MikePDNA51

With this week's financial news regarding inflation, might CD rates tick up next week?

Citibank came out with their new CD rates. No change. Their best rate is still 6 months @ 4.75%. 

I checked the Vanguard Website. 
They offer brokered CDs around 5.1%.  I had not heard of brokered CDs until now.  This seems easier than dealing with all the various banks and their disclosures   
Vanguard had other fixed income options as well such as municipal and corporate bonds from 5 to 8%.  I will do some research before deciding.
Sorry I don't mean to advertise for Vanguard.  I also checked Schwab.   I should take a look at Fidelity also.

If someone has a specific career goal and successfully pursues a college education targeted at that goal, then college is probably worth it. For anyone else, it's a crap shoot. My best friend thought he wanted to enter the diplomatic corps, so the guidance counselor told him that since he was good at languages, he should go to a top tier liberal arts college, and major in Russian, which he did. Unfortunately, he didn't have any idea what kind of person the State Dept wanted for the kind of job he envisioned, and he wasn't it (he came from a rough working class family and had no social graces). However, a major insurance company was looking for young grads to train for their data processing department, and their theory was that anyone who had demonstrated that he could become proficient in a difficult new language would be able to learn programming skills, so they took him into their programmer training program. He turned out to be so good that the NY Stock Exchange recruited him away from the insurance company as a programmer analyst, and he ended up making more money than he ever would have at the State Dept, where he probably wouldn't have risen above the level of a translator. He was just lucky that college turned out to be worthwhile for him.
On the other hand, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but everyone told me that I should go to college because I was smart and would "find my path" there. After two years, I still had no idea where I was going, and since I had to declare a major, I just made a list of all the courses I had taken, with the grades, and chose English literature because those were my highest grades. My mentors kept pushing me towards becoming a literary scholar, and when a national organization awarded me a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D., I couldn't turn it down, even though I still wasn't convinced I wanted to keep going. After two years of graduate school, I had had enough, and I started to look for a real job. To my surprise, I was hired immediately by a hospital as their data processing coordinator, for the same reason as my friend: the boss assumed that anyone with a degree in a language could teach himself to program a computer. Duh! No. I had always thought I didn't want to be a teacher, but I found that a job teaching English was the only reasonable alternative, and to my amazement, I discovered that I loved it, and did it for 37 years. So although I took a long way around, going to college did help me "find my path" after all.

That's why high schools have guidance counselors. 
My parents weren't college graduates so obviously they couldn't help me navigate. Thanks to my counselors and teachers in high school I got accepted to a great school with tens of thousands in student aid. 
Your parents are in charge of making you a good person and teaching you to wipe your ass, not getting you into college.

I don't like holding  very much gold.  It produces no income and in fact takes money to store and secure (even if in the form of an etf).
Kevin Slater

Traditionally, they say hold 5% of your net worth in gold.  It protects against runaway inflation and war.  As far as the present price ($2400/oz as I write this), a historical measure makes it overvalued.  Gold is supposed to protect you against the depreciation of paper money.  Gold was $35.00 an ounce in the 1930's.  If you track that to the CPI since the 1930's, gold should be about $750.00 an ounce today.  It's 3 times that today.  It doesn't mean it won't go to $3,000/oz but right now it's expensive relative to the long-term depreciation of the dollar caused by inflation.  I don't know what to tell you.
In the late 90's and early 00's, it fell to below $300 an ounce and below the trend line.  

I toooootally agree with this sentiment. I feel like I saw everyone and no one at dinner since we all stayed at our tables.
 
Very thankful to have been able to see some folks out there, but I understand I also was being observed and probably evaluated by those who were interested in seeing me who were maybe a bit shy. I’ll hopefully be back next year, and I hope even more folks say hi next year! 
 
Also strooooongly considering the fantasy of coming out there more often. This was just too much fun to make it an annual occurrence.
 
Now all that remains: who’s bringing the cookies and grapefruits next year?!

Thanks to everyone for a great weekend, the usual suspects who did the heavy lifting, @Oliver and Phil, @David-SF, @sam.fitzpatrick, @azdr0710 for his tireless taxi service (and bit of In N Out). Thanks @Simon Suraci for your invaluable advice on things to do in San Diego, if only I'd had time to more of them. The zoo is worth it in itself. I know there are things and people I've missed and for that i apologise.  À l'année prochaine!

Thank you, Simon, for attending this year. I remember last year how interested you were in attending, and glad you had such a great time - and gave me a post-visit cookie education. (wink)

@Robster and I had great chat with Newell after the dinner. He was incredibly kind and patient answering many questions I had about ECT. And OMG, is he gorgeous (and huge!)

In this case, the reference to 'cookie crumbs' was actually referring to crumbs and 'cookies' was actually referring to cookies, the feet were simply the method in which they were fed to me.   

Fifty-fifty on which house to choose, or 50/50 on whether to choose one of them at all?  That is a big decision, but you'll make the right one.  Just get very still, breathe, and listen to what your gut is telling you to do.  

naughtiness around the pool? *clutches pearls*

Sorry I missed this year's event. I had a travel conflict last week. I love your reports and was privileged to be phoned by samfitzpatrick yesterday while he was lounging around the Inndulge pool with sfwestcoaster and mikecarey. Sam updated me on some of the participant's naughtiness and the talent that strutted around the pool.  😘  Sounds like I missed a good time. 😁
Hope to see y'all again soon!

Have fun all…This year started with a lot of responsibilities, and I just can’t swing it this time of year. The hotel chain I used to book thru has closed a few locations in the city, and the options left are inflated and far outside from the action. Of course there’s independent and the nude resorts, but I prefer people to be able to come up to the room without entering a gate.
 
In the future, I wouldn’t mind a BI-annual Palm Springs event 😂 The Coachella event just creates such a gravitational force on the whole valley. I tend to prefer more off season and meet the locals. I will be making my way to SoCal next month though 👍🏾 

Hey, a guy's gotta milk this gig for all it's worth!

What's my congressman doing in Australia??😏  Is this some paid political junket??  Is this for business or pleasure?😋

Eid Mubarak! And a glorious autumn day it is in Canberra. A far nicer day to walk to the bus stop than it was yesterday, 9 degrees at midday and cold rain. And I am about to do just that now, to go to the airport for my flights to Melbourne then on to Los Angeles. I can't wait to get to Palm Springs tomorrow. Well Thursday, and it is already Wednesday here, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

If you haven't let me know of your attendance, please do so.  Thank you!😄

Guys, you are all being too kind. I would have told the bridesmaid that the way to get even is show up on the wedding day with her hair dyed green. That would make for an interesting photo.

Only when we get the population density of Europe will train travel be viable in the US. Those few areas of the US already with that density have successful train operations. It's a nice dream, but geography, economics, and selfish Americans doom it. 

There can be all kinds of indexes, studies, charts, graphs, etc. but the real data is the day to day costs for the average American. I live in California and everything is going up.
- Bridge tools
- Express lane tolls
- Pacific Gas and Electric rates
- Gasoline (approaching record high levels again)
- Water
- Insurance
- Groceries
- Eating out - from burritos at the local taqueria to McDonalds to takeout pizza to coffee to soft serve ice.
Prices are out of control and companies are engaged in shrink-flation (charging the same price but decreasing the amount of product).  I now buy almost exclusively from Walmart and other discount retailers while I stock money away for retirement in a few years.
I'm not trying to be an almost, just a realist.