analog_kidd

When I was young, and first married and absolutely stupid about money, I asked my dad for advice on what I should be doing. Sadly, the only advise he had was to go get some life insurance. I did just that, but bought he wrong kind (Whole life, not Term) , and did nothing with investing. I had a 401k at work, but didn't really care to understand it. All I cared about was they were taking money out of my paycheck that I couldn't spend now. Around my early forties, I woke up and got interested in what I was doing financially. We took a Dave Ramsey class and that set us on a much better path. I read anything I could get my hands on, invested in some real estate and made much better choices with my 401k / IRA. I feel like we are in a much better place now, but cringe at how much better we could be if I had just been smarter early on. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self one thing, it would be to invest early, and be disciplined about doing it. If you are reading this and are in a similar boat as the young me, please, please, please take the time to evaluate your financial situation, get smarter and take action. The government will not be there to bail you out, and even if Social Security is still around, it will not be enough to live comfortably on. At the bare minimum, you should be putting enough into your 401k to meet the full employer match. You really should be putting in 10% of your own money, or 15% even better. I know it seems like you can't swing it, but you can. The older version of you will thank the today version, trust me. If you have 401k's from old employers, roll them all into one IRA. You'll get way better options to invest in from an IRA than you will in an employer 401k. Plus it's easy to do. Most Financial Advisors will do most of the work for you and all you have to do is sign a few papers. Once you have that IRA, anything over what it takes to get the 401k match from your employer, invest in the IRA. Again, you'll have better options and probably get better returns. If you have the option to do a ROTH 401k, take it. You'll pay the tax on the money you invest, but when you cash it in during retirement, no matter how much it has grown, it will be tax free. Same with an IRA, if you invest in one, make sure to do it ROTH style. THAT was the advise I wanted MY dad to give.

Yeah, that is exactly what I'm talking about. Something that has it as part of the fund as a collection of different stocks, I could probably play dumb on. I might be able to do the investing from my Wife's IRA. Not sure if they would even care, as long as it wasn't in my name. Not sure I want to chance it either.

So, I'm really interested in cannabis stock. Whatever your feelings on the product, it's gonna make money and it's gonna be here to stay. You can either be in on it or not. That said, I hold a government clearance, and they do background checks. I know how they feel about using weed, but not sure how they would feel about investing in it. So, I would like a stock that would be legit on the open US market. Maybe a mutual fund that has cannabis as a major percentage of it's holdings, but has other stuff too. Any recommendations?

Well, actually I did let it ride. I figured it would come back. But to be honest, I had not been tracking it that closely. And you are right, it's more than doubled now. I track my total portfolio balance nearly every week, and as long as it is still going up, I just smile and close the page. But I don't pay a whole of of attention to the individual stocks (other than Amazon, cuz I like to keep reminding my guy about that one)

Yeah, several years ago we had a pretty good economy for stocks. Everything was up for the year. I admit, I didn't pay a lot of attention to my portfolio balance, but one day I got a wild hair and went and looked at my EJ account. In a booming year, I pretty much broke even. I called my EJ guy up and said WTH? He said, "yeah we probably should have moved some things around". My point was, I'm paying him to manage my money, why didn't he at least look ONCE all year. I immediately pulled my money and went elsewhere. I pay a LOT more attention these days, and my new guy calls me at least twice a year to see if we need to tune anything up. Couple years ago, I told my new guy "I buy a lot of crap on Amazon, and I know a lot of other people do too. Buy me some of that." He said that he didn't think Amazon was going to go anywhere, and it was $1000 per share. I said, I didn't care and buy me a few shares anyway. Today that stock is over $3000 per share. He called when it hit $2000 to eat crow. THAT time I just got lucky, I'm no stock guru. I had him buy me a few other things that did not turn out so well. Like Nvidea stock, a company that has video cards in EVERYTHING, and the next week a self-driving car powered by Nvidea chips ran over a pedestrian, and their stock tanked. Its a crap-shoot.

Takes them a minute to wind up, but it gets pretty good

I found this video to be more captivating than the song. This one is actually #3 in a 10 song series that details several generations of the fictional Sparks family. If you go back and watch them all, it plays like a mini movie. It's a good time-suck for about an hour of your day if you choose to go down the rabbit hole. The story is a tragic telling of the horrors of addiction.

Rival Sons...

I can't stop listening to this. What a great cover.

Larkin Poe is my favorite new group this year. So many good songs. Here is one of their latest.

Recently went on a camping trip and a buddy only had Tyler Childers on his phone, and played it on a loop. Kinda got in my head. This video is totally trippy, but the song is cool.

Buy the gun you want, and drop it off at a friends house. A few days later they come by with the gun and say "Thanks for loaning me the gun, sorry I kept it so long." The wife will just think it's a gun you already had.

According to this comparison matrix, that lists what networks are on what service, Fox News is available on Hulu Live, AT&T, YouTube TV, and Fubo. We use YouTube TV, and I can't tell the difference between it and Comcast for Fox News. There are a couple of extra remote control clicks you have to do to get to it, but once you do it a few days, it becomes second nature. I'm certainly willing to do an extra click or two to save $80. We tried using the Fox News App to watch the news. If you have an active Comcast account, you can watch it using the app on a Fire Stick. However, every day, you had to jump thru hoops to log into the account. Had to launch the app, go to login, get a code, open a browser on your phone or PC, go to FoxNews Activate link, enter the code, and wait a moment. You had to do that every time, and it became frustrating. With YTTV you just launch the app, click on the channel and watch. Just like cable. Plus, if you cancel your TV service with Comcast, I'm not sure you qualify for watching it with the app. I've never tried it, so I don't know, but my gut tells me you can use the app only if you have the ability to watch the network on cable. My suggestion is try the 1 week free trial with any of the services I mentioned above and see if it meets your wife's needs. You might be surprised how easy and comparable it is.

For those of you on the fence, wondering if you should cut the cord, or how to go about it, I would say take each of the services for a test drive and see if it works for you. All of them give you a free week just to kick the tires. All you need is some sort of streaming device, either a Roku or an Amazon FireStick, or a smart TV with one of the apps already built in. The Roku's and FireSticks are on sale now and can be picked up for around $25. Once you have a streaming device, try out each of Hulu, YouTubeTV, Sling, ATT, Fubo. See if you like the interface and if you could see yourself using it instead of the cable box. It took us a minute to get used to it, but its second nature now. Don't cancel your cable at this point, just check out the other services. But try to just use the service for the week you are getting the free preview. Make a list of all the shows you like to watch, and what channel they are on. Then look at each service and see what channels they carry. Cord Cutter News Website has a page that lists all the services and the channels they carry, side by side, so it makes it easy to compare. Once you have decided which service you like best, go ahead and sign up. None of them have long term commitments like cable does, so if you find you don't like one after a while, it's really easy to switch. Or if you want to binge watch a show that is only on one service, switch to it for a month, then switch back. The last thing to do, which is the most satisfying, is to call the cable company and drop your service down to just internet. These days, they don't even really try to keep you on. Everyone is doing it and they have resigned themselves to losing customers. I think they half-assed offered us something, but it was just barely better than what we already had. We said no thanks, and they said OK, no problem. If you want to go hard core and not have any monthly service, but still like the convenience of a cable box with DVR, look at something like Amazon's Fire Recast. It's a little box with a hard drive in it and WiFi. You put it in a place that gets good antenna signal, and then connect it to your home network, and an antenna. Using a FireStick on any TV, it will send the signal across the home network to the FireStick. So you can watch anything your antenna can pick up on any TV, without additional antennas on each TV. PLUS you get DVR. The hard drive in the Recast box will record programs, then you can watch those on any TV with the FireStick. You can even fast forward thru saved shows. We did antenna only for a while on the upstairs TV. I was too cheap to get another cable box. I tried the Comcast app on the FireStick to use instead of the box, but the app is not ready for prime time, and I had to do all kinds of hacks on the remote to make it work. In the end, it was more work than enjoyment. The antenna was nice for just watching local news and such, But I really wanted cable-only channels and DVR, so a streaming service is what we decided on.

I finally had enough of Comcast charging me $200 for Internets and crappy TV, so we took the plunge and cut the cord. Knocking off the TV part of my service, and just using Internet brought my bill down to $70. We settled on YouTube TV for $50 a month, so that is a total of $120 for both, and a savings of $80 a month. With the YouTube TV, I get all the channels I ever watch, and I can't really tell much of a difference in quality. We can DVR the shows we like and fast forward thru the commercials. We are already bought into the Amazon Alexa ecosystem, and already had a FireCube on our main TV. I bought a couple Firesticks for the bedroom and upstairs, when they were on sale for like $25. These work really well for us. They perform well and the video streams to them very well. I did recently install an AC WiFi access point, so I'm sure that helps. We settled on YouTube TV due to it being one of the few that carry AMC and the Walking Dead. Sounds silly, but it's one of the few shows my wife and I both like, so don't judge. Otherwise, I would probably consider Hulu's Limited commercial plan. I think it is like $10 a month, and you just have to wait a day to watch a show, which we do anyway to be able to skip commercials. So, anybody else make the cut, or considering to?

In the Samsung Smart Things product line, they sell a water detection sensor and a water main shutoff motor. You can link them together thru the app to shut off the water if any water is detected.

I have been using the free AntiVirus that comes with Windows for years. Not sure if it is still supported on your Win7 O/S though. (Why didn't you do the free upgrade to Win10?) The free MS Antivirus works well, and I've never gotten a virus while using it. Of course, I'm not one to go willy-nilly clicking any link that pops up in my browser. I have a few trusted web sites that I visit, and I'm not likely to get a virus from them. I also am a big fan of using host files to block unwanted sites. You need to have a (very) slightly better than average set of computer skills to set it up. You already have a host file on your PC, you just need to copy over it, or edit it in notepad and paste some text into it. Here's how it works: When you browse to a website, your computer has to convert that friendly name into an IP address. It usually does that by looking up the IP on a DNS server. However, your PC will check the host file on your PC before it asks the DNS server. You can fool your PC by giving it the wrong IP address for a given web site. Usually that fake IP is 127.0.0.1, which goes nowhere. So if I add an entry to my host file for www.badwebsite.com to go to nowhere, if I accidentally click a link that tries to send me there, the browser just returns a blank page. If you google "no ads host file" you'll get plenty of examples that you can copy onto your PC.

What are these Dick's Sporting Goods stores you speak of?

Last year I calculated what I thought we would be saving in taxes, and we used that savings to sign up for a new truck payment to replace my 18 year old truck. I would not have gotten a new truck had it not been for that tax savings. But just like the Pres said, people would spend the money, which I did, and that helped other people (dealership, manufacturer, suppliers, etc.). I also used some of the money to increase my 401k contributions, which will help out in my future. I figured with the extra money, I would enjoy something now, and be responsible and plan ahead for a better future. All that, and a net gain / loss of $0 in my paycheck, so I never even noticed it.

A couple of years ago I was in the same boat. I had played out all the good stuff, and there was nothing new that was worth a listen. Then I discovered a new to me genre of music that changed everything. If you like old classic rock, like Led Zeppelin, and Bad Company, well, they are still making it but now they call it "Electric Blues". These artists never get any air play, and you gotta go looking for them. But if you spend the time, you will be rewarded. Here are a couple of bands to get you started: Joe Bonnabassa, Ana Popovic, Buddy Guy, Coco Montoya, Danny Bryant, Erja Lyytinen, Robert Cray, Shemekia Copeland, Deborah Coleman, Tab Benoit, Debbie Davies, Walter Trout, Tinsley Ellis

My favorite is "Stuff you should know". The topics are usually interesting, and I like the format and banter between the hosts. Ridiculous History is good. They tell you about some off the wall thing that happened long ago. Truth is stranger than fiction stuff. BrainStuff is another one. It is usually really quick, explain like I'm 5, segments on how something works.

One of my fondest childhood memories was the day we went to see this movie. We didn't have a lot of money, and so we never went to the movies. This movie was all the rage and everyone I knew was going to it. My family went shopping one evening, and in the shopping center was the theater, and I saw it was playing, and dreamed of a day when I might see it, perhaps for free on TV several years later. Well, my sister and I followed our parents down the strip mall, window shopping like we often did. When we came to the theater, my dad asked "You all want to go see this movie?" It was better than Christmas. I'm sure they must have been planning it all along. What an awesome surprise!

I was in college, and working on the loading dock of a KMart in West Palm FL. We had a perfect view of the direction of the launch site, and would often watch the launches. You couldn't make out the details, but you could see the fire from the rocket, and easily see the contrail left behind. So, I recognized that this was not a typical launch and something went terribly wrong. The entire store ran over to the Electronics department to watch the news reports on the wall of TV's. That Y-shaped contrail is burned into my memory and I'll never forget it.

Yaknow, They could have publicly just said, "The guns and ammo sales aren't working for us, so we're going to phase them out of the stores." But instead they had to try and make a point and say, "Guns are evil and we hate them." The former would have accomplished the same thing without alienating a large portion of their customer base. We all know their prices were too high, and nobody would have given a second thought that they weren't making money on them, and getting rid of them was a good business decision. What was it, the Vegas shooting that started all this for them? America has largely forgotten about that by now, but we have not forgotten that Dicks doesn't want our business.