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On August 11 2016 01:10 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2016 01:00 Mohdoo wrote:On August 11 2016 00:57 KwarK wrote:On August 11 2016 00:53 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2016 00:38 KwarK wrote:On August 11 2016 00:29 DickMcFanny wrote:On August 10 2016 23:45 KwarK wrote:
The only possible explanation for this whole "what recovery?" mentality when the market tripled under Obama is people who somehow don't have a cut of the action. It's been a great 8 years. Yeah, fuck those 85% of the population who have been unable / too lazy / too stupid to benefit from it. The recovery has been great for the rich, so fuck the rest. Even McDonalds offers 401k matching which, in case you're not aware, means that if you put money in then your employer will give you extra money to put in as a reward for putting money in. And that's for your minimum wage new hires. The market isn't some special thing that they reserve for 1%ers. Damn near every employer in the US has some of your compensation package reserved for investment accounts and the government will give you an extra 50 cents in tax credits for every dollar you put into one of those accounts if you are low income. It's really not just something for the top 15%. As someone with a 401K, it is helpful. But also could be wiped out by a single tree falling on our roof. If course we have insurance, but those claims take months and roofs are things you need instantly. And not all 401Ks were created equally and finding out which one is really good is a challenge. Things are not bad, but they could be a whole lot better. Life Pro Tip. Don't fucking cash out your 401k if a tree falls on your roof. Like come on, you're an educated professional. Be smarter than that. I was under the impression he was saying he'd do that because he had to. What other option would someone have? You put a bucket on the floor under the hole in the roof in that room and you wait. You already spent the 401k money on the 401k because you needed it. And you spent it on a thing that is not really refundable due to the time line and the tax penalties. The only thing you spend a 401k on is a health complication that will cause you to die before you can use it if you don't.
Yeah, I bet it would be a race to see which could cost you more money, crushing your 401K or fucking up your house by not repairing the roof and having that tree removed.
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On August 11 2016 01:07 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2016 00:57 KwarK wrote:On August 11 2016 00:53 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2016 00:38 KwarK wrote:On August 11 2016 00:29 DickMcFanny wrote:On August 10 2016 23:45 KwarK wrote:
The only possible explanation for this whole "what recovery?" mentality when the market tripled under Obama is people who somehow don't have a cut of the action. It's been a great 8 years. Yeah, fuck those 85% of the population who have been unable / too lazy / too stupid to benefit from it. The recovery has been great for the rich, so fuck the rest. Even McDonalds offers 401k matching which, in case you're not aware, means that if you put money in then your employer will give you extra money to put in as a reward for putting money in. And that's for your minimum wage new hires. The market isn't some special thing that they reserve for 1%ers. Damn near every employer in the US has some of your compensation package reserved for investment accounts and the government will give you an extra 50 cents in tax credits for every dollar you put into one of those accounts if you are low income. It's really not just something for the top 15%. As someone with a 401K, it is helpful. But also could be wiped out by a single tree falling on our roof. If course we have insurance, but those claims take months and roofs are things you need instantly. And not all 401Ks were created equally and finding out which one is really good is a challenge. Things are not bad, but they could be a whole lot better. Life Pro Tip. Don't fucking cash out your 401k if a tree falls on your roof. Like come on, you're an educated professional. Be smarter than that. Kwark, remember that talk we had about your tone when you respond to some stuff? Pro-tip, avoid it. And I have been there. We had our well pump die(10K), medical expenses(30+K) and a car implode (5K) in the span of 2 months. We were considering putting off the medical expenses to avoid having to crush our saving, but then ACA changed some stuff and the entire expenses were covered. You don’t really know me, so do call me an idiot when I’m considering crushing my 401K or begging relatives for loans.
That's a pretty rare case of literally all the shit hitting all the fans though I would think though.
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Kwark's comment are so unreal from where I stand. They're reasonable from an individual and financial standpoint, and utterly ignorant from an economic standpoint. If you gain money from finance, but that money does not lead to increasing demand but rather inequalities and savings, it is not good it is very bad for the long run.
The goal of finance is not to make money, it's to finance the economy - at least that was its goal.
