When my dad died on active duty, my mother started receiving a death benefit intended for me. That was frittered away on a lot of indulgences - none of which made it to me. When I moved in with my grandparents, they gave me control of the money at 12 yrs old. I was taught by them, so I only focused on saving as much as I could and laddering CDs. When I got to college, I read plenty of Money magazine and Kiplingers. By the time I got out of college, I started investing in mutual funds...back in the day I had to send in a physical check. I picked them by again reading Money, Kiplingers, and heading to the library to read Morningstar...spent a lot of time reading forums on Prodigy (yep, dialup). So started investing around 22 yrs old (1990). Stayed steady, frugal, never panic sold...and it served me well. We are not rich - but we own real assets and have no debt...and got 2 kids through college and building their own financial futures. Didn't start buying bitcoin until my mid-50s (Jan 2022), but I'm glad for the extra piece of mind of having an asset they can't debase.

Absolutely - and both my wife and I have degrees...and my daughters have advanced degrees. But I favor technical education, bring back the concept of apprenticeships that are plenty suitable for most jobs, and keep our youth from falling into unsustainable debt while getting indoctrinated.

Normally, I would say that a judge cannot be held responsible for the decisions of a "sovereign individual". However, if they make decisions to release - with numbers like this (that shouldn't have gotten to within 10% of those numbers) - then I would fully support holding those judges responsible and impeaching. Only need to make a few examples for the rest to fall in line and start upholding and interpreting the law objectively.

This is what we call irony... I can't stand Graham...can't stand McConnell either (glad he is stepping down like some of his other 80+ decrepit cronies). Both are corrupt, back-stabbing, uniparty war mongers.

And me with no dry powder...

But then, we already knew that (insider trading, mortgage fraud, election fraud, etc).

Interesting theory...enough already with the price drop. I have long-term horizon for almost all of my holdings, but I did make an effort this year to start living on a Bitcoin Standard. My retirement check and income go into BTC purchases each month (Strike and River), and then all of my bills get paid using Bill Pay with Strike. And with HIFO, I'm definitely clearing out a lot of $109k, $118k, etc. Stacking some nice capital losses for tax time, I guess. Glad my wife still trusts me.🤣

Great read about the state of our society... ==== consider what this means for young voters: so long as the clear fiscal insolvency of the federal government impends and you suspect that you are being made to pay in to a system from which you will never be able to take out: why would you play? why not jack up your time preference to “immediate” and take as much as you can from the existing system before it falls over? it’s going to do that anyway and obviously, someone will benefit from plundering it to death. so why them and not you? ====

rational smash and grab

when you lose trust in system solvency, there is no longer a marshmallow test to pass