#(or at least all the ones someone in my tax bracket can reasonably buy…I’m not pressed about the prerelease staff ones that go for 20k+)

[sarah-dipitous]

The snow and cold is currently keeping people away from my branch so I’ve had so much time to make dumb decisions on eBay this morning

[star-killer-md]

Actus Reus, Mens Rea

@contesa-lui-alucard asked:

Hey hey happy sleepover my friend!! If it’s alright with you, I have two prompts from the Smut list that I’d love to see you combine for... mob Kylo and lawyer reader! Oh snap!! 15 & 37, if you please. If not, no worries, I still hope you have an awesome sleepover 😁 (“Make it hurt, baby.” + “Lay back and touch yourself. I want to watch.”)

Anon asked:

hello, may i request clingy/possessive kylo,, thank you

Thank you lovlies for your requests and sorry from the bottom of my depressed ass heart that it took me so fucking long. Anyway here ya go, hope you enjoy some mobster Kylo deliciousness. I’m so excited you liked him Contesa, and I hope you’re into it as well too nonny! Sorry it got long, I truly have no control over that. 

And thank you so much to @sacklersdoll for reading over this for me!

Word Count: 4.4k

Warnings: Angst (its me), Smut (its me), mentions of predator/prey dynamic (mostly as metaphor), possessive Kylo Ren, semi-public sex, no pronouns for the reader by they are afab, dominant Kylo Ren, some brat vibes, Kylo Ren is not nice, allusions to guns, some sorta stalking behavior

Ship: Mob Boss!Kylo Ren x Lawyer!Reader

Summary: You’ve started to take on some pro bono clients as a favor to a friend and Kylo Ren is Not A Fan™ of all the attention this guy has been paying you. After a few months of consulting on the side, you’re beginning to wonder if life working for a mob boss is something you’re really cut out for. Though you quickly learn that you very well may have passed the point of no return when Kylo shows up at your office to remind you just who exactly you work for. 

“I really can’t thank you enough.”

You shook the woman’s hands and returned her smile. Her son stayed quiet, looking at the ground, but mumbled his thanks as well. He was a good kid. Just pissed off the wrong neighbor. One of those ‘get off my lawn,’ ‘good ole American dream’ types who thought welfare was a sign of the devil, and had it out for everyone in the lower tax brackets. 

“Really, it’s no problem,” you walked them to the door, leaving her your business card. “I’ll see you both at the courthouse on Monday.” 

Evan was waiting in your office when you returned. His patent leather shoes rested precariously on the corner of your desk and you knocked them off with a huff. 

“See you’ve made yourself at home,” you said, crossing your arms and staring down at him in your chair. 

He shrugged and stood under your scrutiny, moving around to take the seat across from you. Evan Goodman was an old friend from undergrad. You often got the impression he was still that same cocky frat boy in the head. Still flashed the ‘my daddy has more money than you’ smile on occasion when he really wanted to get under your skin. With his slicked back hair, unnervingly straight teeth, and his annoying prosperity despite never putting in much effort it was somewhat shocking the two still spoke. He was simply not the type of person who had ever needed to try. Success came naturally to him, and much to your dismay.

“What can I say? You’re a very gracious host,” he mused and leaned forward on the desk. “So, how did it go?”

You sighed, “They’ll be alright, might get saddled with a fine but the charges aren’t that serious.” 

“Good, Rosa’s an old friend. I would have helped her out myself, but not really my deal ya know?”

“Yeah, Mr. Tax Attorney, I get it.” 

Evan was kind of a dick, but he was also the kind of friend who would sit on the bathroom floor with you, hold your hair back and sing horrendous parody versions of ABBA no matter who heard. So you couldn’t hate him entirely. That also meant that when he came to you with cases like this, a favor for a friend or whatever the situation may be, you had a hard time refusing. 

It was also a convenient front for you not-so-legal legal work you’d been invested in for the past few months.

“Seriously, I know I’ve been asking a lot of you recently,” he flashed you that god awful grin and kicked his feet up again. “You can tell me to fuck off if it’s too much.” 

He had been coming to you for pro bono work with increasing frequency, especially over the past month or so, but again, you didn’t wholly mind it. You went into this kind of work for a reason. Though, you were starting to get the feeling that a certain, brooding, less than lawfully abiding businessman did not feel the same. 

Kylo Ren dealt frequently with the shady, black market underbelly of capitalist society, but you were less accustomed to his world and not completely ready to throw yourself to the hounds just yet.

You had already missed more than a few meetings and canceled on dinner tonight to meet with Rosa. To be fair, it wasn’t as if he’d made any indication this ill-defined whatever-it-was going on between the two of you was anything serious. And you were only his consultant, for now, so this took precedent anyway. At least that’s what you tried to convince yourself of. Definitely not a way to avoid thinking about fucking your boss who also happened to be in with the mob. 

Definitely not.  

“I wouldn’t have agreed to help if I couldn’t manage it,” you yawned softly and stood to collect your things. 

It was late and you were beginning to fantasize about how soft and warm your sheets would be. If you got back in time you could pop them in the dryer and get in an episode or two before bed. 

“Hey, let me at least buy you dinner or something since I kept you out so late,” Evan parked his skinny frame in your path to the doorway. 

“You’re going to apologize for keeping me out late, by keeping me out even later?”

“Do you want free food or not?”

Pursing your lips, you stared at him for a few moments. He really did know all your weaknesses. You had skipped out on meeting with Mr. Ren—or Kylo or sir or whatever the hell you were supposed to call him now—already tonight, however, Evan was sure to take you somewhere nice and it wouldn’t be so morally repugnant if it was just as a ‘thank you….’

“Okay, fine,” you conceded and let him lead you out to the parking garage, locking the office up behind you. 

***

The next morning you stumbled past reception in a haze. Both from lack of sleep, and the bitingly cold winds battering your building despite the neighboring high rises blocking the brunt of the gale. The young woman at the desk informed you tersely that a Mr. Goodman was already waiting for you in your office and that you should really get here on time if you were expecting clients this early. 

You agreed that, yes you probably should but, you know, “trains and all that mess,” and tried not to judge her too harshly. After all, she was the barrier between you and the hundreds of calls this place received daily. 

Before slipping through the door with your name plate, you hung your coat on the rack and switched your phone on. It’d died on you last night amidst the allure of fancy, late night dinner and your sleep deprivation riddled brain had not cared enough to plug it in before bed. Fuck Amazon, but thank god for its speedy delivery of portable charges. 

You chewed your lip as the lock screen came to life. One missed call and a text. Both, of course from the most anxiety inducing sender, Kylo Ren. Because why would it be anyone else? His name menacing even typed out in standard black font. 

The text read:

Meet me at 8am.

It was very much like him—a command with punctuation and absolutely no details. The message receipt showed it was sent two hours ago, and it was already half past eight. Shit. Your fingers shook as you pulled up his contact and called. Every interaction left you coursing with adrenaline. Even now, miles away listening to the dial tone was nerve-wracking. Your heart pounded, hands slick in their grip on your phone. Maybe it was because you were never sure where you stood with him. Maybe it was because he was handsome and he knew it. Strong and he knew it. Intimidating and mysterious and closer in some ways to a Greek god than a man. He was all encompassing, and filled every available space in any room he occupied. 

Sometimes you thought you might choke on his presence. 

It rang once, twice, three times before cutting out completely. You stared down at the blank screen, biting your lip and shooting off a quick text. You were sorry, something important had come up, you would meet him the second it was convenient. 

Evan slapped you heartily on the back when you came into the room. He was holding a bouquet of flowers, evergreen with small white blossoms. 

“So, how many hours did you manage last night?” he asked, smiling his shit eating smile and seemingly unaffected despite the fact that he had to be running on just as little sleep as you.  

“I’m not even sure at this point,” you groaned as you tossed your bags down behind the little metal desk. “Time ceases to exist when you take trains past midnight.”

“Fair enough. Hey look,” Evan waved the greenery in your face, “courtesy of Rosa’s shop. She insisted I bring you something as thanks. I figured you could put them out in the front or something to brighten things up.” 

“They’re lovely. Please tell me you’re only here as a glorified delivery boy.”

His shoulders slumped at your lack of amusement, but before he could quip back the landline in your office rang. You answered, holding a finger towards Evan and leaning against the edge of the desk. It was the receptionist, Jess was her name? Maybe? You could never remember, someone else always addressed the holiday gift cards anyway. 

“There’s someone here to see you at the front desk,” she clipped, almost more exasperated than before. 

You told her you’d be right there and hung up. Evan grabbed his coat as you headed out, holding the door for you and following into the hall. 

“I’ll leave you to it if you’re busy, but give me a call after Monday and tell me how it goes,” he continued rambling as you came out into the front.

You had a smart comeback prepared, something about how simple the case was, he should have more faith in you, he was the reason you were busy in the first place, etc…but every word turned to ashes on your tongue when you saw him. 

Kylo Ren, standing right there at the desk and glaring at your receptionist. His suit was dark blue and ironed to perfection. Each leg was creased perfectly down the front and the jacket sat flawlessly on his wide set shoulders. He was a wall of unimaginably expensive fabric and what looked concerning like barely contained rage. You could see it in the twitch of his eye, the set of his jaw, and in the way his gaze landed on you the second you walked in. 

The way a predator immediately hones in on its prey. 

You froze just feet from him in the lobby, floundering like a fish on a hook. 

Evan, for his part, seemed not to notice the tension at all and continued to say his long winded goodbyes, placing the flowers in your hands and completely unaware of the slow, measured tightening of Kylo’s massive hands into fists at his side. 

“I’m free on Monday evening so we should—” 

“She’ll be busy.” 

Evan frowned, turning to face the man standing before him, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Kylo’s voice was a dark thing, low and rumbling, “She will be otherwise occupied.” 

His words were punctuated by a step towards you, one paw of a hand easily gripping your entire jaw. Lucky he did too, otherwise it would have dropped straight to the floor when he shot one last cobra strike glare in Evan’s direction, and pressed his mouth to yours. Right there. In the lobby. For everyone to see.  

The absolute bastard.

His lips were pillow plump and softer than the silk lining of his suit—and even through the surge of shock and embarrassment and more than a touch of anger—you felt your heart throb at the way he licked into your mouth. 

The flowers tumbled from your hands onto the floor as everything in you went limp under his touch. This was nowhere near the first time you’d tasted him, but it was like this every time. Like drinking ambrosia. An otherworldly experience. 

But that didn’t stop the sharp pain of his crushing grip on your arm, the way he nearly lifted your feet off the floor when he pulled away to drag along behind him. You could hear Evan spluttering in the hall behind you, the receptionist going back to clacking at her keyboard as if nothing had happened. 

When Kylo opened your office door he just about threw you inside. You tripped as he tipped you in, stumbling and catching yourself on the edge of your desk. The power behind his hand alone was undeniable. You shuddered at the thought of the array of purple fingerprints he would leave behind. It made your mouth dry and your heart sink. Confusing and delicious. 

And left you seething nonetheless. 

“What the fuck was that?!” you were not calm, so you didn’t attempt any semblance of it. 

“You didn’t answer me,” he said, level as he always was. 

The quiet before the storm and all that. 

“About the meeting? I tried to call, my phone died—”

“Because you were out catching trains at all hours of the night, I’m aware.” 

You paused, glaring at the wall of muscle between you and the door, “How did you know that?”

“So you’re not denying it?”

Kylo stalked towards you like a beast in his tailored suit and polished leather shoes like talons. You could hear your heartbeat, hear the blood rushing in your ears. Just like a rabbit in the sightline of a hawk, you were clearly being hunted. 

“Why would I deny something I’m not trying to hide?” your voice came out horse as he caged you between the desk and his chest, arms on either side to block any route of escape. 

“No you are certainly not adept at subtlety,” he said and you couldn’t take your eyes off the way his tongue moved behind his teeth. “This is the fifth time that idiot in the hall has distracted you from work.”

“That’s not an answer,” you tried to spit the words but his eyes were boring into you. The honey of them spilled down your spine and made you shiver. “How did you know? You are not entitled to any information pertaining to my personal life, regardless.” 

“Watch your mouth,” he growled. “Entitlement has no part in this.”

You were entering dangerous territory, though stopping curiously did not occur to you.

“I don’t think you have the right to be throwing out commands right now, not after that display.”

“Have you forgotten who you work for?” Kylo hissed at you, hands wrapped around the metal of your desk so hard you thought it might warp under his fingers. 

“Of course not,” you desperately tried to keep your voice down lest anyone get even more a spectacle. 

“Then what is this?” one hand left the desk and pulled a phone from inside his jacket. 

The screen lit up, and you looked in horror at pictures of yourself. Pictures of yourself from last night. Pictures of yourself from last night at dinner with Evan, interspersed with shots of you crossing the street, waiting on the train platform, and stumbling back into your apartment. Each was clearer than you’d expected, presumably from some insanely expensive surveillance equipment. You had been out for hours, and you had been watched the whole time. 

You narrowed your eyes, flicking back and forth between Kylo’s face—the graceful bridge of his nose pointed down at you—and gaped. 

“You had me followed…” you breathed the words into the slowly shrinking space between your bodies. 

He simply nodded, as if, somehow, you were foolish for not having considered this before. Perhaps you were. Perhaps you had no idea what you had gotten yourself into. Perhaps you had signed on for much more than a paycheck when you agreed to work for Kylo Ren. 

“I can’t have my employees getting distracted.”

Kylo slowly drifted ever closer, shoulders bent so he was eye level with you. He pressed further into the desk, pinning you between his body and the hard surface that bit into your ass. Something long and thick and hard nudged your thigh. 

“I don’t know why you though having me followed was necessary—” 

“You’re an arrogant little slut who needs to be reminded of your priorities,” his hand snatched your leg and wrenched it open so he could stand between them, “ I am not something you do on the side.” 

You could hear the way his teeth grit out the words, the way they formed as a growl deep in his beast’s throat. The hand still settled on the desk, skimmed up your hip and chest, his fingers 

biting into your jaw. 

“Do you understand me?”

Your lips were shut tight in a thin line, eyes wide and staring up like the prey you were. The silence only provoked him more. Snarling, two thick fingers wrenched your mouth open, pressing hard on your tongue and making you gag around them. 

“Answer.” 

Kylo Ren almost always spoke in commands. Having power did that to people, and rarely did it ever compel you, but his words sunk deep into your bones. Dredged up some dark, instinctual need to obey. To submit to this show of control. 

“Yes,” you mumbled around his fingers in your mouth, drool slipping past your lips when they moved. 

“Yes, what?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

You watched him suck his teeth, grabbing your face tighter and dragging you close so he could spit directly into your open mouth. He slammed your jaw shut, nearly taking off the tip of your tongue and hissed into your ear. 

“Swallow.” 

Again, you did without a thought. And it was disgusting, but invigorating, sent off some spark in your stomach with how easily he bent your body to his will. There was no man like him, you decided. And maybe this was simply because Kylo Ren was not a man. That term alone would never do him justice. 

In one shockingly smooth motion, you found yourself flat on your back, ass hanging off the edge of the desk with his hands on your hips. He ground himself against you, the throbbing of his cock evident even through the layers of clothing. That feeling on its own had you soaked through, thighs sticking with liquid excitement. 

“Remember who you work for,” he growled into your neck, licking a long stripe up your throat and sucking at the exposed skin. 

But it was very clear to you what he really meant. 

Remember who you belong to. 

You slapped a hand over your mouth as he bit down on the skin just above your shoulder, laving his tongue over the stinging flesh. Kylo pulled back, frowning down at you and yanking the hand away from your face. One held both your wrists in a vice lock while the other ripped your panties straight down your legs and left the dripping fabric discarded on the carpet. 

“No, they’re going to hear you,” he grunted, and pulled one of your hands down, pressing it to your slit and running your fingers through your slick. “Go on, touch your fucking pussy and let them know what a little whore you are for me.” 

It was something about his voice. Something in the way it left him, its timbre, its wonder, unquestioning. You could never refuse him. 

So, with a small nod you parted your folds, head resting on a stack of files as you drew slow circles around your clit with a shaky hand. His eyes never left your cunt, tracing the movement of your finger and the trail of wetness that seeped from you to the desktop. Softly, you gasped as the familiar placement of your fingers made you clench and arch up. Kylo’s rubbed small circles into your inner thighs with his thumbs, kneading the flesh there. 

When the spark was there, the lovely pulsing in your nerves alight, you dipped down, teasing and slipping inside, grinding down as best you could on your hand. It wasn’t enough, but nothing ever was since you’d been ripped open on Kylo’s cock. 

Evidently he did not find your work sufficient either. 

Another finger joined yours, stroking your lips and circling your entrance. His touch made you whine, the promise of hands that were not your own never ceasing to illicit a new gush of pleasure. 

“I said,” he murmured, his touch so terribly feather light. “Let them hear you.” 

He was like a gunshot, sudden and forceful and almost instantly had you screaming. Kylo slammed his fingers into you, so full and so deep, curling hard against that lovely spot inside. 

“Kylo, god, please—” you moaned long and low, your face burning with the knowledge that the walls were barely thick enough to keep your phone calls private, much less the shameful noises he pulled from you. 

“What was that?” he panted, adding another finger and pumping them deep into your cunt. “You can do better.” 

Your teeth dug so hard into your lip you thought it might bleed, but you couldn’t take much more. The ledge was approaching—Kylo Ren knew it—and he was determined to push you straight into the fire. 

You choked when his deliciously thick fingers were ripped from you, walls fluttering around the awful emptiness. Your head lolled back as you listened to him work the buckle of his belt and slacks open, and when you did glance down your mouth watered at the sight. Kylo—impossibly long cock throbbing in his hand—stood between your legs, stroking himself from root to tip. You watched little pearls of precum bead at the head while his thumb swiped across to smear them along his length. 

“You are insane,” you hissed through gritted teeth. 

Did you need to keep this position? No, technically you would be more than well off on the salary Mr. Ren so graciously provided. However, you could not mentally deal with being terminated for getting dicked in your office during work hours. 

Kylo smirked, the edge of his perfect cupid’s bow cocked back and aimed straight at your chest. Without warning, he sunk into you, straight to the hilt and threw his head back as you sobbed with the sharp sting of being split in two on his cock. 

“This is what you do,” he growled into your ear, hands on either side of your head as he worked his length back out only to pound into you again. “You work for me and you take my cock and don’t ever fucking forget that.”  

Your legs were wound so tightly around his waist that had he been any other man, his ribs would have cracked under the pressure. His hair, falling in black, satin waves, was gorgeous even in the sterile office lighting. You threaded your fingers into it at the roots and held him while your body rocked against the desk. It’s metal surface pinched at your sink and made your back ache, though that was nothing compared to the burn of Kylo’s thrusts, sliding against your walls. You felt him in your throat. You always did. That was simply the way things were with him. He filled you painfully, thoroughly, took over all of your senses until it was just him. 

And, strangely, it was the most alive you’d ever felt. 

He was unlike anyone you’d ever known.

You couldn’t scream for him, but you could still let him taste the desperation, the willingness in your body to mold against him. So you kissed him, dragged him by the hair to meet your lips and licked past his teeth, gasping and moaning on his tongue as you sucked it hard and cried into his mouth. 

And he drank you down, picking up a punishing rhythm and breaking blood vessels where his hands gripped your hips. One drifted lower, thumb pressing down hard on your clit as your cunt clenched around his length. The desk was lifting off the ground with every thrust, the room filled with the wet sounds of your bodies and you were quickly melting under him. 

Warmth was spreading, growing, building out from your pussy, igniting in your veins. He was right. This is what you did. This is what he did to you. This toe curling, lip biting, bone shattering kind of pleasure. 

Oh you were so royally fucked. 

“I—oh shit—Kylo I’m,” you pulled back just enough to pant out a warning before the wave took you. 

So hot, it washed over your skin and made your legs shake and your hands leave his hair to dig your nails into his chest through the crisp white button down he wore. 

“Feel that?” he grunted as you convulsed and shuddered under him, “Feel how this pussy was made for me.” 

You nodded, buried your face in his neck and held on as he worked you through your climax and straight into his own. Once, twice he ground his cock deep in you, feeling how tight you were around him until he was spent and spilling hot, thick ropes of cum that coated your walls and dripped out around his length. 

He panted, lazily rolling his hips, fucking you slowly until finally, he came to a halt with his softening cock still sheathed inside you. Seconds past, or maybe hours, you couldn’t tell. Kylo tended to have that effect on you. Time slipped away so easily in his presence, like there was never enough of it. 

When he did pull away, you stayed with your back firmly planted amidst the mess of scattered paperwork and manila envelopes. He rose to his full, towering height and tucked himself away, straightening the wrinkles in his suit and eyeing you only once from the side. You admired his profile, you never understood until now what the meaning of the word “regal” truly was. 

Under the dictionary definition, his picture surely would be there, staring at you down the bridge of his marble carved nose. 

You sat up on your elbows as he stalked towards the door. 

“Was that all you came for?”

Kylo paused, broad back still facing you and leaving the room feeling irrevocably empty with just the intention of his absence. 

“We’ll reschedule for five tonight,” he said, filling the door frame completely. “Don’t be late.” 

The door clicked shut behind him and the sound of it made you collapse back onto the desktop. You laid there for a moment, leaking your combined spend and aching. The throb of him settled in your muscles and festered. But the worst part was the other ache, the pain of being without. And maybe you had been a bit avoidant. Maybe this work really was so you didn’t have to see him. Because if you saw him you’d end up fucking him—which was fine, which was good, which was great actually—but then he would leave. And you couldn’t decide which wanting was worse. The wanting before or the wanting after. 

Maybe it didn’t matter. 

You had more important things to think about anyway. Like securing the receptionist an incredibly large holiday bonus, assuming you still had a job here at the end of the day. 

Maybe that didn’t matter either. 

It might be high time you made a commitment to whatever the hell kind of mess you’d stumbled into. Kylo Ren was an enigma in the best kind of way. Maybe you should stop running from it. 

[eightyonekilograms]

Someone on the Discord brought up fertility

Just like last time I'm lazy and just going to dump it instead of editing.

[5:10 PM] Me: Oh boy, I have thoughts about this

[5:12 PM] Me: I haven't brought it up here but demographics has been one of my covid obsessions. I got a couple books about it (What to Expect When No One's Expecting, One Billion Americans, etc.), read all the articles, etc.

[5:15 PM] Me: I agree with you about a couple things: namely that if we had "infinite free energy" we'd be a a lot better off in many ways including demographically, but I disagree with most of your other points.

[5:18 PM] Me:

Also we need not assume decline in population growth is chronic.

This is a tricky statement because there's a social aspect and a mathematical aspect. Socially you're correct in the sense that whatever trends are driving the current decline could, in theory, reverse at any time. But mathematically, population decline is exactly symmetrical to population growth: it's exponential (technically it's logistic, but that's the same as exponential in the short term), because having fewer people means fewer people to make more people later on.

[5:20 PM] Me:

Infact there is some evidence to suggest that we actually did more science when we had 4-6 billion people.

I disagree with the implication here: we used to do more science because there was more low-hanging fruit, which is now plucked, and further discoveries require more resources (human and financial). Actually one of the big reasons I disagree with Ray Kurzweil and the other singularitarians is that when they show these impressive-looking exponential curves about scientific progress, they quietly hide under the rug that these increases are requiring ever-more investment (again, in both people and money) to accomplish. Just to pick a random example, every time chip manufacturers go to a new process (14nm -> 10nm -> 7nm -> 5nm -> 2nm etc.), the cost to build the fab basically doubles. I remember a couple years back Intel had to spend $5 billion to hit a new process shrink; now TSMC needs to spend $28 billion to hit their next target: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tsmc-to-spend-up-to-record-28-billion-in-advanced-chips-capacity-11610623587)

[5:23 PM] Me: I will try to find it but I came across a paper a little while ago laying out in detail that the cost of new scientific discoveries has been steadily increasing over time. It's not that there's anything necessarily going wrong with the scientific process, this is just what you'd expect as we pick low-hanging fruit: the later discoveries necessarily become harder. But if you extrapolate that trend out forever you eventually hit a point where every single person needs to be a scientist, and every dime of capital in existence, needs to be used to make any new discoveries.

[5:26 PM] Me: (In most fields we're a long way from that point, but it actually is here or nearly here in e.g. particle physics. What I have been hearing from leading-edge particle physicists is that we've got maybe one or two more generations of particle accelerators left before we reach a point where, to probe any further (e.g. to see if string theory is true), we'd need to build accelerators the size of the Solar System, which would take more raw material than the mass of the Earth. Barring some new theoretical breakthroughs, we might actually nearing the "end" of high-energy physics.)

[5:30 PM] Me: Fortunately most fields aren't at that point, but my point is that the more we discover, the more human capital is required to make further progress. That's a tricky enough proposition with a growing population, never mind a shrinking one.

[5:36 PM] Me:

I don't think it is safe to assume lowering population growth is a biological disorder so much as a conscious choice most people in the younger generations are making for a variety of obvious reasons.

I agree with this, but it's important to dig into that a little and understand the reasons. For example, I'm not yet convinced that there is a mass epidemic of people choosing childlessness because of anxiety about e.g. climate change. In internet comments sections you certainly see lots of people making that claim, but talk is cheap and randos on the internet can say whatever they want. In terms of the actual reasons, the data I've seen shows that number of children continues to track closely with a couple data points, mostly housing costs, expected lifetime income and uncertainly about future income flow.

