quote:

So even if you have enough to survive the rest of your life, there are still reasons to want to maximize what you have.

And how about helping put grandkids through college! You can always say, "it's their job not mine." But people who have "succeeded" usually don't have children who succeed quite as well as they did. Regression on the mean. A 529 is perhaps the best way to transmit opportunity across generations.

Our kids are doing better financially than we ever have or will. But there will be plenty to pass on as long as i don't live to be 100. As far as special things one might like to be able to afford to do--we just put them in the plan. We've been told there won't be grandkids. We'll see...

Living simply with low overhead and no debt is also a kind of wealth.

Bump.

It didn't work, people. If anything, my obsession has become worse. Much, much worse.

I . . . I opened my Twitter account. You know, the dusty Twitter account I opened years ago and never used. I started following . . . Nate Silver (538) and Nate Silver (NYT). Big mistake.

Now I am seeing all kinds of minute details and predictions, and it is driving me insane. To cope, I hope you will let me share tiny rays of hope. I will only pass along good news, I promise.

The FL early vote advantage is holding at a little over 300K vote lead for Dems over Republicans. In 2016, Hillary had a 150K lead and lost by about 111,000 votes, if memory serves. There is a large No Declared Party group, and polls show them breaking for Biden and they are voting big also.

In PA, Dems have returned 1.3 million ballots by mail, and Republicans have returned 400K ballots. No word on the in-person early vote there. Just 400 ballots have been rejected.

In Florida, voters have an opportunity to cure their ballots if they have an error. Dem operatives know when a person has already voted and if their ballot has an error. Because so many Dems have returned ballots already, the operatives can disregard them and focus on curing Dem ballots with problems. I cannot recall the number, but a LOT of Dems have already cured ballot errors in Florida.

Here's a snip from a Florida Dem operative's blog about how things are going there:

* * *

Turnout. Y’all are killing it. I did not think over 50% of Democrats would have voted with still five days to vote in-person, and seven days until Election Day. This number is good for a lot of reasons: the obvious one, but also you all have made the job of Biden organizers far easier, as now they can focus on an ever increasingly smaller funnel of voters – and they can focus on broader universes of sporadic voters. If you live in Florida and you have not read this – and you want my guy to win: do your local organizer a favor, and go vote, so they can take you off their list.



Duval. Duval Dems are guarding the house like they are those Jags fans when the Seattle Seahawks’ Quinton Jefferson threatened to climb into the stands in the whatever that stadium is called now. Duval Democrats have a roughly 12-point advantage among people who have voted (compared to a 6% voter reg advantage) and are leading in both vote by mail and in-person voting. Unless something really goes south, Joe Biden is going to win Duuuuval.



Dems in red counties: Turnout and vote by mail return rates have been very strong in places where Democrats need to cut the margins. If Clinton had maintained anything close to the Obama 2012 margins in red counties, she would have won. A Biden win requires both doing well in base communities, and keeping margins close elsewhere.

Cindy,

Concerning: the story this morning that some Pennsylvania counties will not start counting mail-in votes until after the polls close (they're allowed to start at 7AM on Election Day), and some won't even start until the NEXT DAY.

The good news: WaPo had a poll out this morning with Biden with an eye-popping lead in Wisconsin. 17 points, maybe?

We either need all three midwestern states (WI, PA, and MI), or we need some combination of Arizona, Iowa, the Nebraska district that's up for grabs, North Carolina, or Florida. Trump has no path without Florida.

The worry: no matter what happens, he'll declare victory on election night, and his supporters will believe him. And then he'll claim the election was stolen. And then what happens?

At this point, I'm worrying as much about the aftermath as the election itself.

quote:

At this point, I'm worrying as much about the aftermath as the election itself.

+1

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
Concerning: the story this morning that some Pennsylvania counties will not start counting mail-in votes until after the polls close (they're allowed to start at 7AM on Election Day), and some won't even start until the NEXT DAY.

Ah, but which counties?

quote:

Originally posted by Cindysphinx:

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
Concerning: the story this morning that some Pennsylvania counties will not start counting mail-in votes until after the polls close (they're allowed to start at 7AM on Election Day), and some won't even start until the NEXT DAY.

Ah, but which counties?

The ones you'd think. Heavily Republican. Erie and some other one near Harrisburg, I think.

Excellent. Then they will fall behind in the vote count. Works for me.

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
There was a Wall Street Journal story I remember reading more than a decade ago, describing how much it took to reach different levels of "rich". The lowest level was beer and pretzels rich; the next level, I think, was champagne and caviar rich; and the final level was something like private.
Which I bring up to address Ax's point ... it isn't a question of whether you have enough os that your nest egg lasts the rest of your life. It's how many times a year you can get on a plane and visit your kids and grandkids. It's whether you can afford to go to a restaurant once a week, once a month, or never. At an extreme, it's whether you can afford to pay for a vacation with your extended family ... whether it's renting a big beach house for a week, or a month, or taking everyone to Europe.

So even if you have enough to survive the rest of your life, there are still reasons to want to maximize what you have.

Or put a kid through medical school.

Jf

quote:

Originally posted by Jack Frost:

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
There was a Wall Street Journal story I remember reading more than a decade ago, describing how much it took to reach different levels of "rich". The lowest level was beer and pretzels rich; the next level, I think, was champagne and caviar rich; and the final level was something like private.
Which I bring up to address Ax's point ... it isn't a question of whether you have enough os that your nest egg lasts the rest of your life. It's how many times a year you can get on a plane and visit your kids and grandkids. It's whether you can afford to go to a restaurant once a week, once a month, or never. At an extreme, it's whether you can afford to pay for a vacation with your extended family ... whether it's renting a big beach house for a week, or a month, or taking everyone to Europe.

So even if you have enough to survive the rest of your life, there are still reasons to want to maximize what you have.

Or put a kid through medical school.

Jf

Not applicable to us. No grandkids. No kids in medical school. Our gift to them is we saved up enough to not be dependent on them in our old age. We live simply and *we like it that way.* Anything we might want that we don't have, we have to weigh the pleasure of getting it against the cost of getting affluent enough to get it. Neither mr. pique nor I has ever been much interested in paying that price. If we'd both stayed in careers we disliked--he a securities trader, me an up and coming graphic designer--we'd be very affluent by now. Wasn't worth it to us. No regrets.

Is it worth risking a secure nest egg to get more by gambling it in the stock market? Maybe some of it, I am still thinking it over. Looks like we may be entering a period of good buying opportunities.