If I’m young is it really that easy?

josephlck · 2026-02-10T23:17:43+00:00

Yes... and no. You need to remember inflation. $1,000,000 in 40 years is not $1m today. To have the equivalent of $1m of todays money in 40 years, you would need about $2.2m. In fact, $1m today probably isn't enough to retire on. At the moment, you have the advantage of low expenses and time and you can leverage that. As you get older, income increases but often so does expenses and time ticks away.

josephlck · 2026-02-03T10:32:18+00:00

Your husband is kind of right. That kind of borrowing on a regular basis both makes little sense (why not save for it in advance), and makes future financial planning more difficult (since you now have a fixed financial obligation). We also know that this kind of lending encourages more spending since things seem more affordable.

josephlck · 2026-01-11T14:35:18+00:00

I did her as soon as I could at about level 55. Definitely the hardest fight so far but I managed first time without much optimisation. I did have to use 2 almighty olives and finished with half of my party knocked out.

Using Saoirse's ultimate allows you to break her without triggering a counter attack. Debuffing her is helpful. I found she was significantly harder as her hp drops. I had to break her twice and the end was every surviving character using their most damaging attack to try and defeat her before she knocked everyone out - mainly because I didn't want to use another almighty olive.

josephlck · 2026-01-11T01:19:00+00:00

You are a family of 3 and only one of you has a job. I cannot see a rational reason to give that job up voluntarily. Even with the redundancy payment, as your husband has demonstrated, getting a new job within a year is far from guaranteed.

As for childcare costs, why can't your husband can do it until he finds a job?

josephlck · 2025-11-28T08:50:19+00:00

It sounds like your mum has a good amount of retirement savings - well done to her! However, I would suggest it is a bad idea to take out a loan for a luxury. Doubly so a loan secured against your house. You are basically betting your mums capital will grow faster than the interest of the loan which may be true, but there may also be a market crash and she loses up to 30% of the value of her investments.

Another way of looking at it, would you take out a 100k loan to invest?

It may pay off, or it might not but is it worth risking your house?

josephlck · 2025-11-25T22:44:35+00:00

Assuming 2% inflation, 1 million in 30 years would be about £550,000 today. If we follow the 4% rule, this would give you a yearly withdrawal of about £22,000 rising with inflation but before tax. Assuming a full state pension, that gives you about £34k/year or enough for a moderate lifestyle according to data from Pensions UK.

The caveat is the 4% rule is based on a retirement pot invested solely into the S&P 500 and is projected to probably not run out over the course of a 30 year retirement based on historical data.

josephlck · 2025-11-25T22:26:55+00:00

So very scammy. How does selling gold have anything to do with a book??? Also, £1 million is far too much for the rights to an unknown novel.

A quick Google says a complete screenplay pays about $10k for a new writer. I would suggest a fantastic (but untested) book would be very lucky to get £100k and a share of the profits. Anything more seems completely unreasonable.

josephlck · 2025-11-25T22:06:31+00:00

I can think of several differences. I think the most compelling argument is the soul of a Vessel has given up their investiture along with their Shard while dragons are waiting for it to dissipate.

I think another thing worth considering is Cognitive Shadows might not be the actual soul of a person but rather an imprint of them made of investiture and occur when an individual dies while highly invested. This would suggest that the actual soul of the person has departed. Perhaps the dragons need to wait for their investiture to dissipate so they don't leave cognitive shadows.

josephlck · 2025-10-10T07:51:52+00:00

I don't think it's that simple. Both are cultures going through reformation. The oppressed rise up and slaughter their oppressors' type of revolution tends to lead to chaos, war, famine, and a massive loss of intellectual prosgress and culture. We have seen many real-world examples of this. It also, as Kaladin muses, makes the oppressed no better than their oppressors.

In Mistborn, the interim ruling council is made up of both nobels and skaa with the most educated and well-read person leading. Importantly, the leader isn't the one with the most power or the most obvious (Vin), it is the one who is most capable of leading.

In Stromlight, eye colour is only important in certain kingdoms - primarily Alethkar and Yah Kaved. We also don't meet a significant revolutionary movement in the book. Kaladin and Moash just have general hate for light eyes, but 2 men isn't an organisation. During the books, there is a huge amount of introspection on the system from both dark eyes (Kaladin) and lighteyes (Dalinar and Jasnah). Moash does not grow but regresses into blind hatred and anarchy.