[5:40 PM] Me: Third, I think you should give more weight to the concerns Rhys brought up than you currently are. The environmental stresses of more people is certainly a big issue, but I think it's one that can be dealt with without too much struggle with increased deployment of clean energy (one of the few optimistic data points lately is that there's a staggering amount of wind and solar power being deployed every year) and a couple of lifestyle changes like eating less meat. Not to say these are easy, but contrast with the pretty serious problems of population decline, particularly the social safety net.

[5:41 PM] Me: And I don't just mean the explicit ones like Social Security, but even market-based, privatized ones like retirement savings have a hidden reliance on a growing population.

[5:42 PM] Me: When you "save for retirement", you're not stockpiling food and water to live off when you no longer work, you're collecting financial assets that you expect to sell to someone else and live off that income. But if there's no one to sell to, that doesn't work.

[5:44 PM] Me: This is a problem that's starting to show up at the top end of the income stack: see this WSJ article about retirees who can't find anyone to buy their $3 million homes: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-growing-problem-in-real-estate-too-many-too-big-houses-11553181782. It's easy to have schadenfreude here at those poor rich people who can't unload their huge mansion, but remember that this is inherently a problem which will start at the top of the income brackets and gradually make its way downward.

[5:46 PM] Me: You can push this problem back for a while by increasing taxes on the rich, and I do indeed think those should go up, but in a declining population that only buys you a little time. Remember that "money" is nothing but a claim on some fraction of total economic output. e.g. when you hold a dollar bill, you're essentially holding a note entitling you to one-zillionth of American GDP.

[5:47 PM] Me: At a certain point once population falls then total aggregate output necessarily falls too, and at that point taxing the rich hits rapidly diminishing returns: you're just claiming a bigger share of falling output

[5:49 PM] Me: One thing to keep in mind here is that most economies, but especially the U.S. economy, are primarily driven by consumer spending, i.e. normal people just buying and selling stuff to each other.

[5:50 PM] Me: This is why e.g. mass immigration isn't as huge a deal as a bunch of nativists like to think: immigrants get jobs, but they also spend money on goods and services just like anyone else: they generate labor demand as well as taking up supply

[5:51 PM] Me: But what I'm driving at here is that, again, a consumer-spending-driven economy with a falling population is going to get poorer pretty much by definition: fewer people buying stuff means fewer jobs to produce that stuff.

[5:54 PM] Me: Or to put another way, to use a ridiculously simplified model, GDP = Population X Productivity, and so if you take the derivative, then GDP' ~ Population' + Productivity'. So in a falling population environment, you need a lot of heavy lifting in terms of forever-increasing productivity in order for economic growth to be positive. And while there might be improvements down the pipe, frankly we kind of seem tapped out on productivity growth already

[5:55 PM] Me: Now, one possible response here is that we should work out how to have an economic system which delivers prosperity without endless growth, and I do agree we need that. But just saying that doesn't fix the problem that right now we don't have it and people will be poorer in a world without growth.

[5:56 PM] Me: And in such a world, I think it actually becomes harder to successfully transition to whatever post-scarcity economy can fix the problem, because people will be caught up in fighting over a shrinking pie.

[5:58 PM] Me: The neoliberal capitalist mindset of "a rising tide lifts all boats" isn't totally true and has been used to justify all kinds of nasty plutocratic behavior, but it isn't entirely false either. Without growth, at least in the system we have now, wealth distribution inherently becomes a zero-sum game. And that could get really ugly.

[5:59 PM] Me: So, that's most of what I have to say about why a falling population would be bad. But that's the easy part. Where this gets really complicated is why it's happening and what to do about it

[6:00 PM] Me: Now, I think one of the reasons I've been so fascinated by this is that it's been a pessimistic year, and falling birth rates are kind of the perfect pessimistic problem because I don't really see an easy way out. Also I'm just annoyed by partisans in general, and this is a perfect problem for that because it sort of frustrates partisans on all sides.

[6:02 PM] Me: e.g. the left mainly talks about the economic causes and proposes a variety of policy solutions, but an ugly little secret here is that government policy to increase birth rates has basically a perfect, unbroken track record of total failure

[6:03 PM] Me: All kinds of countries (mostly in Europe, but also in East Asia) have implemented all kinds of pro-natalist policies, and for the most part they have accomplished pretty much nothing. (Amusingly, this even goes back to antiquity: in the first couple centuries AD Roman Emperors were also concerned with falling birth rates, and implemented a variety of reforms that didn't do anything)

[6:03 PM] Me: You could always say they didn't go far enough, but at some point you're making an unfalsifiable hypothesis

[6:06 PM] Me: Meanwhile on the right, they're constantly talking about cultural factors, but this runs into two problems: it's again a set of mostly unfalsifiable hypotheses, but even worse since they're all tangled up in the Right's usual rants about The Way Things Ought to Be, but even if they turned out to be true, it seems like a hopeless cause because we basically have no levers to change culture.

[6:07 PM] Me: "Why does culture develop in the direction it does" is one of those huge questions I'm not sure we'll ever have a complete answer for, but I think it has to mostly involve technological determinism.

[6:08 PM] Me: https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ <-- this is a great article explaining what I'm talking about, as well as explaining why you should read Iain Banks

[6:09 PM] Me: But my point here is that all the cultural changes the Right laments as causing people to have fewer children, assuming they're even correct which I am definitely not granting, are pretty much all products of industrialization. You can't roll them back without undoing the Industrial Revolution. At least not without an insane level of authoritarianism

[6:10 PM] Me: So on the policy side we have a bunch of levers which don't do anything, and on the culture side there are no levers at all.

[draven-imani]

Journal 5 (part 1)

We’ve had an…extremely productive day. We found a note on Hosilla’s person that detailed three safehouses of the cult of Baphomet: Nyserian Manor, Topaz Solutions, and the Tower of Estrod. The note was signed SV—which I’m assuming is Stauton Vhagn. Looks like he came back and finished the job of destroying the Wardstone after Commander Tirabade stopped him the first time.

After talking to Aravashnial, Anevia, and Horgus, we pooled our information together. Nyserian Manor was owned by a noble who sometimes worked with Horgus, and had taken out a loan from him once to buy Commander Tirabade’s sword from her. Anevia hadn’t been aware Irabeth had sold her sword—apparently she’d told her wife she’d lost it. Anevia was going to be having words with the commander of the Eagle Watch upon seeing her again.

The Tower of Estrod was of interest to Aravashnial, as it was a place of arcane studies. He also requested that we look into the Blackwing Library, where the Riftwardens would be located.

Anevia wanted to look for Irabeth, and therefore would like to look into going home as that was the only lead she had on where her wife may be.

As we discussed, we exited the subterranean tunnels and entered the sewers. And came upon three orphan kids and a middle aged pinkish tiefling woman with many piercings and a bow. The orphans immediately ran to Luna, clearly familiar with her. Another point in her favor for ‘good person, not a murderer/serial killer/whatever else the rumor mill decides to say’.

“So you must be ‘Una’,” the tiefling said, imitating the orphans mispronunciation of her name. Or maybe legitimately mistaking her name for that. “Nice to meet you, incase you haven’t noticed, everything’s gone to hell.”

The tiefling introduced herself as Hiskaria. She had arrived in town from Numeria recently to join the Raven Corps, actually, although she was apparently a Kenabres native initially. She was on lone by one ‘Kevoth-Kul’, because she was a criminal on parole, and joining the Raven Corps was her penance.

Ouch.

Aaaaaand as the only member of the Raven Corps around that means it fell on me to keep her around until we could either find her handler or someone with more authority. That and strength in numbers. We couldn’t exactly leave her behind, even if she is a confessed murderer.

Oh, yeah, I didn’t mention that her crime was murder did I? Yeah, our new buddy’s a convicted murderer. One fake murderer and one real one, and if I had to put money on it, everyone’s going to get who’s who wrong.

After some discussion, we decided to head for Horgus’ manor first. It would provide a safe place to leave the orphans, so that we wouldn’t be dragging them around in the open where every demon still lurking around might decide to swoop down on them.

We made it there with only minor incident, some rat demon ripping up a clothing store who dubbed himself ‘the rat king’. He was of personal offense to Melody given that he was in the process of destroying things of beauty. That and the owners of the shop were still there and might be able to salvage some things.

Given my studies I was able to identify the demon as an Abrikandilu, a wrecker demon. A destroyer of beauty, not just of artwork like the dresses, but of physical beauty, using their fangs to cause horrible scarring on those they attack. I also knew that Radiance was the only weapon we had that would pierce its defenses, although it also had a unique weakness to mirrors, due to all demons of this kind having an abhorrence of their own visage. That being the case, I suggested that Luna and Melody slip into the store to get one of the mirrors from the changing rooms within while I distracted and fought it with Radiance and Hiskaria took pot shots at it from a safe distance.

Radiance and I were both more than happy to finally be putting a demon to the blade.

Spilling demons’ blood, at least, we both agree on.

Things went off about how we’d hoped. The Abrikandilu was a bit faster than I’d anticipated and it rushed me rather than me pinning it by the building as I’d planned, but I stopped its fangs with my shield and avoided any new scars. Melody and Luna came out with a mirror, which drew the demon’s attention. Luna’s axe stuck into it. Then Radiance slew it.

Radiance roared in my head each time it drew blood against a demonic foe, in what I can only describe as ecstasy. They, at least, get joy from battle. I wish I could say the same, but the demons die all the same. I feel good about it, that we slayed the demon and helped those people. It’s something good. Not joy, that’s too strong of a word. I feel—satisfied, maybe?

Regardless, the shop owners thanked us. They had little to offer and we tried to assure them that we didn’t need anything, but they insisted on at least providing us with a nice outfit each in thanks. I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything so fine. An orphan and a soldier don’t exactly make for elegant living.

Afterwards we made it to Horgus’ manor with no further incidents. His holdings were untouched. Melody mused at first that perhaps someone was trying to frame him. However after some thought, Hiskaria and I disagreed with that assessment. Demons by nature would seek out where the most people are, the places where they could wreak the most havoc. And as we approached it was clear that his manor was devoid of life. It would seem that his men and his servants had fled their posts when the attack happened, and as a lucky result the manor had been untouched. I’ll give Horgus some credit here. While he was clearly visibly upset that the men he’d hired to protect his holdings had left their posts, he tried very hard to be reasonable that it was for the best that they’d left and protected the servants, and that it had indirectly kept the demons from destroying his things. He was however very upset that they’d taken all of the mints from the little bowl at the front entrance—as was Miss Melody, who bemoaned that it was quite rude of them. Ah what I would give to have her priorities.

Luna was shepherding the orphans—one of whom, Hamm, had taken a shine to Hiskaria’s magic and gotten it into his head that he was going to…what was it? Summon demons in his snot bubbles? Charming kid. Glad his entire world falling apart around him didn’t completely destroy his sense of innocence and wonder. Suppose he was lucky he ran into Hiskaria so the three of them didn’t get killed or worse. That’s a point in her favor.

After gathering up food from the kitchen and some entertainment for the kids from a room formerly used for the staff’s children while they were on the job, Horgus went down to the safest part of the manor: the vault. He opened the safe, which proved to have been completed untouched. Inside was more wealth than I’d probably ever seen in one place before, or ever will again. He paid Luna that looked like a rather hefty sum. Then he also paid myself, Melody, and Hiskaria 1000 gold for returning him here safely, although payment had never been promised. Hiskaria tried to argue that she’d only just joined with us, but he said that it was payment due to someone who couldn’t be here to take their cut.

Horgus…is a complicated man, I am beginning to realize. I cannot pin him down yet. Even more than most people, his words and actions do not align. And even some of his actions I think are more masks on top of that. Luna insists he’s a good man but won’t give details beyond that. She’s had a few private conversations with him, so I’m inclined to believe she knows something that’s given her that impression. And I trust Luna’s judgement in people.

As Horgus locked himself away, we heard the beginnings of him teaching the kids something or another about some…math thing. I don’t know, look, I’m not the one to look to about Abadar tax bracket stuff. Luna was just glad he was hopefully keeping Hamm from thinking about snot demons.

From there we went next door, to Nyserian Manor. Or what was left of it. Which was not much. At all. Or anything, really. See, the demons hadn’t been very discerning in their building demolition. They’d destroyed their own safehouse. Idiots. Served anyone who was inside right for betraying humanity to the demons.

Next up was Blackwing Library.

Oh Blackwing Library. This one made me angry.

If you know me you know that’s bad. Of course, you don’t know me, because you’re just a bundle of inanimate papers sandwiched in leather that I’m writing in to keep my tenuous grip on sanity together. Suffice to say: that’s bad. I don’t get angry easily. Unless you’re a Deskari worshipper or waving his symbol in my face like I’m a bull, but I mean, that’s just asking for trouble from any Iomedaen, really.

As we approached the library, it was immediately apparent that the entire thing had been decimated. Aravashnial was despondent. All of his friends and colleagues with the Riftwardens would have been there, and he feared the worst. While Melody and surprisingly Hiskaria tried to comfort him, Luna tried to sneak closer to look into the library. I stuck close to her, although not so close as to blow her cover.

What she saw was a turncoat Iomedaen with five librarians bound and gagged, and a sixth librarian being forced to pile books around them, to serve as both a book burning and a funeral pyre.

We didn’t have long to think as he pulled out the flint and tinder. Luna downed a potion of invisibility and vanished. We had to put our faith in her. And as usual, she didn’t let us down, as a moment later blood splattered across the floor and she reappeared behind the armored man with her hood up and a declaration that she was “the Butcher of Balestreet, Bitch”.

The cavalier’s two tiefling thugs tried to flank Luna, but I helped fight off one and Hiskaria finished them with a potshot from outside the door that got him right between the eyes, while Melody swooped in to take a stab at the other.

Luna clearly outmatched the man she was facing, and he was smart enough to realize it. He dropped his weapons, and offered to surrender. He swore if we let him go, he’d never do such a thing again.

The others seemed ready to let their guards down.

I didn’t buy it.

I could feel it. This was an evil man. The kind who would just turn around and do something like this again the second he had an opportunity, if we let him live.

Luna lowered her weapon to go deal with the tiefling thug. I told her what I just wrote, that if we let him go he would just harm others. She said it wasn’t going to be her choice to make.

If anyone was making this choice, it was going to be me, and me alone.

Melody tried to reason that maybe we could get some information out of him. That we could take him alive, and question him. After all, that’s what she was best at.

And then what, I asked her. What do we do with him after that? There weren’t any jails. The city was in chaos. Where do we put him when we’re done questioning him so that he doesn’t hurt anyone else?

He swore again that he’d just go away and be good. I called bullshit.

Melody said maybe he’d know more about the safehouses, or the other plans. What we’d potentially be walking into.

Fine. For the safety of the rest of the group, I’d take him alive.

So I punched the cocky bastard in the face and left him to Melody.

Hiskaria and Luna went about helping the librarians while Melody did her thing. She manacled the man and tied him up for a nice friendly chat. I stuck around. I didn’t trust this man. Kaleb, I learned his name was. Much good it did.

Melody woke him up. First thing he did was tried to play ignorant. Tried to pretend like he’d been possessed, like he hadn’t been in control of his own faculties before.

Bullshit. More lies.

Melody saw through his lies this time just as much as I had. She told him to start over and try again.

Next he tried to weave a sob story about how he’d been coerced into doing what he’d done. How he was a crusader who’s unit had been taken captive, and he’d been forced into committing evil acts out of desperation.

Again, nothing but lies. All he knew how to do was lie, habitually, spew whatever falsehood he thought would get him in our good graces.

When Melody and I called him out on it again, he snapped. In a final act of rebellious desperation, he finally told the truth. He’s nothing but scum of the earth. He was a crusader, and his unit had been wiped out, that was the one honest thing that had left this mouth. Afterwards he’d decided to hedge his bets and side with the demons, so he started committing every atrocity he could to try to win their favor. And he swore that when he died and went to the pits of the Abyss to be reborn he’d come back.

And flay us alive.

Bad choice of words.

I think the bull metaphor before was apt, because I certainly saw red for a moment. I don’t think anyone was in disagreement when I stabbed Radiance through his blackened heart at this point though.

We didn’t learn anything though. Except that he wasn’t a cultist. Just a psychopath who found an excuse to start killing people.

As we discussed our next course of action, the librarian we’d rescued approached us. He knew that Aravashnial was with the Riftwardens, and he knew what had happened to them. The Riftwardens after locking what they could in their vault had teleported to a different location, meaning Aravashnial’s friends were safely somewhere else. Unfortunately, a day later someone else arrived. Xanthir Vang. Another of Deskari’s generals. A worm that walks, a terrible creature that is both a swarm and one being bound to Deskari’s will. Xanthir cut through the floor, right above where the vault would be in the secret Riftwarden floors below, and lifted the entire vault from the floor. Then he ripped it apart like it was nothing. He seemed disappointed that the Riftwardens weren’t there—predictably, I suppose, since he had a personal grudge against them.

We found a single dead and dried up worm husk in a corner of the room. I don’t like this. It’s probably my imagination that my arm itches. Probably. Another of Deskari’s generals so close. That’s…terrifying.

With this information tucked away, we decided to head for Anevia’s home to look for clues of where Commander Tirabade may be. Mostly to make sure her wife was safe, and to inform her of everything we’d found out thus far, and a little tiny bit to ask her about that sword she’d apparently sold behind her back.

On the way, we were accosted by a skeletal demon from atop a building, who also called himself the rat king. He claimed the one we’d defeated before was a usurper, and then summoned a swarm of dire rats to attack us. We dealt with the dire rats handily enough. They took a few chomps at me, annoying little things. Between rats and lizards, do I just taste good or something?

Nope, just licked my hand to test it, I’m quite certain I do not taste good.

We arrived to a small unassuming house. Irabeth’s funds clearly went to things other than worldly possessions. Not that it was a bad house. I’m not trying to be judgmental of Irabeth Tirabade I’m just saying with her position most people would have much larger quarters, so she clearly puts hers to good use elsewhere. I’m not one to judge small living quarters, I live in the barracks. Which probably are in ruins now. Ah, well. Not like I had anything of sentimental value in there anyways. My fiddle, my sword, and my shield were on my person, those were the only things I might have cried over losing. And then my sword got forcefully replaced by a talkative holy blade anyways.

I wish I could say Radiance is growing on me like Horgus. Unfortunately, we got off an extremely wrong foot and they haven’t exactly tried to mend any bridges. Luna says I should be more assertive with them, since I’m the only one who can wield them, they need me to do their holy mission they want. And Radiance even agreed with her, because of course they did.

Figures. A guy tries to be nice to the holy sword who he’ll have to be working with for the foreseeable future and apparently even trying to just not make waves with the being you’ll have to work with talking in your head is the wrong move.

Fine…assertive. What do they want me to do, put Radiance in time out in their little box when they get uppity? That is a funny image though.

I’ve completely lost my train of thought.

Right, reread a few paragraphs, Anevia’s house. So, Luna and Melody took a peek inside to make sure nothing was lurking around inside.

Predictably, something was lurking around inside.

He was invisible, but when Melody began using detect evil he ‘pinged’, so she had an idea of where the invisible presence was. The invisible presence summoned a fire beetle outside to attack Anevia, but Hiskaria turned and shot it dead before it got a chance.

Melody and Luna had a good idea where the invisible foe was, and began to force him back into a corner, although their swings of axe and glaive kept hitting nothing but air.

I came in, and I swear to you Iomedae guided Radiance’s blade. Not only did I strike true, from the amount of red that splattered across the ground, I’m certain I hit something vital. That, and I made him very angry. The next thing I saw was an enraged orc, whose invisibility faded away as a blast of fire was released from his hand point blank in my face. Too familiar. Far too familiar. And then darkness.

And then I was awake again, Melody tipping one of my potions into my mouth. Luna had bloodied the orc, but he’d refused to go down in his blind frenzy. Then Hiskaria had stepped in and finished the job.

I proceeded to heal myself a little more thoroughly while the ladies talked to Anevia about what just happened.

Huh, now that Aravashnial and Horgus are gone I am the only guy in the little group of ours, aren’t I?

The prettiest guy in our group by default as well, not that that’s saying much.

Anevia recognized the orc, he was someone who Irabeth had stopped from some previous scheme years back, who she’d left out in the world alive. Apparently, he came back for revenge. He won’t be getting a third chance.

With that settled and no more assassins lurking about, Anevia went to her and Irabeth’s bedroom and opened a secret compartment. Inside she read a note and took out some supplies. She told us that Commander Tirabade and the other remaining Crusaders were hiding out at the Defender’s Heart tavern, and the passcode to get in was “Silverstrong”.

We decided to go straight there, as it was closer than any of the safehouses, and allies were still more useful than victories at the moment.

I was especially feeling that way when that damn skeleton ‘rat king’ showed up again, and threw a flock of vultures at us. Most of which decided to descend upon me. I know vultures are a bad omen but come on, that’s too on the nose even for me. What’s worse? Do you know what’s worse? What’s even worse than vultures? Fiend vultures. These things could smite. I had, no joke, five buzzards smiting me like a bunch of feathery antipaladins.

Just my cursed luck again. Why does Desna hate me?

So, yeah. I was hurting. And really wanting some rest. While everyone else was ready and raring to go for two more safehouses after we finished meeting with the Commander. I finished healing myself again and I was almost tapped out of spells, and completely out of potions. My fervor was wearing thin as well. Luna was all well and good, she didn’t use spells. Hiskaria was fine, she mostly only used her cantrips to empower her bow to fire twice—a neat trick that didn’t really cost her anything. Melody had used one judgement and some spells but she was just fine and equally ready to go.

Ever the weak link.

Eh, no point thinking like that, right? Plenty more happened after that. We arrived to Defender’s Heart and gave them the passcode. They came out to meet us, initially excited to see Anevia.

Then they saw Luna, still with her hood up in her Butcher guise from our fight earlier.

Oops.

We tried to explain that this wasn’t what it looked like. That she wasn’t actually a murderer. That the rumors and stories and reports were wrong. Anevia tried to back us up. Luna took off her hood, and pointed out that she drank one of the two of them under the table at this very tavern just a few days prior, and no one got hurt. Despite our best efforts, tensions were raising. The guards were going for their weapons, and we were surrounded. The paladins were throwing accusations, and no one was listening to our words, they were only hearing what they believed to be true.

Then a strong hand came down on both of the guards’ shoulders. A voice spoke, and told them that maybe sometime they should try actually using the gift Iomedae grants them to detect evil.

Irabeth Tirabade stood behind the two guards, in the flesh, as…everything as I ever would have imagined. Tall, proud, honorable, noble.

The guards scrambled to cast the detect spells, and predictably found that Luna was not evil. They were puzzled but relaxed somewhat. Then jumped and went for their weapons again when they looked in Hiskaria’s direction.

The Commander told them that it was alright, and held up some papers, saying all the paperwork was in order for Hiskaria.

It looked like she was officially Raven Corps now.

Commander Tirabade picked up Anevia and carried her inside, and asked the four of us to follow. She got to quarters where she could lay Anevia down, then turned to me.

And the conversation went something like this.

“Acting Captain of the Raven Corps,” she said.

I was flabbergasted for a moment then realized she had to be talking to me because there was literally no one else she could be talking to. “Me?”

[babbushka]

hey mrs z , i was wondering if you’ve ever thought of doing commissions for fics and stuff like that?? i love buying personal fics but i know a lot of fic writers don’t like capitalizing on their hobbies, which makes a lot of sense lol. love u! excited for ur new work💕💕

Hello there my dear anon! Thank you so much for thinking of me with this question but no I have no plans to ever do commissioned works, for a couple reasons. I’m putting this under a cut because it got long lol, but please know I’m sending you all my love :))

The reason that I won’t accept commissions is what you’ve mentioned here, this really is a hobby of mine. This is something that I do because it’s fun and I love it and it’s a way to unwind, ironically, from the stresses of writing professionally lol. I write fanfic for me, you know? I write it because it makes me happy. I feel as though, once I open up the gates for accepting money, suddenly the dynamic shifts. If I’m accepting money for this from someone, I feel more obligated to make sure that whomever is paying is enjoying the writing, I’m no longer writing for myself, I’m writing for them. I’m maybe bound to plot or character or themes that have been put onto me, and I have a responsibility to deliver something of quality because now there’s monetary value involved. That’s not fun to me, that’s just me dealing with another editor with a red pen, if that makes sense. 

The second big reason, is one that sort of goes hand in hand with the third but, I don’t want any of my fanfiction to be exclusively limited to those who can afford it! I don’t want my stories to be only accessible to people who have paid for it. Because then it becomes a very slippery slope of, well these stories are only getting written and only being consumed by those with disposable income, and that’s not fair to the rest of the fandom at all. One of the reasons I love accepting prompts so much is because there’s such a breadth of ideas that people have, and some speak to me more than others. Imagining charging to send me an idea and wondering how many of those people wouldn’t be able to, how many of those stories wouldn’t even be thought of to get written, makes me sad. That’s like how wealthy patrons would commission artworks and then keep them holed up in their estates. I want as many people as possible, who want to read my work, to be able to read my work. That’s why I take so much pride in my masterlist’s organization and accessibility, and why I’m working on updating my AO3 to include all the Sinday writing. Fanfiction for me is something that should be shared with everyone, and the idea of prioritizing or putting a paywall in front of my fics, it just makes me feel kinda scummy. 

