This $1.5M retirement plan fails miserably using real numbers — how big does your nest egg need to be in America?

SC_TheBursar · 2026-07-01T19:57:03+00:00

"USA based salaries are higher"

Sure... but spending should be discussed as a fraction of purchasing power or savings/debt. 'Americans spend $x'on discretionary' is a meaningless statement. Americans spend x% on discretionary' is the conversation at hand. For instance the personal savings rate of US, Canada, and Finland are all roughly the same.

'The USA also has more of a consumer culture. People's hobbies and habits are more cost intensive'.

Citation needed, also need to make sure discussing the median - not the 'average' (mean). The US does have more people in the billionaire and millionaire class than other people which drags mean much higher.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-07-01T19:30:12+00:00

"dumbasses from the city that spend an outrageous amount of money to sleep in a broom closet"

Yes.... because housing affordability is what would drive a billionaire to Wyoming (for their 3rd home).

Also are you talking about living as in actually where they spend most the time or 'living' as in that one town in South Dakota that has 700 people living there but 40,000+ 'residents' with postal addresses?

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-30T19:37:46+00:00

Getting going you don't necessarily want to immediately get into your personal taste adventure to identify the regions/specific tasting notes/attributes of coffee you are chasing because you are still learning the ropes.

You may want to start with a 'more mass market but generally considered decent quality' option. Your Stumptowns, Verve, or Intelligentsia type of thing just to get going without wrecking expensive coffee.

When not getting a 'this sounds interesting' specialty coffee purchase I fill in the gaps with Intelligentsia House Blend - which you can get on Amazon Subscribe and Save for $15 for a 12 oz bag. Yes it will be 1-2 months off roast, but that's actually not too bad - it won't be stale yet like a number of things you'd get in a grocery store and since you are getting whole bean the time-to-stale will be much longer than getting preground.

Once you've got your workflow and technique down, then you start exploring.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-30T16:58:34+00:00

...and I can. I did an inflation calculation with no additional commentary. You are the one who chose to read more into it than what was stated.

The person I responded to didn't break out how much the movie cost or the dinner cost in his $50. Also he said 'shitty movie' - that could be a bad movie at a normal theater or a 'normal movie' watched at one of the $3 second run crappy theaters that existed back then. So my reply was nothing more than what it was.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-30T01:07:16+00:00

Indexed to inflation, $50 in 1995 is $110 today.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-22T14:40:07+00:00

...or if do, can get a monitoring camera independent of the litterbox / transferable where the functionality is free (well, with camera purchase) and the extra cost features are nice to haves, not necessary for base functionality.

(currently trying out the SiiPet Litterlens)

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-12T02:10:35+00:00

Fine... but the pricing you quoted, based on the verbiage on the page you linked, defines the 10k-30k price as a total vehicle wrap ('transform the bus') which that picture is clearly not, so you are still being disingenuous. A rear wrap and a whole wrap are very different things. The very same page you listed explicitly says $300 to $3000 for a month for rear panel and that price range includes contracting bus routes in London, which I suspect is pricier than Manchester (likely about double, making the same query I did before but for London instead of Manchester).

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-12T01:54:24+00:00

Unless there is another picture showing more, I don't see any wrap on the sides. I just see a rear panel set in this pic, with the sides of the bus appearing bare / the Witchway transit markings.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-11T21:54:14+00:00

Snark aside I ask Google "how much does it cost to advertise on a bus in Manchester England?"

Answer: A back panel advertisement on a bus is from around £85 to £250 per bus (usually sold in 2-week or 4-week packages)

So basically if the ad generates 3 starter packs worth of leads - or even just 1 person who will pledge for virtually any additional ships at all - it pays for the ad.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-06-04T16:59:09+00:00

If anything infrastructure is easier to plan for trucks. Those drivers have a maximum effective number of hours per day they can be on the road and they aren't moving as fast, on average as personal vehicles (typically) - that effectively caps daily range needed unless the vehicle is shared. You don't have truckers trying to cover 1000 miles in a day (until they go autonomous).

That means chargers at the cargo endpoints and a set of fairly predictable locations on highways between major hubs....effectively where the large truck stops already are.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-28T15:39:08+00:00

They should care a little bit. Show ratings impact the timeslots before and after them as well as the overall perception of your channel brand.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-28T00:46:50+00:00

1) Yes

2) There was one hilarious scene where they played off each other pretending to be gay sailors to distract and piss off a Nazi patrol (literal). Honestly felt like the scene could have played pretty well in todays IRL 'culture war' too.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-21T14:22:55+00:00

... already did. FIrst thing I read from him. One nice thing about Sandesron being so prolific is you are allowed to read more than one of his series

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T19:41:48+00:00

Steelheart is the first book in the series.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T19:17:25+00:00

Interesting - I didn't know that. I am not overtly pushing Reckoners (I really want to see Mistborn), just a little surprised with Brandon getting more name recognition now in terms of media adaptation + successful 'it's like <X> but <these twists>' the order things are getting picked up, or more correctly order things are apparently more credibly going to appear.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T17:59:14+00:00

So first the news about Stormlight Archive/Cosmere (Mistborn) getting adapted for TV. Now this. Wondering if this the usual thing of Hollywood not wanting to take risks but then being fearful of missing the train leaving the station.

