I was talking about at the time, of course, I was just a kid...and "life experiences" were more important to me than setting the stage for my future. Fortunately, (yes, fortunately) I couldn't afford it...and I wasn't about to take out a bunch of student loans because I was taught debt is dumb growing up...so I went to an in state school that was WAY cheaper. Instead of chasing dreams via liberal arts courses and graduating with a worthless degree and tens of thousands of student loan debt, I decided it was time to grow up a bit and be the adult I wanted people to treat me like. I went to DeVry full time while working nights AND weekends and I learned a trade that would be useful to the world. Was my life one huge party back then? No. If I wasn't at school, I was taking the train to work, and if I wasn't at work, I was likely at school or sleeping. Again agree...I'm not fond of the way our government runs. I'm not a fan of our insane defense spending, nor am I a fan of subsidies and corporate welfare. I wish they'd take that money and use it for better purposes, such as research, staffing national parks, and perhaps trade programs as a alternative choice to overpriced college degrees which are often useless. But to blame the older generation as if "we" caused this mess is absurd. I really don't consider myself old yet, by the way. This money, be it in the form of real estate, savings, 401k's or pensions...wasn't handed too us for free. We earned it and paid our taxes/dues along the way. The way I look at money these days is they print enough of it...so it's out there for the taking, and if you look in the right places it's not all that hard to get. Of my immediate friends, I'm the only one with a college education (if you want to call DeVry a true college education)...the others have high school diplomas and both make over 90k a year. How is that possible? They learned a skill the world cares about. Oh, and one of them grew up on welfare to boot, so let's not play the privilege card, either. The three of us grew up in blue collar Bridgeport, and not one of us has a "connected" city job...we all work white collar computer jobs. Oh and as for Social Security, I also treat it as something I'll never receive...I trust our government as far as I can throw it with my future. If I receive a dollar a month when I retire from SS I'll consider it a win. In the mean time, I'm investing for retirement on my own...I don't plan on needing them.

QUOTE (Tony @ Jun 25, 2016 -> 01:20 PM) Need to go to the Apple Store tomorrow, my Iphone is running WAY too hot, and the battery all the sudden is draining way too quickly when I use any app. It's an IPhone 6 that I purchased like 2 months ago. It seems like they say it could be a rouge app, but I don't know how to find what it could be. Settings > Battery > Check to see if any one app is burning through battery. If an app itself isn't listed, it's probably a iOS process run wild. These can often be cleared by doing a "hard" reboot. Press down the power/sleep button while holding the home button for about 10 seconds, you should see an Apple logo. A soft reboot is when you simply hold down the power/sleep button until slide to power off pops up on the screen. I'd also recommend going into Settings > General > Background App Refresh, and disable any apps you don't need refreshing in the background.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 24, 2016 -> 11:46 AM) People who live in cities should have their votes count less than those living in more sparse areas, got it. As opposed to people who don't live in cities should have their votes count less? And by the way, nobody said this. We're merely pointing out that the entirety of the US doesn't revolve around a few densely populated cities. Because, well...it doesn't.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jun 24, 2016 -> 10:17 AM) Alot of the things that were developed hundreds of years ago are probably not needed today. We had representatives of our communities and states because it simply wasnt possible for everyone to be in one place voting on issues. Today were could (in theory) put everything online and have the country vote. I'm pro electoral college myself...I don't want a few states controlling the will of the entire nation (which they already almost do). Also, as our nation moves closer to the idiocracy it's becoming (people usually know very little about what they're voting for or why), I prefer having such a safeguard.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 24, 2016 -> 09:31 AM) The markets moderated a lot since last night. At one point the Dow was down 700, now only about 400. I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that the Brexit means less to us than it does to them...it's also not instant like a lot of people seem to think. It's going to take them over 2 years to exit the EU. And if anything, the UK was like a EU-lite member anyway...they didn't even use the Euro and were exempt from a ton of EU mandates as it was.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 24, 2016 -> 09:29 AM) Or the electoral college, for example? The electoral college was created -- to put it bluntly -- to protect the people from themselves.

I was actually expecting a bigger knee jerk market reaction than what we got...this didn't even create a buying opportunity. I think this is typically being over hyped and overblown by the media, and despite US markets being down, they've gone up more than that in the past week, so it's like the needle barely moved. Dow is currently at 17,600 -- keep in mind that less than 6 months ago it was just over 15,000. In other words...meh.

