#i feel like the chance of getting it is roughly 0.5% but it is not zero

[strike-another-match]

applied to a senior position even though im a mid at best just to feel something...

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Joe Biden currently has a robust lead in polls. If the election were held today, he might even win in a landslide, carrying not only traditional swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania but potentially adding new states such as Georgia and Texas to the Democratic coalition.

But the election is not being held today. While the polls have been stable so far this year, it’s still only August. The debates and the conventions have yet to occur. Biden only named his running mate yesterday. And the campaign is being conducted amidst a pandemic the likes of which the United States has not seen in more than 100 years, which is also causing an unprecedented and volatile economy.

Nor has it been that uncommon, historically, for polls to shift fairly radically from mid-August until Election Day. Furthermore, there are some reasons to think the election will tighten, and President Trump is likely to have an advantage in a close election because of the Electoral College.

That, in a nutshell, is why the FiveThirtyEight presidential election forecast, which we launched today, still has Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, despite his current deficit in the polls. This is considerably higher than some other forecasts, which put Trump’s chances at around 10 percent. Biden’s chances are 71 percent in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, conversely.14

If these numbers give you a sense of deja vu, it may be because they’re very similar to our final forecast in 2016 … when Trump also had a 29 percent chance of winning! (And Hillary Clinton had a 71 percent chance.) So if you’re not taking a 29 percent chance as a serious possibility, I’m not sure there’s much we can say at this point, although there’s a Zoom poker game that I’d be happy to invite you to.

One last parallel to 2016 — when some models gave Clinton as high as a 99 percent chance of winning — is that FiveThirtyEight’s forecast tends to be more conservative than others. (For a more complete description of our model, including how it is handling some complications related to COVID-19, please see our methodology guide.)

With that said, one shouldn’t get too carried away with the comparisons to four years ago. In 2016, the reason Trump had a pretty decent chance in our final forecast was mostly just because the polls were fairly close (despite the media narrative to the contrary), close enough that even a modest-sized polling error in the right group of states could be enough to give Trump a victory in the Electoral College.

The uncertainty in our current 2020 forecast, conversely, stems mostly from the fact that there’s still a long way to go until the election. Take what happens if we lie to our model and tell it that the election is going to be held today. It spits out that Biden has a 93 percent chance of winning. In other words, a Trump victory would require a much bigger polling error than what we saw in 2016.

Let’s briefly expand on the points I made above.

Biden’s lead is pretty impressive

In this article — partly as a corrective against what I see as overconfident assessments elsewhere — I’m mostly focused on the reasons why Trump’s chances are higher than they might appear. But we should be clear: Trump’s current position in the polls is poor.

Biden is currently ahead in our polling averages in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Ohio and in the second congressional district in Nebraska — all places that Clinton lost in 2016. If he won those states (and held the other states Clinton won), that would be enough to give him 352 electoral votes. He’s also within roughly 1 percentage point of Trump in Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Maine’s second congressional district. If he won those, too, he’d be up to a whopping 412 electoral votes.

It’s important to remember that the uncertainty in our forecast runs in both directions. There’s the chance that Trump could come back — but there’s also the chance that things could get really out of hand for him. Our model thinks there’s a 19 percent chance that Biden will win Alaska, for example, and a 13 percent chance that he will win South Carolina. The model also gives Biden a 30 percent chance of a double-digit win in the popular vote, which would be the first time that happened since 1984.

But there are downside scenarios for Biden.

Polls often change substantially between now and November

Every day, my colleague Nathaniel Rakich tweets out a list of what our national polling average would have looked like at this stage in past campaigns. And it can be a pretty wild ride. Here is Tuesday’s version, for instance.

The @FiveThirtyEight nat'l polling average with 84 days until E-Day:

2020: Biden+8.3 2016: Clinton+6.6 2012: Obama+0.5 2008: Obama+2.6 2004: Kerry+2.5 2000: Bush+10.0 1996: Clinton+11.3 1992: Clinton+20.1 1988: Dukakis+5.6 1984: Reagan+16.0 1980: Reagan+22.1 1976: Carter+26.6

— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) August 11, 2020

Three of the candidates leading in national polls at this point — Michael Dukakis in 1988, George W. Bush in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004 — did not actually win the popular vote. Bush blew a 10-point lead, in fact, which is larger than Biden’s current advantage. (Luckily for Bush, he won the Electoral College.) In other cases, the polls at this point “called” the winner correctly, but the margins were way off. Jimmy Carter eventually beat Gerald Ford by just 2.1 percentage points — not the 26.6-point lead he had at this point in the campaign. Bill Clinton won by 5.6 points — not 20.1 points. And Barack Obama won a considerably more commanding victory in 2008 than polls at this point projected.

Now, there are some mitigating factors here. Some of these polls were taken at the height of a candidate’s convention bounce, although there are ways to try to correct for those. And in general, polls have become less volatile over time, probably because increased polarization means there are fewer swing voters than there once were. The polls have been particularly stable so far this year, in fact.

But while there are some factors that reduce uncertainty, there are other factors that increase it.

COVID-19 is a big reason to avoid feeling overly confident about the outcome

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to more than 150,000 fatalities and has upended pretty much every American’s life, and Trump’s approval ratings for his handling of it have been awful.

But to the extent this is an election about COVID-19, there’s the possibility that the situation could improve between now and November. Cases have recently begun to come down after an early-summer spike, and recent economic data has shown improvement there, too. There’s also the possibility that a vaccine could be approved — or rushed out — by November, though it’s highly unlikely it could be widely distributed by then.

How to account for this? No, we aren’t building a COVID-19 projection model. (It’s really hard.) But we have built an “uncertainty index” that essentially governs the margin of error in our forecast. It contains eight components, two of which are very high because of COVID-19. Specifically, these are the high volatility in recent economic data, and the volume of major news events, as measured by the number of full-width New York Times headlines. There’s more news this year — not just about COVID-19, but the protests around police brutality, Trump’s impeachment earlier this year, etc. — than in any recent election campaign.

We also expect turnout to be harder to predict this year based on primary elections held during the pandemic that had highly variable turnout — which, in turn, could lead to more polling error. So even if the polls don’t change that much between now and November, that could create some additional uncertainty on Election Day. See the methodology guide for more on how we handle COVID-19.

But the other components of the uncertainty index are low, pointing toward a stable campaign. For instance, polarization is high, poll movement so far has been limited, and there aren’t that many undecided voters; the index accounts for all of those things.

In fact, the uncertainty index points toward the overall uncertainty going into November being about average relative to past presidential campaigns. So our model isn’t necessarily saying that things are going to get crazy, although they could. But it’s also saying you shouldn’t necessarily expect highly stable campaigns like 2012 to be the new normal in the time of COVID-19. (And keep in mind that 2016 was a pretty volatile campaign, too, even without COVID-19.) Empirically, the polls can move quite a bit from August to November, more than you might expect intuitively!

There are some sources of uncertainty that the model doesn’t account for, however. We assume that there are reasonable efforts to allow eligible citizens to vote and to count all legal ballots, and that electors are awarded to the popular-vote winner in each state. The model also does not account for the possibility of extraconstitutional shenanigans by Trump or by anyone else, such as trying to prevent mail ballots from being counted.

It’s hard to know what the “fundamentals” say

I’ve long been critical of models that use economic “fundamentals” to try to predict election results, mostly because — although they claim to be highly precise — they haven’t actually been very good at predicting the outcome of an election where they don’t already know the results.

And those models are especially likely to have problems this year because of highly variable economic data. One model based on second quarter GDP projects Trump to win -453 (negative 453!) electoral votes, for example. But if you built a model based on third-quarter GDP, which is expected to be highly positive, it might predict a Trump landslide.

This isn’t to say that we don’t employ a fundamentals forecast of our own. We do, but it’s much less confident than others, and it receives relatively little weight in the overall forecast. It also isn’t currently that bad for Trump. In fact, it essentially predicts the popular vote to be roughly tied. Why?

Although three of the economic factors we use in the model (jobs, spending, manufacturing) have been terrible, a fourth component (income) has been very strong because of government subsidies in the form of the CARES Act, though that could change if stimulus payments lapse. The fifth and sixth components, inflation and the stock market, have also been reasonably favorable.

Most of the variables that declined are now improving, and are expected to continue to improve. (Our model projects what the economy will look like by November rather than relying on current data.)

High polarization potentially blunts the impact of a poor economy.

Trump is an elected incumbent, and elected incumbents are usually favored for reelection.

We extended our analysis back to elections since 1880 (!) to expand the sample size, and found the relationship between the economy and the election likely isn’t as strong as other models claim, anyway.

In other words, our forecast thinks it’s far from obvious that the economy will doom Trump, especially if he can tell a story of recovery by November. Indeed, Trump’s approval ratings on the economy are still fairly good, so our model seems to be doing a reasonably good job of capturing how voters actually feel about the economy.

Another way to look at it is that our model is just saying that, in a highly polarized environment, the race is more likely than not to tighten in the stretch run. Empirically, large leads like the one Biden has now tend to dissipate to some degree by Election Day. And if the race does tighten…

Trump appears to have an Electoral College advantage again

Our model says there’s an 81 percent chance that Biden wins the popular vote — compared to his 71 percent chance in the Electoral College. That means there’s about a 10 percent chance that Trump again wins the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. (Conversely, the model puts the chance that Biden wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote at only around 1 in 750.)

That reflects the fact that the tipping-point state — the state that would provide the decisive 270th electoral vote — is somewhat to the right of the national popular vote. More specifically, our projection as of Tuesday had Biden winning the popular vote by 6.3 percentage points nationally, but winning the tipping-point state, Wisconsin, by a smaller margin, 4.5 percentage points:

The Electoral College could once again help Trump

Forecasted vote margin in battleground states and lean relative to the nation, from FiveThirtyEight’s presidential forecast as of Aug. 11

State forecasted vote margin Lean relative to nation New Mexico D+11.8 D+5.5 Virginia D+10.6 D+4.3 Colorado D+9.2 D+2.9 Maine statwide D+8.2 D+1.9 Michigan D+6.9 D+0.6 New Hampshire D+6.4 D+0.1 National D+6.3 EVEN Nevada D+6.2 R+0.1 Minnesota D+4.7 R+1.6 Pennsylvania D+4.7 R+1.6 Wisconsin* D+4.5 R+1.8 Florida D+3.2 R+3.1 Nebraska 2nd District D+0.9 R+5.4 Arizona D+0.8 R+5.5 North Carolina D+0.3 R+6.0 Ohio R+1.0 R+7.3 Georgia R+2.8 R+9.1 Maine 2nd District R+3.9 R+10.2 Iowa R+4.3 R+10.6 Texas R+4.4 R+10.7

* Wisconsin is the tipping-point state as of Aug. 11.

That 1.8-point gap is actually smaller than what Clinton experienced in 2016, when there was about a 3-point gap between her losing margin in Wisconsin (which was also the tipping-point state in 2016) and her winning margin in the national popular vote. This analysis is a simplification, too. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the outlook, so the tipping-point state could easily turn out to be Florida or Pennsylvania or something more unexpected like North Carolina.

Still, as a rough rule-of-thumb, perhaps you can subtract 2 points from Biden’s current lead in national polls to get a sense for what his standing in the tipping point states looks like. Add it all up, and you can start to see why the model is being fairly cautious. Biden’s current roughly 8-point lead in national polls is really more like a 6-point lead in the tipping point states. And 6-point leads in August are historically not very safe. That margin is perhaps more likely than not to tighten and at the very least, there’s a fair amount of uncertainty about what COVID-19 and the rest the world will look like by November.

Biden is in a reasonably strong position: Having a 70-ish percent chance of beating an incumbent in early August before any conventions or debates is far better than the position that most challengers find themselves in. And his chances will improve in our model if he maintains his current lead. But for the time being, the data does not justify substantially more confidence than that.

[andesite-slabs]

What would a snake look like.. in Minecraft???

I’ve spent some time thinking about it, and have come up with a fun concept for how snakes could be implemented into minecraft! Details about mechanics, design, and other unique characteristics under the cut!

Feel free to suggest any additions, critiques, or things I forgot that come to your head about snakes as a mob! I’d love to have a convo about it!!! I also want to turn this into a series, so if you have any ideas for other animals feel free to comment/ask them!

Now to the good stuff:

Design: I based my design roughly on ball pythons, though I still wanted my design to feel like it could be any snake, which fits minecraft’s simple and direct art style better! There are three color variants, orange, green, and blue!

Model and Animation: Snakes would be approx. 0.5 blocks wide, 2 blocks long, and 0.4 blocks tall. I think a realistic side-winding slithering animation for movement would look out of place in minecraft, so instead they would move like this, where every other segment moves opposite of the others.

Whenever the snake is not moving for a while, or is hiding, it will pop into a curled ball position! It will also occasionally flick it’s tongue out, especially when looking at the player cause that’s cute :D

I was originally gonna say that they also yawn, which is a cute thing snakes do sometimes as well (and mojang loves their cute mob actions, think dancing parrots and cat sitting on chests/beds :D). But when I think of it the only other mob that opens it’s mouth is the ravager, which is used as a warning that it’s about to attack. It just makes more sense that it does not have a mouth animation like 99% of other mobs.

Behavior: I conceptualized snakes as a new defensive mob, similar to pufferfish! They actively avoid the player, and will path-find towards sand/leaves/water and hide in it while pursued. They also will hide under upper half-slabs, but more on that later!

Mechanics: All snakes would move at a similar speed to players, probably slower at idle speed and then a smidge faster when being chased (but not in a straight line, so they can actually be caught up to). They also can swim, but cannot go far below the water’s surface. Only the swamp snake can dive. One cool idea I had is that they can hiss similarly to how a creeper sounds, and this would act as a way to set wandering players on edge. Basically parrots but more effective since they would actively camouflage and hide in their surroundings!

One thing minecraft doesn’t play around much with is mobs with mechanical differences within the same species. All different color cats, parrots, and tropical fish act in the same way. I thought it would be fun if there were 2 or 3 different colors of snakes which have slightly different mechanics in-game, given the 2 different categories of snakes in the world: Venomous and Constrictors.

Desert: The orange snakes would spawn in desert biomes. These snakes are venomous, and when the player steps within their hitbox, will take one half-heart of damage as well as leave the player with the poisoned condition for a few seconds. They hide by burrowing in the sand, so that only their head pokes out! They might be able to hunt rabbits!

Jungle: The green snakes would spawn in the jungle biome! These snakes are constrictors, and when the player steps within their hitbox, will start suffocation as if they were underwater. They will have to jump around for a few seconds (like getting a parrot off your shoulder) to remove the snake from them. I feel like this may be too complicated for minecraft’s combat, but I still think this is a really cool and unique idea worthy of being explored! They hide in the leaves of jungle trees! They might be able to hunt parrots!

Swamp:  The blue snakes would spawn in swamp biomes. These snakes are also venomous, and act the same as desert snakes in terms of combat. They can swim, and naturally camouflage into the water! These were a bit of an afterthought after the desert and jungle snakes, but I thought it would be a good idea since swamps have no 100% unique mobs on their own, and no aquatic mobs spawn in swamps also. They might be able to hunt fish (if they spawned in swamps D:)

Snakes, as mentioned earlier, will also hide in .5 block gaps (as long as they have a roof over their head!) This would simulate how snakes like to have dark, cozy spaces to feel safe in! Since many of these spaces won’t spawn naturally, I feel as this would be less for the sake of combat and more for redstone purposes! Since pufferfish tripwire-hook doors are no longer reliable in 1.14.4, having a mob that always pathfind from one location to another when within a certain distance of the player, and fast, could lead to many cool door designs!

Drops: Snakes would drop snakeskin, which could traded with clerics and leatherworkers. Additionally, it could be brewed into a potion similar to that of the turtle master, where the player both gets a poison-resistance/curing effect as well as a respiration effect! I think any other drops are unnecessary, besides maybe a chance for a bone. Also it’s iridescent cause that’s cool.

Purpose in Game: I imagine snakes being a weird combination of parrots, pufferfish, and their own thing! They are not meant to be actively dangerous, but just set the player on edge as they explore. A hissing sound from behind you or a sudden poison effect when you thought there were no mobs around you is sure to make the overworld feel just a little more dangerous at day, which I think the game could use! Also i just like snakes, and more defensive mobs in minecraft would be cool!

That’s it! Thanks for reading!!!!!!

[sorcierarchy]

hi so i have a question !! do you know of any spells on protecting a relationship from external forces and negative energies ? if not fo you have any suggestions on what to use or do to create one ? thank u sm !!

I don’t normally answer spell requests, but I figured this might be a good opportunity to show how you can use a pre-made spell and deconstruct it if you need to adapt anything or make substitutions. So this post is about:

Deconstructing spells and making well-informed substitutions (and a love spell I guess)

The basic steps I’ll be walking you through are: reading through the spell as it appears in the book or online, identifying the purpose for each item or action, finding equivalent or more powerful items or actions as needed, performing the spell and knowing whether or not it worked. 

If you just want the fish then I guess you can read the first part and go home, but I’m giving you the “learn to fish” option (better deal, imo). 

(This spell is mine btw, so please don’t repost it anywhere. This also means it’s based on French Canadian folk magic, which might differ from your personal practice.)

