Spending

As a country with only a couple of centuries under its belt, I think that our nation has beaten the odds. When the intrepid souls left England and crossed the pond to start a new country, what were the odds of success?
England was a tremendous world power, a strong navy, territories covering the globe, etc., and it must have seemed foolhardy to fight that. Yet, here we are, and thanks to the native Americans, and the millions of immigrants that have come here from 200 nations,

I DON’T LIKE SPENDING, though the older I get, the more I loosen the purse strings. Still, I rarely enjoy spending money. I think I got this from my mother and grandparents.

My grandparents reused Christmas tree tinsel year after year. My grandfather removed every strand—made of metal back then—and placed it in a box for the following year. My grandparents also had two sets of rugs, one for winter and the other—made of woven rattan—for summer.

Popcorn is a food item that in many cases, is marked up in price by an infinite amount. In many restaurants, pubs, etc., popcorn is available for free, yet, movie theaters sell a box for many dollars. Did you know that theaters make most of their money on food and drink, rather than the tickets? I feel that marking up prices to infinity, may be the reason.

2) I see many large pick up trucks, many with dual wheels,

As I keep getting older, I strive mightily to at least slow down the process, alas,  all of my heroic efforts are in vain, those darn birthdays just keep on coming, like clockwork, and I have finally thrown in the towel and accept it.
However, as I age, I find myself getting increasingly annoyed at things that just waste so much time. Specifically, ads of any type, and at the top of the list are  pop up ads,

There are alternatives to the 4% rule that are not complicated. Here are three ways to calculate your first-year spending rate. All the calculations show the percentage of your investment assets so you can compare them against each other and the 4% rule.
The first one is from the Society of Actuaries:
Retirement age / 20 / 100
At 65 the calculation would be 65 / 20 / 100 = 3.25% and if you retire at 75,

Manhattan was purchased from Native Americans, hundreds of years ago, for something like 23 dollars. At first glance , it appears to be the greatest bargain, ever,  for the purchasers, while the biggest rip off ,for the sellers.
I have no idea what even the approximate value of Manhattan is currently, other than more than 23 bucks, so I respectfully ask those far more astute at real estate values, compounded returns and the like, to approximately value the entirety of Manhattan,

Seeking to conserve my driving time, energy and long term parking rates, I decided to drive to my regional PA airport, Scranton/Wilkes Barre, an easy one-hour highway drive, rather than 2 1/2 tense, traffic – ridden hours to LaGuardia or Newark for a direct flight to St. Louis. It’s a tiny, empty airport with honor system self checkout at the souvenir and snack shop. As I’m sitting at the gate, I hear an announcement that our “landline flight” to Philly (where I’ll be transferring for the St.

I’ve made the trip from Pennsylvania to California six times. The first time I went, I didn’t have to pay for my plane tickets. Each of the next five times, the entire trip was completely free.
I was asked to be the best man in a college friend’s wedding a couple of years after we graduated. He lived near Los Angeles. I planned my trip out there with another college friend, Robert. Like me, he was an engineer and single.

I never meant that a consumer buying cases of water at the grocery was wasting money, my point was that at so many venues, water costs well over a hundred bucks a gallon. Why is my tap water only worth .003 cents per gallon, at the store maybe a buck a gallon, and at a concert 120.00 per gallon?
Which price is “correct”? Even at a store, if water is more than a nickel a gallon,

I just received my annual water bill, a tiny 158 dollars. It informed me that I will pay .00375 cents per gallon.
When bottled water is even 5 a pint or 40 per gallon, that is roughly 10,000 times higher. It is often at 30,000 times higher.as many venues charge 15 a pint.
Even at a buck a pint  , that is still thousands of times more , for exactly the same stuff that falls, every time it rains.

I LOVE TO TRAVEL—and it runs in the family. My parents were avid travelers, with my father receiving a generous travel allowance from his work every four years.
In addition, my father always managed his time and budget for numerous other trips. After his passing, my brother and I took turns maintaining the travel tradition with our mom, until plans were disrupted by the pandemic.
After retiring this year, I eagerly anticipated visiting my mother in India and taking her on a grand tour.

I was a bit of a surprise to my parents. My father was 44 and my mother was 40 when I was born. My youngest sister was over seven years older than me. Because of the age differences between my three sisters and me, after about age 10 I rarely had any siblings at home. I was essentially an only child from that point on.
Besides having my parents to myself, my experience growing up in southern New Jersey was a bit different than my sisters’ in another way.

Lately, in my attempts to add a touch of humor to this site, I have apparently ruffled a few feathers. Mea Culpa. That’s Latin for ….er, something.
Now, even though it is difficult to make predictions about the future, I remain unfazed and herewith are my forecasts.
First, though, a bit of nostalgia, from the past. I used to be so poor, I had no common “sense”.( Cents, get it?  )
B)   I was once so destitute,

According to one of my new AI friends, “Anchoring is a cognitive bias in behavioral finance that describes how people use a first piece of information, or ‘anchor’ as a reference point for making decisions. This bias can affect many areas of financial decision-making, including investing, budgeting, and spending.”
In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely makes the following statement: “…what consumers are willing to pay can easily be manipulated, and this means that consumers don’t in fact have a good handle on their own preferences and the prices they are willing to pay for different goods and experiences.”
What can this trickery look like?

We needed a roll of packing tape, so my first instinct was to order from Amazon. But I didn’t want a three- or six-pack, and I didn’t feel great about the environmental impact of an Amazon truck driving to my house to deliver an overly large cardboard box containing a single roll, even if it was a bargain at less than $4.
Instead, during my afternoon walk, I stopped by the local drugstore to pick up a roll—which was priced at $5.99.