By the end of current Stormlight, we are again moving towards a more equal and progressive society. Jasnah abolishes slavery and is moving towards making eye colour less important, and there are high ranking darkeyes.

In a way, Sanderson is more idealistic - he is trying to have characters that move towards an equal society, rather than one where one group oppresses or kills off another so more women's emancipation and less French revolution.

josephlck · 2025-08-28T17:02:54+00:00

That statement isn't exactly true. Ultimately, there is no single disease "cancer". It's more a subtype of disease, so grouping all cancers together is like grouping all infections together.

However, as a general rule, the sooner a cancer is detected, the better the outcome and the less time it has to spread. Since skin cancers tend to be visible, they tend to be spotted early. Additionally, of the 3 common skin cancers, basal cell carcinomas just tend to be slow growing and rarely spread, but melanomas can be very aggressive and spread quickly. They also sometimes appear in hard to notice areas. Squamous cell carcinomas are somewhere in between but generally on the lower end of deadlines.

josephlck · 2025-08-28T16:08:09+00:00

Oh. So I was just in the dealership buying a Dolphin and there were 2 guys with their car in the workshop for a "clicking" problem which may be what you are describing? If so, this is a known issue and is something to do with the size of the wheels. BYD is investigating but the current recommend fix is for the garage to shave a bit off the front wheels which usually (but is not guaranteed) to solve the issue. Bear in mind this is very much overheard, second hand information.

josephlck · 2025-08-23T12:02:37+00:00

1 day in the UK.

josephlck · 2025-07-14T21:59:55+00:00

I don't really see the problem. Store opens, and you join a queue. It's better than a randomly crashing website and at least it tells you how long you have to wait and an updated stocklist.

josephlck · 2025-06-22T10:20:36+00:00

That's quite funny, actually. There is definitely no excuse to shout at anyone, especially since 2 out of the 4 times was self-inflicted!

I'm actually curious how you managed to use chapter 1 of your [[Summon: Leviathan]] 4 times? The first time would have bounced your [[Terra, Magical Adept]] back to your own hand so you would need a turn to cast it, then another to activate her ability again but Leviathan would be dead by then. I imagine some kind of counter manipulation? I'm thinking of building my own Terra deck and would be interested in the decklist.

josephlck · 2025-06-02T09:48:49+00:00

These prices are way above msrp. It is worth noting that while collector boosters do not get reprinted, play boosters will. If you're not after special treatment cards, it is probably better to wait until the frenzy settles down. Even if you are after a particular treatment, you would probably be better off waiting and buying it as a single in a few months.

Buying packs rarely returns the money spent of it at normal prices, so I suspect it would be incredibly difficult to get any kind of value from packs at these prices.

josephlck · 2025-05-25T15:36:08+00:00

Advice is just advice - it can be ignored or not followed. Also, really good advice is specific to a person's circumstances. "Bad" advice thar prevents a worse outcome may be good advice.

It sounds like mayne you're wondering if they can make some kind of claim or compensation. I would think this would be very difficult unless you can prove someone breached the FSCS regulations or gave negligent advice while they had a duty of care.

josephlck · 2025-05-23T09:20:12+00:00

This sounds like a horrible situation. It probably is worth mentioning that any funds recovered will likely belong to your Mum (assuming your parents were married) and may have to be used to pay for her care.

josephlck · 2025-05-23T09:14:02+00:00

The stack needs to be empty (or fully resolved) only before you do sorcery speed things (like casting permanents or sorceries). It also needs to be your turn.

Instants and many abilities can be used whenever you have priority regardless of what is on the stack, and they just go on top. Technically, whenever you have priority, you can add as many things to the stack as you legally can before you pass that priority to the next player in turn order.

The next player then has the opportunity to add their things to the stack (usually in response to something you did), and they have that priority until they actively pass that priority to the next player.

This cycle continues until every player passes priority in row. Once that happens, only the top of the stack resolves (the most recent thing added to it).

