The bulk of those “Charitable” contributions are “voluntary” contributions to the mormon church. Members must contribute 10% of their income plus a little extra just because in order to hold positions of leadership in the church, get married attend cult weddings and most importantly not go to hell.
The mormon church uses less than 1% of their funds for humanitarian needs. The other 99% is used to expand the hundreds of billions in hoarded wealth.
I spent a lot of time on places where the coffee is normally brewed a bit stronger (Italy, Turkey, North Africa etc).
I tend just fill up the filter paper to around to 2/3rds.
I have also been banned from making coffee at a few offices I have worked since. Their shrill cries of “Who made the coffee???” were quite fun however.
Just a sec… the flying spaghetti monster al-though not a vengeful god does concur, it’s smiting.
He likely missed. He was either aiming for center mass (most likely), or the head. In either case he was 8" high or low respectively from misjudging the distance.
My guess is it was likely a shot at center mass that went high. This was was no 3000m special forces sniper insanity.
I have been known to visit some of those growers sheds, sit down and drink their beer, then call them a welfare queen.
When they get mad, I ask them how much their subsidy and crop insurance checks were the past few years?
Every fucking single one of them knows that they are parasites on the system. They just don’t want the “wrong type of people” to get welfare too.
There are assholes in every society.
There is also cultural norms that are in conflict. Tourist commonly fail to adapt or even notice when they are violating them. Which tourist are the worst often depends on which culture clashes the most societal norms.
Monsanto was bought out by Bayer a whole back. It no longer exists.
Since Bayer is a larger company with more leverage against farmers, they are squeezing them harder than Monsanto ever dreamed of.
This year the business devoted to tourism willl struggle. Next year the will start to go under. The year after that is when things get really ugly.
The money has already been yanked from SS and other programs. It’s included as part of the National Debt figure. They have taken the excess funds for decades and spent it. Having private banks hold and invest these funds instead is highly unlikely.
The government also relies on investment funds to buy treasury bills. Most 401K’s at are set up to give the owner very little control over how they invest their money. All of the offered selections usually include treasury bills. So the government is borrowing money from 401K’s and promising to pay it back as well.
That’s all fine unless something happens to erode the trust and willingness of people around the world to lend money to the U.S. government.
Not really, but that’s a myth that credit card companies want you to believe. Creditors really want to be repayed and make a profit. So they want you working, eating top ramen and paying them back. Homeless & jobless = no money for them.
Property owners want somebody with a job, a history of paying rent, and enough income to cover it. I was always able to get a place to live even when my credit rating was sub-500’s due to credit card charge-offs.
Gotta include inflation in there.
$1,546,022 in 45 years with the same inflation we’ve had for the past 45 years would only be worth $529,400 in todays money.
If you only plan on living for 10 years or less after retiring, then, Maybe.
Just to put it into perspective, if the inflation rate for the past 45 years predicts the next 45 years. $14K today = $55K in 45 years. A $75K household income today would be $294K in 45 years.
So $14K in a 401K saved for 45 years is a pittance and should never be considered a retirement “program”. It’s all bullshit to decrease and eliminate the cost of actual pension programs.
Reminds me of an old micromanaging supervisor of mine. He tried to get me to schedule out my tasks in detail so that they knew what I was doing every minute.
So I broke it down in sub-5 minute intervals all day long until the last 2 hours of the day. The last 2 hours: Filling out the calendar for tomorrow. The directive lasted a week.
I also might have set the notification default to 5 minutes before each event and picked an especially annoying notification tone.
The only way off the hamster wheel of paycheck to paycheck living is to find a way to make the paycheck larger. The entire system is designed prevent you from doing so of course. You can not save money out of poverty wages.
It’s counter-intuitive but financially going $10K into credit card debt just to survive, while paying $10K for targeted education/training from disbursed 401K funds is a better use of the money. You can increase your pay by $20-30k or more per year with marketable training/education. If you pay off the credit card it will just come back if you don’t increase your wages. Bankruptcy also can’t take away the education/skills you’ve gained.
Swapping jobs frequently for a higher paycheck is required today. Every 1-2 years in your 20’s as you fight the experience/poverty wages bullshit. Every 3-5 after that just to beat inflation. When you swap jobs the 401k becomes available for withdrawal. Instead of using it to pay down debts etc., pay for education/training to make the next job pay more. Usually signing up for the minimum amount of the 401K makes almost no difference to your take home pay but a nice little bit of cash at each job change.
The best investment at your age is in training/education to improve your take home pay or ability to relocate. Fuck retirement savings, you have to eat for 30+ years to get there first. Invest in yourself, not in the fucking casino controlled by billionaires that is the stock market.
My wife made a career swap 5 years ago after getting a master’s degree. We used our retirement savings to pay for the schooling because the ROI was under 1 year.
I had $20K a 401K and $15K in school loans when I swapped jobs in my late 20’s. Guess what I did with it.
3 years later I was able to purchase my first house because I saved up money instead of paying the student loans.
Right now I should be maximizing my retirement savings according to all the advisors. Instead I am using the money to pay for my kids college so they can start off in life above zero instead of -$50k like my wife and I did.
I figured out a long time ago that there is no way in hell I can retire and remain in the U.S. The system is rigged against me. So my goal for the next 10 years is to learn Spanish.
Mormonism and women is pretty toxic. The list could go on for pages but here’s a few doozies. I grew up in the cult and escaped after seeing all the bullshit when I was 20 years old.
Since sex outside of marriage is a sin equal to murder… Short courtships and young marriages are highly encouraged. 18-22 is a very common age to marry for girls. It’s also common for people to marry after only knowing each other for 6-10 weeks.
Waiting to have kids is strongly discouraged snd babies often arrive 9 months or so after marriage.
Men are the authority figure in the home and women are expect to obey them.
Men are often are assigned unpaid jobs in the church that take over 20+ hours per week leaving the women to take care of everything in the home and kids alone.
Women working is discouraged but culturally okay as long as they feel extra guilty for it.
Women who stay home and pop out half a dozen kids or more are constantly praised.
Mormonism has a massive list of useless tasks that women are supposed to accomplish. They are constantly guilted for not accomplishing them all.
They also have to wear ugly ass special underwear. Seriously it’s ugly, look it up.
Statistically speaking:
“A new super plague WILL develop that WILL fuck us up something fierce.”
The when it will happen is where the fun is at.
There are three separate biovars of blubonic plague. Each of them are associated with a historical major pandemic with high numbers of casualties: Antiqua, Medievalis, and Orientalist.
The pathogen also infects more than 200 species of animals including sheep and domestic cats.
Although fleas are the most famous vector it can also be transmitted by ticks, lice, and direct pneumonic transmission (droplet transmission of >2m). It’s theorized that the majority of plague victims in 14th century contracted the disease from pneumonic transmission.
Plague has mutated and wiped out huge amounts of the population 3 times already in history. It will likely do it again.
As somebody who grew up with one, root cellars suck.
There is always something rotting in them that you have to throw out. So you get a nasty rotten vegetable and dirt smell going all the time.
Add that in to the brined pickles/cabbage that was fermenting and it was nasty.
Running to get some carrots in the middle of the winter when it’s -25C out is not fun either.