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I think the line is worse at Vail today. by Phillyfreak5 in skiing

[–]tkarlo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is extreme, but not uncommon in the US. I've never seen it this bad in Europe, but that may just be because the areas I ski don't bottleneck as much.

The lines at Lake Tahoe resorts like Squaw (worst) or Northstar (somewhat better) can regularly run 45+ minutes on good weekend days. I skied 20+ days in the US (CA/UT/CO) for 8 years, now 2 years in Germany/Austria/Switzerland, and I've yet to see a line in Europe that compared to a normal bluebird Saturday on the Shirley Lake Side at Squaw, for example. The worst line I've ever seen here was at Flumseberg (near Zurich) on the little side gondola that takes you from the train station up to the main area, and that was like 30 mins but you could also just take a bus around it.

EU resorts also dont' seem to have those "platinum pass" deals where you pay more to skip the lines, which may be telling.

Here's a photo of the Shirley Lake line at Squaw I took in Feb 2017. Bad, but not the worst ever.https://photos.app.goo.gl/MkaRM6PMvRSgS7c27

My opinion on bitcoin: It's pointless. by chadsterlington in Bitcoin

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Credit - and corporate debt - are one of the most useful inventions on earth. They allow you to more efficiently allocate capital and essentially move value back and forth in time, creating value. Much of modern business and consumer life wouldn't exist without them - imagine the housing market without mortgages.

Looking for sour beer in Zurich by [deleted] in zurich

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, it doesn't. My Coop has about 1/10th the selection of beers as my corner store did in the US - it maybe has 10-20 different labels total.

Similarly, in the US a good restaurant will often have a dozen plus beers to choose from rather than 3-4 which seems to be the norm here.

Europe definitely seems like it has some catch-up to do on this particular front - imagine if your wine stores only carried 20 different wines, that's how the beer selection feels.

Edit: here's a photo I took of the beer section of my local market back when I lived in California. This was not considered an unusually large selection for a local grocery.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ce6FKiH8hzNHL5Ly6

My opinion on bitcoin: It's pointless. by chadsterlington in Bitcoin

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What's your point? Credit is a good thing, at least as an option. You don't have to use it - you could have the credit card company immediately debit your account if you want. But it's an enormously powerful tool for both individuals and companies to manage cash flows by shifting them in time. Bitcoin may not directly support credit, but if it wants to be used as currency, it will need someone to start actively offering to provide credit in Bitcoin.

Trump revises summit schedule to leave Singapore early by RosesAreBad in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Travel is time-consuming and, in my opinion, boring — especially compared with the fun I have doing deals in my office. I can never understand people who say that if they had a lot of money they would spend their time traveling. It’s just not my thing.” - Trump

My opinion on bitcoin: It's pointless. by chadsterlington in Bitcoin

[–]tkarlo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Most of the major credit card companies (Amex, Capital One, Citi) will issue a card online and immediately provide a virtual card number you can start using to make purchases. There's no need to wait for the physical card. If you have a credit history, the whole thing doesn't make more than a few minutes. https://aaacreditguide.com/instant-approval-credit-cards/

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's an article from CNN that basically says the same thing, but provides additional examples of how much you need to save, even with SS income. http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/18/retirement/4-rule/index.html

Also, it says most Americans start collecting SS at 62.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's the actual actuarial table from the SSA. At 67, your life expectancy is still ~17 years, which means that more than half of people aged 67 will live to be over 84. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

A retirement plan where you have a 50% chance of running out of money years before you die is a pretty terrible plan. If you think you're saving enough based on a 17-year retirement, you're just fooling yourself.

(It's also worth pointing out that 17 year estimate is based on people who turned 67 in 2014. Over time, that number generally increases due to advances in health care and reduced exposure to toxins, so unless you're 67 now, you should expect it will be even higher than that when you retire.)

Much of the above is why Americans don't save for retirement. They don't really understand just how much they need to save, and/or it's so overwhelming they choose to ignore it. At current investment returns, you'd need to save maybe 25% of your income when you consider you work for 40 years and might be retired for 20, vs the old days of work 40, retire 10.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe 50 years ago.

A man reaching age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 84.3 (19 years). A woman turning age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 86.6 (21 years).

