Recent content by grumpy

This was a darn good idea in 2008 - now not so much. What is it about buy low, sell high you don't understand?;D;D

Whenever I am asked if I ever smoked pot my answer has been - "I smoked it once ... the once was the entire decade of the 70's. Its been many years since I have partaken but I would certainly take advantage of legal pot, although there's little chance of that in Virginia any time soon.

Son, daughter-in-law and 3 year old granddaughter are here. DW made a nice shrimp dinner, had a few glasses of wine and will now attempt to stay awake until midnight. My idea of a great New Years Eve.

The reason you are hearing and seeing so much about investing in dividend paying stocks is because interest rates are so low.

My son, the techie, made a modest investment in bitcoins and urged me to do the same. I explained to him that I never invest in things I don't understand. He already has a substantial (paper) gain on his bitcoins and has decided to invest in the hardware needed to "mine" bitcoins. I don't...

We would love to live closer to our kids and granddaughter. But our daughter is in NYC and our son and granddaughter are in North Carolina. We are in northern Virginia which is about a 4 hour drive either way. We end up driving to NC every month to 6 weeks. We do not get to NYC as often...

These issues are nothing new. See this old thread: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/aging-parents-what-to-do-15542.html#msg26095

In college I had a part time job as caretaker of the Psych Lab's rat colony. Not only did I have to clean the cages, at the end of each semester I had to euthanize the rats. The method was to toss 100 or so rats into a garbage can, dump in a bottle of ether, and put the top on until the...

Did I miss it or did nobody mention Carlos Santana?

I moved into a community with an HOA after retirement. I am now the treasurer of the association. Go to this website and do a search for you topic - it almost certainly has been extensively discussed: HOA Talk.com > HOA Forum > Homeowner Association > HOA Discussions

I have been using spreadsheets since Multimate in 1977 and used Excel extensively ever since I was financial manager of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. I rarely if ever use functions, pivot tables, or any of the more esoteric features (although I found sort to be very useful). I think the most...

Worked for Uncle Sam for 32 years - two agencies - NOAA and NASA. Had lots of different job titles over that time. Masters degree. Moved to a new state after retiring.

I use Discover, CIT and Amtrust Direct. Amtrust currently has the best rate (1.01%) but their web site and customer service phone lines are not as good as I would like. Of the three, CIT Bank was the easiest to use and had the best customer support. I have all of these accounts linked for...

It doesn't make sense to analyze TSP allocations without reference to an individual's overall asset allocation. I'm a retired fed. My TSP allocation is 100% G fund. Is this too conservative? My TSP account represents only 12% of my total invested assets. My overall asset allocation is 52%...

I have parked my accumulated cash in CIT Bank's online savings account paying 1%. This is about as good as you can do with no risk to principal as there would be in any Vanguard fund, no matter how conservative.