Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Author: Scott (Page 37 of 80)

Paper Street Soap Investment
Paper Street Soap Investment Property

Comparison of Roth IRAs and Your Current Residence

November 15, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Assumption: you bought your current residence as an investment with the intent of selling it for a profit at some point.

Paper Street Soap Investment
Paper Street Soap Investment Property

Similarities

  • Both are purchased with after tax money
  • No capital gains taxes due when the gains are realized
  • Not taxable as income when the gains are realized
  • No guaranteed rate of appreciation
Differences
  • Roth IRA has a $5k/year limit on how much you can invest, but your home doesn’t
  • You can’t touch the gains of your Roth without penalty until you are 59.5, but you can get the gains from your residence whenever you choose without penalty
  • While you aren’t guaranteed appreciation in either vehicle, if your home has a mortgage you are guaranteed a percentage of interest savings by paying down (investing) the principal early. True, you lessen the tax deduction on the interest, but does it really make sense to pay the bank $100 so that you don’t have to pay the gov’ment $25 anyway?
  • Any improvement-type investments you make into your home (for instance, a foreclosure that needed a lot of work) can be enjoyed by you immediately while you wait for the market to appreciate and can also help you sell quickly and for a higher price later on.
What am I missing here? I’m not a financial professional…just something I was thinking.

All Hallows Link Dump

October 31, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Apple to Make Remote Obsolete? – Because sitting on your ass staring at a screen just isn’t easy enough yet. For some people, the only exercise they get is lifting sofa cushions to look for the remote.

How to Get a Personalized Financial Plan Without Spending a Fortune – Awesome idea, but not sure if I like the idea of giving up the personal attention. Then again, I don’t like the idea of giving up $100 an hour for personal attention.

Signs Of A Slowdown Are Obvious (In China) – They should probably borrow some money to work on that wall thing. You know, infrastructure and all.

7 Steps for Building A Mobile Future In Your Enterprise

Gmail to Unveil New Interface – Unlike FB, I think something Google can really leverage is becoming a place you live, not a site you visit. This looks much more like G+.

100-Year-Old Man Completes Marathon – How old are you?

PETA, Sea World, and Slavery

October 26, 2011 / / 0 Comments

The fact that PETA is suing Sea World for enslaving orcas is ridiculous on so many levels.

These are killer whales. They lost all their constitutional rights when they violated the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of food of the seals and fish they devoured while they were in the wild.

I consider their imprisonment justice for their misdeeds.  Doing flips and splashing me with their tails a few times a day beats the hell out of picking up trash on the beach. They should stop complaining and clogging up the courts with their frivolous lawsuits.

October 24, 2011 / / 0 Comments

You don’t need to see their tax returns.

These aren’t the CEOs you’re looking for.

They can go about their business.

Move along.

{As seen here}

October 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Sorry…I just had to post what I saw on Twitter today:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/JoseCanseco/status/127435700441321472″]

Um…sure. Ok.

Actually, this response was much better:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/CaughtOffBase/status/127436411858194432″]

October 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Real quick…two articles in Mashable today that should give Facebook a clue:

Sean Parker (a FB shareholder) notes that Facebook’s power users are moving to Twitter and Google Plus

and

Users surveyed dislike Timeline.

What do these have in common? It’s the perception that users’ privacy is being chipped away too rapidly. For instance, I think Timeline is awsum! I want to look at my Timeline…what a great tool! It’s just that I want to be able to lock it down and only show it to a few people (or no one).

What if Facebook’s default position was to make all new features super-private in the beginning and give users a chance to adjust to them and open up themselves instead of forcing everything to be public and ratcheted down? They continually come at things from the wrong direction.

UPDATE

And teens will leave Facebook for Google+? I’ve said it before…they really screwed up by putting off that IPO.

I’m reading– September 27th through October 17th

October 17, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Facebook Missteps and Shortcomings – Exhibit F.

Heart Rate Training Zone Calculator – Will have to do until I write one. Which will be tomorrow plus infinity.

Page Speed Online – Woot…super useful tool.

Will the New Facebook Lead to Information Overload? – What he said.

Google Financing Solar Installations – This looks interesting. If the cost is the same as your typical electric bill and you don’t have to worry about the maintenance, what’s the downside? Thinking you could also get your pool heated this way. Yeah…I’m thinking.

October 12, 2011 / / 0 Comments

A guy came by yesterday selling a cleaner than works wonders on just about everything. I stared at the sun for a second, hoping I could muster up a sneeze I could aim in his direction and ask, “How is it with germs?” No dice.

Idea: Remove Limitations to Find Fitness Limits

October 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

This could be a long-ish post for me, but I’m going to try to keep it short and sweet. I’m done with my time in the Clydesdale division. It was fun, but it has really just held me back. The last race I ran I was struggling to keep my weight above 200 for the last few weeks of training. How much faster could I have gone if I’d let my self drop another 10 pounds?

Back when I was lifting weights regularly, it would have been tough to get to 199 and not be a little too little (I was 230 for my marathon PR). I was playing rugby for most of that time too, and I needed the bulk.

It’s not bulk anymore. Now it’s just fat. I’m about 218 right now, and could probably comfortably walk around at 185-190 if I got rid of all the, uh, bulk I currently have.

Ok…maybe I’ll lift just a little and shoot for 195. I mean, the only thing worse than being fat is being skinny.

“Occupy”. And Then What?

