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tundrainafrica · 4 years

Text

Title: Division of Labor (3/?)

Summary:

“The past years, we have noticed a lot of our fresh high school graduates knew nothing about responsibilities that await them outside high school and even college. Many students do not master budgeting, taxes, household planning, loans and we hope to raise a generation who can navigate the adult world without the consequences of bad decisions they are bound to make going in blindly…”

Paradis High school starts a program incorporating adulting into their curriculum and Hange and Levi are paired together.

Note: From request of @a-golden-hearted-snk-fan. See this link for the request

Other Chapters: 1 2

Link to cross-postings: AO3

It turned out Hange did think the housing plan through.

"It's a rent to own contract...so after paying this certain amount of rent… within a number of years… we can own the house basically," Hange explained. Her preparation was evident in the wad of papers she had carelessly spread out on the table in front of Levi.

At first glance, Levi could not make sense of what those papers were. Eventually, by carefully scanning through the therefore, herewiths, in the events, the interest rates and percentages, Levi figured out they were contracts and manuals full of buying and renting policies of one particular real estate company.

Levi looked out the glass window of the booth of the quiet diner they had chosen to work in. He had tried to use the mechanical movements of the crowds on a commute home to at least help clear his mind enough to make sense of how exactly a rent-to-own contract worked. Levi was sure Hange was at least attempting to explain everything about the buying policies of the real estate company in layman's terms. Although Levi was somewhat impressed by the dedication Hange put into it, as soon as she started to talk about the policies and agreements beyond ‘we get to own the house after a while,’ Levi ended up spacing out. The prospect of spending, even if it was fake money, caused him enough unnecessary stress.

He turned his attention to the two flour sacks who were propped by the window of the diner booth they occupied. He had purposefully turned their ugly faces towards the window at the small possibility that Shadis, Erwin or even Zeke were amongst the crowds of people walking through the crowds and into the subway station. A testament to their determination not to waste any unnecessary funds or worse, flunk the program

"If we catch you in public not holding your baby, you pay babysitting dues or you fail." Shadis had said in homeroom class that morning.

After some discussion as a class and with some confirmation from Erwin, the whole class came to the understanding that if they went out separately, they were in no obligation to take their babies with them. It could always be assumed after all, that their partner had their baby with them. Being in public with their partner meant someone had to have the baby with them or they risk pay necessary dues. At any rate, they found solace in the fact that if they were going to look like idiots holding brown sacks with shabbily drawn faces on them, they at least had someone to look like an idiot with.

Levi looked back at Hange to see that she had not stopped talking. Levi was not too surprised, having the disinterested equivalent of a resting bitch face, he had to master the art of looking like he cared to get past most classes.

“Where did you get these anyway?” Levi asked, interrupting the tirade of his partner. The answer to that question would at least be something he would be able to understand.

“The procedures manual and their company policies are available online.” Hange answered matter-of-factly. Levi noted how quickly she recovered from having her explanation of policy and business jargon interrupted.

As Levi looked once again through highlighted lines and messy scrawls, he felt embarrassed that he was not even halfway done with the design they had discussed the night before. He slowly brought out his folder where he had at least begun to draw the floor plan from the link Hange had sent him the night before.

“How has the floor plan been Levi?” Hange cocked her head to one side. Levi could not tell if she was provoking him or if she was genuinely curious about the progress of his work. Regardless, the way that she sifted through the papers under her, while looking pointedly at the roughly drawn floor plan on his hands had Levi self conscious.

It was Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours since she had bombarded him with messages. Less than 24 hours since she dropped a pdf file of the floor plan and went MIA, Levi guessed it was to prepare all the documents which Hange had just laid out in front of him that morning. As he compared his own progress to hers, he also became aware of one more reality, their first outputs were due tomorrow. Begrudgingly Levi had to admit, despite her naivete and overenthusiasm, Hange had a better sense of urgency than he did.

“I planned everything out already. I just need to outline it.” Levi said, trying at least not to sound as defensive as he felt.

“But can you do it alone? I didn’t sleep at all last night to get this done.” Hange looked more concerned than anything else.”

As Levi looked back at a skeleton of a housing plan that lay in front of him, he started to understand her concern. The house they had selected was huge and designing would take hours if he actually wanted to put thought into it.

“I mean even if we take out the 1800 from our budget of 3600 dollars a month, we still have to consider furniture and it might take you a while to come out with the pricing right? I guess we could leave out 1000 dollars for that….”

Furniture? Levi had stopped listening at ‘furniture.’ Somehow Levi had assumed that it would have been fully furnished when they bought it and they just had to rearrange furniture. “We’re buying an unfurnished house?” Levi had hoped Hange was pulling his leg.

Hange knitted her brows in confusion. “Did I say anything about a furnished house?”

Division of Labor

“There are two methods of accounting used in modern day society: cost accounting and accrual accounting or as I’d like to call them: an idiot’s sorry excuse for accounting and actual accounting.” Zeke wrote the two terms on the board and plopped himself on the teacher’s desk. “Really though, why the hell do people still use cost accounting in modern society, it’s fucking stupid, barbaric, might as well go back to bartering…”

Levi had no idea what either of them were. As he looked around at his classmates, they looked as lost as he was about the mini rant that Zeke gave about the two accounting methods he had failed to define.

After a few minutes of ranting, Zeke finally noticed the blank faces of his students. “Okay Social Experiment.” Zeke cocked his head to the side. “Actually, let’s call it an IQ Test. Jean stand up.”

“Yes sir!” Jean followed way too enthusiastically.

“You got the investment banker occupation so ideally you should be the most knowledgeable on money among everyone in the room,” Zeke continued. “You have zero dollars and I gave you 100 dollars right now. How much do you have?”

“100 dollars sir,” Jean answered.

“That’s a smart boy.” Zeke slapped his desk so hard, Armin and Eren jumped, having sat so close to the teacher’s desk. “Okay, so if I lent you 100 dollars, how much do you have?”

“100 dollars.”

“So, you’re gonna run away with my money? No plans of paying me back?”

Jean tensed up in confusion. “No sir. I’ll be paying you back.”

“Then is it your money?"

“It’s with me sir… So I think…” Jean paused for a second. “So it’s your money sir?”

“Tell me. The money is with you after all. Is it your money or my money?”

“It’s my money sir!” Jean answered too quickly, probably without even thinking.

“I lent you the money. I expect it back so it’s mine. Calling my money your money is practically stealing Kirschtein. I can call a lawyer on you.” Zeke narrowed his eyes at Jean for a few seconds before shrugging in defeat. “But you’re not a criminal. You’re just an idiot who relies on outdated accounting methods. Don’t take that with you when you become an actual financial advisor. Sit down. I’m calling someone else.” Zeke turned back to the class list on the teacher’s table. “Okay, anyone in this list with a finance related position...” Zeke’s eyes widened in surprise as he looked through the list. He looked at the class with a cat-like grin, his eyes focusing on one boy in the front row. “In my almost sixteen years of knowing you, I did not expect you to be suitable but it looks like you’re the only one in this list other than Jean with an accounting related occupation.”

“Really? It’s accounting related?” Eren had never been one to be good at Math. Everyone in the class agreed and as their professor hinted at his assigned occupation, many began to whisper, possibly theorizing as to what Eren had gotten.

They did not have to theorize for long though, within seconds, Zeke continued to discuss. “Okay Eren, let’s discuss your field of expertise --- insurance.”

Eren slowly nodded in return. It was a nod which everyone in the room had understood at first glance. Insurance was not Eren’s field of expertise.

Zeke did not seem to care though. “Case study time! I have 3000 dollars. Eren the insurance salesman sells me $200 dollars a month worth of insurance and I buy one years worth of prepaid insurance. By the end of this month, how much worth of assets do I have left?”

“By assets, you mean money?”

“Check a fucking dictionary.”

Eren sat down for a second. From his seat, Levi could hear some whispers from Mikasa and some clicks of a digital keyboard, or possibly a calculator.

“600 dollars.”

“Final answer?”

“Yes. Final Answer.” Eren seemed so sure of his answer.

From seeing Zeke’s face at the answer, Levi could not help but think, maybe phrasing it as a question was the better option for Eren.

“This is why your generation is so shit at saving. With this type of attitude, you‘re all gonna get into some shity Ponzi scheme with yourself and some sad saps who actually pitied you enough to lend you money without assessing your credit rating that’s just gonna continue riding on some endless cycle until you all go to jail or declare bankruptcy.” Zeke ranted again as he punched the buttons of the projector, turning it on. “ Scratch that. At this rate, none of you would probably even know how to declare bankruptcy.”

Accounting 101 . Those two words flashed on the screen, the contrast of black words in a default font to the white background of a hastily made powerpoint only getting clearer as the projector whirred to life.

“The amount of debt you can get into in the real world will fuck up your life. So to simulate the real world consequences of unpaid debt, we decided to make your fake debt by the end of the year one of the main determinants of your final grade. And we will be using real accounting to determine your debt. Any questions before we start?”

It was Sasha who raised her hand from the back of the classroom.

“Yes?” Zeke asked with shoddily hidden annoyance.

“So which one is cost and which one is accrual again, Sir?”

Division of Labor

"I told you. I'll handle the accounting," Hange said. "We can make this work." Her words were not at all assuring.

It was Wednesday afternoon. They had submitted their selection for their house that afternoon in class so that meant no more takebacks. Their house plans were due midnight and Levi was not even halfway done. To add insult to injury, Levi was still reeling from Zeke’s lecture just a few hours ago.

Initially, Hange had suggested they buy the furniture in installments. The prospect of buying in installments though became all the more terrifying with the accounting system Zeke had introduced to them that day and the weight of a negative balance sheet on their grades.

As soon as you buy something and enter into debt, the money owed is not yours anymore. Levi shuddered as those words echoed in his head. He narrowed his eyes at Hange. "Really Hange? Can we? After deciding to spend half your salary each month on an unfinished 3 bedroom house?" Levi asked as he gestured to their next tall order that stretched over two aisles. They were in the baby's section in the supermarket.

It was their third round around that aisle, trying to look for a brand of diaper and a brand of formula that would not cost them a total of 400 dollars a month.

“I mean, we still have 800 dollars on groceries if we put our furniture installments budget at 1000 dollars a month,” Hange explained. “So if we spend 400 dollars on baby stuff, we should have 400 left.”

“400 dollars for a month’s worth of meals for a family of four.” Levi clarified. “There must be something here we could choose not to spend on.” Or maybe we could find a cheaper place to buy things in. Levi thought back to the supermarket nearer to his house and made a mental note to check it. The output was due on Friday anyway.

"Hey, Armin and Annie are here too!" Hange said enthusiastically.

Too enthusiastically. Levi clarified to himself. That was not at all good news. If other groups were going to that supermarket, that must mean they think they have the financial leeway to spend there, That could also possibly mean he and Hange had somehow fucked up financially as a pair, struggling to make ends meet. Armin was a studious student with a good head on his shoulders and he chose to shop in a more expensive supermarket. Are we spending too much?

"Let's ask Armin…" Levi did not need to finish his sentence. By the time, he looked to his side, where Hange stood or at least was supposed to be standing, the latter was already on her way to the blond boy..

Levi did not waste anytime. As Hange chatted up Armin, Levi made a few rounds through the two aisles again, his phone calculator on hand.

Just in case. Levi told himself. Just in case they had miscalculated the minimum expense of 400 dollars.

Division of Labor

Hange had a long talk with Armin. By that point, Levi had lost count of the number of rounds he had made around the aisle. He had stopped counting at five. He had done his research on discounts and made some fake accounts and the expense still clocked at $390 dollars.

By the time he and Hange called it quits, the sun was setting. Hange seemed lost in thought and she had been that way since she had finished her conversation with Armin. Levi decided to take over keeping both sacks for the night. He made a small detour to the grocery store nearest to his flat. It was smaller, a little dirtier but it meant a little more room for spending and a bigger chance of saving his grade and graduating. Begrudgingly, sanitation became the least of Levi's issues.

He wrote out all the prices of the important items they had seen in the grocery store. When he got home, he made sure to write them all on a google sheet complete with weight, quantity and prices and sent the link to Hange through an instant message. For some reason, he felt a twinge of disappointment when all he received was a heart react in return.

Of course, Hange still had a lot of things to calculate. Even as they separated less than an hour ago, she had seemed distracted. Levi guessed Armin had told her something game breaking about the accounting process.

What did Armin tell you? You need any help?

Will explain soon. Send the meal plan and house design by 9 pls.

Levi managed to submit the meal plan by nine. He had copied and pasted from some random family cooking website, changing a few ingredients to fit what he thought would be cheaper options. He did not need to think too much of it either. He lived a life many would consider the complete opposite of excess and as a result, had mastered the art of improvisation when it came to food.

His main problem lay with the floor plan of the house. Hange had agreed to handle worrying about the expenses. That was one problem out of his plate.

Even with the money problem out of his hands, Levi found himself working until late anyway. Or not working… Levi was only reminded of his lack of productivity when his phone lit up with a notification.

11:00pm

Hange Zoe

Where??????

Levi only realized then that he had gotten a little carried away with the problem of where to put the washing machine.

Division of Labor

It was a genius idea.

That Wednesday night, only a few hours before the house plan was due, Levi had had fifty tabs open from German and Japanese house designers showing bathrooms and laundry room designs highlighting the novelty and practicality of putting the washing machine in the bathroom. Levi had spent hours pondering the logistics of making it work for the house design Hange had sent him only for her to shoot down the idea an hour before the housing plan was due.

They rented an American style house with a bathroom in every bedroom and the impracticality had dawned on him particularly when it was fifteen minutes to 12am and they were still arguing in chat over how to design the house. In the end, Hange had gotten her way, having brought up the issue of accounting furniture and the fact that they probably did not even have the financial leeway to pay for a washing machine anyway.

