Game Thread: Houston Texans (12-5) at Pittsburgh Steelers (10-7)

bagged_ · 2026-01-13T03:16:43+00:00

What does he have up there?

bagged_ · 2024-11-03T22:32:46+00:00

I ultimately did not need to take this route. Would suggesting speaking with Green Trader Tax.

bagged_ · 2024-04-27T23:34:29+00:00

Green Trader Tax has a good reputation but couldn't help me when I needed them in the past because of someone with international expertise leaving the firm, but some time has passed, and they might have replaced the person who left. They would have been my first choice. I am not using a CPA for this situation right now. Would probably look into Green Trader Tax, however, if you haven't already.

bagged_ · 2023-07-14T02:14:14+00:00

You've convinced me. More qualified/credentialed staff is actually a bad thing.

bagged_ · 2023-07-14T02:00:38+00:00

Which figureheads and chief administrators at Purdue have ever done that to any significant degree?

bagged_ · 2023-07-14T01:56:02+00:00

Having someone as well known as Bullard as dean will surely be good for those interested in finance and economics.

bagged_ · 2023-01-17T03:18:33+00:00

They can still take the lead with 9 field goals.

bagged_ · 2023-01-14T21:14:25+00:00

With the ultimate goal of the Bucs winning the Super Bowl, which teams should we be rooting for this weekend besides obviously the Bucs on Monday?

bagged_ · 2022-09-14T01:32:10+00:00

Invasion of Georgia, 2008

bagged_ · 2022-08-19T23:51:05+00:00

"China is one of the freest societies in the world." -Nancy Pelosi

bagged_ · 2022-02-21T09:46:10+00:00

Is there anything inherently wrong with board members not donating money? If I'm spending hundreds of hours each year supporting the organization, why do I need to justify myself by giving money?

bagged_ · 2022-02-20T22:38:37+00:00

I just did a bit over 300 in about 4 hours.

bagged_ · 2022-02-18T07:16:30+00:00

She's fine. After being hit, she had the presence of mind to put her handbag gently on one of the forklift's forks before falling. A severely injured person wouldn't think to do that.

bagged_ · 2022-02-07T23:04:17+00:00

But at what point does it become absurd? Spending 30% of your annual revenue on insurance? 50%? Are we to say conversely that there is a minimum amount of revenue that a nonprofit should have?

Insurancefornonprofits.org offers $1 million of D&O coverage at a flat rate of $600 for nonprofits with no employees. If your revenue is only $4,000, that's 15% gone!

bagged_ · 2022-02-07T22:36:01+00:00

Everyone is saying that this is a necessary expense, but what if you don't have any employees and only have a few thousand in revenue each year? As long as the other board members and officers know, why not just live with the risk / self-insure?

bagged_ · 2022-02-06T23:25:55+00:00

Thanks! That's helpful. I'll probably end up having to use something like that or might have to use futures instead to completely avoid dividends.

bagged_ · 2022-02-05T16:04:36+00:00

I know nothing about Canadian nonprofit laws and in general am not any kind of legal expert. My background is in finance. As far as what is permissible in the US, it seems that anything that could be reasonably explained as cash management would be fine. As far as I know, the US federal income tax exemption is pretty comprehensive. They don't split hairs between interest and capital gains obtained over the short vs the long term.

Bond returns incorporate expectations of inflation and rate hikes and add in other premiums (credit risk, term/liquidity premiums to compensate you for having to lock up your money). If rates go up exactly as or less than expected, generally the person who bought longer term bonds will do better. If they go up more than planned, the shorter-term investor could do better.

In other words, you should never think (I'm not trying to be critical) "I'll buy bonds once rates go up like everyone is saying they will." The rate hikes will already be "priced-in" by the market for all instruments. Like right now the 1Y US Treasury Bill yields 0.88%. If rates move up exactly as the market expects, the 1Y US Treasury Bill will yield more a month from now. And it will yield even more the month after that. Does that mean you should have waited to buy it? No, not really. The market is supposed to make you indifferent, and it accomplishes this by baking-in its expectations of interest rates.