The third reason, which sort of ties into both of the first two, is that honestly, I’m very very fortunate to be in a financial situation where I don’t have to worry about money. I would feel morally just, wrong, taking money from people who maybe don’t have much to spare, particularly in this current global crisis that we’re in. Life is stressful and difficult and I want everyone to know that no matter what your tax bracket, you can come here and enjoy entertainment that’s hopefully good quality, whenever you’d like and however often you’d like. 

But the fourth reason, and probably the least important but still an important point to mention -- you really cannot make money off of fanfiction without having lawyers jumping down your throat. For whatever reason, the copyright laws are different between fanart and fanfiction, and they are much much much more strict with fanfiction. If, in some alternate universe where I was accepting commissions, it wouldn’t be for fic at all, it would be for original works, because as someone who grew up around copyright law and lawyers, they are vicious, and I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize my ability to keep writing fic for you guys. 

I hope that all of this made sense, I’m truly grateful that this is a question I get asked on occasion, it warms my heart to know people out there like my writing that much. But as I always say, if you ever feel compelled to support my work financially, please just go see my films when they come out in theaters! That will be more than enough :) Once again sending you love my dear! 

[staircasttext]

Ep 10 Transcript: Fireheart Learns to Code

Episode 10

[intro music]

PAZ: Hi, everybody. Welcome back again to Stairway to StarClan, a Warriors Cat reread pawdcast. I'm Paz.

JULIAN: I'm Julian.

LIZ: And I'm Liz.

PAZ: And we're back again this week reading Fire and Ice, chapter eight through 10, if I am remembering correctly.

JULIAN: Yep.

PAZ: But before we get into the chapters, we have some updates on the Barnes and Noble saga that I want to share, because they're all incredible. So a lot of these are just like additional comments to the Tumblr post that we read last week. I guess we can just go in the order through like how you sent them, Julian, because that's how I pulled them up.

JULIAN: Sure. I can read the first one.

PAZ: Sure, go ahead.

JULIAN: All right. Tumblr user melthedestroyer says, "I used to work at Barnes and Noble. And I need you all to know, when you pulled up a book in the internal system, it gives you a couple of top reviews from bn.com on the page. Imagine now my coworker Sal, a 60 year old Italian man with a flip phone, pulling up one of these one day. It was an interesting shift for Sal and I." Imagine having to introduce your coworker to the concept of roleplay, Warrior Cats roleplay.

PAZ: Yeah, not any roleplay. I love that.

JULIAN: I mean, I'm sure if he worked at Barnes and Noble he was familiar with the Warrior Cats phenomenon.

PAZ: Yeah, better be. Yeah, I'll read the next one. This is by Tumblr user diatribe. "I was part of a different circle of this for three-ish years in the early 2010s. Most of us had super controlling parents and weren't allowed internet access. The BN book reviews were broken af, completely unmoderated. Multiple books often shared the same reviews. And you didn't even have to own the book to write a review."

LIZ: Lawless.

PAZ: "It started with people just shouting out in these popular books, wondering if anyone else could see them. And then when people could reply, it spiraled. Also, we used BN's e-reader, so it just looked like we were reading." So Julian, you were like 100% correct.

LIZ: That's amazing.

JULIAN: Yeah, I was talking about this with Han after the podcast. And they also mentioned that Barnes and Noble's website probably also wouldn't be blocked on a school computer. So people might have been doing it from school computer labs. But a lot of the comments mentioned like doing it specifically on the Nook. So it looked like you were reading which is, oh, I'm really glad that these kids had somewhere to roleplay Warrior Cats that their parents could not control.

PAZ: Right? And just like, instant message, because we saw some of those as well. The creativity of children when they want to RP cats with their friends is endless. And I have nothing but respect.

JULIAN: Yeah, another update was someone saying that there was also a big Warrior Cats roleplay community on Khan Academy, which again, tracks.

LIZ: That is just incredible to me. That's like saying yeah, I used to RP on like Wolfram Alpha, or whatever that math site is.

JULIAN: Does Wolfram Alpha have a comment section because if so there might be Warrior Cats RP there.

LIZ: Wolfram Alpha forums. Let me check. Yes.

PAZ: Oh my gosh.

JULIAN: Oh yes.

PAZ: Search Warriors.

JULIAN: Community.wolfram.com/groups.

LIZ: Wait, search Warriors, please.

JULIAN: Oh, I'm doing it. I'm doing it.

LIZ: Cats, anything.

JULIAN: Oh, no, I'm not seeing anything, unfortunately.

PAZ: Oh no. Maybe it's too moderated.

JULIAN: It might be too moderated. It seems like it's pretty moderated.

PAZ: Tragic.

JULIAN: It's also like a whole company.

LIZ: Well, the framework is there. You could get past that. Listen, we saw some territorial disputes in the Barnes and Noble comments section.

JULIAN: We really did.

LIZ: So if anyone needs to branch out, I bet-- you know, there has to be someone who can hack a little bit.

PAZ: Yeah, Wolfram Alpha? Yeah.

LIZ: To get around this.

PAZ: Who wants to read the other final update that kind of dove into the questions we had about like, moderation and stuff?

LIZ: Is this the very long one that's like a screenshot?

JULIAN: Yeah, it's the one I had to screenshot because it was a reply, so I couldn't link to it.

LIZ: Okay, I can do the first one because it is pretty long. Okay, "here's a breakdown for you guys. You'll find people RPing in classic books because they're multi rez, which means multiple books link to the same review section. You can only post one review per book and posting in it erases your original review. So multi rez books are obvs desirable if you wanted to RP more than one character. Or if you wanted to leave a post up for someone who wasn't online at the moment."

JULIAN: "If you posted a bad word, you'd get locked out and wouldn't be able to post in that particular book anymore, which also made multi rez books desirable. You can get around this by putting open angle bracket underscore close angle bracket after the first two letters of a swear word, and then posting it would make it look like you hadn't censored it at all. Warrior Cats books were the most popular, but I remember Percy Jackson RPers hung around in like the Athenian constitution books."

PAZ: Yeah, so I remember we'd noted that like you could see the review counts of people and it would just say like one. And I think the explanation for that phenomena is here.

LIZ: Incredible.

PAZ: Because apparently it'd just delete if you reviewed more than once.

JULIAN: Yeah, so that makes sense, though, because it's like, if people are basically waiting for someone else to be online and then kind of RPing back and forth, but each of their new posts erases the old post, we only see the last one.

PAZ: Yeah, it's really tragic that there's no archive, though, because of that.

JULIAN: It's all gone. And the odds of it being on like Wayback Machine are very low if it replaced that quickly, unfortunately.

PAZ: It's truly the epitome of like, touches ground, something happened here.

LIZ: God, I hope someone has at least like saved or archived or screenshotted somewhere like just a moment of this. Like a slice in time to put in a museum in 3021.

PAZ: Yeah, I hope somebody was like copy-pasting into a Word doc somewhere.

JULIAN: Right? Ugh.

LIZ: I mean, how else are you gonna remember what's happening if you're RPing?

PAZ: Right?

JULIAN: I mean, you depend on the encyclopedic memory of an eight year old for like trivia.

LIZ: That's true.

JULIAN: They don't have to remember how taxes work so they can remember every detail of what Umbrellastar from BloodClan told them.

PAZ: I wish that was me.

LIZ: God, if only.

JULIAN: Same.

PAZ: But yeah, I guess that's the updates we found. The fact that it was somewhat moderated is extremely funny, but like not moderated enough that they're like we're gonna not allow this RP to happen.

LIZ: You just can't say fuck.

JULIAN: Like we can't stop you from RPing on this forum but you can't get horny about it.

LIZ: For some reason, we can't stop you.

PAZ: I so badly want to find someone to talk to who was in charge of the Barnes and Nobles website in some capacity and be like, what happened here?

JULIAN: I want the email chain where someone was like, Hey, my boss. You got to know about this. What do we do about this?

LIZ: CEO voice, you know, it's interaction. It's engagement.

PAZ: Yeah. They're probably like--

LIZ: We need to get those Hamlet numbers up. The kids do not care about Hamlet. This is as close as we're gonna get. If Shadowfur wants to RP with an assassin cat or get into a territorial dispute with the Percy Jackson RPers, we let them.

PAZ: Yeah, we need those clicks. That's all that matters.

JULIAN: Honestly, I wonder if they were so laissez faire about it because Barnes and Noble really, really wanted people to like use their Nooks. There was like a big push for them to like-- they were pushing Nooks versus Amazon's Kindle really hard. And so if they were like, well, at least people are using the review section with their Nook devices.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're a kid who wanted really badly to RP with their friends and you could convince your very strict parents to buy you a Nook, it works out in Barnes and Noble's favor, so.

JULIAN: I mean, honestly, I wonder if it was just like, you know, I borrowed my mom's Nook because she never used it. And I didn't know about-- I was also too old for RP at that point and was just bulk downloading fanfiction to the Nook. But like if I had been slightly more sheltered and a little bit younger at the time, I definitely would have been-- I would have done this.

PAZ: Did you guys do that thing where you would print out fanfic?

LIZ: Yes. Mm-hmm.

PAZ: And then either read it in bed or take it to school?

LIZ: Yes.

JULIAN: I did not print out fanfic because I was mortified that my family would find out about it. So instead, I copied and pasted it from a particular Doctor Who fanfic archive into Word documents. I had like one Word document that was like one genre and then another Word document that was like a different ship, and they all had like little secretive acronyms so that...

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: This is so intricate.

PAZ: Wow.

JULIAN: It was so much. Because this is before Ao3.

PAZ: I don't think I was smart enough as a child to do that. I would just like to try and throw out all the fanfic I'd printed out before people saw it. Because I would read it in bed because I didn't have a phone I could read it on.

JULIAN: Oh yeah.

PAZ: If I wanted to get cozy in bed and read my, I don't know, Kingdom Hearts fanfic, I had to print it out.

JULIAN: When I finally did get a phone my senior year of high school, I spent pretty much that entire summer reading fic. And so my mom was like, oh, what are you doing? And I was like, Oh, I'm-- someone had posted about this on Tumblr and I stole it. I was like, Oh, I'm reading unpublished stories by authors online.

PAZ: God.

LIZ: Not untrue. You're just supporting new writers.

JULIAN: It's accurate.

PAZ: It's what people on Twitter want to think, so.

JULIAN: It's literature. It's literature, Mom.

LIZ: God.

PAZ: Yep, classic. You know, getting fan content, it was bad. It was hard back in the day.

LIZ: It was hard.

JULIAN: We didn't have tags. You had to just pick a pairing and hope that the fic was good.

PAZ: Right? Oh my god. Yeah, it was all summary based, like good fucking luck.

LIZ: It did have genres. Like fanfiction.net did have genres. It was like romance.

PAZ: I vaguely remember that.

LIZ: Comedy, poetry, suspense.

PAZ: God. What was the fanfic that I would... what was the fandoms that I was in reading fanfic on fanfic.net? I know it was Kingdom Hearts. I think Ranma 1/2, probably Naruto fanfiction.

JULIAN: Yeah, it was just Sherlock and Doctor Who. I'm so sorry to tell y'all this.

PAZ: That seems kind of... Sherlock seems kind of late for fanfic.net though. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

JULIAN: It was... I like started out fanfic.net. It was like right when Ao3 was becoming a thing. But the wait for Ao3 was like six months at that point.

PAZ: Oh right.

LIZ: I used to read Sherlock fic on Livejournal.

PAZ: Also definitely read Invader Zim fic on fanfic.net.

JULIAN: My Invader Zim phase was before I realized that like fanfic was a thing that existed outside of me writing fanfic in my journal. So unfortunately, I did not stumble across that.

PAZ: Maybe, maybe, fortunately.

JULIAN: Maybe good. I also probably would have been reading a lot of iCarly fanfic.

PAZ: It wasn't like ship fic though. I don't think I understood the concept of that at the time. It was just like-- I read a lot of like OC self insert fic when I was much younger. I don't know.

LIZ: You just loved the character building.

PAZ: I did, I loved the worlds.

LIZ: Yeah, well, what an intricate like beautiful universe you've created.

PAZ: I think I remember a fic like that was like a crossover with Alien.

JULIAN: Oh my god.

LIZ: Like Alien-alien?

PAZ: Yeah, the movie Alien with like the xenomorph.

JULIAN: I love that. That's wonderful.

PAZ: It was powerful.

JULIAN: Oh all right, sorry, Chickpea is screaming. Let me see if I can feed her and then she'll stop.

PAZ: Okay.

LIZ: I'm just thinking about that fucking like Sherlock Livejournal community that we looked at with the graveyard with all the broken Photobucket links.

PAZ: I'm kind of... I don't know why I never got into Sherlock fandom like seriously, but I'm happy I didn't.

LIZ: Bullet dodged. It was something. We should look for Warriors Livejournal stuff. I bet there's some good graphics if...

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: If it ever made it there.

PAZ: No, I'm sure there were Warriors Livejournals. But Livejournal was after my Warriors period so I wouldn't know from personal experience. Definitely read a lot of Doctor Who fanfic on Livejournal though.

LIZ: I actually didn't. I was big into it.

JULIAN: Alright, hello.

LIZ: I just stuck around for icons and stuff. Hi.

PAZ: Hi, welcome back. We were saying there's probably like Warriors communities on Livejournal, like old ones somewhere.

JULIAN: Oh my god, I bet there are.

PAZ: Yeah, we should look into that in the future.

JULIAN: Yeah, we should do a hunt there.

PAZ: There's so much content out there. Even on Barnes and Nobles.com.

LIZ: I don't think people are RPing in like Goodreads reviews for Warrior books. But wouldn't that be something? You can reply on those things.

PAZ: Are you sure people aren't doing that?

LIZ: I don't know. Maybe.

PAZ: Now that you've said that, that seems like an obvious situation to do it.

LIZ: Put it on the docket. We've got so much research. God.

PAZ: We're going to become scholars of Warrior Cats RP communities.

JULIAN: Great news. Uh.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Yeah?

JULIAN: There are... Goodreads: Group. Show Tag RP.

LIZ: [gasp]

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: Fuck yeah.

JULIAN: We have 1825 roleplay groups on Goodreads.

LIZ: What?

PAZ: Oh my god. Is this just Warriors, or like everything?

JULIAN: Oh, this is everything.

LIZ: Oh, okay. I was like damn, Warriors. Can you give us a little tasting board of this?

JULIAN: No, don't make me login. So let's see. Just a little something. We have Percy Jackson and HOO– I guess that's something about Olympians– roleplay group. Have you waited for your satyr all your life but it never came? Well, welcome to CHP, where all demigods are accepted. You can create your own character and talk to other half bloods. We are here to have fun, sing songs on the fireplace, play Capture the Flag, volleyball, and of course go on lots of quests.

LIZ: This sounds fun.

JULIAN: Yeah. I haven't seen any-- oh, here we go. Warrior Cats: A New Fall. Yep, we've got three separate Warrior Cats RPs on the first. So we'll have to dig into this a little bit.

LIZ: Thank god.

PAZ: This is so exciting.

JULIAN: A lot of this is like... a lot of boarding school RP. Like people have made up-- this roleplay is tagged as semi-advanced. What does that mean?

PAZ: I guess your reading level has to be... I don't know.

LIZ: Middle school and above.

PAZ: Eight plus.

JULIAN: Oh, I'm so glad people are just out here on the Goodreads forums RPing.

LIZ: Good. Fuck it up.

PAZ: This is a better use of Goodreads.

JULIAN: Yeah, it is. I hope Amazon has to read all of these.

LIZ: Yeah, get wreckt.

JULIAN: It'd be good for them.

LIZ: Humble them a little. We should look into those. I bet there's some new innovations going on if it's still active.

JULIAN: Oh yeah, no, these are sorted by the latest activity. So the three ones I found, last activity six hours 25 minutes ago.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Yeah, so we can really dig in here.

LIZ: We need to check out that semi advanced style. I wanna know what that means.

JULIAN: I can't tell, but they have their own gifs. Like there's some really nice graphics.

PAZ: Wow, you can post gifs on Goodreads?

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Wow.

JULIAN: It's like a fully fledged forum here.

PAZ: Wow.

LIZ: Yeah I think you can post like reviews and then that you have like, here's my Marvel GIF about reacting to... I don't know. Twitches.

JULIAN: I think there's like... because there's like a Groups function.

PAZ: Oh my gosh. Yeah, this is just a forum.

JULIAN: That I think is intended to be like for book clubs. But is, in this case for--

PAZ: This is a book club. What are you talking about?

LIZ: Oh, yeah, these things. I joined one for exactly one reason. It was to ask what book this was because I didn't remember the name, title, or character, or author, or anything. And they were mean about it.

JULIAN: Aw.

LIZ: They were like, everyone has asked what this book is. Did you not read the FAQ?

PAZ: Oh, no.

LIZ: And I did. So anyway, Goodreads is bad, but I'm glad people are using it to RP.

PAZ: Good on this random boarding school roleplay for saying no racist, homophobic, discriminatory, etc. comments.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: The Warrior Cats: A New Fall RP's number one rule is "no bullying. We make exceptions for in the roleplay."

LIZ: Wow.

PAZ: Gosh, perfect. Well, this is an exciting possibility world before us that we will have to revisit in the future. But I guess now that we're done with that update, we should go into our chapters.

LIZ: Beautiful.

PAZ: So this week, we read three chapters, chapters eight through 10. And I'll just dive right into the summaries. So chapter eight continues from the scene of the RiverClan warrior Whiteclaw's death. Leopardfur, the RiverClan deputy, warns ThunderClan that this has now gone beyond a border dispute and leaves. The WindClan cats leave as well, thanking ThunderClan again. And Sandpaw is freaked out from her near death, and Graystripe is shaken and disturbed from accidentally causing another cat's death.

Once they are back at camp, an angry Tigerclaw takes Fireheart and Graystripe back to Bluestar and informs them both of WindClan's rescue and the RiverClan death Tigerclaw believes seeing ThunderClan with WindClan cats will push RiverClan and ShadowClan together. Bluestar, while disappointed, is not as angry. She decides Graystripe and Fireheart should take apprentices to train to prepare for future hostilities.

Later that night there is a naming ceremony for the apprentices. Fireheart takes Cinderpaw, an energetic cat, as his apprentice, and Graystripe takes Brackenpaw, who is more serious, as his apprentice. The chapter ends with Fireheart thinking about how he wants to be a good warrior and mentor and that it feels like Tigerclaw is waiting for him to fail.

In chapter nine, Fireheart takes Cinderpaw out into the forest for her first day as an apprentice. Graystripe declines to join them and is still depressed. Fireheart and Cinderpaw travel various places, with Cinderpaw bounding ahead and not listening to Fireheart closely. Fireheart teaches her some things about scents, hunting, and owls. Cinderpaw then runs ahead towards Snakerocks before Fireheart can warn her, but comes back once he makes the danger clear. They then visit the Thunderpath and eventually go near the Twolegplace, where they spot a pregnant kittypet. Fireheart gets an inexplicable feeling that this cat isn't a threat and gives away their position so she runs away. Back at camp, he dreams about when he was a kitten and realizes the kittypet he saw was his sister.

In chapter 10, Firepaw gets an intense longing to see his sister after seeing the familial familiarity amongst the clan cats. He asks Graystripe to take Cinderpaw for the day and heads back to the Twolegplace. He waits until the sister comes into the garden to reveal himself. She is frightened at first, but once he remembers her name, which is Princess, and remembers who he is, she calms down. When she asks why he came to see her, Fireheart simply says, because you are my sister. He asks about their other family, who all still live in the neighborhood. They talk for a while and Fireheart tells her about the clans. Princess eventually has to go inside and Fireheart returns to the ThunderClan camp after hunting.

Back at camp, Tigerclaw confronts him about leaving Cinderpaw with Graystripe. Fireheart apologizes and says he will focus on her training. Graystripe still seems disturbed about the RiverClan encounter. The chapter ends with Fireheart watching Cinderpaw and her brother, and thinking about how he has felt lonely within the clan, as none of his family is there. And that's the end of our reading this week.

JULIAN: My first note for chapter eight is Graystripe killed a man.

PAZ: Yeah. RIP Whiteclaw, our beloved friend. Yeah, Graystripe, you did kind of kill a guy. This was like, the first time I'm like, damn, I just agree with Tigerclaw because it really is like Fireheart's fault completely. There was no reason to go into RiverClan territory. And he is also partly responsible for a death.

JULIAN: Also Fireheart being like, Oh, it was a special mission, just like Highstones. So it's okay for us to-- like, no, it's not. You knew it wasn't.

PAZ: Yeah, you had to convince everyone to do it. Because everyone was like, I don't think that's a great idea. I feel bad for those poor WindClan cats who just... they just had a horrible two months, and now this bullshit.

JULIAN: Well, and like Tigerclaw is, for once, worst person you know just made a great point.

PAZ: Exactly.

JULIAN: He's like, yeah, this is gonna solidify RiverClan and ShadowClan's alliance. And he's right, it will.

PAZ: Yeah. This is the worst thing that has come out of Fireheart's lack of brains by far. And he seems like he doesn't have any lingering guilt about it.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: Yeah, Graystripe is like, tore up about this. And Fireheart is just like, Why doesn't he want to eat with me?

LIZ: Isn't there that part in like, that part where he's like, aw Graystripe doesn't want to hang out. Oh, well.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, I think I think Graystripe's having the appropriate emotional reaction. But I don't know why he's the only one having that reaction.

JULIAN: Yeah, I am still unclear on like, when it's okay to kill another cat. Um.

PAZ: Yeah, it's very, extremely unclear. Because I really feel like people die all the time. But then it's like, we're sad when people die. Also, sometimes maybe it's dishonorable? Question mark?

LIZ: They say like that it's just a border dispute, which is why like, the murder was, I guess, like, too much, but it seems like all of their disputes are border disputes.

JULIAN: Like what else do they dispute about?

LIZ: Yeah, what?

PAZ: I don't know. Maybe there are periods of active warfare. I don't know.

JULIAN: Yeah, like maybe it's okay to kill another cat like, if they're in your camp or something.

PAZ: Yeah. Or like they stole your children.

JULIAN: Yeah, I remember-- in Warrior Cats roleplay, we would like schedule battles. And I'm trying to remember whether that is based on the books or just useful for RP scheduling purposes.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't really remember from later books. So I can't really say. But I do like how this whole situation sets up like Sandpaw's changing thoughts on Fireheart. Like, her appearances in the rest of these chapters is her being like, very, like, shaken that she almost died and also like, seeming to be thinking thoughts about Fireheart, so.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's very like... you can tell that she's sort of thinking about like, Oh, you know, damn, kittypet did save me.

PAZ: Have I been wrong? Who knows. I do still feel-- damn. Dustpaw and Sandpaw have it bad, though. They're still apprentices and fucking Fireheart and Graystripe are getting their apprentices. Can you imagine sharing the apprentice den with these little tiny babies?

JULIAN: With these babies that are like, technically still too young.

PAZ: I hope they become warriors soon. They don't deserve this.

LIZ: I don't know. You'd think that since Fireheart and Dust-- nope, Graystripe are getting apprentices so early, that Bluestar would also make the other apprentices warriors by now too, just like, gotta keep moving.

PAZ: Right? She's like, we need more warriors. I'm just gonna make these babies apprentices and not promote these older cats for some reason.

LIZ: Who have seen battle.

JULIAN: Right? They're also like, at this point, they're like super seniors.

PAZ: Yeah, I assume they're at least a couple months older than like, Graystripe and Fireheart.

JULIAN: Just like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna keep taking classes.

PAZ: This is so sad.

JULIAN: I was really happy to see that there was some sort of like criteria to become a mentor, because Bluestar says that Runningwind would make a bad one. So at least they are thinking about it a little bit.

PAZ: I think her judgment is off because she decided Tigerclaw would make a good mentor, but I guess, at least there are considerations. Yeah, the other thing from the beginning of this chapter is I know we said we'd keep a Fireheart/Onewhisker alert out. Yes, here it is. "Fireheart meowed a quiet farewell to Onewhisker as he passed. Onewhisker glanced briefly at him and walked on."

JULIAN: Damn.

PAZ: It's there. It's real.

JULIAN: Oh my god.

LIZ: This is all those posts about tender yearning, you know.

PAZ: Exactly.

LIZ: It's about glances... and they don't have hands, so paws.

PAZ: The nose touches. The tail touches at their annual ball dance.

JULIAN: The jellicle ball.

PAZ: But yes.

JULIAN: God-- oh sorry. One more Bluestar thing. Um, she does tell Fireheart to pass on everything that she taught him. And I just have a note that's like, you didn't teach him shit.

PAZ: Right? There was something-- like there was like a part in like, a later scene with Fireheart and Cinderpaw that implied she did more than one thing with him. Because it said something about like, Bluestar teaching him about owls. But I'm like, when in the world did this happen? This did not happen. They had one fight.

LIZ: Is it just like... is it like a retcon to imply that like more time passed than we saw?

PAZ: Yeah, maybe?

LIZ: Or I guess so. It just would have been nice to see like, if not just one, maybe two or three, and then you can just say it kept happening. I don't know.

PAZ: Right?

