I`m almost willing to bet money even nonparent will understand this

[kimba1]

http://shitmykidsruined.com/

 I say this because I have a nephew at 8 think hitting a piano with a hammer is a great idea.
he ran a $400 heating bill and doesn`t understand he`s not getting a play station -ever

[Xavier_Onassis]

A great website.

The worst thing my daughter ever did was to put soapsuds and green dye in a public fountain one Halloween with some other kids.

[kimba1]

thinking about it.
the one thing capitalist advance technology has taken advantage of cell charges from kids.

my new phone actually made flight mode easier to turn off, meaning I can never let him use my phone out of fear he`ll run up a big cost
he already ran up a $70 + charge on his mother`s phone.did you know you text nothing and it still be charged. this kids sent me 3 sound files without knowing what he was doing. all random playing on the phone.
I`m pretty sure this is not rare

we password protect our phone, but the problem is were old people with bad memories,so the password is easy to crack.
my dear neice cracked mine in 5 minutes.she actually said to my face that ain`t hard at all

[Xavier_Onassis]

The one thing that seems to have changed most for youngsters is the ability to yak with anyone, about anything at any time. Every time I go out, half the people are blabbering away on their cellphones. It is not hard to hear their conversations: mostly, they are gossiping and talking about things that could not be important to anyone.


In the 1980's, a couple of girl students at my college were complaining before class about how they were unable to get their cell phone bills below $300 a month. And this was for local calls. Then I went to the supermarket and a grotesquely obese woman with her head in a freezer was asking about what food to buy: she was paying the cellphone company because she was too lazy to scribble a simple shopping list.


 So I went home and invested $10,000 in the Montgomery Telecommunications Fund. In around a year, I had $23,000 in the account, and I took $10000 out and bought the car I have today. I still don't have a cellphone, because I don't need one. When the industry first started, they were diddling customers like crazy. Cellphone companies are still among the worst thieves in the consumer market, but they are better than they were at first.


The bad thing about cell phones is that there are a lot fewer public telephones available. I never used them much, and so far someone I know is always around with a cellphone. That has happened twice in the past three years.

[kimba1]

investing in telecom fund
very good call
it amazing how much investments makes total sense after the fact.

in a natural disaster people will be in a rude awakening when they find out thier cells don`t work.

payphone use has it own power system that bypass this . I know I went through the 89 earthquake and most of the phones still work.

I`m doubtful the cell repeaters uses power off the grid

[Xavier_Onassis]

The trouble with making a good call in the market is that what seems like a sure fire thing often isn't.

A week after the human genome project was completed, I invested in a medical genetic fund, one that had a geneticist as an adviser. It went up slightly, zigzagged all over the place, and when the adviser split, so did I. I lost 8% on that one.

When Mandela was released and the embargo on South Africa was lifted, I invested in a SA gold mining fund. It zoomed up 20% in a month, then slowly descended, and I got out with a 10% gain, which was not bad for a two month deal, but I expected a lot better. Gold, I learned, is not rock-solid, but squishy-soft: it zooms up and plummets for obscure reasons.


We Americans pay a LOT MORE for cellphones than in other countries. Texting obviously costs them less to provide, but they mostly charge extra for it. They don't do this outside the US. There are two incompatible cell systems in the US, one used by Verizon and the other is ATT, I think. There is no reason for this, other than greed. Service in Japan is 10 years head of service in the US, they said on the news last night.


Competition does not truly exist when most people are limited by the phones they have and those ghastly contracts. When I can get unlimited calls and texting and long distance in the US for $30 total, I will switch. Some companies advertise $39.99 and that is all, and when you check them out, it is not all: there are taxes and fees and other crap that jacks it up to $48.95.