QUOTE (CB2.0 @ Jun 20, 2016 -> 11:55 PM) Teaching hasn't been a "sacrifice" for at least 20 years. It's the most protected and "investement lucractive" job in the US. I would personally like to see teachers get paid six figures and pay their own way...like I do. In the real world, you can only put $16.5K a year OF YOUR OWN pre-tax $ AWAY per year, to a retirement plan. That's not even talking about HEALTH. In the democrat world, you become a teacher or union employee of a state, put in 20-25 years, and retire with your best scale for life and medical while dips***s like me pay for it. Then, wonder why all these teachers/cops/firemen are socially malformed and drunken f***ups all the time at the age of 55. It's not from their jobs. It's because they never learned how to be an adult. You seem to paint people with a broad brush there, brotha. Allow me to point out the obvious when I say not all teachers/cops and firemen are malformed drunken f***ups, fyi.

Finally got around to checking this. I have 13 discount codes for 2.25 each and 12 free general admission pairs.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2016 -> 03:01 PM) I agree with you, it needs to be done federally, with Chicago as a great example. The second part I'm not sure how that could be handled. I don't think all gun crime could be handled under federal jurisdiction We claim to be a smart country -- if we're actually that smart, I'm sure our "smart" lawmakers could come up with something.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2016 -> 02:55 PM) But laws haven't been made, and previous laws that were made were overturned under a new view of the 2nd amendment as unencroachable. Any restrictions are unconstitutional. Even the laws that are made are weak because it's not federal. Oh, so you make it hard to buy a gun in Chicago/IL? If only there wasn't a bunch of neighboring states within an hour or two that have no such laws. :| As for gun crime...if you nationalize ALL gun crime and make sentences mandatory WITHOUT parole, the gun violence issue will resolve itself to a great degree. As it stands, some states have weak laws -- and even states that have strong ones, we have judges that are way to lenient and/or don't care...and even when sentenced for 2 years, they'll do less than one and be out of the street again. Gun crime needs to become known as a one and done issue...get caught with an illegal gun, even if you didn't use it in a crime...say goodbye.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jun 17, 2016 -> 02:41 PM) The 2nd Amendment doesn't need to be overturned. We've already accepted that laws can be made that restrict gun ownership. To those that say look at the person. Why do we have so many people in the US who use guns to kill so many people compared to the rest of the world? Someone above mentioned getting rid of the 2nd amendment...I was merely saying it's not going to happen. There could be a lot of reasons for that...and availability of guns is just one of them. We have gang issues (Chicago, for example) that most countries do not have, we have a diverse population unlike anything most of these countries...and while that shouldn't matter, it does. Lot's of stupid people out there.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2016 -> 02:39 PM) Would you support that at federal level? Yes. I think this needs to be handled at the federal level if it's going to be able to do anything.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jun 17, 2016 -> 02:21 PM) I think part of the problem is that the majority of evidence on firearms is anecdotal. I don't think anyone would argue that we have a problem with the amount of gun deaths in this country (particularly when suicides are included). Do guns actually assist with home protection? What's the net impact there? I'm not a gun owner. I have never fired a gun. I don't have a particular interest in learning to be competent enough with a gun to be comfortable with one. But I don't begrudge using firearms for sport, hunting, etc. I do begrudge people who are unqualified - either because they aren't trained to handle a firearm, are intoxicated, or think carrying a gun on the street makes society safer - from owing firearms. We haven't drilled down on the specifics as to what makes gun deaths in the US unique, and how to reduce that in a way that satisfies both sides of the aisle (ie, not completely removing guns from circulation, and not allowing unfettered access to guns).* * As an aside, part of the issue to me is that suicide gun deaths are not treated that seriously by the firearm lobby, but that's probably getting into a tangent. Part of the problem is also what's in the public eye. The public often goes after the low hanging fruit even if it makes little sense in the grand scheme of things. While everyone seems to be clamoring for the ban of "assault style weapons", in reality, handguns are the cause of FAR more deaths than AR-15's. And it's not even close. Odds are the second amendment isn't getting overturned...SO, it's time we turned our attention to consequences (this will curb violent gang related shootings) AND make guns WAYYYYYYYYYYY f***ing harder to get, even for law abiding citizens if need be. At least then, while the law abiding among us may have to wait a bit longer, they'll still get the damned gun...but maybe then we can keep some of these out of the hands of the violent/mentally ill/crazy f***faces that ruin s*** for everyone else.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jun 17, 2016 -> 08:04 AM) Just at home. Oh, I thought you were on your summer trip or something.

I just realized I must have unknowingly gotten old around here...I used to be the one giving backhanded comments and getting suspended on a weekly basis...now I'm telling others to stop doing it. :|