rkbabang

I had a realization like this about 20 years ago. My wife and I were looking to buy a rental property, we were looking at 3 family buildings in a poorer part of a nearby city. We didn't end up buying anything, but the way these poorer people lived was eye opening. This was back in 2004-2006 and these people had gigantic TVs (I still had small tube TVs in my house), video game systems that my kids would have killed for, a lot of late model cars parked on the street (many a lot newer than mine), yet their apartments were all completely trashed and filthy, most of them stunk something awful. We ended up deciding that we didn't want to be slum lords so we didn't buy anything in that part of the city. And we couldn't afford multi-family investment buildings in the nicer areas as the time. Another time we volunteered at a soup kitchen for the poor/homeless. We expected to be preparing/serving food to needy poor families down on their luck, but we were just serving drug addicts and mentally ill people. There were no families there, it was all adults and there wasn't a single person that I would characterize as a normal person down on his luck. Needless to say we never did that again. And another time we volunteered for an organization that provided winter clothes to needy families. We had a stack of about 300 gift cards for JC Penny and we where supposed to provide each child with a $100 gift card and go shopping with the child who would have a list from their mother of what they needed, this was to make sure the money was actually spent on clothes for the child. This took place in the largest city in the state, we had a large group of volunteers, 300 gift cards, and were prepared for hundreds of children to show up. We had 10. Those 10 kids did get much needed winter coats, hats, and boots though. It is a lot harder to actually help the needy than most people think.

Another thing to factor in is your age. If you are 25-35 and have a mortgage with a 3% rate, you should probably keep it. If you are in your 50s and thinking about when to retire, you should probably pay it off. I was 48 when I paid mine off and have no regrets. I have more to invest every month now and am comfortable knowing I'm completely debt free. When I was in my early 30s I wanted to leverage the equity in my house to upgrade to a bigger house. I wasn't thinking about how I could pay it off.

It wasn't an appeal to authority, it was simply a historical example of an authority getting something wrong. An appeal to authority would be in the form: "<X person> says your are wrong, so you are wrong." This isn't as easy to see as dropping bombs from airplanes, because it is in a completely different domain. The internet has been around for a few decades longer than Bitcoin and yet there hasn't been a major war with a major front taking place online yet. It is simply my opinion that this happening is only a matter of time.

If Bitcoin disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't affect US security one whit. Unfortunately for US security Bitcoin isn't going anywhere. If airplanes disappeared in the 19-teens they wouldn't have affected US security one Whit. “Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.” General Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander of WW1

Yes, also I know there are companies researching replacing the steel with different carbon fiber like materials to make them stronger and lighter, but I can't see a switch away from aluminum for the conductor, unless they find some type of engineered material that has both a strength to weight ratio improvement over steel and at least the conductivity of Aluminum. EDIT: at a reasonable cost.

I think the only thing better than copper in a generator would be silver and that is even more expensive.

Yes, those thick aluminum cables are super hard to work with, but dirt cheap compared to copper. We had an April snow storm that took down my drop wire between my house and my detached garage, so I decided rather than put it back up the way it was to run a line underground. It's a 100A panel in the garage and I needed ~170' of cable. I bought 175' of 1/0-1/0-1/0 aluminum cable for $292.25 at an electrical supply. That would have been thousands in cable costs to do in the appropriate gauge copper. I know in-wall aluminum house wiring was used in the 1970s when copper prices were high and there were some house fires due to contractors not using the correct gauge. Aluminum house wiring became a red-flag when looking at properties built in the 70s. EDIT: I just looked it up the aluminum house wiring fires were due to the type of wire used and not being compatible with the outlets and light switches. Aluminum to Copper connections caused corrosion at the connections which caused the fires.

My thinking that Bitcoin is the only digital property that matters and that there is no second best doesn't rely on whatever the SEC or Congress, or President of the United States does or doesn't do. The thing about Bitcoin is it makes the hierarchical players at the center irrelevant. I don't think ETH is a security in the traditional sense, but it isn't money nor is it a viable long term store of value. My views won't change even if the SEC decides to approve a Dog-with-a-hat-poops-on-the-sidewalk-coin ETF.

Currently reading: "The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools" by Corey A. DeAngelis "Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet" by Marian L. Tupy Anyone else here use goodreads.com? If so feel free to friend me. My profile is here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8431549-eric-pavao I've been putting everything I read into there the last few years. Not everything I've ever read is in there, but I put in what I could remember reading, and everything I've read since about 2019 is in there. I've rated 862 books. You can see currently reading, read, and want-to-read books. Also I like the "Year in Books" feature where you can get a summary look at everything you've read in a certain calendar year. Here's mine for 2024-2019: 2024: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2024/8431549 2023: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2023/8431549 2022: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2022/8431549 2021: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2021/8431549 2020: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2020/8431549 2019: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2019/8431549

I converted more of my Ethereum to Bitcoin yesterday. Not a straight conversion. I bought Bitcoin with about 65% of it. I’m holding back 20% for taxes and 15% which I plan to buy MSTR with tomorrow.