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: It really felt like it was only one. But yeah, but speaking of time passing and timelines, I was trying to figure out the timeline for like, how long they were actually warriors before getting apprentices. I think it was like three days, because--

LIZ: Oh my God.

PAZ: Because, right? So they became like, apprentices after-- they became warriors after their vigil. And I think it was the day after that that Bluestar's like okay, you gotta go find-- I don't know. When was the Gathering?

JULIAN: Let's see. Pull up my ebook.

PAZ: I forgot there was a Gathering in between. Maybe it's like five days.

LIZ: Well, how long did the WindClan retrieval take?

JULIAN: I feel like three days, I think?

PAZ: That was like two days.

JULIAN: Two or three?

PAZ: They slept two nights. They slept a night before finding WindClan and then they slept a night on the way back with WindClan. So yeah, I guess it was like three days.

JULIAN: Yeah, they sleep a night on the way back, and then they come back, go through RiverClan, go back to ThunderClan. And then that night they get apprentices. I think the Erins are really relying on the fact that children have no idea what timelines are.

PAZ: Okay, so, checking back to the beginning, it appears there was the day after they became warriors. And then the following day was the Gathering. So that's like two days. And I think it was the day after the Gathering that Bluestar is like, Okay, you got to go on this journey. So that's like another day. And then there's the day of the journey. They sleep. Day of finding WindClan, coming back. They sleep. Then they're back. So that's six days, I think.

JULIAN: What are we at? A week?

PAZ: I totally was not counting. Yeah, like a week, about.

JULIAN: Oh, you know.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: They are cats. A week is a long time if you're a cat and have no real sense of short term memory.

PAZ: I guess.

LIZ: What's a week for a cat?

PAZ: But I mean, cats don't live like-- cats can live until they're like, 20. They don't... I mean, not outdoor cats, I guess. But it's not like they only live to be like five years old. I feel like it should be at least a month.

LIZ: What's a week to a cat? Like, a month?

PAZ: I don't know.

LIZ: Two weeks? Three weeks.

JULIAN: I'm googling cat sense of time. But I don't know. That might be a rabbit hole we can't fall down.

PAZ: I feel like cats don't... Cats wouldn't have a concept of days, though. Because they just sleep whenever.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: I mean, not these cats.

JULIAN: I mean, pet cats have a really good sense of time because like, they do get onto a...

PAZ: Yeah, they know when they get food.

JULIAN: Right. They get on to a rhythm. And if their rhythm gets disrupted, they get very upset.

LIZ: Yeah, they have to have their breakfast at 5am.

PAZ: And they have to run around the house at 3am. Very strict schedule. Well, anyway, yeah. Timeline is weird, but they get their apprentices. I couldn't remember any cat named Bracken-something. I feel like maybe there was like a Brackentail. But I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if this guy's gonna make it.

LIZ: Maybe he's destined to just be like--

PAZ: Pouring one out.

LIZ: -- inoffensive side character.

PAZ: Yeah, that might be the case.

LIZ: That's the life you want. You don't want to be like a fucking Firepaw. Look at that shit he's going through.

PAZ: I didn't look it up because I'm like, I'll just see.

JULIAN: I did look it up and spoiled myself, but I will not spoil y'all.

PAZ: I know what happens to the other two apprentices so far in this book, which is why I'm like who the fuck are you, Brackenpaw? I don't know him.

JULIAN: I mean, in his defense. Well, not in his defense. He hasn't really established much of a personality yet.

PAZ: I know.

JULIAN: You know, sometimes you're the quiet sibling, and your sister is real boisterous.

PAZ: Yeah, is their other sibling Swiftpaw? Or like, am I getting confused?

JULIAN: I thought it was just Brackenpaw and Cinderpaw. I didn't think there were...

PAZ: Was Swiftpaw a different litter? Maybe. Because that was the one who got promoted to apprentice at the beginning of this book.

JULIAN: Oh.

PAZ: Or wait, at the end of last book? I don't know. Recently.

JULIAN: Um, yeah, no, Swiftpaw is a different...

PAZ: Okay. That makes sense. Cause he's older.

JULIAN: Yeah. Different litter. The stuff with Cinderpaw is very cute.

PAZ: It's so cute.

LIZ: It is.

PAZ: But I'm also like, Oh, God, don't go to Snake Hell please. Listen to the adult.

LIZ: She got so close to Snake Hell like immediately.

PAZ: Cinderpaw needs to be on like a child leash.

LIZ: Uh-huh.

JULIAN: I am a little bit like, watching Fireheart mentor her is very much like when you have a teen babysitter take like a bunch of children to a pool. Or like to the zoo. It was just like, Oh, this was a mistake. You all need an adult.

LIZ: Bluestar, why did you do this?

PAZ: Right? Once again, worst person you know makes a good point. I think Tigerclaw was right when he was like, they're too young to have apprentices.

JULIAN: Fireheart like fully does not know what he's doing. He's just like, uh, I'm gonna take you around. We're gonna go to the Thunderpath. That sounds like fun.

PAZ: Yeah, no one gave him the like, teacher's manual.

LIZ: No, he's not certified. He's a teen boy.

JULIAN: Fireheart, your union contract.

PAZ: This is really just like in high school when you have a, like, junior college student come in and be like the assistant teacher for their like college credit courses. And it's, like, so obvious to you as a senior. It's like, Oh, wait, we're actually pretty close in age. What are you doing here?

LIZ: Don't worry. Cinderpaw [inaudible]

JULIAN: I fully respect Graystripe wanting to be alone and not be near Fireheart right now because Fireheart does not seem to understand that he did anything wrong. I also think that he should have stuck with Fireheart because two adults and two children is much more manageable than one adult and one child. Especially when one of the children is like... like if you have a rambunctious child and like a very calm child, that's much better than one rambunctious child.

LIZ: Graystripe even says so, right?

PAZ: Mm-hmm. But Graystripe is having a crisis so I'll excuse him.

JULIAN: God. And then Fireheart is like, well, I'm just gonna ditch my apprentice with you for a day. Is that chill?

LIZ: Yeah, like the second day.

PAZ: Ah, God. I gotta say though, all the internal thoughts about family Fireheart has in these set of chapters is very good.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: There's just so much more internal life than in the first book. It's like, it's very noticeable.

LIZ: Yeah. He's really going through like-- he has not become dad, but he thinks he is. Like, he's looking at Cinderpaw like, Oh, God. Oh, God, what do I do? Oh, god, no, no, she's going to Snake Hell. Wait, come back. Oh, my God, children. So he's also like, just a young guy. But it's very funny.

PAZ: Yeah. And his like, anger and worry about being a former kittypet continues to be like, a thread running through this. Which is... I don't know, it's just good to see that they're keeping that like personality trait consistent in this book.

JULIAN: Yeah. And like the tension between like, found family versus birth family is like, nice to see explored here.

PAZ: Yeah. And like how he feels like he's-- even though he really likes his found family, how he still feels alienated because, I mean, like, they still see him differently.

JULIAN: Yeah. And like, even through that, you know, there's a bit where he's like, yeah, you know, I do wonder if I would have closeness with my birth family. But also I know that like, you know, the closeness that Princess has with her siblings who she sees occasionally is not the same as like, the closeness that the cats in the clan have.

PAZ: Yeah, he like, thinks some thoughts about like, you know, would my life have been different? Like, what am I missing?

LIZ: And he still does feel like, like that level of remove, and he's like, lonely. Like, damn, I wish I had someone who knew exactly like where I was coming from and had the same experiences.

JULIAN: Yeah, that moment where they both-- like he and Princess talk about like, the bedding that their mom had when they were kits is really sweet and like, poignant.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Because he doesn't have anyone in the clan who remembers how he grew up.

PAZ: And like, what they think of his childhood is just like, really mean to kittpets because they're all xenophobic. So he can't even really talk about it I think is one of the points. Like he can't tell anyone like he saw his sister or anything. And it stresses him out and it's just, yeah.

JULIAN: Also the bit where he doesn't remember her name is awful.

LIZ: Oh, yeah, that was bad.

PAZ: Aw, I know.

JULIAN: Like, initially, he can't remember it and he's like, Oh, I'm Rusty. And then like, finally does remember it but like, it takes him a bit and that's just like, ah. Aw, buddy.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: I hope he finds, you know, something where he feels like he can be his whole self. I also got to say, Rusty, do you think your balls really would have been stolen? Because apparently nobody spays or neuters their cats here. Because your sister's just pregnant. She obviously didn't go get the-- what the fuck.

JULIAN: The snip?

PAZ: The cut. Think he might have had balls still.

JULIAN: Like she's pregnant, which clearly means that like A, she didn't get neutered and also, like, whatever cat is the father didn't get neutered either.

PAZ: What is up with this neighborhood?

LIZ: Did you catch the part where-- I mean, like, she says that all the siblings are still kind of nearby too. So do like-- I just want to know if a cat gets pregnant in this neighborhood, do they just distribute the kittens to neighbors, or do they just keep all of them? Cause I know that happens but that can't be regular.

PAZ: When our cat Maria kept having kittens before we could get her to the vet, we would just post free kittens sign. People would come and check out the kittens. I don't know. But it wasn't just like our immediate neighbors.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: No, not at all.

JULIAN: The HOA where it's like, to live in this neighborhood, you must accept every fucking six months or whatever.

PAZ: Oh god. Yeah okay, so let's go through our list of kittypets so far. Princess, wasn't fixed. Their mom, Nutmeg, obviously wasn't fixed. Jake, still had his balls because he fathered children at some point. I guess Henry is the only one we got confirmed to...

JULIAN: Smudge. Smudge got neutered.

PAZ: Oh, yes. Smudge got neutered. Okay. I don't know.

LIZ: So two out of like, what? Six, seven? Probably more.

PAZ: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what's going on here.

LIZ: They're really just lax about it over in England, huh.

JULIAN: I mean, is it England or is it just this book?

LIZ: Is it just this one neighborhood in England? Like oh yeah, that's cat city.

JULIAN: That's cat hell.

PAZ: Maybe it's some sort of weird hippie community.

JULIAN: You know what, maybe that's why all the Twolegs they run into are so awful to the cats because it's like you know...

PAZ: Oh, it's just overrun.

JULIAN: The neighbors are really nice, but like anyone who comes and visits this park is like, oh fuck. It's the fucking cats again. It's all the horrible cats.

LIZ: It's like that one island they always talk about on clickbait articles that's like, oh yeah, this is the city of cats. And they're just everywhere.

PAZ: Oh, the one in Japan? Or near Japan.

LIZ: God, yeah.

JULIAN: I want to read a Warriors book set with the feral cat colonies that live in the Colosseum. That's all I want.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Oh fuck yeah. They'd all be Italian. Cat mafia.

LIZ: The Meowdessy.

JULIAN: You already have a clan structure.

LIZ: The Kittyad.

PAZ: On the day of my daughter's naming ceremony. But to go back to that point about Fireheart's character exploration in this segment, like the second to last sentence in these sort of chapters was just really nice. It was just a good sentence. It was, "He had found the closeness he had missed, but it had given shape to a sense of loneliness that until now had lain vague and nameless in his heart."

JULIAN: Aw buddy.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: That was a good little sentence and evocative of a feeling. And just wanna give him a little hug.

LIZ: He's just a little guy.

JULIAN: He's just a little guy.

PAZ: He's a little guy, but also now a responsible teacher.

JULIAN: He's a little guy and he's also a father.

PAZ: And an accessory to murder.

JULIAN: I mean, manslaughter. Graystripe didn't mean to kill him. It wasn't premeditated.

PAZ: Yeah, sorry, Graystripe.

LIZ: Has Firepaw killed anyone yet? Fireheart, sorry.

PAZ: No.

LIZ: I don't think so.

PAZ: He wanted to kill that one ShadowClan cat but then I think Whitestorm was like, no, we do not kill, apparently.

LIZ: The emphasis on it, and I mean, the emphasis on Whiteclaw dying and like the almost murder from the last ep, I wonder if it's gonna come to a head at like the finale of this book.

PAZ: Yeah, maybe. I just... I know in later books cats die so much, but murder seems to be like... so far the only like onscreen murder slash manslaughter we've seen is Oakheart. Is that the guy? I don't know. That RiverClan cat who got killed by Redtail. And then all of Tigerclaw's murder victims, but that was obviously evil. And then there's accidental death. But I know these cats are killing each other in later books. So I don't know. Maybe it's just like a change that happens.

JULIAN: I feel like there is some-- there is like a shift. But I don't remember when it happens.

PAZ: Yeah, I'll be curious to see if it happens like within the first series, or if that only really starts happening like, second series onwards.

JULIAN: There's definitely murders in the first series.

PAZ: Okay.

JULIAN: Unless I'm misremembering what happens in the first series.

PAZ: No, I mean, there's like murders. I know there's murders of like the other evil group. But I'm talking like interclan murders.

JULIAN: Oh, gotcha.

LIZ: What other evil group? Hold on. Wait.

PAZ: Don't worry about it.

LIZ: Okay, sure.

PAZ: We'll get there.

LIZ: Hmm.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't know. We'll see.

JULIAN: Yeah, there have so far been no war crimes, I would say. At least in these chapters. I think this book has also been pretty low war crime.

PAZ: Yeah, I feel like the war crimes might be coming up, though.

JULIAN: Yeah, I probably shouldn't call it. We're only on chapter 10.

PAZ: Yeah, I think we're gearing up for war crimes.

JULIAN: I guess hunting on WindClan's territory after driving them out could probably be construed as a war crime.

PAZ: Yeah. Breaking treaty, breaking word also. So there were war crimes. Couldn't go 10 chapters without some war crimes.

LIZ: Well, it is Warrior Cats. Not like non Warrior Cats. I think I've made this joke but better before. These are some fighting cats.

JULIAN: Cat fight.

PAZ: They sure are. I don't know. I don't have anything else really for these chapters. I don't-- does anyone else?

JULIAN: Yeah, I don't either.

LIZ: As a note, I think it's very funny that in like these chapters Tigerclaw he's being put on like, the sensible side of the argument or whatever. Yeah. It's just like, he's just acting normal guy now, but he's still evil.

PAZ: Yeah. He was so normal guy these chapters, noticeably.

LIZ: It's very funny.

JULIAN: Yeah, I feel like it's like trying to set us up for like, a twist when he goes mask off again. But.

LIZ: But what if he does-- what if he does just become normal? He's like, Oh, yeah, Vice President. This is good enough. I'm retiring my evil ways. I'm still mean, but from now on, I'm just going to be critiquing your teaching style.

JULIAN: Which frankly, needs it.

PAZ: Fireheart, have you considered murdering your apprentice as a motivator?

JULIAN: Oh.

LIZ: Oh, no? Well, have you considered taking notes?

JULIAN: Fireheart, have you thought about taking some continuing education classes? Some workshops?

LIZ: Night classes.

JULIAN: Personal development? Professional development?

PAZ: Needs to get his education certificate.

JULIAN: Yeah. Fireheart, where's your MA?

LIZ: You know, Fireheart, they have some courses on LinkedIn that you can take. About seven hours each. You get a little certificate at the end. That's how I got mine.

JULIAN: Fireheart learns to code. Fireheart goes to boot camp. Comes out with a Udemy badge.

LIZ: Are we good for these chapters?

PAZ: Yeah, I think we're good.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: It was only three chapters. And it was a lot of like, internal stuff.

JULIAN: Right, they're a lot less eventful than the last ones.

LIZ: Everyone's very sad.

PAZ: Yeah. Yeah.

[meow]

So, in honor of meeting Princess these chapters, I decided maybe we should look at all of the canonical kittypet names and rate them and see what the kittypet names got going on, because I think we were pretty positive on Nutmeg last week.

LIZ: Oh, yeah.

PAZ: So we're gotta see if there's more where that came from. So I'm pulling up the list of canon kittypets on the Warriors wiki. Okay, I'm just gonna go down them and we can give our thoughts. How about that?

JULIAN: Sounds good.

LIZ: All right.

PAZ: So the first that we have is Algernon? Is that how you say that? Al-grr-non?

JULIAN: Al-jer-non, yep.

PAZ: And Bess. How are we feeling about that?

JULIAN: I like them, but only as a duo. Like you got to have Algernon and Bess. They really play off each other.

PAZ: Yeah, I agree.

LIZ: They sound like a separate pirate duo in Black Sails.

PAZ: Yeah, I agree. They have to be a pair. Okay, next we have Hal.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: Pretty boring.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Pixie.

JULIAN: Very good.

PAZ: Eh. Yeah, I think it depends on the cat. I have to visualize this cat.

JULIAN: That's true. This is a fluffy white she cat, which is like a less good-- I hear Pixie and I'm biased by our friend Erin's very good cat who is a little tabby freak.

LIZ: Pixie should be a freak.

JULIAN: And this doesn't... this cat does not sound like a freak.

PAZ: No. Freaks only. Okay, the next cat is Red.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: Uh, it's okay, I guess.

LIZ: We've got a good ginger cat already. And Fireheart really got the protagonist name thing down.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Okay. Next cat is Marmalade.

JULIAN: Excellent.

LIZ: 10 out of 10.

PAZ: This is fantastic. He is described as a large ginger tom.

JULIAN: Yes.

PAZ: I am a huge fan of this name. Then we got Jay.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: It's okay.

LIZ: It's all right.

PAZ: I do like-- a very old black and white she cat. I'm just picturing Chloe.

JULIAN: Oh.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Then we have Jake. I feel like we already discussed his name, but I'll just reiterate. I love when a cat is just named a guy.

JULIAN: Just a human man.

PAZ: Then we have Twig.

JULIAN: Very good.

PAZ: That's pretty good. I like the energy that brings. Then we have another duo. It's Cherry and Boris.

LIZ: Very good together.

PAZ: I love Boris so much.

JULIAN: That's another human man name.

PAZ: Right? It just sounds like some Russian, old Russian man. I don't know.

JULIAN: Who is out here naming their cat Boris? I love it.

PAZ: I don't know but they chose right.

LIZ: I mean--

PAZ: Um-- yeah, go ahead.

LIZ: No. Our good friend does have a cat named Putin. Short for, if I'm remembering correctly, Rasputin, so.

JULIAN: Yes.

PAZ: Exactly. Then we have Echo. That's okay, I guess.

LIZ: Nice Friends at the Table reference.

JULIAN: Next cat name is Fourteen Fifteen.

PAZ: No, if only. Hutch. I don't know.

JULIAN: It really depends on the cat.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: I feel like.

PAZ: It's original, I guess.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: I'll give it points for that.

JULIAN: "Hutch is a dark brown tabby tom with amber eyes and hard paw pads." Why do we know that his paw pads are hard?

PAZ: Oh no.

LIZ: You mush them.

PAZ: How am I gonna squeeze his beans?

JULIAN: Give him some coconut oil.

PAZ: Okay, our next cat is Oscar. Once again, love just a normal human man name.

LIZ: I know I shouldn't be looking at the descriptions of these cause they're probably really spoilery.

PAZ: Yeah, don't do that. Stop.

LIZ: But this one's really funny. I won't remember it by then.

PAZ: Okay, you can read it.

LIZ: But if anyone's worried about spoilers, cover your ears. This says, "an unknowing descendent of SkyClan who chooses not to live in SkyClan because he believes clan ideas are stupid."

PAZ: I agree with Oscar.

JULIAN: That's a real Oscar-- Oscar would.

PAZ: Classic Oscar. Okay, the next cat is Bella. It's boring, I guess. I don't know. Another duo, Rose and Lily.

JULIAN: It's fine. It doesn't have the same energy as our previous duos.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: No, I don't... they're not bringing the same heat. I guess at least they have a theme, which is flowers.

LIZ: I want these to be like really out there cats, if it has to work, like real fancy or really evil.

JULIAN: Yeah, I just want like a cat with a flower name that's like really fucking-- like, where's my cat named Hydrangea?

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Fuck yeah. Okay, next cat is Hattie. Feel like that's cute.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Sounds like it should be like a little, little old cat. Next cat is Velvet.

LIZ: Very decadent.

PAZ: Yeah, just makes me think of the Velveteen Rabbit.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: Which I guess is a vibe. I don't know. Okay, then we have Benny.

LIZ: That's cute.

PAZ: It's pretty good. It's not as good as the other man names but it's cute. Then we have Brandy.

JULIAN: Brandy feels like such a 90s name to name your cat.

LIZ: Yeah. Like you're definitely thinking of like Brandi, capital B Brandi, right?

JULIAN: Oh, yes.

LIZ: I guess these did come out around that time.

JULIAN: Like that cat needs to bring that energy.

LIZ: This is a cat with a rhinestone collar.

PAZ: I think the name is better conjunction when you see that his sibling is Minty.

LIZ: Aw.

JULIAN: Oh, that's good.

PAZ: I think that's a good pair of names. So another one where I think a duo really brings out that energy.

JULIAN: The next one is also a duo. Or like, half a duo.

PAZ: Yeah. So it's Frankie. And then Jesse.

LIZ: Very cute.

PAZ: Those are just like, those are solid names. (laughing) The next cat is O'Hara.

JULIAN: Oh boy.

LIZ: Uh.

JULIAN: Bad, but it's not her fault.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: Oh, God. Okay, next name is Parsnip.

JULIAN: Excellent.

PAZ: I love that.

LIZ: 10 out of 10.

PAZ: This is a perfect cat name.

LIZ: Wow.

PAZ: I'm gonna keep it in mind for future cats, I think. It's powerful.

LIZ: I think Parsnip should have like a little vegetable clan and it should just be like, here's my deputy Carrots. Here's my other deputy, Rutabaga. And my [laughs] I don't know, my apprentices, like, Cabbage and... I'm running out of vegetables.

JULIAN: Peapod.

LIZ: Potato. Peapod, yeah.

PAZ: Polly. Eh.

JULIAN: I like Polly, but I think I'm mostly biased toward it because it's my grandma's name. So I'm just envisioning like a very like old, cheerful cat.

PAZ: That would be good. Then we have Riga, I guess? It's unique.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: It's probably a person name or something?

PAZ: Yeah, I don't know.

JULIAN: I think it's a person name.

PAZ: Points for not being a common name. Scarlett.

LIZ: No. Hold on a second. Are Scarlett and O'Hara a duo?

PAZ: Oh, no.

JULIAN: Oh, I'm very afraid that they might be.

LIZ: I don't like that. No.

PAZ: They both live in the same place apparently.

JULIAN: Nooo.

LIZ: Bad.

JULIAN: Hate it.

LIZ: Not their fault. But bad.

PAZ: No, but I'm looking at Scarlett's wiki page. It doesn't mention O'Hara anywhere, so. Maybe not.

JULIAN: That might be an Erin Hunter badness.

LIZ: Oh, no. Okay, wait. It says they're hostile. [laughs]

JULIAN: Well, then the name is perfect.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't think they're together. They live in the same neighborhood. I think that's about it. Thank God. Okay, then we have Victor.

JULIAN: Excellent.

PAZ: That's powerful.

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

JULIAN: Oh.

PAZ: Then we have Webster.

JULIAN: Yes.

PAZ: I like-- I love that.

LIZ: Yes.

PAZ: That's a little, like, nerd cat.

LIZ: With glasses.

PAZ: Exactly. Then we have Ziggy. That's also cute.

JULIAN: I think the four here are just really good kind of in conjunction, where it's like Victor, Webster, and Ziggy.

PAZ: Yeah, that's a great combo. That's a little like, YA friend group.

LIZ: They all sound like, like in that book, they would be the little nerd group that's going to go on like some sort of robotics competition thing. And it's about friendship.

PAZ: Exactly.

LIZ: And accepting who you are.

PAZ: The next name is Betsy.

JULIAN: Cute.

PAZ: It's a good name for an old cat. Gonna skip some of these names. Max. Eh.

LIZ: Can we go back to one? Just one because it's--

PAZ: No, we gotta skip them.

LIZ: Aw, but the one before that is so...

JULIAN: It's really good.

PAZ: Okay, I don't think that counts as a real kittypet name.

JULIAN: This was clearly not chosen by a human but Harveymoon.

LIZ: Can we give it a shout out?

PAZ: Harvest Moon sequel, Harveymoon.

JULIAN: Is that what they're calling it now that they can't use the Harvest Moon trademark anymore?

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Harveymoon, friend of Susanclaw.

JULIAN: Now I'm gonna be imagining them as an elderly couple.

PAZ: That's perfect.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Okay, um, Ajax.

JULIAN: Excellent, real powerful name.

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

PAZ: That just reminds me of dogs because I read a book about a half-dog half-dingo named Ajax, but that's my own bias.

JULIAN: Can I just read his description real quick?

PAZ: Yes.

JULIAN: "Ajax is a kittypet and friend of Rose and Fuzzball."

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: Yeah, I was waiting to get to Fuzzball on this list to rate that, but Fuzzball is a 10 out of 10 also.

LIZ: All three of those together are just... what a wonderful friend group. Powerful.

PAZ: Then we have Pickle.

LIZ: Beautiful.

PAZ: Perfect.

JULIAN: He has a squashed in face.

PAZ: Aw, Pickle. Imagine Pickle and... what was it? I've already forgotten it. Yes, Pickle and Parsnip together. Imagine that.

JULIAN: Oh yes.

LIZ: Oh, yeah.

PAZ: Yeah. Powerful.

LIZ: Wait, wait, wait. Do you think Pickle used to be Cucumber when he was younger and then as he aged he became Pickle?