Having to deal with the disappointment of losing the opportunity to design the house the way he wanted to and having his unfinished design shipped off to Erwin’s email, with little regard for the effort he had put into the intricacy of both the toilets and the laundry room, Levi was a little pissed. He also considered the fact that he had respected the effort and detail Hange had put into choosing a house and had allowed her to submit a potentially overpriced and unfurnished house as their final product.

And she could not even reciprocate the respect for his whims.

Levi decided then to take a break from it all. It was a silent agreement on both ends. Or there was no need for an agreement anyway. They had finished their deliverables for the week by Thursday.

Everyone had ended up cramming theirs anyway and Levi found himself walking home alone and spending his time outside school hours bingeing whatever was new on Netflix.

By Monday, Levi had not expected to do much. Their breakdown of responsibilities was due Friday, 12am on Thursday to be exact according to the file that Erwin had sent. It was a one page paper with a few questions that just needed answering. They could easily start on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Levi wanted to spend at least just his Monday, peacefully, not considering the program which has been plaguing the start of their junior year since Shadis’ announcement just a week ago. He allowed himself to clear his mind, making sure to just note on his phone to start on the next output by Wednesday. Hange would probably remind him anyway.

He had deluded himself well into thinking the adulting program was limited to those once a week outputs. An announcement was made to meet in the kitchen after lunch for home economics class. His mood that Monday had him living in complete denial of what could actually go on in a school kitchen and for some reason, Levi imagined having a lecture in the kitchen was a completely normal expectation, even with the reminder to bring aprons and gloves. Maybe we just need to put them in lockers or something.

As the students filed in though, some of them panicked and that was when Levi figured out that something was not right. The counters were all lined up with ingredients. Some of the students had recognized the ingredients. Levi looked to Hange to see that she was blank on what the hell the pattern was behind the types of ingredients set out.

There were the essentials--- flour, sugar, eggs. There were exotic ingredients Levi could not even name or pronounce.

“Cardamom, Star Anise, Rose water. What the hell?” It was Jean speaking from behind Levi.

“I’m glad you see the pattern. I’m assuming that means you’ll all do well?” Erwin waited while the rest of the class filed into the room before he raised his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Today we’ll be having a pop quiz just to make sure you all know what you’re writing when you make the meal plans. In the tables assigned to you, you will see the ingredients for one of the meals you put in your meal plan. Please use them accordingly to make a full course meal from what you had submitted.”

Levi could not remember for the life of him what the hell he had put in that meal plan a week back

#levihan #levi ackerman #hange zoe #levi x hange #fanfic

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zhonglisimper · 4 years

Text

`` the city of unity `` | dystopia au

⇢ 1,028 words of a flash-forward several millennia of a godforsaken world.

⇢ Contains profanity, dead animals, implications of rotting corpses, mentions and/or implications of police corruption (bribery).

⇢ Any similarities between characters, timelines and places is purely coincidental. This is nothing but a work of fiction. All rights reserved to Mihoyo Inc. for the canon characters, titles and locations to be named.

⇢ Cr. to Liam Wong for the banner used below. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5Lnn9Lg48jv1RvvvLnKKrJK/neon-dreamland-atmospheric-photographs-of-tokyo-after-dark

OTHER NOTES:

will be cross-posted on my AO3 once i finally set that account up. ();u;)

oh shit school will be coming in like 30 hours at the date of posting on tumblr so i can’t promise i’ll post regularly, especially since i signed up for this one event,, fuck

another reason i can’t promise i could even continue with this is because 1) this was very impulsive and was actually an attempt for me to go to sleep at 4-5am 2) i didn’t plan far into this, the last thing i worked on were the characters and even then i doubt i’m finished bc i’m not satisfied bye

also this doesn’t strictly follow the official lore, whether from the manga or not. the official lore definitely did serve as a basis, but there might be statements in the narrative that are deviated from the official facts and that is perfectly intentional! damn right i beta read but only bc i had to write everything from my broken phone to my laptop manually

Only the dead archons from long ago know what millennia it currently is.

In any case, speaking from the perspective of a human being currently reading this - presumably one from a distant present, considering the methods I have undertaken to preserve this: my envisioning.

I’m sure the overbearing gods and goddesses in Celestia will strike at me with a snap, which is why I am in a hurry to note as much detail of my revelation as possible. I am no priest, nor chieftain of a tribe, but a mere... dreamer? Or delusional? Perhaps both; regardless, my identity is but a trivial matter, now and in the future.

Let me begin by the strong iron gates I envision myself stumbling upon every weekend. The gates are tall and proud, and thicker than Madame Lisa’s bookshelves. It is evident that this holy gate is meant to keep away the unwanted. Which is understandable - for the world beyond the gate, once one looks behind themselves, is nothing but the never-ending void. It is dark and will certainly suck the life and joy out of someone.

Perhaps that is why so many outcasts line themselves up to get to enter the sacred City of Unity, the only cluster of civilization left standing after the Interstellar War. Surely, the darkness beyond the walls of the thriving city are all because of the towering mountains of garbage that take up all the light. The dusty haze of unknown substances wafting in the already-putrid air don’t aid in letting sunlight in either.

This, my lieges, is the price the denizens of Teyvat shall pay for being blinded by words and revelations of Celestia and its power-hungry archons. They (the archons) are just as much of tyrants as the Lawrence Clan was. You’d think that they had it all - beauty, grace, brains and power - so what was there to thirst for, especially in the mortal realm?

Much to my dismay, even I, who is but a mere mortal, cannot answer such a complex thought.

Nevertheless, the city appears to be very futuristic; there are significant technological and scientific advances. Alchemy is but a dead folklore, and the mysterious denizens have evolved to “cyberpunk” technology. Visions have also become nothing but dead folklore. After all, what on Earth would any of the denizens need a Vision for when cutting-edge technology was at their feet, giving them the power to alter their godforsaken appearances? Their physical and mental capabilities? Their senses? It gave that damned civilization a sense of security, a sense of wealth and elegance and power, regardless of social status.

But tyranny has revived itself once more; the ever-so-humble wishes of the Lord Barbatos have blown away with any sanity left during the War. All of the Geo Archon’s hard labor into shaping the lands into precise perfection have gone down the drain, and Fontaine’s famously just system has evaporated into nothingness. Tyranny hails in the City of Unity, and the wealthiest of entrepreneurs take their holy seats. For in the City of Unity, it is widely believed (and affirmed, even a drunken fool can see the facts and statistics) that the said city would certainly not be where it is now - eternal florescent lights, advanced machinery, unparalleled science and evolutionary bio-alchemy that not even dear Miss Sucrose can match - without the diligence and intellect of the leading entrepreneurs. After all, they are the ones that funded the scientists who discovered and created all the blessed machinery that the city so desperately depends on like a drug and its pusher. Like an alcoholic and his wine.

Because of their seemingly endless wealth and sheer social power, the military turn a blind eye to the graft and corruption of the famed entrepreneurs. Even when a brave soul speaks up with the appropriate evidence, that evidence will never be able to compare to the five lawyers hard at work for their single client.

And it’s not like Miss Angelica, founder and chief of Honey Entertainment, can indulge on the secrets of her fellow business partners, for everyone in the business realm has something to say about everyone. One misstep could lead to the ultimate downfall of any entrepreneur, with all of them equally knowing the way the general public despises them. They are arrogant, but not ignorant - no good businessman would get where the holy seven are now if ignorance to the general public’s opinions blazed in their cores.

But who are they (the general public) to comment, the rich ponder, when it’s all thanks to their ‘philanthropy’ that the rats below their aristocratic asses have food to eat in the first place.

And at the end of the day, the rats below can only hope to make it another rainy day in the ever-raining city as they snake through the cramped alleyways that still hold the scent of cigarettes, beer and cup noodles, all combined in one nauseating scent altogether. And goodness, it’s been two weeks, haven’t the exterminators stopped by yet? The corpses of the actual rats are beginning to pile over the dark corners behind the trash cans. Do they not get paid enough? Probably not. No one in the general public ever does.

Mora is still a thing of the future. No one has ever bothered to change its name, despite the God of Mora dead during this future. Honestly, it’s not that they still want to honor him, rather, nobody cares. In this world, money is money, and it’s only the value and profiting this money long money that matters. Where it came from, how it came to be, what the fuck others call it is irrelevant. Besides, it’s not like the entrepreneurs could think of a more fascinating title befitting for the very currency that feeds their mouths and provides all their pleasures.

And although Mora had been a name for eons, its value had, for once, been disputed. ‘Tis but a powerful curse laid upon the techy city by the entrepreneurs. Still, Mora has, fortunately, been the only currency the City of Unity uses. Even if they’ve converted to online banking and “ATM.”

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lordeasriel · 4 years

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I had a random thought yesterday that daemons have something in common with cutiemarks from the MLP franchise. Particularly, I think that both daemons and cutiemarks represent not just a personality of their owner, but their destiny. I've just noticed that settling is usually happening too early to be a full representation of the person right here and now and still be a full representation of them in their adulthood, and sometimes it's not so easy to predict whom a child's daemon would settle as, but when we take adults, especially those who have found their personal role in the society, their forms just feel natural after a deeper look, even if you may wonder at the first sight why an adventurous explorer like Lee Scoresby has a hare daemon. So, what if daemons actually represent not just person's personality, bit some sort of their perfect place in the world, something what may make them happy and/or successful, and reach their full potential? I find it interesting, because I practice daemonism as a some sort of spiritual practice combined with perspnality typing, and this point helped me to settle as a sea eagle, while back in my teenage years I was resembling a parrot more.

I apologise for not replying sooner, I got carried away doing other things, but I think this is an interesting point.

Canonically speaking (I don't know if you are a book fan, so I'll try to avoid major spoilers just in case you're not) daemons are more than just the definition of a person's personality; they are their own person, with their own personality and traits, and they act more as a symbiont relationship than being solely half of a being (I hope this makes sense hahahah). So, they are more than just the personality in physical form, they represent more than that.

Now, for the daemons showing the full potential of a person/indicating who they will become as adults: I think there's some truth to this, like there are lots of people whose daemons would help define who they would be as adults, but I think this is more to do with how the world is, than a more spiritual aspect.

Lyra's world has a very strong social segregation and you can see how the daemons help establish that division; in the first book, it's pointed out how most servants had dogs daemons, but the type of dog changed depending on the status of the servant: a higher class servant (butlers, governesses, cooks and maid for like aristocrats) would have a more posh type of dog, while a lower class servants (people who would work with manual labor, but in less rich establishments). So, while I think the daemons plays a part in helping you establish yourself in the world, I think it more of a question of "my daemon is this, so I can do/be this and this and this" rather than "my daemon is this, so I WILL be this". Lee is a good example of it because he became an aeronaut by pure chance; like you mentioned, you can see how he and Hester fits with he adventurous role, even if at first they don't seem to fit in.

And I agree that daemons can't represent fully the personality of a child, because the child still is growing up and building their personality, but this is why we can't see daemons solely as a portrait of someone's psyche. They are more than that, like I mentioned earlier. Also, the social aspect of the daemon is important; as a child, having a dog daemon, you'd probably grow up with your parents telling you how good of a butler you could be; or if you have a water type daemon, you'd be conditioned into thinking your entire existence should be about becoming something. It's not different than those people who are born to a family of specific people (doctors, lawyers, farmers, people who work with wood - sorry idk the word in english); they end up being conditioned into thinking they have a talent/a disposition to doing the same thing their parents did. And there is also the social barrier: people with simple dog daemons would face a harder time trying to become politicians, but it wouldn't be impossible.

You said you practice daemonism, so this whole take may seem a bit different, because I understand general daemonism is more about the mind and the spirit, but in Pullman's world the social aspect is very important to how daemons work. They're not just a reproduction of a person's behavior, they are people themselves, co-existing with another person on a very intimate level, that we can't even compare because nothing similar exists for us.

They are the same person too, yes, but they are also individuals whose actions affect the other in unpredictable ways, but I think the reason why they shape each other's lives has more to do with society's perception of daemons than a destiny type of thing. At least that's how I read them, anyway, and I usually like the social lens better than the spiritual lens hahahah

#asks #hdm meta: daemons #thank u for the message that was a very interesting take #i hope this is not too confusing talking about daemons is always hard for me

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ladyhallen · 7 years

Text

To Those Left Behind

Sakura knows the boy sleeping under the covers is not her son.

She exchanges a tentative look with Syaoran and is relieved when she sees the knowledge in his eyes too. She wasn’t sure he would remember their other son, but the blood of Clow running through his veins, no matter how diluted, gives him enough power. Enough to be a powerful sorcerer in his own right. Certainly more powerful than he was in her memories.

“He’s…” she tries to start and is unsurprised at how difficult it is to get the words out. “He’s not ours…”

A memory made from a wish, of time turned back and she shudders at the feeling. Memories like that always make her feel nauseous, and not only for the disassociation it gives her. Her mind is given memories of giving birth to a black haired boy that is a throwback to Syaoran’s ancestor, Clow while her body remembers giving birth to another boy.

“He’s ours,” Syaoran says firmly, resolutely. As sturdy as a tree and a mountain and his resolve has always been what she loves about him. “His soul…his magic and his existence was brought about by my other self. In essence, he is….”

In essence, he is the same, is what he would have said. Sakura understands what he means.

“My hands remember a different shape,” she whispers. She doesn’t know why she is uncertain. The pain of a mother is burning – lancing through her like a rod. She has just lost her son and gained another, along with a foreign host of memories that stand out in her mind, highlighted by the magic running in her veins.

“Your hands hold, no matter the shape. You will be fine. We will be fine,” Syaoran reassures her.

Her magic is powerful though, stronger than his and she knows that the twin-soul of their son will suffer much hardship unless they do something about it. It’s a relief to know that they could do something about it, unlike their other son.

“His name,” she whispers, feeling her magic stirring deep inside her. “Will be Watanuki Kimihiro. You must bury his name, Syaoran. Bury his real name, lest that Puppetmaster find him and use him as he had used us.”