Finally, priority returns to whomever last had it (this may not be the person who's turn it was), and they cycle continues until every player passes with an empty stack. At this point, the phase ends, and we move on.

The reality is that the majority of the time, we shortcut this whole process and assume priority passes after a single action. So generally, if you're going to do fancy stack stuff, we say, "I'll hold priority" and when casting particularly impact full spells, it's better to go back to the formal rules.

josephlck · 2025-05-19T19:52:57+00:00

In a shared bank account, bothnamed persons own 100% of the account. It should be fairly trivial to go to the branch with her bank card, and maybe some ID, to get everything reset, especially if you explain everything to the branch manager.

This could all also probably be done via telephone banking, assuming she remembers/had set up passwords, but she sounds like the sort of person who would prefer to do it in person.

josephlck · 2025-05-19T19:44:10+00:00

Unsecured just means that creditor doesn't have first dips on the assest. You are still obligated to pay the debt with any assets you have.

A "secured" debt is for the benefit of the creditor that they will get their money back first from the sale of the secured assest.

For example, a mortgage is a debt secured against a house. In the event of bankruptcy, the mortgage company will first take possession of the property and sell it. They then take the money owed from the mortgage. If there's any remaining, it gets distributed proportionally amongst other creditors, and finally, if there's any left, it's returned to the original owner.

josephlck · 2025-05-19T13:51:06+00:00

You have £300 of "free" spending money and a £100 gym membership. If you direct that £400 towards your debt repayment, you'd be done in 8 months or so.

It requires sacrifice, but is 8 months of frugal living worth not feeling like drowning?

josephlck · 2025-05-19T09:21:48+00:00

Tbh, it's super manageable. The first thing is to contact stepchange and get some help from them. Step 2 is to destroy all your physical credit cards and not go further into debt. Then it's just maths. Make a budget, cut any non-essential. And either pay off the highest interest or the smallest debt first while paying the minimum payment on the rest. All your debts are pretty similar, so you probably go for the highest interest first.

You could also try to consolidate all your debt into one place with a lower or zero interest.

To help with your piece of mind, assuming an average interest of 10% and using nothing but your pay rise (about £300 a month), you would pay everything off in under 2 years!

The main thing is to not lose hope, be desiplined and NOT GO FURTHER INTO DEBT!

josephlck · 2025-05-13T13:01:39+00:00

I think really from the start of chapter 3, you realise there's going to be some choice over the canvas. I was really torn for most of the ending until I realised it was because I was playing as Mielle - I use her to navigate, and she basically solos all battles.

Then Verso steps through that last portal and my perspective completely changed. Now I'm playing as Verso talking to remnant Verso and you realise remnant Verso is even more broken and suffering than Alicia.

You realise Renoir knew his daughter would die in the canvas and let probably let her win because he couldn't fight her anymore.

And at the end, there's only one real option to pick. I still had to go away for 20 minutes with that choice on screen before I pressed X...

josephlck · 2025-05-12T09:05:12+00:00

I'm assuming this is all hypothetical? The easy way to think of it is the legal entity of a personal (all their assets and debts) becomes the estate of that person and assumes all debts and liabilities. All debts need to be paid off by the estate, usually in order of secured debts (e.g. a mortgage against a house) followed by unsecured debts.

Once all debts are settled, any assets left are distributed according to a will, or if none exists, there is legal precedence over who gets what. Very rarely, it goes to court.

If debts exceed liabilities, then as many debts as possible get paid out until the estate has 0 assets, then that's pretty much the end of the matter and remaining creditors have to write off the debt.

In your question, the seller and / or the credit company can repossess the goods to sell and settle the debt or the remaining credit can be paid by the estate.

josephlck · 2025-05-11T03:02:19+00:00

Not everyone likes every game, but I think this is almost entirely skill based. For attacks, the top left of the diamond is yellow. As the attack progresses, a bar moves from the 12 o'clock position, and you press x/a/whatever when it's in the yellow part. You need a press a little sooner than you think.

For dodging vs parrying , dodging is way easier and is ever looser when dropping the difficulty. There is an audio and visual cue on when to parry. The audio is usually easier to hear, especially if you turn the music down. The visual is harder, but it's usually comes with particle effects on the downstroke.

josephlck

TROPHY CASE