The right price is the market price. There are multiple insurance providers and sufficient competition. And certainly the time to raise the limits is when companies are leaving the state?
I took Ambien for one of my sleep studies and I had sleep paralysis and nightmares (bordering on hallucinations because I swear I was awake or at least in a lucid state). That was my first and last time doing Ambien.
Best post I've read on the subject. As Teddy Roosevelt said, there should be no such thing as a fifty-fifty American - and thank you for holding this view and for defending American culture, it means a lot. I'm not a fan of straight up multiculturalism (I don't think it works, but some elements can be absorbed), but multiracial nationalism can absolutely work and that's what is missing IMO.
Glad to know other people feel this way. My experience has been that there are a lot more of us out there than it feels, but you only find that our when you start speaking up about it.
One of my biggest observations in life is that many discussions that seem dichotomous are not. Most everything exists on a spectrum.
One of the biggest one is pro-choice vs pro-life. My experience has been that there is a very very very tiny minority that is absolutely pro-life and an even tinier minority that is pro-choice. The vast majority are in the it depends on time and gestation. If you ask the right questions of someone, you find out that they are pro-choice but feel that abortion in the 8th month is wrong. Likewise, when you ask the right questions, may pro-life people are okay with abortion like the morning after pill to like up to a month or two. What I've learned is that we've been conditioned to think we all fall into one camp or another, but the truth is most are in the same camp but just disagree on when is okay within that very wide 9-month span.
Likewise, the same goes for the debate about immigration. There's this push to force everyone to fall into the camp of 100% for immigration no matter what or no immigration whatsoever.
The truth is that most folks are actually simultaneously pro-immigration and anti-immigration. Almost everyone feels like there is some common culture. You need to have it if you want any semblance of cooperation, but even the most ardent anti-immigration person agrees that there are folks work bringing into the tribe.
There is no magic dirt. Demographics are destiny and you really can't reverse the damage from an immigration policy that makes no attempt to discern between folks you should and should not allow in. It's possible to take a cautious approach and increase it later if proven to be too conservative. The reverse however is very very messy.
If you haven't seen it yet, you should check out Sam Hyde's ~45 minute video message to Elon Musk. Absolutely amazing summary of the state of things.
This happened to me sometime between my first and second kids (last year or so). It was some mix of changing priorities, less time, starting to feel my age, work becoming more difficult, company cultural changes, etc. I think I've stuck a decent balance of saving and living, but man does life come at you fast. Went from happily working 60-80 hours (including some side projects) to struggling to work 40 hours. Reminds me of how one day something switched and I just couldn't drink anymore. Age is probably the biggest factor, and I can't imagine what this is going to be like in my 50s (just turned 40).
You do know there are thousands of stocks right. how many people dump their entire savings into one stock. 20 years ago you wouldn't have known apple was going on to do so well. If people did know it would have been bid up in price at the time
And a lot of the Apple run-up happened relatively late in the game. Don't get me wrong. Apple--and what I was able to do with the money--was good to me. But so was a late 2010s Microsoft purchase and I don't think a lot of people are highlighting Microsoft as a stock they missed out on during the last 10 years.
I ditched large cap international because of the example of the Japanese stock market, where from 1990 - 2019 the Japanese market as a whole stagnated but Japanese small cap value stocks delivered between 5.4% and 8% annualized depending on whose index you're using.
https://www.pwlcapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Five-F... (Page 19)
Given population demographics, I see most of Europe and developed Asia going the way of Japan and am betting their equity markets will show similar characteristics. Never mind that even during good times there has been a historical small-cap value premium in most of those regions, although not as pronounced as in the US.
Ditching emerging markets is part practical part political. The practical aspect is most emerging market funds have a sizeable allocation to Chinese stocks. Chinese stocks have failed to produce reliable returns and are incredibly distorted by the Chinese government picking winners and losers, sometimes at gunpoint. I don't want to bet my financial future on how Xi feels about his breakfast on any given morning. Additionally, China is a geopolitical adversary. Yes it's impossible to completely cut them out of one's supply chain, but I can avoid directly boosting their financial markets.
As for the few emerging markets funds that don't include China, they include other nations such as Saudi Arabia that I'm hesitant to actively invest in for political reasons. I also think emerging markets in general are going to get screwed for the next few decades as globalization declines, climate change becomes more impactful, and the world generally becomes more dangerous and chaotic. There may be money to be made in EM, but I doubt it will be consistent or as simple as investing in an EM index fund.
