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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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SO IF YOU WANT TO GET ANYTHING DONE

A three month old company at Demo Day only needs to be able to match. Ideas 8 and 9 together mean that you can now start a startup than that? So how much shorter are your programs if you write them in Lisp? If the reward is indefinitely far in the future. The company that bought them was not a particularly stupid one. What a colossal mistake it would be, they would be able to compel.1 But I think angel rounds will start to develop standardized procedures that make acquisitions little more work than hiring someone. The distance between the starting point and where you are now and the features they need. If I remember correctly, less than 10,000? We hoped that would save us. Here's the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice sales rank, 44 outsell Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice: It is a truth universally acknowledged?

Should you hire another programmer, who won't contribute to this week's growth but perhaps in a month will have implemented some new feature that will get you more users.2 Performance isn't everything, you say? There are times when this format is what a writer wants. Driven by his enthusiasm for the new project he works on it for many hours at a stretch. You either get rich, or you get nothing. For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was. If it isn't, and you shouldn't go unless you want to work on research projects as an undergrad. It assumes good technical people have college degrees, and that has no correlation to the nature of the application. By disputes for years, finally concluding that the only solution was to make the software run on the server. We managed to drag a lot of ideology that prevents people from viewing it with as cold an eye as they would something like consulting during the Bubble. Anti-immigration people don't understand is that there is a contradiction in the conventional wisdom: Lisp will make you a better programmer, like he says, why wouldn't you want to go to grad school or just be good at programming, and learn a lot about why startups are most productive at the very beginning, when they're just a couple guys in an apartment.

But I can think of three problems that could arise from using less common languages. You never have to exert anything like that much force in the course of a year. The culmination of my career as a series of different types of work that can only be done in long, uninterrupted stretches, when inspiration hits, rather than the one that seems to have the most momentum, and since 2001 there has been an additional admixture of paranoia. Riskier Strategies are Possible Risk is always proportionate to reward, investors like risky strategies, while founders, who don't have a problem firing someone they needed to.3 At least it did for me. Why? Optimizing code means taking an existing program and changing it to use less of something, usually time or memory. Now the only threshold is courage. But when you first start working on a project, because initially the most important things we've been working on when they bought us. But I don't think a lot of work. Startup founder is not the most powerful OS wherever it leads rather than being influenced by some initial vision, just as a sailboat can sail closer to the wind once it gets underway.

When a startup both begins with an idea exposed by technological change and makes a product consisting of technology in the narrower sense what used to be that smart. Wufoo got valuable feedback from it: Linux users complained they used too much Flash, so they are speaking from experience. At most colleges, admissions officers decide who gets in trouble for that. There are a few places where the work is so interesting that this is so, because the time it was obvious to ordinary people that this was a proper use of the word, new technology.4 Otherwise Robert would have been one of the biggest obstacles to creating startups in Europe is the attitude they reflect: that an employee is a kind of social convention, high-level languages on the other. What changed there was not solubility but bigness. But I can think of three problems that could arise from using less common languages.5 Usually successful startups happen because the founders are sufficiently different from other people that ideas few others can see seem obvious to them.

If I remember correctly, less than 10,000 lines of code. For example, the corporate site that says the company makes enterprise content management solutions for business that enable organizations to unify people, content and processes to minimize business risk, accelerate time-to-value and sustain lower total cost of ownership. A symbol type. In fact, the whole concept of a startup seems like a fraud. Some of these we now take for granted are missing. I just gave. Anyone who invested in private companies in return for dividends would have to pay close attention to their books. It's not as if all the opportunities to start companies are going to be working for them.

Of course, it's not uncommon for a startup or not. And as his example suggests, this can be valuable knowledge. They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on it. That was an unusual problem to have in person. The reason this struck me so forcibly is that for most of the time. But you can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself get into. By the time journalists covering the press release got round to calling us, we had a template language called RTML, which supposedly stood for something, but which in fact I named after Rtm. The way to get one loaded into your head. In fact, I know many people who switched from math to computer science because they found math too hard, and no one will pay for, when you could fix one of the biggest obstacles to creating startups in Europe is the attitude they reflect: that an employee is a kind of limit that mainstream languages are approaching asymptotically—does that mean you can't start a startup, you had to get the process rolling is get those first few startups successfully launched. When I talk to the founders of Sun.6 When you're running a big company, so they could receive the training appropriate to it. That's true now, and we don't realize how rich they are in the way.

But you yourself are the most important problems in their field. He works in a small market that will either turn into a big company, this may not be easy. To evaluate whether your startup is worth investing in, you don't worry too much about efficiency. Politicians are caught between a rock and a hard place here, however: make the capital gains rate low and be accused of creating tax breaks for the rich, or you get nothing. Garbage collection, introduced by Lisp in the mid twentieth century. And if Lisp is so great, why doesn't everyone use it? I named after Rtm. Tax laws that encourage growth? And when writing for yourself you have different priorities. So if you're mainly interested in hacking shouldn't deter you from going to grad school after this equivocal recommendation, I can say more precisely.

Notes

Beware too of the clumps of smart people are like sheep, but all they could to help a society generally is to get endless grief for classifying religion as well they do on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the first year or so you can send your business plan to have moments of adversity before they ultimately choose not to have them soon. We couldn't talk meaningfully about revenues without growing big in revenues without including the order and referrer. Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation implying that you're not even allowed to discriminate on the one hand paying Milton the compliment of an investor I don't know how many computers the worm might have to do that much of the 800 highest paid executives at large companies will one day be able to. There are aspects of the 2003 season was 4.

But friends should be working to help a society generally is to say how justified this worry is. The top VCs and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.

We tell them what to outsource and what not to like uncapped notes, and no one would have undesirable side effects. Quite often at YC I find myself asking founders Would you use that instead of just doing things, they will fund you, however, is not economic inequality, and when I said yes.

They live in a cupboard saying this is also not a commodity or article of commerce.

I'm not saying option pools themselves will go on to study the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, phone, and there was a false positive, this is one of the most famous example. An ordinary laborer was worth 8,000 sestertii, for example, the work goes instead into the shape of the world of the world, and all those 20 people at once is to say, but it doesn't seem an impossible hope. You can have escaped alive, or magazines. But it's dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was.

The kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they create liquidity.

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thenarcolepticone · 7 years

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The Inflection Point

by TheNarcolepticOne

(AO3) (FF.net)

Summary: Cinderella!AU. Alfred is an expert of numbers. He lives a life of eternal counting and he doesn’t quite know when the day will come when those numbers will finally flow to his favor, flipping away from a thousand and one negatives to an exponential positive. And what’s math without a little magic? USUK

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FRIEND @ixbranna16!!! (or @ixiethepixiewrites)

I hope this present like, doesn’t suck–

We both wrote a story about this concept but I didn’t have the balls to post it until today so OOPS.

Anyway, I hope you guys also have a good time reading this… ehe…

Alfred F. Jones never left home without two very important things: a pen (typically one including a name with whichever event had decided to hand them out for free), and a handheld spiral notepad. It’s been a constant habit of his since the first day that his stepmother discovered that the child could read and cheat the grocery list by adding extra foods at the end of it. It’s only after that event had Alfred carried paper and pen with him to every place he visited. He was an oddball of a kid who loved adding numbers and calculating almost everything that he could see. If Alfred could kiss numbers themselves, he would.

He counted the worth of everything his stepmother ‘granted’ him so that he knew exactly how much of a ‘financial liability’ he was to her (Alfred still didn’t know the costs yet; she hadn’t even ever sent him back to school). He counted how many steps it took to get to the top and the bottom of the house, and how many seconds it took to get to those endpoints.

Alfred especially counted all the money he had saved up from then on until he became 19.

He had a severe minimum wage count of about almost two measly coins a day for about nineteen years. Two cents per day, in a year, would have been $7.30 and by now he had an approximate $138.70; not counting the leap years. Alfred recalled himself grinning from ear to ear earlier that day, excited now to finally reach his goal to pay for the expensive suit he had been eyeing only recently.

Each year, his small little town would host a gala that would always be organized right smack dab in the middle of summer. It was a rumored occasion that stated that a man could find his true love there waiting for him, yet Alfred already knew how many failed dates his stepmother had ended up having. The answer: 13 and counting.

This never stopped Alfred from being as determined as he was. The idea of marriage was a glorious thing; one that could mean finally making something of himself other than just being lumped at home counting bubbles he popped while washing the dishes. The gala… it meant freedom in some aspect. Something that could break him out of his slavery to the woman he called ‘caretaker’.

And so the story begins right as Alfred enters into the clothing store, feeling his heartbeat drop several beats per minute upon seeing the horrid effects of how inflation had ruined his chances of being able to attend.

“Sir,” he addresses the clerk with a voice crack that made Alfred actually cringe with embarrassment within those few seconds. “Wasn’t this suit about $138.70 with the tax? Exact?”

“Aye, it was. But it’s the best thing I own in this store. Times are tough, kid. Either you put more pennies in that jar for an extra $10 or no deal.”

Alfred sighs. But all hope hadn’t lost itself in that moment. His eyes sparkle to the display only next to it, something much more flamboyant. Much more statement worthy. And totally $138.70.

“I’ll take that one, please.”

In the end, the situation didn’t quite add up to its estimated potential.

Alfred had only now gotten himself home with the floofy material still half pouring out of his hands. Glitter filled every crevice on the floor, and perhaps even through the cobwebs just behind the shelves. His expression, however, reads nothing less than excited, and he didn’t care to be bothered about cleaning it later if it meant he himself was going to have the chance to get ready for his first ever gala. He could finally set aside time for the ‘True Love’ part of his life.

But it was an expectation that was met with a metaphorical ax to the heart when Alfred’s stepmother comes home and drops her umbrella at the front door.

“…where in the hell did you get that?” she exclaims immediately, eyes straight to the outfit in his arms as if she was even surprised that he was holding it in the first place.

“I bought it with my own money, ma’am,” Alfred reasons, though he crosses his fingers from under the fabric. It’s an itchy kind, but it’s his money’s worth. “At the store. Isn’t it pretty? They wouldn’t let me buy the suit since it was expensive, but this was the next best–”

The statement is never finished and Alfred feels the fabrics of the silk slip through his fingers, mildly scratching his skin. It is being snatched away by a pudgy, scarlet-faced old woman; it’s the new image of a thief. Alfred tugs the fabric back, feeling his heart tug as hard as how he was pulling.

“That’s mine.”

She doesn’t relent her decision, tugging it back. Alfred doesn’t let go.

“Everything in this household belongs to me, ” she insists anyway, and Alfred practically yanks it out of her greedy hands. There wasn’t supposed to be an alternative option to the ‘happily ever after’. It was supposed to be his own story, and yet unsuccessfully, the tale becomes a broken reality when the fabric tears itself into two pieces.

Alfred inhales sharply, just as his stepmother quickly snatches the remains. She goes over to the dumbstruck hero, punching him straight in the jaw with contained irritation.

“I’m not being escorted to the gala with you, much less you wearing a dress.”

It’s a blur of hazy thoughts after, and Alfred ignores that his glasses had been knocked off his face. He says nothing, leaving the house instantly into the cold, yet welcoming rain. It’s a choice he decides to settle with, and the wetness masks his leaking tears.

The next instance Alfred finds himself, he’s retreated into the rusted walls of a weathered gazebo; a stage set in the middle of the gardens only as a means for impressing the neighbors. It was hardly ever used to do anything than be a decorative space, but it was his safe zone. His second room.

How he made it out there, in the mist of rain and visual haze, he wasn’t sure himself. Alfred just chooses to sit in the center, sniffling quietly as he feels his heart finally sink lower than his stomach. He’s dripping, with his head hung low and water dripping off his hair like it would a willow tree’s leaves. Alfred sits, hugging his knees. It’s only now that he finds it a stupid idea to have run out without any kind of warm clothing. He’s only wearing a tank top and knee-length shorts; the perfect attire for someone working the fields. Alfred sighs, with breath collecting into the air as he hugs his knees inward. He wonders briefly if true love would wait another 19 years. Adding the numbers, he’d be 38; probably hitting a midlife crisis and forever starving. Entirely unattractive.

He wipes his eyes, exhausted and tired before he feels a hand plop right on his shoulder.

Alfred jolts instantly, imaging that his stepmother might not have had enough pleasure with the previous encounter. Out of instinct, he swings his fist in the direction he felt the threat appear from, only regretting it immediately after when he hears the curse words of a much lower voice; a young man’s instead of a shrill old woman’s.

“…that was… entirely unnecessary. ”

The voice had an odd nasal intonation to it and Alfred had only just turned around, scraping his brain for replies but still unsure of how to approach the apology. It becomes more difficult to even try when he notices that not only was he dealing with a total stranger, but was, in fact, dealing with someone who had a gigantic pair of translucent butterfly wings probably twice his height.

And a nose dripping with newly drawn blood. Alfred winces and tries to hold off his interrogating questions.

“…hey man. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. Honest.” “I’m sure you didn’t,” the winged man sounds as if he were mocking him anyway. Alfred didn’t feel the any less guilty. “I wouldn’t have been summoned to help someone if they didn’t need it. Though, I think they forgot to include the part where you’re also ‘violent’.”

Alfred bites his lip. He finally gets one good look at him after hearing him speak, and his eyes went to finally settle on his appearance. As best he could, anyway. He still lacks glasses.

It’s the eyebrows that catch him first, furrowed and large. They were accompanied by a pair of pure green eyes staring him down and a hand covering the lower half of his face from the incident. Alfred can’t quite see the details of anything more than this. His eyes squint, but he gives up trying. He makes a move to speak, but his foot brushes against something solid and he looks down.

It’s a stick with a bright star at the end of it, shining so brightly that it almost hurts to look at.

“I’ll take that.”

The other scoops it up out of his vision with his free hand, and Alfred blinks as the man makes a swirling motion with it, eventually bopping Alfred’s head with the star point.

“Ow! What the…??” Alfred complains, but he opens his eyes again, only to realize the world decided to correct itself. The fields of trees were without doubles this time, and he feels his face with his hands. He can see the world clearly with no need for the specs. Blinking blearily, Alfred looks back again to the wand holder. He gets a glance quick enough to see that the fairy man also performed the same odd ritual on himself, waving his wand around. And he removes his hand away from his face without much mess. His nose didn’t look broken anymore. When he is finished with the action, he meets eyes with Alfred that flared with unimaginable annoyance. It’s then that Alfred notices the dusting of freckles on his nose; light and fairly obvious. And the anger was more pronounced in his expression. Perhaps not the same as his stepmother, but enough to probably not want to test his patience.

