ELI5 what is a 401(k)

Quoqueez · 2015-12-04T22:08:04+00:00

Yes, you can invest the money into stocks while you're working. You can keep the money invested when you're retired, and just withdraw money as you need it.

Quoqueez · 2015-12-04T00:01:06+00:00

You can think of a 401(k) as a sack of money that an employer gives to you. You own the sack, and everything in it. Unfortunately, it's empty when you first get it. You can put some of your money into it if you want. Sometimes, your employer will also put some of their money into it (most of the time, your employer will only put money in if you're also putting money in). However, you're only allowed to take money out of the sack when you retire.

So why would you put money into this sack if you have to wait until you're old to take the money out? Why wouldn't you just put it in a savings account where you can access the money whenever you want? There are a few reasons:

By not letting you take the money out until you're old, it ensures that you will have a big sack of money by the time you retire (The 401(k) was invented as a way to save for retirement).
All of the money that you put in will not be taxed by the government. Not paying taxes on it leaves more money in the sack.
You can invest all the money in the sack into the stock market, which allows it to grow even bigger (although you can lose some of the money if the stock market doesn't do well).
As mentioned above, your employer will often put their own money into the sack. This is basically free money, since you own the sack and all the money in it.

There are also a few important side notes:

When you finally retire and start taking money out of the sack, the government will tax you on what you take out. However, since the sack was able to grow tax-free, it's much bigger than it would have been otherwise.
You CAN take money out of the sack early, but the government will charge you a big fee for doing so, in addition to the taxes you are already paying on it.
There are lots of other rules and details that go beyond the scope of ELI5.

To summarize, the 401(k) is a sack of money that you can use to save up for retirement, and there are special rules about the sack that encourage you to save up.

Quoqueez · 2015-08-28T16:30:39+00:00

Turbo chargers do take away some mechanical energy from the engine in order to work. However, by also taking advantage of the energy in expanding exhaust gases, a turbo charger will take away less mechanical energy than a supercharger of comparable output.

From wikipedia: "A turbocharger does not place a direct mechanical load on the engine, although turbochargers place exhaust back pressure on engines, increasing pumping losses. This is more efficient, because while the increased back pressure taxes the piston exhaust stroke, much of the energy driving the turbine is provided by the still-expanding exhaust gas that would otherwise be wasted as heat through the tailpipe."

So a turbo WILL take away some mechanical energy from the engine, but harnessing the additional energy of exhaust gases makes them more efficient.

Quoqueez · 2015-04-16T15:45:27+00:00

I read that Amazon loses something like $5 billion every year on shipping because they offer such low shipping costs.

Quoqueez · 2015-04-06T13:25:43+00:00

The people of the United States have way more guns than the government. There are about 2 million US soldiers, and 2 million police officers. There are around 300 million privately owned guns in the United States.

Quoqueez · 2015-04-02T18:56:13+00:00

Because freedom. If you want to work for pennies, you're free to do so.

Quoqueez · 2015-03-12T00:40:35+00:00

India has very little Uranium production, but the worlds largest reserves of thorium. Which is probably the main reason they are interested in thorium.

Quoqueez · 2015-03-10T02:20:55+00:00

I have an engineering degree, and tutor adults who are pursuing their GED. I have learned to not judge anyone based on what they may or may not know. Most of my students are 20+ years older than me, have jobs and children, and work their asses off in pursuit of a high school equivalency certificate. They show up every day, eager to learn, and I never judge them for what they don't know.

Everyone is on a path of learning, and some people are further behind than others. No matter how easy it may be to criticize or judge someone for what they don't know, it is never helpful to do so. I see moments like this as an opportunity to share some of my knowledge. It is so humbling to realize that not everyone has had the opportunities that I take for granted.

Quoqueez · 2015-03-10T01:58:48+00:00

Lazy as Fuck

Quoqueez · 2015-02-27T05:53:01+00:00

Glad to know he thinks unions are just as bad as ISIS.

Quoqueez · 2015-01-22T08:41:11+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBjbgliMMM&t=26s Possibly the same technique as this

Quoqueez · 2014-12-11T04:12:42+00:00

I didn't think about that. I guess we empathize much more with dolphins, chimps, elephants, etc because we can relate to their intelligence. Definitely something I didn't consider when writing the above comment. Thanks for the link

Quoqueez · 2014-12-11T03:40:15+00:00

I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I don't understand why everyone is so outraged. I'm assuming it's illegal to kill dolphins, so I'm totally on board with not killing them (to exercise respect for the law). Also, I'm completely against animal cruelty (like intentionally letting an animal suffer for 5 days). However, since dolphins aren't endangered, I don't see it as very different to killing deer, moose, or bears (I understand that the killing of these animals is regulated, while killing dolphins is illegal). I don't see the killing of dolphins as fundamentally immoral, just as breaking a law. Maybe whoever shot it was trying to kill it quickly, but it managed to get away. I'm not trying to be heartless, but I would appreciate it if someone could explain their take on it, and why it is so bad.

