StrangeSox

The College Illinois plan stopped taking new applicants last year and is at risk of not actually being able to cover the tuition expenses down the road. 529's are good but you might not want to load everything in there as that money is more locked up for specific education expenses. If for some reasony our child doesn't go to college or gets scholarships etc. there will be penalties for withdrawing.

Not really. The overall spending by people on entertainment/events remains more or less the same, it just gets shifted around from say concerts to sporting events. There's usually a small amount of additional annual tax revenues, but it's nothing compared to the subsidies handed out to build the stadium. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/

If the owners have no loyalty to the city and their fan base, why should their fans have loyalty to them?

Quick check using this calc: https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/retirement/mutual-funds-fees-calculator.aspx Invest 100k, hold 30 years, 7% ror, comparing 0.05 and 0.15 expense ratios is about $10k difference over 30 years. Not nothing, but if you don't wont to worry about "well do I have the right ratio of bonds to stocks, what about large vs small cap, or domestic versus foreign??" it could be worth it. I like this general guide called "If You Can" http://tuttle.merc.iastate.edu/Bernstein_If_You_Can.pdf

Both Vanguard's and Fidelity's target date funds have slightly higher expense ratios than their regular index funds, but they're still pretty low (0.14 for Fidelity, 0.15 for Vanguard). Those companies' S&P index funds are more like 0.05 or so, but if you want a "set it and forget it," their target date funds aren't too bad. And at least as of today, Fidelity's 2050 fund and Vanguard's 2055 fund only have 10% bonds, so it's not like they aren't growth-oriented this far out. Our non-401k stuff is mostly in Fidelity or Vanguard target date funds. Now the target date fund in my 401k, lol. Expense ratio north of 1.00 last I checked.

Pritzker isn't running on "I'm not Trump" in any of the ads I'm seeing? Some of the local House races are tying vulnerable candidates like Roskam to Trump, but they still focus on the tax cuts for billionaires and their never-ending quest to kick millions off of health care

Some other good electoral reform results, too: (this is why the GOP purges voter roles and blocks voter registration expansion everywhere they can)

Turkish officials releasing some brutal details on what Saudi agents did to him

Double the House and vote by head [for Senate and President]

Initiatives for non-partisan districting committees are on the ballot in four states. They look poised to succeed in at least Utah and Michigan., not sure what poling shows in the other two states.

Republicans never run on idpol!

Cortez's big things are stuff like universal healthcare. Not sure that's missing the forest for the trees. And it's no different from "coming to take your money at gunpoint" for any other activity the government does, such as running detention centers for children they separate from their parents or supporting Saudi bombing in Yemen.

Rick Scott, who made his fortune off of the largest Medicare fraud in history, didn't really create a "blind trust" for his assets at all.

Conservatives don't engage in idpol, just those filthy degenerate lefties! A lot of conservative campaigns this year are centered on culture war (which is just another name for idpol) issues, including the Senate messaging on SC/judicial appointments. They're not talking about fiscal policy or even attempting to defend their tax cuts for billionaires, and they're only talking about health care to the extent that they are lying about their support for pre-existing conditions coverage.

And they're stacking the courts with the exact same set of FedSoc judges a Jeb or Rubio or Walker would have chosen.

Republican politics are mainly white grievance politics, which is it's own form of idpol

Yeah I'm not sure how any of those lines of attack, while all valid, would get Flake or Collins and Manchin to a "no" on Kavanaugh. I don't think the rest of the short list from the Federalist Society was much if any better on those issues, either.

If you're worried about deficits, vote Democratic. The GOP tax cut for billionaires that was not only going to pay for itself, it was going to pay down the debt has instead led to a deficit increase of 17% while corporate tax payments fall 31%. Who could ever have predicted this??

Was surprised to see Hoge's tweet earlier that Trubisky is either the 4th or 5th most accurate passer so far this year. Had the forced INT and the bad miss on the first drive, but he looked solid Sunday after looking phenomenal two weeks ago.

So pro-union, pro-workers' rights, pro-public option. I dunno sounds pretty progressive to me. I guess that's what's dooming Finkenaur to failure, because we all know progressive politics could never work in the midwest. In all seriousness, those are good policies. That's at least a decent candidate. She sounds miles better than the types of candidates people in this thread tend to dislike, the types who would just talk about HSA's and other garbage fiddling at the margins that won't actually help much at all.

It'd still be interesting to see what message you think would play to this guy.

you continue to be very angry at people who don't appear to be posting on this board