PAZ: God.

JULIAN: Aw.

PAZ: Then we have Yew.

LIZ: Oh, me?

[laughter]

PAZ: Yep. Then we have Bumble.

LIZ: Beautiful.

JULIAN: That's very good.

PAZ: I like to picture this as the cats, you know, with like the balance like condition.

JULIAN: Oh yeah.

PAZ: Where they wobble.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: Yeah, it'd be a cute name.

JULIAN: I do think it's a cute name. I do think about the dating app unfortunately.

PAZ: Oh no.

JULIAN: But it's fine.

PAZ: I forgot that existed. Um, there is a cat just called Tom.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Good.

PAZ: Here's Tom's description. "He is hostile to every cat he meets and is a mean bully."

JULIAN: Good for him.

LIZ: So this is an old man.

PAZ: Who wrote this? Then we have a cat, Flower. Eh.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: I don't know about--

JULIAN: She is said to be frightened by strange cats.

PAZ: Who isn't?

JULIAN: So I'm picturing a very skittish creature.

PAZ: Yeah. Um, we got our boy Rusty. I think that was a pretty good name, but could be better.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah. Then we have Smudge. I think Smudge is a cute name.

JULIAN: Smudge is very good.

PAZ: We have Princess.

JULIAN: Eh.

LIZ: Classic.

PAZ: That name didn't do much for me.

LIZ: In context, it's very good.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Right, when you know that Princess is the daughter of Jake and Nutmeg.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah. Um, then we have Henry.

LIZ: The best.

PAZ: We love Henry. Henry is 11 out of 10. Fantastic.

LIZ: I'm looking at Henry's page wondering if there have been any hot Henry updates.

PAZ: No, I think we already established this.

LIZ: There's a pretty good image of him. He doesn't look as big as I imagined him, though.

PAZ: Yeah, it's like the stock Warriors wiki for kittypets.

LIZ: Aw.

JULIAN: I want him to be like a real chongus.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Okay, moving on. We got Purdy. I think that's a great name.

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

JULIAN: Mm-hmm.

PAZ: Cody.

LIZ: That's just a boy. That's just a guy. A lad.

JULIAN: Cody feels like a dog name to me.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah, if you told me there was an animal named Cody, I think I would assume a dog. Then we have Sasha.

JULIAN: Cute.

PAZ: It's okay.

LIZ: Also feels like a dog name, but like a sort of big furry one.

PAZ: Yeah, kind of.

JULIAN: Mm, I can see that.

PAZ: Then we have another duo. Jacques and Susan.

JULIAN: Perfect.

LIZ: Yes.

JULIAN: Yes.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Jacques is such a good cat name.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: And with Susan, though, that's like...

JULIAN: Yeah. I'm picturing like, you know how kids cartoons have like, sometimes just a very stereotypical French character.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: I'm picturing like a little cartoon where it's like, I'm Jacques. (high-pitched creaky voice) And I'm Susan.

PAZ: Yeah, Jacques has a little beret on.

JULIAN: Yeah, he's all stripey.

LIZ: I've seen this and it's the cooking show that Jacques Pepin had with Julia Child. This is just what it is.

JULIAN: Perfect.

PAZ: We have, um, Jingo. I have to say, don't name your cat that.

LIZ: Mm-mm.

JULIAN: Yeah, I think the cat right after is also bad.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: It's like Jingo and Huss-er. Or Hussar. I don't actually know how to pronounce that word.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Bad.

PAZ: Yeah, it's like a cavalry person. Really leaning on that theme. Then we have Snowdrop.

JULIAN: Perfect.

LIZ: Cute.

PAZ: I think for a little kitten, that would be a very cute name. We have Jigsaw.

[laughter]

Yeah?

LIZ: I love puzzles. That's the only reason I'm laughing.

JULIAN: I think it's a very good cat name.

PAZ: Yeah. Is Seville how you pronounce this next one?

JULIAN: I think so.

LIZ: Yeah, like with the oranges?

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Seville oranges.

JULIAN: Unless you're being super like, "suh-veal" or "suh-vee" or something. But like I don't think anyone...

PAZ: No.

JULIAN: That's like people who say "cwossan."

LIZ: Oh god, can I get another read on that? That was very good.

JULIAN: You want me to...? "Cwossan."

LIZ: Name a cat that.

JULIAN: But you have to say it exactly like that.

PAZ: Uh-huh. Next up we have Bob.

JULIAN: Good.

PAZ: 10 out of 10. Fantastic. Then we have Zelda.

LIZ: Great cat name.

JULIAN: Can I just read this list of like the next like three or four, kind of all in conjunction?

PAZ: Yeah, go ahead.

JULIAN: So we have Bob, Zelda, Max, and Loki.

PAZ: Wow.

JULIAN: Just a real--

PAZ: One for the Marvel fans there.

JULIAN: That's another YA book friend group.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: You have Zelda, your sort of token girl. And then Loki, who clearly chose their own name.

PAZ: Loki's just LARPing. I think we already rated the next two, which is Velvet and Fuzzball.

JULIAN: Fuzzball is still so good.

PAZ: Fuzzball's still fantastic. Okay, everyone brace yourself for the next two. It's Eggs and Bacon.

LIZ: Perfect.

JULIAN: Yes.

LIZ: Best ones.

PAZ: And Eggs and Bacon are the sons of Pancakes.

LIZ: Oh my god, they're siblings. Of course they are.

PAZ: This is 100% the best names on this list.

LIZ: Pancakes, you've done it.

JULIAN: Pack it up. What else can we do?

LIZ: We can't go on.

PAZ: It's so good.

LIZ: Fuck.

PAZ: Oh my god. Okay, um, we got Millie... eh.

JULIAN: Eh.

PAZ: Also, Liz, don't look at these descriptions. I'm covering your eyes.

LIZ: Okay, can I-- I'm covering the half that has the descriptions and I'm just looking at the names.

PAZ: Uh-huh.

LIZ: These... these mostly look like people names going forward.

PAZ: Yeah, yeah. We got Millie, Duke, Ruby, and Socks. I think Socks is cute.

LIZ: Socks is cute.

PAZ: Socks is a classic.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: Quince... Okay.

LIZ: So a fruit?

JULIAN: I think it's a fruit.

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: You little fruit.

LIZ: Tigerclaw.

PAZ: We have Shnuky.

JULIAN: Oh, that's good.

PAZ: That's a powerful name.

LIZ: Oh, when did that book come out, with the Shnuky in it?

JULIAN: Shnuky's in the mangas.

PAZ: Yeah. Then we have Patch. That's cute.

JULIAN: Cute.

PAZ: Then we have Harry. Once again, that one's just a guy.

JULIAN: Can I just post real quick an image of Shnuky?

PAZ: Yeah, please.

LIZ: Yes.

JULIAN: From the wiki? That may be from the official art. Um, this is not a cat.

LIZ: Wait. Wait a second.

PAZ: Oh my god. That's definitely from the manga.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: That's a man. Or that's some sort of human.

PAZ: This is a human man who's been cursed to be a hairless cat.

JULIAN: He looks like those paintings.

LIZ: This cat has the eyes of Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid.

JULIAN: The legs are also all wonky. They're like--

PAZ: They look like arms.

JULIAN: I'm like... so I assume this is, because I don't want to make fun of it if this is like a child's fan art.

PAZ: No, I think this is the manga for sure.

JULIAN: Oh god.

LIZ: I think it is. It's got that screen tone.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah, I think oh, it does have screen... Yeah, no, this was drawn by an artist. These are human eyes.

PAZ: Yeah, it's kind of scary.

JULIAN: I hate to look at this.

LIZ: They're human eyes and they're begging you to set him free from this cursed form.

JULIAN: God, and the back legs. One knee bends forward like a human's knee. And then the other knee is bending back.

PAZ: God.

LIZ: This is an animorph mid-transformation.

PAZ: Oh god. Okay, we're almost at the end here. Let's get haulin'. Myler.

JULIAN: I... sure?

PAZ: I don't know. I guess.

JULIAN: I don't know how I feel about that.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: It feels like a... like a Kayleigh. Like a Michaela name.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't know. It's a name, I guess. Um, Crystal? She's just like, a blonde.

LIZ: That's the name of my old boss.

PAZ: I don't know.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's like, the problem with Crystal is that it is a human name. But it doesn't have the same kind of human name energy that like... Susan--

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: This is no...

JULIAN: --has because it's also an object.

PAZ: This is no Boris.

JULIAN: Yeah, no, not a Boris at all.

PAZ: We have Violet. It's fine.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Riley. Also fine, I guess.

JULIAN: Yeah, Riley's cute I think.

PAZ: Yeah, depending on the cat, I think. Then we have Lulu.

JULIAN: Lulu's very good.

LIZ: Good.

PAZ: That's what my dad calls my cat Loo, whose full name is Waterloo technically.

JULIAN: Aw.

PAZ: Heck yeah.

JULIAN: I didn't know Loo was short for Waterloo. That's really cute.

PAZ: Then we have Madric. I feel like that's something, but I don't know what that is. Okay, googling it just showed me soccer players so I don't know. I guess it's a--

LIZ: This is a jock.

PAZ: Oh my god, this cat's homophobic.

LIZ: What?

PAZ: "He is an antagonistic kittypet who acts hostile towards Ravenpaw and Barley--"

JULIAN: Fuck off, Madric.

PAZ: "--and accuses them of trespassing."

LIZ: Fuck you. Get out of here.

PAZ: Madric's just some fucking straight boy in those like knee length shorts in winter on the football team.

JULIAN: Ravenpaw and Barley don't respect your land borders.

PAZ: No. And then we have Pasha. I don't know why this is the second cat named after historical military officers, but okay.

JULIAN: Isn't Pasha also like a diminutive for like Sasha?

PAZ: Is it?

JULIAN: I thought it was.

PAZ: I believe that, yeah. It probably is. Oh my god. Okay, I just have to read this description. "A dark tabby. He is one of the kittypets tormenting SkyClan."

LIZ: Oh no.

PAZ: Oh god. Okay, that's all the kittypet names.

JULIAN: We did it.

LIZ: I think there's some more.

PAZ: No, I think that's all of them.

LIZ: No, if you click on the-- did we miss Gremlin?

JULIAN: What?

PAZ: Where is this?

JULIAN: Oh, there's-- if we go into List of kittypets, there are more kittypets.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Liz, I don't want you to-- stop clicking around. Please.

JULIAN: Here, I opened it up. There's no spoilers on this list. And we don't have to read them all because there are--

PAZ: No, Liz, close the list. I'm holding a gun up.

JULIAN: 155.

LIZ: I'm closing it.

JULIAN: Um, but I just want to call out a couple of really good ones.

PAZ: Yeah, please.

JULIAN: Bigteeth. Bugeater. Buster.

LIZ: They're good.

JULIAN: Cheddar.

PAZ: Oh god.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Oh, we do have a good-- Daffodil.

LIZ: Aw.

PAZ: That's cute. Diesel.

JULIAN: Yeah. Um, Gremlin, as mentioned.

LIZ: Perfect.

JULIAN: We have not only Hal, Harry, Harvey, Hattie, and Henry, all of which are good.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Macgyver. Oh, Miss Mama Cat. Hello?

PAZ: Oh my god. That is incredible.

JULIAN: I must know more. Oh, Miss Mama Cat is a different name for a cat who has a separate name.

PAZ: Oh, yeah. Don't click.

LIZ: Spoilers, huh?

PAZ: Look away from this list.

LIZ: I'm not clicking. I'm not clicking.

PAZ: Holding up the gun.

LIZ: I've exited. Don't worry.

PAZ: Okay.

JULIAN: Um, let's see. Raindrop, very good. Scraps.

PAZ: Aw.

JULIAN: Shanty, Snooky.

PAZ: Tiny.

JULIAN: I can't be fond of Tiny because I know who Tiny is.

PAZ: Oh yeah, fuck, I forgot. Yeah, you're right.

LIZ: Oh, that's very ominous.

PAZ: Yeah. That bitch Tiny.

JULIAN: But apparently there are two Tinys. So maybe I can be fond of one of them.

PAZ: No, it says graphic novel.

JULIAN: Oh, they've listed it twice.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: They just haven't sanitized this list well. Um, but yeah, there's some good ones on here. I think we-- oh, Little Mew. I missed Little Mew.

PAZ: Aw.

LIZ: More cats should have little titles.

PAZ: I agree.

JULIAN: Yeah.

LIZ: Like imagine if--

JULIAN: Oh.

LIZ: I don't know, Nutmeg was like Miss Nutmeg.

PAZ: Aw, that's very good.

JULIAN: Little Mew is the kit of Husker and Moss and kin to Splash. Their siblings are Pad, Raindrop, and Birdy. And they all live in a barn besides a Twoleg nest.

LIZ: Wow.

PAZ: Aw, that's so cute.

LIZ: They're in their own book. This is some like Beatrix Potter shit.

JULIAN: Oh my god, Little Mew has anime bangs.

PAZ: Oh my god, please. Please please please. Oh my. They're horrible.

LIZ: Oh my god.

PAZ: Little Mew has 90s boy like middle part anime bangs.

LIZ: Little Mew looks exactly like a little boy in Pathologic Classic.

JULIAN: Here's the screentone version of Little Mew so you can see the bangs better.

PAZ: The bangs are colored differently.

LIZ: Little Mew's frosted tips.

JULIAN: Little Mew's center part.

PAZ: Oh God.

JULIAN: Little Mew's Edward Elric haircut.

LIZ: No!

PAZ: It also kinda looks like Yugioh hair.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: I love the Warriors manga. I love that it exists and that it gave all the cats anime bangs.

LIZ: But not the ones we wanted.

JULIAN: Oh.

PAZ: Okay, well, that's all the kittypet names. I think there's some pretty good ones here.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: So good job, Erins.

LIZ: 98% good job.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: Can I share one more art from the manga?

LIZ: Yes.

PAZ: Oh yeah, please.

JULIAN: This is Birdy.

LIZ: Holy shit. What the fuck.

PAZ: Does she have eyeshadow on?

LIZ: What the... who...

JULIAN: I just, I love that for the manga they appear not to have gotten like furry artists or people who were particularly good at drawing cats.

PAZ: No.

JULIAN: They got some like regular manga artists and were like, hey, you're good at shoujo manga, right? Um, can you draw cats? Don't worry. It's just like people.

LIZ: This cat looks like one of those old cats in the Cats musical.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: This is Grizabella the glamour cat. But this is before she really went downhill. You know? She's got her eyeshadow. She's looking fierce.

PAZ: Uh-huh.

LIZ: This is her in her prime.

PAZ: Yeah. Got her side face fluff styled to perfection.

LIZ: I don't like this expression that the artist has drawn.

PAZ: No.

JULIAN: She looks really vacuous. It's kind of scary.

LIZ: Don't look at me with those big old eyes.

PAZ: Oh gosh. Okay, well, I think that might do it for us. It's been a while. It's been a journey.

LIZ: I think we can agree that there are three really good categories of kittypet names. So there's one, just stuff in the kitchen. Two, just human names. And three, which is just kind of like a cutesy descriptor.

PAZ: Yeah. I agree.

LIZ: Fuzzball, you know, can't top that.

JULIAN: Socks.

LIZ: I think for the new generation of Warrior Cats as a series, if they have more kittypets, there should be cats named Toaster and Tax Return. That seems to be what millennials are doing now, right?

PAZ: No, it's for the children. It has to be like TikTok and, um...

LIZ: This is my cat Fortnite.

PAZ: My cat Fortnite. Exactly.

JULIAN: Name your cat after memes that are like three years old. This is my cat Doge.

PAZ: Oh god.

LIZ: Name your cat Bean Dad now to be already out of date.

PAZ: My cat Milkshake Duck.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: This is my cat Warrior Cat. I'm sure somewhere there is a cat rescue that is naming their cats after memes.

PAZ: Oh, absolutely.

JULIAN: Ensuring that everyone who adopts the cats will immediately rename them.

PAZ: Mind games. Okay, I'm gonna call it here. Great list, some great names. But we'll be back next week reading chapters 11 through 14. And as always, you can follow the show on Twitter @staircast and send in any questions or anecdotes to stairwaytostarclan@gmail.com. I can't remember if there's anything else to plug. Oh, I don't know if I ever mentioned it on the podcast but the episode summaries like written out, I'm linking them in the episode description. If anyone wants to look at that, they're there. Other than that, I think that's it. So until next time, may StarClan light your path. Bye.

JULIAN: Bye.

LIZ: Bye.

[outro music]

Let's podcast. Sorry.

JULIAN: We have to get that MeUndies money.

PAZ: Ugh. MeUndies wishes, but they'll never get us. They won't corner this market.

[yvaquietdays]

idealising the past and dreaming about the future

Last week, after I made the blog public, I received some pretty beautiful messages. Most of them were from folks who had been in the exact same position as me, whether living with depression or anxiety, or simply finding it tough battling through life’s disappointments. It was incredibly comforting knowing what I believed when I wrote that last post was so resonant; we’re all going through the same bullshit.

But a friend in particular, his name is Mat. He commented publicly on my post with some words that got me thinking. Imma share this here:

If I was arrested for any crime at all it would be for idealising my past self. That and eating too many biscuits. Who I was, who I thought I was. I laughed more, I cared less, I subscribed to nobody else’s version of me. But then I got depressed and worried all the time, and I lost that part of myself. The happy-go-lucky, ball of energy, motivated, determined young woman, gone. As slow and as unnervingly noticeable as a fart. Much in the way that Mat reminisces over his “extroverted, confident ‘me’“, I reminisce heavily upon the teenage me, the one who had stars in her eyes and never wavered in her confidence of her abilities.

Except, when I really think about it, when I’m honest with myself, and I face my self in the mirror, I know that isn’t true.

All that I’ve lost, really, are my rose tinted glasses.

I grew up.

I was never motivated, I was never determined. I was lucky. I can’t reminisce about the person I was because I know more about myself now than I did before, and I think the hardest part of climbing out of the pit of your mental un-health is accepting that life goes forwards, not backwards. I can’t unlearn all the things I’ve learnt since I noticed three years ago that I wasn’t happy. The truth is, I was unhappy before that. I’ve been fighting off that frequency sadness for as long as I can remember.

So I can’t go back and rewind the clock, because all I have is now and I don’t want to be that sad girl anymore. I’ve been thinking a lot about cycles, the 7-year-life cycle in particular. Wait, though- Before you flick back to whatever you were doing before you decided to read my blog, bear with me. Aside from whatever spiritual or philosophical connotations the idea might have, let’s look at it logically for a second. The first seven years of our life we spend smelling and touching and feeling out the world around us. Any mental learning is done almost subconsciously, depending on how our world treated us. We’re well on our way to becoming a real, pubescent adult when the second cycle rolls around, by which point we’re discovering our sexuality, relationships, viewpoints and intellect. This is such a huge exploratory phase for some. Then the third arrives, and we’re beginning to find out what the world is like without our parents driving the train. We’re figuring out where we place in the grand scheme of things, and wondering how you might change, politically, environmentally, socially. And then come our twenties.

Jesus Fuck.

WHAT HAPPENED?!

I think it is no coincidence that a lot of people suffer mental illness for the first time in this particular age bracket. I envy those who don’t. They tend to be some of the most driven, strongest people I know. But my friends used to call it “the mid-twenties fear.” Out of nowhere, we’re mentally and physically culpable for all our own decisions and mistakes, and all the ideas we had for life in those first three cycles have become somewhat buried under a pile of work deadlines, rent days and bills to pay. We don’t own your own home yet, we aren’t married, we have no kids. We aren’t in the perfect job yet, we haven’t even begun the successes that were supposed to come to us after we put in so much work at our GCSE’s, A-Levels, degrees!

We’re the guy cleaning our toilets now, we’re the ones buying the food. School didn’t prepare us (not in the UK at least) for how to deal with every day responsibilities; how to pay taxes, how to arrange loans, how to mentally cope with the resounding disappointment we feel at how our lives panned out in contrast to the grand ideals we had when we were in our third cycle.

Oof. I know. Heavy man.

(I have a big problem with how out-dated our education system is; instead of being career-driven, it is goal-driven. Degrees don’t work for everyone and they evidently do not provide for a stable economy. More apprenticeships, less pressure on exams (not everyone is good at those) and more practical applications, pls & thnx)

But here’s what I’ve realised. Life is a cycle. It’s not meant to go backwards, it’s supposed to continue on its round, picking up what we’ve learned and adapting itself as it goes. Why focus on what we haven’t got when we should focus on what we do have? And if something is ever spiralling, ever changing and evolving, how can we go back to the last cycle? Should we jam an iron rod in the spokes, forcing the wheel to brake suddenly and collapse under the pressure? Because that is what would happen. That is what happened to me.

I knew at the age of 18 my life wasn’t heading in the right direction, when I stared out of my university accommodation window at York Minster in the distance, listening to Stop This Train by John Meyer. The night was dark, and I sat curled on my redundant desk chair, wondering in a pale blue light of sadness, even then. Eventually I made the change, dropping out of further education and pursuing my joy, my music. But it did not alleviate the sadness. I continued on, all the while so scared of living life on my own, so scared of growing up. I lived in fear for years of never achieving my goals because I could not bear to be alone doing it. Isolation was my motivation and fear my hinderance.

I spent years dreaming and idealising this vision of the future where I was always winning, where I was singing and performing and recording and I was writing with everyone and everyone wanted to write with me, and everything was just going to work out (claps between words required). It was easier living in this fantasy life I wanted to build, but the escape was taking me further away from reality. Much like that incredible Pixar film, Inside Out, fear and sadness was in control of my actual life.

Things were going well for a while in that frame of mind, but then they didn’t.

When all those things I’d dreamt (I stress that I never visualised them, not in a positive way- I dreamed them- the difference is as vast as an ocean) didn’t happen, I kept harking on to that past self, wondering where it all went wrong, trying to get back that ambition, the endless streams of excitement, the riveting pangs of desire. It was all a lie I told myself. Because really, all I had in the pit of my stomach was dull and and grey; it was nothing, and I could feel myself hiding in that pit, far, far away from where I used to be. All of what I told myself was a lie, and I was starting to realise the truth of it.

I think that amidst all of it, life was telling me (whatever it was; nature, God, Buddha’s mates,) I ought not to hyper-admire my old self. Because in trying to become my past self, I was ignoring what I could become in the future. All of the little lies I told myself started to evolve on their own like that black icky shit from Prometheus (don’t watch it- it’s disappointing, just like your life), to the point that I forgot what I had done to protect myself; when all of those things I had lied with were stripped from me, I was naked and bare, and I had no idea of how I was going to move through the murk of it all. My self esteem was so low that the idea of performing made me anxious, writing made me cry, I sat in silence at the piano with a choke in my throat and my guitar lay in its case gathering dust.

But I was naked for a reason. I had to accept that I was relying heavily upon this idea of my self, not upon what I was. I was constantly seeking others’ approval, my only source of validation was what I thought others thought of me.

It has been empowering to know that the answer has been in me all along. I cannot blame others for how I view myself.

Life is a cycle. I am where I am supposed to be now. It’s not perfect, I’m still working on me and creating my life with my own hands, not someone else’s. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m trying.

But maybe this is my best self, because I’m so much more aware and emotionally awake. Maybe I’m the best I can be because I recognised my laziness and arrogance when I needed to, and in stripping these things away from my ego I am looking forward to being a better person, not the young complacent girl I was. And as a woman, cycles rule our lives. From the second cycle to the latter, our emotions and physiology is run by a monthly turn of events. Part of the reason I came off the pill was so that I could feel and trust this more purely. I was neglecting my basic instincts and self and I couldn’t have jacked up hormones hiding it away from me.

So everything comes and goes. The old girl goes and the new woman arrives. We have a chance to change every time. All aspects of life in this world run in a cycle. Water, fire, earth. It all moves and works in a cycle. Ice ages, the rising of dough into a beautiful donut, the melting of butter atop a mountain of cheese and jacket potato. Life and death. All the important stuff.

So I let the death of my old self instigate the birth of a better me. And one day I might shed this skin too and look forward to the next husk I inhabit.

What I’m learning is that nostalgia can be good, if you’re with your mates and remembering that time you threw up down the side of George Ezra’s tour van (true story).

But if we start becoming nostalgic about our selves, thinking of our current self in a negative way, dousing it in low light and bad reflective gear, and instead highlighting that past self with the glory light of hindsight, we can’t, and I believe, we won’t move forward.

We have to accept ourselves as we are now, and then build whatever we can upon the foundations that we create every second we’re alive. Because all we have are our own decisions, that ultimately we are in control of. How we respond, how we act, what we say; at the end of the day, that’s who we are. What you did today, that’s who you are, good or bad. No-one is perfect and life is a cycle. We always have tomorrow to try again.