The intent of this spell is: “These individuals are happy together and prosper, and are protected from hindering forces/energies.”

The spell:

- Two apples- One knife- One pack dry yeast (they’re usually about 7g)- 1.5 tablespoons of white sugar- 1.25 (one and a quarter) cups of warm water- 0.5 tablespoons (half) or 1.5 (one and a half) teaspoons- 1 tablespoon of oil- 3 to 3.5 (three and a half) cups of flour - enough twine or string to wrap around the apple, 100% cotton NOT synthetic (butcher’s twine for example)- Baking tray or bread mold- Oven

1. Before you start any kind of ritual, you want to cut both apples in half top down (vertical through the core). Don’t worry about perfection, it doesn’t matter, but you need to have this step done before you cast any kind of circle if that’s something you do. 2. If you have any kind of “pre-spell” activities such as casting a circle or cleansing your space, go ahead and do that. 3. Bring one half from each apple into the ritual space (”ritual space” as in wherever you do your thing, does not have to be an altar or anything of that nature… I do mine wherever is practical, in this case the kitchen counter) as well as the twine. Put the two halves together, wrap the twine around them three times and tie a knot. If you like to say something during your spells such as a mantra or a sentence setting your intent, to this while wrapping the apple and tying the knot. If short, repeat it three times. French Canadian folk magic often has short rhymes repeated during spells.4. You’re gonna bake some bread. You can use a different recipe than the one linked, and change the list of ingredients accordingly. When kneading, focus on your intent and the two people the spell is involving. There will be long pauses while you let the dough rise: what you do during that time doesn’t matter for the spell. The second time you let the dough rise, you need to put the apple into the center of the dough FIRST (so it is enclosed completely) and let the bread rise around it. Don’t worry if the bread rises funny or caves in the middle.5. Bake the bread with the apple in the center. Ideally you should use a bread mold, but you can just shape it roughly round and put it on a baking tray if you don’t have one. 6. Score a cross shape into the bread using your knife (straight sharp blades work best).7. Once the bread has baked and cooled, each party the apple halves are representing must eat a piece of the bread. Depending on the environment you’re in and the apple you used, you’ll have varying levels of edible bread. If your loaf looks roughly normal, you should be able to each eat from one extremity. The closer you get to the apple, the more chances there are that it’s gooey, undercooked, or mushy from the juices. It’s not bad for you, just kinda gross tasting. Feel free to eat it if you want. The more weird your bread looks, the more your center is sketchy. Wonky bread isn’t a bad omen and won’t affect your spell, it’s just physics and stuff. 8. Enjoy your magically enhanced relationship, and don’t forget that no amount of magic can help if there are too many mundane issues left unresolved. 

The rest of this is below the cut because this is already long af. The counter-spell is also under the cut, all the way at the bottom. Please forgive typos, I’m a very tired gay. 

Link to the upcoming giveaway, on the offhand chance you like free stuff.

Interlude:

Before you deconstruct a spell, it’s important that you determine whether or not the spell should be deconstructed. If you’re using a random spell you don’t know the source of, or something written by someone on the internet (like this one), you can usually make a significant number of (logical) changes and substitutions. 

However, in the case of spells that have centuries of history, such as spells found in old arcane texts and grimoires, the more you change the more likely you are to get an unpredictable result. Spells that have been passed down survive because they work as written, and every change will decrease it’s likelihood of success. Ideally, you want as many checks in the “keeping as is” column as possible, and very few checks in the “changes” column. Sometimes there are things you just have to modify because life has changed since the 1700s, and that’s fine, just make sure you’re changing only when necessary and using sensible substitutions. More importantly, be prepared to deal with any consequences that may arise. 

Deconstruction:

Here I’m going to give you the purpose and meaning behind each element of the spell. The next section will show you how to come up with substitutions.

• Apple: In French Canadian folk magic, it’s a symbol of love and unity. Each full apple represents the person as a whole, and we put the two halves together so they can come together. You want to avoid using only one halved apple, as that implies that each person is incomplete until they are paired with the other half, which can create codependency or abusive relationships. One tradition is to use a half with a stem to represent the male in the relationship, and a half without the stem to represent the female. This is obviously heteronormative and might not work for your situation, so in the substitutions section I’ll list some other options. You can also just ignore the stem situation completely, and just determine in your mind which is which. 

• Twine or string: The twine is representative of the relationship itself, keeping the two halves together. It’s all the good things in the relationship, such as communication, honesty, common traits, etc. We wrap the twine around the apple three times because the number 3 in French Canadian folk magic is used to “strengthen” a spell or intent. 

• Flour: Flour represents prosperity in the home. It does not represent excess. It is having enough to eat, to stay warm, to live happily and comfortably. The type of flour doesn’t matter.

• Other ingredients: Everything else is used as part of the bread making process, and has no significant meaning otherwise. 

• The joining of the apples step is explained pretty well already in the apples info, so I’m going to move on to the bread baking. Kneading the dough and preparing the bread are all symbolic of the time and work it takes to maintain a good relationship with someone, and are important steps if you’re able to do them. During kneading, you should be focusing on your intent for the spell. 

• Placing the apple in the center of the bread is to bind the symbol of the couple (the apple) with the symbol of prosperity and happiness (the bread). The water from both will mix, and water is like the “and” in your spell if it were a sentence. You’re saying “These individuals are happy together AND prosper”. 

• Scoring the bread with the cross is your symbol of protection from outside forces. Since French Canadian folk magic is heavily entwined with catholicism, the cross is a protective symbol. 

• Eating the bread can be considered both the activating of the spell, as well as the closing element. It is enforcing the properties as it is ingested by the people involved, and is symbolic that they have accepted the intent of the sorcier or witch. 

Substitutions: 

I obviously can’t possibly cover every single option here, but I’m going to do my best to give you a lot of suggestions that should give you a pretty good idea of what kind of changes you can make and how to adapt the spell to your abilities, correspondences, and what you have available to you. 

• The apples and twine can be substituted for anything else that would represent the individuals and a loving relationship. If your local folk magic has a symbol that is different from apples, you can absolutely use that instead. Likewise if you have a personal correspondence that is stronger to you, or tag locks for the individuals in question (just remember it’s going in bread, so hair might not be your best option here). 

• The stem situation, as I mentioned in the deconstruction section, is not a mandatory part of the spell. Nonetheless, I wanted to provide some alternate options. You can of course you two stemmed apples, two unstemmed apples, you can cut the apple into more than two pieces (so long as you can roughly fit them together, and you would use a corresponding number of apples), etc. Keep in mind that the stems don’t need to represent anything at all, and they can be unrelated to gender (for example, stem representing the taller person and no stem being the shorter one). You can make it whatever you want. If you would like the stems to represent gender, non-binary genders can be a bent stem, a half stem, an additional stem (just stick it in, don’t put glue on it please), whatever you want. Again, you can completely disregard the stems if it causes any kind of anxiety for you or if you’re like me and massively despise the binary implications of it. 

• If you can’t find cotton twine or don’t have cotton string, you can use anything else that would tie the two halves together. The important thing to keep in mind here is that it is going inside the bread, so you definitely don’t want to use synthetic fibers as they could melt in the oven and go into the bread (don’t eat that). The important thing is that there be something going around the apple holding the halves together. You could even use a long strip of dough from what you’ve kneaded. Another important thing is that you don’t do something that will go through the apples to keep them together, such as using toothpicks, as this has a different meaning and will change the intent of the spell. 

• The bread baking is a step that might be problematic for individuals who are not open about their practice, or who are physically incapable of making the bread because of the kneading, or multiple other reasons. If the issue is the kneading, you can use this no knead recipe instead.  If you’re dealing with any other issue for the bread step, you just need to find a substitute that would represent the same thing for you or for your culture. Some examples: using rice in place of bread, writing your intent to fill up an entire page of paper (or typing it and printing it out) and wrapping it around the apple, burying the apple outside, etc. If visualization is your only option, go for it. 

• Eating the bread is your activation step. If someone is allergic to gluten or has a dietary restriction, you can change the type of flour you use accordingly without changing the intent of the spell. If you didn’t bake bread, any alternative that feels to you like the intent of “the individuals involved accept the intent of this spell” will work. It can be as simple as them both holding the apple and reciting a line if you wrote one, or simply reciting the intent of the spell, etc. This step is going to be dependent on what you’ve already changed if anything. Ultimately, there should be an overall impression of completion afterwards. 

Counter-spell: 

You should always, always have a way to undo any spell that you’ve performed. I personally keep the twine somewhere safe, and will cut the twine in half or burn it if I need to reverse the spell. Alternative options would be to have a set of words as your counter-spell, or some other symbolic means of reversing the spell. Be careful that this information is only available to those involved with the spell, so no one wishing ill on the relationship can do any damage.

[adamoco]

DISNEY PIXAR MOVIE MADNESS! (now, with math)

On March 21, in the height of March Madness, Twitter user @yeeitsanthonyy unleashed their own viral bracket buster upon an unsuspecting interwebs. Under the title “DISNEY PIXAR MOVIE MADNESS!” they set up a tournament-style, single-elimination competition between 32 films from both studios, spanning from “The Little Mermaid” to “Coco.” Deceptively simple, devised to determine one champion from two brands enjoying long runs of success.

As a Disney employee and superfan of both studios, the bracket rocked me to my core. It’s a brilliant idea that rightfully set Disney fandom ablaze. But I couldn’t help but notice the lack of explanation behind each film’s place in the bracket. The seeming subjectivity of the ordering. And most notably, a couple of glaring omissions. Much like the NCAA basketball tournaments are seeded, there had to be a statistical way to rank these films. One driven by metrics to ensure the correct films make the tournament; one that gives each studios’ substantively better performing and critically lauded works a fairer path toward total glory.

I started work immediately on using data to make a better version of this bracket.

Above: the original bracket Tweeted by @yeeitsanthonyy.

Methodology

The construct of the original bracket is straightforward and compelling: Disney films fill out one side, Pixar films fill the other. I wanted to maintain this setup, since it ultimately matches up the top Disney and Pixar films in everyone’s bracket for an overall winner. But the reasoning behind which films were selected for the tournament needed to be more transparent.

Using the original bracket’s “The Little Mermaid” (1989) and “Coco” (2017) as start and end points, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios have combined to make 49 films during the time frame it represents. Disney made 30 of those movies, Pixar made 19. That’s more films apiece than there’s room for in each side of the bracket, so we have to omit a few intentionally. But to be objective about which ones, I wanted to consider every film from both studios during this time period for the tournament.

With room for 16 films on each side of the bracket, 14 Disney films from the time period wouldn’t make the tournament, but only 3 Pixar films would miss the cut. That’s a problem – it’s unfair that it’s easier for Pixar movies to make the field. There needs to be a little more parity added to the tournament for Disney films that would be on the “bubble” quality-wise for making it in, but still have a lot of potential for making a Cinderella-type run (see what I did there?) through the bracket.

Speaking of quality, how do we rank these films? The original bracket doesn’t appear to factor in seeding, and that’s my biggest critique. In the NCAA tournament, teams are ranked #1 through #16 in each region. Across the four regions, a #1 team should be roughly the same caliber as the other three #1 teams in the tournament, the #2 teams should match up with the other #2s, and so forth. 

 Without any qualifications provided for why each movie is placed in its particular position on the bracket, the original gives the appearance of being entirely subjective, possibly based on the original poster’s personal preferences. My goal is to address this.

The Model

We need to rank these movies to set a bracket. Where can we find some data to build an overall metric of quality upon? The internet has made it easier to quantify a movie’s critical reception – particularly a website called RottenTomatoes.com, which popularized the “Tomatometer,” gauging the percentage of movie critics’ positive reaction to a film. It’s not really a statement of a film’s overall quality; for example, it considers a 2.5 out of 4-star review as “fresh,” indicating the critic had a positive response – not exactly glowing. But it’s a highly marketable figure, essentially an update of Siskel and Ebert’s “two thumbs up” with more data points, and it gives us a metric that at least attempts to characterize popular critical response.

The other obvious metric is the movie’s bottom line: how well did it do at the box office? That’s a challenging question, because the answer has changed over the period the bracket represents. Increasingly, it’s not good enough for a movie to just do well in the United States. Global box office has become hugely important to studios; a project’s appeal to worldwide audiences is a huge calculation in slating new releases. And there’s some major winners and losers on global box office among the 49 films under consideration.

But box office numbers can be deceiving. “The Little Mermaid” was a watershed film that marked the start of the original Disney renaissance. But it only made $211 million in 1989, when ticket prices were lower and theatrical distribution wasn’t as wide globally. By comparison, “Zootopia” (2016) cracked just over $1 billion globally. It’s weird to think “The Little Mermaid” would have been a financial disappointment by contemporary standards, so we have to factor inflation into our evaluation.

I did this by looking up the total global box office for each film on BoxOfficeMojo.com, which has a searchable database of box office information. Then, I divided it by the average ticket price for each film’s year of release, yielding a figure I called “admissions” – theoretically, the number of people who saw it in theatres. Since the population of our fine planet keeps growing, it’s not really fair to penalize older movies that fewer people would have had a chance to see. So ultimately, we need to grade box office performance on a something like a curve.

Overall, I used a weighted score to evaluate the 49 movies under consideration. 50% of that score is determined by a movie’s Tomatometer percentage. I took each movie’s Tomatometer  and multiplied it by 0.5; the product is a decimal between 0 and 0.5. (“Finding Nemo,” with a 99% Tomatometer, gets a .495 out of .5 score. “Brother Bear,” the lowest Tomatometer of all films in contention at 38%, gets a .19 score.)

Then, I evaluated box office performance to determine the other 50% of the score. I used the “admissions” figure described earlier — again, the idea is to reward movies that were the strongest performers, but not overly penalize ones that didn’t have a great box office (especially if they were still critically loved). I sorted the films by most admissions to least and assigned a perfect score of 0.5 to the film with the highest figure. Then I subtracted .005 from that score for every position a film fell down the list – enough that high performers are rewarded, but keeping a relative balance in place with critical reception, so that movies need decent scores on both to make the tournament. (“Finding Nemo,” with the highest admissions figure on the list, gets the perfect 0.5 score. “Mulan,” the median entry, gets a .365, and the film with the lowest admission, “Winnie the Pooh,” gets a .26 score.)

Add those two scores together, and we’ve got an overall weighted score between 0 and 1. Now, sort the films by those scores, and we’ve got ourselves a statistically sound-ish list!

And here’s that list!

I use “sound-ish” because this model almost certainly has flaws. I could have used the “Top Critics” Tomatometer score that filters out all but the most well-known writers, which could have caused variation. As far as admissions, I have no way of knowing how close my theoretical figure is to actual; it’s just the best I can do with the available data. And also, there’s no accounting for the “favorite” factor, that feeling where regardless of critical or box office performance, you just love one movie more than another. And make no mistake – you should love what you love! Data-wise though, it’s just really hard to account for movies that became “cult” favorites, since there’s not really a good way to quantify that performance-wise. For example, you could take social media likes or conversation into consideration, but that might put certain movies (particularly older ones) at a disparate disadvantage. 

One other thing: I’m standing firm on the inclusion of only Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios films, none of their subsidiaries. That means no “Planes,” and as some called out as a miss on the original bracket, no “A Goofy Movie,” either. Rest assured, if I included them in consideration, when the numbers are crunched, none of them make the tournament.

Bracketology

A look at the results of this model suggests the original bracket had a few key snubs. Most notably, it left “Finding Dory” out of the Pixar bracket. The #9 weighted scorer, its credentials are sterling with a 94% Tomatometer and over $1 billion in global box office. Also snubbed was “Monsters University,” a little further down the weighted list but a certain shoo-in at #25. Much further down the list, “The Good Dinosaur” (#37) and “Cars 2” (#45), which made the original bracket, objectively don’t belong in the field.

There’s also misses on the Disney side of the bracket. “Wreck-It Ralph” (#26) is omitted from the original bracket, and people forget this but “Bolt” (#27) actually performed comparably strongly on Tomatometer and box office. But right after this, we get to the problem described earlier: there’s a need for some more parity on the Disney bracket. With only three Pixar movies missing the field, we owe it to a few more Disney movies to have a shot at a tournament run. “Hercules” (#28), “Lilo & Stitch” (#29), “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (#30), “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (#31), and “The Princess and the Frog” (#34) are separated by 0.03 points on our weighted scale. They’re all legitimate bubble contenders.

The NCAA basketball tournament solves for this and makes things more exciting with a “First Four,” where the four lowest-ranked automatic and at-large qualifiers face a one-game play-in against each other to make the official 64-team bracket. That’s how we’re going to solve for this, too: we’re going to expand the tournament field from 32 to 34 movies, with one extra round for those four bubble films to claim the last two spots on the bracket proper.

Probably my adjusted’s biggest snub among movies that made the original: “Pocahontas” is out of the tournament with its #38 weighted ranking. Despite a solid $346 million box office, its 57% Tomatometer is among the lowest in the field; it actually drops it below “The Emperor’s New Groove” and “Winnie the Pooh” as far as movies not making the tournament. (It’s okay, just imagine them all playing in a really fun consolation bracket somewhere.) 

