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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • or that mainstream (S&P, Nasdaq) financial investments were no longer sound, what can one do to prepare for “the worst”?

    Investors that factor in world markets would probably do okay as long as you’re talking just U.S. economic troubles. e.g. right now VT (total world stock ETF) is weighted 64.70% U.S. market due to market strength. So in theory if the U.S. tanked and other countries have better markets for investing then the weights would shift to the other side and maybe being closer to 30% U.S. vs rest of the world’s markets weighted towards 70%.


  • If you’re not seeing anything of concern in the SMART info then there’s little to worry about. You could install/run smartctl from the command line, or for something with a gui try gsmartcontrol / any other app that can interact with your hard drive diagnostics.

    Hard drives can last a long time, as a general rule if your hard drive made it through its first 1-2 years without issue then there’s a good chance it’ll keep chugging along for years. I personally haven’t found that hard drives consistently die in 5-7 years, not too sure where you got that info from.

    In any case backups are your friend, not just in case the hard drive dies but there’s always the possibility that your entire OS blows up somehow or you get a bad case of malware.






  • Could you bear to wait eight more years for the 100%? You’ve already waited 62 years! What’s 8 more?

    It’s easy to think that way in your younger years. That’s a much more difficult request for people actually in their 60’s, lots of people make it to that age with broken down bodies, various illnesses/prescriptions/whatnot & probably can’t see themselves continuing to do the work thing throughout their 60’s let alone 70.

    There’s also the problem of holding down a job at that age, ageism exists in a lot of industries so a lot of these people are first in line for layoffs / taking a massive pay cut from their earlier jobs vs being a Walmart greeter or just being unemployed.

    But sure… in theory if you manage to stay fit & healthy well into your old age & are able to hold onto your normal job then sure working into your 70’s or more could be plausible. People probably worry less about that stuff once they’re higher up on the corporate ladder - though at that point they should already have fat 401K plans & other investments so the social security aspect becomes less relevant.



  • The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit movies. If I could manage it usually would head up to the theater to re-watch every 1-2 weeks.

    They were all movies released in December. I still distinctly remember heading up to the IMAX in Manhattan late night after work so the movie would finish up around midnight(?). After watching these movies I’d walk out of the theater into a cold and snowy NYC. Felt a bit surreal, especially after the last 2 Hobbit movies where most of the movies were centered around cold climates.