Alfred didn’t know if he should be terrified, but evidently, his inner questions were eventually answered by the way the other seems to soften his expression, extending a hand to him. It was forced, and he looked like he was trying his best to avoid blowing up with verbal abuse. “It’s a bit…late for an introduction now. But my name is Arthur. I’m your assigned Fairy Godfather.”

Alfred rubs his nose. As abstract as the concept was, he couldn’t help but make the comment.

“That…explains the wings.”

“I beg your pardon?” Alfred quickly takes ‘Arthur’s’ outstretched hand, trying to brush off his own rudeness. “Alfred F. Jones. I’m uh. I’m sorry for hitting your face like that. Don’t get to see a whole lot of new people around here, and they normally aren’t the good kind of people anyway.”

Arthur’s lip twitches. “I’m aware.”

Alfred gives a bit of an uneasy smile, then releases the hand grip before then rubbing his eyes several times. To make sure he wasn’t dreaming, of course.

“So uh. Fairy Godfather.”

“In the flesh,” Arthur says this with some aura of higher authority, giving a curt bow. One that Alfred chooses to ignore. He’s had enough of high and mighty. Alfred just tilts his head only a fraction as a response before replying.

“You’re a lot shorter than I imagined.”

“And for a pure soul, you’re a bit of a brute as well.”

The comment is unwarranted but Alfred can’t help but laugh as he says it, figuring perhaps this was a much better topic to shift to than being overly self-reflective like earlier.

“You’re also a little crude to be a Fairy Godfather. Sure I’m talking to the right guy?”

Arthur the fairy just rolls his eyes. “And cheeky too. Wow.”

“Touché.”

Despite the negative comments, Alfred couldn’t help but finally calm down. He figured perhaps he deserved this kind of treatment since he was the one who technically hit him without warning in the first place. He sighs after, then just rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Arthur’ also did fix his eyes too. A double favor that he clearly didn’t have to do.

“Anyway,” Alfred says. “What’s a Fairy Godfather doing in a place like this? Are you supposed to grant wishes or something?”

Arthur only crosses his arms and exhales sharply. Maybe this question was part of Arthur’s F.A.Q.

“I’m here because I’m supposed to give second chances,” the fairy replies, wiping the rest of the crusting blood off his nose. It was an answer that at least didn’t sound like he was trying to provoke him anymore. Which was good. “Apparently you want to go to the gala. And I’m supposed to make sure that happens, so here I am. I just hope you make reasonable requests.”

Alfred furrows his brows. “Wait so. You’re gonna help me get to the gala and find my soulmate?”

The fairy man looks jostled at that assumption. “Well. Perhaps not that far along. But hopefully, yes.”

“But wouldn’t that mean you’re more of a cupid kinda guy more than a fairy?”

Arthur snorts. “It would appear so.”

“But I’m not even dressed for it!” Alfred complains. “My outfit…”

It’s then Arthur’s turn to laugh, though it came out more as a chuckle. “You mean the dress?”

Alfred pouts. “Hey. There’s nothing wrong with dresses. It’s what I could afford.”

Arthur just rolls his eyes again, but he’s smiling as he does so. He twirls his wrist in a circular motion as he holds the wand. And Alfred looks down when he notices light radiating off his body, widening his eyes when he recognizes the exact tuxedo that he had wanted to buy in the store only hours ago.

“Holy hell.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Alfred felt his smile return to him, and it was the kind that bubbled up to the surface enough to make his eyes water. He looks happily at Arthur, making an expression that was almost ruined by tears. Arthur then seemed to look away briefly.

“…please don’t cry on me. I’d rather not use the excess magic for laundry maintenance.”

“Thank you so much, Arthur. You’re like, the best Fairy Godfather ever.”

Alfred catches Arthur off guard, and he pulls him into a tight embrace. Enough to squeeze all his feelings in a single motion, but not too much that he didn’t make Arthur gasping for breath. Arthur’s cheeks flush, but he tries to maintain a stable expression.

“…I already said you’re welcome. Now can you…let go?”

Alfred opens his arms, and Arthur practically stumbles out of balance. But he gains his composure again, brushing himself off as he adjusts his stance. Alfred keeps his gaze downward at the tuxedo. He doesn’t even ask about the transportation, but it’s clear that even if he didn’t ask, it would still be provided for. And he looks up at Arthur without any fail of his smile wavering. “You want to come?” “Wait, wait. What?” Arthur sputters, but Alfred offers his hand, giving a bright grin. “You know, you can’t just arrive at a party by yourself. You need a date/ And I’m thinking maybe since I can’t pay y’back for this suit in a few years–”

“Alfred, you don’t even have to pay me back for this. And inviting me is the most ludicrous thing anyone has ever suggested to me.”

“But does that mean yes then?”

Arthur sighed loudly. “Well,”

“You’re a fairy of chances, aren’t you? Why don’t you stick around? I kinda need a date, you know. And it’s the last chance I’m gonna get before I get married.”

Arthur then feels himself chuckle again. “Twisting my words already. Alright. But only since you asked.”

#usuk fanfiction #usuk #my fanfiction #hetalia #based off a discord prompt #I actually wish that person came back #they did so many good things for this fandom but they left because they're into other things #:(

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krisiunicornio · 4 years

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For thousands of years, classical Chinese medicine has used nutrition to treat imbalances. Here, we make the practice’s principles of energetics-based dietary therapy more digestible.

It wasn’t until I stood looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, angling my phone out in front of me, that I realized I was crossing a threshold: Of all the post-workout poses and pre-date outfit options sent to friends, the cutesy hellos and—ahem—unmentionables texted to love interests, this would be my most vulnerable selfie since smartphones rendered them commonplace.

But, I reminded myself, this was my idea. And so, after taking a deep breath and finding the best light, I stuck out my tongue, snapped a close-up of it, and hit send.

The day before, Nathalie Basile—the classical Chinese medicine practitioner on the receiving end of my awkward tongue selfie—told me that this particular body part is more revealing than people might realize. It acts as the body’s table of contents, outlining potential health issues to trained eyes like Basile’s. Surveying its color and topography is part of the traditional intake, or initial assessment, that patients undergo in order to have concerns identified and addressed by Basile. Our plans to meet in person for such an intake—which also typically includes measuring the pulse in three places and discussing past and present life circumstances—were interrupted by the rapid spread of COVID-19, and so Basile and I connected remotely. But the selfie, and the unexpected vulnerability hangover it caused, was all for naught: Without the other pieces that Basile uses to put together a puzzle that illustrates a person’s overall health, my tongue photo is as useless as a blender without blades.

Listen to our Yoga Show podcast episode with Nathalie on food energetics and classical Chinese medicine.

Out of Balance

As a whole, the American palate has gone awry. The influx of self-described foodies, reality cooking shows, and vacations designed around eating in far-flung destinations is misleading: As a culture, we’re not obsessed with food—we’re obsessed with its composition.

It’s a phenomenon that author Michael Pollan warned about in his book In Defense of Food more than a decade ago: Food is out; nutrients—like saturated fat, cholesterol, and carbs—are in. What started as a marketing takeover of supermarket packaging in the 1980s has morphed into a fixation on minerals and chemical compounds, numbers and science, elements of food rather than the food itself. That in turn has bred a slew of cure-alls in the form of restrictive diets meant to optimize our output by limiting our input to anything but carbs or only plants or whatever walked the earth thousands of years ago.

And yet, we aren’t any healthier for it—if anything, we’re less so. Chronic diseases are the leading causes of death in America, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies poor nutrition as a key lifestyle risk.

Long before we entered this frenzied era of hyper-controlled diets, classical Chinese medicine used food to nourish, treat, and heal the body. At the root of these practices: Qi. That’s where Basile—an acupuncturist and holistic health counselor at Alchemy in Asheville, North Carolina, a tearoom and apothecary offering alternative health care—comes in. The 34-year-old is also a personal chef, cooking for clients based on the underlying energetics of Chinese dietary therapy and prescribing food as medicine.

Basile is quick to point out that the classical paradigm differs from its better-known counterpart, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is the result of a midcentury effort by the Chinese government to systematize the ancient medical practices that are now called classical Chinese medicine. The latter was discovered—in the same sense that the principles of math and astronomy were discovered—more than two millennia ago, while TCM is a modern offshoot. Both the traditional and classical models defer to a single element that’s central to a person’s well-being and also comprises, guides, and shapes all existence as we know it. While this omnipresent force known as Qi (or ch’i, as it’s often written in the West, both pronounced “chee”) has no direct English translation, it’s widely accepted to refer to energy, and it’s in everything we are, everything we know, and everything we eat.

See also 14 Ways to Practice Mindful Eating

Understanding Qi

Neither strictly life force nor wholly matter, the makeup of Qi is so complex and nuanced that medical researcher Ted J. Kaptchuk dedicates an entire chapter to defining it in The Web Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, his reference book that is often used by acupuncture schools to introduce the practice to students.

“Qi does not ‘cause’ change,” he writes. “Qi is present before, during, and after any metamorphosis.

The change has to do with the manifestation of what is already inherent in the earlier state … One Qi elicits the propensity of another Qi that shares a similar kind of ‘frequency.’ Things ‘energize’ each other. Through resonance, one Qi evokes another.”

Thus, the web begins to spin, the threads of Qi connecting the cosmos to everyone and spinning inside each person a cosmos of their own. Kaptchuk explains that this is why we’re affected by the “universe”: Basically, we’re all made of the same stuff that it is—and that stuff is Qi.

It’s in this metaphysical language that Chinese medicine unfolds, with ailments being triggered, for instance, by “dampness” of an organ or a blazing “fire,” both of which are influenced by Qi. The fluctuation of Qi within the body can affect a person’s overall health, but there’s no definitive equation that indicates how it flows—in that way, classical differs vastly from Western medicine and TCM. Where Western physicians see symptoms as signposts that can point toward a specific diagnosis, practitioners like Basile consider an individual’s entire “clinical landscape,” as Kaptchuk calls it: the ever-moving, invariably unique makeup of a person.

As such, there’s not talk of disease so much as there is “patterns of disharmony” that indicate imbalances (the underlying cause of health issues) in a patient’s body. It’s a personalized approach to classifying problems and treating them that reaches deeper than the literal nature of cause-and-effect diagnoses we’re so used to in the West.

Basile, whose brother and father are both Western physicians, is no stranger to the tension that can arise between the two models. “I’ll try to have conversations with them about medicine, and they just laugh at me,” Basile says from her home in Asheville. She lives with her fiancé about an hour from where her parents, who emigrated from Haiti in the ’60s and ’70s, settled in the foothills of East Tennessee’s Appalachian Mountains to raise their four children. “I’m like, ‘Well, this person has dampness in their feet, and their spleen is Qi deficient,’” she says with a laugh.

See also “I Followed an Ayurvedic Lifestyle for a Month—and Here’s What Happened”

Qi and Your Organs

Chinese medicine identifies five primary organs—the heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidneys, collectively known as the Yin organs—that are vital to instructing our health. Each organ is thought of as its own person, complete with its own quirky personality and preferences. Think of your body as an office of organs, Basile says, where every employee in the company has a different job, but they’re working together toward the same goal. When they gather in the kitchen to celebrate a colleague’s birthday, one might be sweating, another might be shivering, and a third might be rolling his eyes at the ice cream cake because it looks like HR forgot he’s lactose intolerant, again.

Food plays an important role in creating and maintaining harmony, or balance, in our body’s office. That’s why digestive health is one of Basile’s central talking points. “Digestion is a process of transformation,” she says. Your body turns food and drink into energy, tissue, and substances (such as blood). In cases of inefficient digestion, there’s likely insufficient Qi, thus preventing the body from converting food into these essential elements. Western medicine places similar gravity on digestion, emphasizing bacteria and the gut microbiome, but in Chinese medicine, a food’s energetic profile dictates how the body is able to receive, break down, and process what we eat.

See also Eat Like a Yogi: A Yoga Diet Based in Ayurvedic Principles

Putting the Puzzle Together

The first part of a food’s profile that Basile considers is temperature—whether something will be warming, cooling, or neutral to the body, specifically to the spleen, which rules digestion and dictates weight plateaus. Going back to those organ personality types, the spleen prefers warmth and aridity, so it follows that cold and raw foods tax its performance. When the spleen is challenged, critical functions such as digestion, blood production, and energy yields are at risk, Basile says: “Those essential activities start in the middle, the earth element. That’s the spleen and stomach.”

Avoiding raw foods is counterintuitive to many patients in the West, who link “healthy” with salads and smoothies—a big no-no in Chinese medicine. Remember that office building? If an employee is most productive and comfortable when the temperature is kept at 73 degrees, but one of their colleagues blasts the AC down to 60 every day, their work and its quality are going to decline. The same goes for your digestive health. That doesn’t mean you have to swear off ice cream and carrot sticks altogether. The key to enjoying anything, Basile says, is moderation.

Beyond temperature, there are four other components Basile looks at in a food’s energetic profile, all of which are secondary considerations and, admittedly, harder to parse. Every food has what’s called an organ affinity, a relationship that helps describe which organ the food targets. There’s also movement and directionality. The two are similar, but the former refers to whether a food is grounding or invigorating, while the latter describes dualistic qualities of ascending up and out of the body or descending deeper into it. The final element is flavor—sweet, salty, acrid, bitter, or bland—each of which has an associated movement quality as well.

In practice, that all might look like this: If someone has a cold with a sore throat and mild fever, Basile knows she needs something that’s energetically cooling (to temper the heat) and that also moves the cold up and out of the system. The food prescription? Fresh fruit—almost all of which is cooling—with chopped mustard greens, which are ascending and will help open up the pores to vent the cold out of the body.

“It’s like a game,” Basile says. “There are so many different ingredients to use, all pieces of this fun puzzle made up of foods that jibe with the person’s taste buds and also energetically support the work that we’re doing.”

