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Reagan1k

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Reagan1k

  1. Yep...... In all seriousness, an old illustration is as worthless as tits on a boar considering the changes in investment experience and interest rates. Surprising to some, major insurance companies' portfolios have experienced some nice returns relative to other non-equity investments because of their class A real estate holdings, etc.
  2. 1) If your father is 85 and his whole life policy is decades old (seems so based on the OP), it may already be self sustaining. If paying the premiums out pocket becomes an issue, you probably have a couple of options and should get those answered now, before it ever becomes an issue (if it ever does) ......a) ask the agent to run an INFORCE ILLUSTRATION using the dividends to offset the premium and / or a policy loan if the dividends don't cover it and b) ask them to show you the increase in death benefit (paid up additions) for each new premium paid. Old policies like this presumably would be self-funding at a point, if the underlying insurer is strong. Also, most of these policies are set to have each dividend buy a "paid up addition" which is basically trading cash today for an increase in the policy's death benefit down the road. As an example, the premium may be $1000, the annual dividend may be $1800, and if used to buy paid up additions to the face amount, the increase in death benefit might be $2500. Those are made up numbers but from an estate planning standpoint, you may be able to take $x out of pocket A and put $xxx in pocket B. If he/you doesn't need the premium payment funds for immediate needs, it is likely worth continuing to pay it. If money is tight, using the dividend or even a policy loan to offset the premium could make sense. Before you and your father jump to any conclusions, make sure you look at all the angles using INFORCE ILLUSTRATIONS so you can see how taking dollars from pocket A impacts pocket B. 2) On the group life question, your cousin needs to get a copy of the group life policy from his employer. He needs to be looking for things like portability clauses, waiver of premium, or convertibility clauses. Some policies have none of those options, but others allow for you to take the term policy with you on termination, convert it to a permanent policy, or may have a clause that waives the premium in the event of a permanent disability (meaning he can keep the policy). It would be vitally important for him to get the policy, dig into the provisions, and ask his HR or the company's agent a lot of questions to determine what he can and can't do....don't wait until after separation of employment. Do it now. And, very sorry to hear about your cousin.
  3. Level term is inexpensive insurance to replace income or pay for increased expenses if death occurs during the prime earning years or “expensive” years when you have dependents. 30 year level term is cheap until you hit 35+, and 20 year is cheap into mid-late 40’s barring some health issue. Permanent insurance is a tool (often mis-sold) that is useful in the right situation. It doesn’t “suck” any more than a hammer “sucks” when what you really need is a screwdriver. Used in the right scenario and it has its place. In the wrong application it’s misguided at best. Use the right tool for the job, and when kids are young and death benefit needs are high, the right tool is normally level term. Buy term life from a good company with convertible options regardless of future insurability and don’t sweat the pennies when the future of your family is at stake.
  4. Life expectancy tables have been updated for the first time in something like 20 years so that’ll be a slightly smaller RMD bites, but won’t help a ton. If they were smart and wanted to increase current tax revenue they’d allow limited withdrawals above the RMD to be made at a special lower tax rate provided they were reinvested for a period of years (create a hybrid, restricted, taxable account in the same vein as the IRA) People would be incentivized to get money out and the Treasury would get current revenue right away instead of only getting the bare minimum out of big IRAs. Call it a TROTH- Taxable Roth
  5. The original “Ranch” moniker was Ruger’s attempt to make the Mini-14 less A-Teamish and more utilitarian…. Which it really was. Great knock around semi-auto that was very useful as a truck gun. I saw that they now call the carbine bolt actions Americans by the same name and all I can figure is they think all of us old fuckers are dead or can’t remember.
  6. Calculated - Yes.....possibly calculating that she'll have uninterrupted sleep while someone else deal with colic and shiity diapers.
  7. Yeah - I spent untold hours combing through Shotgun News and mentally amassing a collection. Even $25 seemed like a lot for a surplus rifle in 'the early 70, but those Enfields would have turned into a solid store of value at today's prices. I wish I had every No. 5 Mk I I ever handled at a gun show but eventually passed. Have two but they're by no means the best I've had opportunity to purchase.
  8. My retired cousin has a side hustle helping relocate big fishing boats and yachts. Me: This spring he's going to help run a boat from Mobile up to some place close to Philadelphia. Her: Wow. So he'll get to go through the Panama Canal? Me: Maybe...... Depends on how they go I guess.
  9. It’s not always greed that stumbles over the traditions or causes people to market sobriety. I’d be the first to admit, my business and marketing brain went into overload after a month or two into the program. I wasn’t thinking I could make a fast buck; rather thinking- Holy shit this is the worst marketed / greatest thing ever. ERRRBODY needs this stuff. We have to get this message cranked up and cranked out to the masses. I was well intentioned but could easily see how that could spin into something else. Hopkins blows me away. I’m sure I’m not the only one who started listening to a tape and thought the speakers voice was a dead ringer for A.H. only to quickly piece together Tony and CA. when he started talking about acting. His is a great gift; relating the otherwise unrelatable to our common struggle.