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On August 11 2016 01:16 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2016 01:07 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2016 00:57 KwarK wrote:On August 11 2016 00:53 Plansix wrote:On August 11 2016 00:38 KwarK wrote:On August 11 2016 00:29 DickMcFanny wrote:On August 10 2016 23:45 KwarK wrote:
The only possible explanation for this whole "what recovery?" mentality when the market tripled under Obama is people who somehow don't have a cut of the action. It's been a great 8 years. Yeah, fuck those 85% of the population who have been unable / too lazy / too stupid to benefit from it. The recovery has been great for the rich, so fuck the rest. Even McDonalds offers 401k matching which, in case you're not aware, means that if you put money in then your employer will give you extra money to put in as a reward for putting money in. And that's for your minimum wage new hires. The market isn't some special thing that they reserve for 1%ers. Damn near every employer in the US has some of your compensation package reserved for investment accounts and the government will give you an extra 50 cents in tax credits for every dollar you put into one of those accounts if you are low income. It's really not just something for the top 15%. As someone with a 401K, it is helpful. But also could be wiped out by a single tree falling on our roof. If course we have insurance, but those claims take months and roofs are things you need instantly. And not all 401Ks were created equally and finding out which one is really good is a challenge. Things are not bad, but they could be a whole lot better. Life Pro Tip. Don't fucking cash out your 401k if a tree falls on your roof. Like come on, you're an educated professional. Be smarter than that. Kwark, remember that talk we had about your tone when you respond to some stuff? Pro-tip, avoid it. And I have been there. We had our well pump die(10K), medical expenses(30+K) and a car implode (5K) in the span of 2 months. We were considering putting off the medical expenses to avoid having to crush our saving, but then ACA changed some stuff and the entire expenses were covered. You don’t really know me, so do call me an idiot when I’m considering crushing my 401K or begging relatives for loans. That's a pretty rare case of literally all the shit hitting all the fans though I would think though.
Its not that rare, from my experience. When it rains, it pours. We have shitty safty nets in this country and lots people are one large medical bill from bankruptcy. We save a lot, but shit happens.
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United States43468 Posts
On August 11 2016 01:07 Plansix wrote:
so do call me an idiot when I’m considering crushing my 401K or begging relatives for loans.
Thanks, I will.
A 401k isn't a secret cash reserve, it's something you bought because you need it and you still need it. That need has not gone. Using it isn't putting out a fire, it's setting fire to something bigger and leaving tomorrow Plansix to worry about that.
Go without the well pump until you have the $10k, a gym membership gets you free and regular access to showers, tap water is available pretty much everywhere, laundromats exist etc. $10k taken from a 401k at age 30 is $107,000 from your retirement. Medical expenses, well, if it was going to literally stop you making it to retirement, arguable I guess. Otherwise work out what payment options they have for you, you won't be the first person who can't afford to pay $30k of medical bills in cash. Car? The entire industry pretty much exists just to let you get any car in existence with no money down. You can get a beater easily enough for the short term.
You're not above making mistakes and you're certainly not above being judged for them. People who cash out their 401ks with plans to pay it back when things are better typically never pay it back and even if they do, they can't get back that lost time, especially if they cashed it out in 2008 etc. This is how otherwise smart people fuck themselves over. So drop this "only God can judge me" shit, I'm not divine but I can certainly call you an idiot if you do something idiotic.
I know you're smart, you know you're smart, but that doesn't mean that anything you do must be smart simply by virtue of you doing it. You're not above fucking yourself over.
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Well we didn’t tap into the 401K, so it worked out. And when it comes to home repair, please seek professional advice before “holding off” repairs. It is pretty easy to do 100K damage to your house by not repairing a roof.
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If anything, Kwark's comments illustrate precisely why the economy is not doing that well for most people. He's absolutely correct that 401k/IRA/retirement is a necessity that people must invest in. He also is absolutely correct that it is retarded to take money out of that account. But what's left unsaid is the difficulty in affording retirement contributions when it is also necessary to have a separate rainy day fund given all of the other shit that needs to be bought. This is where the poor wage growth really hits home.
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On August 10 2016 23:45 KwarK wrote:
The only possible explanation for this whole "what recovery?" mentality when the market tripled under Obama is people who somehow don't have a cut of the action. It's been a great 8 years.
I might be ignorant here, and if I am I apologize and would appreciate being corrected. But aren't we currently basically in the very end of a bull market? Meaning we should be entering a bear market fairly soon, which means during clinton's presidency the market will go back down. And then people will most likely blame her for it, despite the fact that it would do so regardless of who's president.
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United States43468 Posts
On August 11 2016 01:35 xDaunt wrote:
If anything, Kwark's comments illustrate precisely why the economy is not doing that well for most people. He's absolutely correct that 401k/IRA/retirement is a necessity that people must invest in. He also is absolutely correct that it is retarded to take money out of that account. But what's left unsaid is the difficulty in affording retirement contributions when it is also necessary to have a separate rainy day fund given all of the other shit that needs to be bought. This is where the poor wage growth really hits home.
