How do you think our lives will change...
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@Steve-Miller said in How do you think our lives will change...:
last week we went in to overdrive - cleaning, mending, maintaining, cooking, preparing the yard for winter, bringing paperwork up to date - all sorts of tasks that kept our minds busy and needed to be done at some point anyway
We did the same, including a bit of grave shopping in the township cemetery four blocks from our house. We were just looking and didn't buy.
But I did stumble upon a sad story that I was previously unaware of that's related to some graves in that cemetery...one just never knows when your last day will be...
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@pique well that is distressing.
Some of those details I knew or was tracking, some were new, but reading it all in the same place is awful.
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@ShiroKuro it was that op ed that I think, subconsciously, prompted me to start this thread.
I am trying to walk a tightrope between being informed of the facts, so we can face them, and protecting my nervous system, which doesn't have a lot of reserves at this age, and after many traumas.
I've started doing Somatics, which is a form of exercise that helps you get out of your thinking brain and into your body and the present moment. Something I've never been great at. It really helps with everything, including horseback riding. Practicing full present moment awareness is something that horses do naturally. It can really refresh you and give you more energy reserves.
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Here's an article that is more hopeful. This is falling in line with our thinking about making a move to MA.
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I'm doing my best at "Grant me wisdom to know what I can control" and focus only on that! Most of the changes to our lives last time were emotional. Living in a big (mostly Blue) city, I expect there to be plenty of strife and sadness to go around as targeted "punishments" are enacted..
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I think it’s important to remember the threats and chaos from the previous Trump administration vs. what actually happened to average folks. Tariffs and the tax cut is all I remember.
These guys are not good at follow through.
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I'm in a deep blue state. People here are shell shocked. I doubt people are worried because of that privilege and other privileges.
My most direct concern is that one of my daughters might need an abortion. If medication abortion becomes illegal or there is a 15 week ban, I'd have to fly them to Europe for care, assuming that is not also illegal.
Regarding work, well . . . Use your imagination. I am afraid to say anything publicly. I do plan to stay, but I can imagine scenarios where I would have to quit. These scenarios are not outlandish.
I am not worried that federal workers will be fired en mass. You would just need one favorable ruling from one federal judge to get a nationwide injunction. And I think the biggest targets would be Education and EPA.
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@Cindysphinx re your comment about your daughter -- exactly. I am too old for it to be relevant for me, and I'm not a parent, but as a teacher, I care deeply about what happens to my students. Who are primarily 18022 years old, may get pregnant, may identify as LGBTQ... May not have papers. May have parents that don't have papers....
These I think are more immediate than the threats to higher ed, which I think are real but will be slower to take shape.
I am also deeply concerned about something like attempting to do away with the 22nd amendment....
That's where I hope @Steve-Miller
These guys are not good at follow through.
is right.
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@wtg You win the internet today. Grave shopping. We just looked. We didn't buy anything. Lol.
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Mutual funds do not have a great history of surviving crises. Thinking of moving funds to stocks.
I don't have a public profile and I don't go to gay bars anymore. I expect more violence against gays, but expect it against the
very visible. Thought about keeping a low profile, but I could hardly be more low profile.
Some asset values were going up very nicely. They settled back down. Commodity and cotton prices are down and, therefore, my income is down a considerable amount.
I expect Jimmy Carter level inflation, possibly higher. Don't want to be liquid. -
@CHAS okay color me clueless but aren't mutual funds often stocks? What kind of mutual funds are you talking about?
A few days ago Mr Pique told me he'd moved a large sum out of stocks and into cash. I chided him for trying to time the market. He said "it's going down." Well looky here, he was right.
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@Steve-Miller said in How do you think our lives will change...:
I think it’s important to remember the threats and chaos from the previous Trump administration vs. what actually happened to average folks. Tariffs and the tax cut is all I remember.
As far as a personal impact, I doubt a Trump administration will have much of an adverse affect on me.
The rest of the country and the world? I don't like what I see coming. And am trying to figure out how I can contribute to preventing what I think will be unhealthy changes for the world.
These guys are not good at follow through.
He stumbled into the presidency in 2016. I think it's "game on" this time around and the people surrounding him have agendas and now have the power to move forward to implement them.
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@pique There are many kinds of mutual funds. Stocks are one kind.
I try to avoid mutual funds. If I buy and hold an individual stock and its value increases over ten years, I will owe capital gains tax when I sell. No other taxes or admin costs.
Say I buy a successful mutual fund and hold for ten years. Each year, the manager buys and sells stocks within the portfolio. I owe taxes on my piece of the action each year, not just at the end. I think I also owe tax when I sell at the end. And there are administrative costs too.
That seemed to be the situation when I stopped buying mutual funds. There was one year in the 90s when our mutual funds threw off all of this taxable income. I was so annoyed that I now buy and hold individual stocks.
I still use mutual funds for retirement accounts because those don't have immediate tax consequences.
Everyone, please correct me if I'm wrong. I might be.
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I'd offer a detailed reply, but it's just too damned depressing. Suffice to say that we expect our lives to change dramatically, and we've had serious conversations about what the trigger would be for us leaving.
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Oh Dewey... no words.
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@Cindysphinx there are mutual funds that have extremely low fees. Vanguard offers them. Have a look. I would personally rather have a someone managing a portfolio or go with an index fund that tracks a certain segment of the market than pick individual stocks. But that's because I don't want to have to pay a lot of attention to it.
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@pique Understood. My undergrad degree was in finance, so used to know how to evaluate stocks. I'm a little rusty, but I don't mind it. When we have some money, I think about what companies have a good product or service. I check a few basic pieces of data, like price earnings, and I check various analysts outlooks and news reports, looking for trouble.
I don't buy anything I don't understand, so no crypto or gold bars. I stay away from anything trendy because trends come and go. Buy and hold strategy doesnt mix well with the latest flash in the pan. In a way, buying a few of your own stocks is kind of fun, kind of like going to Vegas, except you usually make money over time.
Some of my.picks have done super well, and others have cratered. But . . . No taxes and no fees.
Someday I will compare my picks with my retirement mutual funds. For now, I don't want to know.
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Berkshire Hathaway, the stock that's basically a mutual fund...