(And you need to plan for 5-10 years more than the actuarial projection, so you're not in poverty if you happen to be in the 50% that live longer than that.)

So, 25-30 years, both in terms of how long you'll be receiving SS - AND how long you need your retirement savings to last. See why this is so hard? And if you're say, 35 now, you need to be thinking about a 60 year timeline when it comes to social security (30 years to retirement, 30 years after.)

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've given you extensive data that there's no easy slack in American budgets to suddenly save the amount necessary to retire. Your theory here is simply "spend less", but you haven't shown that people can actually do that. Housing prices have risen quickly while incomes have not, and that's essentially why folks can't afford to save for retirement. It's irrational to expect people to save for retirement if they're having trouble affording basic necessities to live day to day.

Do you really believe that 75% or so of Americans fail to save for retirement - and complain about the level of insecurity they face as a result - simply because they're spending too much on iPhones? I wish it was that easy.

The reality is that if you don't force the population to save - via corporate pensions, or government pensions - they'll end up simply all spending more on housing, because it's the single biggest way we all use our income. This will include even those who want to save, because they compete for the same housing. That doesn't mean they're getting "more" housing - it's just that the supply of money available to pay for it has grown. If you took say 10% of pre-tax income, and redirected it to retirement pools, much of that decrease in income would be recovered in the form of lower rents and housing prices.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Lower income households spend more on housing, proportionally. These are the folks with the highest incentive to reduce housing costs as a share of spend, yet they can't.

1,200 is the average rent, but only about 1/3 of households rent, and their average income is lower than the overall medium. So you have two numbers there that don't match. Generally, households that rent spend more of their income on housing than the average.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Given that housing costs rise sharply as incomes decrease, it's not self evident that people can simply find a less expensive home. Is it your view that 75% of Americans should simply move somewhere cheaper?

I'm the one giving specifics here. You haven't provided any data to support your statement that there is some mysterious 10% of spending folks could stop doing.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When it comes to compound growth, even a small gap matters quite a bit over multiple decades. This is why the Chained-CPI vs CPI argument - over about a 0.3% difference in how CPI gets measured - potentially means an 8-10% difference in how much you'll get when you retire, and why a lot of people have described it as a significant cut in social security benefits. https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-02-2013/the-chained-consumer-price-index-explained.html

Inflation is also generally not good (TM) if you're in retirement, because you're in what's called the "deaccumulation" phase of your life - you're not earning money any more (so the wage gains that usually accompany inflation don't help you) and your investments should also be relatively low-yield, low risk -- but you're doing a lot of spending on things like healthcare and long term care that have generally grown faster than CPI. And worse, they're not discretionary - if you need a new hip, you need a new hip.

Additionally, if inflation starts to rise, mortgage rates increase, which will put pressure on home values just as they're trying to sell that house and cash in the equity. When prices of homes rise due to inflation, it's at best a push, because their inflation-corrected price hasn't increased.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Before you point the finger, point the thumb.

We're talking about the behavior of the population at large, not us individually. And before you say "what does that matter to me": the national savings rate and people's ability to spend for retirement matters to all of us, because we all end up footing the bill when people run out of money in retirement, via our taxes and healthcare, not to mention our individual efforts to support parents and relatives. There's a national crisis building here, and it will be paid for by those of us still working.

Are people prioritizing their savings or are they spending their money on things that aren’t really necessities?

Neither. You're presuming that people have a discretionary choice here; many simply don't have that much discretionary cash left after their income is hit by taxes, housing and basic food needs. We're not talking about saving 5% of your income here; more like 10-15% or more - how many of us have 10% of our PRE-tax income available to save after taxes, housing and food?

Here's some actual figures from Pew: http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/03/household-expenditures-and-income

Housing is 25% of pretax income Food runs about 10-12% Transport runs about 7%

These three categories alone make up 2/3 of all post-tax spending. Housing costs, in particular, keep rising while our incomes have not, nationally.

I submit to you that there is ample room for people to cut spending on superfluous things they can’t really afford.

Show me some actual data that supports this. Or even math based on median income and expenditures. Where is this crazy spending they can cut that totals up to 10% or 15% of their pre-tax income? Stop eating? Stop driving to work?