Syaoran nods. “We will tell him the truth?”

Sakura feels a tear drop at what will happen when they do. “Yes. And he will go to the Shopkeeper and make his own choice.”

The rustling of sheets takes their attention and her son’s twin-soul is stirring. Syaoran gestures and the name buries itself, deep into the recesses of his memory, where only a wizard wielding Clow’s magic could open it.

“Kimihiro,” Sakura says softly. “Good morning.”

He blinks sleepily at her, eyes blue and innocent. Sakura remembers meeting Clow Reed in a dream, or a memory of him. Those same blue eyes blink at her from the bed and it takes all her willpower not to freeze.

“Good morning, mother,” he says. “I had a strange dream. Another boy was yelling at me, not to disappear.”

Sakura manages to hide a shudder. She knows who that boy was, somehow.

“Hold on to that, for a moment,” Syaoran says behind her. “It’s too early for dream interpretation. After breakfast, tell me about it.”

After breakfast, Kimihiro would likely forget the dream. Sakura exhales a quiet sigh of relief. She is not one to run from confrontation, but she would need time to gather her strength to do it first.

“You’re not joining us for breakfast?” Syaoran asks her, recognizing the look in her eyes.

“I have to prepare,” she murmurs, eyes already distant. “If he is to survive, I have to prepare. You have started the first step, I’ll take care of the rest.”

Sakura spends the day making calls.

While she’s prominent in Hongkong for being the wife of Li Syaoran, she is well-known in her own right for being a powerful dreamseer. Syaoran’s expertise of wards, talismans and offensive magic ensures that they have enough connections all over the world.

Who Sakura contacts, however, are her old school friends in Japan. Her precognition had pointed her to the old, ratty address book and she’d obliged. (She may no longer have the Luck of the Gods, but she trusted her magic not to lead her astray.)

“Umi-san, good morning!” she greets as cheerfully as she can over the phone. “Do you remember me? I’m Sakura. Well, I was Kinomoto Sakura.”

Umi Ryuuzaki evidently does, judging by the pleasure in her voice. “Of course I do!” she says gleefully. She is as vivacious as always. “Sakura-chan! You’re Li Sakura now, aren’t you? It’s good to hear from you again. What’s up?”

That’s what she likes about Umi. Straight to the point and completely shameless about it.

“You know what I do for a living, don’t you?” she asks as a prelude. “My son, Kimihiro…in a few years, he’ll need your help.”

Given that Umi’s job is being an inheritance lawyer and most of the people she deals with are the deceased and their descendants, her sharp intake of breath is completely understandable.

“Sakura, are you ill?” she demands.

Sakura shakes her head, forgetting for a moment that she’s on the phone and Umi can’t see her.

“Ah, no. I just…I had a dream,” she says solemnly. “And I know…my Kimihiro, he will come to you so young.”

Umi is quiet for a moment, before she sighs. “Mou! If this is what I was signing up for when I agreed to be your friend, you could have warned me!” the tone of her voice is completely ridiculous and Sakura can’t help but laugh. “I’ll tell Fuu?” the lawyer continues, prodding.

“Ah, please,” Sakura agrees, thinking on the blonde girl and how kind she was. Her being a Social Worker for orphaned children was a really lovely coincidence (Hitsuzen).

“Send me a picture of your Kimihiro,” Umi demands. “Gah! I hate it when you use that mystical, serious voice on me, Sakura.”

Sakura laughs again, imagining her face. “Of course. He just turned seven this year.”

Strangely, Umi just sighs and says quietly, “I’ll take care of him for you, Sakura. I’ll miss you.”

A lump forms in her throat at the sudden feeling of gratitude. Just three hours ago, she had been unsure of the little boy bearing an identical soul to her son. Now, having named him – hiding his true name and his soul in the process - and contemplating his future, she knows she loves that boy to distraction. Just as much as she had loved her son.

“I’ll miss you too, Umi. Thank you.”

Lastly, she places a call for Yukito.

She arranges it so that she calls when Touya is not there and she manages to inform Yukito, as obliquely as possible without stating it outright, that her son might get into some trouble in a few years and to please take care of him?

Yukito, like all dreamseers Sakura has met, doesn’t ask unnecessary questions like Umi. He just says, “I’ll find him and take care of him for you.”

Sakura puts down a note to send him a picture, dithering for a bit, before putting a note at the back of the photograph that said, “Be careful of his name.”

Sakura puts down the phone and allows herself to crumble, just a little. Syaoran is doing his duty and teaching Kimihiro everything he would have taught their other son and more besides. Cooking and cleaning, while easier done with magic, is always better made with manual labor.

To her surprise, the phone rings.

Sakura stares for a moment, taken aback by the sudden, shrill sound. She would say it is a coincidence that someone is calling her in her private line when she is in the office to hear it, but she knows better than that. (Hitsuzen.)

She picks it up with some trepidation and then almost laughs when she hears the voice on the other end of the line.

“Good morning, Yuuko-san,” Sakura greets back.

The Witch of Dimensions’s husky voice murmurs, “Sakura-chan, so serious.”

Sakura lets out the giggle she had been holding back. The witch she had known had been serious, the memories she holds always held an air of professionalism. But just remembering Mokona and the pranks the little meatbun had done told her that outside of a professional setting was a woman who liked messing with people. (She thinks of Fai and knows both of them would have gotten along marvelously.)

“Sorry, you caught me at a bad time,” she apologizes.

“A-ah,” the witch says in that tone of voice that always makes chills go up and down her spine. “The fractured memories just caught up, I see.”

Sakura’s breath caught. “Yes,” she chokes.

There is a sigh on the other end of the line and Sakura wants to weep. As awful as the hand fate had dealt the both of them, the witch had it worse. Sakura bites on her tongue to stop the apologies from coming out.

“He’ll be fine,” Yuuko says eventually. “I’ll make sure of it.”

The sobs that had been building up in her chest come out as a whimper. “The price?” she manages.

“Oh Sakura-chan,” the witch says sadly. “He’s a customer.”

A customer.

Sakura wants to cry, because there are a lot of reasons why one would become Yuuko’s customer, and it all boils down to desperation.

Duty, she reminds herself. “Thank you, Yuuko-san.”

“It is the least I could do, Sakura-chan.”

Vehemently, Sakura shakes her head. “No, Yuuko-san. You’ve already done so much! So really, thank you.”

“Such a sweet child,” Yuuko says fondly. Sakura could hear the smile in the witch’s voice this time, which is better than sad melancholy.

Syaoran takes one look at her face and holds her hand. If they were alone, he would embrace her.

“Mother, I made a cake for you! Father said you weren’t feeling well,” Kimihiro greets her, eyes sparkling hopefully.

Sakura’s smile comes more naturally this time. “Ah, what a lovely surprise! You made this, Kimihiro? Thank you!”

He blushes and smiles back, clearly pleased with her reaction.

“But this is so big and so delicious,” she adds with a hint of mischief. “I’ll need your help finishing this, dear one.”

Kimihiro tries to get out of eating the cake, insisting that it’s for her. But he’s no match for her, especially since she’s in the mood to be distracted.

So they eat the cake and laugh, Sakura allowing herself close her eyes from the darker visions coming to her.

The day it’s set to pass arrives and Sakura closes her eyes to enjoy what is surely the last sunshine she would feel in forever.

A set of footsteps sound at her right and she turns her head to look at her husband, her soulmate. Syaoran is holding an hourglass, a very familiar hourglass.

“Kimihiro is having a trip to Japan. He thinks it’s all grand and swell to stay with his uncles,” Syaoran sighs. “That boy’s enthusiasm is amazing.”

She manages a smile for him. “That is how children are. Are you prepared?”

“Yes. One last time,” he says. His brown eyes are fierce and determined. One last kiss, one last hug, the last they would feel.

Then they activate the magic deep in the blood and have faith with the rest of the people they entrusted their son to.

A wink, a surge of magic and all in place of where they stood is an hourglass.

For the breathe of one second, the world is quiet.

Touya receives a package in the mail and knows without doubt that he wouldn’t want to open it.

He opens it anyway, because the return address is his brat-sisters address and this would likely involve more magic foolery than he is comfortable with.

“That’s for Yuuko-san,” Yukito says from behind him, peeking over his shoulder. “Sakura-chan did call last month for something important, but she was being cryptic about it.”

With a sigh, Touya plucked the tape holding the brown box together. And stopped again.

A case of polished wood, the sort that hold really expensive heirlooms. It’s flat shape hints at one thing he knows that the Li’s have in abundance.

Upon opening it, he groans to Yukito. “Yuki, look. They sent me replica’s.”

Yukito’s dark eyes are intent on the wand and the sword. “No, Touya. Those are the real things.”

Unwittingly, Touya touches the wand and somehow, he just knows. Grief lances through him, as well as understanding. Sometimes, having untrained magic in his blood is such an inconvenience.

“Ah, Sakura. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I just had a thought.

What happened to those who remembered, when the switch happened?

I didn’t mean for this to get this sad.

#fanfiction #xxxholic #tsubasa reservoir chronicle #sakura kinomoto #syaoran li #watanuki kimihiro #trcxxxxholic #crossover #snippet

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un-enfant-immature · 5 years

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Lawyers hate timekeeping. Ping raises $13M to fix it with AI

Counting billable time in six minute increments is the most annoying part of being a lawyer. It’s a distracting waste. It leads law firms to conservatively under-bill. And it leaves lawyers stuck manually filling out timesheets after a long day when they want to go home to their families.

Life is already short, as Ping CEO and co-founder Ryan Alshak knows too well. The former lawyer spent years caring for his mother as she battled a brain tumor before her passing. “One minute laughing with her was worth a million doing anything else” he tells me. “I became obsessed with the idea that we spend too much of our lives on things we have no need to do — especially at work.”

That’s motivated him as he’s built his startup Ping, which uses artificial intelligence to automatically track lawyers’ work and fill out timesheets for them. There’s a massive opportunity to eliminate a core cause of burnout, lift law firm revenue by around 10%, and give them fresh insights into labor allocation.

Ping co-founder and CEO Ryan Alshak. Image Credit: Margot Duane

That’s why today Ping is announcing a $13.2 million Series A led by Upfront Ventures, along with BoxGroup, First Round, Initialized, and Ulu Ventures. Adding to Ping’s quiet $3.7 million seed led by First Round last year, the startup will spend the cash to scale up enterprise distribution and become the new timekeeping standard.

“I was a corporate litigator at Manatt Phelps down in LA and joke that I was voted the world’s worst timekeeper” Alshak tells me. “I could either get better at doing something I dreaded or I could try and build technology that did it for me.”

The promise of eliminating the hassle could make any lawyer who hears about Ping an advocate for the firm buying the startup’s software, like how Dropbox grew as workers demanded easier file sharing. “I’ve experienced first-hand the grind of filling out timesheets” writes Initialized partner and former attorney Alda Leu Dennis. “Ping takes away the drudgery of manual timekeeping and gives lawyers back all those precious hours.”

Traditionally, lawyers have to keep track of their time by themselves down to the tenth of an hour — reviewing documents for the Johnson case, preparing a motion to dismiss for the Lee case, a client phone call for Sriram case. There are timesheets built into legal software suites like MyCase, legal billing software like Timesolv, and one-off tools like Time Miner and iTimeKeep. They typically offer timers that lawyers can manually start and stop on different devices, with some providing tracking of scheduled appointments, call and text logging, and integration with billing systems.

Ping goes a big step further. It uses AI and machine learning to figure out whether an activity is billable, for which client, a description of the activity, and its codification beyond just how long it lasted. Instead of merely filling in the minutes, it completes all the logs automatically with entries like “Writing up a deposition – Jenkins Case – 18 minutes”. Then it presents the timesheet to the user for review before the send it to billing.

The big challenge now for Alshak and the team he’s assembled is to grow up. They need to go from cat-in-sunglasses logo Ping to mature wordmark Ping. “We have to graduate from being a startup to being an enterprise software company” the CEO tells me. That means learning to sell to C-suites and IT teams, rather than just build solid product. In the relationship-driven world of law, that’s a very different skill set. Ping will have to convince clients it’s worth switching to not just for the time savings and revenue boost, but for deep data on how they could run a more efficient firm.

Along the way, Ping has to avoid any embarrassing data breaches or concerns about how its scanning technology could violate attorney-client privilege. If it can win this lucrative first business in legal, it could barge into the consulting and accounting verticals next to grow truly huge.

With eager customers, a massive market, a weak status quo, and a driven founder, Ping just needs to avoid getting in over its heads with all its new cash. Spent well, the startup could leap ahead of the less tech-savvy competition.

Alshak seems determined to get it right. “We have an opportunity to build a company that gives people back their most valuable resource — time — to spend more time with their loved ones because they spent less time working” he tells me. “My mom will live forever because she taught me the value of time. I am deeply motivated to build something that lasts . . . and do so in her name.”

#TechCrunch

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magzoso-tech · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/lawyers-hate-timekeeping-ping-raises-13m-to-fix-it-with-ai/

Lawyers hate timekeeping. Ping raises $13M to fix it with AI

Ping co-founder and CEO Ryan Alshak. Image Credit: Margot Duane

#Uncategorized

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auroraaboraaborealis · 6 years

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The New York Times

The Queen of Change

With “The Artist’s Way,” Julia Cameron invented the way people renovate the creative soul.

By Penelope Green

Feb. 2, 2019

SANTA FE, N.M. — On any given day, someone somewhere is likely leading an Artist’s Way group, gamely knocking back the exercises of “The Artist’s Way” book, the quasi-spiritual manual for “creative recovery,” as its author Julia Cameron puts it, that has been a lodestar to blocked writers and other artistic hopefuls for more than a quarter of a century. There have been Artist’s Way clusters in the Australian outback and the Panamanian jungle; in Brazil, Russia, the United Kingdom and Japan; and also, as a cursory scan of Artist’s Way Meetups reveals, in Des Moines and Toronto. It has been taught in prisons and sober communities, at spiritual retreats and New Age centers, from Esalen to Sedona, from the Omega Institute to the Open Center, where Ms. Cameron will appear in late March, as she does most years. Adherents of “The Artist’s Way” include the authors Patricia Cornwell and Sarah Ban Breathnach. Pete Townshend, Alicia Keys and Helmut Newton have all noted its influence on their work.