It doesn't work with brussels spouts or math homework either. I think it needs to be something they actually want.

Unfortunately the average person has a high time preference and there is nothing you can do for them. The relatively rare low time preference individuals turn out fine, the rest are just hopeless. There really isn’t anything that can be done as high time preference people will always make the wrong choices regardless of their situation and regardless of their education or any advice or handouts they receive. https://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification

Thanks for these posts, they are very helpful. I’m just a little younger than you (51) and by the end of last year was letting myself get obese again. I’ve lost just over 40 lbs since Christmas but have been a little discouraged the last 2 weeks because I bruised and fractured a couple of ribs doing a home project and have had to stop any workouts except walking. I’m going to get back to lifting weights and my rowing machine again as soon as I can. The Dr said at least 6 weeks. Staying motivated to stay in shape isn’t always easy and getting older isn’t always fun.

There is no need to spend a fortune on Olive Oil to get the real thing. Here is a list of brands that have agreed to random testing from their bottles sourced from store shelves. https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/79-certified-pure-and-authentic-olive-oils

You could be right, now that I think about it. He made a lot on the Fairfax options, but the BAC leaps could have been the BIG one. I don't remember.

Ericopoly was a frequent poster here for a long time who made an absolute fortune on Fairfax options (somewhere well into 8 figures IIRC) as well as some other outstanding trades. He left the board at some point unfortunately. Keep up the training!

LOL, maybe you are correct. My wife and I met in our teens, got married in our early 20s, had 2 kids in our mid-20s (less than a year apart) and were done in our mid-40s. It seemed like we were running at 120% for 2 decades and then all of the sudden we could stop and breathe.

I just finished it, thanks for the recommendation. I started on his newer book "How Innovation Works: Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time" where he talks about innovation and what types of environments create it and which type of environments prevent it, and it's making me less optimistic as the US is clearly moving in the wrong direction and has been for some time. For just one example out of millions of possible examples see my last post to the BYON topic.

It’s funny but that chart kind of true. I’ve never been unhappy, maybe “happiness” isn’t even the right word, maybe it’s a harder-easier scale, but late 20s into early 40s I was so damn busy working my ass off and raising my kids that those years went by in a flash. Once I hit my late 40s early 50s with the kids being adults and having more money life is just easier. My wife and I get to spend a lot of time together like when we were in our early 20s before having kids. We can do what we want, go where we want, whenever we want. I remember the first time we went out to eat on a week night. We were like “it’s a Tuesday night and we’re actually sitting together in a restaurant!” That was impossible when the kids were young. Anyway life does get more relaxed and easier. While I wouldn’t trade those busy years for anything, I look at people who had kids late and are my age with young kids and I feel so bad for them. They always look exhausted, that’s a young person’s game.

This is an old topic that has been revived. Damn, I wish I was still 41. At least my portfolio is a lot bigger now along with my age.

When we've been saying that Bitcoin is going to be the base layer of all human value. In the future every person on earth, every institution, every government will use Bitcoin as a ruler from which to measure everything of value. Your pay will be in Sats, your groceries, your stocks will be priced in Sats, your house will be worth a certain number of Sats, etc, Did you think we meant that will happen while only a handful of Libertarians and anarchists owned Bitcoin? Yes, BlackRock and other institutions (even governments) are going to acquire Bitcoin in large amounts.

They will certainly exist. But will they be widely used? You can make the case that they are already not widely used today and in 5-10 years they will be used much less than now.

My thinking is that BTC takes some market share from Gold, Real Estate, Money, Bonds, and even Equities. In that order. Gold & RE 1st, Money, Bonds, & Equities last. Right now holding money as an asset is like holding water in a leaky bucket. It loses value constantly. When BTC gets close to its terminal value it will be far safer to hold than government money. There is some percentage of wealth held in Bonds and Equities now simply because people don't want to lose money to inflation every single year, so holding it in riskier investments is an attempt to hold the value through time. At the point that BTC is the underlying base layer for which most things are valued against and it is stable (growing in purchasing power at about the rate of productivity growth in the world economy), some of the wealth that would be invested in bonds and equities today will be held in Bitcoin instead.

Yes. No one knows what the correct percentage is nor how long it will take to get there. My personal opinion is more than Gold, Art, and Collectables combined, but less than Equities. So the 2024 equivalent of $40T-$80T and within the next 20 years.

Most people feel the pain of loss much more than the joy of gain. So they don't feel the gain of going from $50 to $75 as much as they feel the loss from $75 to $60. So even though they are up in total the unrealized loss from their high water mark hurts more than the unrealized gain from their basis feels good. I read a study that the vast majority of people lose money even in index funds, because they are more likely to sell after a downturn in the market than they are to buy. This coupled with the fear of missing out, means they are not only likely to sell at the bottom, but they are more likely to buy at or near the top. To be successful even at indexing, never mind stock picking, you need to put away your fear of loss and your fear of missing out. A lot of people can't.