We don’t have yesterday, so

[sjphotosphere]

(How To Learn About Mutual Funds) This post will be a bit of a “back to basics” post. I’ve written about mutual funds in the past, but it has been a long time and I’ve never done a post like this one. If you want to see some of the older stuff on mutual funds, check these out: Mutual Fund Expenses Why Vanguard? Avoid Actively Managed Mutual Funds Survival Bias- Another Great Reason to Invest In Index Funds Mutual Funds Versus ETFs But today, I’m not going to give you a fish. I’m going to teach you how to fish. Mutual funds make up the majority of my investment portfolio and I think that should be the case for most investors out there. There are other ways to invest successfully, but they will require significantly more time and effort than building a mutual fund-based portfolio. Upsides and Downsides Mutual funds have a number of sweet benefits you can’t get by buying individual stocks, bonds, and properties. These include: Diversification – Buy thousands of securities in 10 seconds Pooled Costs – Share the costs of the fund with thousands of others Daily Liquidity – Buy or sell the entire investment any day the market is open Professional Management – Don’t know what you’re doing? No problem. Hire someone for cheap who does Automatic Reinvestment – While stocks often have DRIP programs, try doing that with a municipal bond or a duplex Mutual funds have a few downsides as well, and in full disclosure they ought to be mentioned. Diversification – It works both ways, you (or the manager’s) best ideas get diluted No Capital Loss Pass Through – While capital losses in the fund can be used to reduce the capital gains passed through, those tax losses that occur on individual securities in the fund won’t find their way on to your tax return. You can be assured you’ll get a capital gains distribution most years though, whether the fund makes money or not. Management Fees – While they can be very low, they often are not Loads and 12b-1 Fees- While you don’t have to buy a fund with these fees, lots of investors do Manager Risk- The reason you hire a professional manager is because you recognize you’re an idiot. But what if the manager is too? What Mutual Funds Should You Buy? Instead of paying mutual fund loads, save your money and go heli-skiing This is a “back to basics” post, so let’s make this real basic. If the name of your mutual fund does not have one or more of the following words in it: Vanguard DFA TSP Index Spartan you probably shouldn’t buy it. That doesn’t mean that any fund with one of these words in it is a good fund, nor that every fund without one of these words is a bad fund, but it’s a pretty darn good first screen. What Are Acceptable Fees? I’ve written before about mutual fund fees. There are a number of fees associated with mutual funds. Most of them you don’t have to pay. Expense Ratio: Don’t pay one over 1% and try to keep it under 0.2%. Load: Don’t pay one at all. This is supposed to compensate your “advisor” for his advice. In reality, it’s a commission for a commissioned salesman. Since the best funds don’t charge loads, why would you pay extra to get a crummier fund? You wouldn’t, unless you don’t know. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. And if you need advice, go to someone who sells advice (i.e. a fee-only, not fee-based planner/investment manager) not products. 12b-1 fee: Just like a load, this is an unnecessary fee. Since the best mutual funds don’t have one, if the fund you’re looking at has one, then you know it’s a crummy mutual fund. It doesn’t even matter what the theory behind 12b-1 fees was/is (the theory is BS anyway.) Buy/Sell Fees: Some funds, including some of those at Vanguard, have buy and sell fees. It might be structured so you get hit with a sell fee only if you don’t hold on to the fund for a period of time like 6 months or 5 years. Try to avoid these as much as possible. If you are really, really interested in the fund/asset class and are committed to it for a long time and the fee is low, then maybe it’s okay to pay. What About ETFs Exchange Traded Funds are just mutual funds that you can buy and sell during the day instead of at 4:00 pm. They’re not necessarily good or bad, just slightly different. They are certainly a little more complicated to use, so have a good reason (such as lower overall expenses) to use an ETF over a mutual fund. Actively Managed Versus Index Funds I love it when people call the frequently seen argument about active management a “debate.” It’s not a debate and if it ever was, it was over a decade or two ago. An actively managed mutual fund has a manager who tries to buy the good securities and avoid the bad ones. A passively managed mutual fund has a manager (mostly a computer) who just buys all the securities and keeps costs as low as possible. It turns out that it is very hard for a mutual fund manager to add enough value to overcome the costs of active management over the long run, especially in a taxable account. In fact, it is so hard that an individual investor even bothering to choose an active manager is probably making a mistake. The data, which I don’t have room to recount here, is pretty overwhelming. So at least until you know something, stick with passive (index) mutual funds. Chances are once you do know something that you won’t change your strategy and you’ll be glad you started with it. And you’ll probably send me a nice thank-you email in a few years and I like those. Which Mutual Funds Should I Invest In? Okay, you got the message and you’re looking for an appropriately risky mix of low-cost, passively-managed, broadly diversified index mutual funds mostly from Vanguard. But then you go to the Vanguard site and it’s overwhelming. I mean “there are eight money market funds, and I don’t even know what money market funds are.” There are 37 bond funds. And dozens and dozens of index funds. Too many choices lead to analysis by paralysis. I was in a restaurant recently and I was handed a menu. There were three options on it. That was awesome. I think all menus should be like that. The happiness literature tells us that we like to have choices and feel in control, but that the fewer choices we have, the happier we’ll be. So let me try to simplify things a bit. We’re going to work our way down the entire page listing the Vanguard mutual funds by asset class. (Remember “asset class” is the type of investment the mutual fund invests in.) By the way, this is one of the most important pages of the internet for a Do-It-Yourself investor. If you don’t have an investment advisor, you should know it like the back of your hand. Okay, let’s walk through this. First, what’s a money market fund? Well, it’s basically a bank account. There are some subtle differences, but not enough that you really need to spend a lot of time on them. Basically money market funds make very short term loans to companies and federal, state, and local governments. In return, they are paid interest. After paying their expenses, whatever interest is left over is paid to you. They are very safe investments in that you are unlikely to lose money in them. But don’t expect to make much. In fact, for the last 5-8 years, you’ve made less than the rate of inflation in money market funds. As you can see, there are two types of money market funds. There are “taxable” ones and “tax-exempt” ones. The tax-exempt ones are like municipal bonds. You’re loaning money to state and local governments. In order to incentive you to do so, you get a federal tax break and maybe a state and local tax break on the interest. So as you might expect, the interest on these is generally lower than on a taxable fund, but if you’re in a high tax bracket, you may come out ahead after tax even with that lower interest payment. As we move left to right here, we see the name of the fund, the ticker symbol (ignore this), the expense ratio (never ignore these, but if you’re on the Vanguard site, they’re all pretty low), and then we come to the price of the shares. In a money market fund, the price is always $1.00. The next two columns give you the change in the share price yesterday, both in dollar terms and percentage terms. Since the price of a money market fund is zero, that should also always be zero. The next column is important. This shows you the yield on the mutual fund. Remember that yield is not return for most mutual funds, but for a money market fund (and a bank account) they are essentially interchangeable. Finally, we come to the “return” figures. Remember that it is not wise to choose a mutual fund primarily based on past returns, but it is a good idea to have some idea of what you can expect from this mutual fund in a given economic environment. The first column is the year to date return (interesting, but not very useful) and then Vanguard publishes the 1 year, 5 year, 10 year, and “since inception” return. As you can see, the last decade has not been kind to money market funds but the “since inception” numbers and dates tell you that things were not always like this. Okay, let’s move on to bonds. Remember a bond is a loan to someone, but it’s a longer loan than the ones that go in a money market fund. Because of this, bond funds can’t keep the share price at $1.00. As Jack Bogle has said, you can have stable principle or you can have stable yield, but you can’t have both. With a bond, you get a stable yield and a variable principle (unless held to term). With a money market fund, you get get a stable principle, but a variable yield. However, when you throw a bunch of bonds into a bond fund, the yield is only kind of stable, especially with economic fluctuations. Platinum Level Scholarship Sponsor Let’s go down the left hand column first. Luckily, at Vanguard the names of the funds actually tell you what they’re invested in. At other mutual fund companies, you might actually have to read the prospectus to get that information. No wonder everyone is pulling their assets from other mutual fund companies and sending them to Vanguard. At any rate, the first fund is GNMA. Ginnie Mae is a semi-government agency that does mortgages. So the bonds in this fund are loans to home owners. You’re buying mortgages. Where does the money go when you pay your mortgage? It doesn’t go to the bank. They sold your mortgage to someone like this fund two weeks after you got it. So when people pay on the mortgages you own through this mutual fund, you make money. When they don’t pay, well, you don’t make money. The next fund is “Inflation Protected Securities.” That means Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS. These are bonds whose value is indexed to inflation. This is one of my favorite funds and one I’ve owned for years. The next fund is Intermediate Term Bond Index Admiral Shares. That means it invests in all types of bonds that are of an intermediate duration and uses an index fund strategy. It buys both corporate (loans to Ford and Apple) bonds and government bonds (treasuries.) This fund doesn’t hold GNMA bonds. The “admiral” means you have to put at least $10K into it. If you don’t have $10K, you have to buy the “investor” shares, which have a slightly higher expense ratio and usually a $3K minimum. I also like this fund and use it in my parent’s portfolio. The next fund is just like it, except no corporates. The fifth fund down doesn’t have the word “index” in it. It is actively managed and invests only in treasury bonds. Luckily, even the actively managed bond funds at Vanguard act like index funds so there isn’t a bad fund on this list. Moving left to right, we see some various expense ratio, prices that aren’t stable (but really don’t move much, I mean, you can handle swings of 0.27% per day, which are actually pretty big for a bond fund,) and higher yields and returns than you see from money market funds. Be aware the TIPS fund yield is a “real” (i.e. after-inflation) yield. If it was a nominal yield, you would be better off putting money in your mattress than investing in that. As you scroll down the page you will also notice there are corporate bonds funds (guess what they invest in) and tax-exempt bonds funds (just like the tax-exempt money market funds.) In the interest of time, we’ll skip through all that and get to the Balanced Fund Section. What is a balanced fund? It invests in both stocks and bonds at varying ratios depending on the strategy. Why might you want to use one? Mostly to keep things simple. You only have to own one fund and you get to own all kinds of assets all over the world without any hassle. I use them (okay, one of them) for things like my kids’ Roth IRAs. Vanguard has a number of different types of balanced funds. The Target Retirement funds are supposed to be chosen by your retirement date. The further you are out from retirement, the more aggressive the fund is (i.e. more stocks, fewer bonds.) Then the fund gradually becomes less aggressive as the years go by. The Target Risk funds are also contain a reasonable mix of stocks and bonds, but they don’t become less aggressive as time goes by. They just stay the same. Then there are more traditional balanced funds, including both index funds and some of Vanguard’s most successful actively managed funds. Finally, there is the managed payout fund, which tries to keep a constant “pay-out” despite widely fluctuating asset values. That’s kind of fun to watch to see if Vanguard can do it, but I wouldn’t actually invest in it. Now let’s move on to a more exciting part of the portfolio- the stocks! Remember when you own a stock you own a tiny piece of a real, live company with real, live customers. When they make money, you make money. When they lose money, you lose money. In the short run, there is also an impressive speculative component, but in the long run, you’re just buying a piece of a (hopefully) profitable enterprise. First we see US Large Cap Stock (or Equity) Mutual Funds. Dave Ramsey (and other people who were investing in the 90s) calls these Growth and Income funds. You’ll notice Vanguard has a couple dozen of these. Which one should you invest in? This one. That was easy, wasn’t it? It is also a good example of why you shouldn’t choose a fund based on performance since inception. As you scan down that list, you’ll see funds with very different inception dates, and the date has more to do with the return since inception than anything the mutual fund actually does or has control over. But moving left to right, you’ll see slight changes in the asset class column. Some funds invest in Large Cap Growth stocks, some invest in Large Cap Value stocks, and most invest in Large Cap Blend (growth and value) stocks. You can also see the difference in expenses between an index fund and an actively managed fund. Even at Vanguard, you can see an 8-fold difference in expense ratio. That is not easy for a manager to overcome. Stock funds have yield too, although instead of coming from a bond coupon, they come from stock dividends, and thus aren’t nearly as stable. You’ll also notice that returns, particularly for the last few years, are dramatically higher for stock funds than balanced, bond, and money market funds. As you scroll down, you’ll come to Mid Cap stock funds (Dave Ramsey calls these “Growth” funds) and Small Cap stock funds (“Aggressive Growth.”) Then you move into international funds. Remember this section includes both stock funds and mutual funds, but again, the names are descriptive. Developed Markets include mostly Europe, Australia, and Japan. Emerging markets are places like Brazil, Russia, India, China, most of the Pacific Rim, and most of Central and South America. The best thing for most investors to do is scroll to the bottom of this section and look at the two “Total International” funds. The first buys all the bonds in the world outside of the US and the other buys all the stocks in the world outside the US. I’ve been using the Total International Stock Index fund for more than a decade in my portfolio. The next section down is for “Global” stock funds. There is an important bit of terminology here. When it comes to investing, “International” means outside the US and “Global” means the entire world including the US. These funds are all a bit small and a bit expensive. I’ve never invested in any of them. The Total World Stock Index has potential, but still hasn’t caught on much after almost a decade. You can buy its components cheaper separately. Finally, we get to the bottom. If you want to invest at Vanguard, but still want some excitement in your life, this is your place. Why buy a diversified portfolio of stocks when you can get a concentrated one? If you learned something in the previous 3000 words of this post, you have no business buying any of these funds. That said, I’ve owned all of them at one point or another and they’re a lot of fun. I mean, look at Energy- 33% last year alone! And Precious Metals- 76% last year! Whoohooo! (And I owned both of them last year- bragging rights for cocktail parties.) Guess what? They go down just as fast. In fact, precious metals still has a markedly negative return over the last 10 years. Health Care is one of Vanguard’s long-term successes in active management. But they had a pretty rough year last year, underperforming the overall market by 10%. Lots of people hold a little slice of REITs in their portfolio in hopes that they will act differently from other stocks due to the slightly different structure. I lost 78% of my money in that fund in the 2008 bear market. Use extreme caution with any of these four funds, even if they do have the word Vanguard in their name. You should not have a large portion of your portfolio in any of them. Prospectus As you can see, this page alone gives you a lot of information about a mutual fund once you know how to read it. You can get even more information from the Prospectus and Annual Report, which I also recommend you at least skim. In fact, let’s look at one now. Just click on a mutual fund link. Let’s do the REIT Index Admiral Fund for convenience. It’ll take you here: This is the fund page. It gives you even more information about the fund including what it invests in, what the fees are, what the past performance is etc. If you want even more information, click on “View Prospectus and Reports.” Then read the prospectus. There’s a short version (8 pages) and a long version (53 pages.) The short version is probably good enough. I would concentrate on these sections: Tons of interesting information on the 2nd page. First, you learn what it invests in. Unsurprisingly, it invests the entire fund in Real Estate Investment Trusts. You also learn the strategy- it tries to track the performance of an index. In other words, it just buys all the publicly traded REITs. Platinum Level Scholarship Sponsor The fee section is also interesting. Well, maybe not for Vanguard funds, but when you compare it to another fund. You see there are no loads, purchase fees, sales fees, redemption fees, account services fees (I know, it says $20 but that gets waived if you opt for electronic communications or if you have more than $10K in the fund), or 12b-1 fees. The expense ratio is a low, low 0.12%. Just for fun, let’s look at a similar page from the prospectus of another mutual fund. How about the Alger Capital Appreciation Fund Class A. It’s page looks like this: They have an investment objective too. But it’s so friggin’ vague you have no idea what they’re doing. And check out those fees. Wow! Let’s start with the 5.25% load. Yup, that’s money right out of your pocket. Give your commissioned salesman $1000 to invest, and he takes $52.50, puts it in his pocket and invests $947.50. That’s going to take a little while to recover from. Oh wait, there’s more. Not only do you get to pay a “front-load” but you also get to pay a 1% back-load. I love the little extra kicker there- if the share value goes down, you pay a back load off what it used to be, not what it actually is at the time of sale. The ER is 0.79%, or approximately 16 times as high as a Vanguard Index Fund. But wait, there’s more. You can also pay a 12b-1 fee of 0.25-1%. And “other expenses” of 0.19%, whatever the heck those are. All in, you’re looking at 1.23% for the front-loaded shares. But wait, there’s more. Look at all those asterisks and fine print at the bottom! I’m not saying this fund sucks and you should avoid it….actually, that is what I’m saying. Given those high fees, you won’t be surprised to learn its recent performance was kind of crummy too. Last year, while the US stock market generated returns of 12.94%, this fund LOST MONEY. A LOT OF MONEY. -4.94%. That sucks and it certainly doesn’t sound like “capital appreciation” to me. Why are people still investing with those chumps? Because they’ve never read a blog post like this one. Okay, let’s go back to the Vanguard prospectus. This section is pretty important. It talks about the risks you’re running in this fund. Let’s just say it is a risky fund, but you should read and understand all of these before buying the fund. There is a reason the government requires them to tell you this. This is also a really useful page. It may give you some idea of what to expect in the fund. You’ll notice it has had some huge losses, such as in 2007 and 2008. -37.05% doesn’t sound too bad, right? But wait. Didn’t I say I lost 78% of my money in this fund in that bear market? Yes I did. Bear in mind that performance data reported for the calendar years will down play what you will feel as an investor. You feel the peak to trough drop (and trough to peak rise), not the calendar year drop. Notice how few years there are with returns of 5-10%, which is what you expect the long-term return to be. Most years are big losses or big gains. That tells you it’s a risky fund. Check out the tax data too. These are also mandatory disclosures. Notice the difference between the 10 year pre-tax return of 7.44% and the post-tax return (assuming maximum tax brackets) of 5.40%. That’s a fairly tax-inefficient fund to lose 27% of its return to taxes. Compare those numbers to a more tax-efficient fund, like the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund which lost just 19% to taxes or a really tax-efficient fund like the Vanguard Intermediate Term Tax Exempt Bond Fund which only lost 3% to taxes. Morningstar Vanguard is pretty good at putting lots of very useful information on their website and in their prospectuses and reports. Probably because they don’t have much to be ashamed of. But if you’re looking up a mutual fund somewhere else, you may find it a little tougher to get the information you seek. Or you might just want more detail. In those cases, you can go to Morningstar, which provides all kinds of mutual fund information. There is some information behind a paywall, but everything you really want is in front of it. Let’s take a look at that Vanguard REIT fund there. Most of the good stuff is under the “Performance,” “Portfolio,” and “Expense” tabs and is summarized at the bottom of the front page. This tells you what it is invested in (100% stocks, remember REITS are a type of stock) and mostly small to medium slightly growthy stocks. At the bottom, you can see all of the money is invested in the real estate sector (no surprise there) and that their top holdings are all big real estate companies, some of which you might have even heard of. It is a fairly concentrated fund, with over 20% invested in just the top five holdings. The comparative performance data is also pretty useful. Look at the long-term % rank in category near the bottom. Over 5-10 years, this fund has outperformed 80-83% of the other funds in its category. That’s pretty typical for an index fund. Despite whooping up on 4 out of 5 funds for a decade, Morningstar only gives it 3 out of 5 stars. That’s another good point- when you go to Morningstar, you’re looking for 3-4 star funds. 1-2 star funds tend to stay 1-2 star funds, but 5 star ratings do not predict future performance. Steady eddies are what you want. This post is way too long already, but I hope it has been educational. You can learn a lot about mutual funds without ever reading an investment book if you just know where to look on the internet and what you’re looking for. What do you think? How did you learn about mutual funds? What do you think a beginning investor needs to know? Do you invest in mutual funds? Why or why not? Comment below! !function()function e()var e=document.createElement("script"),n=document.getElementById("myFinance-widget-script"),a=t+"static/widget/myFinance.js";e.type="text/javascript",e.async=!0,e.src=a,n.parentNode.insertBefore(e,n);var c="myFinance-widget-css";if(!document.getElementById(c))var d=document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0],i=document.createElement("link");i.id=c,i.rel="stylesheet",i.type="text/css",i.href=t+"static/widget/myFinance.css",i.media="all",d.appendChild(i)var t="http://ift.tt/2oFUowK";document.attachEvent?document.attachEvent("onreadystatechange",function()"complete"===document.readyState&&e()):document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",e,!1)(); http://ift.tt/2qH1K3j

[jenroses]

Demystifying US taxes

Okay, kids, so look, I know a lot of you are paying taxes for the first time, and it’s important to do it right, but for most people, doing it right is not terribly difficult. I am not a tax professional. I’m just a grownup who has to handle taxes that involve a business, rental properties, medical expenses, mortgage deduction, etc. I did, once upon a time, qualify for EIC and various child care credits, and have handled the educational bullshit that comes with the luxury of a 529 educational trust fund. 

1. If you have income that is on W2s, and not a lot of investments and stuff, and you don’t need to itemize deductions (most people don’t! If you don’t own a house, it probably doesn’t benefit you to itemize!) then doing your taxes is likely to be pretty straightforward and it doesn’t have to be scary.

2. Turbotax (and other programs like it) will do the math for you.  If your income is under a certain point and you’re not using fancy features like for owning a business and shit, it’s FREE. You don’t have to pay until you file, regardless, so it’s worth running through the program to make sure you have everything. 

3. It is worth using a program like Turbotax, because it might flag deductions and tax credits you didn’t know you qualified for. Earned Income Credit, health care credits, etc.

4. It can get complicated if your parents claim you, or if there’s educational stuff going on. You’re going to get some tax documents, and your parents might, too. You’re going to need to work it out with them which things are relevant. 

5. It’s a good idea to keep a box, folder, whatever with various Important Papers that come in from January to March for taxes. If you do anything involving an online business (*cough*Patreon*cough*) and you are paying expenses related to that business, they all go in the box, and if they’re not tangible paper receipts, you need to keep track of them online. Google docs spreadsheets are a fast, easy way to do this. I also set up a dummy account on facebook and message numbers to myself a lot. 

6. It is possible to reconstruct a LOT of expenses via your credit card bill, Paypal account, etc. If you’re paying with a credit card via paypal, don’t double dip. If you buy supplies on Amazon, your entire history forever is up there. 

7. Google Docs has a spreadsheet function! This means you can plug in a bunch of numbers in a column, highlight the numbers, and click the SUM button. And that will add them for you. You usually don’t have to do any actual math to do your taxes if you know how to use the tools available to you. 

By far the easiest situation is if you have ONE job, one W2, and no reason to itemize. Your taxes are probably mostly paid! That’s great.

If you have TWO jobs (or more), there’s a good chance you’re going to have to pay extra money in April. This is because they don’t tax the first chunk of income, and if you have two jobs, that means two chunks that didn’t get taxed, instead of one. Talk to HR if you are in this situation. You may need to have fewer exemptions on your second job, or they may handle it differently if you ask. 

If you have self-employment income, even if your overall income is low, you’re going to PROBABLY end up sending something to the government. Why? Because of medicare/social security taxes, which employees pay at like 7.5% (or something, I forget) and the employer pays the same, and self employed people pay both “halves” of that payment, so whatever your profit is on your business, you’re going to pay a minimum of 15% on it, in most cases. If your income is higher (or the business is supplementing a day job) it is likely to be higher, a total of anywhere from 30%-50% depending on what tax bracket you’re in. Turbotax will help you figure this out, but you REALLY need to be setting aside money out of every withdrawal, regardless. Put it in an account that you don’t touch. If you’re really with it, see if you can put the money in a short-term low-risk investment account with a maturity date shortly before you file. But even a box under the bed is better than not saving up as you go along. 

If you owe more than a certain amount of taxes come April, you could owe a penalty! The way to avoid this is to pay quarterly taxes as you go. If you have a W2 and a business, when you do your taxes, make a note of how much your advance payments (from the day job) were, in total, and subtract that from the total tax, and divide that by four. Turbotax should be able to handle this. Send it in every 3 months. If you’re ONLY paying self-employment stuff, you’ll probably just take the total tax owed, divde by four and send that. If you do that, even if your income goes up, if you can show you made a good faith effort to put in what you paid last year, they won’t charge a penalty. The first year you go over the amount ($1000 last I looked?), they won’t charge a penalty. 

At least through this year, most low-income people are not likely to pay a lot of taxes and might actually get a refund, and possibly a substantial one. Next year? Fuck if I know. Who knows what those yahoos will do to the tax code.

After dealing with my own taxes, running through a simple 1040EZ for someone with one job is downright relaxing.

Anyone else want to chime in? 

[theredherb]

Is the Nintendo Switch Launching Too Early?

Breaking Down the Info from the Hybrid Console’s Big Presser

When Nintendo finally revealed the Switch back in late October, I was left more excited about the company’s future in hardware than I have been in years. Granted, that initial trailer was the idealized vision of the console: it was direct in its messaging while shrewdly omitting any hype-strangling details like battery life, resolution, and, most importantly, price. What we were left with was the exciting prospect of console quality games (like the newest Zelda opus) on a handheld hybrid that features modular controllers; a machine that cobbles together what Nintendo is best at -- forward thinking portability and first-party games so good they stand head and shoulders with the best this industry has to give.

On Thursday, Nintendo began filling in the blanks, setting about to answer (at least some) of the questions fans have had circling in their heads since the system’s unveiling. You can watch the entire conference here but, coming from someone that sat through a livestream of the proceeding -- awaiting something, anything, that signaled Nintendo’s return to form -- I’d recommend just reading up on the cliff notes.

Though the affair was poised in the same fashion as one of Sony’s knockout E3 conferences, Nintendo couldn’t land the same blows. I began the show with more enthusiasm than Nintendo let me leave with. After the abject failure of the Wii U (a console that only managed to push slightly north of 13 million units -- the worst sales in Nintendo’s hardware history barring the Virtual Boy) the Switch needed to be touted as a reckoning. It was Nintendo’s chance to convince the fence-sitters to choose their side of the picket. We didn’t get that Thursday night.