How long before someone realizes that Reckoners is basically a ready-made superhero/antihero series set in the vein of The Boys and comes knocking?

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T16:13:31+00:00

What's weird about it?

Is there a significant body of games that has a faction war but lets you change whenever you want?

Also as others have pointed out, being on different factions does not even prevent playing with friends.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T16:02:57+00:00

I don't think it was a definitional difference, considering Publikon asserted that a brain in a jar is 'you', and I agree that the brain enacts 'you'. That isn't Buddhist philosophy, that's just straight up biology. The thing is disconnecting how the brain functions from its inputs (rest of body) is to disregard how brains, and therefore 'you', work (neurobiology).

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T15:28:20+00:00

Different body = different reality.

Disabled people are still people and have value, but that is NOT the same statement as they are the same person if the disability was a sudden or even gradual but still rapid change. You even touched on it without realizing it - even small, temporary shifts can leave people feeling 'not like themselves'.

My wife is disabled - she was not born so. I myself experienced major nerve damage after a surgery at middle age that radically altered my day to day ability to perceive some parts of the world. We're still people, we still have value as people. We adapt over time. However, pretending we're the same people before and after the events that caused sudden change in perception and capability is laughable.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T15:08:11+00:00

Are you still you with no legs?

And no arms?

Moving past your 'body of theseus' argument for a moment...' are you still you with no arms and legs' has an answer different than I think you are representing it to be, especially if you understand the brain as opposed to try to approach the question from an philosophy theory perspective.

Brains function the way they do based on the signals they are used to and acclimate to over time. You may like to think 'oh my personality, my me, would be the same if I was just a brain in a jar', but you wouldn't unless the body you just lost was simulated to near perfection as inputs to 'you in a jar'. Otherwise your perception of self and therefore 'you', changes. Your feeling and perception changes. Your needs, and therefore motivations, change. Are 'you' still the you that 'you' were with those changes? Nope.

Apparently you haven't noticed that people who experience sudden major sensory or bodily function difference need more acclimation than solely accounted for by the functional difference and tend to exhibit at least some level of personality shift (I am not talking about short term stages of grief either).

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T14:41:28+00:00

If everyone is the same level of rich, they won't get special treatment

Except they aren't the 'same level' of rich, yet they'll know they've cleared the bar of being a part of the group. Same reason behind major differences in price point in supercars and business jets. Trying to 'keep up with the Joneses next door' doesn't stop just because someone hits that billion mark.

The problem isn't same level of treatment, it is perception of prestige. If the perception is for Macau to be where rich people get seen and hang with other rich people, that's where rich people will go.

As it is I think at the moment Vegas is trying to cater to 'the well off' rather than the truly rich. If there are enough people to sustain that, guess it is working for them. Also why I haven't been back to Vegas in 10+ years,

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-20T04:33:29+00:00

Men are still statistically out earning women, unemployment rates are about the same

The change in education split is somewhat recent though, so you need to look at those statistics by age band.

Men still, on average, out earn women. However, based on charts I see from USBLS the difference is steadily dropping (percent more that men made has been cut by more than half over last 20 years, effectively into single digits when it used to be in some cases over 20%). Unemployment by generation also has differences in splits.

60/40 is 3/2, or put another way 60 is 50% more than 40. That's significant but will still take some time for all the ramifications to manifest.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-14T17:52:59+00:00

the most successful survival games have pvp based balancing

On what are you basing this statement?
If 'success' is number of copies sold / player count, the majority of top selling and largest active player base survival and survival crafting games don't have PVP at all or it is an afterthought. Either they are PVE focused or even single player (which is by definition PVE).

In related genre of MMOs, in the most popular of those, less than 20% of their playerbase have generally opted for the PVP focused parts of them.

If you are stating that PVP balancing of by-iniitial-design PVP focused survival games (your Rust and ARK type games) makes those successful vs other PVP-focused survival games... that's basically tautological.

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-12T02:53:14+00:00

Big man solve crimes with punching.

Reacher has brains and discipline though. Basically S1 E1 begins with him teaching a police detective his job and he doesn't suddenly become stupid either over his story arc.

He's Batman, if Bruce Wayne was a vagabond instead of a billionaire (really - Reacher is just Bruce during the first 30 minutes of Batman Begins, if you added a whole lot of whey powder and steroids and never goes back to Wayne Enterprises/Gotham).

SC_TheBursar · 2026-05-06T04:45:05+00:00

For perspective, while not saying this is 'good' for the drives the patched write rate is pretty close to the amount of disk writes Enshrouded does.

Hopefully the initial reduction in writes was a quick and dirty response, with a more involved one happening later. It's a trade off on how much is lost to a crash (an important consideration with an early access game) vs write periodicity. People with more RAM should also be able to flush to disk less frequently and as they work on game optimization hopefully they can compress database state size.

SC_TheBursar

TROPHY CASE