I refuse to believe that most people who don't contribute really cannot afford to contribute. Between matches and the Saver's credit it costs about $500 to put $2000 into a 401k. If that costs too much then you can cash $625 out of your 401k the following year, pay $62.50 to the IRS in taxes and another $62.50 to the IRS in penalties and still have your $500 back and $1375 in the 401k for a cost to you of $0.
It's a lack of financial education and a tax system that is simultaneously both reliant on the user for input and makes no effort to educate the user. A considerable part of the problem is also lobbying from the likes of TurboTax which tries to keep the system fucked. Other countries don't have that.
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Norway28734 Posts
yeah, agreed. 'just place some buckets until you make the 10k required to fix it' advice might work for people who have jobs where they make significantly more than their monthly expenditures, who don't have kids, and who live in new mexico or other hot and arid states, but it sure as hell doesn't qualify as 'generic advice applicable to most people'. the 'just have a solid rainy day fund so you can take care of 30k expenses at any time' requires knowledge or planning or connections far beyond what most people can be expected to have.
Imo, you don't design your national policy based around what the top 10% of planning, smart and connected people find important - these people will succeed under mostly any circumstance. It's far more important to lift the bottom layers of society.
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United States43468 Posts
On August 11 2016 01:39 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2016 23:45 KwarK wrote:
The only possible explanation for this whole "what recovery?" mentality when the market tripled under Obama is people who somehow don't have a cut of the action. It's been a great 8 years. I might be ignorant here, and if I am I apologize and would appreciate being corrected. But aren't we currently basically in the very end of a bull market? Meaning we should be entering a bear market fairly soon, which means during clinton's presidency the market will go back down. And then people will most likely blame her for it, despite the fact that it would do so regardless of who's president.
The good thing about predicting the next big crash is that if you wait long enough you'll always be right. People have been saying the market is overvalued since 2011 and they may even be right but the market doesn't act in predictable and logical ways. A crash will happen at some point, crashes are part of the natural economic cycle. It seems to me that it is incredibly unlikely that one won't happen in the next 8 years, especially given the tendency of investors to forget that crashes happen and act more and more stupidly the longer it's been since one.
So on the one hand it makes little sense to thank a sitting president for a good economy and condemn them for a bad one given how little direct control they have. Especially given that factors that cause problems or fix them often take longer than one presidency to take effect. That said Obama handled the financial crisis competently for the most part and while there are systemic issues we're back to a stable sort of all kinds of fucked up. Some sort of recovery was inevitable and most likely would have also happened under McCain but America is hugely richer today than it was when he took office and people should be aware that it's been a great 8 years. That doesn't mean he necessarily caused it but it does mean you can't attack his record on it.
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On August 11 2016 01:41 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2016 01:35 xDaunt wrote:
If anything, Kwark's comments illustrate precisely why the economy is not doing that well for most people. He's absolutely correct that 401k/IRA/retirement is a necessity that people must invest in. He also is absolutely correct that it is retarded to take money out of that account. But what's left unsaid is the difficulty in affording retirement contributions when it is also necessary to have a separate rainy day fund given all of the other shit that needs to be bought. This is where the poor wage growth really hits home. I refuse to believe that most people who don't contribute really cannot afford to contribute. Between matches and the Saver's credit it costs about $500 to put $2000 into a 401k. If that costs too much then you can cash $625 out of your 401k the following year, pay $62.50 to the IRS in taxes and another $62.50 to the IRS in penalties and still have your $500 back and $1375 in the 401k for a cost to you of $0. It's a lack of financial education and a tax system that is simultaneously both reliant on the user for input and makes no effort to educate the user. A considerable part of the problem is also lobbying from the likes of TurboTax which tries to keep the system fucked. Other countries don't have that.
Yes, but I think that the larger point that people are taking issue with this is this correlation that you're drawing between the health of the financial market and the health of the economy overall -- particularly for those that are not and cannot be heavily invested it beyond their retirement accounts.
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United States43468 Posts
On August 11 2016 01:43 Liquid`Drone wrote:
yeah, agreed. 'just place some buckets until you make the 10k required to fix it' advice might work for people who have jobs where they make significantly more than their monthly expenditures, who don't have kids, and who live in new mexico or other hot and arid states, but it sure as hell doesn't qualify as 'generic advice applicable to most people'. the 'just have a solid rainy day fund so you can take care of 30k expenses at any time' requires knowledge or planning or connections far beyond what most people can be expected to have.
Imo, you don't design your national policy based around what the top 10% of planning, smart and connected people find important - these people will succeed under mostly any circumstance. It's far more important to lift the bottom layers of society.
Giving them huge incentives (often double/triple matches on their money) to open investment accounts which entitle them to a share of the overall growth of the economy is how you help the bottom layers lift themselves up. Refusing to use them or using them badly is how they fuck themselves over.
