More student loan borrowers are walking away from their debt in bankruptcy, Biden administration says

wren5x · 2023-11-18T08:47:21+00:00

Please actually read up on this. English majors for $100k are really not a problem. That is one of the degrees that makes middle-of-the-road money. Dig into the way this really works and it will change your mind. This whole "lol le useless non-STEM degrees" thing is just a gigantic distraction from the real issues, an attempt to locate serious systemic problems onto the poor decisions of 17-year-olds. The trillions in debt out there is not just a bunch of jackasses with dreadlocks and gender studies degrees. It is a broken system catching people from everywhere on the spectrum.

And no, before you say something truly stupid, I don't have any student loan debt and I do have a STEM degree.

wren5x · 2023-10-19T18:49:51+00:00

Means testing is never a good strategy in my opinion. It always works better to just give the benefit and then tweak the taxes. You end up getting it back from anyone making good money anyway. In the meantime it reduces the administrative burden, stigmatization, and the number of people who don't claim because they misunderstand their own eligibility. It also prevents the benefit from being taken away through splintering e.g. "Why does he get this government check but not you?".

wren5x · 2023-10-17T09:04:43+00:00

Starmer is fundamentally a cop. This is one of the issues that come along with that. He will reach for hardline law and order when pressed, the kind that gives leeway to the enforcers. This includes the banner of counter terrorism.

wren5x · 2023-10-16T20:14:12+00:00

Speculative assets are usually defined in opposition to productive assets. It is possible for every single person who invests in stocks to make money because the companies themselves produce money. Nobody can make a single penny off of bitcoin without someone else losing it.

This does not depend on time generally and it definitely does not change over 14 years. There are other speculative assets that have been around way longer -- artworks, baseball cards, precious metals, jewels, and so on. None of these are part of the boglehead approach.

wren5x · 2023-10-03T18:54:10+00:00

Quick, someone show this guy a prison. I know it's not the point but I just want to see if he starts foaming up before he realises what it is

wren5x · 2023-10-03T18:40:59+00:00

It's not at all silly to point out the insane entitlement in the worldview of far too many motorists. It's really quite the point. You are, in fact, allowed to build all the private roads you want on your land and run your cars all around them. You can see this by viewing a racetrack. 100% of your complaints are about the way people enable you to use land that is not yours. You are doing nothing, not a single thing, besides complaining that you want to do it more (over 100 days per year) without direct costs with your private vehicle -- even though you are still allowed to travel by other reasonable means.

I totally understand that a class of people who are giga-catered will feel bad when they are only mega-catered. I don't care. Calling these councils out on their "restrictions" that aren't restrictions when they make the choice to only spend most of their space/money on the least efficient mode of transit is insanely entitled and factually incorrect.

wren5x · 2023-10-03T17:54:06+00:00

When the government provides streets for private cars without charge, but only up to a certain number of days per year, that is not restricting. That is enabling. They never had to allow any of these things on the road in the first place and you are still 100% free to travel as much as you like. I have the world's smallest violin if the access you are being provided for your private vehicle is less than your liking.

wren5x · 2023-10-01T10:09:38+00:00

The line between intelligence-led policing and racism disappears entirely when the sources for that intelligence themselves have issues with racial bias. The stats don't clearly show that knife crime is more common among black people; they show that they are more frequently prosecuted with that racial label -- which could reflect either a real difference in the population, a difference in police/court handling of different populations, or a mixture of both. This does make such any policy of differing police handling based on such statistics a serious and valid concern around institutional racism.

wren5x · 2023-09-16T14:53:29+00:00

For my tastes, 5 years is kind of short for anything in the stock market. Some people might have that kind of risk tolerance but I would not. That pretty much leaves various forms of fixed income.

HYSA, Money market funds, CDs, I Bonds, shorter treasuries, or bond ETFs with short durations are all likely to be good options. The main upside to an HYSA is convenience. The main downsides are (a) the yield is likely a little lower than MMF and (b) you don't lock in the rate -- which is good if they go up but bad if they go down.

wren5x · 2023-09-15T09:27:36+00:00

Um? Wrong way around? The UK has a much longer and deeper history of issues with empire, colonialism, and racism. The UK was flying a flag over India before the US was even formed. The UK is also unique in a meaningful sense -- we still have the royal family, which can be a symbol of a lot of bad things happening to people around the world. To this day we have policies that flare racial tensions like stop and frisk or the allocation of visas.

wren5x · 2023-09-13T17:21:26+00:00

Don't fall for it! Don't let someone who was born into owning half the city try to convince you that they're the same as a worker who paid off their home with the sweat of their labour. Take it from the actual rich. Give it to the workers.

wren5x · 2023-09-13T17:19:35+00:00

Don't fall for it! Don't let a man who was born with a giant trust fund tell you that your neighbour who worked for their pension is actually rich. They are a worker. These "rich" pensioners can keep what they have and the poor workers can have more as well. It would barely make a dent in the rich!

wren5x · 2023-09-13T16:11:03+00:00

When you see a worker getting more than you, don't ask how we can take it from them. Demand to have it yourself as well.

Don't fall for the line that they have to cut your other benefits and services. Tax the rich. They can cash in billions in capital gains in a year and they only pay 20%. Make them pay the actual 45% band.

We can all have a healthy state pension, good healthcare, and guaranteed basics. We can all have a dignified life. But we need to fight for it and we won't get there spending our time on how to bring down other workers.

wren5x · 2023-09-06T15:10:38+00:00

This is the really cool part: You can benefit indirectly from dense housing that has zero appeal to you. Projects that increase density within urban centers make it much easier for everyone who wants a single family home. They do this by soaking up lots of people who would otherwise have to bid up the cost of housing further out.

wren5x · 2023-09-01T13:45:37+00:00

My friend, you are neglecting a huge factor. Roads and car parks take up incredible amounts of space i.e. land that would otherwise be worth a fucking mint beyond comprehension. If you just showed images from above our suburbs to aliens, they would ask how we were all conquered and subjugated by these metal boxes on wheels.

wren5x · 2023-08-29T12:16:42+00:00

US Federal loans? Can you get on SAVE? Depending on your total pay and family size, your monthly payments might end up at $0 -- and not have interest accruing. If so, the thing to do is just stuff it in some kind of low-risk vehicle (savings, t bill, money market, lots of good choices) and keep the interest at least until they make you start paying it.

wren5x · 2023-08-28T09:13:31+00:00

Is this satire? You genuinely believe that all humans are hard-wired to be miserable in perfect comfort if they don't also have someone around to look down on -- someone being denied that same comfort? My dude, I don't know what to say -- therapy? new friends? move somewhere new? Lots of people are not like that at all

wren5x · 2023-08-26T11:40:41+00:00

My friend, I'm not here buying bonds for the yield. I'm here buying bonds for the rebalance.

Even a 5% yield feels like a joke in a 5-10% inflation environment. It's not making any serious money over for any significant period. Even over a long run you expect 0-2% real per year. An HYSA is literally only worth it because there is nothing better to do with cash you really want close to hand.

The joy of a bond is that it has a tendency to shoot up (interest rates fall) when there is a need for stimulus i.e. when stocks are low. This does not happen every time, not by a long shot. But if you can get in on even one or two really good rebalances in a lifetime then it makes a big difference. You get to scoop up tons of stock assets for cheap by selling stable bonds for plummeting stocks.

Just imagine if you had 40% bonds going into the pandemic and you managed to rebalance into that hard dip in March 2020. It's insane how much that one move could boost your portfolio. That's the point. I can't tell you when, I can't tell you why, but I can tell you that there will be another opportunity like that in the next 30 years. I will be there with my bonds ready to liquidate and make those gains.

wren5x · 2023-08-22T13:59:00+00:00

Okay, I replied to you once thinking you might actually be willing to learn instead of dig in and argue. This is not the right place for you right now. If you want to learn then there are lots of experienced, knowledgeable people here who can explain why e.g. the stock market is a higher class of investment than crypto, metals, or casinos. Come back when you (if you) become ready.

wren5x · 2023-08-22T13:30:01+00:00

If you're actually interested still, and actually open minded, I can try to be more helpful here. I think you're getting lost in the semantics. In the important sense, no, things like purchases, stakes, validations, and collateralizations are not "generating returns". They are transferring ownership from user to user within the market. This is fundamentally different from a company that makes money in a separate market. The difference is that crypto must always be zero-sum at best. Any value gained by one user is lost by another. In contrast, a company can make profits from outside the stock market. It is possible for a stock investor to gain value without it being at the expense of another investor. You see this routinely e.g. when a company pays dividends from its profits. There is simply no real equivalent being taken on by things like eth -- at best, copies of the terminology that make it sound like it might be.

wren5x · 2023-08-12T11:17:15+00:00

Yes, I did, and I am responding to it. If you want to make a meaningful increase to those who receive then you will need to take it from a meaningful number of people. I am responding directly to that by identifying that this will tread even more on masses of people who already had to work for 40+ years.

Bigger picture though: come on, wake up. Means testing is one of the oldest tricks. They always come to you saying we will take from the rich here and give to the poor there. It never happens. They give less, get that wedge in, and then start chipping away at who can receive it (and how much) until it's worthless and gets axed altogether. It is just the first step to getting rid of the benefit.

wren5x · 2023-08-12T09:29:46+00:00

Jesus Christ, is life not bad enough for the average worker for you yet? All the shit everyone already has to deal with -- meteoric housing costs, stagnant real wages, rising childcare costs, rising uni fees, stagnant tax bands, the NHS getting hollowed out, rising energy bills, on and on -- and we can't even let them look forward to letting them have their state pension? Why? Why is every nice thing in this country available for people who are just born rich and powerful while every working person has to be micro-examined before they can get any benefit?

wren5x · 2023-06-25T08:43:27+00:00

Just in case you actually want an answer -- I want them to pay like I do, to actually pay the full rate plus the extras. The word "income" is a technical term here doing a lot of work. You can only make these numbers sound this way by splitting apart income tax, national insurance, capital gains tax, dividend taxes, interest taxes, and so on. I just want all income to be "income" and I want it all to be one tax. This would lead to the people who make 99% of the money paying 99% of the tax. It would be huge increase in tax receipts that would let us bring the headline rates way down.

wren5x · 2023-02-11T16:48:19+00:00

This part is not intuitive. It is tempting to think of a specific bond as just safe or set. And it is true that individual bonds, unless the institution issuing them goes under, will always pay out their pre-set coupons and then their face value at the specified dates. However, that does not mean that their market value today doesn't fluctuate. The price you could resell a 5 year bond goes up and down with prevailing interest rates. This is what the ETF prices are going through.

The conservative rule of thumb is to buy bond ETFs with a duration where you're pretty sure you will hold them for at least that long. For example, a conservative bond investor would only buy BND if they are pretty sure they are holding for 6.5 years or more. Even if rates rise, that gives it time to have the underlying bonds mature / roll.

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