patrick.net

Is is pretty amazing. Why can't everyone do this? Al_Sharpton_for_President, LLC now announces that you have $800,000 in an account. No, we don't have the $800,000 ourselves, why?

richwicks says

Farmers work on a shoestring budget. It's commodity production. If lettuce potatoes cost $0.02 more, they eat that cost - the price is determined on a commodity market.

They can't just increase the cost. What will happen is farmers will go out of business, and their production will end.

Maybe farmers in California should have invested in more water conservation technology and irrigation over the years instead of just opening a sluice gate with flood irrigation and putting a foot of water on their fields............because water cost next to nothing for them due to 100 year old water contracts?

I am not a big fan of letting my yard burn up so California farmers can sell almonds to China.

There is a cap... people's ability to pay.

I'm at 6. I thought I was almost at 7, but the stock market slapped some reality into me lately.

Speaking of level 7, do people use a financial advisor? How does one go about finding such an advisor? I've been going it alone, which is educational/rewarding, but probably foolhardy.

It's not too hard to get to 6 if you start investing early.
The compounding effect applies to mutual funds, and is amazing.
I'm constantly telling younger people that $500/month will be a million dollars someday (30+ years).
Nobody wants to wait or come up with the dough usually.
I might be between 6-7 but I don't have enough for a yacht or helicopter or etc. Maybe we can call that level 8.
Incidentally, the 4% rule can be broken with a portion of your financial assets (not all) if you buy an immediate fixed income annuity when you're a geezer.
That's because they 1. pay more than 4% 2. never stop until you or your wife ("second to die") are dead.
I'm considering marrying a girl someday, she should be 49 or 50.
I have to live 10 years, then when I'm dead and she's 60 she can collect my social security (10 years married required).
I'm so pissed about the taxes I pay I want to get some back from the grave.
She's not going to kill me off because she's not collecting unless we complete 10 years of marriage.

The 10th anniversary will be interesting, lol.

SunnyvaleCA says

Speaking of level 7, do people use a financial advisor? How does one go about finding such an advisor? I've been going it alone, which is educational/rewarding, but probably foolhardy.

@SunnyvaleCA I worked at Schwab's investment advisor service branch (just on the tech side) for a few years, and I do not recommend that you ever get a financial advisor.

They will generally want 1% of your assets per year no matter how they do with your money.

You would do much better just buying index funds, or even better, the specific stocks that make up the indexes.

Patrick says

I do not recommend that you ever get a financial advisor.

I guess I'm doing it correctly then!

I think it’s easier to save for retirement then to figure out what you’re going to do when you get there.

I’m getting really close, but have no idea what I’d do if I quit. Probably will just keep working and give less fucks.

SunnyvaleCA ,
You can hire a financial planning guy if you pay by the hour. (“Fee only”)

I told my father once he was paying 1% of his net worth to a Morgan Stanley guy.
Of course he was incredulous.

Invest for capital appreciation with mutual funds over a long time.
Tax deferred SEP-IRA, 401k or tax free (Roth, HSA) better.
Believe me you will hate taxes later; my taxable accounts cost me $$$ in 2021.
Another good investment is Vanguard Tax Managed Capital Appreciation.

pudil says

I think it’s easier to save for retirement then to figure out what you’re going to do when you get there.

I’m getting really close, but have no idea what I’d do if I quit. Probably will just keep working and give less fucks.

@pudil You may have some life project you want to accomplish then.

I would like to find all the descendants of all my known ancestors and meet the ones that are alive. And to record the relationships in books so everyone knows who is who. That's my project, and I'm really enjoying it, especially when I find new relatives who are friendly (not all are).

@patrick when someone ask for censorship!

2 yrs worth of expenses in cash? Insane. Especially now.

RWSGFY says

2 yrs worth of expenses in cash? Insane. Especially now.

Reminds me of Suze Orman, who got $20,000 from a person she never named (probably her lawyer older brother) in 1980 at the age of 19. Who never had any kids, who became a financial advisor and then sued for sex discrimination, winning a 6 figure award in the 1980s, and then going on to a lucrative career giving financial advice.

Only people like that can say with a straight face "Two years of expenses in cash".

SunnyvaleCA says

Speaking of level 7, do people use a financial advisor? How does one go about finding such an advisor? I've been going it alone, which is educational/rewarding, but probably foolhardy.

You don't need a financial advisor. Most of them are annuity/mutual fund salesmen in disguise.

Save 10-15% of your income as early as possible and buy equities or real estate, preferrably a mix of both. Buy Broad Index ETFs if you don't want to play the market. Don't put ALL your investment money in your own industry and definitely not only the company you work for, because if the industry or company gets pranged (think Enron) you'll have a double whammy of losing your job while your investments tank simultaneously.

Realizing that housing is 30% of expenditure, so the fastest way to save a large percentage of income is to buy the CHEAPEST dwelling you can that is remotely convenient to multiple potential employment sources and not next door to a trap house is priority one.

Not buying the dream suburban shack your wife wants, but the smallest, lowest maintenance apartment you can tolerate in terms of distance and space and paying it off ASAP. In fact it's best not to get married or have a live in girlfriend to avoid that pressure.

Assuming you're male, you're under no time pressure to reproduce.

Imagine if you didn't pay rent or mortgage, just $500/month in combined condo fees and taxes to live in a small apartment or house (Yes, this is not possible in SFBA but is in most of the US Metro Areas esp. in the South), how much money you can save on a modest tax home net income. Buying a cheap condo is literally job #1. Not getting married until 40 (if ever) is job #2. You can spend thousands on hobbies and fun and eat well and still sock away 5 figures a year with a modest job of any kind, and retire at 55 quite comfortably.

My net worth is 1.8 million and I live frugally yet I still feel like I'm only a 5.5 I plan to keep working my 'career' job for at least 7 more years.

When I first started reading patnet I was only an 80,000aire. I'll probably get to 6.

Rin says

I'm PatNet's anti-Covid crusader.

Didn't you have to get vaxxed for work?

Onvacation says

Rin says

I'm PatNet's anti-Covid crusader.

Didn't you have to get vaxxed for work?

And it was beaten up to a pulp

https://patrick.net/post/1343648/2022-02-12-rin-and-the-vaccine-part-deux

Level 8 - immunity from murder, pedophilia, fraud, slander.

FJB says

When I first started reading patnet

How long ago was that?

Re: Financial advisers, etc.

I’m attaching a picture of the article that I showed my father after we transferred all of his stuff to Vanguard from a Morgan Stanley guy.

Note she correctly has money in Vanguard mutual funds.
Unfortunately she is skimming 1% of her clients’ net worth; nice work if you can get it.

She charges a 1% fee and the minimum investment is $1 million, so she makes $10 grand from each “client.”

The problem with 2yrs of expenses is most people are n ramp when it comes to their expenses and lifestyle.

Bigger house, more kids, more toys, inflation, etc

RWSGFY says

2 yrs worth of expenses in cash? Insane. Especially now.

Exactly, if you’re living correctly, 3-6 months emergency fund for expenses MAX. By that I mean you’ve paid off your debts, and are paying off your house or it is paid off.

I’m don’t have a month of cash.

Why bother?

I do have about a month of expenses deposited every month into my bank however.

Guys, what do you mean by ... 'cash'?

Right now, my dividend payouts earn cash, every business quarter. And for now, I only re-invest that from Rio Tinto, Altria, & British-American tobacco, ala DRIP, because much of the rest of the dividend equity players are overpriced.

So thus, in terms of 'cash' as in checking account, I don't need more than 3-6 months of expenses, because I'm earning that amount of cash, every business quarter.

So compare 'free' money vs a checking account at less than 1% makes no sense.

9. Caligulan excess, hot and cold running hookers and cocaine, Satanic world conquest, Babylonian loan sharking to victimize the plebs, plans for psychopathic bloodline political dominance, Swiss citizenship.

I think I'm almost there. Just a few hundred years more of saving.

Ceffer says

Swiss citizenship

Hoeing is legal in Switzerland.

Rin says

Ceffer says

Swiss citizenship

Hoeing is legal in Switzerland.

Let's face it, dating is a form of prostitution. Try going out with a girl, and on your first 3 dates, go for a nice walk, then hiking, then split the check at a nice place. See how far you get with that.

Rin says

Hoeing is legal in Switzerland.

One must keep one's priorities sorted at all times.

richwicks says

Let's face it, dating is a form of prostitution.

It's burning money at the alter of reproductive consideration. It is kind of like bribing a vampire to occupy your goods, too, but genetics doesn't care about the individual, just the species. If a male is sacrificed out of short term appetites for sex to become a burned out, exploited wreck, so be it.

WineHorror1 says

FJB says

When I first started reading patnet

How long ago was that?

Sometime in 2007. Paid off all of my debt by 2005. Took on 'good debt' staring in 2013.

great article by Logan M like always. without extremely higher inventory, dont expect house prices to fall. But a cool down, sure and see that already.

AmericanKulak says

Realizing that housing is 30% of expenditure, so the fastest way to save a large percentage of income is to buy the CHEAPEST dwelling you can that is remotely convenient to multiple potential employment sources and not next door to a trap house is priority one.

Not buying the dream suburban shack your wife wants, but the smallest, lowest maintenance apartment you can tolerate in terms of distance and space and paying it off ASAP. In fact it's best not to get married or have a live in girlfriend to avoid that pressure.

Love this idea. What do you mean by "remotely convenient to multiple potential employment sources"?

Because the US imports cooking oil from Indonesia?

FJB says

Took on 'good debt' staring in 2013.

What are examples of good debt?

richwicks says

These are AI trained systems.

I honestly don't think you have a very good idea of the structure of these systems and what the "AI" training entails. It's not just "all AI" and you train a magic thing that then drives the car.

From a high level, there exists at the "core" of the software a volumetric map. This is not AI. It's voxels, or a way of representing structured cubes of space, in an occupancy grid.

The software marks or clears these volumes of space in its memory from sensor readings. The "AI" comes into play in 2 ways: 1 by attempting to reconcile known instrument data (lidars marking space occupied, and cameras giving depth information) , and 2 by attempting to group together occupied marked cells as objects, and assign velocity vectors to those objects for moving things, or other properties to them for stationary things (light, person, parked car).

Once there are a bunch of identified "things" including road lanes, and traffic, the planner takes a pass over a set of actions possible to achieve the goal (move the car to the destination). These actions are discrete control inputs. The planner has to plan several "frames" of time ahead, or control loop iterations. In other words, it breaks time into discrete steps that each loop of the control system takes to run approximately. This might be 5 - 50 milliseconds for example.

It then projects the velocity of the "known moving objects" through those time spaces to "predict" any collisions. Here, a bit of AI might come into play to predict how those moving objects might deviate from a straight line or instantaneous velocity the system has estimated. But a big part of this is just a simple dx/dt calc looping over the objects to see if they will intersect (crash) or come close. It prunes actions that result in collisions. and near collisions (because anticipated movement is a probability).

It then further restricts the set of actions it can take based on rulesets . I.E. we saw a "no right turn sign". These rules are not AI based. The recognition of the "no right turn" sign will be AI based, but the ruleset to follow when then sign is in our immediate area is not AI based.

So I don't know if that makes sense or not. It's not just a giant AI black box. There are discrete portions of the system. If something goes wrong it is possible to replay the data back to see: for instance, did the sensors not recognize that a cell was occupied? Did the object detectors not correctly identify the objects in marked cells? Did the system correctly identify all objects and signage, but the ruleset for allowed driving actions was incorrect? Did the motion predictors fail to allow/anticipate how the motion of the tracked object might progress?

And then, that portion of the system gets worked on.

If some object is new in the system, it still occupies space grid cells. It still has a velocity associated with a group of cells even if the object isn't identified. So it can still predict, within some error bound, the trajectory of an unknown object based on its velocity and acceleration over time.

This doesn't make it magic though. If a child darts out from between two cars, the SDC might hit the child the same way a human would have. If you literally can't see something, you can't plan on it being there. But in all likelihood, the reaction times and planning capability will likely give the SDC a better chance of a lower impact accident, if not avoiding the accident entirely.

@HunterTits says > Another example of you not bothering to read.

But I think you're not understanding to how I am responding to what I did read. It's fine that you don't understand. But its strange for you to say its my problem that you didn't understand.

As far as SDC "Utopian", that's kind of a strange characterization of my overall view on SDCs. I view SDCs as kind of like the internet. There is a lower cost infrastructure being developed. As a society, it would be REALLY good to make sure this isn't walled off in corporate winner take all cells. When an electric vehicle can deliver people and goods at an order of magnitude cheaper cost, I'm expecting there will be quite disruptive effects in the labor markets (taxi and truck drivers losing jobs), but entirely new industries are going to spring forth that we can barely anticipate. But the possibility of corporate walled gardens screwing it all up, and in ways we don't anticipate is really high.

For instance, RV hotels that take you to a destination while you sleep might screw with airlines in a big way. No security, no bag check, load all your stuff up at your own house, no waiting for bags on arrival, transferring them to taxi, then hotel. For $1600 for a family of four 4x400 airline tickets, you might get an entirely different class of travel. Then, when you are done, you don't have to spend $300 per month to park the RV when you're not using it, and all the associated maintenance.

But on the flip side, what if the majority of cars are no longer produced with steering wheels, and some weird situation arises where you need to drive the car through the brush.. You lose the control utility of operator controls.Or what if a tree falls down across your yard, and you wanted to grab the car and bring it over to pull with a rope. Might be hard with an SDC in your driveway without operator controls. Worse case scenario, what if you or your family is trying to flee some form of persecution, and the corporate overlords simply disable your SDC or instruct it to drive you to the nearest detention center once you are inside?

I managed number 5, I think 3 and 4 are out of order. I don't think anyone has any financial freedom as long as they have a huge chunk on a credit card.
Four really should be a nonstarter. As the whole point of 3 is making enough money to have a nest egg, and emergency funds. If you're making money and have the cash in the bank, you really shouldn't buy consumer hard goods on credit cards, unless you're only doing so to rack up the points, and you zero out the balance when you get the bill.

I've known people with $25K in credit card outstanding debt, they are one paycheck away from ruination.

Ever since commie dictator Indira Khan came up with land ceiling of 25 ha and stole everything above and gave it to commie who made it idle. India is stuck with small land parcels and not profitable many crops including Palm oil. Government has to remove land ceiling to make it profitable again or continue remain suffer with commie policy stuff.