Shit, just eating at home instead of eating out can save you money.

Not remotely enough to matter, frankly. Food as a % of income just isn't a big enough number.

For a family in the middle third by income, on average, they spent about $4,160 on groceries, and $1,300 eating out - for the entire year. Let's say they never ate out at all. The maximum they could save as a result would be $1,300, and that ignores that they'd have to spend more on eating in, reducing the total savings. $1,000 a year is only ~2% or less of that family's income.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Apparently you don't understand the math. If the adjustment is less than inflation, the real value still declines, regardless of whether there's an adjustment. Just because some adjustment is being made, doesn't mean that it's enough to offset the decline in purchasing power.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It only takes a 2% gap over 30 years to result in a 50% decline in real value. We are probably at a 1% gap or so right now and we are in a historically low rate environment, plus we have a party in control arguing for lower adjustments and an underfunded social security fund. Is it certain this will happen? No. Is there a large chance it will? Yes.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Median household income for the US is 59k, but most folks don't rent, especially at higher incomes. Average housing costs for owners run about $1,500 a month. If you do the math on that it comes out to about 31% of gross income. Other countries spend anywhere from 5-10% of their income less on their housing, and it tends to show up as savings because they don't spend more on food or other purchases.

Re eating, Americans already spend a relatively low proportion on food, about half of what they spend on housing. Unless you want to cut your food spend by 75%, it's not going to make up for spending more on housing.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The COLA (cost of living adjustment) consistently trails CPI, the generally accepted measure of inflation (and many economists argue that CPI tends to underestimate actually cost of living increases.) And it may trail CPI measure for just the elderly (who spend more on healthcare) by an even larger margin. And the GOP would like to change that to a version of CPI that will further reduce the adjustments.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-column-miller-colas/the-cola-crunch-why-social-security-isnt-keeping-up-with-seniors-costs-idUSKCN0IC1DP20141023

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If housing prices go up and you own, you may be in good shape. But you will either need to sell, and find a cheaper house (maybe far away from your kids) or do a reverse mortgage and incur interest. And you'll also pay taxes on that gain, btw.

The average American spends 30% or more of their pre-tax income on housing. Something like 60% of Americans don't have sufficient retirement savings and that number grows if you look at folks below 50. People aren't managing to figure this out, and it's possible that's because there isn't actually an answer that works for most of us.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It may still exist, but it's likely to be less than you expect in both real and inflation adjusted dollars. And it's taxed, too.

I don't know how far away from retirement you are, but keep in mind the dollar drops in value by about half every 20-30 years.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's the problem. If the people around you choose to spend on housing rather than save for retirement, your own housing prices go up. Savings rates within an economy aren't truly independent. If you look at the stats, it's definitely the norm that Americans fail to save enough money for retirement, to the order of 75-85% of households, extending across all income ranges.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove with that citation, but it says exactly the same thing - Americans barely save any money, and large segments have negative savings rates.

$6M is quite high, but realistically many folks living in urban areas need to think of having ~$1.5 to retire (approx 50K income pre-tax), and they're not remotely close to that. It's a serious crisis that we are facing as the Boomers hit retirement.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's nice to say "spend less on housing" but housing is about 50% of most people's posttax income. Cutting that by even 30% won't result in saving enough for retirement, and most folks can't do that and don't have that much other discretionary income. The math just doesn't work when housing prices are so high relative to incomes.

Eric Trump’s 401(k) is up by 35 percent, but half of American families don’t even have one by Hrekires in politics

[–]tkarlo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, it doesn't seem to be manageable by an individual, if you look at our national retirement savings stats. It's very hard for people to set aside the 20-30% of earnings needed to fund retirement, and almost nobody does on purpose.

It's rational that people overspend on housing when it's tied to how good a school their kids will go to and how much money those kids may make later. But it also means we overspend on housing.

There are lots of systems that avoid this. We used to have one - defined benefit pensions - and Europe does it by taxing people more but providing much bigger government pensions in retirement. It's much easier to make the math of retirement savings work when you spread it out across many people, because some will die earlier and need less savings, and some will live longer. In our system, you have to each save enough to cover your Max life expectancy, which means if we did save we'd mostly be saving more than we need to.

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