Because I work for UNLV, a state school, they automatically take out a minimum of 14% of each paycheck and put it into a retirement fund - and then they match that 14%. (Nevada does take out social security, so the retirement fund is mandatory.)

It's nice....especially since I'm bad at saving.

thats great dom. find out if you have chooses of where it is put. and the fees they take.

An interesting point that's been made over the years is that such a small percentage of stock brokers do better than the market that it comes down to variance. Most actually do worse.

I don't know, it's hard to really put it all together. Back when I was selling online, I started up with $500 then built that to $10k in about 6 months. It was pretty easy, though I was small, but at the same time, I was selling a high-demand product.

I ended up going through a rough time and ended up spending most of that on emergencies. I had to move 3 times in 2 months and ended up losing my security deposit on two of those because of "situations." I spent $7,000 in one month, which was a disaster, then had about $2,000 in inventory that I couldn't get rid of due to a several changes in the market.

I know that's crazy, but it's just my mind. I don't like to sit still, which is probably a lot of reason I'm perpetually single, and why I jump all over the money map. It's a lot of variance, but at that time, I was earning below $30k / year at that time, so I couldn't fade any life issues. It's a bit different now and the temptation is very strong to move money around again.

Yeah, true that. People always ask me how much I spent on some instrument. I mean, really? I can sell everything I have today for more than I bought it for. It's the cheapest hobby one can have, plus getting money for shows and other things adds upside.

The nice thing about buying a MacBook is that it doesn't depreciate much (plus it earns me money). Everything else I have is pretty much worthless, but I like wearing clothes if I'm not in the shower.

If there is one thing I abhor, it is "stuff." If I get to the point that I can't toss everything in a bag and move house, I feel like I'm weighed down. Twenty years ago, I joked that my only goal in life is to do two loads of laundry, and I never accomplished that "goal." My minimalism is extreme and probably unhealthy, if I have to be honest. You see people living in tents that own more than I do.

When I moved to Austin and back to LA, everything I owned was carry-on. When I landed, I threw half the stuff into the trash.

Stuff I'll look into.

A bank account is a must-have, but I don't think there is a such thing as no-fee bank accounts anymore. My bank requires 15 purchases per month with my debit card or a rolling balance of some sort of money. I'm sure others require direct deposits or some other thing like that. Banks are horrible when you are broke, but nice to have when you have more than you'd feel comfortable keeping in your socks.

Remember when you could open a savings account with 5% APY?

That's a large chunk of change, but I guess you can't miss what you don't see, right?

My technique for saving is adjusting my idea of zero. I have a number that I won't go below unless there is no other option. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but it works okay for me and keeps my spurious spending to a minimum, plus my disdain for "stuff" helps.

I got approved for this apartment I was looking at, by the way. It's a nice place and I'm sure I'll be happy there, but it's still nerve-racking. It's actually a bit of a relief since I have some idea of what my budget is going to be. It's a 750 SQ FT artist-style studio, laid out openly and feels huge inside.

The rent in LA is getting out of control. People has been telling me how their rent has been jumping up $300, despite already paying over $2,000 for a studio or small one bedroom. At least I don't live in the bay area, right?

dT,
I have a schwab brokerage account with a separate free checking account with debit card and reimbursed atm fees. it's out there if you look.

Virginia Woolf's birthday today. I ain't afraid of no Woolfs, just ghosts.

Tobias Wolff, now him I like. His brother Geoffrey too.

MLB opening day! Best day on the sports calendar. Only day I really feel my team has a chance

Its Friday - go to a baseball game and get ripping drunk!

2 weeks left in the nhl season, enough time to watch a few BB games and see my teams fall out of contention.
Than back to the real greatest time in sports: the nhl playoffs

NHL playoffs kinda lost their allure for me the last few years It sucks when you can't even make the nhl playoffs which is the real hockey season.

When you are retired, every day is Friday.

Roll that and smoke it.

I hate the Dodgers.

Now, put that in your pipe and schmoke it!

I'd like to be a Walmart Greeter in my orthopedic shoesies

Hey, you young whippersnapper, show me the papers for that purchase! Ya suspect!

Italy out of the EU quagmire!!!

if you are dying to post some more pics of yourself zeno why dont you go south a few miles and take some of you and the plastic dinosaurs.

nothing better than looking out your window and watching whales go by.

wasnt there a song about standing on the foyer watching all the whales go by.

the four lads sang that in 1956 for you old farts.

Is it Friday yet?

I have thought about it many times. If you pay me $1,500 I will do a whole set. I will also include, for free, pics of me at that wonderful small beach park nearby; the one hardly anyone stops to visit.

your camera should b taken away from you.

It's Friday. I have the day off.

its friday i have to go play cards after fishing today to help make ends meet. i aint got no govt. backed pension to sit back on while others toil and slave to make ends meet.

I could go play poker to help others make ends meet.

you would be the life of the party.

I got an awesome review of my music today:

This music is disgusting. No vocals. It sounds like hideous 80's house band music.

Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month, so I'm going into poetry posting mode.

Entanglement

Jane Hirshfield,*1953

A librarian in Calcutta and an entomologist in Prague
sign their moon-faced illicit emails,
“ton entanglée.”

No one can explain it.
The strange charm between border collie and sheep,
leaf and wind, the two distant electrons.

There is, too, the matter of a horse race.
Each person shouts for his own horse louder,
confident in the rising din
past whip, past mud,
the horse will hear his own name in his own quickened ear.

Desire is different:
desire is the moment before the race is run.

Has an electron never refused
the invitation to change direction,
sent in no knowable envelope, with no knowable ring?

A story told often: after the lecture, the widow
insisting the universe rests on the back of a turtle.
And what, the physicist
asks, does the turtle rest on?

Very clever, young man, she replies, very clever,
but it’s turtles all the way down.

And so a woman in Beijing buys for her love,
who practices turtle geometry in Boston, a metal trinket
from a night-market street stall.

On the back of a turtle, at rest on its shell,
a turtle.
Inside that green-painted shell, another, still smaller.

This continues for many turtles,
until finally, too small to see
or to lift up by its curious, preacherly head
a single un-green electron
waits the width of a world for some weightless message
sent into the din of existence for it alone.

Murmur of all that is claspable, clabberable, clamberable,
against all that is not:

You are there. I am here. I remember