So has Tim Ferriss, the hyperactive productivity guru behind “The Four Hour Workweek,” though to save time he didn’t actually read the book, “which was recommended to me by many megaselling authors,” he writes. He just did the “Morning Pages,” one of the book’s central exercises. It requires you write three pages, by hand, first thing in the morning, about whatever comes to mind. (Fortunes would seem to have been made on the journals printed to support this effort.) The book’s other main dictum is the “Artist’s Date” — two hours of alone time each week to be spent at a gallery, say, or any place where a new experience might be possible.

Elizabeth Gilbert, who has “done” the book three times, said there would be no “Eat, Pray, Love,” without “The Artist’s Way.” Without it, there might be no adult coloring books, no journaling fever. “Creativity” would not have its own publishing niche or have become a ubiquitous buzzword — the “fat-free” of the self-help world — and business pundits would not deploy it as a specious organizing principle.

The book’s enduring success — over 4 million copies have been sold since its publication in 1992 — have made its author, a shy Midwesterner who had a bit of early fame in the 1970s for practicing lively New Journalism at the Washington Post and Rolling Stone, among other publications, and for being married, briefly, to Martin Scorsese, with whom she has a daughter, Domenica — an unlikely celebrity. With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — “The Artist’s Way” proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it.

The book promises to free up that inner artist in 12 weeks. It’s a template that would seem to reflect the practices of 12-step programs, particularly its invocations to a higher power. But according to Ms. Cameron, who has been sober since she was 29, “12 weeks is how long it takes for people to cook.”

Now 70, she lives in a spare adobe house in Santa Fe, overlooking an acre of scrub and the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. She moved a few years ago from Manhattan, following an exercise from her book to list 25 things you love. As she recalled, “I wrote juniper, sage brush, chili, mountains and sky and I said, ‘This is not the Chrysler Building.’” On a recent snowy afternoon, Ms. Cameron, who has enormous blue eyes and a nimbus of blonde hair, admitted to the jitters before this interview. “I asked three friends to pray for me,” she said. “I also wrote a note to myself to be funny.”

In the early 1970s, Ms. Cameron, who is the second oldest of seven children and grew up just north of Chicago, was making $67 a week working in the mail room of the Washington Post. At the same time, she was writing deft lifestyle pieces for the paper — like an East Coast Eve Babitz. “With a byline, no one knows you’re just a gofer,” she said.

In her reporting, Ms. Cameron observed an epidemic of green nail polish and other “Cabaret”-inspired behaviors in Beltway bars, and slyly reviewed a new party drug, methaqualone. She was also, by her own admission, a blackout drunk. “I thought drinking was something you did and your friends told you about it later,” she said. “In retrospect, in cozy retrospect, I was in trouble from my first drink.”

She met Mr. Scorsese on assignment for Oui magazine and fell hard for him. She did a bit of script-doctoring on “Taxi Driver,” and followed the director to Los Angeles. “I got pregnant on our wedding night,” she said. “Like a good Catholic girl.” When Mr. Scorsese took up with Liza Minnelli while all three were working on “New York, New York,” the marriage was done. (She recently made a painting depicting herself as a white horse and Mr. Scorsese as a lily. “I wanted to make a picture about me and Marty,” she said. “He was magical-seeming to me and when I look at it I think, ‘Oh, she’s fascinated, but she doesn’t understand.’”)

In her memoir, “Floor Sample,” published in 2006, Ms. Cameron recounts the brutality of Hollywood, of her life there as a screenwriter and a drunk. Pauline Kael, she writes, described her as a “pornographic Victorian valentine, like a young Angela Lansbury.” Don’t marry her for tax reasons, Ms. Kael warns Mr. Scorsese. Andy Warhol, who escorts her to the premiere of “New York, New York,” inscribes her into his diary as a “lush.” A cocaine dealer soothes her — “You have a tiny little wife’s habit” — and a doctor shoos her away from his hospital when she asks for help, telling her she’s no alcoholic, just a “sensitive young woman.” She goes into labor in full makeup and a Chinese dressing gown, vowing to be “no trouble.”

“I think it’s fair to say that drinking and drugs stopped looking like a path to success,” she said. “So I luckily stopped. I had a couple of sober friends and they said, ‘Try and let the higher power write through you.’ And I said, What if he doesn’t want to?’ They said, ‘Just try it.’”

So she did. She wrote novels and screenplays. She wrote poems and musicals. She wasn’t always well-reviewed, but she took the knocks with typical grit, and she schooled others to do so as well. “I have unblocked poets, lawyers and painters,” she said. She taught her tools in living rooms and classrooms — “if someone was dumb enough to lend us one,” she said — and back in New York, at the Feminist Art Institute. Over the years, she refined her tools, typed them up, and sold Xeroxed copies in local bookstores for $20. It was her second husband, Mark Bryan, a writer, who needled her into making the pages into a proper book.

The first printing was about 9,000 copies, said Joel Fotinos, formerly the publisher at Tarcher/Penguin, which published the book in 1992. There was concern that it wouldn’t sell. “Part of the reason,” Mr. Fotinos said, “was that this was a book that wasn’t like anything else. We didn’t know where to put it on the shelves — did it go in religion or self-help? Eventually there was a category called ‘creativity,’ and ‘The Artist’s Way’ launched it.” Now an editorial director at St. Martin’s Press, Mr. Fotinos said he is deluged with pitches from authors claiming they’ve written “the new Artist’s Way.”

“But for Julia, creativity was a tool for survival,” he said. “It was literally her medicine and that’s why the book is so authentic, and resonates with so many people.”

“I am my tool kits,” Ms. Cameron said.

And, indeed, “The Artist’s Way” is stuffed with tools: worksheets to be filled with thoughts about money, childhood games, old hurts; wish lists and exercises, many of which seem exhaustive and exhausting — “Write down any resistance, angers and fears,” e.g. — and others that are more practical: “Take a 20 minutes walk,” “Mend any mending” and “repot any pinched and languishing plants.” It anticipates the work of the indefatigable Gretchen Rubin, the happiness maven, if Ms. Rubin were a bit kinder but less Type-A.

“When I teach, it’s like watching the lights come on,” said Ms. Cameron. “My students don’t get lectured to. I think they feel safe. Rather than try and fix themselves, they learn to accept themselves. I think my work makes people autonomous. I feel like people fall in love with themselves.”

Anne Lamott, the inspirational writer and novelist, said that when she was teaching writing full-time, her own students swore by “The Artist’s Way.” “That exercise — three pages of automatic writing — was a sacrament for people,” Ms. Lamott wrote in a recent email. “They could plug into something bigger than the rat exercise wheel of self-loathing and grandiosity that every writer experiences: ‘This could very easily end up being an Oprah Book,’ or ‘Who do I think I’m fooling? I’m a subhuman blowhard.’”

“She’s given you an assignment that is doable, and I think it’s kind of a cognitive centering device. Like scribbly meditation,” Ms. Lamott wrote. “It’s sort of like how manicurists put smooth pebbles in the warm soaking water, so your fingers have something to do, and you don’t climb the walls.”

In the wild.CreditRamsay de Give for The New York Times

Ms. Cameron continues to write her Morning Pages every day, even though she continues, as she said, to be grouchy upon awakening. She eats oatmeal at a local cafe and walks Lily, an eager white Westie. She reads no newspapers, or social media (perhaps the most grueling tenet of “The Artist’s Way” is a week of “reading deprivation”), though an assistant runs a Twitter and Instagram account on her behalf. She writes for hours, mostly musicals, collaborating with her daughter, a film director, and others.

Ms. Cameron may be a veteran of the modern self-care movement but her life has not been all moonbeams and rainbows, and it shows. She was candid in conversation, if not quite at ease. “So I haven’t proven myself to be hilarious,” she said with a flash of dry humor, adding that even after so many years, she still gets stage-fright before beginning a workshop.

She has written about her own internal critic, imagining a gay British interior designer she calls Nigel. “And nothing is ever good enough for Nigel,” she said. But she soldiers on.

She will tell you that she has good boundaries. But like many successful women, she brushes off her achievements, attributing her unlooked-for wins to luck.

“If you have to learn how to do a movie, you might learn from Martin Scorsese. If you have to learn about entrepreneurship, you might learn from Mark” — her second husband. “So I’m very lucky,” she said. “If I have a hard time blowing my own horn, I’ve been attracted to people who blew it for me.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/style/julia-cameron-the-artists-way.html

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andrewdburton · 4 years

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We didn’t start the FIRE: The true history of financial independence

I used to be a collector. I collected trading cards. I collected comic books. I collected pins and stickers and mementos of all sorts. I had boxes of things I'd collected but which essentially served no purpose.

I can't say I've shaken the urge to collect entirely, but I have a much better handle on it than I used to. A few years ago, I sold my comic collection and stopped obsessing over them. Today, I collect three things: patches from the countries I visit, pins from national parks, and — especially — old books about money.

Collecting old money books is fun. For one, it ties to my work. Plus, there's not a huge demand for money manuals, so there's not a lot of competition to buy them. (Exception: As much as I'd love a copy of Ben Franklin's The Way to Wealth, so would a lot of other people. That one is out of my reach.)

One big bonus from collecting old money books is actually reading these books. They're fascinating. And it's interesting to trace the development of certain ideas in the world of personal finance.

For instance, there's this persistent myth of “lost economic virtue”. That is, a lot of people today want to argue that people were better at managing their money in the past. They weren't. Debt (and poor money skills) has been a persistent problem since well before the United States was founded. It's not like we, as a society, once had smart money skills and lost them. The way people manage money today is the way they've always managed money.

Or there's the notion of financial independence (and the closely-related topic of early retirement). The standard narrative goes something like this:

In 1992, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin published Your Money or Your Life, and that marks the “discovery” of FIRE.

In the late 2000s, Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme picked up the FIRE banner, then handed it off to Mr. Money Mustache a few years later.

Today that banner is being carried by newcomers like Choose FI and the /r/financialindependence subreddit.

When you read old money books, however, you soon realize that FIRE isn't new. These ideas have been kicking around for a while. Sure, the past decade has seen the systemization and codification of the concepts, but people have been preaching the importance of financial independence for about 150 years. Maybe longer.

youtube

Today, using my collection of old money books, let's take a look at where the notion of financial independence originated.

This article is a work in progress. It's something I've been thinking about for years, but I haven't had the resources to actually write it until recently. And as I acquire more old books about money, I'm sure my insights will change. This particular version is based on a talk I gave last month at Camp FI in Colorado. In fact, some of the images I'm using here are taken from the slides for that talk.

In the Beginning

Who started the FIRE movement? Who “invented” financial independence? Who first came up with the concept? Despite my burgeoning library of money manuals, I don't have a definitive answer. Not yet anyhow.

That said, the earliest reference I've found is Aesop's fable of the Ants and the Grasshopper from about 560 BCE. (The grasshopper was a cicada in the original Latin, by the way.) Here's an English translation of the original:

The ants were spending a fine winter’s day drying grain collected in the summertime. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants inquired of him, “Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?” He replied, “I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing.” They then said in derision: “If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter.”

This fable clearly contains the germ of the financial independence idea, even if it doesn't explicitly talk about F.I. and/or early retirement.

Now, I'm certain there are references to this concept in other ancient literature. I haven't gone looking for them yet, however, so I can't tell you where to find them. (If you know, please tell us in the comments.)

But if we jump forward 2250 years, we can see F.I. concepts quite clearly in the writing of Benjamin Franklin. “If you would be wealthy, think of saving, as well as of getting,” Franklin wrote in 1758's The Way to Wealth. He noted that because they were so obsessed with nice things, many wealthy people are reduced to poverty and forced to borrow from people they once looked down upon.

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden. While I have some issues with this book (and with Thoreau), Walden contains a clear foundation for the modern FIRE movement. In fact, when I emailed Vicki Robin to ask what inspired her and Joe Dominguez to teach about financial independence, she specifically cited Thoreau. And it's easy to see why. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he famously wrote. But he also wrote this:

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

That quote from Walden sounds as if it could be lifted directly from Your Money or Your Life‘s discussion of life energy, doesn't it?

In 1864 — during the American civil war — Edmund Morris published Ten Acres Enough, which documented his family's moved from the city to the country in order to grow ten acres of fruits and berries. His goal was for his family to be self-sufficient, to obtain what we'd call financial independence.

Morris' approach was typical of the day. He wrote:

No prudent man, accepting such a trust, and guaranteeing its integrity, would invest the fund in stocks. Our country is filled with pecuniary wrecks from causes like this…

Like many of his contemporaries, Morris thought stocks were a poor investment. He advocated investing in real estate. (And note his use of the word “pecuniary” instead of “financial”. We'll come back to that in a moment.)

Fun trivia! In Ten Acres Enough, Morris doesn't call the Civil War a “civil war”. He calls it “the slaveholders' rebellion”. He also makes liberal use of the word “treason”. There's no bullshit about the source of the war being “states' rights” as we hear nowadays.

Coining a Term

In 1872, H.L. Reade published a book called Money and How to Make It. This is an amazing book — one of my favorites out of all the volumes I've picked up over the past few years. It tackles all sorts of diverse topics, and is quite progressive for its day.

Much of the book is, as the title suggests, about how to earn more money. To that end, Reade offers chapters on how to make money with geese and with ducks and with cattle. He talks about making cheese. He talks about becoming a doctor or a lawyer. But he also includes a chapter on “Woman's Part in Making Money” and one on “The Brotherhood of Man”. Cool stuff for 1872!