October 7, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Ok, so I have some questions about the whole “Occupy” movement. Not trying to be a jerk here, even though that will surely be the way it’s interpreted. There are just some things I don’t get about this movement. I don’t think what they are doing is wrong or a bad idea necessarily, I’m just not sure they are doing it for the right reasons or if they’ve thought about what would happen if they got what they’ve asked for.

  1. If the minimum wage is raised to $20 (demand one), all the people currently making $10-$19.99/hour will get a raise to $20/hour, but definitely no higher than that. They’ll only be making minimum wage. Because the increased cost of labor will cause the retail cost of pretty much everything to increase, isn’t this effectively giving those currently in the $10-$19.99/hour range a pay cut? Doesn’t this really hurt the middle class instead of helping them? Or is step 2 an introduction of price controls? Careful what you ask for there.
  2. If you put pressure on a political party (probably the Democrats) to nominate anti-capitalist candidates, what do you expect to be the end result at the end of election night? Will those folks receive “the other 99%” of the vote?
  3. One of the major talking points seems to be a disagreement with the 2008-2009 bailouts. Another major talking point seems to be that “Occupy” is an answer to the Tea Party. But aren’t the bailouts a major issue both groups agree on?
  4. Free college (demand four)? Ok…but by doing that you’ve basically ensured everyone will go, which waters down your liberal arts degree even further. Or do you still want entrance standards? If so, won’t this be giving things to people based solely on their intelligence? And people will have to compete for these funds–who will set the standards and entrance exams? Isn’t this knowledge rationing? And look out…those professors and administrators who planted some of these ideas in your head may not be to happy about working for less (or for free).
  5. Wipe out all debt (demand 11)? Ok, now you guys are just ripping off Fight Club. Of course, we never got to see the result of this effort. I am Jack’s longing for a sequel.
I’ll happily argue about this, but really I’m just looking for some clear answers. The impression I’m getting so far is that many of these folks are no different than some people who identify as Tea Partiers who are in favor of saving Social Security/Medicare and continuing/expanding war spending. You know…people who haven’t really taken their stated positions to their logical end.

In Honor of Steve Jobs – The Facts of Life

October 6, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Sad day. Whether you are with Apple or again’ ’em, you have to admit that Steve Jobs did more that any other single person to raise our expectations of Apple and every other tech company.

And now, a 1984 episode of “The Facts of Life” entitled “Dear Apple” where Jo has a Siri-esque conversation with a computer named “Steve”. “The Facts of Life” writers were visionaries as well.

<3 Google+ Photo Sharing

October 5, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I’ve shared plenty of photos from my phone on Google+, but in the last couple of days I’ve started uploading larger albums there. The display of photo albums within Plus is very nice (waaaaaaaay cleaner than Facebook), and if you upload through Plus instead of Picasa, your photos get auto-resized and don’t count towards your Picasa limits:

If you’ve signed up for Google+

Free storage limits

Photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won’t count towards your free storage.

Automatic resizing

All photos uploaded in Google+ will be automatically resized to 2048 pixels (on their longest edge) and won’t count towards your free storage quota.

Well, sorta. You can only have 10,000 albums and you can only have 1,000 photos within an album. Maybe not enough for pros, but plenty for people who just want to share with the fam.

So all you have to do to back up all of your photos is upload them through Plus set to private. Then go over to Picasa, create new albums and move/copy photos into them to share.

My one complaint is that the beautiful photo album layouts we see on the Plus website haven’t made it to the Android applications yet. It would be nice to get the same broad overview when browsing photos on a tablet.

The Great Facebook Compromise

October 4, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been going back and forth for a while on what should be done about Facebook in my particular case. It would be kind of nice to eliminate it completely since I don’t ever post there, but there are some work-related advantages to being there that I just can’t deny.

Oh, and I also need a FB account to use Spotify.

My first thought was to go to an extreme and un-friend every single person on there. I even started doing that (sorry if you got axed…I made it to the letter ‘C’). The logic was that I’m easy enough to find on the web in other places if you really want to find me, but the problem is that other people aren’t. The simple fact is that I do have some great friends who have a presence on Facebook and nowhere else, and I like to keep up with them and occasionally comment.

Then I remembered reading somewhere that a person can only really have 150 friends–the Dunbar number. That gave me the idea of shrinking my list down to 150 Facebook friends as a maximum. But that required some rules. So here’s my strategy…

  • If I just kinda knew you but have no funny stories about you, you’re out
  • If I only know you through other social media (blogs, Plus, Twitter), you’re out…we communicate in those places and not Facebook.
  • If I only know you because the person you are married to or dating, you’re out. Think of it this way…who would get me in the divorce?
  • If you are close family that I regularly talk to on the phone and in person instead of online, you’re out. We already have an established means of communication, and it’s not Facebook.
  • If you are other family and we don’t talk even though we’re Facebook friends, you’re out. (I post photos of the family here, and I would love to share with you!)
  • If you don’t actively participate on Facebook anyway, you’re out (and good for you!)
  • If you are married to me, you’re in. Always.
  • If we were once really close but aren’t any longer because of time and distance, and Facebook is the only way we can stay connected, you’re in. But I’m going to try to get you to move to Plus.
  • If someone who trumps you tries to add me as a friend later, you may get the boot. Sorry. 150 is the limit.
Some of these rules may seem harsh, especially the family stuff, but since I don’t share on Facebook, I figure no harm done. And it also clears up a few spots for friends. So we’re pretty much down to people who I really liked in high school and college, people who have sweated and bled with me on the rugby pitch, and chicks who are good kissers.
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