  10. It’s not always greed that stumbles over the traditions or causes people to market sobriety. I’d be the first to admit, my business and marketing brain went into overload after a month or two into the program. I wasn’t thinking I could make a fast buck; rather thinking- Holy shit this is the worst marketed / greatest thing ever. ERRRBODY needs this stuff. We have to get this message cranked up and cranked out to the masses. I was well intentioned but could easily see how that could spin into something else. Hopkins blows me away. I’m sure I’m not the only one who started listening to a tape and thought the speakers voice was a dead ringer for A.H. only to quickly piece together Tony and CA. when he started talking about acting. His is a great gift; relating the otherwise unrelatable to our common struggle.
  11. Yeah- Ruger is already doing great things with the Marlin brand. That’s a perfect fit. Roundhill bought the Ilion plant and the TN barrel facility and are saying all the right things about bringing back the Remington brand to what it once was. I hope they pull it off. Time will tell.
  12. Holly Whittaker’s opinions on sobriety and AA aren’t really any of my business I guess, other than as a reminder to be welcoming to all. What I will say is that she appears to be pretty good at marketing and business development.
  13. Holly Whittaker’s opinions on sobriety and AA aren’t really any of my business I guess, other than as a reminder to be welcoming to all. What I will say is that she appears to be pretty good at marketing and business development.
  14. If 100% of the contributions were non-deductible (after tax) then the tax liability would be on the gains only. If you roll it over during a series of years to keep the tax hit down, each year the rollover is considered part contribution (not taxed) and pre-tax earnings (taxed). But.......Your tax preparer would have to look at all of your IRA's, how they were funded, and apply the proper formula to figure it out. The IRS has formulas for all scenarios of contributions....100% pre-tax, 100% post tax, or a combination of both. You can't pick and choose which dollars to convert......the IRS looks at the aggregate holdings and treats a rollover as an equally proportional transaction.
  15. As mentioned above, sequence of return is the single most important part of the equation for most people except the ultra wealthy. Retiring into a market that experiences a couple of bad or even a few down years means a) withdrawals and therefore expenses must be cut significantly or b) the money won’t last as projected even if the markets recover to their projected long term averages. If you don’t have a flexible budget (i.e.have fixed expenses) or aren’t disciplined in other spending then a 2-3 year bear or flat market at the start of retirement can make what you wanted to be a 4% withdrawal much higher. Stacking a few withdrawals of what must become 5-10% or more due to fixed expenses on top of a falling market early in retirement destroys principal and that can’t be easily recouped. Having “buckets” of money not exposed to the market from which to pull current income and then refilling those buckets in subsequent years is a way to mitigate that risk but it requires disciplined asset allocation and rebalancing.
  16. Slowly raises hand. I was that guy in both places. I always felt like I must be doing something wrong. AA told me it was OK to have a higher power of my very own. Took a lot of pressure off.
  17. A break from the Christmas cheer is right. What a stark reminder of the power of addiction. Thanks for the recommendation.
  18. I did not give you permission to take my picture. Delete that right now sir. I know my rights.
  19. Congrats @TwiceHorn that’s a big deal. @BearSchlong same deal last weekend. I was getting coffee before my 9am meeting and a guy came in wearing a sweatshirt, pajama bottoms, and crocs. Dude plops a cold case of cheap beer on the counter, and I can smell him already. Not his breath- out of his pores. Had I not grabbed and continue to grab for the grace God offers us all, that would / could be me. I don’t speed much anymore but I got to that meeting in record time. It made me uneasy yet grateful all day long.
  20. Smith and Wesson M&P12 Sell me a bullpup ? I could be talked into one because, gun.
  21. Just got some new pics. I've been MIA from our place but it looks like the tail chasing may be on hiatus and the boys are hungry enough to at least tolerate each other. And even from 800 miles away I can smell those knee walking goats.
  22. I run .30 caliber cans for that caliber on down for centerfire rifles and then .22 for the rimfires. Technically you lose some performance when you use a .30 can with, say, a 5.56, but it is impossible for me to tell a difference. A meter will show higher dbs but I can't hear it. I got into cans before threaded barrels on bolt actions were mainstream, and didn't want to mess with caps and stripped threads. So, I bought cans with a quick disconnect, and adapters for each caliber. Threaded the barrels and then installed the adapters "permanently" - permanently meaning I don't take them off. That way I can shoot suppressed or not and never worry about exposed threads, etc.
  23. I don't spend much time in Excel - In fact I suck at it and never had any real training....just trial and error. I have a large file.....1000's of rows but only 5 columns. I'm trying to print pages with only 50 rows per page and all columns, so that the printed sheets are less compressed and easier to read. I know how to insert manual page breaks, but is there an easy way to have Excel automatically format the printing at 50 rows per page to make this shit easier to read when I need to print it?
  24. SGAmmo.com has it. Not a steal but it’s there.
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