I'm not saying a hole in a roof isn't a problem, I'm saying that your solution to the hole in the roof problem if you have no cash and only a 401k should be the same as your solution to the hole in the roof problem if you have no cash and no 401k. Some problems can't be dealt with. If you have a $30k emergency and no rainy day fund then you're fucked unfortunately. Cashing out your 401k doesn't unfuck you, it makes you more fucked in the future.
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Damn, Kwark's elitist, entitled view of the economy is just dripping right now
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On August 11 2016 01:53 Nevuk wrote:
Damn, Kwark's elitist, entitled view of the economy is just dripping right now
He does have a point that most people are hopelessly financially illiterate, which is why they have so much debt and so little savings.
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On August 11 2016 01:47 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2016 01:39 hunts wrote:On August 10 2016 23:45 KwarK wrote:
The only possible explanation for this whole "what recovery?" mentality when the market tripled under Obama is people who somehow don't have a cut of the action. It's been a great 8 years. I might be ignorant here, and if I am I apologize and would appreciate being corrected. But aren't we currently basically in the very end of a bull market? Meaning we should be entering a bear market fairly soon, which means during clinton's presidency the market will go back down. And then people will most likely blame her for it, despite the fact that it would do so regardless of who's president. The good thing about predicting the next big crash is that if you wait long enough you'll always be right. People have been saying the market is overvalued since 2011 and they may even be right but the market doesn't act in predictable and logical ways. A crash will happen at some point, crashes are part of the natural economic cycle. It seems to me that it is incredibly unlikely that one won't happen in the next 8 years, especially given the tendency of investors to forget that crashes happen and act more and more stupidly the longer it's been since one. So on the one hand it makes little sense to thank a sitting president for a good economy and condemn them for a bad one given how little direct control they have. Especially given that factors that cause problems or fix them often take longer than one presidency to take effect. That said Obama handled the financial crisis competently for the most part and while there are systemic issues we're back to a stable sort of all kinds of fucked up. Some sort of recovery was inevitable and most likely would have also happened under McCain but America is hugely richer today than it was when he took office and people should be aware that it's been a great 8 years. That doesn't mean he necessarily caused it but it does mean you can't attack his record on it.
Thanks for that. I'm still just a newbie learning about stocks
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United States43468 Posts
On August 11 2016 01:53 Nevuk wrote:
Damn, Kwark's elitist, entitled view of the economy is just dripping right now
The darn liberals in Washington set it up so even the poorest workers could have a share of the pie to mitigate exactly this kind of situation in which the wealth was largely returned to the capitalist class and not the labouring class. Sure, real terms earnings have stagnated and that sucks and I think the minimum wage should be higher. But at the same time we shouldn't present this as a narrative of growth only benefiting the few people at the top, not when the system is built to give direct cash incentives to people at the bottom who want to play.
The fact of the matter is that the American labour practices and tax code are built to literally pay people to enter the capitalist class. That doesn't mean that everyone gets to retire and live off the interest immediately but it does mean the poorest workers get literal free money to start their slice of the pie. Which would be extremely progressive if it actually worked.
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On August 11 2016 01:55 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2016 01:53 Nevuk wrote:
Damn, Kwark's elitist, entitled view of the economy is just dripping right now He does have a point that most people are hopelessly financially illiterate, which is why they have so much debt and so little savings.
That is more the fault of the system, rather than the people. Like law, it is very hard to tell if you are getting good advice or if the thing you are investing in is going to benefit you. I’m in no way stupid and I get completely feed up with dealing with the folks that manage my 401K. Its not about lack of education, it is that there is so much resistance to finding real, good information.
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That you shouldn't need to play if you have a 100% job never came to your mind?
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On August 11 2016 01:58 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2016 01:53 Nevuk wrote:
Damn, Kwark's elitist, entitled view of the economy is just dripping right now The darn liberals in Washington set it up so even the poorest workers could have a share of the pie to mitigate exactly this kind of situation in which the wealth was largely returned to the capitalist class and not the labouring class. Sure, real terms earnings have stagnated and that sucks and I think the minimum wage should be higher. But at the same time we shouldn't present this as a narrative of growth only benefiting the few people at the top, not when the system is built to give direct cash incentives to people at the bottom who want to play. The fact of the matter is that the American labour practices and tax code are built to literally pay people to enter the capitalist class. That doesn't mean that everyone gets to retire and live off the interest immediately but it does mean the poorest workers get literal free money to start their slice of the pie. Which would be extremely progressive if it actually worked.
Well not the poorest by a long shot. If you're really poor you can't save at all. You're talking more about "middle-class poor".
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EPT
