Posts posted by CooterBrown
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Edited by CooterBrown
28 minutes ago, B00M said:Is anyone pulling out of the markets as (a) protection against trump’s seemingly intentional recession and (b) protest against Trump since there’s little else we can do until midterms and we know he views the stock markets as a report card? I’ve been thinking about it…
I moved half of my retirement to gold (GLD) a week ago. That's had a slight profit since then. It'll stay stable or increase unless the nukes drop. This week, I moved another 25% to Fidelity's money market account (SPAXX) that is returning 4.x%. I'm okay with that return for 2025. I have roughly 20% in the S&P 500 (FXAIX) and 5% still in tech (VGT). I was in FXAIX & VGT for over 15 years with no complaints. I was hoping to stay in that mix for 6 more years until retirement.
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Edited by CooterBrown
1 hour ago, GhostOfTomJoad said:The Hobby Bldg has been demo'd and redeveloped (something about an "infestation" issue).
Mrs GOTJ works out of a leased facility in N Austin that has been shrunk down to a third of its size pre-Covid. She currently goes in one day a week because that's all the space they have to accommodate the mgmt team.
The Hobby Building had a major rat infestation. It was so bad you couldn't leave food on your desk because rats would come out during the workday for a snack.
When my wife quit working in that building, she brought home her little dorm fridge she kept in her office and there were two dead rats under it.
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23 minutes ago, The Ace of Aces said:
Medicine and cell phones were taken from the house.
How on earth would they know someone stole Tylenol?
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Grad schools are slowing down admissions since they don’t know how funding will shake out.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/02/25/facing-nih-cuts-colleges-restrict-grad-student -
I just have a really hard time believing that someone with the ability to spend $5 million would want to spend that to move here. I'm looking at places that offer golden visas so I can move out. This isn't a very affordable place to retire and we have other, much cheaper options if you are young and looking to move here to make money.
Some Russian Oligarchs are gonna want to get on the action here. -
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https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO
He just started this podcast interviewing music industry pros. Say what you want about Corgan, but he is a shockingly good interviewer. -
7 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:
Yeah, I'd like to see what that portfolio did during some of the shocks more than a decade ago. portfoliometrics goes back farther?
Looks like it also limits you to 10 years for the free tier. Of the two, I would join the Portfolio Visualizer and do the 14 day free trial. That's plenty of time to run through a bunch of scenarios.
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3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:
Thanks, those sound like good tools. I'll check them out. I assume they allow for the reinvestment of dividends, too? We don't really need cash flow outside of the current obligations I've alluded to.
Yep. You can set reinvesting, cashing it in, withdrawing a fixed amount or percentage, etc.
Portfolio Visualizer is more detailed and the best but they ruined the interface so us long time users don't like it. If you haven't seen the old version if it then you'll probably love it. PV will now only back test 10 years without a paid subscription so just be aware that it won't cover all major events in the back testing.
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6 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:
I finally got a chance to review a small inheritance my wife received from her mother. It's a mix of a few stocks, a couple of mutual funds, and some cash. We would like to be pretty conservative at this point, for a variety of reasons, so I'm wondering if there is any consensus about whether we should hang on to any of these holdings:
MSFT (biggest holding, seems pretty stagnant for over a year)
ABBV
PG
ABT
XOM (pretty stagnant)
WMT (nice run but took a dump today)
BAC
I can see keeping WMT, it's not a big % of the holdings and despite today's hit would seem more recession proof than most. The others I can do without, but if there are any compelling reasons to hold on to any of them I'm all ears. Thoughts?
Go to either https://portfoliometrics.net/ or https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio#analysisResults and enter what you own. You can then back test how that portfolio has performed historically. You can set up withdrawing dividends or withdrawing a percentage or fixed amount monthly/annually and see how it performs. You may realize that you can cash flow a healthy amount of extra income without needing to sell all of it at once and take a big tax hit. Of course, back testing doesn't predict the future but it's about the best tool available for the average person.
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6 minutes ago, elguapo said:
Providing education services to special ed kids/kids with behavioral issues is expensive af, and public schools don't get to turn them away like privates do.
Well, special education is currently on the chopping block so public school won't be providing that service either. Look at all the money saved!
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Edited by CooterBrown
11 minutes ago, immamac said:I don't pretend to know what things cost in schools, but why is this so expensive? Outside of teacher salaries, the real estate is free/tax free/funded with bonds that aren't ISD dollars. Maintenance shouldn't be insane, the tech/refresh cycle is long enough to not be a huge cost and books etc are also reusable for years on end.
What eats the budget?
I don't know shit about fuck either but some quick back of the napkin math:
There are 10,500 AISD employees. At an average salary of $50,000, that's $525,000,000 in raw salary. Add in 40% for payroll taxes, benefits, retirement, that's another $210,000,000. So, it's $735,000,000 for just staff.
I would also guess that the electric bill each month is at a minimum of $10,000. For 113 campuses, that's over $13,000,000/year just in electric bills.
The Democratic Party
in Cloak Room
The Washington Generals of political parties. JFC.