Seeding

As mentioned in the methodology, the bracket should be seeded so that quantifiably better movies earn a little bit easier of a run through the bracket (assuming they’re winners in your heart, too). I subdivided the Disney and Pixar sides of the bracket into a two regions of eight movies apiece, so we’ll have four sets of #1 through #8 seeds. The idea is that each numerical seed is of roughly equal quality to the movies in other regions with the same seeds. The #1 seeds in each region are pretty impeccable – and immediately lent themselves to the idea of organizing the regions by older and new entries from both studios.

“Finding Nemo” tops the Classic Pixar Region, while “Toy Story 3” tops the New Pixar Region. “The Lion King” tops the Disney Renaissance Region, while “Zootopia” might be a slight surprise as the top of the Second Renaissance Region, but the credentials are definitely there.

In the first round, #1 seeds face off against #8 seeds; that winner plays the victor of the matchup between #3 and #4 – technically, the easiest path through the field to the Disney or Pixar final round. The #2 seeds get #7 seeds, facing off against the winner of the #3 and #6 seeds. If the top two seeds win out, the final on each side of the bracket matches #1 against #2.

That means “Nemo” gets “Cars” in Classic Pixar, where my favorite opening round matchup puts #3 “Toy Story 2” against #6 “Ratatouille” – the Little Chef could be poised to cook up a nice run in many brackets. In New Pixar, TS3 gets “Brave,” while #6 “Wall-E” could certainly clean up against #3 “Finding Dory.” 

Now, checking out the Disney side of the bracket. The two play-in rounds are for the #8 seed, meaning “Lion King” gets the winner between “Nightmare” and “Hunchback” in the Disney Renaissance, while “Zootopia” gets the winner of “Lilo & Stitch” and “Princess and the Frog” in Second Renaissance. (Just to get out ahead of this: “Lilo & Stitch” isn’t part of the actual Second Disney Renaissance; it falls in that weird shadow time between the two, but being released on the 2000s side of the millennium line, I decided to lump it in with the movies in the newer half of the bracket.) 

In Disney Renaissance, “The Little Mermaid” is ready to go where the winners go, despite being a #5 seed. In Second Renaissance, I think “Zootopia” might be the most vulnerable of the #1 seeds in the tournament for an early exit, especially considering the crash course it faces with either with #4 “Moana” or #5 “Tangled” in the second round.

Conclusions

What exactly have I wrought with this? A painstakingly calculated, statistically semi-sound bracket that perhaps more accurately reflects the respective pop culture and financial impact of recent Disney and Pixar films, setting up an exceptionally silly, imaginary tournament slightly more equitably. Yet at the end of the day, reiterating a potential shortcoming of this model and all of the math behind it, you love what you love.

I posted my adjusted bracket and hundreds of social media likes and responses rolled in, with comments ranging from “The hero we needed!” to “This is a work of Evil.” But a few people noted that, even with corrected seeding, they still came up with the same final four and eventual winner as the original bracket. If your favorite Disney and Pixar movies were already on both brackets, there’s a very good chance you were faced with the same eventual final picks anyway. You just arrived at them in a somewhat different manner.

So, a closing thanks to @yeeitsanthonyy for their blindingly bright idea that sparked cheerful, passionate participation and conversation across the Disney fandom. I recognize it most importantly as an attempt at creating joy, and there’s objectively nothing to critique about that. But to those craving logic and order in our increasingly chaotic world, I hope you rest just a bit easier tonight.

And finally, my bracket, in case you were curious. 

[droneseco]

Minisform U850 Mini-PC Review: a NUC Killer With Outstanding Value and Flexibility

Minisforum U850

9.00 / 10

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There's no better-priced NUC, or NUC-like computer, out there. If you love small form factor computers, or just need to economize on desk space, the U850 is worth checking out. But for those who want a more performant computer, you can get a much better deal by buying a full-sized desktop.

Key Features

Upgradeable

Quadcore CPU

USB-C power

Dual 2.5-inch drive bay

NUC form factor

Mobile processor

Integrated graphics

Specifications

Brand: Minisforum

Graphics: Intel UHD 630

CPU: Intel Core i5-10210U

Storage: 256GB SSD

Ports: HDMI, DV, 3.5mm, 4x USB 3e.1, 2x USB-C 3.1

Pros

Tool-free upgradeability

Lower power footprint

Great value

25-watt TDP

Fast for mobile CPU

Cons

DRAM-less SSD

No online driver support

Hot HDD bay

Not for gaming

CPU not upgradeable

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Small-form factor PCs tend to lack features, underperform, and cost a fortune. The Minisforum U850 NUC-sized mini-PC breaks all three rules, delivering a NUC-killing mini-PC for $599. The U850 suffers from a couple of Achilles Heels but its virtues make up for it.

What Is Minisforum?

Minisforum designs a range of small-form-factor computers. Their products get as small as stick-PCs and scale up to NUC-sized computers. They use processors from both AMD and Intel. Most of their computers include the option to upgrade individual components. For example, the U850's RAM can scale up to 64GB and its SSD can go up to 500GB.

Hardware Analysis

To the extent of my knowledge of small, NUC-sized computers, no similarly-sized mini-PC offers the same level of features as the U850. For example, it's common among mini-PCs to cripple integrated graphics with a single SO-DIMM RAM slot. And, at best, you might find a single 2.5-drive bay. Worst of all, the processors usually use a 15-watt wattage limitation and perform like laptops.

The hardware on the Minisforum U850 beats down its NUC-class competition. The U850 may use laptop-class components, but the processor has been configured to run at 25 watts, instead of the lower 15 watts. As far as low-wattage, quadcore, eight-thread processors go, it's performant, snappy, and can handle pretty much any home computing scenario thrown at it.

Specifications and Hardware for Base Model U850

CPU: Intel Comet Lake 14nm 10210U cTDP: 25-watts

GPU: Intel UHD 630

RAM: 16GB DDR4

Storage: 256GB Kingston Design-In NVMe SSD

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro

Dimensions: 127 x 127 x 53.1mm

Wattage consumption: 35-watts maximum; 0.5-watts idle; 13.5-watts average

Power adapter: 65-watt USB-C power adapter

Cost: $599

Video: DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0

Ports: 4x USB-A 3.1, 1GB LAN, 2.5GB LAN, USB-C 3.1, 3.5mm

Security: Kensington lock port

Wireless: Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)

Other: VESA mounting bracket, 100 x 100mm

Weight: 500 grams

Who Is the Minisforum U850 Mini-PC for?

The Minisforum U850 is for Small Form Factor (SFF) enthusiasts who feel dissatisfied with the lack of flexibility in NUC-sized computers. Anyone interested in an Intel NUC needs to take a close look at the U850 because chances are, the U850 will meet your needs for less money.

I don't see any reason to spend more money on a NUC when the U850 is better in every way I could conceive of, except one: the U850 cannot refresh a 4K panel on its HDMI port at 60Hz.

RAID1 and Dual LAN in a Mini-PC

If you want to squeeze the most utility out of the U850's hardware, the two features that jump out are the dual LAN and the dual SATA ports. The dual LAN ports allow it to bridge two network connections, function as a repeater while hooked up to a NAS, and a lot more (the vast majority of PC users will never touch a dual LAN port, by the way).

The dual SATA slots let you use a feature known as Redundant Array of Independent Disks. There are several types of RAID configurations; RAID1 allows for any single drive to fail, without it destroying any data.

Related: What is RAID, and can I use it on my PC?

The U850's ideal usage scenario is probably in an enterprise role, where it would allow two different networks access to a RAID1 network drive. However, it has a lot of other uses aside from enterprise and someone with greater IT experience than I could probably write a book on it.

It's NUC-Sized and VESA Mountable

The U850 is for folks who want a tiny computer. The 127 x 127 x 53.1mm dimensions make it's less than half the size of an ITX PC. As an added bonus, Minisforum includes a VESA-mounting bracket, which lets you screw it onto the back on a television or monitor. Overall, the U850 is designed for keeping your desk clear of a bulky computer and wires.

Good, But Loud Cooling

But with an extra 10-watts of power to dissipate, something had to give. Fortunately, Minisforum chose to beef up the cooling, as well. The fan inside of the U850 is significantly larger than cooling solutions you'd find in a laptop, although still tiny compared to large-sized ATX coolers used in tower PCs.

To test cooling, I disabled all power-saving features using the excellent Throttlestop software. Then I hit the processor with a variety of CPU loads. I'm happy to say that stress testing didn't lead to any CPU overheats. However, even with BD PROCHOT disabled, I could not stop the processor from throttling down to 2GHz.

On the downside, under full load, the cooler can hit 48 decibels, which is moderately loud.

Easy Disassembly

The U850's chassis is designed for disassembly. It's the easiest computer that I've ever torn down. Accessing the inner components just requires pressing down on the lower-left and right sides of the plastic top cover. Removing the top exposes all of the modular components, with the exception of the CPU, which isn't modular.

All of the parts use standard mounting mechanisms and can be swapped out or replaced as easily as with any ATX-sized component. However, Minisforum chose to hot glue the SMA connectors on the Wi-Fi card, which required a little effort to remove.

Energy Efficiency

An advantage of using laptop components is that you get laptop-like efficiency. The overall power footprint of the U850 (with a RAID1 setup) comes in at 35-watts at maximum loads, 13.5-watts at average loads, and 0.5-watts while in suspension.

Benchmarks and Performance

Synthetic benchmarks aren't very accurate and exist for making loose comparisons between processors. More or less, the Comet Lake Core i5-10210U inside offers a significant performance improvement over Intel's older Kaby Lake-R chips, but it's not quite on par with the latest AMD Ryzen mobile processors, even it's still competitive with them.

On the other hand, the Intel UHD 630 is by no means a solid integrated GPU. At best it can play older games at 1080p, with playable frame rates. As mentioned earlier, the U850's design focuses on low-power consumption and not performance. Definitely not gaming performance.

Kingston Design-In SSD: Benchmark and Performance

The 256GB Kingston Design-In SSD (model #OM8PDP3256B-A01) inside of the U850 includes NVMe 1.3, an SLC cache, 3D TLC NAND, and a Phison controller (model# PHA-PS5013-E13-31). In other words, it's a budget-class, DRAM-less drive. While not as performant as Samsung's high-end segment, it's a solid drive.

Kingston's Design-In product line tailors to manufacturers, not customers. As a result, they don't hand out very many firmware updates. So if any bugs show up down the line, it's up to Minisforum to push out the firmware update, not Kingston.

Kingston does provide a three-year warranty on its drives, which is unusual for OEM-supplied components. Unfortunately, like most SSD warranties, the warranty expires if you write too much data to the drive or three years elapse, whichever comes first.

I wish that Minisforum would sell a barebones version of their U850, which would allow you to throw in a DRAM-equipped SSD. But even with a lower-tier drive, the U850 still offers better value compared to NUCs.

Performance CPU and GPU

I used PassMark's bench-test software to test the Intel Core i5-10210U processor. PassMark isn't the most accurate of tests, but it does a good job of determining the relative performance of a processor.

PassMark gave the CPU a score of 7005.6 putting it roughly 20% ahead of the Kaby Lake-R mobile processor inside of my laptop. Despite Intel using the same basic 14nm technology node, the Core i5-10210U is still competitive with other mobile processors, possibly because the U850 increases its TDP to 25-watts.

Again, PassMark's scoring system doesn't mean that the U850 offers 20% greater speed. It's just 20% faster on a synthetic benchmark. The Jetstream 2 benchmark shows a similar performance difference.

Minisform U850 RAID1 With 2x 2.5-Inch HDDs

I can confirm that RAID1 works and performs as it should with two 2.5-inch hard disc drives (HDD) attached. The U850 doesn't include any special RAID levels. You must choose between using the drives as just a bunch of disks (JBOD) or as a mirrored array, in which you get half the storage capacity in exchange for redundancy.

The bottom drive usually hovered around 33-34C with the top drive hitting 32-33C. Running a sustained transfer, the real-world file-transfer speeds for writes hit 85MB/s and reads at 50MB/s. The drives reached 53 and 55C respectively after 30 minutes and both were at 60C after 1 hour of sustained transfer, which is far outside of a platter-based HDD's operating temperatures.

Most HDDs have a maximum operating temperature of 50C. Given that operating a computer component well over its design threshold is a disaster waiting to happen, I'd recommend using SSDs instead of HDDs, which can safely run at up to 70C.

RAID1 Benchmark

The synthetic benchmark speeds are approximately equal to the maximum speeds offered by 5400RPM HDD drives. In other words, there doesn't appear to be any significant bottleneck in the U850 for managing two SATA drives in a RAID1 array.

CPU Temperatures

SFF computers pack a lot of hardware into as tiny a space as possible. Unfortunately, that oftentimes means higher temperatures for internal components. Higher component temperatures can spell an early doom for the most sensitive components of a computer by prematurely aging silicon.

The U850, however, throttles its CPU frequency at around 85C. You shouldn't experience any issues with CPU temperature, even with heavy workloads.

Drive Temperatures Under CPU Load

The U850 does not use direct cooling on its drive bay. That means sustained writes to the drives will result in overheating. However, a question you might have is whether or not a high-CPU load will overheat the 2.5-inch drives. In short, heavy CPU loads won't overheat the 2.5-inch drives.

I ran the HDD drives up to 50C and 47C respectively and then blasted the processor with a sustained Prime95 torture test, which generates a lot of heat. As you can see from the graph above, as the CPU fan increased in speed, the 2.5-inch drives decreased in temperature. While the air circulation from the heat-sink fan assembly does not touch the drive bay, it does somehow manage to reduce the temperatures.

Drive temperatures did slowly creep up over time, but they eventually leveled off well below their maximum operating temperature.

Linux Compatibility

While its mainboard is compatible with Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS, the U850's Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 network card won't work out-the-box with either version.

However, even though the BIOS/UEFI settings aren't accessible, Intel's VT-d setting is turned on by default (although not accessible) so running Linux virtual machines isn't a problem.

The Minisforum U850 Problems

The U850 isn't perfect.

HDD Drives May Overheat

As mentioned earlier, long file transfers cause the 2.5-inch drives to overheat, hitting 60C after an hour of sustained transfer; this means you either need two SSDs in a RAID1 configuration or you should avoid using HDD drives for sustained transfers.

Windows 10 Recovery Partition Does Work

A big potential issue is that the recovery partition doesn't work. I'm not sure whether this is a problem with the unit I tested or whether something went wrong at the manufacturing facility. But if you need to boot from the recovery partition, it might not work. However, you can always create your own bootable Windows 10 recovery drive.

Intel AX200 Wireless Adapter Doesn't Automatically Work With Linux

The Intel AX200 Wi-Fi adapter is not, out-of-the-box compatible with Linux (of any kind that I could find) and requires a lot of additional work to get functional.

Custom Drivers Not Available Online

Because of the dysfunctional recovery partition, if you ever reset the computer, you'll need to acquire the drives somehow. And, unfortunately, the firmware and drivers were not made available online at the time of review.

You can email Minisforum's customer support, though. They respond to inquiries, usually, within 24-hours. But they have yet to respond to my last request for support.

Can't Change BIOS/UEFI Settings

The BIOS settings available are limited to setting an administrator password or changing the boot medium. It's not possible to change very many settings, including configurable TDP.

No 60Hz at 4K Resolutions on HDMI Port

The U850's Intel UHD 630 does not do 4K at 60Hz over HDMI. It can do 4K over DisplayPort at 60Hz, however.

No Thunderbolt 3

The USB Type-C (USB-C) port doesn't offer Thunderbolt 3 compatibility, which limits its transfer speed to 2.5GB/second. Thunderbolt 3 would have doubled the transfer speeds.

Should You Buy the Minisforum U850 Mini-PC?

The Minisforum U850 offers a similar size as a NUC but with a much wider range of uses and much higher value. While it's expensive, particularly compared to a laptop or desktop computer, it's also versatile and packed to the heat vents with features.

To my knowledge, there's no better-priced NUC, or NUC-like computer, out there. If you love small form factor computers, or just need to economize on desk space, the U850 is worth checking out. But for those who want a more performant computer, you can get a much better deal by buying a full-sized desktop.

Minisform U850 Mini-PC Review: a NUC Killer With Outstanding Value and Flexibility published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/

[themoneybuff-blog]

How much I spent during two weeks of travel

I like to travel. Over the past decade, I've probably made an average of two international trips per year. But you know what? Never once in that time have I tried to track how much I spend while exploring the world. Sure, I log my numbers in Quicken (as I do for everything), but I've never analyzed the cost of an individual trip. This month, I flew to Europe to hang out with my cousin Duane again. He and I enjoy traveling together. Because I was curious, I decided to be diligent about tracking my expenses for this trip. Note, however, that I didn't try to do anything different. I didn't adjust my normal behavior simply because I knew I'd be reporting to GRS readers. I did what I always do. I spent in ways that felt normal to me. I don't need a fancy hotel, for instance. Neither does Duane. We're happy with cheap, simple lodging. And because most of the time we don't book rooms in advance, we don't hunt for the best deal. When we decide to stop for the night, we look for a place to stay. When we find something reasonable ($50 per person per night is our target) and available, we book it. We don't continue to search. We'd rather use our time to explore our surroundings. On the other hand, we're both willing to splurge on food from time to time. Our rooms aren't important to us, but what we eat is. Similarly, we'll pay to see special sites, but mostly we're happy visiting free museums and/or walking around a city. We don't pay much for tours, etc. So, how much did I spend for two weeks in Europe? Let's find out!