But the reason this book is important is that it's the first instance that I've been able to find where an author actually writes about financial independence. Here's a quote from the book's introduction:

We have purposely united with plain practical talk, enough of history and story to relieve the volume from any text book tendency, and believing, as we sincerely do, that no man or woman can read it without receiving a value far greater than its cost, we commend it to the calm consideration of every person who, like the writer, beginning comparatively poor, is anxious to reach what all men should desire and labor for, PECUNIARY INDEPENDENCE.

There you have it. The first reference (that I've been able to find so far) to the idea of financial independence.

But wait. What's up with Reade calling it “pecuniary independence”. That's strange, isn't it? Well, not really. Turns out that the word “financial” wasn't yet in common use in 1872. The word had been around a few hundred years, but it wasn't until the late 1700s that “financial” began to take on the definition it has today: “relating to money”. Before that, people used the word “pecuniary” instead.

Here are a couple of graphs that show how the usage of “financial” and “pecuniary” have changed over time.

It wasn't until the late 1800s that “financial” supplanted “pecuniary” as the term of choice. In 1872, Reade didn't write about “financial independence” because “pecuniary indepence” was the more common term!

Nerdy stuff, eh?

Another important early F.I. book was published at about this same time. In 1875, Scottish author and social reformer Samuel Smiles published Thrift, which was meant to conclude a trilogy of personal development books. (Smiles published Self-Help in 1859 and Character in 1871.)

In the preface to Thrift, Smiles writes:

Every man is bound to do what he can to elevate his social state, and to secure his independence. For this purpose he must spare from his means in order to be independent in his condition. Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live. Independence can only be established by the exercise of forethought, prudence, frugality, and self-denial. To be just as well as generous, men must deny themselves. The essence of generosity is self-sacrifice.

And Smiles begins the book by re-stating the fable of the Ants and the Grasshopper. For my money — and I haven't read the entire book yet because I just got in the mail yesterday — this could very well be the first book about financial independence…even if it never uses that term precisely.

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So, what's the first actual reference to the term “financial independence”? I don't have a definitive answer yet, but I do know its earliest appearance in my collection of old money books.

In 1919, Victor de Villiers published Financial Independence at Fifty, a collection of loosely-related articles that originally appeared in “The Magazine of Wall Street”. While the book itself doesn't dwell on financial independence, the author includes this definition at the start:

What is financial independence? Freedom from dependence on others for guidance, government, or financial support. The spirit of self-reliance, or of freedom from subordination to others.

He also includes a chart showing “the six ages of investment” which is strikingly similar to my own list of the six stages of financial independence!

Financial Independence through the Years

From these humble origins, the concept of “financial independence” grew more complex and more robust. The path to financial independence became codified.

One of the first books to set out a system to help others become F.I. was the immensely popular The Richest Man in Babylon, which is quite possibly the best-selling money manual of all time.

The Richest Man in Babylon began as a series of pamphlets distributed through banks and insurance companies during the early 1920s. In 1926, author George Clason collected this material into book form for the first time. Over the years, Richest Man underwent several revisions until it reached the form we know today.

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As you're probably aware, Clason suggested the following seven commandments for building wealth.

Start thy purse to fattening. (Save 10% of all you earn.)

Control thy expenditures. (Avoid lifestyle inflation; curb desires.)

Make thy gold multiply. (Use compounding to grow wealth.)

Guard thy treasures from loss. (Avoid get-rich-quick schemes.)

Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment. (Buy your home.)

Insure a future income. (Plan for retirement.)

Increase thy ability to earn. (Educate yourself.)

But there were plenty of lesser-known books published during the twentieth century that offered excellent financial advice and espoused the principles of financial independence.

In 1936, for instance, as part of a series of books called “The Franklin System”, Lansing Smith wrote Gaining Financial Security. This book (which is better than 90% of the money books being printed today!) might be the earliest book to promote financial independence as a concept by name and with a system. Here's an excerpt (emphasis mine):

If you want financial independence, you must realize its great and lasting value as a desirable attainment. You must keep everlastingly at the task of making it come true. Finally, you must let nothing shake or weaken your determination to achieve your objective.

There is one factor you should understand thoroughly at the outset: The amount of one's annual income has far less to do with ultimate financial independence than most people think. There are probably thousands of people with incomes many times the size of yours who are nevertheless deeply in debt and wholly unable to meet their obligations. On the other hand, many thousands have far less income than you have and yet they are managing to achieve financial security or are now maintaining and, indeed, increasing it.

Similar books followed. In 1946, in the wake of the second world war, John Durand published How to Build Financial Independence for a New Age. And during the 1950s, several books appeared with the term “financial independence” in their title. (Universally, however, these later books didn't actually discuss financial independence. Instead, they were manuals for investing in the stock market.)

The 1960s and 1970s saw other books about financial independence appear, many of which promoted a philosophy that seems relatively workable by today's standards. Then, in 1988, Paul Terhorst published what I consider the first modern FIRE book: Cashing In on the American Dream [my review].

Terhorst was 33 years old and a partner at a major accounting firm. But he began to wonder if he really wanted to be part of the rat race. Didn't he have enough money already? It took him two years of playing with numbers, but eventually he realized that he could quit working if he wanted. At age 35, he retired. And he's been retired ever since.

Early Retirement

You'll notice that so far I've only discussed the origin of the concept of “financial independence”. What about early retirement? The modern FIRE movement combines these two notions under one roof. Why don't older books do so?

The answer to this is complicated because the history of retirement is complicated.

You see, retirement as we know it has only existed for about 150 years. In reality, the definition of “retirement” has been in constant flux for most of that time. In the latter part of the 19th century (and the early part of the 20th century), retirement wasn't considered desirable. It was called “mandatory retirement”, and it was something that people railed against.

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One hundred years ago, retirement was a massive social issue, much the same way that immigration or gun rights are today. Many people opposed retirement. It wasn't until the Social Security Act of 1935 that attitudes began to change. In time — by the 1950s, certainly — our modern view of retirement as a period of rest after of lifetime of work began to crystalize.

Once this happened, then a notion of “early retirement” became possible. And we can see society explore the idea through books and magazine articles.

The books tend to be academic and of little interest to us. The magazine articles, on the other hand, are interesting — especially since they portray early retirement as an opportunity to pursue other paid work. (This flies in the face of an attitude prominent in some quarters today, an attitude that says “you can't be retired if you continue to work”. That idea was bullshit sixty years ago and it's bullshit today.)

Final Thoughts

So, if financial independence isn't a new concept, why hasn't it caught on? If people have been preaching the power of financial freedom since 1872 (or before), why don't more people know about it? I think there are a number of reasons.

Samuel Smiles — and people who adhere to his Victorian ideas — would argue that the reason F.I. hasn't become more popular is that people are weak. As progressive as he was in his day, Smiles believed that poor people were poor because they made poor choices. There are many people who would make the same argument today. And while I certainly believe that poor choices can be a barrier to wealth, I think they're a barrier for the middle and upper classes, not the lower class. I believe that poverty is often a result of systemic issues.

Note: Let me be clear, though, that regardless the source of poverty, I believe strongly that it is up to the individual to elevate her financial position. It doesn't matter the reasons you're poor. If you'd like to escape poverty, it's up to you to make the choices required to do so. Then, after you've freed yourself, you can turn your attention to systemic issues, to helping other people rise up as well.

Perhaps the biggest change from 1872 to today is technology.

When Money and How to Make It was published, its reach was limited. First of all, it was expensive. The book cost $20 back then, which would be roughly equivalent to $400 in 2020. (You almost had to be financially independent to buy the book!) If you could afford to buy it, then what? Who could you share the info with? If you loaned the book to your sister or your neighbor, maybe you'd have a few people to talk about these ideas with, but mostly you were on your own.

Today, on the other hand, this information is ubiquitous. If you want to learn about financial independence and early retirement, there's almost too much material out there for you. And it's easy to find like-minded folks to talk with! There are Facebook groups, subreddits, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and in-person meet-ups galore. Technology makes it easy to connect with other people who are interested in financial independence and early retirement.

But I think the real reason that F.I. ideas didn't catch on in 1872 (or 1919 or 1936 or 1957 or 1988) is simple: Most people just don't care. Some folks don't believe the concepts work. (They do.) Others don't believe the ideas apply to them and their situation. (They do.) And plenty of people simply aren't willing to wait. The pursuit of financial indepence requires trading short-term comfort for long-term security. Humans aren't hard-wired to think long term.

Because we're a myopic species, it's tough for us to plan five or ten or twenty years in the future. That was true 150 years ago. It's true today.

I'm not saying that the FIRE movement is going to fade away and be forgotten. I don't think it will, actually. But I do think that its appeal is limited. Most people are unwilling to make the choices and changes necessary to retire early. They're okay with the standard path…even though that means they'll be working until they're 65. Or 70. Or older.

I suspect that 150 years from now, some kid will be digging through a digital archive and discover the dozens of FIRE blogs from 2020. And he'll marvel at how the ideas he thought were original to him and his colleagues in 2170 have actually been around for decades. So, he'll whip up a hologram for HoloTube and share what he's learned about the history of financial independence and early retirement.

Because — to quote George Santayana — “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/history-of-financial-independence/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years

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Argument analysis: Justices wrestle with scope of cross-examination of social security experts

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard argument in an important Social Security Disability Insurance case, Biestek v. Berryhill. At issue was whether the Social Security Administration may ground a decision to deny benefits on the opinion of a vocational expert who refuses to disclose the data on which that opinion relies. Under the regulations, once a claimant has demonstrated that a severe impairment prevents her or him from returning to past relevant work, the agency must show that jobs exist in substantial numbers in the regional or national economy that the claimant can perform. The vocational expert’s opinion is crucial to the agency’s carrying its burden of proof.

Vocational experts testify in response to hypothetical questions posed by administrative law judges. The judge will ask the vocational expert whether the claimant can perform any jobs if the judge finds that the claimant has a particular set of limitations. The vocational expert, commonly a professional staff member from an employment agency, will testify based on a combination of public data compiled by various federal agencies and the expert’s own experience. Claimants’ counsel has access to the federal data, but what the expert says about her or his direct experience placing job-seekers typically is dispositive in a case.

Disputes commonly arise either over whether the job in question can, in fact, be performed by a person with the claimant’s limitations or whether that job does exist in substantial numbers in the regional and national economies. After the vocational expert in Michael Biestek’s case testified that Biestek could work as a sorter, Biestek’s counsel asked for the data on which the expert’s opinion was based. The expert said it was contained in confidential client files. Counsel said that redacted versions were fine, but the administrative law judge intervened to rule that the expert would not have to provide that information, and the ALJ went on to deny Biestek’s claim for benefits.

The justices’ questioning provided no clear sense of which way the court is likely to rule. Several justices questioned whether this case is an appropriate vehicle for making general law. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that Biestek’s attorney did not substantially cross-examine the vocational expert after being denied the expert’s underlying data, suggesting that the court cannot know whether effective cross-examination was still possible. Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the need for cross-examination depends on the facts of an individual case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor also wondered whether the court had sufficient information to lay down a “blanket rule” about vocational experts having to submit the data underlying their opinions.

Both Sotomayor and Chief Justice John Roberts suggested several ways cross-examination might destroy an expert’s testimony without access to the underlying data. The chief justice later noted, however, that “when you’re having someone testify to data and numbers, the way you cross-examine is to ask what she relied on and then see if that testimony lines up.” And Sotomayor questioned whether the government’s position was essentially shifting the burden of proof to the claimant to show a lack of foundation for the vocational expert’s opinion when Social Security regulations place the burden at this stage of the process on the agency.

Ishan Bhabha, representing Biestek, responded that the publicly available data is generally inadequate for that purpose. The Department of Labor has not revised its Dictionary of Occupational Titles since 1991 and census data tends to be too broadly aggregated to answer particular questions. Roberts surmised that the ALJ might have allowed access to the underlying data had Biestek’s counsel made these sorts of arguments.

Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan pursued a line of questioning that could, in principle, lead to a fundamental re-examination of a cornerstone of administrative law: the substantial-evidence standard. Courts long have interpreted that standard to require consideration not just of the evidence supporting an agency’s position but also of the evidence refuting it. Courts are not empowered to reweigh the evidence, but they can reject an agency decision as lacking substantial evidence if nothing adequately responds to a particularly telling point made in opposition to the decision.

This “Twelve Angry Men” approach to substantial evidence has compelled agencies to concern themselves with the whole record rather than just assembling superficially adequate support for their positions. Alito, however, stated: “Substantial evidence refers to a quantum of proof. And … it’s hard for me to see why that inquiry is different depending on whether the underlying information … was requested or not.” He said that access to cross-examination seemed more of a procedural-due-process question than one of substantial evidence, a point Kagan pressed as well. The two justices asked whether, if including the expert’s underlying data in the record is a question of substantial evidence rather than procedural fairness, that data should not be required whether or not the claimant requests it. Bhabha responded that he would welcome that rule but had not pressed it because it went beyond what courts of appeal have required of vocational experts to date.

Later in the argument, however, Justice Neil Gorsuch stated that this was “[n]ot a process problem,” noting that, in a case in which the Federal Rules of Evidence applied, a court would have no trouble finding that no rational jury could believe an expert witness who refused to disclose her or his underlying data. Assistant to the Solicitor General Anthony Yang responded that, in Biestek’s case, it was the ALJ, rather than the expert witness, who ultimately refused to make the underlying data available.

In framing his argument for the government, Yang emphasized the unparalleled vastness of the Social Security Administration’s disability adjudication process, with roughly 2,500 hearings being held each day. This, in his view, meant that the SSA had to be allowed considerable latitude to adopt procedures to make the system work.