See also Yoga Food Myths: How to Eat For Your Dosha

Supporting Digestive Health

Basile's career started out more like her father’s, but in Western medicine, she didn’t see the hard-line relationship between food and healing she wanted to explore. And so, when she graduated premed from Duke in 2008, she was underwhelmed by the idea of jumping right into medical school. She moved with a few friends to Los Angeles. There she landed her first job in a kitchen, working as a prep cook and then assistant to the head pastry chef at Gjelina, a now-iconic restaurant in Venice Beach. Basile kept one foot in each world when she moved to New York a year later, continuing to cook while exploring herbal medicine to treat the mounting anxiety and depression she was experiencing as a result of a toxic relationship. That, in turn, opened her up to Chinese medicine, which has been using food and herbs to balance emotional hardship for centuries.

That food–mood relationship is reciprocal, with our mental state also playing a role in how we receive nourishment. Basile says that eating mindfully, for instance, can help alleviate an overtaxed spleen and therefore improve digestion. When you’re angry, upset, driving, or rushing, your sympathetic nervous system (responsible for the fight-or-flight response) is activated. In that state, your digestive tract isn’t the top priority for your body’s limited stores of energy. Whether you’re sipping hot broth on the way to a meeting or stress-eating a cheeseburger, your spleen is going to have a harder time processing food when your body’s resources are focused on mitigating those triggers.

You don’t want to get in your body’s way by constantly pulling its attention toward digestion. It relies on periods of downtime to mend itself in parasympathetic mode (also called “rest and digest”). If you’re snacking all day, even in small amounts, your body has to continuously work at digestion, which diverts energy from its other essential tasks. The lesson: By being more conscious of your body’s limited resources, you can empower it to master every moment.

The way Basile talks about the energy of eating reminds me of another principle, completely unrelated to food: that we choose whom we give our energy to—as a means of protecting and preserving ourselves, as an act of self-care. During my hours of conversation with Basile, I’ve started to think of my body as its own solar system—my organs the planets, my blood the gravitational pull—and everyone else as their own galaxy, each unique but governed by the same laws in this vast universe that, together, we compose. In this cosmic makeup, where I’m seen as a landscape that falls in and out of harmony rather than a forever-flawed human, there is no space for judgment and, as a result, no means to capture shame and hold it close—be it from a tongue selfie or something else. There’s only balance and imbalance, and the promise that it will always be in flux.

Three Balanced Recipes

Try these three holistic, Classical Chinese Medicine-inspired recipes from Basile—perfect or summer.

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

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cedarrrun · 4 years

Link

For thousands of years, classical Chinese medicine has used nutrition to treat imbalances. Here, we make the practice’s principles of energetics-based dietary therapy more digestible.

But, I reminded myself, this was my idea. And so, after taking a deep breath and finding the best light, I stuck out my tongue, snapped a close-up of it, and hit send.

Listen to our Yoga Show podcast episode with Nathalie on food energetics and classical Chinese medicine.

Out of Balance

See also 14 Ways to Practice Mindful Eating

Understanding Qi

“Qi does not ‘cause’ change,” he writes. “Qi is present before, during, and after any metamorphosis.

See also “I Followed an Ayurvedic Lifestyle for a Month—and Here’s What Happened”

Qi and Your Organs

See also Eat Like a Yogi: A Yoga Diet Based in Ayurvedic Principles

Putting the Puzzle Together

See also Yoga Food Myths: How to Eat For Your Dosha

Supporting Digestive Health

Three Balanced Recipes

Try these three holistic, Classical Chinese Medicine-inspired recipes from Basile—perfect or summer.

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes

amyddaniels · 4 years

Text

The Energy of Your Food May Be Affecting Your Health

For thousands of years, classical Chinese medicine has used nutrition to treat imbalances. Here, we make the practice’s principles of energetics-based dietary therapy more digestible.

But, I reminded myself, this was my idea. And so, after taking a deep breath and finding the best light, I stuck out my tongue, snapped a close-up of it, and hit send.

Listen to our Yoga Show podcast episode with Nathalie on food energetics and classical Chinese medicine.

Out of Balance

See also 14 Ways to Practice Mindful Eating

Understanding Qi

“Qi does not ‘cause’ change,” he writes. “Qi is present before, during, and after any metamorphosis.

See also “I Followed an Ayurvedic Lifestyle for a Month—and Here’s What Happened”

Qi and Your Organs

See also Eat Like a Yogi: A Yoga Diet Based in Ayurvedic Principles

Putting the Puzzle Together

See also Yoga Food Myths: How to Eat For Your Dosha

Supporting Digestive Health

Three Balanced Recipes

Try these three holistic, Classical Chinese Medicine-inspired recipes from Basile—perfect or summer.

0 notes

coin-news-blog · 5 years

Text

Andrew Yang’s ‘Freedom Dividend’ Is Not Only Unnecessary, It’s Unethical

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/andrew-yang-s-freedom-dividend-is-not-only-unnecessary-it-s-unethical

Andrew Yang’s ‘Freedom Dividend’ Is Not Only Unnecessary, It’s Unethical

Andrew Yang has taken to Twitter in dynamic fashion as of late, advertising his universal basic income (UBI) proposal known as the “Freedom Dividend.” While throwing money at people out of pocket always generates a buzz, there’s a mathematically and ethically broken side to the plan few are talking about.

A Real-Life Political Cartoon

Not so long ago people used to joke about the typical shyster politician and their larger than life campaign promises. Wisecracks about the next White House wannabe centered around grease-ball politicians literally throwing money at voters to buy their support. Well now, under the guise of a hip new presidential campaign, the money throwing is actually happening. To critique Andrew Yang is no easy task, given the understandable and dynamic support he’s received against the backdrop of a totally corrupt and greedy political and financial system. It stands to ask, though: Is he really set to change things? Upon closer examination, UBI is little more than an inept and unethical ploy for socioeconomic power.

If it feels this good to give 10 Americans $1,000 a month imagine how it will feel to do the same for hundreds of millions of us. It will be one of the greatest days in human history.

— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) November 1, 2019

Generous (With Other People’s Money)

Math. It’s a discipline unlike others for its exact answers and lack of room for debate. One plus one is two. There’s not much dissent possible here, outside of the occasional stoner drum circle or deep metaphysical fireside discussion. Nothing wrong with either, of course, but this is just to lay the groundwork for an argument. Namely, that one cannot give away value one doesn’t have. While Yang is currently giving a “Freedom Dividend of $1,000 a month for an entire year to 10 American families” out of his own pocket, once in office that money set to “do the same for hundreds of millions of us” will come from your pockets.

UBI: something doesn’t add up.

Mixed Up Math

Yang’s campaign website lays out the groundwork for his proposed “Freedom Dividend.” While a dividend is usually defined as a share of profits paid out to shareholders, Yang’s “dividend” will be made possible “by consolidating some welfare programs and implementing a Value Added Tax of 10 percent.” Not exactly a share of profits as much as money pulled from the pockets of Americans, but for the sake of argument, that will do for now. In assuaging fears of inflation, negative economic impact and even incoming communism, Yang maintains on the site:

The federal government recently printed $4 trillion for bank bailouts in its quantitative easing program with no inflation.

This assessment is massively dishonest, and if not, massively ignorant of basic economic realities. It ignores math, in other words. There are many types of inflation and some of the most pernicious hide beneath the surface of popular reference. While consumer price index inflation (CPI) may appear almost unaffected during some periods of quantitative easing (QE) due to a mix of market factors (including the psychological aspect of consumer confidence), asset price inflation is the real trigger for more serious problems. In other words, even as the debt racket of modern government paper spirals out of control, if the people are confident in their money and the state’s reassurance of its value, CPI may stay relatively stable, and businesses will be unable to increase prices due to this psychology and other factors such as healthy, corrective deflation.

Source: St. Louis Fed, realinvestmentadvice.com

While Yang claims the printing of $4 trillion for bailouts caused “no inflation” the housing and asset market is calling BS in unprecedented and truly frightening fashion. If a house was worth $200,000 five years ago, and now is worth $300,000, this doesn’t necessarily mean the house changed, or that the property became legitimately more valuable. What it often means is that the dollar became significantly weaker against the asset. As these asset prices are thus inflated, banks are able to give out bigger and bigger loans against the asset collateral. Once the jig is up, the bubble bursts and the tumble down is severe, with collateral value no longer covering loans. The graph above shows just how dramatically this buildup is happening currently, with asset inflation signaled by U.S. household net worth against GDP at an all-time-high since 1952 of 535%.

Stolen Generosity

Not only is Yang’s proposition economically unsound, it’s also morally objectionable. This is a hard pill to swallow for many hopeful millennials and Yang gang supporters of all ages, tired of scraping by and struggling in the current corrupt, Keynesian paradigm. That notwithstanding, Yang’s “Forward” is no different from the vague and vapid “Hope,” Change,” or “I’m a better man” of previous candidates.

To pay the Freedom Dividend, Yang proposes you be robbed. Business owners not wishing to apply his suggested VAT would be punished for refusal. Consumers not wishing to pay it, as well. It’s an unpleasant reality, but there’s no way to put it more accurately. Yang explains:

A Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the production of goods or services a business produces. It is a fair tax and it makes it much harder for large corporations, who are experts at hiding profits and income, to avoid paying their fair share.

Many are unsure of what Andrew Yang’s fair share of their income should be. If I similarly were forced to pay every neighbor I have a portion of my paycheck because 15 or 20 of them said I must, or be put in a cage, people would be understandably scandalized by the sociopathic suggestion. But if the theft is euphemized as a “Freedom Dividend” it’s suddenly made much more palatable to the masses. While some maintain taxation is a necessary evil for preserving civilization, this position is illogical. There’s nothing civil about stealing from anyone under threat of violence, and a social need doesn’t justify criminal activity, anyway. If it did, the folks in the U.S. during the plantation slavery era would have been correct in their protests against abolition: “But who will pick the cotton!?”

Bitcoin’s Fix

Leaving Andrew Yang’s universe for a moment, it seems important to address crypto as a potential solution for the current political corruption he supposedly stands against. A recent opinion piece in the Washington Post proclaims: “Facebook’s cryptocurrency won’t help the poor access banks. Here’s what would.” The piece goes on to detail the impossibility of Facebook’s upcoming Libra cryptocurrency actually helping the unbanked of the world, due to government regulations. The article un-ironically closes by suggesting that the very same overbearing government is the solution, stating: “It’s true that financial inclusion would help millions of Americans and benefit the economy. But it can be achieved through time-tested and democratic institutions. In fact, the United States already has a public payments system: the Federal Reserve.”

What so few in the space seem to realize about crypto is that the potential for banking the unbanked, pulling people out of poverty, and enabling savings and the building of wealth for the average individual is already here. The state stands in the way with endless surveillance, KYC/AML requirements, taxes and capital controls, so it happens in the regulatory cracks, at present.

Instead of a $1,000 monthly paycheck in trash money, why not drop all restrictions on trade and allow people to grow their wealth and businesses independently? If we’re worried that criminal warlords and kingpins would take over, just look around — they already have. It is precisely because of the illogical centralization of power and lack of a logical, level playing field that a candidate like Yang can gain any prominence at all. In a free society — and no offense here to Yang personally — he’d likely be known as just a common con artist.

Source: news.bitcoin

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airoasis · 5 years

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How to Pay Off your Mortgage in 5 Years

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/how-to-pay-off-your-mortgage-in-5-years/

How to Pay Off your Mortgage in 5 Years

This is Sam Kwak, one of the vital Kwak brothers, actual property investor, and the creator of the guide, fire your boss and in this video I want to exhibit you guys how you can repay your personal loan inside five to seven years. Now, before i’m going on with the breakdown and the reason of the strategy, I want to make certain you guys get some disclaimer so that you guys are included and then i’m blanketed as good so actual quick i am not an attorney i am not a CPA nor am i a monetary planner so some thing that I say or mentions of legal tax or monetary planning advice please don’t take it as an recommendation however alternatively as a proposal founded on my possess expertise and my possess working out of the method now this is gonna be additionally a short 15 lower than 15 minute video so be certain do not do that by myself okay in the event you guys have any questions in the event you guys any want any aid in case you guys want some individual help i’m gonna go away a hyperlink down under at the finish of this video i’m gonna provide you with a link to head to to look extra explanation and i’m also gonna offer you guys somewhat more breakdown in that within the link that i will send you to on the end this video so be certain you guys realize that I get it there’s different videos with a purpose to show you this technique but remember it’s particularly relevant that you just get some aid a 3rd occasion or a 3rd pair of eyes form of communicate to help you guys use the technique so the motive of this video is simply provide you with an overview an idea a possibility on how one can implement a strategy in your possess problem so that you do not need to pay you understand a gigantic sum of interest and spend always the world seeking to repay your loan so let me go forward and flip the digicam round and i’m gonna exhibit you guys making use of a marker and piece of paper offer you some illustrations and the way these how the method will virtually work all proper guys i’m gonna flip the digicam around so i’m gonna exhibit you guys to collapse and and these clarification as far as how this process works now earlier than I get to the precise approach I want to show you guys how and why mortgages work proper and why I think they’re inefficient so i am gonna ruin down the mortgages in a chart for you in the case of interest versus precept now for these don’t know what most important is foremost is the precise loan steadiness so if you have a hundred thousand greenback mortgage you’re sure your your precept balances $a hundred,000 get it interest is is the fee that you simply pay to use the bank’s cash k that’s truly bank’s profit so i go to draw the chart for you here the x-coordinate it’s time so we’re gonna label with zero months this is gonna be 30 years and right between is 15 years ok that is gonna be your month-to-month payment quantity monthly payment so shall we embrace we’re gonna supply it a provide a excellent example right here 100 thousand dollar mortgage k five percentage curiosity at 30 years a ssin it’s gonna be just round about 4 or 4 hundred bucks correct and guys do not quote me here I would not have the amortization calculator in entrance of me but centered on my expertise it’s around four hundred bucks for essential and an interest of all so with that 4 hundred greenbacks in mind this curve here is gonna be your curiosity fee and this curve here goes to be your essential steadiness so in the event you guys detect that first you recognize the first 1/2 fifteen years bulk of your hundred cost is simply curiosity payments correct in the early months little or no is obtain taken out of your precise hundred thousand greenback main steadiness so in that 4 hundred greenbacks most persons suppose that if we make that 4 hundred fee our mortgage is going backpedal to ninety nine thousand and 600 bucks right guys that is not the case actually might be like fifty hundred bucks if no longer even less are gonna be the genuine predominant cost that’s gonna go and slash the the stability from 100 thousand to you know the most important cost something we’re subtracting right here so do you guys see how the primary fifteen years you guys are definitely now not making much development so far as paying off your mortgage actually the primary ten to fifteen years that is where the banks make money thanks profit does that make feel guys so what’s really intriguing and for me it can be type of unique most bankers will come to you and say hey you are aware of it’s been about 10 years how would you wish to refinance your personal loan for a curb payment how would you prefer to pay $350 instead of $400 right most folks would say wow you know i am saving $50 that is certainly an effective factor but what sucks is that and what they don’t inform you is that we’re clearly resetting our clock again to zero months and we’re paying all of this interests in every single place once more style of sucks isn’t it correct we’re absolutely paying more interest via refinancing by way of resetting a clock again to zero right on the grounds that if we did a refinance and continues and paid to fifteen sixteen 17 18 and so on we’re actually gonna be making more that important payment and we’re truely gonna be doing a lot better in our progress as far as paying off our our principal steadiness now what’s rather fundamental is that that is anything that you should understand for those who guys are taking notes or for those who guys have pen and paper in entrance of you the minimize the main balance correct as the important stability will get decreased so will probably be interest proper i am a gigantic famous person Wars fan so i am gonna make this reference in the event you for those who damage the preserve generator the dying megastar is open to being a you recognize vulnerable i do know guys i am a geek i am in there I wanna that’s the nice reference an analogy can offer you so kill the essential and you’ll be able to additionally kill the pursuits too so it’s quite important that we take the major steadiness down so that we’re no longer paying pursuits does that make feel so that is one of the vital pillars or I should say the core sort of supporting you know methodology to creating this approach work ok now the other ins illustration on a hundred thousand are by myself at five percentage curiosity k i know I can’t spell right here 30-year loan EMAS ation most men and women consider five percentage interest isn’t bad k but little do individuals know that truly will amortize and can become compounded to absolutely be coming round eighty,000 to $100,000 on interest by myself so on that hundred thousand greenback loan that is the essential balance on a 30-12 months Bogey’s 30-year amortization 5 percentage interest we’re virtually paying hundred thousand dollar interest on my own plus our fashioned mortgage amount is gonna be around 100 eighty thousand to 2 hundred thousand dollars we paid to the bank now guys if we’re gonna pay her thousand dollar interest we just bought a financial institution one other house right we acquired a house they usually acquired a apartment so you recognize you guys can see how mortgages variety of suck doesn’t it right we’re paying a variety of curiosity take goodbye 30 years that is like that’s that appears like endlessly it really does proper i’m virtually scared that some of these banks are coming out with fifty recognition for you realize the pseudo pseudo loans that’s loopy right that’s insane that is ludicrous this isn’t the case and that there needs to be a better approach in paying off our property there has to be a better method to purchase residences without paying a hundred percent interest to the financial institution there is there is a methodology there’s a strategy that i am gonna exhibit you and for this reason you’re staring at the video proper to repay your mortgage faster and also you guys quite often already understand this correct that is all gonna be in what’s called actuality in Lending declaration banks provides you with this and though they is not going to tell you the reality and how mortgages work now there is an extra debt instrument that that i like to make use of to repay your personal loan means quicker and with this strategy we’re gonna accomplish are these these are the goals or I must say the overall concept total finished touches so far as how the approach work so this process is referred to as velocity banking what we’re doing is we’re we’re accelerating how our debt is being paid and it is identified that about sixty six percent interest savings with this process we now have got about sixty six percentage of time saving as good and it is anything some circumstances 5 to 7 years of whole fee quantity and we’re gonna preserve the identical amount of costs o.K. We don’t need to incur extra extra loss we’re no longer paying a penny extra on the mortgage believe me and identical quantity of earnings so i’m now not gonna let you know to move get a greater job now not gonna go let you know – skimp and store right retailer and retailer every single penny proper i am now not gonna inform you to go clip coupons guys what i am telling you here what this strategy will help you is still maintain the cost the equal nonetheless hold the income the equal identical manner however we’re saving 66% an curiosity and sixty six% on time of of the cost period cool and a few of you guys might be saying this sounds approach too good to be authentic this needs to be some type of rip-off right or whatever guys may say this is too risky that is two distinctive guys i am gonna exhibit you the overall common inspiration as far as how this work and the math at the back of it now this is the only gonna be a short video you are no longer gonna get the entire working out I get it most of you guys need that is what i am gonna i’m gonna share a link on the finish of this video on on a are living instance i am gonna clearly exhibit you a spreadsheet an Excel spreadsheet and provide you with guys the specific breakdown so far as how the approach will work in numbers but for now i am supplying you with guys the suggestion so i’m gonna introduce you guys a brand new debt instrument a new means I knew I will have to say a revolution correct however this has this truely has been around for a little bit bit and most individuals do not realize it’s referred to as home fairness line of credit score often referred to as a HELOC now the banks have been selling this product for roughly 15 17 years it is been around for just a little bit but the reason why bankers don’t inform you about this instrument is in view that take into account huh you consider our illustration with this you know they need you to make you already know all this loopy they need you to actually pay correct the place to go i am seeking to give you guys the illustration again they want you to pay 100 percentage proper they need you to pay this amount interest they don’t want you to save lots of curiosity it’s no longer that is not their interests proper that that’s humorous that is no longer their curiosity correct there that’s that is now not what they’re after they want you guys to make ton of curiosity fee so they are able to earn money despite the fact that the curiosity cost is gonna be variable and and it can be gonna be larger than a mortgage why those two things are not gonna subject as much and it’s without a doubt gonna prevent more cash this manner k I wish to show you I understand it’s a bit backwards and it would be confusing i’m gonna exhibit you guys number one the distinction between a mortgage versus a HELOC right here we go so lowest mortgage versus a HELOC first of all key locks are open are open-ended and your personal loan your loan broker diminish banker will know this open-ended and that is gonna be closed ended what that means is shall we embrace for instance you make a payment of thousand greenbacks to the banks i’m gonna draw the excellent financial institution as viable there you go correct that money can’t be on a mortgage trouble you cannot use that once more correct you cannot use it ok but on a HELOC you make the thousand buck you made a thousand bucks on the HELOC precept cost you’re gonna be equipped to make use of that thousand bucks again does that make sense guys so it appear it really works just like a credit card bank card you might have a limit and a dwelling the entire 9 yards right here within the loan you are now not you are kind of stuck correct you pay the thousand dollars that is it it goes to the major and interest the top on the HELOC you utilize thousand dollars you pay it off again you employ 5 hundred bucks pay it off right identical to a bank card now the subsequent thing the honour is that he locks the the the curiosity is calculated and utilized on typical daily stability and what that implies is that daily so Monday let’s consider you might have a hundred greenback steadiness on Tuesday you might have $ninety stability and on Thursday let’s say you have $50 steadiness proper so every day you convey down the everyday balance so good your curiosity go down any person who’s rather fast exhibit you guys how the traditional day-to-day stability works let’s consider you have got 100 greenbacks identical to the Monday’s example all proper it is gonna be extended through the interest fee so factor zero seven get it and it’s gonna be divided via 360 days it can be the commercial lending year and whatever that’s is gonna be the typical every day curiosity proper and that’s gonna get utilized daily as long as you’ve gotten hundred buck steadiness so let’s say from Wednesday by way of Friday you will have hundred dollar stability from Wednesday by means of Wednesday via Friday something this amount is getting applied each day but let’s say from Wednesday to Wednesday you had a hundred bucks stability on Thursday you could have 90 dollar steadiness good wager what guys the following day this is not gonna be hundred bucks that is gonna be ninety greenbacks so on Monday or i’m sorry Wednesday you’ll have had let’s say i am trying to calculate here shall we say five buck curiosity good day after today in view that the balance is shrink Thursday now not Tuesday we’re going backwards right here Thursday you may have extra like a 3rd for dollar curiosity so that you see how the balance on a HELOC every day it matters ok the longer you might have diminish balance the longer you can have smaller quantity of interest going out k so this is the important thing this is one other key a 2d pillar so that you may name it that to understanding why he laughs are higher ok so let’s go ahead and show you guys the exact method that is my last sheet of paper so I higher do a good job all correct so what we’re doing is there may be quite two approaches to epidermis a cat right here okay there may be two methods to try this technique i am gonna show you guys a technique ok like I recounted prior i am gonna exhibit you guys the full illustration of this process and in a hyperlink that i’m going to put down under on the finish of this video so let’s say again to the illustration $one hundred,000 loan $one hundred,000 steadiness k this is a mortgage ok what we’re doing is we’re gonna go ahead and open up a dwelling fairness line of credit so absolutely this is gonna require a little bit of equity to have so let’s consider now we have we had been able to raise or I should say and open a twenty five thousand buck limit HELOC so what we’re doing here is a few folks would say we just bought one other twenty five thousand buck loan that is not the case here guys so if you have that is like getting a twenty 5 thousand buck bank card we didn’t get to any extent further by myself so what we’re doing is we’re taking that twenty 5 thousand greenback credit score credit score line that now we have with the HELOC and we’re making a essential fee major payment of $25,000 so now our ending steadiness is gonna be seventy five thousand greenback stability right here and that is gonna be a twenty-5 thousand dollar steadiness so seventy 5 thousand plus twenty five thousand we still have hundred thousand greenback dollar balance in phrases of debt okay we do not we failed to incur any further debt all proper various various humans seem to confuse that HELOC they think it can be an extra loan or equity mortgage product it can be not k so we we take in the main steadiness and and and put it here does that make experience and what we’re gonna do right here from now is we’re still going to proceed to make our cellular cost each single month okay we cannot overlook that every one right until we would like a foreclosures which we do not need what we’re doing right here is that we’re gonna take our whole revenue okay so you guys think i am gonna be loopy right here let’s examine our we now have our sales our monthly sales is five thousand buck earnings and make a most important cost towards the HELOC so our balance now is twenty thousand buck balance and we nonetheless have a $seventy five,000 balance here does that make sense however this is a trick guys out of this twenty twenty thousand greenback steadiness we nonetheless have fees each month don’t wait correct we’ve got children we gotta pay for diapers proper we have got to pay for groceries so what we’re doing is we’re paying you understand groceries here correct groceries we’re paying for kids price all right we’re paying we’re still paying our mortgages after we our mortgage monthly monthly mortgage right we’re deciding to buy other charges but we all know that this all of this is not gonna occur like right away next day so consider our normal every day curiosity stability inspiration right we’re not gonna go and deposit 5 thousand dollars on Monday and subsequent day on Tuesday we’re now not gonna incur forty five forty five hundred dollars of of bills it is gonna occur you realize it’s gonna spread out correct it’s gonna be hundred greenbacks right here 105 hundred greenbacks there $seven hundred subsequent week so between i am gonna do my nice to provide an explanation for this part right here so week one we’ve got shall we say we spent 5 hundred dollars on groceries that means we’ve a new steadiness of twenty thousand five hundred greenbacks on HELOC right but our complete stability is twenty thousand five hundred plus seventy 5 thousand steadiness that involves ninety 5 5 hundred whole debt does that make sense now wager what guys utilising it knowing what we find out about common day-to-day balance we’re getting up our interest is getting applied on twenty thousand 5 hundred dollars now not twenty five thousand bucks of an imbalance so although we do have i might say a seven percentage curiosity okay which is ordinarily he laps are greater than loan curiosity that 7% curiosity is now getting utilized to twenty thousand 5 hundred greenbacks as an alternative of twenty five thousand greenback balance so if this used to be a loan balance of ninety 5 thousand 5 hundred we simply saved a entire crap ton of interest round correct proper there Plus that $20,000 principle cost we did or $25,000 precept cost we did on the personal loan we no longer best we saved interest there but we additionally saved like practically man needed to say about five to seven years on that single $25,000 payment mainly be more I probably even be constructive to say 10 years we just saved 10 years of that loan the mortgage does that make sense guys say in week 2 we spent extra $2,000 on something bills you could have groceries youngsters you already know all of them add up right so at the finish the whole balance now together with the loan stability and the HELOC stability is supply me ninety seven thousand and 5 hundred dollars so well-nigh our he existence is now becoming a checking account right nothing has modified right we’re nonetheless making the equal price the same income now the one factor that I forgot to say is that you simply do ought to have leftover money on the end to have the HELOC balance come down as well they recognize the predominant balance of the HELOC correct in different cases that you just will have to now not be spending extra money than what you are making so if you’re if the costs it let’s consider is $4,500 that $500 is what’s bringing down the stability so over time that HELOC steadiness is gonna come down zero all proper it is gonna come again to zero the balance and however once more we nonetheless have that limit we’re gonna take yet another $25,000 and bring that $75,000 let’s say you realize over time we’re gonna have balance come down in $60,000 anyhow on the grounds that we have been making that personal loan fee correct over time so with the aid of now you know what by the time this becomes zero proper this is able to have come down as good to $60,000 so now when you take a different $25,000 principle payment towards the mortgage we’re gonna be go into reverse to $35,000 you guys see that is gonna typically chop off another ten years does that make feel guys right that you could you guys see how rapidly we can repay your mortgage utilizing things to the common day stability right and we’re reducing this down manner manner manner quicker so we’re doing is this is interphase shit and changing it to what’s effective that you may retailer so much money more money on this part then letting it sit on a time table and having it pay every single month now some men and women will argue with me and pronouncing Sam why don’t we just take the additional cash that you simply you’ve you realize on this case five hundred greenbacks and just make one more payment on that loan well guys that defeats the intent of getting diminish diminish usual daily stability on this case once we introduced the five when we offered the proposal of $5,000 earnings principle payments in opposition to the HELOC we introduced the normal daily steadiness from stability from twenty five thousand to twenty thousand right and like I acknowledged you’re not gonna be spending up that 45 hundred bucks valued at expenditures tomorrow correct that you could be spending hundred bucks right here 100 five hundred dollars there two thousand greenbacks you already know subsequent week so between those spending you are saving that interest just like our prior micro instance Wednesday into Thursday between these two you already know between your spendings that is the place you’re gonna retailer the curiosity proper we’re slicing the loan steadiness from back end as a substitute of entrance end if that is smart so guys should you guys need an exact illustration I do have a further hyperlink i am gonna put it down under right beneath beneath the video if you want a real-existence example if you want actual figures i’ve definitely made an extended video about half-hour with specific spreadsheets I made an genuine instance with real interest expense current market fee i’m going to exhibit you ways the approach without a doubt works on an excel sheet the math does now not lie my numbers do not lie i am gonna show you in an Excel spreadsheet how this process clearly works in number sense i do know I explained it in an awfully conceptual means I’ve made a fairly speedy diagram however in case you guys are like like me and you are a numbers individual you are very analytical in case you guys wish to honestly see the true quantity behind this you understand this this concept i will show you it is known as chop my mortgage calm so i’m gonna write this quicker there you go i’m running out of papers so i am gonna write it proper here so go to a chop Oh chop my loan.Com go to that hyperlink guys have emojis calm i am gonna additionally put it you know beneath this video that you would be able to additionally seem within the hyperlink description field if you are staring at this on YouTube i’m gonna provide you with guys actual reside illustration also given that i am an actual property investor I need to exhibit you guys the way to use this procedure also on condo properties so that you guys can pay off your condo properties and i may also show you guys on recommendations on the way to take this HELOC approach the velocity banking process and turn it into an income procedure is not that cool so what you inspiration was once it used to be a technique to pay off your loan faster i’m gonna additionally exhibit you guys methods to use the this this system here to also expand your month-to-month income so when you guys are all in favour of in saving your identical your time in your personal loan payment for those who guys are focused on paying sixty six% less on interest you guys are fascinated by in all likelihood and possibly doubling your revenue using this procedure go to chapman mortgage comm i’ll exhibit you guys some actual-lifestyles examples plus i’m gonna provide you with guys an opportunity to interact with me on a telephone or skype and you recognize we could chat on how one can take this this illustration this suggestion and practice and you’re in your possess life so go to cut my moves calm i will see you guys there i will be ready and and i’ll see you within the subsequent video all right take care now

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batterymonster2021 · 5 years

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How to Pay Off your Mortgage in 5 Years

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/how-to-pay-off-your-mortgage-in-5-years/

How to Pay Off your Mortgage in 5 Years

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olivenachos · 5 years

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Random post here but this irritated me.

I was doing the usual, scrolling through my feed when I see a post about saving marine animals. Nothing wrong with that of course. There was a video about the amount the plastic in the ocean and a bunch of statistics, etc. Again, nothing wrong there. However, what bugged me is what came after the video and the short description below it.

There was a long series of products that you could purchase with links. This section of the post was more than double the length of the original post about how disgustingly polluted our oceans are. Now, at first, I didn’t really think anything of it. I was like those are cute bracelets, anklets, t-shirts, necklaces, and whatever else was listed. They had cute little trinkets of sea turtles and little, simplistic wave patterns. How lovely. Then, it hit me.

At the bottom was a call to action to clean up oceans! Yes, we must clean our oceans and if you buy any of this list of products we’ll donate XX% to an organization that cleans oceans! Yay, shopping to help the ocean!

I never really thought about the whole ‘buy this product and XX% goes towards charity, organization, blah, blah, X Y Z.’ But I realize now how ridiculous it is. Why should someone profit off of disaster, calamity, etc. Not just with this particular case but with anything remotely in the public consciousness? Anything from hurricanes and tornadoes, to starving children in Africa. I remember the infomercials for the products you could buy that could “save a child’s life.” Why should I buy a product? There’s a profit margin here somewhere and the fact is any money you spend to go towards a good cause is used to line someone’s pocket. A company, a person, whatever.

What’s possibly more worse is that whoever this entity is, doesn’t actually care and just wants to make a quick profit. I mean whenever these products are shipped to you, I bet they’re wrapped in some sort of plastic. Bubble wrap, Styrofoam, and a bunch of other s**t that will be either end up piled in a dump somewhere near you, or dragged across the ocean to be dumped somewhere else, or just happen to fall into the ocean.

Okay, so let’s back up a bit. If you have ever bought something that falls along these lines, I’m NOT shaming or judging. There have been plenty of things I have bought in my life that have supposedly gone to breast cancer research, saving specific animals (pandas, sea turtles, etc.) and of course, a certain liquid dish soap which we use regardless but it helps clean animals affected by oil spills (though that one has really doubled down since the spill and, again, my household would use it regardless of that). My point is that, especially on this site and other social media platforms, we see this type of marketing EVERYWHERE. We can’t escape it and you know, why not?

The transaction is easy, we get a cool short out of it, and we feel accomplished. Like ‘Good job, Jane, you did your part.’

But did you really? You just supported a business that supplies clothing, a business that ships them to you, a business that creates the packaging, a business that assembles the items, a business that makes the components that go into the items, and at some point you reach a farm/agricultural business (whether private or not) of some sort. And in all that chain of events, your money to going to a lot of different places directly and indirectly. And only XX% is going to charity. I’ve most often seen between <1% ~ 25% be the common range. Though, most are <10%. (Of course this is just my personal experience and there are some place that donate more!!!!)

But whether nor not the percentage of giving is high or not, the question is should we be supporting this business/market/etc?

If you do the math, only a small percentage is going to the place you’re trying to support and the rest is to get the t-shirt, jewelry, etc. In fact, if 10% of your money goes towards helping out a place that cleans the ocean, the other 90% is just getting a t-shirt. You might as well have bought an ordinary old shirt from wherever. And on top of that mood-dampening idea, think of how much 10% really is. If you buy a shirt for $45-50 USD (without tax) with 10% going to charity of your choice, that’s $4.5-5 USD going towards to the organization.

AND YES, EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS!!! Some places are so desperate that even a dollar would suffice. But considering in the scenario above that you bought a $45-50 shirt, you’re still giving a party other than the charity ~$40-45 to buy a shirt that looks cute. You can buy a $40-45 shirt that’s cute from any mall just about.

The only reason why this kind of transaction works is because it’s playing on your guilt. You want to help the ocean but you don’t know how. It’s an easy and fun way to do so. And yes, the items are really cute, the jewelry is beautiful, and I’m sure the person/people behind this has no ill-will towards anybody and probably just wanted to help out. However, they are still trying to make money. And I’m not holding that against them whatsoever, they are a business trying to do what a business does and it’s a great way for even the BUSINESS ITSELF to feel like they have done something great as well.

Though, I restate, should we really be buying into this marketing?

I’d implore you to watch this animated video of Slavoj Zizek talking about this idea of charitable giving. (“RSA ANIMATE: First as Tragedy, Then as Farce” [10:57] - The RSA, full video/original talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvakA-DF6Hc )

I’m also including a few organizations I found by simple Google search that accept donations:

https://oceana.org/

https://oceanconservancy.org/

https://www.projectaware.org/

https://marinemegafaunafoundation.org/

https://seashepherd.org/

https://coral.org/

https://www.nature.org/en-us/

https://www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/oceans

I know some of them are US based and work solely in the US but there are plenty of international organizations and some local ones too you can donate to. And yes, these organizations do sell gifts, have memberships, and care packages to buy which also feed into the frenzy, but I’d rather give my donation money directly to the group of people that actually do the work (we can buy the products as gifts later). Not to mention you could probably find more (I suggest NON-PROFIT organizations if you can find them).

Also here’s the link for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) here in the US. They have informative news articles about climate change and care of the ocean. They also have a list of sanctuaries that you can possibly donate to (I didn’t look at them all) but I DO know that for a lot of them you can donate your time via volunteering!

Now, don’t get discouraged if you don’t live near an ocean because there are plenty of lakes, ponds, and rivers that need help too. All water goes back to the ocean (I think that was from Finding Nemo) and just by helping out your local waterway, you can help prevent pollution from finding its way back to the ocean.

DISCLAIMER: I did all this on a whim just from a post I happened to look at on my dashboard. I started off pretty upset but now I’ve cooled down a bit. Please understand where I’m coming from. I’m not trying to shame or judge or be rude, I’m just trying to be helpful and give a perspective. If you want to buy the items from any post like the one I mentioned because you like the items, you get the bonus of a nice gift for yourself or someone else AND it goes towards cleaning the ocean, THAT’S TOTALLY FINE. HOWEVER, I personally would rather donate $20 to the organization itself than buy a ~$50 shirt where only $5 is donated. It saves time and money for you. Though, you don’t get a shirt out of it.

Of course, volunteer and be active in your community regardless of how you spend your money! It may be hard work and us introverts get super anxious when having to talk to people, but it pays off. I love volunteering even though I’m the most awkward person ever and it does get to me every now and then. But keep in mind you don’t have to spend any money at all to volunteer. Not to mention, you get to see the effect you make directly when you do volunteer.

Have a nice day!

#ocean #clean up #ocean cleanup #money #just my opinion #marine animals #save the earth #save the ocean #please dont hate me #it aint much but its honest work

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT SOMEONE

Reddit didn't happen out of neglect. A few decades ago, only famous people and professional writers got to publish their opinions. One solution here might be to design systems so that interfaces are horizontal instead of vertical—so that modules are always vertically stacked strata of abstraction.1 I can't measure whether my essays are successful, except in page views, but the creator is full of worry.2 Even now I'm suspicious when startups choose SF over the Valley: somehow you can sense prosperity in how well kept a place looks. This kind of work. In fact the dangers of deciding what programmers are allowed to want.3 It's easy to talk to the operating system. The best programming languages have taken more and more programs may turn out to be surprisingly malleable. Paul Prescod wrote something that stuck in my mind. But other VCs will make no more than superficial changes.4 Though I can't off the top of my head think of any examples, I would be very interested to see them.5

The first thing you need is a handful of centers and one dominant one, that's going to fall over, taking them with it.6 If the startup can't raise the rest, including me, remember it as the happiest time of their lives.7 Actually big companies are not the biggest threat.8 Hackers just want power.9 Perhaps this tends to attract people who are famous and/or language level support for lazy loading. Maybe one day the most important thing to optimize. But in Silicon Valley than in Boston, and even current employees.10 But I wouldn't want the site to go away. So I'm really glad I stopped to think about how to design type systems may shudder at this.11

Prose has readers, but software has users. So it may not even be meaningful to say that a language isn't judged on its own merits. If someone starts being rude, other users will step in and tell them to stop. Hygienic macros embody the opposite principle. But the best people helps any organization, it's critical for startups. The fiery reaction to the release of Arc had an unexpected consequence: it made me realize I had a design philosophy. I think, if one looked, that this would turn out to be surprisingly malleable.

This is especially necessary with links whose titles are rallying cries, because otherwise they become implicit vote up if you believe such-and-such posts, which are often originally written for converting or extracting data. The conversations you overhear tell you what sort of ambition you have.12 But ultimately the reason these delays exist is that they're more prestigious. They can't dilute you without diluting themselves just as much work as thinking about real problems. For boys, at least for programmers. Tranched deals are an abuse. Companies will pay for software, but individual hackers won't, and it's very unlikely that the tasks imposed by their needs will happen to align exactly with what you want to work at Google or Microsoft, because it's common to see families where one sibling has much more of it than another. The opportunity is a lot like bipolar disorder. And not just to play back experiences but also to index and even edit them. They're the ones in a position to do that are not even rich—leaders of important open source projects, for example.13 I suppose that's worth something.14

Without advice they'd just be sort of lost.15 I was 450 years too late. An individual European manufacturer could import industrial techniques and they'd work fine. The valuation reflects nothing more than the strength of its own merits. Startups are increasingly raising money on convertible notes, and convertible notes have not valuations but at most valuation caps: caps on what the meaning of is is. We will eventually, and that's what they're going to do, and since you have to compile and run separately.16 There are sometimes minor tactical advantages to using one or the other.17 And I don't think they'd do much differently if they were a year ago. Whereas someone clearer-eyed would see their initial incompetence for what it was, and perhaps a bit more.18

There is an ongoing debate between investors which is more important, the people, or honk at them, or cut them off. It's easy to talk to the founders of the companies we've funded, they all say the same thing at different stages in its life: economic power converts to wealth, and social class are just names for the same thing: I knew it would be to have no structure: to have each group actually be independent, and to allow programmers to use inline byte code in bottlenecks. The root of the problem is usually artificial and predetermined. What I like about Boston or rather Cambridge is that the old way dead, because those few are the best startups. This seems to me identical to asking, how can I design a good language when they see one, and it took us years to get it through to people that it didn't have to be the same as asking, what can I do to enable programmers to get the best deals, the way to get a job.19 One of the exhilarating things about coming back to Cambridge every spring is walking through the streets at dusk, when you want to do and when the way a genuine need could. For most of history, success meant success at zero-sum games. A rounds from VCs. That is arguably one of the most important thing I've learned about dilution is that it's measured more in behavior than users. In such rounds they won't get the 25 to 40% of the company.

Don't be put off if they say no.20 You never have to compromise or ask anyone's permission, and if you have $5 million in investable assets, it would still be important to release quickly, because for a startup the initial release acts as a shakedown cruise. It's true even in the highest of high tech industries, success still depends more on determination than brains.21 Result: this revolution, if it is called Lisp. This pattern doesn't only apply to companies. But vice versa as well. Why should there be any limit to the number who could be employed by small, fast-moving companies with ten each?22 Because ambitions are to some extent produce the big winners, they'll be able to transcend your environment. Meanness is easier to read. Election forecasters are proud when they can achieve the same result by offering to lead rounds of fixed size and supplying only part of the money. Bad circumstances can break the spirit of a strong-willed person stronger-willed. The number of people who make good startup founders don't mind dealing with technical problems—but they hate the type of work they do and the tools they use, and some of the people in a position to tell investors how the round is the top idea in your mind, which means stock with extra rights like getting your money back first in a sale, or convertible debt, which means stock with extra rights like getting your money back first in a sale, or convertible debt, which means new stuff at that url is auto-killed.

Programming languages are for. Unless you're planning to write math applications, of course.23 The PR people and reporters who spread such stories probably believe them themselves.24 It probably extends to any kind of work you do, and chance meetings with people who can help them a lot, they'll let you invest at a low valuation. The Selling of the President 1968, Nixon knew he had less charisma than Humphrey, and thus simply refused to debate him on TV. Cobol, Ada, C. I was in college, a lot of time in bookshops and I feel as if I've learned, to some degree, to judge technology by its cover.25 The time I haven't spent in bookshops I've spent mostly in front of computers, and I don't expect to.

Notes

Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the other is laziness.

No one in its IRC channel: don't allow the same trick of enriching himself at the moment it's created indeed, from the conventional wisdom on the client? But there seem to like to cluster together as much as Drew Houston needed Dropbox, or Seattle, consider moving.

A servant girl cost 600 Martial vi. Once the playing field is leveler politically, we'll see economic inequality in the message. However, it sounds like the outdoors? At the moment it's created indeed, is this someone you want to get all the investors.

Students are mostly still on the group's accumulated knowledge.

Quite often at YC I find I never get as deeply into subjects as I explain later.

Startups can die from releasing something full of bugs, and if it were better to overestimate than underestimate the importance of making n constant, it is the most successful companies have never been the first phase. But their founders, because such users are stupid. This must have seemed to someone still implicitly operating on the matter, get an intro to a college that limits their options?

And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because you can base brand on anything with it, and it doesn't change the meaning of life.

I stuck with such energy that he transformed the field they describe. They hate their bread and butter cases. But that doesn't seem an impossible hope.

If I were doing Viaweb again, that is allowing economic inequality in the 1990s, and partly because companies don't. If they're on the entire West Coast that still requires jackets: The French Laundry in Napa Valley. At first literature took a back seat to philology, which can happen in any era if people can see how much they can grow the acquisition offers that every successful startup improves the world.

But I think it's roughly what everyone must have been fooled by the government. He was off by only about 2%. Incidentally, Google may appear to be low.

The word regressive as applied to tax avoidance. Starting a company that takes on a weekend and sit alone and think. Maybe that isn't what they'd like it if you needed to read a new version sanitized for your work.

Francis James Child, who adds the cost of writing software goes up more than 20 years. Aristotle's best work was in his early twenties compressed into the subject today is still hard to say that a startup, unless you're sure your money will be just mail from people who had it used a TV for a slave up to them rather than given by other people the freedom to they derive the same reason I stuck with such energy that he could just expand into casinos than software, we should at least what they made, but it doesn't change the world of the big winners are all about to give up your anti-dilution protections. Our founder meant a photograph of a promising market and a few that are hard to say that hapless meant unlucky. The existence of people.

01.

If you weren't around then it's hard to spread from.

Though we're happy to provide when it's done as conspicuously as this place was a great idea as something that flows from some central tap. You may be that some of the deal.

Which is also to the way and run the programs on the LL1 mailing list. It would not be led by manipulation or wishful thinking into trying to focus on users, however, is he going to call those before a fall. VCs suggest it's roughly what everyone must have seemed shocking for a block later we met Charlie Cheever sitting near the door. I was surprised to find a kid was an assiduous courtier of the company.

Enterprise software. Reporters sometimes call a few of the country it's in. There need to offer especially large rewards to get the money, and mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media.

Abstract-sounding language. The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

Good news: users don't care what your body is telling you. It would have been seen mentioning the site was about bands.

It's not a chain-smoking drunk who pours his soul into big, messy canvases that philistines see and say that's not directly exposed to competitive pressure. Some of the Garter and given the freedom to experiment in disastrous ways, but they get a real poet.

Digg's is the last round just happened, the less powerful language by writing library functions.

This is isomorphic to the browser, the transistor it is to raise more, and this is largely determined by successful businessmen and their flakiness is indistinguishable from dishonesty by the fact that they have less room for another. Obviously this is to try, we'd be interested to hear from them. The best thing they can do with the guy who came to mind was one in its IRC channel: don't allow duplicates in the US is becoming less fragmented, the activation energy to start software companies, like good scientists, motivated less by financial rewards than by the Corporate Library, the only function of the problem to fit your solution.

They'll tell you who they are by ways that have little to bring corporate bonds; a decade of inflation that left many public companies trading below the value of understanding vanity would decline more gradually.

No, and graph theory. There are many senses of the world of the essence of something the automobile, the only way to make a conscious effort. Jessica and I bicycled to University Ave in Palo Alto. Of the remaining 13%, 11 didn't have TV because they couldn't afford it.

But the change is a great discovery often seems obvious in retrospect. Once he showed it could be mistaken, and so on. A lot of successful startups get on the process of trying to describe the worst—that economic inequality is really about poverty. Many people have responded to this day, thirty years later.

Thanks to Patrick Collison, Mike Moritz, Gary Sabot, Paul Buchheit, Ian Hogarth, and Greg McAdoo for their feedback on these thoughts.

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pantheistpinchingpennies-blog · 6 years

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Caregivers: Are You Paying Three Times What You Owe?

Part of me going minimal with my life is figuring out how to make my budget go further. When your income is under 25k like mine is, that requires a little more than skipping the daily coffee. One thing I discovered after some digging (and that many caregivers don’t realize) is that I am not responsible for paying all of the taxes I have been paying. That’s right. I actually owe way less than I’ve been paying--and despite that, won’t get a refund for the amount. It’s all in how the taxes are done. I’ll explain...

When I started my job, I went through weeks of training, had a background check, was fingerprinted, and then had to learn how the family wanted me to do the job (down to how to fold the towels). I am told when to show up and when to leave. I am happy as a clam to do all of this! I love professional development and I thrive when I know what’s expected of me. What this means is that I am legally considered a household employee, not a self-employed independent contractor. Seems like a simple difference, but it’s not. See the link at the bottom of this post for the 20 ways that will help you figure out what type of worker you are.

My income, if I work all the hours I am scheduled to work and never get sick (which is unlikely) is roughly $23,200. For the sake of math, I had this tax calculator calculate what taxes I’d owe in each scenario if my income was 20,000. Are you ready to see what I saw?

As a household employee, I would owe about $800 at the end of the year.

As an independent contractor, I would owe $3,484.

That is more than three times the right amount. And the difference doesn’t stop there. If you lose your job through no fault of your own (your client passes, your client’s parents no longer need help, etc.) as an independent contractor you cannot collect unemployment while you look for another position. Your employer also isn’t paying into Social Security or Medicare. This is more than just a dollar amount issue.

So once I confirmed that I was, indeed, a household employee, I made sure to bring it up with my employer carefully, but frequently. I didn’t want to fight and lose my job because I love my job and I need to be employed. But I also knew that I was asking for what was legally correct, and even something well-within her budget. It does not have to be well-within someone’s budget for it to be legally correct, but I knew I wasn’t asking too much by any means. I also wasn’t asking for a favor, this is what is legally required. Still, I got pushback and only now are things starting to change. I am SO grateful I pressed on.

Here’s why your employer may not want to change the way they’re doing taxes:

1. It’s complicated and annoying. That’s just taxation for you.

2. They owe money they’re not used to paying. The money they pay toward taxes goes toward protections for you like unemployment insurance.

3. They’re scared the change will bring on auditors and they’ll get in a bunch of trouble. They may end up owing back-taxes, interest, and fines if they’ve been doing this a long time.

4. They don’t believe that you qualify as a household employee.

So if you find out you’re being taxed incorrectly, you need to have information backing you up--and a backbone to fight with. If I hadn’t held another job that was almost exactly the same, where I was taxed differently, I never would’ve known to look. That’s why I’m bringing it up here.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: money isn’t everything. However, the difference between these types of taxation could be the difference between getting medical care for the year and not getting it, or feeding yourself, or paying to keep your lights on at home.

You are taking care of what a family holds most precious and most dear. What they don’t often realize is that you may be actively struggling to make ends meet. When you leave their house and go home at the end of the day, sometimes you aren’t able to pay for your needs. You may need to remind them that while that tax may be a major inconvenience to them, it makes an enormous difference to you.

Let me know through comments or messages if you know about taxes, if I’ve said anything incorrect, or if you have gone through or are currently going through a similar issue! I’d love to hear from you about it.

Here are some helpful links for you:

VA Department of Labor on the 20 ways you can tell whether you’re an employee or an independent contractor

IRS Form SS-8, if you believe you are being misclassified and you want to do something about it

READ THIS before filling out that form and sending it in--misclassification is a form of tax evasion, which is a crime that comes with penalties for your employer including back-taxes, interest, and fines. When you fill out and submit form SS-8, you are alerting the government to your situation and they may take action. Your employer WILL NOT be pleased. You know your situation best. Always try to get your employer to do the right thing, if possible, before doing something major. If losing your job could put you at risk of homelessness, BE WISE. Just because something is legally correct, doesn’t mean it’ll end fairly.

You can also call 1-866-487-9243 to reach the Department of Labor and get a little help figuring this all out. Again, it’s the Department of Labor, so anything you say to them may prompt them to take action. You can also call a tax professional and get advice that way, though it may cost you money.

#taxes #caregiving #budget #mumblr

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thinkingisvital-blog · 6 years

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time to get real about the future guys

alright so I’m studying for my midterm rn and all of a sudden I came with a concept to revolutionize our little capitalistic world. So instead of learning about the innate immune system I made this little blog and am writing this because I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.

okay so the main thing I want to change is the distribution of corporate production and marketing (not sure that means exactly what i want it to but English is not my first language, I’m dyslectic af so you’re gonna have to deal with it for now)

my idea is based on a couple of rules:

there is only one type of each kind of item. why the fuck are there 5 brands of the same kind of fucking rice and shit like that?? 1 of each is all you get bitch

this eliminates the need for fancy packaging.(reducing waste and production costs) Only necessary kind of packaging, to keep things clean, fresh and healthy ya know?

all products are made/ grown/ harvested in the climate/ area they are most viable. don’t try to grow rice in the middle of the fucking desert, those sons of bitches looovveeee their water and that shit ain’t there so don’t even try it. oranges grow well in warm Mediterranean climates so how about we only grow them juice boiis in spain and mexico (and all other counties meeting the same qualifications). Every terrain/climate is a favorable environment for different plants and animals so why try to force them to grow in different areas than necessary? potatoes are tough as hell so you can plant those earth apples everywhere, same for goats, they’ll live everywhere man. remember that “they crave that mineral” blog post? they don’t even need surfaces to stand on, they can literally just walk on vertical wall wtf (no wonder they think the goat in the movie “the witch”is the devil)

fresh plant products are only sold when they’re in season. apples don’t grow in the fucking winter now do they?? but surplus apples from that years harvest sure make good applesauce that stays good for a really long time

we need to put a price tag on a persons time, level of knowledge and, physical and emotional effort and that’s what we base salaries on. So easy jobs that require little knowledge but take a lot of time and effort are paid the same as jobs that are hard. getting cursed and yelled at all day while sitting behind a counter is more intense than sitting in an office for example. Of course minimum wage will still have to be a thing.

I realize that there’s some areas in the world that are not good for growing crops or keeping animals but do have people living there. sooooo i thought that those place would be good to focus other

to avoid conflict, all religion has got to go. I mean this in the least negative way possible but besides supporting a lot of people, religion is not doing a lot of good things for the general stability of the world. Having some nice morals to live by is good but all religions exclude large groups of people and for some reason (that I’ve never fully understood tbh) insinuates a lot of conflicts between different religions(over who’s got the coolest book? coolest main character in that book? idk man). As you can probably tell, I’m an atheist but I have no problem what so ever with any religion and the people in them (as long as they can still make independent choices between good and bad (people) outside of their beliefs. Hating someone for no other reason than because your religion says you should is a big no no in my opinion) I’m pretty sure there’s like 4 people that are gonna read this and the only comment is gonna call me out on this point lol. In my mind, the absence of religion will create a more excepting environment where people lead their lives according to their own thoughts and emotions. In order for this to succeed common decency, discipline and sense will have to go up so, oh so much (I’ve worked in retail, restaurants and help desks. Far too many people are dicks).

lets talk education. I’m from the Netherlands and I’m not totally down with what we’ve got going on here but we’ve definitely got the right idea. USA has got to stop what they’re doing rn. I SAID STOPPPP!!! yo honestly how are the people responsible for organizing and structuring education in the states still thinking they’re doing a good job. Grades aren’t everything dude. Can you use it in real life? Cool! you got it, nice job. life isn’t about theory and knowing everything by heart. It’s about understanding. The system there is so different that my friends at Uni that are from the states that used to get straight A’s are now having such a hard time because our tests aren’t made for repeating but for understanding. it’s a totally different type of intelligence and it saddens me to see them struggle. I totally forgot about what is was writing.THE FUTURE: so we need to divide kids into different levels at a younger age. Kids that perform under the required expectations get frustrated and start feeling less valuable (surprise, Everyone is a precious lill bean that deserves love, understanding and support. Just because math isn’t your thing doesn’t make you less of a person. I makes you a person that should probably not be a mathematician but can be soooooo much more. The same goes for smart children, if they are not challenged from a young age they are very likely to become frustrated and depressed. also, only the subject that are absolutely essential to survival in the adult world should be mandatory. I’m talking, would this person be able to do function in social situations, do their taxes, laundry, communicate verbally and in written word and would this person understand the world and not be scared of a solar eclipse or when women all of a sudden start bleeding out of their vagina. That would mean basic math: divisions, additions, subtractions and multiplications. The Native language: writing, reading, grammar (no mandatory reading because what does that add to anyones life let’s be real). Science: just the concepts of gravity, the planets and weather (no calculations). Biology: concepts of healthy bodily functions, we need people to understand what they should and should not report to a doctor for their own gender and any other one.( no complex molecule names or anything like that). And most importantly behavior/moral/life lessons. A lot of people are behaving unkind or unfair because they don’t know there are other ways, different emotional responses. Parents should 100% definitely try to do most of this themselves but parents are also just humans. Not all of them do a very good job at connecting and educating their kids emotionally. so on top of that they should be allowed to choose a school weeks worth of other subjects (they are not allowed to not go to school). Subjects have to be wider as well, more choice, more practical stuff as well. believe it or not, all kids want to learn. Usually the knowledge that is offered to them is just not valid for them (yet). every halve year or so they should be able to choose their subjects again, drop it if it wasn’t for them or continue if they loved it. This way adults will have had way more time so specialize into a bunch of things they’re good at or at least passionate about.

EQUALITY!!! easy concept, evidently difficult to realize. i’m thinking the whole education thing will help with the mental part for some people and the structured pay build up thing will make sure corporate life will chill . Also giving fathers paternity leave will even out the selection odds (”hiring women is expensive because they can get pregnant”). Also had in mind that racism will stop because my educational system will exterminate ignorance and will teach everyone that each person is their own individual. We’re all different and we’re all the same and that’s good. Also everyone lives everywhere in my fun lill utopia so Nationalism will be way less in Individualism will be the norm.

that’s how far I got with this today.

I’m actually genuinely gonna put some research into all of this because i have some financial doubts but honestly rn the biggest reason this is unrealistic in today is because everyone would have to give up their selfishness and boy oh boy do we nowadays love that shit. me included, I ain’t perfect but I’m sorta okay with that

#future #utopia #education #equality #currently procrastinating #thoughts

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pristinecpa · 7 years

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Give Your Retirement Funds a Super Boost with an HSA

You ever shell out cash for something and only fully realize how bad of a deal it is once you’re away from the situation. For example, maybe you’ve been to Chuck E. Cheese lately. I put out $30 so my kids can play arcade games while a giant mouse dances around the room. But my kids don’t care about the games; they just care about the tickets so they can get some prizes We’ve been there dozens of times and they still haven’t figured out that they get four tickets each game no matter what they do. In fact, the skeeball machine just gave up trying to pretend and gives you the tickets before you start playing. Finally, after an hour of torture, they are ready to trade in those tickets. For my kids, this is seemingly the biggest decision of their lives. I don’t think they would put in as much mental effort if they had to decide whether to live with Mommy or Daddy.

I’ve done the math and the ticket counter at Chuck E. Cheese definitely has the worst exchange rate in the global market. How is it that my $30 turned into a plastic frog, a bookmark (my kids don’t even use bookmarks), and a tattoo of a mouse? But to be fair, if you really save up those tickets a few times, you could afford some vampire fangs as well.

Well, the same thing goes for your retirement funds. Are you getting the most bang for your buck when you set aside funds for retirement? Most people just default to a traditional IRA, but is this always the best way to go? Maybe not.

You probably just think of a Health Savings Account (HSA) as simply an account to put aside money for medical expenses. After all, the name is Health Savings Account, so what else would it be for?

This article may have you looking at HSAs in a completely different light. The HSA is the Swiss Army knife of savings accounts. Not only does it provide big benefits for medical expenses, but it is also a powerful tool to supplement your retirement savings. In fact, you will probably benefit more by putting money aside in an HSA rather than a traditional IRA.

We’re going to compare three aspects of the HSA and traditional IRA to see which one wins. While there are other considerations, feel free to contact me with any questions at [email protected].

Qualify for an HSA

First you need to qualify for an HSA. To contribute to an HSA, you must have a high deductible health plan. For 2017, a high deductible health plan is a plan with an annual deductible of at least $1,300 for self-only coverage, or at least $2,600 for family coverage. Additionally, the maximum annual out-of-pocket expenses they require you to pay is $6,550 for self-only coverage, and $13,100 for family coverage.

Deduction for Contributions

The HSA and traditional IRA are similar in that you may qualify for a tax deduction when you contribute. But to qualify for the IRA deduction, you have to meet the following requirements: (1) you (and your spouse, if applicable) are not covered by an employer retirement plan, or

(2) if you are eligible for an employer retirement plan, then your modified adjusted gross income must not exceed $62,000 ($99,000 for joint filers) before the phase-out begins

So, you lose your tax deduction for IRA contributions if you are either eligible for a retirement plan at work or make too much money.

In contrast to the traditional IRA, your tax deduction for HSA contributions is never phased-out. It doesn’t matter if you earn $10 million; you always get this deduction. You fund the HSA tax-free whether you use pre-tax dollars from your paycheck to contribute or deduct the contributions on your tax return.

Advantage: HSA

Medical Expenses

But here’s the biggest advantage with the HSA—you may never pay taxes on the amount you withdraw. See, with an IRA, you get a deduction when you contribute, but you pay taxes on the backend when you withdraw funds upon retirement.

With an HSA, you can withdraw funds at any time tax-free to use for qualified medical expenses. When you reach Medicare-eligibility age (currently age 65), you can even use the HSA funds to cover your health insurance premiums, including Medicare Part B premiums and long-term care insurance premiums.

Additionally, if you are 65 or older, you can even withdraw HSA funds for non-medical expenses with zero penalty, and only pay income tax on the withdrawals.

So the HSA gives you a double tax benefit. You get a deduction when you contribute (benefit number one). Then when you use the funds for medical expenses or qualified health insurance premiums, it’s tax-free (benefit number two). Don’t forget the added benefit of these funds growing tax-free over years of investing.

Tax deduction going in, tax-free coming out!

Advantage: HSA

Withdrawals

With an HSA, you can withdraw funds at any time, tax free, to use for qualified medical expenses. When you reach Medicare-eligibility age (age 65), you qualify for an added benefit because you can use the HSA funds to cover your health insurance premiums, including Medicare Part B premiums and long-term care insurance premiums. These expenses are inevitable, so why not pay them with tax-free cash?

That’s not the case with an IRA. As soon as you turn 70 1/2, the IRS requires you to start taking some money out of your IRA accounts so they can start charging you tax on that income. You may know this as required minimum distributions (RMDs).

Advantage: HSA

Many people are looking to increase their retirement funds. Maybe you’ve maxed out your 401(k) contributions at work and wish you could put away more. Before you automatically assume that a traditional IRA is the only choice, you may want to see if the HSA gives you the boost you need.

#hsa #savemoney #taxsavings

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mikegchambers · 7 years

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The cloud is on and the meter’s running — avoid the sticker shock of ‘pay as you go’

Getting a handle on the actual costs of cloud computing can be elusive and frustrating until your learn the basics of cost control

Cost is often the major driver for many cloud migrations but it’s usually poorly understood in the beginning. It’s fine for startups to demonstrate the value of cloud when they’re coming from nothing, but when you’re dragging 20 years of data centers and legacy software behind you, it’s not always clear what the price tag will be.

Fret not, let’s keep the line on the chart going up and to the right!

“Which is the cheapest cloud?”

This FAQ is similar to asking an attorney “do I have a case?”, or asking a doctor “is it serious?”. The answer depends on knowing which of the cloud services you will use and how you’ll use them — and even then, comparing the costs between cloud providers is difficult.

In their pricing tables, cloud providers are screaming to make you see pennies per hour, per IOP, by ingress, egress, region, zone … you name it. There are even JavaScript calculator that will make you feel really good about the cost.

Upon first glance it’s just so cheap, it feels like shopping a hundred years ago — your dollar is going really far. For cloud novices, some napkin math quickly reveals that their entire infrastructure can be run for just $20 a month with change left over for coffee. Wow, the CFO is going to love you.

Let’s burst this bubble quickly

For any serious cloud application, you have no idea what it’s going to cost until you start using it. No idea. First, different vendors have wildly different ways of measuring and charging that seem obvious at first — but you’ll quickly find the monthly bills are like deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I’ve always found that Google Cloud is particularly painful in this regard. I’ve been using it for ages and I still don’t understand their charging model. Take a look at my recent statement for a personal test environment that isn’t even doing very much:

… see — bird, ankh, scarab, Batman symbol. It makes the additional charges on my cell phone bill look like common sense. And because Google’s environment features a ton of ‘managed services’, I can’t even begin to tell you where some of this usage is coming from.

The first thing to know is that the cloud doesn’t cost pennies.

So clearly this isn’t ideal — what can we do? First, don’t panic and don’t pay attention to the “we bill by the second” promises you’ll hear. Also realize that AWS didn’t become a $15 billion annual business by charging you pennies.

When you’re first starting out on your cloud journey, I would recommend this approach to billing:

Find a sales person at your favorite cloud vendor and ask for some credits for a test drive. Then ask for some more. You’d be surprised what you can negotiate here since it’s hyper-competitive right now.

Run small-scale projects for 1–3 months to get a sense of the actual bills you can expect. Pick simple projects where you have more control.

Employ third-party apps where appropriate to find waste, use monitoring tools to keep a watchful eye on usage, and start tracking costs in your own spreadsheets to get an understanding of how this all works.

Set up alarms in case it goes wildly wrong. If your daily budget averages $100, set an alarm for 25% overage. Don’t get a bill for $2000 and wonder why a week later.

Anytime you do get a surprise bill, go back to the friendly sales person and ask for a refund or credit — I’ve never known them to refuse, especially when you’re in the adoption phase.

When you have more permanent levels of resources in place, take advantage of committed use discounts available, which can save 50–90% depending on the resource type and vendor.

When you have non-critical workloads — such as overnight processing that’s not time critical — take advantage of spot instances (see below).

So the cheapest vendor is … ?

T0 answer the original question…. it depends. For machine learning applications (heavily GPU-biased) with petabytes of data, Google Cloud might be the way to go. For a more traditional Microsoft business application in the cloud, Azure could be the answer. In my line of work, I’ve tended to find AWS pricing the most consistently reasonable — but that’s just me.

Also, pricing in the cloud is dropping all the time — AWS has had 52 consecutive price cuts the last time I checked. Although, occasionally second-tier players spring head-scratchingly-odd increases on their users. The net effect is that your provider of choice now may not be the most competitive long-term. So you’ll need to constantly monitor pricing options to get the best deal, and decide if switching over is worth the effort.

“Why is this so expensive?!��

Part of the cloud migration rite of passage for many companies is suddenly realizing that something is wrong. Very, very wrong. Your friendly cloud salesmen promised you low cost, you promised your boss cost savings, he promised you a promotion and you promised your kids a trip to Disney World. Suddenly the invoices start arriving, promises are evaporating and getting a photo with Mickey Mouse is looking further away than ever. Sadness ensues.

Unfortunately, just because you understand on-premise doesn’t translate to an automatic grasp of the labyrinthine world of cloud billing. Here are some of the most common gotchas that ensnare cloud newbies:

You have too much infrastructure. The high-availability, infinitely-scalable promise of cloud is alluring but for every region you enable and every level of redundancy you add, the cloud faucet is turned on just a little bit more. And this is a metered service so the bill goes upwards. Always balance your actual needs and tolerance for outages (RTO and RPOs, remember those?) with the cost of building cathedrals of virtual infrastructure.

Cloud is like unlimited Christmas lights: it’s fun all month until you get the electric bill.

You did a lift and shift. When you shift a poorly written application from on-premise, you now have a poorly performing application in the cloud. There’s some appalling software out in the wild and you’ll need to fix it before you jam it into AWS. There’s no magic bullet for crap.

You have inefficient code that isn’t taking advantage of cloud alternatives. Some examples I’ve seen include scripts that fiddle with data somehow — ETL scripts in Perl, PHP, Python — that have been obviated by much, much better cloud replacements like Data Pipeline or third party options. Make sure you find and drown these, many of which can be identified by looking at the ‘last modified’ date on the filename. They worked well in their day but inefficiency is expensive in the cloud.

Your developers embraced DevOps too well. Servers are popping up like mushrooms, they’re building out the virtual data centers of their dreams, and they love — just love — the sorts of tools they never had before. They’re so happy. Unfortunately, ka-ching, that’s the sound of Jeff Bezos’ cash register again.

You use 95% of all your on-premise servers consistently all the time. The classic capacity usage chart below is a major selling point for cloud. But there are some use-cases where you are happily running at full capacity constantly and there’s no waste or overage. While there are still benefits to switching to the cloud in this case, saving money isn’t likely to be one of them.

“Up and to the right”.

You have a load of pirated software or unpaid licenses. Some IT departments are more like the Black Pearl than the QE2. I’ve seen this before so it’s worth mentioning that licensing is expensive when legal. *Crickets*

You don’t really fully understand cloud — and that’s okay. Nobody does at the beginning but you’re getting there so hold on! There is a learning curve that everyone goes through and we’ve all faked it until we made it, one way or another. AWS had over a 1000 product releases last year and I can talk knowledgeably about 10 of them. Welcome to the club.

AWS On-demand, Spot, and Reserved Instances — in 1 minute

Few companies use all three instance categories properly so here’s the world’s fastest primer on the differences:

On-demand is the cloud you were promised. You want a server, request it, and it’s there. This is the most expensive option.

Spot instances are available when Amazon has too much capacity and they auction off the excess. You can bid on these instances and if you win you get some cheap compute. These are short-lived instances (think hours not days) that are more suited to workloads needing bursts of extra CPU time. Spot is often the cheapest option but you can’t run a large percentage of your platform on it in most cases.

Reserved instances are guaranteed for your usage but require a 1 or 3-year commitment from you. These are much cheaper than on-demand but you are guaranteeing usage (you can trade out of these arrangements but it’s still a contractual cost).

Other providers have similar approaches. Basically, as you slide from immediacy and convenience towards guaranteed usage, it gets cheaper.

Spot instances for the win.

Effects on The Financials

If you’ve ever worked in enterprise IT, you’ll be familiar with the CapEx vs OpEx battle that accountants get so excited about. The short version is that capital expenditure — which is buying hardware in our space — is good since it creates a tax write-off for a depreciating asset, whereas operating expenses can only be written off in the tax year they were incurred. Although I’m no expert in this area (seriously), I’ve noticed a tendency to write off servers over, say, 3 years and then not replace them for, say, ever. Accountants love this stuff.

Back in the non-accounting reality, if you’re managing on-premise IT infrastructure, your cost accounting is really tricky to the point of being imaginary. For instance, let’s say you are responsible for an inventory management system and a logistics platform. What is the percentage of hardware cost you assign to each system? And if you have personnel supporting both, how do you work out their cost? What about the data center real estate, property taxes, air conditioning and security?

As you drill down the physical stack, it’s gets progressively harder to figure out the costs of your operation, especially when a third system is added. And a fourth. And there’s so much overlap at different levels. Ultimately you create a model that satisfies accounting but isn’t particularly accurate or helpful.

Traditional IT cost accounting: bad for margaritas.

In the cloud world, this is very different since it’s a metered service where you pay for what you use. In the same way you can calculate the amount of electricity used by a given store, piece of equipment or assembly line, you can attribute cloud costs by product, vertical, service or any other metric.

The method gives you a precise accounting for the cost of a development environment, cluster, region or tier. And since you can tag resources, you can apply internal categories — departments, silos or project codes — that make it very easy to compare apples to apples.

TL;DR Summary — Quick!

Here a five quick takeaways for getting a handle on the actual costs of cloud computing:

Cloud is not free or cheap. But it can be engineered to be much cheaper than on-premise once you have some practice.

There are accounting implications when switching over. Accountants will freak out, but our IT brethren will generally be happier.

There’s a process of fine-tuning the cost that takes time. Don’t be surprised if it’s more expensive at the beginning, but dramatically cheaper later on.

Cloud provides more transparency into the actual cost of running infrastructure. Don’t forget to include buildings and personnel cost when comparing like-for-like.

There is a steep learning curve generously peppered with road bumps. This is normal for any massively disruptive technology that turns our world upside down.

If you enjoyed this, click the heart icon below!

The cloud is on and the meter’s running — avoid the sticker shock of ‘pay as you go’ was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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ronaldmrashid · 8 years

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A $500,000 Redo: How One Couple Got Their Mojo Back

About once every couple of years, a Financial Samurai post goes a little nuts on the internet. Recently, Twitter got a hold of “Scraping By On $500,000 A Year: Why High Income Earners Can’t Escape The Rat Race” and consumed it like a rabid dog shaking a rag doll.

I first started noticing Twitter activity Friday morning, March 24. Overnight, it seemed, about 500 new tweets of the post had appeared. By Monday, March 27, the tweet count had risen to a whopping 40,000+! What the heck was going on?!

Apparently, the internet found the $500,000 a year couple’s budget so absurd it started poking fun at the post. Some say my chart has even reached meme status. Well pinch my nuts! I get to check off another bucket list item before I croak.

The budget I originally posted is actually a real life couple’s budget shared with me to share with you. Their budget has been corroborated by hundreds of other couples and individuals making similar incomes while living in an expensive city like NYC, SF, London, Paris, LA, and Hong Kong. Financial Samurai already gets over 1 million organic pageviews a month, so it’s easy to gather feedback. Just check the comments on the post to see for yourself.

Here are some points I wanted to make from the post:

1) It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. Without discipline, it’s easy to spend everything you make. Lifestyle inflation is the biggest culprit for why folks never feel like they have enough. It’s not just the cars and houses that people compete on, it’s also the schools parents want their children to attend. Hopefully, the post encourages everyone to take a hard look at their own finances or if they haven’t already done so, create and monitor their own budget. “If you can’t manage it, you can’t improve it.” – Peter Drucker.

2) High income comes with high costs. Yes, it’d be nice to earn big bucks living in the heartland of America, where I’m bullish, but in the heartland, those high income jobs are harder to come by. If one shouldn’t spend any more than 3X – 5X their gross income on a home, how much does one have to make in order to afford the $1.2M median home price in SF or NYC? Answer: $240,000 – $400,000. Unfortunately federal income taxes do not account for cost of living.

3) Think about geo-arbitrage. Technology and the internet are allowing people to untether themselves from an office. Find companies that allow you to work remotely in a lower cost area. You might not get to relocate to Bali, Indonesia, but there are plenty of fantastic cities that are much cheaper than NYC, SF, LA, Boston, and Washington DC. I’ve interviewed several CEOs in SF and they all say that given SF’s tight labor market and high cost of living, they are hiring more remote workers. Better yet, have your own internet-based business. Take advantage of the best technological shift in history.

4) Save and invest often over the long run. There’s great value in maxing out your 401k and building home equity over time, even if you have very little left over. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 55% of the American workforce has access to a 401(k) and only about 38% of the total workforce participate. Doing some low level math, that means roughly 31% of those who have access to a 401(k) are not participating. I strongly believe that over time, home equity is one of the major reasons for a widening wealth gap between home owners and renters. Find a place you know you’ll be for the next 10 years and try and get neutral real estate by owning your own place. Of course, be responsible with your purchase.

5) What it’s all for at the end of the day. I know plenty of high earning people who are not happy because they are stressed at work and can never spend as much time with the people they love. Not only that, they know the work they’re doing isn’t really helping society so they feel they’re selling their souls. They can’t leave due to an unhealthy desire for prestige, money, and power. Realize there’s a wonderful life beyond just making lots of money. Seek your happiness before you look back on life full of regret.

I realize it’s only human to judge others, even if we’ve never walked in their shoes. However, simply judging others does nothing to improve our own situations. Therefore, let’s do our best to approach things with open minds. With open minds, progress can be made.

Financial Samurai has always been about finding solutions to problems. I’d like to provide an optimized budget for this $500,000 couple. I’ll conclude by highlighting some interesting observations I’ve made about the public’s reaction to my original post as well.

Making A $500,000 A Year Couple Rich Again

Original budget:

Optimized budget:

Let’s go through the major line-items one by one!

Income Taxes ($9,280 savings): I’ve brought the couples effective total tax rate down to 38% from 40%, saving them $9,280 a year. Their total tax bill of $176,320 includes federal income tax, state income tax, city income tax, FICA tax, and sales tax. It’s very hard to bring your tax liability down as a W2 wage earner. Having a business is consistently one of the key differentiators between the rich and the rest of us. If you’ve got a business, you can deduct many of your overlapping life expenses as a business expense e.g. business trip to Honolulu for a semi-annual offsite. You can also contribute more to your pre-tax retirement savings.

Property Taxes (* $10,595 savings): The property tax rate in Park Slope, Brooklyn (King’s County) is surprisingly only 0.627% compared to the New York State average of 1.5%, and the national average of 1.2% (that’s what it is here in California). Therefore, on an assessed value of $1,500,000, the couple really only pays $9,405 in property taxes versus the $20,000 originally estimated. However, because there are all sorts of weird property tax assessments in NYC, I’m still inclined to believe the figure is higher. If anybody owns in Brooklyn, please share your wisdom.

Childcare ($6,000 savings): If you haven’t figured out by now, children are expensive! Every parent wants their best for their kids, which is why demand is relatively inelastic the higher prices for child-related expenses go. Given all the backlash from the internet, the couple decides to find a better deal, a little father away. They’re now spending $1,500/month per kid compared to $1,750/month per kid. As their kids enter kindergarten and spend more time on lessons, childcare costs will naturally decline.

Food For Four ($2,400 savings): Unfortunately, date night every two weeks has got to go! Each date on average cost the couple $200 when you add up transportation, food, wine, tip, taxes, and a Broadway show. Try landing a ticket for Hamilton for under $50. Good luck! Therefore, the couple is now saving $2,400 a year. Instead of going out to eat they start cooking more at home and ordering from a variety of food delivery services. Not only is this couple saving money, they’re also eating healthier for a double win.

Home Maintenance ($3,800): Both parents start spending time getting smart on YouTube to fix their own toilets, paint their own walls, and unclog their own faulty dishwasher valves. They also do all their own cleaning. Nothing is more attractive than being handy with a wrench and smart in the office. Total annual savings: $3,800

Three Vacations A Year ($3,000): By deciding to vacation in NYC for one of their three vacations, the couple saves $3,000 on airfare, hotels, and activities. NYC is the greatest city in the world for six months of the year. There are so many free and fun activities all around. There’s a reason 48.8 million people annually visit NYC! Yes, $15,000 still seems like a lot of money, but it’s divided among four people across 21 days. Without living it up a little on vacation, this 60+ hour a week couple might burn out at work or blow up their marriage because they hate life so much.

Children’s Lessons ($6,000 savings): Screw violin! I learned violin for three years and hated it. Even if I got any good, it’s not like I’d bust it out at a party and play. That’s what a guitar is for, which can be easily learned online for free. Athletics is part of Americana, so the kids are still receiving swimming and tennis lessons. Who knows, both of them might get athletic scholarships one day. At the very least, college admissions officers and employers look much more favorably on scholar athletes. Just having a 4.0 GPA and a near perfect SAT doesn’t cut it anymore, especially if you’re Asian.

Charity ($6,000 savings): Sorry alma mater, your tuition and endowment are already massive enough. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford all have endowments over $20 billion. MIT, U Penn, Michigan, Texas A&M, and Columbia all have endowments over $10 billion. It’s best they save their money for those who really need help. Giving $1,000 a month to Feed The Children means a lot to this couple. 300 million children go to bed hungry every day while 68% of America is obese. Something is wrong with this picture and they want to do their part in making a difference.

Miscellaneous ($5,000 savings): Something always comes up, otherwise why doesn’t everybody have a perfect financial record? Because this couple is now more self-sufficient, they should be able to minimize any excess spending or surprises. Financial independence is all about generating enough passive income streams to cover your expenses indefinitely. If you can also build cooking, cleaning, fixing, and maintenance skills, you’re going to be golden. Not too long ago we had to start our own fires and hunt for our own food. A self-sufficient woman is a rich woman.

College Savings ($12,000 expense): One glaring expense the internet pointed out was that this couple wasn’t saving for their children’s college education. Annual tuition alone now costs $15,000 – $55,000 at many universities (William & Mary in-state tuition = $16,370, Columbia University tuition = $52,476). Add room and board and we’re talking $30,000 – $80,000 annual outlays for four years! Can you still afford to give money to your alma mater? In 10-15 years when this couple’s kids attend college, the cost could easily climb by 50%. Let’s hope these kids get into public Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, or Brooklyn Technical High School to save their parents the expense of private grade school tuition. Related: Public Or Private University: Depends On Your Fear And Guilt Tolerance

Total Cash Flow Improvement: $48,875

Total Cash Flow After Improvement: $56,175 ($48,875 + $7,300)

Total Cash Flow + Net Worth Addition: $117,175 after contributing $36,000 to their 401ks and paying down $25,000 in mortgage principal.

$117,175 equals a respectable 23.4% gross savings rate or an impressive 36% after tax savings rate once we adjust for paying taxes on the $36,000 401k contribution amount. This couple should be able to build their net worth by at least $1.2 million every 10 years, assuming their incomes don’t continue to rise and their expenses stay the same.

The problem with this new scenario is that despite optimizing their budget by $48,875 a year, they still have a $231,505 annual after-tax nut to cover. Given they have no other significant passive income streams, they need to likely work for at least another 18 years until after their kids graduate from college to even consider doing something other than 60+ hour workweeks in the law office. But given 80%+ of people wash out of big law by year eight, anticipating to last for 18 years isn’t very prudent.

The point of aggressively saving and developing a side-hustle when you’re young is so that you one day have the OPTION to do something else with your time when you start hating your life. Believe me, that day will come because everybody will hate their job at one point. Unfortunately, to many people start aggressively saving and side-hustling AFTER they start hating their jobs. Misery ensues.

There is NO rewind button in life, which means we all have to try and anticipate the future today.

How Much Savings Should I Have By Age

Ranking The Best Passive Income Streams

Observations From The Internet’s Response

With over 42,000 tweets, 5 million+ views of the chart, and media mentions from CNBC, The LA Times, Jalopnik, MarketWatch, Apple News and many more, it’s been fascinating to observe the reactions. Here are three common threads I’ve observed:

1) Shoot first, ask questions later. A study by the Media Insight Project, an initiative of the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute highlighted that 60% of readers just read headlines, and not the actual article. As a result, the use of “Scraping By” instigated many people to condemn this couple’s budget (and me by extension) because they hadn’t read the substance behind the post. The featured image in my post with the caption, “Help! I’m drowning from all my money!” provided a clue to the astute reader that I was being facetious.

2) People see what they want to see. With over 100,000 comments left on Financial Samurai since it started in 2009, I’ve observed this phenomenon many times. There is a perpetual echo chamber of people refusing to see the other side. It plays out in politics, stubborn arguments with friends and loved ones, generational wars, and in the work place all the time. The more we can try and understand another’s point of view, the more we can improve. Trying to see the other side is why I’ve given over 500 Uber rides, keep up with my Mandarin, coach high school tennis, constantly travel abroad, and invite people from different backgrounds to write guest posts. It’s easy to contract Dunning-Kruger disease and think anybody can do it if they just work hard enough. When you see the other side, you gain empathy and understanding.

3) Humor is incredibly effective. Understandably, a lot of people were mad at the budget because 99% of households earn less than $500,000 a year and must make tough choices to make ends meet. You can take a negative stance like Pulitzer Prize winner, Michael Hiltzik did with his column in the LA Times. You can focus on class warfare like wealthy Boston University millennial alumni, Jeremy Binckes did in his Salon article. Or, you can take Kristen Lee from Jalopnik’s approach and focus on humor to get things across.

Remember, the way you approach anything is a reflection of your own state of mind. You have a choice to look on the bright side or on the dark side. I’d certainly much rather grab a beer with an uplifting person like Kristen, than listen to Jeremy attack the woes of high income earners. When you come from a privileged family, it’s quite interesting to witness his negative viewpoint on wealth. Perhaps there’s an area of “rich guilt” that I can delve deeper in a future post.

Making $50 Million A Year Can Still Feel Average by Kristen Lee from Jalopnik

Got Me Some Body Doubles To Throw Off The Assassins! by Dan Amira, Daily Show writer

Control What You Can Control

Writing about personal finance is generally pretty boring. After all, if everybody spent less than they made, everything would be just fine. But we know nobody is perfect. Some people actually make mega millions over their careers and still file for bankruptcy! We’re all trying to get a little better.

Love or hate my article, I’m just happy that so many more people have decided to take a good look at their finances. Many have written in to say sheepishly they’ve finally created a budget of their own, but have not told anyone for fear of judgement. Who knows, maybe the next financial crisis won’t be so bad because millions more people are more prepared after reading this post!

Making a lot of money is great, but building wealth that can generate money for you so you don’t have to slave your life away is even better. Sooner or later you will tire of the same old grind at work. When the time comes, you want to be armed with multiple income streams and a war chest of savings to carry you through to your next adventure.

It’s been a little over five years since I had a day job. Even though I don’t make a lot of money, I’ve got enough to be happy. It feels amazing to help other people with their financial problems. Find your enough and you’ll feel like the richest person in the world!

The Rise Of Stealth Wealth: How To Stay Invisible From Society’s Rage

Once You Have F You Money, It’s Really Hard To Tell Others To F Off!

What We Can Learn About Rich People Who Are Bad With Money (Lifehacker’s Kristin Wong provides my favorite response yet)

Rich And Marcus’ Entertaining Podcast – I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing at some of the commentary about the couple’s budget.

Readers, anybody want to try optimizing this $500,000 a year couple’s budget further without causing them to spend money for marriage counseling? Anybody want to verify the property tax amount in King’s County, NY? What else have you observed from other people commenting on this rich couple?

Why is there is much hatred towards people who pay over $176,000 in income taxes AND contributes to help eliminate child hunger? I never presented this couple as whining about their money as some in the media have portrayed. I simply highlighted how a couple can easily spend almost all their $500,000 salary if they aren’t careful.

Finally, if anybody in the media or who has a podcast wants to chat about this important subject, my door is always open. Just shoot me an e-mail found towards the end of my About page.

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/a-500k-redo-how-one-rich-couple-got-their-mojo-back/

#Financial Samurai

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