Chateau Chenonceau in France's Loire Valley Booking Flights This trip was sort of spontaneous. Remember, Duane has throat cancer. We expected our trip in December to be the last adventure we had together. But his health has held steady and his doctor is making hopeful statements that he might be around for Christmas! so we decided to make another trip. Generally, I try to book flights several months in advance. I feel like I find cheaper options that way. This time, though, I didn't book my flight until April 19th, less than a month before our trip. Also, I'm fussy about flights. It's not that I need to sit in business class I'm perfectly happy in coach but I don't like layovers. I'm willing to pay extra for a direct flight. Unfortunately, when I searched for flights from Portland to Paris, I couldn't find any direct flights. I could, however, find a non-stop to London. I like London. It's a pleasant city. What if, I thought, I flew to London a few days early and used that time to get some work done? Then I could take the Chunnel train across to Paris to meet Duane when he arrives. So, I booked a flight to London. It cost me $996.63 and each leg took roughly 10.5 hours. (I don't know how much Duane paid for his plane ticket. I think it was around $600, but he had to fly from Portland to Las Vegas to Los Angeles to Paris and it took him almost 24 hours. Yuck. I'm happy to pay a premium to avoid crap like that.) I made a small mistake when booking my ticket. In the past, I've always traveled economy. That's what I thought I was doing this time. Nope. Apparently, there's a new(-ish) airfare class called basic economy. This is a massive screw you from the airlines to their customers. It's a little bit cheaper, but you're not allowed to make any changes to your ticket once you've booked. No option to upgrade. Plus, you board dead last. And you can't choose your seat. And if you check a bag as I did for my return flight it costs a ton. Edinburgh I flew into London with no real plan for the first few days. Brandon (the Mad Fientist) had invited me to visit him and his wife in Edinburgh, Scotland, but I felt like I oughtn't do it. I felt like I should stay in London and work. When I landed, though, I changed my mind. Is it still okay if I come up to see you? I asked. Sure! Brandon said. So, I hopped on Trainline (an awesome app that Duane and I used to buy train tickets during our December trip) and booked a ticket from London to Edinburgh. Cost: $101.92. While waiting for my train at Kings Cross station (and watching the tourist throngs at Platform 9-1/2), I withdrew 200 for spending money, which is about $252.31. I used this cash to buy things like coffee and snacks and souvenirs. I brought home 141.15, which means I spent 58.85 (or about $74.24) cash while in the U.K. I had a great time hanging out with Brandon and Jill. They showed me everyday life in Edinburgh, one of my favorite cities. They put me up in their spare room, took me to pubs, and we wandered together through the streets and the parks. While there, I spent: $45.76 at Brewdog for beer and snacks. (Did you know that low-alcohol beer like 0.5% to 2.0% is a thing in the U.K.? I wish it was a thing here in the U.S. I'd buy it.)$17.74 at Whiski Bar for an hour of music and Scotch.$9.91 at Cairngorm Coffee, where Brandon and I spent a morning working.$33.78 at Mother India restaurant, where the three of us had a fine meal of Indian tapas. In all, I spent a total of $283.35 during my three nights in Scotland.

Picnic in the Meadows with the Mad Fientist and friends Paris When it came time to meet Duane in Paris, I was faced with a choice. Originally, I had intended to take the train from London to Paris. But when I looked at times and prices to get from Edinburgh to Gare du Nord, I didn't like what I saw. The trip would take about 12.5 hours and the total cost would be over $350. Yikes! You should book a flight on EasyJet, Brandon suggested. I've never used EasyJet, but I looked into it. For $199.45, I could fly from Edinburgh to Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) in Paris in less than two hours. I booked a ticket. Then, using Chase Ultimate Rewards points, I booked one night at the Hotel ibis, which is attached to CDG terminal 3. My cost: 7718 Chase points. In Paris, I paid 17.99 for a one-day train pass, which gave me unlimited access to all Metro and RER routes. (The metro lines are the subway and local trains. The RER routes are the commuter trains that run deeper into the suburbs, going places like Versailles and the airport.) I also withdrew 200 in cash (about $222.50) to use for incidental expenses, such as snacks and souvenirs. While I waited for Duane's flight to arrive, I visited Notre Dame to see what it looked like after the fire. (I was startled to note that when the wind was right, you could smell the ashes!) I bought an extra travel shirt. And I met my friend Amy for champagne and charcuterie. (Amy lives in Houston but happened to be in Paris for work.)

Amy, J.D., and random amused French woman At around 18:00, I returned to the airport to pick up our rental car. I was worried this might not go smoothly, but I was wrong. Estelle, the young woman at the Avis counter, was amazing. It didn't take long for her to get met set up with a Peugot 208. Plus, she was kind enough to phone ahead to our hotel to let them know we'd be a little late. I booked the car with British Airways points. My cost: 16,600 Avios a bargain! As I was finishing at the rental car, Duane cleared immigration. Perfect timing! We hopped in our little car, braved Paris traffic and made our way to the garden spot of Giverny. In Giverny, we checked into our B&B (booked with 8154 Chase points), then hurried to the only restaurant in town that was still open. Duane spent 51.00 on our dinner of duck breast and red wine. During two nights in and around Paris, I spent $199.45, 17.99, 8154 Chase points, and 16,600 Avios (BA points). Duane spent 51.00. Normandy The next morning, Duane and I started our driving tour of northwest France. I'd been worried that all French drivers would be like the ones in Paris. They weren't. On the country roads, people were much more mellow. Thank goodness. (I drive like an old man. I hate speeding and tailgating.) First, we toured Rouen, the town where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. We saw our first cathedral of the trip, visited the (free) Museum of Fine Arts, and browsed the weekly market. Duane and I both enjoy markets. We're happy to pass time looking at fruits and vegetables and meat and fish. For real. Plus, this gave us a chance to buy cheap food for the road. I picked up a paper sack filled with twenty baby chorizo sausages, for instance, and it cost only 5. (I think there were more than 20 sausages in the bag too. That thing lasted me almost the entire trip, and I was eating several sausages per day.) In the afternoon, we drove to Honfleur with no plans about where to stay. The first hotel we visited was perfect: cheap and efficient. I paid 100.00 to book a room. Duane spent 54.00 on our dinner at a local pub. On our second day, we meandered along the coast. We stopped to taste calvados (an apple brandy made in Normandy), nibbled goat cheese in Deauville, and stopped to visit the Grand Hotel in Cabourg, the site of Proust's famous memory-inducing madeleine.

Buying goat cheese and bacon in Deauville In the late afternoon, we reached Bayeux. Our first hotel choice was booked, but the second had two cheap rooms available. We paid 49.00 each. For dinner, we chose an expensive restaurant (I can't remember why) that cost Duane 94.00. After dinner, we wandered around town. It was a magical evening in mid-spring. We happened to hit the city during its festival of lights, and when we stopped by the cathedral, an American choir was performing a concert. We stopped in to listen. In the morning, we visited the Bayeux Tapestry, a 70-meter long work of art that's nearly 1000 years old. In dozens of scenes, it depicts the Norman conquest of England. People think I'm joking when I say this, but I'm not: This tapestry is like a very early comic book. (And, in fact, the drawings used to plan tapestries like this are referred to as cartoons. No joke.) This visit cost me 19.00.

Seriously, the Bayeux Tapestry is like a primitive comic book While in Bayeux, we visited Omaha Beach and the nearby American Military Cemetery. After that, we drove backroads to reach Mont-Saint-Michel, one of the most famous tourist sites in all of France (and formerly one of the top three destinations for Christian pilgrims). This island used to be isolated from the mainland by ocean tides. Now there's a causeway that leads to it, but even that sometimes floods over (as it did during our stay). I used 14,538 Chase points to book a room on the island, and I'm glad we did. During the day, the place is packed. After 18:00, the crowd disperses and things become peaceful. It's fun to wander the ramparts with nobody to disturb you. Here, Duane paid 89.00 for dinner. During our time in Normandy, I spent a total of 168.00 and 14,538 Chase points. Duane spent 286.00.

Mont-Saint-Michel at high tide Brittany The next morning, after a quick tour of the Mont-Saint-Michel abbey, Duane and I packed up to drive to Brittany. (The island actually sits on the border between the two regions.) As we entered Brittany, we got our first taste of fuel prices in France. To put 38 liters (about 10 gallons) in the Peugot 208, I paid 60.00. Holy cats! That's nearly $7 per gallon, or about twice what we pay here in the States. In the early afternoon, we stopped for a couple of hours in the walled city of Dinan, which is built on a hillside overlooking the river Rance.

Looking from the ramparts of Dinan to the valley below By early evening, we'd reached Carnac on the Atlantic coast. Carnac is famous for its standing stones, a collection of 3000+ domens and menhirs in the region. I love sites like this (and Avebury and Stonehenge in England), so was pleased to visit. (If you've ever read any Asterix comics, you're familiar with the stones of Carnac.) The first hotel we visited had a cheap room available (66.00), so we booked it. Our dinner next door wasan adventure. Brittany, as you may know, is the source of the crepe. It's also the source of the galette (a savory crepe). Crepes and galettes everywhere in this region. Because we like to try local food when we travel, Duane and I decided to eat galettes for our evening meal. You should get the andouille, the restaurant owner told us, smiling. So we did. Well. It turns out that American andouille is not the same as French andouille. French andouille is simply sliced pig intestine that has (ostensibly) been cleaned very, very well. This tastes like ass, Duane said as he ate his galette. He couldn't finish. I did finish, but was a little mortified when I looked up the ingredients later. Our host seemed to take pity on us for being such good sports. When I ordered a glass of calvados after the meal, he gave me a huge pour. I paid 46.00 for our dinner of pig-gut pancakes. During our 24 hours in Brittany, I spent a total of 172.00. Duane spent nothing. The Loire Valley After a quick breakfast of coffee and crepes (12.00 paid by Duane), we made our way to Angers, former capital of the Anjou region. (Angers is the source of both anjou pears and Cointreau liqueur.) Here, we visited our first chateau. Did you know that a chateau is a castle? I didn't not until this trip. Anyhow, the Chateau d'Angers is home to the amazing Apocalypse Tapestry, a 600-year-old visual retelling of the apocalypse story from the Bible's Book of Revelation. Like the Bayeux Tapestry, it reminds me of a massive comic book made from cloth. It cost us 12.00 each to see the chateau and its art. (Duane paid this.)

The Apocalypse Tapestry at Chateau d'Angers In the evening, we experienced our big splurge of the trip. Based on a GRS reader recommendation, I had booked a night for us at the Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud, a former monastery founded in 1101. Although many old buildings remain (and guests are free to explore them), the site is no longer an abbey. It's a fancy upscale hotel and a Michelin-star restaurant. Going in, I'd told Duane to ignore the costs for our night at Fontevraud. I'm paying for the hotel and dinner, and it's not part of our trip accounting. Don't try to balance it out, I said. I'm making a deliberate decision to splurge. Our room at the abbey cost us 172.00. Our meal cost 239.00. As I mentioned earlier this week, the food was fine and I'm glad I experienced it. But I wouldn't do it again. In the morning, we traveled country roads to visit another chateau: Chenonceau. We each paid 19.00 to tour the grounds of this beautiful old estate. In the afternoon, we moved to nearby Amboise, where Duane paid 73.00 to book a hotel. We hiked up the hillside, then tasted wine in a cave. We ate dinner at the tiny Restaurant L'Ilot, where the woman waiting tables chided us for not making a reservation then was playfully grouchy the rest of the evening. This meal cost Duane 94.00 because he insisted we order a bottle of wine. The next day, we stopped briefly in Blois to visit the church of St Nicolas. This place is barely mentioned in the guidebooks, but we loved it. During World War II, most of its stained-glass windows were destroyed. They've been replaced by modern windows with modern glass. The results are amazing. When light shines through them, color spreads throughout the church.

The light show from the stained glass at St Nicolas Church We next stopped in Chartres to visit its famous cathedral, which is especially known for its stained-glass windows. And while yes, there are many of them (176!) and they're impressive, I liked the ones in Blois better. During our time in the Loire Valley, I spent a total of 430.00, most of it for my splurge at the abbey. Duane spent 281.00. (He filled the car with gas at one point.) Wrapping Things Up After touring the Chartres cathedral, we didn't know what to do. We found ourselves on the southwest side of Paris, but wanting to reach the northeast corner by the following evening. We couldn't make up our minds, so I simply drove east. Eventually, we reached Fontainebleau, which we decided might be fun to visit. But the town was packed and we were tired. Instead, we drove on until we found a budget hotel (aptly named Budget Hotel), where Duane paid 86.00 for a room. For dinner, we each paid cash at a French fast-food chain. The next morning, we returned our rental car. I was sad to say good-bye to the Peugot 208, which had served us well. Before we turned it in, Duane paid 32.00 to top off the fuel tank. For logistics purposes, I'd used 11,182 Chase points to book us separate rooms at the ibis Hotel once again. (It's handy having this place next to the airport train station.) We each paid 17.99 for one-day train tickets, then we rode into Paris. With several hours to kill, we decided to walk the city. But we didn't walk the downtown tourist core. We've both done that before. Instead, we chose the Coule verte Ren-Dumont, an elevated greenway akin to New York's Highline. From there, we made our way along the canal. This 5k stroll made for great people-watching. Here, we said our good-byes. Duane wandered off to spend time on his own. I met up with my pal Matt Kepnes (a.k.a. Nomadic Matt) for a couple of beers. In the morning, I took an early flight back to London (booked with 4500 Avios and $27.50), then boarded my Delta flight back to Portland. On this final day, I spent a total of $47.48, 4500 Avios, and 11,182 Chase points. (At some point, I withdrew another 200.00 in spending money. I returned home with 102.66, which means I spent 97.34 of that or about $108.41.) Duane spent 86.00 and $19.98. The Bottom Line After all of that, how much did I spend on this trip? Let's crunch the numbers. For two weeks (three nights in Scotland and ten in France), I spent: $996.63 for my flights from and to the U.S.$573.65637.98 (about $710.63)19,336 Chase points21,100 Avios (British Airways points) Converting all of my expenses to dollars, my total cost was $2277.91 plus rewards points. That's an average of $175.22 per night. (I spent $1284.28 plus points if you ignore the flight, for an average of $98.79 per night.) If I hadn't splurged 411.00 for the abbey experience (and instead paid 100 for dinner and lodging that night), my costs would have been 311.00 less. During our nine nights together in France, Duane spent a total of 670.99 (about $747.40) plus whatever his flights cost him (about $600, I think). That's $83.04 per night ($149.71 with his flights). Together, not counting flights, we spent the equivalent of $2031.68 and points for this vacation. Because I've never tracked my trip spending before, I have no frame of reference for our costs. I feel like we did a good job of using money wisely spending only on things that brought us value but who knows? I'm sure plenty of people would spend much less on a trip like this. That would probably require advance planning, though, and half the fun for us is making this up as we go. Here's the thing, though. How much have I been spending simply to live here at home? About $5000 per month, right? (And I'm aiming to get that down to $4000 per month.) When you compare the cost of travel to the cost of simply maintaining my lifestyle here in the U.S., it's shockingly affordable. Cheaper than living in Portland, even. That's food for thought. One final note: In Edinburgh, Brandon showed me how to use Apple Pay. Believe it or not, I'd never done this before. Now, though, I'm hooked. Even back here in Portland, I'm using my phone to pay for things, not my actual credit card. I think this is awesome. Duane is less convinced. But that's a subject for a future blog post

Author: J.D. Roth In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals. https://www.getrichslowly.org/travel-spending/

[shawnsprincesse]

How did you get so many reads on Wattpad? I've been trying really hard. Talking in forums and voting and commenting on other stories, and writing decent content, at least to me, and I still hardly get any reads. MAybe 4 per chapter (maybe 3 because i think one of those is me when I read through to extra make sure there is no mistakes) and still no votes or comments. I've given in and voted on all 10 chapters that I have up so far. I've had my story up for about a month an a half.

My readers for Twin Rivals which was my wattpad story doesn’t actually do me justice. Before I jumped on the wattpad wagon I was gaining millions of views on another site where Justin Bieber fans posted fanfics. I built up that reader base from years and years on twitter and I had 44k followers on my twitter when I was at my peak right before I left.

I got the million views from twitter and they do not really reflect anything but my once upon a time twitter “fame”. I’ve been a fanfic writer since 2009 and I built up a good reader base as one out of maybe ten girls at the time who posted sex stories on twitter and the jb fic place and people soon learnt to recognize me. I did a lot of twitter promo and i got a lot of attention for that story and it was hard work but I wouldn’t say the views on that piece reflects my skills as an author as it was mostly hyped up by people on twitter so the word spread easily.

My harry books we’re never promoted except the promotion I’ve done on tumblr. Posting excerpts to get people to read them was all I did. I never ask people to “hey check out my books” chances are no one wants to hear you say that and they will not want to do that. I never comment other peoples stories or anything because I don’t read them.

I got 0.5 million views on the first book and it’s been two years. That is not a lot of views if I’m gonna be honest (not compared to how much better my jb fics did). 0.5 million views in two years roughly amounts to 3000-7000k on each chapter and yes that is a lot of people if you think about putting them all in a room or if you think about me starting out with zero. However, Twin rivals at it’s peak roughly got somewhere between 10-15k on each chapter and now has over 30k on each chapter and THAT story has 1.4 million views which is still a low number for a wattpad book to be called successful. It is still not getting recommended in all the right places despite it’s success.

Wattpad is obviously not valueing their writers and they are not promoting us right. Now I’m not whining, I have a shit ton of views and I’ve worked on it for a shitlong time. However wattpad is not the writing plattform I wish it would be. I use it because I want to keep my work in one place and since TR was already posted on there I figured I’d smack my Harry series up there to.

When I shifted to the Harrie fandom I had zero Harrie friends. Everyone on twitter got pissed as fuck (bc apparently you’re fake if you leave one fanbase to join another) and the only thing I had was my loyal readers. When I posted my first chapter of MPH I was lucky to get roughly 100 people to read it- those were loyal from the belieber fandom. From there I worked my way up by updating every single day, writing replies to all nice comments, posting about it on here (I had a just become a harry tumblr so I tried to get people on here to read it) It takes a while to build up a fanbase of readers. It is hard work and you have to plug your story without forcing it on people.

Wattpad is unfortunately not willing to help smaller writers so you need to find another platform where you can post about your stories and find your readers. My book is averaging at 500 reads and that is after two years of hard work. 2 fucking years and a college auditorium is willing to read my work…. that is very poorly for someone who’s spent two years of her life on a book. (Once again not whining, just comparing)

As a writer you have a choice, you can either write for your own pleasure and fun and not worry about the views you’re getting or you can go full on out there and promote yourself to every person you come across and work hard to get the views. I chose to not do the heavy promotion for my Harry series because I knew how much work it would be. I know how long it would take to get abother 44k of a whole new fanbase to pay attention to me. It would’ve been nearly impossible.

I was lucky as a jb writer. The timing was right and I was early enough, there wasn’t much on the market especially not in the kink department at the time and I hit it off. You only get a chance like that once in your life time and it has to be so fucking perfectly timed that you’ll never figure out how to do it again. Think about all the youtubers out there, pewdiepie for example was extremely lucky and had an extremely perfected timing for his videos. NO ONE else did what he did at the time.

So unless you wanna figure out exactly how to time everything in your “writing career” right then you’re better off waiting for the slow growth and that can take two years like mine did or it can take three months. It all depends on when you’re satisfied. I consider my Harry series to be a success but I’m still shit ass nervous to start a new book because I’ll lose readers.

Mph is 0.5 million, lph is 145k and hah is 50ishk that’s how many reads i lost through each book and there’s nothing I can do about that so don’t stress to much.

I hope this long ass answer kind of explained to you how I got so many views on one book and how it’s quite impossible to do that again which shows at my other books :) i hope you feel encouraged to write despite your low views and at least find it relieveing it took this lil writer right here two years to get so many views😂😂😂

Basically with luck you can get 1.39m

Without luck and two years you can get 0.5m

[andrewdburton]

How much I spent during two weeks of travel

I like to travel. Over the past decade, I've probably made an average of two international trips per year. But you know what? Never once in that time have I tried to track how much I spend while exploring the world. Sure, I log my numbers in Quicken (as I do for everything), but I've never analyzed the cost of an individual trip.

This month, I flew to Europe to hang out with my cousin Duane again. He and I enjoy traveling together. Because I was curious, I decided to be diligent about tracking my expenses for this trip.

Note, however, that I didn't try to do anything different. I didn't adjust my normal behavior simply because I knew I'd be reporting to GRS readers. I did what I always do. I spent in ways that felt normal to me.

I don't need a fancy hotel, for instance. Neither does Duane. We're happy with cheap, simple lodging. And because most of the time we don't book rooms in advance, we don't hunt for the best deal. When we decide to stop for the night, we look for a place to stay. When we find something reasonable ($50 per person per night is our target) and available, we book it. We don't continue to search. We'd rather use our time to explore our surroundings.

On the other hand, we're both willing to splurge on food from time to time. Our rooms aren't important to us, but what we eat is.

Similarly, we'll pay to see special sites, but mostly we're happy visiting free museums and/or walking around a city. We don't pay much for tours, etc.

So, how much did I spend for two weeks in Europe? Let's find out!

Chateau Chenonceau in France's Loire Valley

Booking Flights

This trip was sort of spontaneous. Remember, Duane has throat cancer. We expected our trip in December to be the last adventure we had together. But his health has held steady — and his doctor is making hopeful statements that he might be around for Christmas! — so we decided to make another trip.

Generally, I try to book flights several months in advance. I feel like I find cheaper options that way. This time, though, I didn't book my flight until April 19th, less than a month before our trip.

Also, I'm fussy about flights. It's not that I need to sit in business class — I'm perfectly happy in coach — but I don't like layovers. I'm willing to pay extra for a direct flight.

Unfortunately, when I searched for flights from Portland to Paris, I couldn't find any direct flights. I could, however, find a non-stop to London. I like London. It's a pleasant city. “What if,” I thought, “I flew to London a few days early and used that time to get some work done? Then I could take the Chunnel train across to Paris to meet Duane when he arrives.”

So, I booked a flight to London. It cost me $996.63 and each leg took roughly 10.5 hours.

(I don't know how much Duane paid for his plane ticket. I think it was around $600, but he had to fly from Portland to Las Vegas to Los Angeles to Paris and it took him almost 24 hours. Yuck. I'm happy to pay a premium to avoid crap like that.)

I made a small mistake when booking my ticket. In the past, I've always traveled economy. That's what I thought I was doing this time. Nope. Apparently, there's a new(-ish) airfare class called “basic economy”. This is a massive “screw you” from the airlines to their customers. It's a little bit cheaper, but you're not allowed to make any changes to your ticket once you've booked. No option to upgrade. Plus, you board dead last. And you can't choose your seat. And if you check a bag — as I did for my return flight — it costs a ton.

Edinburgh

I flew into London with no real plan for the first few days. Brandon (the Mad Fientist) had invited me to visit him and his wife in Edinburgh, Scotland, but I felt like I oughtn't do it. I felt like I should stay in London and work.

When I landed, though, I changed my mind. “Is it still okay if I come up to see you?” I asked. “Sure!” Brandon said. So, I hopped on Trainline (an awesome app that Duane and I used to buy train tickets during our December trip) and booked a ticket from London to Edinburgh. Cost: $101.92.

While waiting for my train at Kings Cross station (and watching the tourist throngs at Platform 9-1/2), I withdrew £200 for spending money, which is about $252.31. I used this cash to buy things like coffee and snacks and souvenirs. I brought home £141.15, which means I spent £58.85 (or about $74.24) cash while in the U.K.

I had a great time hanging out with Brandon and Jill. They showed me everyday life in Edinburgh, one of my favorite cities. They put me up in their spare room, took me to pubs, and we wandered together through the streets and the parks.

While there, I spent:

$45.76 at Brewdog for beer and snacks. (Did you know that low-alcohol beer — like 0.5% to 2.0% — is a thing in the U.K.? I wish it was a thing here in the U.S. I'd buy it.)

$17.74 at Whiski Bar for an hour of music and Scotch.

$9.91 at Cairngorm Coffee, where Brandon and I spent a morning working.

$33.78 at Mother India restaurant, where the three of us had a fine meal of “Indian tapas”.

In all, I spent a total of $283.35 during my three nights in Scotland.

Picnic in the Meadows with the Mad Fientist and friends

Paris

When it came time to meet Duane in Paris, I was faced with a choice. Originally, I had intended to take the train from London to Paris. But when I looked at times and prices to get from Edinburgh to Gare du Nord, I didn't like what I saw. The trip would take about 12.5 hours and the total cost would be over $350. Yikes!

“You should book a flight on EasyJet,” Brandon suggested. I've never used EasyJet, but I looked into it. For $199.45, I could fly from Edinburgh to Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) in Paris — in less than two hours. I booked a ticket. Then, using Chase Ultimate Rewards points, I booked one night at the Hotel ibis, which is attached to CDG terminal 3. My cost: 7718 Chase points.

In Paris, I paid €17.99 for a one-day train pass, which gave me unlimited access to all Metro and RER routes. (The metro lines are the subway and local trains. The RER routes are the commuter trains that run deeper into the suburbs, going places like Versailles and the airport.) I also withdrew €200 in cash (about $222.50) to use for incidental expenses, such as snacks and souvenirs.

While I waited for Duane's flight to arrive, I visited Notre Dame to see what it looked like after the fire. (I was startled to note that when the wind was right, you could smell the ashes!) I bought an extra travel shirt. And I met my friend Amy for champagne and charcuterie. (Amy lives in Houston but happened to be in Paris for work.)

Amy, J.D., and random amused French woman

At around 18:00, I returned to the airport to pick up our rental car. I was worried this might not go smoothly, but I was wrong. Estelle, the young woman at the Avis counter, was amazing. It didn't take long for her to get met set up with a Peugot 208. Plus, she was kind enough to phone ahead to our hotel to let them know we'd be a little late. I booked the car with British Airways points. My cost: 16,600 Avios — a bargain!

As I was finishing at the rental car, Duane cleared immigration. Perfect timing! We hopped in our little car, braved Paris traffic and made our way to the garden spot of Giverny.

In Giverny, we checked into our B&B (booked with 8154 Chase points), then hurried to the only restaurant in town that was still open. Duane spent €51.00 on our dinner of duck breast and red wine.

During two nights in and around Paris, I spent $199.45, €17.99, 8154 Chase points, and 16,600 Avios (BA points). Duane spent €51.00.

Normandy

The next morning, Duane and I started our driving tour of northwest France. I'd been worried that all French drivers would be like the ones in Paris. They weren't. On the country roads, people were much more mellow. Thank goodness. (I drive like an old man. I hate speeding and tailgating.)

First, we toured Rouen, the town where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. We saw our first cathedral of the trip, visited the (free) Museum of Fine Arts, and browsed the weekly market.

Duane and I both enjoy markets. We're happy to pass time looking at fruits and vegetables and meat and fish. For real. Plus, this gave us a chance to buy cheap food for the road. I picked up a paper sack filled with twenty baby chorizo sausages, for instance, and it cost only €5. (I think there were more than 20 sausages in the bag too. That thing lasted me almost the entire trip, and I was eating several sausages per day.)

In the afternoon, we drove to Honfleur with no plans about where to stay. The first hotel we visited was perfect: cheap and efficient. I paid €100.00 to book a room. Duane spent €54.00 on our dinner at a local pub.

On our second day, we meandered along the coast. We stopped to taste calvados (an apple brandy made in Normandy), nibbled goat cheese in Deauville, and stopped to visit the Grand Hotel in Cabourg, the site of Proust's famous memory-inducing madeleine.

Buying goat cheese and “bacon” in Deauville

In the late afternoon, we reached Bayeux. Our first hotel choice was booked, but the second had two cheap rooms available. We paid €49.00 each. For dinner, we chose an expensive restaurant (I can't remember why) that cost Duane €94.00.

After dinner, we wandered around town. It was a magical evening in mid-spring. We happened to hit the city during its “festival of lights”, and when we stopped by the cathedral, an American choir was performing a concert. We stopped in to listen.

In the morning, we visited the Bayeux Tapestry, a 70-meter long work of art that's nearly 1000 years old. In dozens of scenes, it depicts the Norman conquest of England. People think I'm joking when I say this, but I'm not: This tapestry is like a very early comic book. (And, in fact, the drawings used to plan tapestries like this are referred to as cartoons. No joke.) This visit cost me €19.00.

Seriously, the Bayeux Tapestry is like a primitive comic book

While in Bayeux, we visited Omaha Beach and the nearby American Military Cemetery. After that, we drove backroads to reach Mont-Saint-Michel, one of the most famous tourist sites in all of France (and formerly one of the top three destinations for Christian pilgrims). This island used to be isolated from the mainland by ocean tides. Now there's a causeway that leads to it, but even that sometimes floods over (as it did during our stay).

I used 14,538 Chase points to book a room on the island, and I'm glad we did. During the day, the place is packed. After 18:00, the crowd disperses and things become peaceful. It's fun to wander the ramparts with nobody to disturb you.

Here, Duane paid €89.00 for dinner.

During our time in Normandy, I spent a total of €168.00 and 14,538 Chase points. Duane spent €286.00.

Mont-Saint-Michel at high tide

Brittany

The next morning, after a quick tour of the Mont-Saint-Michel abbey, Duane and I packed up to drive to Brittany. (The island actually sits on the border between the two regions.)

As we entered Brittany, we got our first taste of fuel prices in France. To put 38 liters (about 10 gallons) in the Peugot 208, I paid €60.00. Holy cats! That's nearly $7 per gallon, or about twice what we pay here in the States.

In the early afternoon, we stopped for a couple of hours in the walled city of Dinan, which is built on a hillside overlooking the river Rance.

Looking from the ramparts of Dinan to the valley below

By early evening, we'd reached Carnac on the Atlantic coast. Carnac is famous for its “standing stones”, a collection of 3000+ domens and menhirs in the region. I love sites like this (and Avebury and Stonehenge in England), so was pleased to visit. (If you've ever read any Asterix comics, you're familiar with the stones of Carnac.)

The first hotel we visited had a cheap room available (€66.00), so we booked it. Our dinner next door was…an adventure.

Brittany, as you may know, is the source of the crepe. It's also the source of the galette (a savory crepe). Crepes and galettes everywhere in this region. Because we like to try local food when we travel, Duane and I decided to eat galettes for our evening meal. “You should get the andouille,” the restaurant owner told us, smiling. So we did.

Well. It turns out that American andouille is not the same as French andouille. French andouille is simply sliced pig intestine that has (ostensibly) been cleaned very, very well.

“This tastes like ass,” Duane said as he ate his galette. He couldn't finish. I did finish, but was a little mortified when I looked up the ingredients later. Our host seemed to take pity on us for being such good sports. When I ordered a glass of calvados after the meal, he gave me a huge pour.

I paid €46.00 for our dinner of pig-gut pancakes.

During our 24 hours in Brittany, I spent a total of €172.00. Duane spent nothing.

The Loire Valley

After a quick breakfast of coffee and crepes (€12.00 paid by Duane), we made our way to Angers, former capital of the Anjou region. (Angers is the source of both anjou pears and Cointreau liqueur.) Here, we visited our first chateau. Did you know that a chateau is a castle? I didn't — not until this trip.

Anyhow, the Chateau d'Angers is home to the amazing Apocalypse Tapestry, a 600-year-old visual retelling of the apocalypse story from the Bible's Book of Revelation. Like the Bayeux Tapestry, it reminds me of a massive comic book made from cloth. It cost us €12.00 each to see the chateau and its art. (Duane paid this.)

The Apocalypse Tapestry at Chateau d'Angers

In the evening, we experienced our big splurge of the trip. Based on a GRS reader recommendation, I had booked a night for us at the Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud, a former monastery founded in 1101. Although many old buildings remain (and guests are free to explore them), the site is no longer an abbey. It's a fancy upscale hotel and a Michelin-star restaurant.

Going in, I'd told Duane to ignore the costs for our night at Fontevraud. “I'm paying for the hotel and dinner, and it's not part of our trip accounting. Don't try to balance it out,” I said. “I'm making a deliberate decision to splurge.”

Our room at the abbey cost us €172.00. Our meal cost €239.00. As I mentioned earlier this week, the food was fine and I'm glad I experienced it. But I wouldn't do it again.

In the morning, we traveled country roads to visit another chateau: Chenonceau. We each paid €19.00 to tour the grounds of this beautiful old estate.

In the afternoon, we moved to nearby Amboise, where Duane paid €73.00 to book a hotel. We hiked up the hillside, then tasted wine in a cave. We ate dinner at the tiny Restaurant L'Ilot, where the woman waiting tables chided us for not making a reservation — then was playfully grouchy the rest of the evening. This meal cost Duane €94.00 because he insisted we order a bottle of wine.

The next day, we stopped briefly in Blois to visit the church of St Nicolas. This place is barely mentioned in the guidebooks, but we loved it. During World War II, most of its stained-glass windows were destroyed. They've been replaced by modern windows with modern glass. The results are amazing. When light shines through them, color spreads throughout the church.

The light show from the stained glass at St Nicolas Church

We next stopped in Chartres to visit its famous cathedral, which is especially known for its stained-glass windows. And while yes, there are many of them (176!) and they're impressive, I liked the ones in Blois better.

During our time in the Loire Valley, I spent a total of €430.00, most of it for my splurge at the abbey. Duane spent €281.00. (He filled the car with gas at one point.)

Wrapping Things Up

After touring the Chartres cathedral, we didn't know what to do. We found ourselves on the southwest side of Paris, but wanting to reach the northeast corner by the following evening. We couldn't make up our minds, so I simply drove east.

Eventually, we reached Fontainebleau, which we decided might be fun to visit. But the town was packed and we were tired. Instead, we drove on until we found a budget hotel (aptly named Budget Hotel), where Duane paid €86.00 for a room. For dinner, we each paid cash at a French fast-food chain.

The next morning, we returned our rental car. I was sad to say good-bye to the Peugot 208, which had served us well. Before we turned it in, Duane paid €32.00 to top off the fuel tank.

For logistics purposes, I'd used 11,182 Chase points to book us separate rooms at the ibis Hotel once again. (It's handy having this place next to the airport train station.) We each paid €17.99 for one-day train tickets, then we rode into Paris.

With several hours to kill, we decided to walk the city. But we didn't walk the downtown tourist core. We've both done that before. Instead, we chose the Coulée verte René-Dumont, an elevated greenway akin to New York's Highline. From there, we made our way along the canal. This 5k stroll made for great people-watching.

Here, we said our good-byes. Duane wandered off to spend time on his own. I met up with my pal Matt Kepnes (a.k.a. Nomadic Matt) for a couple of beers.

In the morning, I took an early flight back to London (booked with 4500 Avios and $27.50), then boarded my Delta flight back to Portland.

On this final day, I spent a total of $47.48, 4500 Avios, and 11,182 Chase points. (At some point, I withdrew another €200.00 in spending money. I returned home with €102.66, which means I spent €97.34 of that — or about $108.41.) Duane spent €86.00 and $19.98.

The Bottom Line

After all of that, how much did I spend on this trip? Let's crunch the numbers. For two weeks (three nights in Scotland and ten in France), I spent:

$996.63 for my flights from and to the U.S.

$573.65

€637.98 (about $710.63)

19,336 Chase points

21,100 Avios (British Airways points)

Converting all of my expenses to dollars, my total cost was $2277.91 plus rewards points. That's an average of $175.22 per night. (I spent $1284.28 plus points if you ignore the flight, for an average of $98.79 per night.)

If I hadn't splurged €411.00 for the abbey experience (and instead paid €100 for dinner and lodging that night), my costs would have been €311.00 less.

During our nine nights together in France, Duane spent a total of €670.99 (about $747.40) plus whatever his flights cost him (about $600, I think). That's $83.04 per night ($149.71 with his flights). Together, not counting flights, we spent the equivalent of $2031.68 and points for this vacation.

Because I've never tracked my trip spending before, I have no frame of reference for our costs. I feel like we did a good job of using money wisely — spending only on things that brought us value — but who knows? I'm sure plenty of people would spend much less on a trip like this. That would probably require advance planning, though, and half the fun for us is making this up as we go.

Here's the thing, though. How much have I been spending simply to live here at home? About $5000 per month, right? (And I'm aiming to get that down to $4000 per month.) When you compare the cost of travel to the cost of simply maintaining my lifestyle here in the U.S., it's shockingly affordable. Cheaper than living in Portland, even.

That's food for thought.

One final note: In Edinburgh, Brandon showed me how to use Apple Pay. Believe it or not, I'd never done this before. Now, though, I'm hooked. Even back here in Portland, I'm using my phone to pay for things, not my actual credit card. I think this is awesome. Duane is less convinced. But that's a subject for a future blog post…

The post How much I spent during two weeks of travel appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/travel-spending/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[mikemortgage]

Relying on proprietary products not necessarily a bad thing for advisers

I have been known to be critical of the biases in Canada’s financial advice industry and rightly so, as there is plenty to criticize. I was interested to read the findings of a recent two-year research investigation by Credo Consulting into the presumably biased practice of proprietary product loading (PPL). The study determined that PPL was common.

“Financial advisers use their own related/affiliated companies’ products far more frequently than could have happened by chance alone,” according to Credo. The results were reported in a study released earlier this year called Advisers Load Clients’ Portfolios With Proprietary Products.

National Bank came out on top, with National Bank Financial advisers recommending National Bank funds to 62 per cent of their clients. The likelihood of a randomly selected investor owning National Bank mutual funds was only 4.8 per cent. A client of National Bank is therefore roughly 13 times as likely to own National Bank products than an average investor.

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The largest dealer in the study, Royal Bank, had clients about 5 times as likely to own RBC mutual funds as the general investing population.

Proprietary product loading by dealers of their affiliated manufacturer’s products is common across the board. In fact, all 15 dealers investigated by Credo were found to favour the mutual funds of their sister companies.

These findings do not surprise me. What did surprise me was the degree to which investors’ feelings of financial well-being correlated with owning proprietary funds. I would have expected those with proprietary funds to be worse off than those with more diverse investments. But the investigation found that “the statistical evidence does not support the idea that … investors are any worse off (or better off, for that matter) for having … (proprietary) mutual funds in their portfolios.”

In fairness, the “assessment” of well-being was a subjective one based on survey questions as opposed to an objective one based on relative investment returns, for example. But the results were interesting nonetheless.

I put forth the argument that if the fees for a proprietary product are competitive and represent a fair value for the services provided, I would not be too concerned about the product selection bias that Credo found to exist.

In fact, I might argue that an adviser who spends less time focused on product selection — where they arguably provide less value — and more time focused on tangible items they can control is time better spent in the first place.

So, if an adviser uses proprietary products they know well already, they can allocate more resources to investment risk tolerance assessment, portfolio asset allocation, tax efficiency, decumulation planning, estate strategies, and retirement planning. These, to me, are more black and white than the grey of whether someone owns a National Bank or Royal Bank mutual fund with comparable mandates and fees.

Some low-fee aficionados would decry any suggestion that investors consider mutual funds at all. Given Canada’s high fees, it is a fair concern to raise. The 2017 Morningstar Global Fund Investor Experience Study once found Canada had the highest mutual fund fees of the 25 countries surveyed.

Canada’s median asset-weighted expense ratio for equity funds in the study was 2.23 per cent. By comparison, the other two “bottom” rated countries were Taiwan (1.91 per cent) and Belgium (1.75 per cent). The United States came out on top with median fees of 0.67 per cent for equity funds.

And while Canadians could have significantly lower investment fees by building a do-it-yourself exchange-traded fund portfolio (maybe 0.1-0.2 per cent) or opting for a robo-adviser for investment management (maybe 0.5-0.75 per cent all-in), not everyone is destined to be a DIY investor nor comfortable with the non-traditional model of a fintech firm. Investing is, after all, a personal financial decision, so there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

If you are invested in proprietary products, the two questions I would be asking are if you are invested in products with competitive fees and if you are getting more than just investment management?

If your fees are much more than 1.5 per cent annually, there are definitely lower cost alternatives. And if you are only receiving investment management, with no ancillary services, 1.5 per cent is on the high side. Clearly, based on Morningstar’s recent assessment, most Canadians pay much more than that given the median balanced/allocation fund fee is 2.02 per cent.

Advisers who put their clients in high-fee, proprietary products, and provide little to no additional financial planning are a bad investment. The longer you hold on, the worse your return will be. This is one time that buy and hold is definitely the wrong investment strategy.

Jason Heath is a fee-only Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and income tax professional for Objective Financial Partners Inc. in Toronto, Ontario.

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[ronaldmrashid]

Who Makes A Million Dollars A Year? Exploring The Top 0.1% Income Earners

If you want to get rich, you might as well focus on joining industries that pay very well. But there’s more to just joining a well-paying industry to get you to a million dollar income. You’ve also got to perform at a high level, survive cutthroat competition, and receive lots of luck along the way.

Corporate politics can be brutal on your climb to the top of the pyramid. Oftentimes, it’s those who’ve been able to successfully sell themselves internally who achieve the greatest rewards.

During my career in investment banking, I was too defiant. Despite getting promoted quickly in my 20s, I stalled in my 30s because I didn’t want to relocate to grind cities like New York or Hong Kong. Nor could I pretend to like enough people who could push me forward. In the end, I decided to see what I could do entirely with my own fingers.

We know that an American top 1% income starts at around $450,000 today. We also know that a top 1% income varies by age as well. For those interested in making a top 0.1% income, let’s take a look at some career profiles. 

The People Who Make $1 Million A Year Or More

Managing Director, Investment Banking – Achieving the title of Managing Director has always meant that you’d finally break seven figures a year, at least when I worked in the industry between 1999 – 2012. The typical MD base is around $400,000 – $500,000, and they would often earn a bonus of $500,000 or more.

But the bonus is often paid in deferred stock and cash. For example, out of the $500,000 bonus, only $200,000 might be paid in upfront cash. The remaining $300,000 is deferred over four years. If you quit before the four years is up, you lose your deferred compensation, which is why negotiating a severance is huge in any industry with deferred compensation.

General Partner, Private Equity – Private equity is one of the most coveted next step careers for investment bankers. The hours are much better, while the pay also tends to be higher as well. These folks earn salary, bonuses, and carried interest, which can often lead to huge bucks.

Some of the top private equity firms include: Blackstone Group, KKR, Warburg Pincus, TPG, and various sovereign wealth funds like Temasek, GIC, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Another chart by efinancialcareers.com.

Portfolio Manager, Hedge Fund – Again, your compensation is based on performance, size of assets under management, and the number of employees. First-year associates out of business school can make $250,000 – $500,000 at the largest shops. By the time you become a general partner or portfolio manager, you should be making at least $1 million a year if your fund is over $500 million. Here are some great charts by efinancialcareers.com.

Portfolio Manager, Actively Managed Long Only Fund – Fund manager pay is based on tenure, performance, and assets under management. In order to earn $1 million a year, you will probably need to manage over $1 billion in assets under management and have a solid 5-year or longer track record of performance. A 1% fee on $1 billion generates $10 million a year in revenue to pay the portfolio manager, analysts, office rent, marketing, other operating expenses, and the overall company.

But most of these actively run funds are charging less now (~0.5%) due to the proliferation of index funds. Companies such as BlackRock, Fidelity, Wellington, T.Rowe. Price, Capital, PIMCO, Prudential, Nuveen, Invesco, Janus, AXA, Legg Mason, TIAA-CREF and many more all have portfolio managers and some analysts who earn over $1 million a year.

Principal/ General Partner, Venture Capital – Just like all the other money management industries, there are good venture capital firms and there are bucket shops. The largest VC firms like Benchmark, Sequoia, and Kleiner Perkins pay their General Partners multi-million dollars a year, especially if one of their investments has a huge exit such as when Whatsapp sold to Facebook for $19 billion in stock and cash.

I consider being a VC one of the best vacation jobs in the world because you don’t have to build anything, you get to earn a nice salary with carry, and you don’t have to prove your investment returns for years given the normal 5-10 year lockup periods for funds. By the time your limited partners discover you’ve made terrible investments, you’ll have earned a lot of money and moved on to a new VC or started a new fund within the firm.

Analyst $ 80K – $ 150K

Associate $ 130K – $ 250K

Vice Presidents $ 200K – $ 250K + $ 0-1MM carry bonus

Principal/Junior MD $ 500K – $ 700K + $ 1-2 MM carry bonus

Managing Directors/Partners $ 1MM + $ 3-10MM carry bonus

Partner, Big Law – The starting salary for first-year associates is around $190,000. By their 8th year (34-35 years old), their salaries will have risen to around $330,000. The funny thing about big law is that everybody up to the 8th year all get paid pretty much the same across all firms.

Bonuses are nothing to write home about, often ranging between 0% – 20% of salary. Therefore, in order to make the big bucks in law, you need to become a partner where you’re bringing in business and earning a percentage of profits.

Starting in 2018 from law.com

* Strategy Consulting, Partner – Firms like McKinsey, Bain, and BCG are some of the top strategy/management consulting firms. But to get to partner and $1,000,000+ generally takes about 10 years after business school, and only a few make it that far. Here’s the salary progression from the website: managementconsulted.com.

First-year out of undergrad:

Base: ~$80k

Signing Bonus: ~$5k

Performance Bonus: up to ~$12k

First year out of MBA:

Base: ~$150k

Signing Bonus: ~$25k

Performance Bonus: up to ~$44k

Manager/Project Leader (2-3 years out of MBA):

Base: $190-210k

Bonus: $80-120k

Associate Principal/Senior Project Leader (4-5 years out of MBA): 

Base: $230-300k

Bonus: $110-200k

Junior Partner/Principal (6-8 years out of MBA): 

Base: $320-400k

Bonus: $300-500k

Senior Partner/Director (10+ years out of MBA): 

Base: $400-600k

Bonus: $500k+ (all-in, senior partners at top firms usually make $1M+; top partners can make $4-5M while ultra-performers can make more)

* Division I Football Coaches – The average salary of a Division I football coach is roughly $1.8 million. It is the football coach that is often the highest paid state employee. For example, Nick Saban took down $11,132,000 at Alabama in 2017. Not bad! Even Urban Meyer, a head coach full of controversy for covering things up makes over $6 million a year.

Source: USA Today

* Public Company C-Level Executive – Don’t let $1 salaries fool you. C-level executives are often paid mostly in stock compensation. The theory is to tie compensation to performance. They simply end up getting way more stock than anybody at the firm. For example, Dara Khosrowshahi reportedly got a $200+ million package to join Uber and pretend that the firm cares about its minimum wage earning drivers. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has a base salary of around $650,000, but got a stock grant worth $199 million in 2016. The median CEO pay for the top 100 largest companies reached a record $15.7 million in 2017.

Source: Equilar

* Self Help Gurus – The self-help industry is estimated to be worth more than $11 billion dollars and growing because we’re all jockeying to make more money and gain more prestige. The self-help industry is also considered recession-proof since even more people are looking to get out of the muck during downturns.

Folks like Tony Robbins make millions selling $10,000 self-help seminar tickets. His net worth is estimated at $500 million. TV personality Dr. Phil wrote a bestseller on how to lose weight and eat right, despite he himself being overweight. Then there are guys like James Altucher whose company generated over $11 million in sales selling himself as a cryptocurrency genius in order to sell his courses online.

Whether you succeed or fail, these people will always succeed because people are always feeling bad about themselves in this ultra-competitive world.

Anything is possible!

* Professional Athletes – They make great money, but their longevity isn’t very long. One estimate says that if you are able to finish every professional golf tournament at par, you will average $1 million a year in earnings. Did you know the NBA veteran’s minimum salary is $2.4 million if you’ve been in the league for 10+ years? Pretty good if you can survive that long.

The average NBA player will make ~$25 million during his career. This is based on an average annual salary of $5.2 million and a career length of 4.8 years. In comparison, the average NFL player will make only $6.5 million due to a lower average salary of around $2 million a year and a shorter average career length of just 3.3 years. Elsewhere, the average MLB player earns about $3.3 million annually, while the average NHL player earns about $2.5 million.

NBA Minimum Salary Chart

* Bloggers – Blogging is my favorite business in the world because you can simply write whatever is on your mind and advertisers will pay you, not your readers. Since you give away your product for free, there are no returns, no customer support, and no obligations to your customers, only freedom baby!

One of my favorite responses to an unhappy reader is, “I’ll gladly refund any money you’ve paid to read my work.” For some reason, they never respond. Whoo hoo! I’m telling ya, if you’re irreverent and don’t want to worry about your product spoiling or having a defect, blogging is the best.

Once you build a brand and can generate organic traffic of over one million pageviews a month, there’s a decent chance you could make $1 million in revenue a year. Here’s a sample income report from a personal finance blogger.

The Million Dollar A Year Dream

The easiest way to make $1 million a year or more is as a public company non-founding CEO. The compensation is outrageously high for what they do. CEOs have huge teams who do most of the work for them. A CEO is really just an ambassador of the firm who tries to drum up positive PR. They sign off on decisions that have already been carefully vetted. They neither invent new ideas or get in the weeds.

It’s good to be CEO vs. the common worker +997.2% vs. +10.9% since 1978

The hardest way to make $1 million a year or more is a profession that relies mostly on performance. As a fund manager, you’re either outperforming your respective index or you aren’t. As a professional tennis player, nobody is going to win a match for you. As a blogger, you’re either going to come up with interesting content that gets indexed and shared, or suffer in purgatory. The upside is professions that rely mostly on performance provide the most satisfaction.

I don’t have to tell you that earning $1 million a year is difficult. Even if you do get to such a milestone, it’s even harder to stay there over the long-term due to competitive forces that will eat away at your product or services.

Never assume you’ll make $1 million again the next year. Instead, save as much of it as you can. If possible, figure out a way to build a brand around yourself or your business to expand your earning power. Always work on improving your craft because eventually, you will become irrelevant. When that time comes, however, you already will have saved up a lovely nest egg to support you for the rest of your life in peace.

Remember, you only need to get rich once!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Related:

The Top 1% Net Worth Levels By Age Group

The Top 1% Income Levels By Age

How High Net Worth Individuals Invest Their Riches

Reader, do you believe you have the ability to earn $1 million a year? How long do you think you can earn $1 million a year if you do? Did your happiness change at all once you hit the $1 million mark? What other types of people earn $1 million a year?

The post Who Makes A Million Dollars A Year? Exploring The Top 0.1% Income Earners appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from https://www.financialsamurai.com/who-makes-a-million-dollars-a-year-exploring-the-top-0-1-income-earners/

[samuelfields]

The Benefits Of Owning Stocks Over Real Estate For Certain Investors

I was expecting much more backlash from coastal city folks in my article, Why Real Estate Will Always Be More Desirable Than Stocks, but instead, I got heat from folks who live in the Midwest. The general feedback was that Midwesterners never felt anti-housing rage and that I’m a fool for preferring real estate over stocks since they’ve made more money in the stock market.

Well obviously you aren’t going to feel a lot of anti-housing rage if you can buy a beautiful house for $280,000 a couple years out of school! And obviously you have a better chance of making a larger absolute return on your investment with stocks since housing is so cheap. We already know that in the long run, stocks outperform real estate, un-levered.

What I do predict with great confidence is that 20-30 years from now, the anti-housing rage will have spread to the Midwest. Money is fungible. It will go where the returns are highest. Residents from San Francisco, LA, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, and Miami will bring their bags of cash and either buy up non-coastal real estate directly through REITs or through real estate crowdfunding deals.

Making a fortune is about predicting long-term trends, and I’m certain diversity will continue to spread across America. Technology will make paying $4,600 a month for a two bedroom in a congested city like San Francisco no longer necessary because you no longer need to work in an office. By 2030, there will be more freelancers than W2 workers because today already ~35% of the American workforce are freelancers.

Every opportunity will eventually be arbitraged away. Thankfully, such trends can take decades to play out. Face reality or get left behind.

Why I’m Always Going To Own A Good Amount Of Stocks

After selling my SF rental house and reinvesting the proceeds, I’ve got roughly 30% of my net worth in stocks. Although stocks give me zero pleasure, they are a necessary component of my asset allocation because history has shown that stocks outperform inflation by 3-5X.

Here are some reasons why stocks may be more attractive than real estate.

1) Higher rate of return. Over the past 60 years, stocks have historically returned ~7-10% a year compared to 2-4% for real estate. You can also go on margin to boost your stock returns. However, I don’t recommend this strategy given your broker will force you to liquidate holdings to come up with cash if things go the other way. With real estate, your bank can’t force you to come up with cash or move out so long as you continue paying your mortgage.

2) Much more liquid. If you don’t like a stock or need immediate cash, you can easily sell your stock holdings. If you need to cash out of real estate you could theoretically take out a home equity line of credit, but it’s costly, needs getting approval, and takes at least a month to open up a new account. I tried unsuccessfully to sell one property in 2012. It took a stressful 45 days to finally sell the same property in 2017. With stocks, it’s so nice to be able to simply click a couple buttons and be done.

3) Lower transaction costs. Online transaction costs are under $5 a trade no matter how much you have to buy or sell. The real estate industry is still an oligopoly which still fixes commissions at a ridiculously high level of 5-6%. You would think with the growth of companies like Zillow and Redfin transaction costs would significantly decline, but unfortunately they’ve done very little to help lower expenses for the consumer.

Check out this detailed breakdown of how much it would cost to sell a $1,850,000 home.  If they charged a 6% commission fee, the cost would be $18,500 more!

The cost to sell real estate is still absurd

4) Less work. Real estate takes constant managing due to maintenance, conflicts with neighbors, and tenant rotation. Stocks can literally be left alone forever while paying out quarterly dividends. Without maintenance you’re able to focus your attention elsewhere such as spending time with family, your business, or traveling the world. If it made you feel more comfortable, you could hire a money manager for a fee of under 1% to manage your investments. Or you could just track and manage your portfolio yourself for free like I’ve done for the past 22 years.

Log onto dashboard and click Investing -> Holdings to get an overview of all accounts

5) More diversification. Unless you are super rich, you can’t own properties in Honolulu, San Francisco, Rio, Amsterdam and all the other great cities of the world. With stocks you can not only invest in different countries, you can also invest in various sectors. A well diversified stock portfolio could very well be less volatile than a property portfolio. People forget that buying property is a highly concentrated bet, often with debt, in a single asset.

6) Invest in products you care about. One of the most fun aspects about the stock market is that you can invest in what you use. Let’s say you are a huge fan of Apple products, McDonald’s cheeseburgers, and Lululemon yoga pants. You can simply buy AAPL, MCD, and  LULU. It’s a great feeling to not only use the products you invest in, but make money off your investments as well. As soon as we started actively using Netflix in 2011, we bought some shares that have done well (wish I put my life savings in the stock in 2006 when Reed Hastings, the founder spoke at my Berkeley MBA commencement!). As soon as my wife signed up for Amazon Prime in 2016, we also bought some shares.

7) Tax benefits. For capital gains and qualified dividends, the maximum tax rate is 15% for taxpayers in the lower tax brackets. For those in the highest tax bracket, the tax rate is 23.8%, including the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax, associated with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Short-term capital gains tax (<1 year holding period) will be taxed at the normal marginal income tax rate.

Although these tax rates are quite reasonable, they can’t compete with the $250K/$500K tax free gains for singles/married couples who sell their homes after living in it for 2 out of the last 5. Now that’s some great tax savings!

8) Protecting your investment in a downturn is easier. If you think the end is near you can easily sell a stock or short it. But if the real estate floor gives way, there will be no reasonable offers as vultures will start swarming. If you think the real estate market is about to implode, you can short homebuilder stocks like KB Homes, a homebuilding ETF like XHG, a real estate play like Home Depot, a REIT like O, or mortgage backed securities. But these hedges are inefficient. At least with physical real estate, you can buy insurance. But is buying insurance really a benefit when no insurance is required to buy stocks?

9) Less taxes and fees. Holding property requires paying property taxes usually equal to 0.5 – 2.5% of the value of the property each year. In 40 – 200 years, you’ll have paid for the full value of your property in taxes alone. Then there’s maintenance costs, insurance costs, property management costs, and transaction costs to deal with. With stocks, you can build a portfolio of ETFs for free on Fidelity. Or you can have a digital wealth advisor build and maintain your investment portfolio for just 0.25% a year.

From a property tax perspective, the only states that seem reasonable to own property are Hawaii (0.28%), Florida (1.06%, no state income taxes), Washington (1.09%, no state income taxes), Wyoming (0.61%), Colorado (0.61%), Utah (0.68%), South Carolina (0.57%), Louisiana (0.51%), Arkansas (0.62%), Alabama (0.43%), and Nevada (0.86%, no state income taxes).

Property taxes by state

Characteristics Most Suitable For Real Estate

* Believe wealth is made up of real assets not paper.

* Know where you want to live for at least five years.

* Do not do well in volatile environments.

* Easily spooked by downturns.

* Tend to buy and sell too often.

* Enjoy interacting with people.

* Takes pride in ownership.

* Likes to feel more in control.

Characteristics Most Suitable For Stocks

* Happy to give up control to those who should know better.

* Can stomach higher levels of volatility.

* Have tremendous discipline not to chase rallies and sell when things are imploding.

* Likes to trade.

* Enjoys studying economics, politics, and researching stocks.

* Don’t want to be tied down.

* Have a limited amount of capital to invest.

The Main Reason Why I Own Stocks Today

Real estate is a younger person’s asset class. I had all the energy in the world in my 20s and 30s to buy and manage real estate. Now that I’m in my 40s and have a wife and son to take care of, I simply do not have enough time or desire to manage real estate. The same thing goes for buying and selling cars. I had 10 cars between 22 – 34 because I was a car addict. I loved meeting up with people on Craigslist to haggle. Now, I’m happy to own one car for 10 years if it lasts that long.

If you want to own real estate build your empire when you’re young. You won’t have the energy once you’re middle-aged. I’m thankful the 2/2 condo I bought in 2003 is fully paid off. We’re thankful we got through remodeling hell at our current residence before our son was born. Now, we just want to own stocks, bonds, REITs, and real estate crowdfunding with our incremental investments.

A simple life is a happier life!

Readers, what are some other reasons why I prefer stocks over real estate? How is your net worth composition currently?

Related: Recommended Net Worth Allocation By Age Or Work Experience

The post The Benefits Of Owning Stocks Over Real Estate For Certain Investors appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from Finance https://www.financialsamurai.com/benefits-of-owning-stocks-over-real-estate/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[lindyhunt]

Unriddled: "Alexa, Make a Donation," and More Tech News You Need

Welcome one, welcome all to Wednesday -- the day that marks not just the week's halfway point, but another edition of "Unriddled": the HubSpot Marketing Blog's mid-week digest of the tech news you need to know.

This week, we continue to wade through the very crowded pool of tech news items to help you decrypt what's happening in this vast, often complex sector. And, get this: It's not all about Facebook.

It's our Wednesday tech news roundup, and we're breaking it down.

Unriddled: The Tech News You Need

1. An IRA Purge From Facebook

Yesterday afternoon, Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos issued a statement indicating that the company had removed 70 Facebook and 65 Instagram accounts, in addition to 138 Facebook Pages, that were controlled by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA). The announcement noted that many of these Pages ran ads that have also been removed from Facebook.

Roughly 95% of the Pages with content were in Russian, indicating that these pages were targeted toward Russia residents or people who speak the language in neighboring nations.

According to Stamos, the decision to remove these Pages had little to do with the content itself -- and everything to do with the fact that they were controlled by the IRA, which "has repeatedly used complex networks of inauthentic accounts to deceive and manipulate people who use Facebook, including before, during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential elections," he wrote. "It’s why we don’t want them on Facebook."

Users can expect a further explanation from Facebook in the coming weeks, Stamos said. The company is looking to update its Help Center so people can find out if they liked any of these Pages.

Source: Facebook

2. "Alexa, Make a Donation"

On Monday, it was revealed that Amazon Echo Users can now donate to 40 charities through Amazon Pay: a service, much like Apple Pay or Google Pay, that lets people use payment methods already associated stored in their Amazon accounts to purchase goods and services -- and now, to make donations.

To make donations through Alexa, users need to have such a valid payment method set up in their Amazon accounts, and have voice purchasing enabled. And in order to prevent others from making unwanted donations, users can set up a four-digit voice confirmation code, which can be done through the voice purchasing settings.

It's an interesting new feature for Amazon, and not the first that allows shoppers to use its technology to make charitable donations. In 2013, the company launched Amazon Smile, which lets users pick a charity that will receive 0.5% of what they pay for certain, eligible products.

Source: Amazon

But with the introduction of this Alexa skill, it allows users to make more spontaneous or impromptu donations just through an Alexa command -- without reaching for their wallets or filling in several information fields.

To that end, organizations that receive donations through Alexa will also receive the user's name, address, and email address, but not his or her credit card information. So, while there's a chance that you'll receive follow-up communication from the organization you donated to, the payment information itself is supposed to be secure. 

3. Data Leaks Abound

Facebook wants to make one thing clear to users: The ongoing situation with Cambridge Analytica was not a data leak. Rather, it was the misuse of data -- collected by an app developer as was allowed by Facebook at the time -- by an analytics and profiling firm that never should have obtained information in the first place.

Keep that distinction in mind -- because over the past several days, more than one consumer platform has experienced actual data leaks.

MyFitnessPal

One of them was MyFitnessPal: a free online calorie tracking site that's owned by fitness apparel company Under Armour, which announced last week that the site had experienced a data beach impacting up to 150 million accounts. The data did not include information like Social Security or credit card numbers, according to the company's statement, but was instead limited to things like usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords (the kind that's encrypted with something called bcrypt). 

Panera

The second was a data leak from fast-casual restaurant chain Panera that included information like customer names, email and mailing addresses, dates of birth, and the last four digits of their credit card numbers. And according to information security blogger Brian Krebs, Panera knew of this leak for eight months before it addressed it.

It all began in August 2017 when security researcher Dylan Houlihan alerted Panera that customer data was leaking from its site -- which according to emails supplied to Krebs, led to Panera's director of information security Mike Gustavison largely writing off the report as a scam. And despite Gustavison verifying the problem soon thereafter and saying the company was working on a fix, eight months later, Houlihan discovered that the site was not only continuing to leak data, but that the estimated seven million jeopardized customer records could also be easily indexed and crawled by automated tools.

Since Krebs first reported the leak on Monday, Panera has issued statements indicating that it has fixed the problem -- but several sources have said that the "fix" barely goes beyond requiring a valid user login to view these records (whereas before, anyone with the correct link to them could view them). Others have also reported that they have reason to believe more than seven million customer records have been exposed, and that Panera's corporate client records may have also been affected. 

Grindr

Finally, it was revealed by BuzzFeed earlier this week that dating app Grindr has been sharing personal user data with such third-party research firms -- which included personal medical test results that users have the option of sharing on their profiles. Again, this incident is not to be confused with a data leak. Rather than this information being unintentionally exposed, the app says that this information is intentionally shared with research firms (namely, Apptimize and Localytics) to help improve the user experience. 

According to the report, all of a user's personal profile information is shared with these firms, which can include test results, if the user chooses to include it in his or profile. And while Grindr says this information is shared only with research partners and should, therefore, be secure, the news has left many wondering how easily that information could be abused if there was a data breach and it fell into the wrong hands.

Grindr has since issued a statement to BuzzFeed indicating that it will stop sharing medical test information from user profiles with these third-party firms -- while also calling the negative response "a misunderstanding of technology," according to the app's Chief Security Officer Bryce Case, by the people who were unhappy to learn of this activity.

Why This Is Important

Okay, so, we clearly have a lot to learn from these three incidents -- all in light of the fairly recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data news.

I'll start with Grindr. While it's possible that users did misunderstand the extent and intention of this data sharing, the point is: There was an outcry. To accuse this unhappy audience of "misunderstanding" how it works can easily (and understandably) be deemed as insulting. For any marketers who curious as to how they might want to handle a situation like this one, should they become responsible for responding to it, I would suggest explaining the situation clearly and in a non-condescending manner if you believe your audience might misunderstand the situation. But try to avoid labeling it as such, and instead, focus on a resolution.

And you might be thinking, "There's very little chance that I'll find myself in that situation." But think twice: With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force next month (check out our primer here), it might soon apply to you more than you think. Don't feel bad -- our research shows that only 42% of marketers feel that they're even somewhat prepared for the GDPR.

Plus, the noticeable volume of data- and privacy-related issues making headlines within the past year (we haven't forgotten about you, Equifax) shows just how much more vulnerable businesses might be to these types of issues than they're aware. Long story short: If you haven't done one already, now might be a good time for a security checkup, to make sure you know how your (and your customers') data is protected, and who exactly has access to it.

4. Apple Chips

Bloomberg reported this week that Apple will begin using its own chips in Mac devices as soon as 2020, rather than using the Intel processors it's long relied on in the buildout of its computers. It's a project reportedly known internally as "Kalamata": one that illustrates another step toward making the Apple branded ecosystem iron-clad.

In February, I wrote about how this ecosystem can sometimes create a restrictive user experience, especially when it comes to Apple's smart home speaker, the HomePod. In my experience, limiting the device's music streaming options to Apple Music rendered the HomePod somewhat useless to those who use services like Spotify (which, side note, officially became listed on the New York Stock Exchange as SPOT yesterday) or Pandora. 

But processor chips are different, and introduce a new type of vertical integration for Apple. While much of the company's hardware -- like the iPhone and Apple Watch, for example -- runs on its own, internally-designed processors, its computers still rely on chips from Intel, often slowing down production due to the reliance on major pieces from external companies.

It's not exactly welcome news for Intel, whose stock price dropped when this information was revealed -- though it does appear to have slightly rebounded as of writing this post. 

Source: Google

Apple certainly isn't alone in its desire to create a product ecosystem that's somewhat indestructible as a result of brand loyalty. Google, for its part, is building a growing portfolio of branded products, including mobile devices and computers, like Chromebooks, which currently run on Intel processing.

But this move has many -- present company included -- wondering if Google will be the next to vertically integrate machine processing capabilities. After all, Google and Apple have been known to become more than a bit competitive when it comes to similar products and capabilities (see: last fall's #MadeByGoogle event) -- so should Google follow suit, it wouldn't exactly come as a surprise.

What Else Is Going Down in Tech Town?

More of the Latest From Facebook

On top of the ongoing data-related scrutiny Facebook is already receiving, the social media network is now coming under fire for archiving videos -- like deleted multiple takes -- that users thought had been removed, but were instead stored in personal data files, as per New York Magazine. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that this happened because of "a bug," and that the videos probably weren't seen by the public.  

Facebook has continued to respond to the fallout from allegations that personal user data was misused by analytics and profiling firm Cambridge Analytica, with announcements made last week that the company would be limiting the data available to advertisers on its platform. Meanwhile, new data shows that 31% of tech workers said they would delete Facebook.

In light of this data misuse, many are asking if or how Facebook will extend rules and practices required by the GDPR to U.S. users. In an interview with Reuters, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not make that clear, though he did say that the social network is working on an internal "law" or version of the GDPR that would apply globally to all users. When asked which parts of the European regulation that would include, he answered, “We’re still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing.” 

The company also announced last week its action plan to prevent the future weaponization of its platform to influence elections, outlining a four-tiered approach to protecting election security. Yesterday, that was followed by an announcement that Facebook will roll out changes to provide greater context around stories appearing in the News Feed. Read full story >>

Google Also Had a Busy Month

While Facebook was dominating many tech news headlines in March, Google was quietly having a busy month of its own. Learn more about these latest developments in this month's edition of "What You Missed in Google." Read full story >>

More (Unconfirmed) Changes From Instagram

Last week, we reported on changes that visual-content-sharing app Instagram would be making to its algorithm, with the possible introduction of a "New Posts" feature and more. Now, it seems that the company has made abrupt, unannounced changes to the way developers can use the app's API to access data, with some losing access to it completely. Read full story >>

It's a Dark, Pivotal Time for Autonomous Vehicles

Following recent fatal accidents involving both Uber and Tesla self-driving cars, the autonomous vehicle sector is going through a somewhat dark, but important phase. California has responded with new regulations imposed by its Department of Motor Vehicles, Arizona's governor suspended Uber's self-driving cars from its roads, and many other manufacturers have voluntarily paused its testing of these vehicles. But what does it all mean for the future of this crucial, highly-scrutinized industry?  Recode's Johana Bhuiyan breaks these issues down, and the implications they could have for the future of self-driving. Read full story >>

That’s all for today. Until next week, feel free to weigh in on Twitter to ask us your tech news questions, or to let us know what kind of events and topics you'd like us to cover.

[moon-battery]

From the article:

===============================================

Income is not wealth.

We forget this when complaining about the 1%. Because it’s hard to figure out how much wealth people have, it’s easy to look at the tax tables–forgetting that the two doctors earning a combined $400,000 a year are paying a total of perhaps 30% to the fed, maybe another 10% to the state, leaving them an after-tax income of $240,000 a year.

And while that may sound like a hell of a lot–and let’s be honest, it is a hell of a lot, especially given the average income of a working family today in the United States is perhaps $60k/year–but when you then subtract out payments on student loans (which for doctors can be upwards of $500,000 at 5%–peeling off $45,000 a year just in loan payments), then subtract out the typical stuff that people tend to surround themselves with (Million dollar home? $67,000/year. Two BMWs? $36,000/year–and that’s if you cheap out and get a really well equipped 5-series rather than going for the top-of-the-line. Oh, and don’t forget the insurance for all this stuff.)

Suddenly, that $240,000/year has been eaten up: just with loan payments for the nice home and the nice cars, and toss in perhaps $50,000 a year on everything else: food, vacations, clothes, insurance, utilities)–and that power-couple doctor pair may only be able to save $40k/year for retirement–assuming they’re saving anything at all.

And that 1%er in income, bopping along without paying attention, not really saving for retirement, suddenly realize they don’t want to be arms-length in someone’s insides for the rest of their lives–they wake up and start shoveling money into retirement. But $48k/year over 15 years of savings only amounts to $1.2 million (assuming 7% ROI on investments, which is better than consumer averages)–and that means our doctors are going to have a serious hair cut on their standard of living.

Fuck, even if they were smart and saved that $48k/year over 30 years–that only amounts to $4.8 million. But remember: inflation ate away at the spending power of that money, making it “only” worth $3.3 million. A “safe” withdrawal rate on an invested $3.3 million for retirement purposes is around $130k/year–far far less than our Doctor’s $240k/year lifestyle. And remember, that was for someone who conscientiously saved over a 30 year career for their retirement.

Most of us are not that conscientious.

(If you want to be, may I suggest the writings of Dave Ramsey?)

Now I don’t feel sorry for those doctors. For the average person making due on $60k/year, $130k/year sound fantastic. For most of us it would solve all our problems.

But my point is this:

Those 1%ers in income do not have a lot of wealth.

(Okay, $4 million with a paid off $1 million home is pretty damned good. But it’s not “buy a million dollar yacht and sale around the world from your private Caribbean island” rich.)

I point this out because I would often see estimates by the Federal Reserve, such as used in this article, which claim the bottom of the top 1% (in terms of wealth) have at least $7 million in assets.

And I think “on what fucking planet?”

There are a lot of older generation people who have successfully retired. But they’re not retired on the returns on investments accumulated over a lifetime. They’re retired on fixed pension plans–pension plans that are not available to the majority of my generation or to those who are younger. (My father receives a railroad retirement pension–but I believe he was one of the last to receive such a generous payout; certainly to my generation a pension which pays out 80% of your income for the last 30 years of your life would be absolutely unheard of.)

I think this skews estimates of net wealth (which can only be estimated) upwards. For me to retire on 80% of my current income would require several million dollars (using various safe retirement rules published on the ‘net). But my father’s pension is not worth millions. It pays like it was worth millions. But when he dies, *poof*, it’s gone.

It’s why I found this guy’s essay so interesting: because by using the methodology used by the IRS (and not the Federal Reserve) using anonymized tax return data to estimate net wealth, the estimated amount of money necessary to enter the top 1% of wealth (not income, wealth) is considerably less.

Around $1.2 million (as of 2011, or around $1.3 million in today’s dollars).

An Investment Manager’s View on the Top 1%

Until recently, most studies just broke out the top 1% as a group. Data on net worth distributions within the top 1% indicate that one enters the top 0.5% with about $1.8M, the top 0.25% with $3.1M, the top 0.10% with $5.5M and the top 0.01% with $24.4M. Wealth distribution is highly skewed towards the top 0.01%, increasing the overall average for this group. The net worth for those in the lower half of the top 1% is usually achieved after decades of education, hard work, saving and investing as a professional or small business person. While an after-tax income of $175k to $250k and net worth in the $1.2M to $1.8M range may seem like a lot of money to most Americans, it doesn’t really buy freedom from financial worry or access to the true corridors of power and money. That doesn’t become frequent until we reach the top 0.1%.

In other words, financial security is increasingly eluding our grasp. And unless you inherited a small fortune or built a large business and successfully sold it off, your net worth will probably never crest the $5 million mark (putting you in the top 0.1% of wealth).

No matter how much you make in salary.

I find stuff like this interesting.

But I do want to make an observation.

Unless you were part of the ruling class during medieval times, you worked until you died. There was no “financial security”–and in the turbulent periods of medieval times, there may be little political security as ruling lords often fought each other for land and status.

In fact, the very notion of “retirement” is a recent invention. Previously as one aged, large extended families may take care of you. But it was not so you could relax; Native American tribes would take care of the elderly in the same way they would take care of the sick and ailing: if you can’t work, your family would take care of you until you died. If resources were tight, they may cut their losses–and leave you in the wilderness to die on your own, or put you on the ice flow to allow you to die at sea.

But we invented the notion of retirement on the theory that we needed to make space for the younger to obtain jobs–yet notice, we set the retirement age at roughly the life expectancy age: meaning chances were, when Social Security was invented, you’d die before you received a dime. And even if you collected, chances are you were only collecting around 12 years of retirement on average.

So I suspect this notion of financial security eluding our grasp was a fiction — and most of us will be working (even if just part time) supplementing our income up until the day we die.

Even those in the top 1%.

=========================================

[g16framework-blog]

3 Fundamental Rules for Writing Web Copy That Makes Million

New Post has been published on http://g16frameworkmedia.com/blog/2017/05/21/3-fundamental-rules-for-writing-web-copy-that-makes-million/

3 Fundamental Rules for Writing Web Copy That Makes Million

THE SHORT GUN

When I worked as the director of creative web writing at G16framework Media Production, I commissioned extensive in-house marketing research to test the effectiveness of every imaginable element of our web copy and other online marketing communications.

The sales results I witnessed made clear to me the effectiveness of the editorial style of copywriting. In the tests in which I’ve been involved, editorial-style web copy out-pulls sales letter–style Web copy every single time.

THE RULES

Rule 1. Don’t Make Your Website Look Like an Ad

Depending on which source you believe, the average person is exposed to anywhere between 1,500 (Media Literacy Report published by Unicef) and 5,000 (Charles Pappas, Yahoo! Internet Life columnist) advertising messages per day from TV, billboards, radio, the Internet, practically everywhere we turn.

The last thing we want to see when we land on a website is yet another ad. Yet many online businesses seem to go out of their way to make their websites look like ads, billboards, or other commercial media.

Don’t fall into this trap and turn away potential customers. Your website should provide the solid information that your prospect is looking for, and it should have an editorial feel to it. Above all, it should be free of hype. Why? Because people usually go online to find information.

Few people log on saying, I can’t wait to see ads, and I can’t wait to buy stuff! No, that usually doesn’t happen. People go online to find information. That’s why they call it the information superhighway. Even if they are shopping for something—say a DVD player or a hair restoration product— they are generally seeking information, not advertising, about those products. There is a myth that the Internet is an advertising medium or one big shopping channel. It’s not.

Web copy needs to have an editorial feel to it; that is, it must not have the semblance of a sale pitch.

In the offline world, editorial-style ads boost readership significantly more than adequate-looking ads. David Ogilvy, legendary advertising man, wrote in his photo album, Ogilvy in this area Advertising.

There is no play in which says that advertisements have to see in the look of advertisements. If you make them see later editorial pages, you will attract more readers. Roughly six period as many people log on the average article as the average public declaration.

Very few advertisements are retrieve by more than one reader in twenty. In fact, in a split-inform test conducted in Readers Digest, an editorial-style ad boosted confession by 80 percent on severity of the conventional ad layout.

RULE 2: STOP THE READERS AND GRAP THEIR ATTENTION AT A GLANCE

Online advertisers and business owners spend a lot of time and money trying to get traffic to their websites. Building web traffic is very important, but it won’t mean a thing unless you do one thing first. That is, create compelling web copy that will stop them dead in their tracks and get them to do what you want them to do when they get there.

According to Google, as of April 2004, there were about 36 million websites clamoring for attention, not to mention more than 4.28 billion pages of content! It’s no wonder, then, that in order for words to wield their magical power on the web, they have to be tailored specifically for the information-flooded Internet public where attention span is a rare commodity.

Always remember the power of captivating headlines, as it incites and triggers curiosity out of unwilling readers.

RULE 3: GRAP THEIR CONTACTS

For a website to succeed, it must have effective direct-response web copy that induces action from a single exposure. Just imagine. What’s the point in getting someone to come to your website if the site visit doesn’t generate a response such as picking up the phone and calling your business, subscribing to your newsletter, signing up for your mailing list, or buying your product or service?.

If you are selling something on your website, chances are that less than 5 percent of your site’s visitors will ever buy your product. Conversion rates vary with each industry, but the typical healthy rate for online stores is 0.5 percent (.005) to 1.5 percent (.015), according to the Bock Newsletter on Yahoo! Store (issue 32).

What happens to the 95 percent of your web visitors who came and went? For most websites, nothing. Those prospects are gone for good, never to return. That’s why it is absolutely essential for your website to have an opt-in mechanism.

The odds are low that people will buy from you the first time they visit your website. After all, they don’t even know you. Rather than lose them, ask for something that is easier and less intimidating than pulling out a credit card—ask them to give you their e-mail address. It’s a simple, nonthreatening way to initiate a relationship.

[thesixweekseeker]

Road to Hana

(1/26-1/27/17)

 The “Road to Hana” is on every must-do list for Maui, so I was not about to have some major FOMO and miss out on this trip. My best bud and his dad love it up there so they happily obliged and became my unofficial tour guides.  Since it’s about a 3-hour drive from where we are, we woke up at 5am to get a head start on the “tourists” and the sunrise. Since I was with these two experienced locals, I earned the shotgun spot, and just sat back and was prepared to soak it all in.  

For starters, the drive itself is like an amusement park ride (which is totally my jam).  As you drive along a road made for one car (not two), with tons of opportunities to meet another car head on around every curve, and also throw in the chance landslide encounter (one had just occurred a day or so before we arrived)… it becomes a windy little thrill ride.  Hands in the air like you just don’t care.

Luckily we made it unscathed to the first stop on our tour: Wai'anapanapa Beach, aka Pa'iloa Beach, aka Black Sand Beach.  A quick walk down the path takes you to a beautiful beach with (you guessed it) black sand.  The black sand was created by a lava flow several hundred years ago and the proper name of Wai'anapanapa translates into “glistening water” which is very evident from the pictures below.  It wasn’t really swimmable so we took a path above and alongside the beach to get some stellar views over the cliffs.  We weren’t sure how far the path went, but we walked about 0.5 miles in and got some of these views below.  Maybe next time we will go on a little Lewis and Clark expedition for the full mile and see what we find.

 En route to our next highlight, we made a quick pit stop at Hana Farms.  Although there is no shortage of fruit and coffee stands on the Road to Hana, this one may be the winner.  The women behind the stand were super friendly and answering all of our annoying “what’s in this” questions with an extreme amount of patience as we were trying to decipher what was Six Week approved. Unfortunately their Macadamia Nut Banana Bread “voted best in Hana for years” was not on the approval list so I can’t weigh in on that ruling.  We did get the green light on their Macadamia Nut Pesto Hummus and that did not disappoint (includes everything the name says plus some basil and olive oil).  They also have a ton of homemade goodies including dried exotic fruits and jams, holistic healing goodies and a very legit coffee bar.

 Moving on to our next beautiful beach: Kaihalulu Beach (known as Red Sand Beach).  If I wasn’t with my local tour guides, I would not have been able to find this beach … and that’s the way they like it.  It was a slightly intimidating walk down to the beach and we almost saw a guy bite it over the cliff, so make sure to wear something besides flip flops and get off your phone and focus.  

When you get to that first lookout over the beach, it’s absolutely stunning. Picture huge red cliffs, beautiful red (ish) sand, clear teal water, naked people… wait, say what?

So yes, it’s a clothing optional beach (which I fully support) and I’ve experienced my fair share living in SF.  My only issue is it seems like it’s always the LAST person you want to see naked… and I’m just wondering when do I get the Kelly Slater look-a-like who wants to throw his board shorts to the wind and sit next to me versus “this guy”?  

Anyway, I had to do a quick conference call there, so I tried to go around to a little side pocket so I could avoid the distractions.  However, my new friend just decided to pull up his laptop next to me in his birthday suit and jump on his conference call to discuss philosophy and politics.  Go ahead and also cue two dogs stopping right in front of me to fully (and I mean fully) get it on, with the owner (topless chic) running towards me to try and stop it.  My conference call obviously went well.

Pepper is clearly vibin’ with this beach.

After an exhausting day of sitting at beautiful beaches in perfect weather, we decided to go set up shop at our campsite. We went to Haleakala National Park on the Kīpahulu side (one of two drive-up camping options in the park) and got the best spot (IMO) in the very back away from everyone, but still close enough to get a great view of the water.  The campsite was small with no frills but it was completely surrounded by wonderful scenery.  If you have a Wrangler, Golden Retriever, hammock and a pop up tent – go chill here for three days.  (Three days is the max number of nights they allow at once and I guess you don’t need a Wrangler and a Golden – I just assume everyone wants the same things that I do.) 

 While at the campsite, I learned how to make a version of Huli Huli (turn turn) Chicken – which was delish.  I also became very campfire savvy and learned that you can wrap sweet potatoes up in foil and put them right in the coals and you can also put a whole can of green beans on the grill and cook them straight up.  (You didn’t know that either.)  We walked off our din by taking a little stroll to see the sunset and I knocked out “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg - GREAT book and very applicable for The Six Week. 

 I had some conference calls that next morning and I was able to walk down and take one right as the sun was rising – and it was hands down one of the best I’ve seen.  It was a moment where I realized that I was “in my office” working watching all of this unfold, and it made me beyond grateful for the choices that led to that present moment.  (Side note: you will learn that I geek out over the following: sunrise, sunset, waterfalls.)  

We decided after sunset that we would get a jump start on the Pipiwai Trail to go see some waterfalls.  Go early (7ish) as it starts to get crowded by 9/10am.  The hike is roughly 5 miles round trip but it doesn’t even feel close to that.  Your hiking highlights include:

A massive banyon tree..

A view of Makahiku Falls ...

A trek through an enchanted bamboo forest ....

And the grand prize… Waimoku Falls.  

 My friend’s dad was talking to us about the vortex right above the waterfall.  He said there were only two in the world (here and in Africa) and it was meant to have vast spiritual powers and healing energy.  I did some quick research and it says this area is the Global Fire Vortex. This is said to govern liberty and they recommend coming to this space to meditate (during the Aries new or full moon) on fire, liberty and purpose.  I’m not sure what all I buy into, but there is definitely something very special in that space.  I instantly felt a complete calm rush over me and it was very therapeutic in a way.  

I could have and would have stayed there all day … but somebody had to go find her pot of gold.

 After we got back from the hike, we decided it was tear down camp time, and we were going to venture the rest of the way around the island – Venus Pools would have to wait until the next Hana trip.  My bud made us stop at the Coconut Zen Cave on our way back, and if if you met the owner and saw his space, you would too.  I learned how to crack open a coconut and use a machete for the first time and somehow all appendages are still intact.  Also, putting some Tahitian lime juice (his recommendation) in the coconut water IS amazing and it makes a huge difference.

 The ride back home from Hana was one of the highlights of the trip.  I was surprised to learn that most people don’t go around the backside of Haleakala, they just head back the same way they came.  “They say” the backside is more dangerous to drive on and less visually appealing, but I thought both claims were false.  I mean, there were definitely a few “we might die here” spots during the ride back, but alas, I live another day to write another blog.  

 You need to make sure to save some room for lunch on your drive back so you can hit up Ulupalakua Ranch Store.  Since they were fresh out of elk (the go-to choice) we had lamb and venison burgers, but don’t worry, we had those wrapped in lettuce wraps so TSW approved.  After lunch, I convinced the crew to drive around the West Maui Mountains instead of the normal way home through town. It adds an extra 45 minutes but well worth the drive as the views are gorgeous – reminds me of some of the North Shore in Kauai.  

 We made the complete figure eight loop of Maui within 48-hours and that final day I was able to watch an epic sunrise in Hana, hike to a stunning 400-foot waterfall in Haleakala Park and get home just in time to end with a beautiful sunset in Kahana.  Like I mentioned above, geek out central with those things, so all three in a row = my favorite day in Maui so far.