This argument ran afoul of Sotomayor and Ginsburg, who pointed out that an SSA manual for vocational experts – albeit one issued after this case arose – tells the experts that they must be prepared to disclose the data underlying their opinions. Yang responded that vocational experts cannot bring all their relevant case files to a hearing because they do not know in advance what they will be asked. This response ignored the fact that most vocational experts testify by telephone from their offices. But Yang did imply what is almost certainly true: that the process of responding to requests that vocational experts produce their underlying data would require continuances in such cases, a result he argued would substantially impair the agency’s functioning. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch expressed skepticism that the agency’s burden would be so great.

Ginsburg and Gorsuch noted that the SSA’s manual requires experts to be ready to produce “any” material supporting their opinions. Gorsuch asked why the court should not defer to that sweeping directive. Yang responded that the manual was not intended as legally binding guidance.

Both of the lawyers and several justices danced around a central underlying problem: Many people suspect that vocational experts’ opinions, whether favorable or unfavorable to claimants, have tenuous support. Indeed, vocational experts increasingly have become black boxes, churning out de facto decisions in many disability cases based on little more than guesswork. Bhabha noted that the courts of appeal have often criticized vocational experts’ testimony. Kagan observed that one amicus curiae in support of Biestek presented wildly varying estimates that vocational experts have offered in different cases of the prevalence of the kind of jobs that the SSA determined Biestek was capable of doing. Had one of those other vocational experts been called in his case, Biestek likely would have prevailed.

Yang acknowledged the weaknesses in the publicly available data, to the point that Sotomayor eventually told him that he was “worrying me that this is, in fact, what all of the critics are saying … [t]hat these are numbers pulled out of a hat as a person sits there.” The chief justice later said that “no matter how much of an expert a person is, what you’ve basically said is … trust me. [A]nd it’s not just trust me … in general. Trust me, I think, it’s 20 percent. It does have a sense of being pulled … out of the air.” Ginsburg wondered how substantial the vocational expert’s claim of confidentiality can be if the vocational expert had, as she claimed, conducted research into labor market conditions.

As usual, Justice Clarence Thomas did not speak during the argument.

The justices certainly identified several possible bases for a minimalist decision. They also, however, raised tantalizing hints of a broader ruling. If the court were to embrace the narrow view of the “substantial evidence” test, administrative agencies would have sweeping license to engage with arguments against their preferred decisions. On the other hand, several justices seemed disposed to force the Social Security Administration finally to address long-standing objections to the arbitrariness of vocational experts’ opinions.

Editor’s Note: Analysis based on transcript of oral argument.

The post Argument analysis: Justices wrestle with scope of cross-examination of social security experts appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/12/argument-analysis-justices-wrestle-with-scope-of-cross-examination-of-social-security-experts/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#law #justice

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briefbouquetcreatorlove-blog · 6 years

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My step-daughter, husband and I are currently insured trough Blue Shield of California. The Deductible is $7.500 annually and we are paying $520 a month. Whenever we are going to get my husbands prescription drugs, we have to pay 100% out of pocket, whenever my husband has to go to a doctor we have to pay %100, whatever we do, we have to pay 100% ourselves, when does the insurance come in??? Every year, we have to pay $7.500 out of pocket till we can expect the insurance to even consider covering anything, who has that much money to spend every year on health insurance?! Recently my husband started having kidney pain, hernia, heart problems... but we can't go to a doctor because after paying the $520 a month to the health insurance we are simply left with nothing. I have not been to a doctor for 8 years, now I am very frustrated, I really need to take care of my husbands health but every insurance is just a ripoff. Can anybody help me with some advice...or a good insurance with low deductible or none at all (if that even exists).""

I need insurance for my motorcycle thats cheap?

How Much Does Dog Owner Liability Insurance Cost?

I am looking in to getting a basenji/ miniature pinscher mix. The dog is only 19 lbs so it not a very big dog but the apartments I live in require this kind of insurance in case it bites someone. I would like to know monthly and yearly cost. (I dont have renters insurance I just want to know dog liability insurance)

""On average, how much cheaper do you think it would be to use public transport instead of a car?""

Assuming the average person travels 20 minutes to get to work/uni in a car and works/studies full time? I currently own a car and that's what I do. However I'm starting uni soon and I think the uni has limited car spaces available, and I also think they charge fairly high rates. So I'm considering selling my car and using public transport all the time. Has anyone done this before? Do you know the difference in cost this will turn out to be? Thx P.S. the car I own is a Nissan Versa (Tiida in Australia) and it's a great fuel efficient reliable car. This year I paid approx $2000 (AUD) in annual insurance and registration""

Cheapest possible car insurance...?

I'm just about to get my license, I have next to no experience. My parents aren't offering to pay ANY, yet they are nearly forcing me to get my license, which is next to insurance. Everyone is telling me my only option is to pay like 200 frickin bucks a month. I can't spend that much money, I don't have time to earn that much money, It's almost a hopeless situation. Anyone have a miracle remedy to this problem?""

Full Coverage Insurance for financed vehicles ?

If i get financed for a car, do i have to pay full insurance for that car ? I live in NY. If yes, any idea how much full coverage would be for an 2004 acura tl ?""

No Insurance!?

No Insurance!? How much do you think a tooth will cost to be pulled?

Does anyone know of affordable family health insurance?

i need an affordable family health insurance

What's your Scion TC's Insurance Rate?

Scion TC's are in the top 10 most expensive cars to insure. (Number 2) So I was wondering if you have a TC, how much do you pay monthly? What's your deductible? What insurance company are you with? And how old are you?""

What is the lowest payment for a car loan?

I want to get a Camaro when im 16. Theyre about 35,000 new. Its a lot but yet not. My parents wont buy me a new car as my first. I understand why, but im not reckless or anything. Also what is the insurance for a 16 year old (great grades) driving a Camaro? I think my family has progressive. Anything cheaper? Loans are very risky I know but the job that I will be getting pays a decent amount every 2 weeks or so. I do good with money, every know and then a girl needs to shop :). My mom usually pays for all that stuff though. I dont know anything about loans and banks. How does it all work? Can you tell me like what I would be about paying each month or week for a Camaro? Dont call me stupid, Im just thinking about it. I want a sports bike instead because then I wouldnt need a loan but I need a car for the winter...""

Can you cancel your car insurance?

I will be selling my car, and still have 4months left on a 6 month insurance..they have my bank account""

How where and how can I get cheap car insurance?

I lost my job last year and I'm getting back on my feet again and I'm looking for very cheap insurance because I still can't pay too much.

How much would insurance be for a 17 year old girl with a 2010 camaro ss?

okaii. so my birthday is coming up...and ill be getting my lisence and a car. i believe my parents are considering getting me a camaro ss. I promised that i will be paying for the insurance for my car. its the least i can do. I was wondering. how much it would cost? I live in Miami,Fl if that makes a difference...I live with my parents we have 3 cars in total. with the camaro it would be 4. my parents both have clean records etc. if any of that helps(discounts etc) i appreciate any help!""

Divorced Parent's Car Insurance?

I'm under my mothers car insurance policy, so does that mean if i drive my fathers truck and I get into an accident, Were not covered? and does someone in your immediate family need car insurance when driving it if you are the registered owner""

I received a speeding ticket while driving my parents car does that affect there insurance rates.?

I was also issused a ticket for driving without insurance, what should I do about that?""

Hey much will auto insurance cost me?

hey i will be 16 yrs old soon enough but i need an auto insurance i live in orlando, does anyone know how much it will cost me?whats the cheapest?""

How much would we (roughly) pay for health insurance?

Adult male 40+ adult female 40+ and a 5-year old child. No medical problems or histories if that makes any difference. All are EU citizens ... Maybe it's not that simple, but if I don't ask I won't find out :-) I lived in Twente back in 2000 but and remember health iunsurance as affordable (i was single then). From what I hear now prices have gone through the roof. I am considering returning but am worried about ziekenfonds costs.""

Do you know that 30 million working poor will be able to get health insurance under the affordable care act?

But only if the law stands. http://eclectablog.com/2012/06/18-reasons-the-affordable-care-act-is-the-greatest-achievement-for-the-middle-class-since-medicare.html

A question regarding auto insurance?

even though I have no need of a car/cant afford one, my parents are still pushing me to get a license as soon as possible because they say it will reduce your insurance cost when I eventually do get a car, are they right? thanks""

""What's Cheaper to Insure, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen ?""

I'm 21, Here are my options. 2008 Audi A4 2009 BMW 328I 2007 Mercedes c250 2010 Volkswagen GTI or Golf. How much do you think rates will be.""

What is the *cheapest* car insurance for a 20 year old female driver in TX?

I'm going to pay. I don't have any close family that can put me under their insurance, so please give me the CHEAPEST choice... Thank you.""

Traffic ticket gave the officer wrong car insurance?

I got my first traffic ticket yesterday my frist violation is i forgot to put a sticker on my car... And the secon violation i gave him the wrong (expired) car insurance instead of ...show more

Car insurance in new york?

hey guys, I'd like to know what would be the ballpark for insurance. I'm 24 years old and have had my driver's license since 2003 and never have had parking violations, points taken off my license or any type of moving tickets. I'm looking to buy a 96-00 civic and would like to know around how much I would be quoted""

What is the best way to recruit people to become insurance agents?

I recruit people for Farmers Insurance to become insurance agents. We train and help finance them to open their own insurance office. I'm doing this within a 30 mile radius of ...show more

connecticut individual insurance

How much can we expect to get from insurance for replacement of car door?

Our 2003 Hyundai Sonata got backed into recently. The lady hit the front passenger door and smashed it in. It still opens, but sounds awful when it does, and the window doesn't work right (power window). She had Farmers insurance, and I've heard bad things about them, but we're gonna get an estimate from different auto body shops around town. How much can we expect the insurance to pay out for this damage?""

Does manual transmission increase your insurance rate?

i had someone tell me it did, but i just don't know about that!""

What is the cheapest insurance for a new driver?

I'm a new driver and I don't make much but I do need insurance so what is a cheap one?

Car insurance question?

how much will it cost for a 21 year old single female per month? i just recently got my drivers liscense and i have never had a car or insurance..i have no credit and have never had a ...show more

Car insurance question?

My car was in an accident (not my fault, I wasn't in it and the time) when someone plowed into the back. All signs are indicating it's totaled. She and I have no-fault insurance. Here is my questions. 1. Do I talk to the police and insurance company? 2. Do I get any money/compensation from the accident? 3. Do I go after her insurance and Do I get anything from that? 4. Or do I reach a compromise with both parties? If anybody has anymore suggestion feel free. Thanks!!!""

How much does Viagra cost without insurance?

Would it be the cheapest sports car?

I saw the 4 cheapes sports cars for insurance a mazda mx 5 and a pontiac solstice would they be the cheapest sports car for insurance for a 16 year old or what sports car would be the cheapest to insure for a teen I know for a teen with a sports car would not be cheap we have the money but what sports car would be the cheapes for a teen

Question about general car insurance?

I'm doing a Statistics Lab based off car insurance and i'm a little confused. I'm supposed to make a statement to my boss about charging higher or lower car insurance based on the rating the cars get. So, for the larger, and safer the car is, should I tell my boss to RAISE the insurance prices, or lower the insurance prices? I'm a little confused on the correct way to do it? Safer = Higher insurance or lower insurace? and WHY?!?!?""

Where can I get an information of car insurance??

I am 18 years old and I want to get a car insurance... where can I get the CHEAPEST but safe car insurance??? THank you... how much is the car insurance for 18-year-old boy???

What's the cheapest Insurance company?

I'm sixteen, will be seventeen in June. I just got a job and I need to get insurance so I can get a car. My parent's insurance will be really expensive plus to put the car on there it will be even extra. Can anyone tell me what the cheapest car insurance place would be for me with full coverage? Thank you (: oh and my car will be a 2000 saturn.""

Looking for good medical insurance BUT AFFORDABLE?

i'm a senior age 62 wife 69,still working my medical insurance at work is 185.00 per payroll 307.00 per month it's killing where can i get good insurance but affordable.i live in california also i'm planing in retiring july 2013,i'll be 63, yahoo answers find me insurance i put my trust in answers people thank you gilley p.s. no kids""

""What is the cheapest, full-coverage auto insurance in Pennsylvania for an age 54 female?""

What is the cheapest, full-coverage auto insurance in Pennsylvania for an age 54 female?""

Where can i get the cheapest car insurance?

Im a 16 year old male who lives in new orleans. I have a 3.8 GPA and no one in my immediate family has been in a wreck in the previous 5 years. Where can i get affordable insurance?

Who knows the best Health Insurance out there for individuals. Plan and pricing must be affordable. Thanks.?

It must come with an appropriate and flexible plan, with affordable pricing for a college student.""

What would be an inexpensive car insurance company for drivers that dont have the best record due to speeding?

i live in Jacksonville,Fl if anyone knows a cheap insurance company""

Buying a home in south caroline?

Just wanted to know if Conway is near the Myrtle beach airport and how far it is from the beach. How much is real estate tax for a home for about 100,000 to 200,000? Are there any marina's close to Conway? Is there a city wage tax on income? How much is car insurance? We live in philadelphia and are tired of the area and the high cost of living. Thanks, Jeanete [email protected]""

Fighting my auto insurance company?

I have 2 homes, one in New York and Pennsylvania. My Pennsylvania address is my primary and I commute to NY for work, but my insurance company is raising my premium and quoting for NY which raised my policy considerably. Even though I have proof that my primary is in PA they are still changing my policy to NY. How do I fight it and have them honor my policy?""

Is insurance necessary for a scooter over 50cc?

I know that in FL, at least, one does *not* need insurance for a scooter that has 50cc, and one does not need a special license. However, once you surpass 50cc (like, for example, 150 or 200cc), then a motorcycle license is required (or so I've been told). So, if I were to cough up $3,399 for a Piaggio Fly 150cc, would I also need insurance? I mean, if I would, I would simply settle for the $1,499 scooter in town made by some random company. I've heard good things about it, but Piaggio has name to it, y'know? Anyway, I was just wondering about the insurance deal. Thank you!""

How much do auto insurance agents make there first year?