Nintendo has always floundered in the stage show department, though. You’re asking the same company that thought this shit was a good idea to try and wow us in an hour and a half. Nintendo’s like that shy kid at the back of the class: he tests well and always turns in his homework, but the second you ask him to walk up to the board and present, he becomes a mumbling, incoherent mess. Of course they shit the bed. This is Nintendo we’re talking about. Credit to that first Switch video, though. I fell for it, too! I wrongly assumed Nintendo was trying to demonstrate they’ve turned a new leaf (no pun intended, Animal Crossing fans). At the presentation, however, it seems Nintendo isn’t just making its same old mistakes but brand new ones.

But I think it’s important to remember that a poor showcase isn’t enough reason to condemn the hardware itself. The tech, despite Nintendo’s aloof messaging, still looks cool. So let’s try to unpack what we learned at the showcase (and the info we gleaned in the days following) without having to suffer through awkward squid doctors and a translator whose probably looking for a new job right about now:

The Nintendo Switch launches March 3rd and costs $299.

I had it in my mind that if NIntendo wanted to blow some toadstools, the price would have been $249. However, this gives them some wiggle room if they wanted to make a $50 cut closer toward the holidays (or if it performs, shall we say, shittily?). Still, $300 is in bounds of reason. Base model PlayStation 4’s and Xbox One’s start at that price. While enthusiasts understand, and could potentially be irked by, the fact that they’re paying the same price for a console that has less horsepower than its contemporaries, we should look to the casual consumer’s mentality instead.

The casual consumer is likely to see this new system from trusty Nintendo --a brand so storied that there was once a time in my childhood where my parents referred to any video game console I had as “a Nintendo” -- see the similar pricing, and lump the Switch’s capability in the same bracket. Any cheaper and a casual consumer may begin to think of the Switch as a handheld: a complementary device that can’t do what a home console does. The very perception Nintendo doesn’t want, evidenced by their reminding us that it is a home console every chance they get.

If you don’t think that’s a genuine concern, keep in mind that the mainstream audience who made the Wii a massive success didn’t  know the Wii U was a separate console. Sometimes, even retailers didn’t know what the hell it was.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a launch title. Mario isn’t.

Nintendo ended its ten-mile-jog-through-glass of a presentation with one of the only franchises in this industry that hasn’t been poisoned by cynicism. And goodness gracious does it look breathtaking (sorry, another dollar for the pun jar). Nintendo is well aware that a new Zelda game can pry wallets open -- especially the rare Zelda game that releases at a system’s launch. Unfortunately, Breath of the Wild seems to be the only compelling reason to snag a Switch on Day One.

Super Mario Odyssey, a brand new adventure that sees the Italian reptile stomper leap between dimensions (including an analog for NYC called “New Donk City”... let that settle inside you for a moment), won’t hit the launch window. It’s tentatively set for Holiday 2017. I’m not trying to gloss over the power or draw of a new Zelda title but… that’s coming out on Wii U as well. If you wanted a surefire system seller that tickles the fancies of the mainstream and hardcore, young and old alike, then you sell it alongside a Mario title. So why not wait until your flagship game was ready?

One gander at the launch lineup only underlines this point: there’s only three other games releasing on day one besides Zelda. You have the gimmicky 1-2-Switch that relies on the motion sensors within your Joy-Con controllers to play party games (you can see shades of Nintendo’s belief that the Wii wasn’t a hugely successful fluke in this game); then there’s two third-party offerings from Ubisoft and Activision -- Just Dance 2017 and Skylanders Imaginators, respectively. That’s a paltry showing, even taking into account launches tend to be historically thin.

Beyond that, our confirmed launch window games are either ports of games that have been out for years already (like Skyrim, I Am Setsuna, and Lego City Undercover) or updates to existing Wii U games (like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2… don’t let the 2 fool you, this sequel feels incremental rather than substantial). There’s some standouts, though. Super Bomberman R looks good, as does Arms which is said to be a surprisingly engaging fighter despite its stupid, stupid name and Nintendo’s obvious attempt to make it A Thing.

The accessories cost an arm and a leg and the other leg too.

This one truly boggles the mind. It’s like Nintendo is trying to offset the money they lost on the Wii U by taxing the shit out of us. Here’s the breakdown:

-Left & Right Joy-Con Controllers: $49.99 for one/$79.99 for both. Okay, I get that there’s all sorts of fancy tech shoved into these little guys. They feature “HD Rumble” which offers impressive feedback, letting you feel like you’re rattling a real cup full of ice or fondling a cow. Then there’s the IR sensor capable of spatial detection so precise, it can detect your very hand gestures. Awesome. Except… will that make a difference when you’re playing a traditional single-player game like Breath of the Wild? Motion controls and playing virtual rock, paper, scissors are decidedly not why I’m excited about a console/handheld hybrid.

-Pro Controller: $69.99. Now you’re off your fucking rocker, Nintendo. The way in which traditionalists and hardcore gamers will undoubtedly favor to play is more expensive than a PS4 or Xbox One controller. Granted, they couldn’t resist tossing in that “HD Rumble” and amiibo functionality. I’m sure that drove up the cost. But goddamn. Imagine wanting to play Zelda with a Pro Controller at launch. You’re out $430 and you only own one game.

-Joy-Con Charging Grip: $29.99. If you’re skipping out on the Pro Controller but still wish to play on your TV, you’ll have to snap off your Joy-Cons to go wireless. Ah, but the charge on those babies drains. Enter the Charging Grip, a peripheral that serves as its own controller while it juices up your Joy-Cons. Ostensibly the only other reasonably priced accessory besides the $14.99 set of Joy-Con Wheels.

-Nintendo Switch Dock Set: $89.99. And we’re back into the clutches of greedy insanity. Now, this bundle -- which includes the dock, AC adapter, and an HDMI cord -- is paired with every Switch out of the box. But, say, your toddler decides to feed your dock some peanut butter or subjects it to a water level in your bathtub, this is one pricey replacement. It looks like a hunk of plastic (and very well could be) but the fact games run at a higher resolution when the Switch is docked could point to more intricate internal components. Still, a $90 price gouge dashes most gamers’ dreams of buying a dock for every TV in the house for convenience's sake (don’t act like you didn’t think about it; deep down, we’re all that lazy).

There’s going to be a paid subscription service for online play, and it already sounds bad.

It’s astounding Nintendo hasn’t figured out an online ecosystem. Nintendo struggles with requisite features companies like Microsoft figured out fourteen years ago. I don’t even mind that they’re charging for the service. Feels like an inevitability in the console space -- though I will argue they have a serious uphill battle ahead to prove the service is worth the coin. What bothers me is that there has been no information on the continuity of service when it comes to transferring Virtual Console games over from the Wii U. There’s also been no word if we’ll finally see a system-wide Achievement feature -- another failing of the Wii U that fans have been pleading to see.

What we do know is that the online service will be free to Nintendo Account holders until the Fall -- when the feature is launched in proper.  They’re also offering a free NES or SNES download every month. That’s cute, and they’re incorporating online play to these retro titles, too, but the sour little caveat is that these games are free and playable only for the month you get them. Nintendo, buddy, you’ve already allowed yourself to get meat-checked by the competition, and your system isn’t out yet.

It gets better. They’re attempting to launch a “dedicated smart device app” that “will connect to Nintendo Switch and let you invite friends to play online, set play appointments, and chat with friends during online matches in compatible games -- all from your smart device.”

Are you seriously telling me the console that you’re launching in 2017 doesn’t have native voice chat? That I have to use an external device to play with friends? Nintendo’s been vague when it comes to online-play. Hell, Nintendo’s vague in general, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until they clarify the matter… Otherwise, I’d have to call them out for being hopelessly fucking antiquated and warn them that their clownish decision making is a self-paved death march out of the hardware business.

Listen, I want to eat crow. I hope Nintendo makes me choke on my own words. I hope, as I always do when they release new gadgets, that Nintendo succeeds. The company is how I first broke into gaming, and those early days with the Super Nintendo are some of my fondest. Of course I want to see Nintendo score another win. In a year’s time, I want to feel like the Switch is an integral, oft used part of my gaming life. The device is interesting and the most appealing piece of machinery Nintendo has shown us in years. But a system is only as good as its games, and this March, there’s only really one title I can hang my hat on. I sincerely hope that changes and that 2017 isn’t as dry as looks right now.

Something stinks about this launch lineup. It stinks of Sega Saturn. The Saturn launched before developers were ready for it, having very little in the way of games prepared for the new console, and Sega suffered the consequences. Again, I’m behind the concept of the Switch 100%. But, from this outlook, it makes little sense for Nintendo to launch in two months. It doesn’t feel ready.

Sure, Nintendo has survived abysmal launches before. The 3DS launched with a nigh empty catalog and that little bastard has been kicking for five years now (managing to smother the Vita along the way). But for as much pull as our favorite Hyrulian has, Mario’s your bigger draw. And what happened to that Pokemon game supposedly in development for the Switch? If Nintendo waited until the Fall and launched with the holy triumvirate of Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, and a new Pokemon, the Switch would sell like gangbusters.

Even the company’s shareholders are having a tough time believing the Switch can reach a wide audience. Just a day after the big conference, Nintendo’s stocks dropped 5.75 percent. It feels just as dismal on the game dev side. The Game Developers Conference released the results of a poll where 50 percent of developers think the Switch can outsell the Wii U. I know, predictions don’t necessarily dictate reality. No, what has me distressed is that, of those who were polled, only 3 percent were actively working on a Switch game.

I’m… trying to remain optimistic. Consoles can make turnarounds. The PS3 famously pulled away from the faulty, downright arrogant decision making that plagued its early years and fought to close the gap Microsoft had forged with the Xbox 360. It’s just that I’d hate to have to wait four years for the Switch to really find its step -- in the same amount of time, the Wii U expended its entire life cycle.

[meraenthusiast]

A Doctor’s Primer On Real Estate Professional Status

A Doctor’s Primer On Real Estate Professional Status

It seems like real estate investing has become the “hot” investment among doctors and other high-income professionals these days. Why? Many are becoming gun-shy of the volatile stock market and want diversification.

Others are sick of paying Uncle Sam half of their check each month and are looking for tax advantages.

How about you? Do you fall into either of these categories? I don’t know too many people that want to continue receiving a HUGE tax bill each year. Myself included.

One of the top questions I get asked from members of the Passive Investors Circle is:

“Will investing in passive real estate syndications lower my practice income?”

The only income that investing in syndications lowers would be the passive income it produces and NOT your practice’s income.

The depreciation from an apartment syndication offsets the monthly/quarterly distributions. This is great as these distributions are received and zero tax have to be paid!

Related article: How Is Passive Income Taxed

But there’s also something out there that could help doctors significantly reduce their tax burden called Real Estate Professional Status (REPS).

Have you ever heard of this? Most haven’t. But if you’re already a real estate investor like myself, then using this designation could potentially save you a huge amount of dinero when it comes to paying taxes.

Interested? Let’s begin…..but first a disclaimer.

[Disclaimer: I’m not an accountant, lawyer or financial advisor. This article is informational only. Please consult your own team of professionals about the topics covered here today.]

Going, Going, Gone…

Dentists and physicians alike have very few tax advantages.

Unfortunately, many of the tax deductions that most people get are in the lower income brackets keeping us from benefiting from them.

As an example, most deductions begin to phase out the higher the income made. You may have encountered this when attempting to deduct student loan interest.

Here’s how I felt when I tried this: “Sorry, we’re going to punish you because you trained and sacrificed and had to take on student loan debt in order to do so but wait, you now earn too much so no deductions will be allowed.”

As a side note, when we reached debt-free status, most of our practice’s deductions were phased out leaving us with a HUGE tax bill. So much for enjoying being debt-free!

Passive Real Estate Investing

The majority of the Passive Investor Circle members are too busy to become an active real estate investor and for that reason, focus on investing in passive real estate.

The definition of a passive investor is someone that does NOT “materially participate” in the buying, selling, or management of properties.

A popular type of passive investment (that we invest in) are called real estate syndications.

These allow the passive investor to pool their money with others (plus the sponsor who handles the day-to-day property) to purchase an asset (i.e. apartment building) that they couldn’t normally do so on their own.

Other examples of passive investments are:

Real estate funds

Real Estate Investment Trusts or REITs

As stated earlier, these types of investors are subject to passive activity loss rules. This means if your real estate investments generate losses, you’re NOT able to deduct those against your practice’s income.

Passive investment example

Most syndication deals are for accredited investors only which allows the majority of doctors to qualify for due to a high income.

The minimum investment for most of the deals that we’re currently in is $50K. If you invest in a deal then you can expect to receive a K-1 tax form annually.

If a particular deal that you’re in generates a $20,000 loss from depreciation, you can’t offset that $20,000 against your W-2 or practice income.

However, you can offset that loss against any passive gains you have in the current tax year. Most of these will be used against your monthly/quarterly distributions your investment spins off.

Active Real Estate Investing

When I first made it a point to begin the process of acquiring streams of passive income, real estate investing was one of my first choices.

At that time, I thought that in order to get into real estate, I had to become a landlord. As you can imagine, I wasn’t too thrilled with the thought of getting a second job. For me, practicing full-time along with being a husband and dad puts plenty on my plate.

But back then I was clueless about other options available. I thought that I wanted to buy a handful of single family homes and eventually pay them off to reap the benefits of the cash flow rolling in.

As an active investor, you’re responsible for:

finding investment properties

acquiring financing

managing yourself or hiring a firm

marketing vacancies

repairing holes in walls 🙁

As you can tell from the list above, being an active investor acquires much more hands-on attention vs passive investing.

Active investor

The IRS states that an active investor are those who materially participate in the management of the real estate business. In this situation, they’re substantially involved in the business’s operations.

Unlike passive investors, active investors can offset losses from real estate investing against their ordinary income.

Good news, right?

If you’re a doctor or other high-income earner, think again.

If you’re an active investor and married making over $150,000 a year, no deduction is allowed. Again, it seems as if we’re being punished for being successful, right?

For those who earn less than $100,000 (single) or $150,000 (married), they can deduct up to $25,000 of losses against their ordinary income from W-2s or 1099s.

But wait, there maybe something you can do about it….

What Is Real Estate Professional Status?

If you’re able to claim real estate professional status (REPS) on your taxes then you can be exempt from both the passive loss rules and the active investor’s income limitations.

This is great news!

In order to qualify for REPS, the good ‘ole IRS states you must meet a few conditions:

(1) must spend the majority of his or her time (more than 50%) in real property businesses in which you materially participate.

(2) the taxpayer must spend 750 hours or more in the real property business and rentals in which he or she materially participates (roughly 15 hours per week).

In layman’s terms: You have to work on real estate more than you do any other job. So being a real estate professional is your primary profession which means you spend more hours in real estate than you do treating patients.

You also must work at least 750 hours on real estate activities with most of this coming from the day-to-day management of your rentals.

Literally anyone can qualify if the criteria above is met. No special license or degree is needed.

How can a doctor qualify?

If you’re a doctor or other high-income professional that typically works more than 40 hours a week, it may not be that easy to cut back in order to claim this status based on your work situation.

But wait…there is another option. Have I ever told you that I love options? 🙂

If your spouse currently doesn’t work, works part-time or is looking for a career change then this could be the key to success.

Basically only one spouse needs to qualify (not both). So if you’re a full-time dentist, then you can continue treating patients (if you want!) and your spouse can fulfill the real estate professional status requirement.

This way, BOTH spouses can benefit from the deductions and possibly HUGE tax savings while not sacrificing any income.

Does This ONLY Work For Real Estate Losses?

The short answer is “yes.” In order to obtain a tax benefit, you have to show losses on any real estate activity you’re in.

If you know anything about psychology then you’re probably familiar with how the brain works when it comes to loss vs gain.

We’re wired to AVOID losses more than we are to try to GAIN something.

For instance, if we have been searching for a particular pair of basketball shoes and Zappos claims that there’s ONLY one pair left….then we’re MORE motivated to buy ’em from FEAR of loss.

Just last night, I told my youngest son that if he doesn’t come to the kitchen and eat then his mom was going to put all of the food away.

He was there in less than 20 seconds :). He didn’t want to lose out!

So now when I tell you that the ONLY way to benefit from using the real estate professional status as a type of tax shelter is to actually show a loss on your real estate then you may initially have a negative reaction.

I get it. NOBODY like to lose. But when it comes to real estate, I’m giving you permission that it’s OK to lose (just this one time)!

That’s what makes real estate investing so great.

Taxes and real estate

One of the key reasons most doctors SHOULD look into real estate investing has to do with the multiple different ways to EXTREMELY lower their taxes.

The MORE you make, the MORE taxes you’ll pay. So you can continue working your tail off putting in longer hours just to make a little more or work SMARTER.

If you play your cards right, you can work less yet make MUCH more.

Interested?

It all starts with how taxes are calculated when it comes to real estate.

The NOI, or net operating income, is what’s left over after all expenses have been paid. This is what you pay taxes on.

But one of the cool things is something called “phantom expenses” which are expenses you don’t actually pay for. That’s right, you read that correctly.

Not only do you NOT have to pay for them but the IRS will actually allow you to claim them on your taxes.

Sound too good to be true?

Let me introduce you to one of the most powerful phantom expenses around.

Depreciation

Let’s briefly define what depreciation is. In accounting terms, depreciation is nothing more than the reduction in value of an item over time.

An example of this is the value of the computer I’m currently typing on. What I paid for it a few years ago and what it’s worth now (not much) is much lower. In other words, it’s depreciated in value.

One of the BEST financial gifts we could ever receive (ironically it’s from the IRS) is having the ability to depreciate an appreciating asset.

Phantom?

By doing this, it creates a phantom or paper loss that can be used to offset actual gains which saves you in taxes.

Remember, this isn’t a true expense. You don’t have to worry about taking money out of your pocket to pay for this….

If you claim real estate professional status, losses from depreciation allow you to offset your W2 clinical income and reduce your tax liability.

Is REPS Right For You?mi

I get it. Being a real estate professional is not for everyone. But if you can swing it, it could be extremely beneficial to your family.

Remember, if you’re married and both of you work, then you’ll first need to figure out who’s going to become the real estate professional.

Your two choices are:

scale back treating patients or…

commit to working more hours in real estate than your practice with the minimum number of hours being 750 hours

Consider keeping a detailed log of the hours you’ve spent, but also what exactly you’ve been doing during that time.

Examples include:

meetings

searching for new properties

renovations

marketing to fill vacancies

responding to tenants, etc.)

If you have further questions, consider hiring a CPA that’s knowledgeable about qualifying for the real estate professional status.

The post A Doctor’s Primer On Real Estate Professional Status appeared first on Debt Free Dr..

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HOME BUYERS TURNED DOWN BY THE BANKS: WHAT TO DO

Buying a home when you’ve been told you can’t is a difficult endeavor. However, there’s a reason to be optimistic. Many home buyers are able to buy a house by structuring a complex deal that will be discussed in this article.

To help home buyers own a home, as long as they have a good down payment, we can typically find someone to put them in a loan with.

Why home buyers are being turned down by the banks?

Prices actually had fallen by over 50%. The banks had reduced the commission they were paying and they were requiring us to do repairs.

Looking back at the end of 2012, when the market was just starting to recover, the prices were starting to come back. People were getting back on their feet and succeeding. However, we found that a good percentage of our clients could no longer qualify for a loan at the bank. And as a matter of fact, in October of 2018, all the loans in the United States that were applied for, 29% of the people have turned away still.

The bottom line is that this model isn’t working anymore. Banks are the only people that could afford to sell when everyone’s lost 50% of their market value.

1 of 3 people cannot qualify and even over half the real estate agents in this country cannot buy a home, because of the banks. It’s not that they’re bad people or they don’t necessarily have bank credit. It’s that they make their money in spurts. They don’t make it in W2 every two-week paycheck. And that is what the banks are looking for because they’re selling all their loans.

To help home buyers that have been turned down by the banks, we can typically find someone to put them in a loan with as long as they have a good down payment.

Where these types of home buyers came from?

Self-employed business people are the ones that we actively seek. We put up signs down in the industrial parts of the city, by the roofing supply store, the plumbing supply store in the electrical supply store.

These people basically aren’t looking for a home on the MLS because they’ve been told they can’t have one. So we educate them with a bandit sign that basically says, “Hey, Own for cheaper than rent“. That’s where the majority of the home buyers come from.

How to structure the Deal for the home buyers?

If you are one of this type of home buyers, we would simply ask where you live, how much you pay in rent and how much money you have for a down payment.  If you have at least 10 to 15% down, we will find a loan to help you qualify with a licensed lender. We get a copy of your credit report and structure the deal.

Address

Market value

30-day market value of the home

Offer Price

Down Payment

Insurance Taxes

HOA dues

what the buyer would pay in rent

Income Tax Bracket

Market Appreciation

Using these 10 pieces of information above, we’ll produce a report for that basically shows them what their total payment is for the first and the first and second loan if they buy a home.

The home buyers typically save between a hundred and $200 a month from what they’re currently paying right now in rent.

We also inform our home buyers that they are able to deduct the mortgage interest and the property tax. Also, they pay down every month the principal, so it’s being paid off. Any appreciation that occurs in the market belongs to them instead of their landlord.

Check this out: How to Secure the Best Financing Rates When Buying a Home in Palm Beach or Broward County

They will actually end up saving almost $300 a month and we target the lower-priced homes in the area. It works best on the low priced homes because the rent is high compared to the price.

Typically, a single family homes with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths would rent around $1,100 a month. We can offer a buyer a home with a monthly payment of just under a thousand dollars.

THE PROCESS

1. Get one-third of buyers that had been turned down by a variety of banks or lenders or loan originator.

2. Find sellers that don’t want to put their stuff necessarily on the market or anything else and offer to sell their home for 10% more than what other homes are selling for and put it together.

There’s a shortage of inventory all over the United States. It’s gold when you can actually offer to a seller.

Instead of saying, “Hey, I’m a real estate agent, I’d like to list your property”. You say, “what if I could find you a buyer that would pay you $10,000 more?“

Most sellers actually hire an agent that promises them the highest price. The only difference is we actually have a way to get a higher price more than what the market would typically pay.

And that’s often the case, home buyers that can’t get a loan at the bank are very willing to pay a higher price.

If you aren’t going to get your money back for 30 years, will it buy as many groceries when it comes back? That’s very easy to explain to the home buyers and then when you show them the benefit that they are going to get back $105 in income tax that they not getting back right now, they’re going to save $131 in rent. Every month just those two alone are $236 that’s real money next month in your paycheck that’s leftover.

In addition to that, you’re paying down principal, which starts in the first month at $78 and then if and this is on $100,000 home example, and the appreciation at 3% a year would be $250 a month. So that’s 328 in equity that you’re gaining in 236 in cash for a total of $565 how much of your rent are you going to get back?

Does it take a lot of work? No, it’s far less work.

Instead of buyers agents are writing 10 offers to get one accepted because of the bidding wars and the shortage of inventory, we basically go out and show a buyer two homes and ask them which one they want to write an offer on. The sellers are predisposed to take that offer because our buyers don’t go through a traditional bank.

And some of our buyer’s are not asking for 3% in closing costs they are paying their own closing costs, our sellers are saving 3% in buyer closing costs because of our closing costs for a buyer or about $500. Also, because they’re in the trades, they very rarely ask for any repairs.

Do you have a good credit score?When you fill out this

form

, our system forwards the home buyer’s information to a certified mortgage professional. Our recommended professionals can assist you in locating the best mortgage rate and lowest closing costs possible when you buy a home.

So compare that to like an FHA buyer that is coming in with, with very little down. It’s taking every dime they have saved they’ve never owned a home before and they’re scared and they’re asking for a laundry list of repairs.

Our buyers come and say, “I’ll take it the way it is. I don’t want anything. I’ll pay my own closing costs and I’ll close in two weeks.”

And there are sellers also, you go to the seller and you say, “Let me ask you a few questions. Do you want a fast sale or an easy sale? When I, when I sell your home, do you want the process to be fast or slow?” And of course, they say fast. “Do you want the negotiation to be hard or easy?” Well, they say easy. “And do you want more money or less money?” And of course, they all say more. So then I just say, “Well, what you’ve described is a seller finance transaction”. And I can close faster for more money with the least amount of hassle.

If the seller doesn’t want to qualify or carry the loan, we find somebody else to carry it for them.

That’s where retirees come in. These people have their money sitting in banks at $100,000 and 0.2% interest or a total of $200 a year. Which is $16.65 cents a month.

Well, that same $100,000 invested in a first position loan at 70 or 75% loan would get that investor or that retiree, not $16 but $665 a month.

So let’s just use this example. If we could sell the house in 30 days for $100,000, that’s the 30-day market value we could get in this low supply market. If I got $115,000 for that home, the buyer would put down a minimum of $15,000. So that would mean that there’s $100,000 left to be financed.

What we would do in this situation is that just say the retiree funded $75,000 of that, and then there’s another loan, a second position loan behind the retiree for another $25,000. We do that to keep that retiree secure. We often take that second position loan, because we are equipped to actually buy that home.

What if the home buyer’s don’t pay?

Well, here’s what happens first. That person would lose their $15,000 cash. The second thing that would happen is I’m behind in position. I would have to lose all of my $25,000 before you lose interest in your $75,000. So what other investments do you have where two people need to be totally annihilated before you lose the interest on your money?