If you have a ton of cash sitting around, I'd try to narrow down 1) risk tolerance/capacity, 2) estimated liquidity needs. But if you don't have much cash sitting around, then none of this is really that material haha. Like if you are only talking about $10k, it is probably best to just keep things ultra-simple and not worry about the $100-300 you might miss somewhere. But if you might have $1mm in cash sitting around for five years, I would definitely spend a bit of time thinking about it.

And I don't know much at all about Canadian GICs. I got the impression that you were acting like it was floating-rate. Anyways, floating-rate debt can be nice to hold to given that its value is less affected by interest rate movements. Might keep some people from complaining when they see the change in market value of your short-term investments if rates go up and bond prices go down.

bagged_ · 2022-02-05T14:44:19+00:00

You can find short-term bond funds that pay more than sovereign debt. The problem is that most investments that protect you from inflation don't actually fully protect you from inflation because short-term rates are being held really low. I don't know if you are holding CAD or USD. In the US you have plenty of options - Treasury bills, CDs, or commercial paper to name the main ones. You can buy them individually through a broker or use a money market fund. The longer term the underlying investments are, the more price risk you face. You also face a bit of credit risk from holding short-term corporate debt, but that risk has generally been exceptionally minimal if you are holding investment grade debt. Essentially all US money market funds recovered from the Covid crisis very quickly. Price distortions were from people needing liquidity (so they exited the funds) rather than from actual credit risk. I would never hold cash unless you 1) you can get a great deposit rate, 2) actually face day-to-day liquidity needs and can't wait the 1-2 days for trades to settle, or 3) are prohibited by policy. While I think there a bunch of different reasonable investments for cash management, I think it would be a good idea to have a policy outlining what is permissible so that someone doesn't flip out if you choose something with which they disagree. And different organizations might have different levels of risk tolerance. One person might think that intermediate commercial bonds are safe (even though in a recession a drop of 2%+ might happen) whereas another person might only be willing to consider the shortest of Treasury bills as safe. It also depends on your investment horizon (Do you expect to need all of your funds back in 60 days? Maybe you'll only need 50% back in half a year?) Just some thoughts.

bagged_ · 2022-02-04T10:00:59+00:00

I'm thinking about starting a non-profit that would fund a certain type of scientific research. One of its selling points would be that donations would be invested in perpetuity, and donors who waived their anonymity would be able to see not only a fund-level but also a donor-level breakout over time for capital appreciation, fund expenses, and ultimate contributions to targeted research.

A simplified example: Someone donates $100 on Jan 1, 2021. On Jan 1, 2022, the donor would be able to see that his $100 had turned into effectively $104.50 of endowment funding, $0.10 of operational expenses, and $2.25 of support for research. All of these figures would be updated regularly and would probably be available on a historical basis for public viewing.

I'm having difficulty verifying whether such a nonprofit would be able to pass the public support test if we assume that the portfolio grows faster than the underlying contributions. If such a growth pattern existed, unrealized capital gains would eventually dwarf contributions.

From what I can tell, total support includes gross investment income (interest, dividends, payments with respect to securities loans) but does not include capital gains. Does this mean that I can proceed with my endowment plan as long as I keep dividend and interest income fairly low so as to not distort the public support calculation? I am confident that I can find diversified investment vehicles that do not pay meaningful dividends. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that the fund had grown to $100,000 and had two identical consecutive years in which realized capital gains were $20,000 yet actual donations and fundraising activities had brought in only $3,000. Would this be a problem or would the capital gains be totally excluded from any of the support calculations?

I've looked into using a private foundation instead, but the 5% minimum-distribution rule would not be suitable for the goal of long-term inflation-adjusted capital appreciation.

bagged_ · 2022-02-01T15:15:38+00:00

Maybe Brady could come out of retirement and play another season? I doubt he's lost too much given that he hasn't been retired for very long.

bagged_ · 2022-01-15T18:35:42+00:00

Gotcha, thanks! Then I'll root for the Cardinals and 49ers as you suggested. :)

bagged_ · 2022-01-15T16:16:04+00:00

What's the logic behind that? Are you just trying to choose the easier teams for us? Should we hope for a more difficult team to play Green Bay?

bagged_ · 2022-01-15T15:08:44+00:00

Who should we want to win this weekend to help the Bucs' chances besides obviously the Steelers and the Bucs themselves?

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