What's the average for starting license auto insurance agents? Do they only make commision or hourly too? Are the leads provided. Is it a hard industry to get into?

NC Divers License and insurance?

My boyfriend is looking to get his license for the first time and we have a question about insurance. As far as I know, in the state of NC you cannot get your license w/o having car insurance. How can you get your license w/o having a car to issue insurance on? In other words, if he doesn't have a vehicle, why do they require you to have insurance before obtaining your license?""

Does anyone know the insurance group prices in the UK?

looking at car insurance does anyone know how much is group is like 3E, 5 and 12 or summit is there any websites where you can find them? if anyone has any suggestions please leave below!""

""Do i need car insurance 2 do my drivers test even thought is not my car, is my brother car? (califronia)?

i want to take my drivers test using my brothers car. the car has insurance. i just want to know do i show his car insurance or do i need 2 get insurance on my name to use his car and take the drivers test.thanks

Can I get Insurance I am the only employee at my office Group of One?

I live in California and work for a Doctor's office but it is only part time. I have been working for a little over three years and my boss said I can look into the option of getting health insurance however all the companies I look at only want to insure groups of people can my employer get me health coverage even though I am the only one on the plan. Curious in California

I got a speeding ticket and no insurance?

well my insurance was expired when i got the ticket. so when i renew it will it still go up?

Is there insurance for replica cars(EX. Replica Lamborghini Countach).?

Is there insurance for replica cars(EX. Replica Lamborghini Countach). OR Do you just say to the insurance company the donor car used to build the Replica(EX Pontiac Feiro)($3-5K) So they cover only the car used and just treat the replica kit as just additon stuff(EX like adding more exspensive RIMS to a VW). Is the replica insurance cheaper then a real cars insurance. EX Replica Lamborghini Countach($25K)(V6 Engine, Pontiac Fiero) VS. REAL 1988 Porsche 911 ($25k)(V6 Porsche Engine) Do 21st auto Insuracne company have Replica Car insurance and/or will they cover just the donor car used to build the Replica.""

connecticut individual insurance

Will a dropped speeding ticket affect insurance rates?

How much per year does health insurance cost for an average 50 year old with no employment benefits?

just a single person. no previous health problems. I realize this depends on specific circumstances, but you can ballpark estimate it for me thanks.""

Does anyone know of any cheap but good medical insurance?

I need affordable medical insurance!!!

250CC motorcycle insurance-How much should I expect to pay?

I am looking to buy my first motorcycle. I am looking in the 250CC category. I have narrowed down to 1. Yamaha Virago 2. Honda Shadow I am 29 yrs old male with good driving record for car. Have good credit history. How much should I expect to pay for insurance for the motorcycle if I buy 1. NEW 2. USED (my preference). I would probably look for a MB with 10-15K on it.

Would it be cheaper to put my name on my parents insurance ?

would it be cheaper to put my name as an additional driver instead of my own as i got the cheapest quote as 3000 euros for my own policy would it be cheaper to put my name as an additional driver on theres? my parents have 25-28 years experience with no claims ?

Insurance for a 2003 F-150?

Hi, i am 18 yrs old, im wanting to find out how much i would expect to pay for a 2003 f150 on insurance. Or what is the best insurance company that works with you and is not as expensive just because im 18. And how much do you pay for insurance on your ford f150? Thank you!""

Cheapest car insurance for 20 year old females?

im a new driver, 20, and female. i need car insurance! which would be the cheapest? i already looked at geico and esurance quotes, its $250 a month....""

How much would my insurance be?

If I am 17/18 years old. The car is used from about year 2000 or 2003, costs me around $4,000. This is in NY CITY. If it's a Nissan Altima. Thank you.""

How much does it cost for car insurance?

I am 17 years old. I just got my licenses and i need insurance. How much does it cost with my parents and how much does it cost without my parents?

I got a ticket and need to know what my insurance will cost?

I got a reckless driving ticket I'm 16 no other tickets or wreck I have Erie insurance What will my insurance cost bcus my mom canceled it and I have to pay it now

How can I get auto insurance in my name when the car is registered in someone else's name?

My mom currently has a loan on my car in her name in California. My car is registered in California, but because my husband is active duty military, we relocated to South Carolina. Is there a way I can obtain insurance in my name without being a registered owner?""

Which would be cheaper to insure generally speaking a Honda Civic coupe or Mazda 3 Hatchback?

Car insurance in another state?

i was wondering if your car is register in one state can you get insurance on it in another state w/o registering it in that state?

Car insurance question?

What is the normal price range for monthly payments on car insurance? I'm 23, female, with no prior accidents.""

Sportbike Insurance...?

Where is a good place to have motorcycle insurance through. My husband is looking into buying a Suzuki gsxr and we are trying to find something cheap or reasonable.

How much will my motorcycle insurance be??

I'm 19 years old in Arkansas. I'm planning to buy a 2008 Kawasaki Ninja 250R soon. I'm currently under my parents coverage policy with Shelter Insurance. I have good driving records so far...and I just want basic coverage. Oh, and Im also planning to make payments on the bike, so does that mean I have to get full coverage? Any help would be greatly appreciated!""

Insurance quote for a vehicle?

hey i just want to know the 5 important factors they consider when giving an insurance quote and an example of an insurance quote?

Auto insurance without driver license?

Does anyone know of any insurance company operating in TEXAS that provides minimum liability insurance to drivers without a driver license? This includes a driver license from any US state, territory or other country. Before I get the ignorant answers about how no company does this, I know that some have and still may, and I know the rates would be very high.""

""If I am under my mothers insurance, will it help me in the future when I branch off?""

I am thinking about putting my first car insurance under my mothers name, but in a couple years I want to start paying it on my own. Will the fact that I was under her name help me a little with my rate? Or will it not matter, and the insurance company will treat me as a new driver?""

If you get a ticket for expired meter does your insurance go?

I just got a ticket for expired meter will your insurance go up because I don't want my mother to know about it

Insurance for honda civic?

Does anyone no how much insurance is for a Honda civic, I am 17. Do i have any hope of getting any?""

Does having a 4x4 increase auto insurance?

I turned 18 and I wanted to get a 95' Jeep Wrangler for $5000 as my first car. But will the fact it's a 4x4 raise my dad's insurance. Please respond.

How much do Brits pay monthly for health insurance?

I see them on here all the time talking about how much better their system is than ours, that it is more affordable. How do they know how much it is costing them monthly if they are taxed to pay for it?""

Temporary car insurance in uk?

can you get short term car insurance in the uk for like say a few months??? reason being is i have my everyday car but... have my toy i would like to use maybe few months of a year.

Is there any way i can get cheaper car insurance?

ok so I have not long passed my test im looking at buying a car im looking at a ford fiesta I have 1000 to spend on a car but now the problem is the insurance which is sky high and the deposit well ... and the insurance is like 2-3 times more than what I would actually be spending on what the car is worth

connecticut individual insurance

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blackburn-insurance-jeremy-cox/"

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larrykozin · 7 years

Text

What’s wrong with the Mattress Industry? (everything)

Welcome to the Mattress & Furniture Revolution!

A GrassRoots effort is being spearheaded by the Furniture Chamber of Commerce to bring together Entrepreneurs and educate and empower Local Consumers to put a stop to the greed & corruption taking place in the Mattress Industry.

Becoming an expert on what is happening behind the scenes will empower you with all the ammunition you need, to educate your community on why a mattress should NEVER be purchased from a retail store. Knowledge is POWER and this POWER will enable you to increase your closing ratios and build long term relationships with every consumer in your community.

WallStreet Retailers and Name Brand Manufacturers are in bed with Media Moguls and Government Lobbyists, to confuse, frustrate and con consumers with the intent of extracting the maximum dollars from their hard earned wages. Their fiduciary responsibility, by definition is to the shareholders and NOT consumers, who they “claim” they want to help. get the best deal.

Unethical Practices

1). Price Guarantees: Just about every WallStreet Mattress Firm, BigBox Furniture Store and even smaller wannabe stores ALL Guarantee the Lowest Price and use various tricks, to make it sound like this is something real & valid. We have seen everything from double your money back, to your Mattress is FREE...if you can find for it less and many other scenarios. The problem is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to even find the same mattress at any other local store, due to the phenomenon of requiring manufacturers to sneakily change the names and disguise spec sheets, to eliminate price comparisons and protecting the profits of this unholy alliance, as described in the original premise.

2). Unethical Advertising: There are 2 main components of the WallStreet Firms practice unethical advertising. They stay in a very gray area, but are protected by special interests, lobbyists, who also coordinate with the MainStreamMedia Conglomerates, who want the BIG advertising dollars and turn their heads and take the money.

The most common display of unethical advertising, is to focus on the cheapest priced mattresses, say something that they could offer for $200 or $300, and make it seem that it is of very high quality, just to get you in the door. Salesmen are then taught a multitude of tricks and coercion, to subtly move the consumer to the $1000, $2000 or even $3000 price point. This tactic is known as bait & switch and governmental agencies turn their heads, since consumers have not complained enough (until now).

The second common way of unethical advertising is the utilization of the concept of “ON SALE”. Consumers are programmed into believing that buying something on SALE is better than buying it, when it is not on sale. Certainly, on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you can find “real” sales, however, the Retail Mattress Business is notorious for having SALES, every single day….yes, they run sales 365 days per year and use this unethical practice to exploit consumers to purchase now or leave a deposit, since the “sale will be over tomorrow”. This leads into the next area of Unethical Practices.

3). High Pressure, Deception, Insincere Community Outreach & Lying: The unethical advertising practices feed into the training and brainwashing of mattress salesmen, who are probably good people at heart, but need a high paying job to support their families and are forced to compromise their values for the almighty buck and to avoid being fired. Mattress salesmen, have a fear of being fired daily, incumbent on their closing ratios and profit ratios. If they let customers walk out, without buying or leaving a deposit or they do not sell the correct percentage of $2000+ mattresses, they will be shown the door and replaced by the next guy (please note, I use the term salesman over salesperson, since over 90% of the top mattress salespeople are men, although we have met some women, that are just as devious and evil, in how they take advantage of customers).

In terms of the Mattress Revolution, the salesmen are taught psychological warfare and we have received their training manuals, from disgruntled employees that came on board with us. Upon analyzation of the materials, in the simplest terms, the most important part of the equation is to use insincerity to become a good friend of the consumer (even though they are taught the consumer is actually their adversary). We know it is insincere, since the salesman knows unequivocally that they cannot give the consumer the lowest price, that their price guarantee is bogus and they will resort to coercion, guilt, or outright lying, if they feel the sale is slipping away, and this is not how you treat a real friend. Since the training manual is in writing, the high priced lawyers worded things in a way to avoid liability, but the pressure and verbal training conducted by managers leave no room for misinterpretation and the salesman will be fired, if they are not able to extract cash, credit card or long term financing from a high percentage of every customer that walks through the door. I believe the pressure on the salesmen to perform is almost equal to the pressure they put on customers to buy now.

Employees, in many Firms, are also REQUIRED to volunteer time or something to a local cause to help boost their credibility in the community, but it is often done with resentment and half-hearted efforts, since the threat of dismissal is always over their heads, and the PR department over-exaggerates any good that is done to try to create false goodwill in the community.

Outright lying takes place, when the desperate salesman sees that the sales is just about lost and will promise things that they cannot honor and hope to wiggle out of at a later time. Also, to protect their profit margins, in the case of a consumer insisting on purchasing the promo mattress, since it would be in an extra room and rarely used, the salesman will claim that they are sold-out, as it is actually better to lose the sale completely than sell a promo mattress and hurt their profit numbers (and they actually can be fined, if they cannot bait & switch the consumer).

4). Misleading Sleep Guarantees: Medical Experts agree that the Bed Bug Epidemic in urban areas is fueled by illegal Black Market Sales of used mattresses. Companies like MattressFirm and hundreds of others have been caught in sting operations, selling used mattresses, as new and also re-wholesaling thousands of beds every week to disreputable liquidators, who flood the market with used mattresses. These mattresses were found to have human DNA, larvae, eggs and nasty bed bugs, that spread illness. The only reason why these Firms are selling the used mattresses, is due to their “Sleep Guarantee and Exchange Privileges” they incorporate, once again to trick consumers in paying too much for their mattresses.

Besides the health ramifications, let’s examine the financial and lifestyle ramifications of doing business with any company that offers a one time exchange privilege.

The first factor is the cost. WallStreet Firms are not stupid and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with mathematicians (called actuaries) who crunch the numbers and figure out exactly the percentage of people that will elect to a one-time exchange and how much money they will lose in the transaction and then they add this amount (and more) to the cost paid by the consumer.

There are a number of fallacies associated with this exchange privilege. The most obvious it that it takes 4-6 months for a mattress to be “broken in”, yet the exchange period is generally 1-3 months, which means getting an exchange may be something you dislike even more, you paid more money and now you are in the same boat of frustration.

If you never tried to redeem an exchange, you would not be aware that this process can be and often is a nightmare. Fighting with managers who try to coerce you into keeping the mattress longer, total inconvenience in coordinating the logistics of the exchange and paying inflated prices for the new upgraded mattress, and even having to pay additional fees and costs that are buried in the fine print.

NOW HERE is the WORST PART

Over 50% of the people that received an exchange, were also dissatisfied with the replacement mattress and a high percentage regret even exchanging and you cannot exchange again.

Why is this true?

As previously discussed, mattress salesmen are known to lie and embellish during the selling process. In our aging society, millions of North Americans are experiencing pain, sleeplessness, anxiety and many other ailments. Certainly. A good mattress will help to not exacerbate any medical condition, but it is NOT going to heal anybody, so many consumers take the exchange, since their back, neck or legs are still hurting, so what happens is that another used bed is dumped into the Black Market, more money is paid, more frustration and inconvenience is incurred in the exchange process and the replacement mattress will NOT be any better in healing them or making them more comfortable.