If they give everybody at some time in their life where they’re going to get in a car wreck, they’re going to become ill and they’re going to be short on money. They look out the window and think, this is why it’s so important to make the total payment that they’re paying on the home. Because their alternative is to not pay you and to move across the street and pay someone else more.

That’s what keeps them paying.

Not only would they lose all their down payment, but they would also have to pay someone else more. So that’s what I believe are the two things that make this such a success, and these people are getting equity and especially in a, in a rising market. The people that we finance five years ago are starting to sell their homes. They’re walking away with $30,000-$50,000 worth of equity, that the market has given to them in two ways. One in appreciation. The second thing is in principal pay down because it is a fully amortized loan.

So it’s just really we’re finding buyers who can’t buy. We’re finding sellers who can’t sell and we’re finding retirees who can’t afford to live on the money that the bank is paying to them.

Conclusion

Check your savings to see if you have extra money for a larger down payment. Saving up for a good amount for a down payment can increase your chances of buying a house if you have been turned down by banks.

As a first-time home buyer, you may also want to read this: Homeownership and the true cost of homeownership

Stay optimistic, lots of people have been able to buy a house, you can too.

Many people ask the same question.

How to own a home after being turned down by the banks?

While it’s not an easy task, it’s not impossible. There may be other options if you have been turned down by banks. Call us at 561-500-5747 to go over all potential options.

Each month, we publish a series of articles of interest to home buyers and homeowners in South Florida– money-saving tips, household safety checklists, home improvement advice, real estate insider secrets, etc. Whether you currently are in the market for a new home in South Florida, or not, we hope that this information is of value to you. Please feel free to pass these articles on to your family and friends.

At

The Stampini Team

, we’re happy to answer any questions you have about buying and selling in the South Florida area.

Call us now or feel free to share our contact information

with someone you know that needs expert help in buying or selling their home.

Receive South Florida real estate news and trends straight to your inbox. Stay connected to the community and be the first to know when new homes come on the market. Sign up here!

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Here’s Some Money Advice: Just Buy the Coffee

Welcome to the Smarter Living newsletter! Every Monday, Tim Herrera emails readers with tips and advice for living a better, more fulfilling life. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

I’m calling it right now: This is the summer of bad personal finance advice.

An industry of experts exists to advise us on how to spend our money. Some of those experts are truly on your side and sincerely want to help you be better with money. Some of those experts are … not exactly on your side, and are perhaps more interested in riling us up about our spending. It can be difficult to tell them apart, and it makes our already-fraught relationship with money even worse.

Earlier this month CNBC generated an outrage cycle about money advice by tweeting this story, in which the personal finance professional Suze Orman claimed that buying coffee means “you are peeing $1 million down the drain as you are drinking that coffee.” (Even the legendary writer Susan Orlean weighed in.) Earlier this summer, USA Today generated a similar negative buzz when it published an article from the money website The Motley Fool that claimed Americans waste an average of $18,000 a year on “nonessential items,” which they said included personal grooming, gym memberships, restaurants, coffee and lunch. These are all on top of similarly shaming articles that tell us we’re not rich because we sleep in and travel; because we buy shoes and jeans; and, of course, because we buy too much coffee.

While it is true that every one of us — including yours truly — can and should be smarter about spending, these small, sometimes necessary purchases are a just a sliver of a much wider story about our struggles with money that, in large part, can be traced back to the Great Recession, the debt load for younger Americans and broader trends about wage stagnation.

“For Americans under the age of 40, the 21st century has resembled one long recession,” the Times columnist David Leonhardt wrote earlier this year. “I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, given that the economy has now been growing for almost a decade. But the truth is that younger Americans have not benefited much.”

So, no, your coffee habit is not the reason you aren’t a millionaire, nor are the haircuts you get or the gym membership you have. But how can we improve our financial situation when we’re being shamed for enjoying a latte? Who can we trust? Is the advice we’re reading truly advice or is it meant to sell us something? It’s a mess!

To get some answers, I talked to an actual expert who is on our side: Tara Siegel Bernard, a personal finance reporter for The Times and one of the sharpest minds working in this space. Below is a conversation I had with her about the state of personal finance advice, along with what we can do to truly improve our financial well-being. (And let me know on Twitter what money-saving tips have worked for you.)

Tim Herrera: So I feel like we’re in this weird bubble where a lot of personal finance advice is centered around tiny expenses, like coffee, snacks, occasional lunches or other small indulges. I hate it! Those are usually the things that make life worth living! So I’ll start with the question we’re all wondering: Will skipping coffee make me a millionaire?

Tara Siegel Bernard: The short answer: no. It’s silly. It’s a superficial way to get at the “needs versus wants” question, but it’s not a particularly smart one. Or maybe it’s just easier to blame people for overspending on coffee because it’s a lot more difficult to give advice on the many things they cannot control: wages not keeping pace with the cost of living, the high cost of health insurance, housing, child care, paying for college, etc. But … coffee! You can control the coffee!

All of that said, we should try to be thoughtful about spending. We’re constantly making choices and trade-offs that affect our financial and emotional well-being. Should I pay more for housing so I can live closer to work and spend less time on the train and more time with family and friends? Or should I pay less for a home but increase my commuting stress? Those types of financial decisions — how much house to buy, for example, or buying a more economical car — will go a lot further than agonizing over lattes.

TH: Yes! And I feel that focusing on tiny purchases just ends up making people feel bad and shamed about their spending — like there’s something wrong with them because they lack the willpower not to buy a latte. We all have enough anxiety about money, why does this stuff keep coming up?

TSB: It seems like a quick fix, something we can easily control. But I’m willing to bet that the headlines that accompany these types of stories and tweets generate a lot of clicks.

TH: So while we’re doing a little myth-busting, are there any other especially bad pieces of money advice that have seeped into the public consciousness you’d like to shoot down?

TSB: There’s a myth, or at least a misunderstanding, that investing needs to be hard and complicated, or that you will do better with the more “sophisticated” investments that wealthy people have access to. It’s just not true. If anything, it’s often a marketing tool to push some newfangled mutual fund or investment that you just don’t need.

There is a learning curve, even with the most basic investments, for those just getting acquainted with saving and investing. But it can be boiled down to the following: Buy a collection of low-cost investments like index funds, which will track different certain segments of the stock and bond markets, that provide exposure to businesses around the world. The most important factor is coming up with the right mix of aggressive investments (stocks) and conservative ones (bonds) that you can stomach — and there are smart financial pros who can help you with that.

The quality of any advice you receive depends on who is providing it. Wall Street regulators just passed new rules that, advocates say, may make it even more difficult to distinguish between which financial pros are acting in your best interest. The onus remains on us to sort it all out.

TH: Clearing away all the clutter, very simply: What are a few things average people could do today or this week to improve their overall financial well-being?

TSB: It has become much easier to be an unconscious spender. Within a relatively short period of time, subscription-based businesses are everywhere, and they’re probably betting that most of us will forget to turn off these services when we don’t need them anymore. Unsubscribing to something is a quick little win. It’s not going to make you a millionaire, but you can comfortably buy a cup of coffee with the proceeds. You might also check out our 7-day Money Challenge, which helps you tackle one simple task each day to help improve your financial life.

Here’s another easy one: Do you know what sort of perks your employer provides? Do you commute to work? Do you plan on buying a new pair of glasses? Your employer might have programs that allow you to buy all of these things with money from your paycheck before it has been taxed. If you’re in the 24 percent tax bracket, that translates into a $24 discount on your $100 prescription sunglasses. You might also be able to set aside up to $5,000 pretax for child care expenses. Open enrollment for all of these things — commuter programs, flexible spending, dependent care accounts — tends to happen in the fall, so check with your employer if you haven’t already signed up.

Earning more money always helps, too. Keep a written record of your accomplishments at work and ask for raises when you can build a case. Research shows this can be particularly tricky for women, which is something I’ve written about over the years. (Here’s some advice on asking for a raise.)

It’s also worthwhile to take a deep dive into your finances once every three to five years to get a better grasp on where your money is going and how it’s working for you. I’m a fan of getting advice from a professional, even if it’s only occasionally, to help hold you accountable. (Just be sure the adviser promises to act as a fiduciary, which means your interests are always put first.)

TH: Last question: What’s one piece of financial advice you wish you had known at the start of your career?

TSB: I wish I would have been better at seeing how much more I could’ve saved and invested. I think I knew that I had to save enough to get a matching contribution from my employer, but I should’ve tried harder to see how much further I could’ve gone. It might not have been much, but it would’ve raised my consciousness on the whole “save early and often” idea, and how much that can help later in life. Just going through the exercise helps.

During roll call, my teachers used to pause before sputtering out a chopped-liver version of my name. At appointments, interviews and coffee shops, it suffers a similar treatment. (That’s if people don’t freeze, waiting for me to break the painful silence.)

Butchering someone’s name is the ultimate of bad first impressions. So ensues a domino effect of uncomfortable social exchanges that at best sour someone’s day and at worst deem a relationship dead before it’s had a fair shot. “What’s in a name?” Shakespeare challenged. Well, easy for him to say. Try these tips next time the cat’s got your tongue over an unfamiliar moniker.

Don’t Assume

English class taught us to “sound it out,” but people’s names — especially those roughly transliterated from other languages — play by their own rules. Simply put: If you’re unsure if you know how to pronounce it correctly, you probably don’t.

Just Ask

The simplest solution of all is simply to ask, “How do you say your name?” Doing so is not only respectful, it saves about 10 minutes of correcting, joking and pretending the whole situation isn’t just awkward.

Spell It Out

If afforded the luxury (or if all else fails), there’s always the option of taking it letter by letter. Chances are the person whose name you handled with such tender care will make themselves known midway and, most important, be so grateful.

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[cathrynstreich]

The Pros and Cons of Paying Off Your Mortgage Early

(TNS)—Most homeowners want to own their homes free and clear. For some, that means using a raise, inheritance or savings to pay off their mortgage early.

This seemingly responsible move may not always be in your best financial interest. According to financial experts, paying off your mortgage early actually comes with a cost to your bottom line. The reason lies in simple math: The amount you’ll save in interest likely won’t exceed what you would earn in other long-term investments, such as stocks and real estate.

For investments to make more sense than paying off a mortgage early, the annualized rate of return over a certain number of years would only need to make more than the mortgage interest—and since most people are sitting on relatively low mortgage rates, between 3.5 to 5.5 percent, beating that rate isn’t tough.

The average annualized return for the S&P 500 index over the past 90 years is roughly 10 percent. Using the cash to leverage more real estate, such as multifamily properties and single-family homes, is another long-term investment that will likely offer higher long-term yields compared with paying off your mortgage, says Richard Bowen, CPA and owner of Bowen Accounting in Bakersfield, Calif.

It’s Not an Easy Call However, it’s important to work with a financial advisor before you invest so you can fully understand the risks and benefits involved, Bowen adds. Although history tells us that these investments outpace saving on your mortgage interest rate, they can be risky.

“Sadly, the math tell us it’s almost always better to invest in other places than in your mortgage,” Bowen says. “The thing is no one can give you a guarantee on an investment. You can put your money in the stock market and lose it. You can put your money in real estate and it doesn’t perform as well as you expected it to.”

Indeed, if you, like thousands of others, had invested in Las Vegas real estate before the 2008 financial crisis, you’d have lost your shirt and pants, too, when prices plunged 60 percent, nearly twice the national rate.

Maintaining Some Liquidity Is Essential Financial experts agree that it’s important to have a portion of your net worth in liquid assets. These are assets that can be converted into cash quickly, such as stocks, marketable securities, mutual funds, U.S. treasuries and bonds. A house is considered a non-liquid asset because it can take months, or longer, for a homeowner to sell the property.

Liquidity is important in times of economic downturns and personal emergencies. Its primary function is to be an easy way to access cash when you need it. If your cash is tied up in a house or retirement accounts (which can be expensive to draw from), you could end up having to borrow money in a pinch.

“If you start paying down your mortgage too fast, you risk depleting your liquidity. The kind of liquidity you have is important, too. You don’t want too much cash tied up in retirement funds because you can get slammed with fees if you have to withdraw early,” warns Amanda Thomas, a client advisor at Mission Wealth.

If you withdraw money from an IRA before you turn 59, you will pay a 10 percent penalty and income taxes on the amount you withdraw. After you turn 59, you will not have to pay the penalty fee on withdrawals, but you’ll still be obligated to pay income taxes. Depending on how much you withdraw, this might be pushed into a higher tax bracket, which could mean a bigger bill from Uncle Sam come tax time. Find out the minimum distribution from your retirement accounts here.

If paying off your house is more valuable to you than earning a few dollars more in stocks, be sure you have a six-month emergency fund saved before you commit a big chunk of cash to your mortgage payment, Bowen advises.

Families should strive to have a minimum of three months after-tax wages in the bank and low-income earners should aim for at least $1,000 saved before putting extra toward a mortgage payment.

“From a personal finance perspective, you free up monthly cash when you pay off your house, but you remove a whole bunch of cash to do that. As long as what you’re giving up still leaves you with the pad that protects you for six months to one year, then that’s okay,” Bowen says.

Poor Savers Might Be the Best Pay-Off Candidates Financial planning is a process that’s unique to every individual. Spending habits, timelines, how much risk you’re willing to assume, and how much you’re okay losing, as well as your financial and personal goals, are all elements that go into an effective strategy.

If someone tends to spend or has trouble keeping money in the bank, then that’s a behavior that’s not likely to change so it’s important to plan around it, Bowen points out.

“The right thing to do is the thing you will do. All of this has to do with personal habits. If you’re going to blow through the extra money anyway, then it’s better that you put it into your house than spend it,” Bowen says.

Paying off your mortgage early will decrease your total mortgage interest, which could save you thousands, as well as help you build equity faster.

Homeownership Offers Peace of Mind According to ATTOM data, 34 percent of homeowners have 100 percent equity in their homes. For many people, including Thomas, owning your home offers benefits that can’t be tallied on a computer.

For folks nearing retirement, eliminating that monthly mortgage payment can be a mental relief when they’re facing a fixed income.

“Personally, I’m paying down my mortgage. It feels good to have it paid off before retirement. It might not always make financial sense, but it offers peace of mind and it might allow for better budgeting,” Thomas says.

Homeowners can also borrow against the equity in their home by way of a home equity line of credit, or HELOC, in case of emergencies or to make improvements to their home. HELOC interest rates are still historically low and if you use the funds to add on or make repairs to your home, then the money is tax-deductible.

The important thing is for people to identify their financial goals and to allocate their money appropriately. Although financial planning seems like an exercise in logic, it’s often ruled by emotion. People want to feel good about where there money is and that doesn’t always line up with what a spreadsheet might recommend.

For some people, owing money causes stress, so getting rid of debt is a better use of funds than keeping the debt in order to earn extra in investments.

“My wife likes having money in the bank whereas I’d rather invest it. But if money is a tool, then that money is buying her happiness, so it’s working,” Bowen says.

©2018 Bankrate.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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[cyberdelusionphilosopher-blog]

Can I get temporary car insurance for 3 to 5 days?

"Can I get temporary car insurance for 3 to 5 days?

I'm not currenty insured because i go to San Francisco state and dont need a car, im going to florida for thanksgiving and ive got my old car out there, but my parents wont let me drive it unless im insured..

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://financeandcreditsolution.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

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Ex. Insurance deals by LIC, GIC Banassurance deals by banks""

What is the price of a mini copper and its insurance?

just wondering what the price of a mini copper is to buy and the cheapest insurance? Details would be helpful Thankx

Car insurance??

Do yesterday i accidentally back up into a metal pole and slightly scratch my rear bumper, and there are another couple bigger damage from before. should i report this to my insurance. it cost 500$ to of deductible to get it fix.so should i report it to my insurance company??""

Who thinks the health insurance waivers means that companies don't have to provide health insurance?

You'd be wrong. Care to understand why? http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/10/truth-about-health-care-waivers The bad news is that today mini-meds are often the only affordable option for many low-wage workers because retail and chain restaurants rarely offer their workers options beyond these plans. And because mini-meds are built around annual limits, estimates from employers and insurers indicate that beginning the phase out of annual limits this year would cause mini-med premiums to rise by more than 200 percent, forcing employers to drop coverage and sending many low-wage workers to purchase insurance on the more expensive individual insurance market, where they would get an even worse deal than what they have today. The result would be a whole new population of uninsured Americans. To ensure that we protect the coverage that these workers have today until better options are available for them in 2014, the law allows HHS, in extreme cases, to issue temporary waivers from the phase out of annual limits. There are some important facts to remember about these temporary waivers: The waivers only apply to one provision of the law  the provisions phasing out annual limits. Insurance companies and employers that receive waivers must comply with all other parts of the Affordable Care Act. The waivers last one year. Insurance companies must reapply for the waivers each year between now and 2014 when annual limits on coverage will be completely prohibited and individuals will have more affordable and better private insurance choices in the competitive Exchange markets. All employers and insurers that offer mini-med plans may apply for a waiver if they demonstrate that there will be large increases in premiums or a significant decrease in access to coverage without a waiver. You can read a list of employers and insurers that have received waivers here.""

I was wondering who has the cheapest auto insurance rates in the bay area california? please help.....?

I was wondering who has the cheapest auto insurance rates in the bay area california? please help.....?

Health insurance question plz help?

My husband lost his job and my and our child health insurance was with him. Can i get health insurance my employee even through its middle of the year will my husband loosing r insurance qualify us qualify event that allow you to enroll

What's the cheapest auto insurance ?

What's the cheapest auto insurance ?

In san diego when you have a driving permit do you have to be part of your parents insurance?

In san diego when you have a driving permit do you have to be part of your parents insurance?

Speeding ticket in california?

i got my first speeding ticket i was going 55 on a 45 how much would that cost me? and also it wasnt my car it was my parents car but i dont live with them so will there insurance go up???

Would insurance for a 1991 Camaro RS v6 be affordable for a teen driver?

Would a 1991 or any other 3rd gen Camaro's insurance be affordable for a 16 year old with the good student discount?

Is it cheaper on insurance to make payments on a car or buy it straight out?

Is it cheaper on insurance to make payments on a car or buy it straight out?

What car is very cheap to insure? Im 17 and really want a car!?

I was thinking about the peugeot 106 before ad the saxo but apparentley its too expensive, i just want to know a car that i can get quite cheap insurance for, bearing in mind im 17!""

Cheapest car insurance in nj?

Cheapest car insurance in nj?

Cheapest auto insurance for a teen?

im 18, got a used car, and now need insurance to drive it. my family has AAA auto and if im added to that ill be paying 2k a year. i also work at target and might get a discount on metlife or travelers but i cant get quotes online and also think it wount beat the adding on plan. is there any good autoinsurance or should i just be added on parents?""

What is the best health insurance's for myself?

added info im 22 years old with no medical problems.

Can I get temporary car insurance for 3 to 5 days?

I'm not currenty insured because i go to San Francisco state and dont need a car, im going to florida for thanksgiving and ive got my old car out there, but my parents wont let me drive it unless im insured..

When does wisconsin drivers need to buy insurance?

My roommate and I heard that in wisconsin that we need insurance at least liability insurance. We haven't heard anything on the news about it!

Auto Insurance coverage -- How much Liability and Medical?

I got a couple of questions about about auto insurance coverage. Namely, what's the best amount of liability and medical coverage to select. 1) For the liability, I know it's wise to get the best liability that one can afford to cover your assets. But how about if one also gets umbrella coverage. For example, if one gets an umbrella coverage at a $2 million limit and the liability limit for the auto insuarance is $300,000 or $500,000, does it make sense to select the $500,000 or is it better to select the $300,000 limit since the umbrella coverage would kick in? 2) for medical, is this redundant coverage and not needed because wouldn't the liability portion also cover medical expenses? Or is it wise to get this, for example, if a passenger is not insured (no health insurance), so the medical part would help out in that case? Thanks.""

Which insurance companies will let me drive other cars whilst fully comp at 21?

Which insurance companies will let me drive other cars whilst fully comp at 21?

What is electronic insurance?

details about electronic insurance

Does anyone know whats the cheapest car insurance in NY ?

I have a 2003 Mitsubishi I'm 24 and i want to know which is the cheapest insurance that i can afford. I check a lot of the insurances out there but they are all so expensive. i just want something with the basic cover in order for me to be able to afford it. If someone knows of anything cheap please let me know thank you so much

Obama used to be critical of insurance companies. But his health care plan seems like it will benefit them.?

Obama used to be critical of the health insurance companies, but his health care plan seems like it was designed to benefit the insurance companies more than anyone else. Why is that?""

No car insurance automatically suspends CA driver's license?

So apparently in CA, if you stop paying your car insurance (I had to), your vehicle registration is revoked and your license is suspended automatically, and you get a notice in the ...show more""

Can i pay for a car and insurance together monthly?

Like on finance or something? so i pay the insurance and the car price on a newish car both at the same time each month?

What kind of insurance would I need to start a home improvement referral service?

What kind of insurance would I need to start a home improvement referral service?

Car Insurance Question?

Hello- I was involved in a really bad car accident, where I was the stationary vehicle in my lane and the other driver was completely at fault, texting, speeding at 60+ over, lost control of his car and ended up horizontal in the road- needless to say my car is totaled and the other driver lost his life. He was really close to have taken mine as well. Anyways, my question is how long does it take for the insurance to cut a check so that I can go out and buy a car?""

All my friends seem to be getting cheap car insurance?

All my friends seem to be getting cheap car insurance but i cant seem to find it lol, im 17 and i know its expensive but people say they find it for 1.4k or 1.5k which id be happy with but im getting quoted 5k (and dont say what type of car is it!!) cause i know all that""

How much will auto insurance be?

I am going to be getting my permit in a month and i already have a car. its a 94 plymouth acclaim 4 cyl and i was wondering how much insurance will be, I will be joining my moms insurance she has farmers.""

Farmes Car Insurance?

I had a accident on the freeway a girl hi tme from behind and she had farmers insurance are they good at fixing other peoples cars when their cutomers are at fault

Best insurance company in ..........................?

What is the best insurance company if I live in Alabraska?

I am looking for an eye docter that takes any insurance in los angeles california?

for kids that will give contacts

Is Auto Insurance cheaper in Florida or Georgia?

Is Auto Insurance cheaper in Florida or Georgia?

If the policy holder on car insurance crashes does it affect the named drivers?

I am wanting to get a car and been 19 it will cost a lot , my insurance drops below 1000, if i put my parents as named drivers. I was wondering if the policy holder (me) had a crash would it affect their insurance or is it just the other way around, if they crash as named drivers it will affect the policy holder? As they have no claims discount and i have none , so i can not apply NCD protection ? Thank you :)""

Is There A Way Of Finding Insurance Prices Without Owning A Car In The First Place?

Ok ill explain it better here. I'm after a car but i will need to know how much the insurance is for different cars. So for example if i wanted a car in insurance group 2, could i find out how much that specific car and insurance group would be for me? I know there's go-compare and all the other comparison websites but they are expecting you already have the car and just need to insure it. I need to know the prices before i get a car so i know i will have enough! Help please? Cheers""

I'm buying a used car from a private owner. Will I need to have insurance before I purchase the car?

I've never had insurance before. Should I call insurance agencies before I get the car? Get quotes/etc? I won't know if I'm going to buy the car until I see it.

Motorcycle insurance?

I am looking at buying a road bike to save money on gas. i am 21 years old and have a good driving history. how much do you pay for insurance? I live in Michigan? do i need insurance? does it matter the size engine for different price insurance?

Is motorcycle insurance expensive?

I am 18 looking to get a bike want a CBR 600 or something along those lines. My question is how much is it to insure a bike my mother said that the personal protection would be very expensive how does this work and do i need two different kinds of insurance for riding? Like is the personal insurance separate than the insurance on the bike? And don't tell me thats a big bike i have been riding all my life and have took my friends CBR out more than one time i know i will probably kill myself lol

Any one know about car insurance for teenage driver in north carolina?

so im going to be driving soon and i will need to get insured. does anyone know how much this will cost if i live in north carolina? by the way, i dont know what car im getting...im looking. ;] so it would be helpful if you could give me a range for different types of cars. oh yeah, and sources would be nice. =] thanks a bunch!""

Where can I buy 1-day car insurance?

I have my car parked in a storage facility in LA, CA and I want to sell it, but I don't have insurance to cover my drive from storge to the dealership. I've looked online for temporary/1-day car insurance but all the ones I find are the the UK. Does anyone know of any companies that offer temporary car insurance? Thanks!!""

Can the car insurance find out that I have been in a car accident?

I have just gotten a new job and I said I havent been in a car accident, but I did twice. Are they gonna find out about it when they add me in their car insurance?""

Is pregnancy considered a pre-existing condition in florida?

IM PREGNANT!!!! I am 7 weeks along and just found out! The problem is I start a new job next week and will not be eligible for insurance until after 90 days.. By then I will be over four months along and I'm not quite sure if they will accept me or if they will say that it is a pre-existing condition? So, my dilemma is either: pay out of pocket until my 90 days are up and hope they accept me OR apply for medicaid and use the health department? If it changes anything the insurance I would be applying for is Florida Hospital private owned insurance.""

Can I get temporary car insurance for 3 to 5 days?

I'm not currenty insured because i go to San Francisco state and dont need a car, im going to florida for thanksgiving and ive got my old car out there, but my parents wont let me drive it unless im insured..

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-involved-multiple-vehicle-accident-do-know-possible-walter-dunn/"