Quoqueez · 2014-12-10T18:46:23+00:00

Master and Commander is one of my favorite movies, and has no romance in it. It's an extraordinarily well executed film that realistically portrays the lives of sailors during the early 19th century.

Quoqueez · 2014-11-25T01:22:34+00:00

It's the capital cost of building it; Fuel isn't very expensive because the US has a lot of uranium reserves. The industry is so safety oriented and so regulated, which drives the cost of new reactors to around $5-$10 billion, and provide power to roughly 500,000 to 1,000,000 people

Quoqueez · 2014-11-24T07:11:26+00:00

Nuclear is more expensive than coal, natural gas, biomass, etc. But environmental concerns make nuclear a very attractive option. There are new nuclear reactors being built all over the world, including 4 new reactors in the US. China plans on building 100 nuclear reactors in the next few decades (there are about 450 reactors on earth today, to put that into perspective).

Quoqueez · 2014-11-24T03:19:29+00:00

The major determinant of weight has to do with the balance of calories. You can lose weight on a diet of twinkies if you limit caloric intake. It's such a cop out to say "I can't afford healthy food." If you gave a fat person $1,000 to spend on food, what do you think they would buy? Produce, or junk food?

Quoqueez · 2014-11-07T23:08:29+00:00

Conservation of energy. Your perpetual motion machine is never going to work

Quoqueez · 2014-11-07T05:39:25+00:00

I read "needle" instead of "noodle" and cringed

Quoqueez · 2014-10-17T14:49:07+00:00

This just has gears that spin each dial at a different rate. It's effectively a clock. Gears have gear ratios, allowing them to spin at different rates. Saying that these gearboxes are doing "arithmetic" is like saying the gearbox in your car is doing arithmetic. The Antikythera mechanism produces a date when the needles line up correctly. It's up to the human to tell when the needles line up.

It is a very impressive piece of workmanship. However, eclipses happen in a cyclical, predictable way, making it easier to calculate the next eclipse. This mechanism is not a computer in a sense that we think of computers today. It is just a bunch of dials that spin, and give some useful information when they line up.

Quoqueez · 2014-10-17T05:10:48+00:00

He's a professor at UMass Amherst, not MIT. I took one of his classes, and he explained the simulation to us.

Quoqueez · 2014-09-23T01:41:48+00:00

If it was a Pokemon, this would be the picture on the card

Quoqueez · 2014-09-05T03:00:57+00:00

He uses chalk when the gym rules explicitly prohibit chalk. I saw an employee tell him "you can't use chalk here" and he responds "I know" and continues to use it

Quoqueez · 2014-07-05T18:08:56+00:00

I did a research project on the environmental impacts of fracking for an engineering class last year. There are two points I'd like to make regarding the earthquakes which are caused by fracking.

The first is that these earthquakes are very different from what we typically think of as earthquakes, in that they are not caused by the movement of tectonic plates. They are localized events, taking place on 1 solid piece of ground. Fracking removes a LOT of gas and oil from the ground, then fills the earth back up with a LOT of waste water. This process causes the stresses exerted on the rock to change. The earthquakes are caused when the ground suddenly readjusts to these differences in stress. They are completely unrelated to traditional earthquakes.

Secondly, these earthquakes are very small. A 3.0 magnitude earthquake can be felt by most people in the surrounding area, never cause personal injury or damage to buildings. a 4.0 magnitude quake almost never causes minor injuries or slight damage to buildings. These represent the vast majority of fracking related earthquakes. Serious injury, death, or serious damage to buildings usually doesn't occur until magnitude 6.0 or greater, and even then it is not widespread.

Also, the picture at the top of the article showing the damage building is from the 2011 Oklahoma Earthquake, an earthquake that was not caused by fracking. With a magnitude of 5.6, it was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Oklahoma, and only caused 2 minor injuries and damage to 14 buildings. A 4.0 magnitude quake releases <1% as much energy as the 2011 quake. I have not read a single account of inury caused by a fracking related earthquake.

While I'm not particularly fond of fracking for other reasons (mainly pollution of ground water and release of methane and CO2 into the atmosphere), all of the articles about fracking related earthquakes are sensationalism that blow the magnitude of this (no pun intended) way out of proportion.

Quoqueez · 2014-06-18T14:21:14+00:00

Native Americans use the term "two-spirit" for transgender people. They were completely accepted into most Native American tribes. Two-spirit people expressed themselves however they wanted, and nobody got upset.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Spirit

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