I fully disclose these facts to my clients and use the analogy of a new pair of shoes. It takes a certain amount of time for them to break-in and over the months and years, they get more comfortable. The same is true for mattresses. I suggest they find something that they really like on my Showroom Floor, but in 4-6 months, they will absolutely love it and do not get sucked into the try-before-you-buy mattress, as it is a fallacy.

What Determines Prices

When you add up the costs of the raw materials that go into a mattress (cotton, foam, ticking, springs, stitching, glue, etc) and you add the cost of unskilled labor and factory employees, a high quality mattress may cost $100-$150 to produce. Memory foam costs even less, yet by the time it gets to the consumer, they end up paying anywhere from $1500-$4000 for a high end product.

Below is a broad overview of how manufacturers, retailers, media moguls and special interest groups formed an unholy alliance to usurp the hard earned money of consumers to feed the greed of the WallStreet Mattress Firms and Big Box Stores.

1). National Brand Awareness: Each name brand company spends tens of millions of dollars on name brand recognition, with many spending over $100,000,000 per year and gets added to the cost paid by consumers.

2). Retail Overhead: WallStreet is locking up the most expensive retail locations to capture walk-in business. In many larger markets the WallStreetFirms will open up stores within walking distance of each other, in an attempt to monopolize the market and drive competition out-of-business. Since the manufacturers are deliberately producing products that will deteriorate quicker and quicker, at any given time, 10-20% of the entire population is in the market for a new mattress and people are impulsive. So even though, each store may be paying $20,000 or more per month in rent, these costs are added to the price the consumer pays and it only takes less than one mattress sale per day to cover the rent and everything else is gravy for them. Stores that do not sell at least 30-50 mattresses per month are eventually closed up and the personal fired or moved to another location. As an example, just in the Chicago market, MattressFirm alone has over 200 stores.

3). Tradition Local Advertising: We have already discussed the unethical advertising practices of WallStreet Mattress Firms, but let’s now examine the amount of money spent on local advertising (this is on top of the hundreds of millions spent each year National Brand awareness advertising by the manufacturers). Typically, the formula is to spend 10-15% of monthly sales on local advertising and this cost is passed on to a consumer. So a store doing $200,000 per month in sales (about 5 mattresses per day), they must recoup $20,000-$30,000 back from consumers to cover this expense.

4). Specialty Advertising: Capitalizing on the Baby Boomer phenomenon, additional advertising is targeting seniors with health issues, and giving them false hope that a mattress or electric adjustable bed will heal their ailments. Certainly, a great mattress or an adjustable bed, can bring great relief and comfort, but targeting these folks and gauging them for higher prices, we find repulsive and despicable.

5). Fallacy of Internet Pricing: We know that Amazon and other Internet sellers of mattresses are having a hard time cracking the 10% mark, as 90% of people would rather pay more and try a mattress locally first. Let’s say, however, that Amazon had a level playing field like they have with Electronics, Dog Food, Books and most other items that you can shop locally and then save money buying online. Amazon does not actually sell mattresses. They rent their platform for top dollar...15%, the maximum a retail store pays for advertising and entrepreneurs that try to sell mattresses on Amazon have to add in very expensive logistics costs, since shipping a mattress LTL could cost more than the actual cost of the mattress. Some e-tailers carved out a niche of selling blocks of foam online at reasonable costs, since they compress them in a little box and can ship cheap. HOWEVER, they are selling cheap, inferior goods to unwary consumers who want an alternative to walking into a retail den of thieves.

6). Employee Costs: One of the biggest expenses borne by WallStreet Mattress Firms is the cost of Employees and we are not just talking about salaries and commissions. Besides the floor sales staff, there are many different levels of managers, warehouse personnel, delivery drivers, human resource, credit managers, administration, customer service and on and on. Regulations are ever changing on benefits, insurance, sick pay, etc. Many employees have a conscience, and when they begin to have trouble sleeping themselves, due to the unethical practices they are perpetrating, they always have their eyes open for a more ethical occupation, and the regular firing of salesmen that are not able to extract the required sales minimum, create a revolving door of turnover and an incredible cost of doing business. Millions of dollars are spent annually, just on training new employees at some WallStreet Firms.

Of course, just like everything else discussed, all of these costs are passed on to the consumer and then bumped up as much as possible on top of that to satisfy the unfathomless greed of their officers and shareholders. Another issue with employees is that they STEAL. Their best salesman are thieves by definition and often get away with selling mattresses for cash out the back door and other creative strategies of illegal behavior. Warehouse personnel also steal, and all these losses are passed on to the consumer.

PerfectDreamer Solutions

Before we empower you with all the solutions PerfectDreamer Mattress has for consumers, let’s begin with an important discussion on the topic of:

Name Brand Fallacy

Companies like Serta, Sealy, Spring Air and Simmons have each been around over 100 years and have maintained an illusion of Identity that is really smoke & mirrors.

So a consumer might ask, “who makes a better mattress, Simmons or Serta”? The fact is that both companies are owned by the same WallStreet Venture Capital Firm, and are made in the same factories, by the same employees and utilize the same materials. These companies do not even manufacture the spring systems or produce the raw materials...they all buy components from the same WallStreet Firm, Legget & Platt, which is currently trading at over $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange and product designers make slight variations of different components to develop cheap mattresses, mid-level mattress, good mattresses and top-of-line mattresses. In reality, the Brand Name is completely irrelevant and has absolutely no bearing on being good or no good.

With that being said, as iDealFurniture expanded their distribution and manufacturers started seeing that the Retail Model is on the decline in so many industries, despite the threats and protestations of the WallStreet Mattress Firms, one innovative company, Spring Air, the 5th largest Mattress manufacturer in America, decided to support the Local Entrepreneur and the PerfectDreamer iDealist line became a reality.

The PerfectDreamer iDealist line is EXACTLY the same as the Spring Air line. Same exact materials, same employees, same factory and even delivered on the same trucks as Spring Air. The only difference is the label, the cost and the enhanced warranty. At PerfectDreamer we do not spend a single penny on National Name Brand Advertising and we only sell through Authorized Independent Owner Operators and Dealers, and tremendous savings are realized by the consumer, based on all the other topics we previously discussed. We also have added our exclusive Lifetime Warranty, which includes a substantial period of absolutely NO CHARGE for service.

PERFECTDREAMER MATTRESS ADVANTAGES

1). No Local or National Traditional Advertising

2). No Name Brand Misleading Labels

3). No Inflated prices for Exchanges~No Used Mattresses

4). No Bait & Switch~No Unethical Advertising or Sales

5). No Employees~Saves Clients hundreds of Dollars

6). No High Retail Overhead

7). Deal with Owner~Support Local Community

If all things were equal and a PerfectDreamer Mattress was the same exact cost, as what they sell at the WallStreet Mattress Firm, we believe that most people would still rather support their Local Economy, than a WallStreet or Foreign Firm (in fact MattressFirm was recently sold for billions of dollars to a foreign company). BUT, our prices are substantially less (see comparison chart below).

The Mattress Industry is over $100 Billion just in North America and the way they are making them to wear out faster, that number is going up annually. We are at a Turning Point and getting close to a Tipping Point, of eliminating the cancerous, greedy Mattress Firms from our society...we are seeing so much change in this NewEconomy and based on the tremendous efforts of the Furniture Chamber of Commerce, Local Entrepreneurs and the masses of consumers who are sick and tired of being lied to and taken advantage of, the time is nye for their demise.

All we need to do is be be bold, get the word out, build our Teams and educate consumers and furnitureBROKERs to get involved in this Crusade and take back the profits that WallStreet Mattress Firms are stealing from the Public.

Please review the PerfectDreamer Mattress Comparison Chart, as the better quality iDealists are where you want to focus your sales efforts. Selling promo mattresses is not suggested. The profits are low and you are actually doing a disservice to your client, if you do not educate them properly. NEVER PAY RETAIL AGAIN & JOIN the REVOLUTION

0 notes

andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

We didn’t start the FIRE: The true history of financial independence

One big bonus from collecting old money books is actually reading these books. They're fascinating. And it's interesting to trace the development of certain ideas in the world of personal finance.

Or there's the notion of financial independence (and the closely-related topic of early retirement). The standard narrative goes something like this:

In 1992, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin published Your Money or Your Life, and that marks the “discovery” of FIRE.

In the late 2000s, Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme picked up the FIRE banner, then handed it off to Mr. Money Mustache a few years later.

Today that banner is being carried by newcomers like Choose FI and the /r/financialindependence subreddit.

youtube

Today, using my collection of old money books, let's take a look at where the notion of financial independence originated.

In the Beginning

This fable clearly contains the germ of the financial independence idea, even if it doesn't explicitly talk about F.I. and/or early retirement.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

That quote from Walden sounds as if it could be lifted directly from Your Money or Your Life‘s discussion of life energy, doesn't it?

Morris' approach was typical of the day. He wrote:

No prudent man, accepting such a trust, and guaranteeing its integrity, would invest the fund in stocks. Our country is filled with pecuniary wrecks from causes like this…

Coining a Term

There you have it. The first reference (that I've been able to find so far) to the idea of financial independence.

Here are a couple of graphs that show how the usage of “financial” and “pecuniary” have changed over time.

Nerdy stuff, eh?

In the preface to Thrift, Smiles writes:

youtube

So, what's the first actual reference to the term “financial independence”? I don't have a definitive answer yet, but I do know its earliest appearance in my collection of old money books.

What is financial independence? Freedom from dependence on others for guidance, government, or financial support. The spirit of self-reliance, or of freedom from subordination to others.

He also includes a chart showing “the six ages of investment” which is strikingly similar to my own list of the six stages of financial independence!

Financial Independence through the Years

From these humble origins, the concept of “financial independence” grew more complex and more robust. The path to financial independence became codified.

One of the first books to set out a system to help others become F.I. was the immensely popular The Richest Man in Babylon, which is quite possibly the best-selling money manual of all time.

youtube

As you're probably aware, Clason suggested the following seven commandments for building wealth.

Start thy purse to fattening. (Save 10% of all you earn.)

Control thy expenditures. (Avoid lifestyle inflation; curb desires.)

Make thy gold multiply. (Use compounding to grow wealth.)

Guard thy treasures from loss. (Avoid get-rich-quick schemes.)

Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment. (Buy your home.)

Insure a future income. (Plan for retirement.)

Increase thy ability to earn. (Educate yourself.)

But there were plenty of lesser-known books published during the twentieth century that offered excellent financial advice and espoused the principles of financial independence.

Early Retirement

The answer to this is complicated because the history of retirement is complicated.

youtube

Once this happened, then a notion of “early retirement” became possible. And we can see society explore the idea through books and magazine articles.

Final Thoughts

Perhaps the biggest change from 1872 to today is technology.

Because we're a myopic species, it's tough for us to plan five or ten or twenty years in the future. That was true 150 years ago. It's true today.

Because — to quote George Santayana — “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/history-of-financial-independence/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

We didn’t start the FIRE: The true history of financial independence

One big bonus from collecting old money books is actually reading these books. They're fascinating. And it's interesting to trace the development of certain ideas in the world of personal finance.

Or there's the notion of financial independence (and the closely-related topic of early retirement). The standard narrative goes something like this:

In 1992, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin published Your Money or Your Life, and that marks the “discovery” of FIRE.

In the late 2000s, Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme picked up the FIRE banner, then handed it off to Mr. Money Mustache a few years later.

Today that banner is being carried by newcomers like Choose FI and the /r/financialindependence subreddit.

youtube

Today, using my collection of old money books, let's take a look at where the notion of financial independence originated.

In the Beginning

This fable clearly contains the germ of the financial independence idea, even if it doesn't explicitly talk about F.I. and/or early retirement.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

That quote from Walden sounds as if it could be lifted directly from Your Money or Your Life‘s discussion of life energy, doesn't it?

Morris' approach was typical of the day. He wrote:

No prudent man, accepting such a trust, and guaranteeing its integrity, would invest the fund in stocks. Our country is filled with pecuniary wrecks from causes like this…

Coining a Term

There you have it. The first reference (that I've been able to find so far) to the idea of financial independence.

Here are a couple of graphs that show how the usage of “financial” and “pecuniary” have changed over time.

Nerdy stuff, eh?

In the preface to Thrift, Smiles writes:

youtube

So, what's the first actual reference to the term “financial independence”? I don't have a definitive answer yet, but I do know its earliest appearance in my collection of old money books.

What is financial independence? Freedom from dependence on others for guidance, government, or financial support. The spirit of self-reliance, or of freedom from subordination to others.

He also includes a chart showing “the six ages of investment” which is strikingly similar to my own list of the six stages of financial independence!

Financial Independence through the Years

From these humble origins, the concept of “financial independence” grew more complex and more robust. The path to financial independence became codified.

One of the first books to set out a system to help others become F.I. was the immensely popular The Richest Man in Babylon, which is quite possibly the best-selling money manual of all time.

youtube

As you're probably aware, Clason suggested the following seven commandments for building wealth.

Start thy purse to fattening. (Save 10% of all you earn.)

Control thy expenditures. (Avoid lifestyle inflation; curb desires.)

Make thy gold multiply. (Use compounding to grow wealth.)

Guard thy treasures from loss. (Avoid get-rich-quick schemes.)

Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment. (Buy your home.)

Insure a future income. (Plan for retirement.)

Increase thy ability to earn. (Educate yourself.)

But there were plenty of lesser-known books published during the twentieth century that offered excellent financial advice and espoused the principles of financial independence.

Early Retirement

The answer to this is complicated because the history of retirement is complicated.

youtube

Once this happened, then a notion of “early retirement” became possible. And we can see society explore the idea through books and magazine articles.

Final Thoughts

Perhaps the biggest change from 1872 to today is technology.

Because we're a myopic species, it's tough for us to plan five or ten or twenty years in the future. That was true 150 years ago. It's true today.

Because — to quote George Santayana — “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/history-of-financial-independence/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes