StrangeSox

I don't think Chicago has rent controls like NYC, I think he meant market value.

He's on to the same grift in Florida, so not really. But really it's indicative of a lot of the "School Reform" movement. It's about privatization of the school systems and crushing public school unions.

The AP has a story on the former head of Indiana's school system and current head of Florida's school system changing the way schools are 'graded' explicitly because a wealthy Republican donor's charter school was going to get a lower grade. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap-excl...hanged-19807123 Accountability! edit: links to the actual emails are available at the bottom of this page: http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/a82...-School-Grades/

QUOTE (Jake @ Jul 30, 2013 -> 10:54 AM) For me, not being able to take a road trip is far from a non-starter Living near Chicago pretty much guarantees that the first 5-10 hours of your road trip, depending on which direction you're heading, are going to be pretty boring.

Yeah, I'd have a hard time being 8+hours away from all of my friends and family.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 04:45 PM) Employer match isnt a standard thing, in fact I've only seen it twice my entire career. It's a value-add of working for that company. Only about 50% of employers offer any 401k program at all. FWIW 401k's were originally an executive-level benefit. They weren't created to be the main retirement vehicle for Americans.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 04:46 PM) A good portion of us will die before we ever reach retirement age. Life expectancy post-infancy is into the 80's these days. Life expectancy at age 65 is another 16 years or so for men and 18 or 19 years for women.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 12:37 PM) Vancouver, Seattle, or Portland. Probably one of these three, maybe SF, either way a hell of a lot closer to the mountains.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 04:00 PM) The Democrat's bread and butter: create dependents and promise them more. Nobody on social security or medicare ever votes Republican

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 03:17 PM) Then contribute more. You can't expect to contribute $3k a year and retire with $60K a year pension benefits. It just doesn't work unless you have other suckers, I mean workers, paying for your defined benefits. Regardless of whether or not people should have invested more money during their working years, the reality is what Balta pointed out: there's a huge wave of retirement age workers coming with little or no retirement savings. Whose fault that is and whether or not the whole "everyone individually invest in stocks and bonds" 401k experiment was a good idea for the average worker doesn't change the reality that millions are facing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 03:20 PM) I assumed people knew that the better firms have incredibly low fees. 10k in the Vanguard 500 and you're not being charged 1.25% like in the frontline piece, you're charged .05% And you should never have trading fees that might double those costs (as was claimed) because you shouldn't be day-trading your retirement account. I mean, I'm glad frontline is trying to educate people. I thought that was investment 101 type stuff. You don't have a choice in what investment management company your employer offers with their 401k. That 0.05% is also the fund management fee, not your account management fee. The old 401k plan the company I work for offered charged every account 2.5% of their annual average balance every year on top of whatever fees your funds charged.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 03:11 PM) Is that even possible? My 401(k) gets contributions from me and my employer every 2 weeks. They don't promise me that they'll contribute money in the future when I retire. Underfunded in the sense that you're going to have to work until you're dead. Underfunded from the perspective of the person who hopes to one day retire.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 03:07 PM) The problem with underfunded 401k's leaving people with no retirement security is going to make the problem of underfunded pension plans look like a walk in the park. e.g. http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_..._Update-092.pdf

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 03:02 PM) If you invest properly, a lot of those fees don't apply. Trading fees for example. You should never get hit with a trading fee if you invest in diversified index funds. And the personally managed fund (and fees associated with it) are a thing of the past. Hate to derail, but there are basic account management fees that you get charged regardless of what funds you're in. If you're with someone like Vanguard, they're minimal. Fidelity, ok. A smaller firm might charge as much as 3% of your account balance annually. http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/planni...probably-paying edit: the frontline episode and linked website a few posts back details this pretty thoroughly.

good job, now you've gone and broken Balta

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 02:30 PM) Explain to me how a teacher contributing $250 a month to their pension and then collecting $40k, $50k or more a year in benefits is cheaper than having a 401k set up? If they worked 30 years they would have put in less than $100k, which they would use up in 2 or 3 years. The rest comes from the pyramid scheme known as defined benefit public pensions. 401k management fees are almost nothing unless you constantly change your funds allocations. There were a handful of links and an episode of Frontline in the financial thread (or at least I thought, can't find Balta's post now) a few months back that highlighted just how big of a bite management fees take out of the average 401(k). It's something like 40-50% of your total value over the lifetime between fund management fees and account management fees. Don't want to derail the thread, but here's the Frontline episode if you're curious: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bu...-fees-cost-you/

Some private companies still offer their employees pensions.

Slightly related, I just started preparing for the Professional Engineering exam. The 1500 page reference manual is a bit intimidating

How much of a burden on pension funds would a universal healthcare system have alleviated?

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 26, 2013 -> 07:31 PM) lol. like 90% of the corporations that own the Democrat party yup

And the Shenanigans Begin

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 26, 2013 -> 11:14 AM) I don't think the situations are really comparable. Zimmerman didn't get off on a technicality like Braun. People believe that if Zimmerman truly is not legally guilty, then something is wrong with the law because his course of actions should not have been 100% legal. A not guilty verdict doesn't mean people have to drop those feelings.

Welcome to Cook, One of America’s Safest Counties A new study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine finds that rural areas contain a 20% greater risk of injury or death. The biggest factor appears to be motor vehicle injuries.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Jul 17, 2013 -> 12:37 AM) Yep, Gran Turismo is perfect for someone looking for a true racing sim, the cars are supposed to handle and feel like their real life counterparts, you can customize everything on the car, i mean real gearhead stuff (gear ratios, suspension height, downforce, power distribution on a limited slip differential, and tons more), the race tracks are detailed to the very exact specs as their real life counterparts as well in terms of track width and every bump and turn you go through. Need for speed is an arcadey racing sim that is still very fun and has a fairly nice amount of depth. i had a blast playing need for speed most wanted, for those times when you just want to hop in a cool expensive car and unrealistically rip through a make believe city. The online modes for both titles are very active, even to this day. This is an older post, but GT is a good console racing sim but not really a true sim. There's hardcore PC racing sim games that are essentially impossible to play without hundreds of hours of practice. Grand Prix Legends is sort of the classic standard in that regard, and the EA F1 games are pretty difficult as well. Those sorts of games are so difficult that they're hard to actually enjoy unless you're heavily dedicated and get expensive force-feedback wheels. For the PC world, you can even get force-feedback seats that simulate the entire driving experience, multi-monitor support for 360 views, etc. GT (or Forza for Xbox) are great sim-lite games for most people, including me. I want a challenge, but I don't want to have to run 100 laps of the Monaco gran prix circuit before I can complete one semi-fast lap without crashing or going off.