Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Little Blackbird

TRAVEL

I saw this little blackbird singing at I35 lamoni rest area. Plenty of birds singing there.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Dolls Overflowing

TOYS

I think I have been a bit too successful in getting these dolls. I need to start giving them away.

Retirement

PERSONAL FINANCE

I read in this week's The Kansas City Star Moneywise: how to save for retirement. Basically, it says to save 10-15% of your pretax income. It is very important to start early. If you don't, and instead chose to wait until you're 45, then you need to save 20%. Wait until you're 55 and not only you have to save 40%, but you also have to delay retirement until you're 70 years old.

What about inherintance? Well, the way I see it is that IRA is inheritance, albeit the one that you have. Think about it: if you put $10,000 in IRA, and let the magic of compounding interest grow the account, then even if you do nothing, you'll have over a million dollars in the account over 40 years, depending on the interest rate. All you have to do is put some seeding money and wait 40 years.

What kind of account should you have? 401(k) if you have it. Then Roth IRA, then Traditional IRA. Leftover money should be spent in stocks while you're working, and bonds when you retire, IMO.

How much do you need? That depends on your spending. If you spend $50,000 per year, then you need about $500,000 at 10% interest. But you also need to save 40% of your income for reinvestment, so double that figure to $1,000,000.

The key is in the spending. If you regularly spend only $20,000 per year, then $400,000 is enough. Can you save $400,000? Over 40 years that's $10,000 per year. Not too difficult. Especially with compounding interest magic.

So save early and often! If you carry debt at all, you want to eliminate those first. Bad consumer debt first. Good equity debt second. Then save.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Plane on a trailer

TRAVEL

I saw this yesterday and I couldn't resist taking a picture.

There was a deer just amblin on the road, too. A big truck next to me didn't even slow down. It just blared its big horn at it. The deer was hesitant for a while before getting off the road. I guess this is how accident happen. People expect other people to yield whenever they blow their horn. What happens when they don't? Accident hapens.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Cottage Computer Programming

WEBSITE
Just found this on http://www.atariarchives.org
Cottage Computer Programming by Paul Lutus. Looks interesting. Also found some discussions about "Personal Computer". Ha! How quaint. Zaltair by Steve Jobs. Funny! How times have changed! Can you imagine writing software using such antiquated tools and thought "Wow, this is really neat! Amazing productivity tools here." What were we thinking? The fun is in solving problem, not typing them in. Can Paul Lutus write computer programs without computers? Yes, he can.