[kimba1]

I think you did great with gold
any gain is a win my book.
knowing when to cashout is the more difficult skill

I made money with B of A but people keep telling me if I stayed an extra day I would made more.I just don`t think it`s worth the risk for those extra dollars.I`m not good enough to know when it`ll top out.and B of A did crash 2 days later.

shame I`m too chicken to shortsell. it`s pretty easy to know in december which company stock will tank in january.

when dell couldn`t ship my x-mas computer in time and it was delayed over a month. I knew the stock would fall.x-mas is the worst time for a business to screw up orders.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Here is my advice for doing fairly well in the stock market: subscribe to Hulbert's Financial Digest and use everything free that Morningstar has to offer. Figure out what your goals are and your tolerance for risk is, and subscribe to the best newsletter that has those goals and that tolerance, and follow it to the letter, especially about when and what to buy and when and what to sell. I invest only in no-load mutual funds and use No-Load Fundx, DAL investment Co, right there in SF. I am pretty happy with the results most of the time. They almost always beat the S&P 500 and by enough that the few times they have been behind, it makes up for it. Any good newsletter will pay for itself.

I think they will send you a free copy if you ask for one.

[kimba1]

thanks I`ve use morningstar before it`s very useful. made a few bucks on singer because of it.

I find it quite strange how the general  population assume it`s more complex than it is.

meaning when I first got morningstar people refuse to read my copy thinking it`s over thier head.

[Xavier_Onassis]

when I first got morningstar people refuse to read my copy thinking it`s over thier head.

================================
It is probable that it WAS over their heads. Morningstar does a good job explaining stocks, bonds and mutual funds, but there are a lot of people who have such an aversion to math that they actually mistrust numbers and perhaps even hate them. I think I had ONE decent math teacher in high school and college. By decent, I mean someone who was capable of explaining math in a way that was logical. Teachers tended to be people who did not seem to really understand math themselves, and were repeating stuff from books they did not really understand, or math geeks who could not explain a five stage process in more than three stages. They assumed that what they left out was obvious. 

[kimba1]

I just simply like math. I don`t think I`m good at it,but I enjoy the solving process.
I just can`t understand people needing a calculator to figure 3% interest from $10,000

[Xavier_Onassis]

I just can`t understand people needing a calculator to figure 3% interest from $10,000
====================================================================
They see the word "interest" and the % sign and it is as though they were asked, "What is 13/64ths of 2/3rds?" or how to pronounce a five-syllable word in another language.


This could be due to some sort of inherited inability, but mostly, it is just fear of numbers and any mathematical term.


At the start of every new semester, the truly awful students used to come in and ask me to change their grades. I tell them I will if I made a mistake.


So I read them the scores and have them add them up. At the end, typically, I will say "what did you get?" they say .47. I say, when you multiply by 100, that gives the percent, or parts per hundred. You have 47%, passing is 60% as it says in the course syllabus.


I ask them if they understand the meaning of the word "percent" so they can calculate grades better in the future. It is very rare if they want an explanation.



Then I get questions about "extra credit", and how it is that another student, who also attended rarely and did not know anything also got an F. I explain that in reality, they got a G, and the really poor student got a J, but I was required to give no grades lower than an F.

I point out that the Fat Lady has sung her last, and the curtain has descended. I suggest that the next time, they buy the book and actually use it.

I do not have to do this anymore. That is why I enjoy retirement.


The reason students come in at the end of the semester and ask to change grades is because they got away with this in high school, and even some college professors would change grades. I always put in the syllabus I WILL NOT CHANGE GRADES UNLESS I SOMEHOW MADE AN ERROR IN CALCULATING YOUR GRADE. But, of course, they are really awful students and have not read the syllabus.

[kimba1]

percentages gives me the willies

for the reason some people don`t have much of a grasp of it. a coworker I gave a powershot drink said he took a quarter and i said back "you took 25%?" he didn`t understand what i said.
I didn`t know people can`t convert simple fractions to percentages.
shudder.

I truely believe the bell curve should not be used in schools, but it`s quite applicable in observation of the general population.

[Plane]

 I WILL NOT CHANGE GRADES UNLESS I SOMEHOW MADE AN ERROR IN CALCULATING YOUR GRADE. But, of course, they are really awful students and have not read the syllabus.

XO , how often did you have a serious or eager student who really learned your subject well?