Friday, September 28, 2012
A Verizon Service Representative will be with you shortly. Thank you.
Leo(15:25:19): Technical support :1-800-VERIZON (1-800-837-4966)
You(15:47:41): THE 800 NUMBER WILL NOT PICK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You(15:57:03): Please answer my question......................
Friday, September 14, 2012
#AreYouBetterOff - Why, Yes!
#AreYouBetterOff Since '09: I have 2x in savings and investments, I started a small biz, got married, bought a house..WTF more do I want?
I tweeted this on September 1, 2012 to do my part to help...correct...the #GOP's mistaken, hateful, purchased hashtag #areyoubetteroff. It has been retweeted and favorited on Twitter dozens of times. It has also received many many Mentions and Direct Message responses. Many have been favorable, and with many...hilarity has ensued.
Listen, I was born the son of a union working man and a farmgirl. We never wanted for food, shelter, or healthcare. We never had the nicest car or the biggest TV, but my folks were able to buy me a guitar, save for my college education, and give me a comfortable life.
Nothing in this tweet is a lie. I've been through careers, jobs, and just-getting-by in my life. I have two sons and I have tried to make sure they have had the opportunity I had. I've been divorced, but I never gave up on the work it takes to build a good relationship.
About half of us Americans own stocks - much in 401(k)s or other individual investments. A generation (or two) ago, our employer took care of this as a pension, and anything extra the average person had earned us 5% or-so in savings interest. Now, it's stocks, which are essentially a losing proposition for a buy-and-hold family investor, whether in mutual funds or individual stocks. Investments I got when my marriage ended in '97 halved, and now are valued at a little more than then (not accounting for inflation...). I have continued to nickel and dime my investments, even through the recession, and my employer finally saw the light, started a 401(k) a few years ago, and I have been both aggressively funding this from my paycheck and lucky in what I choose, so my total investments, and what I've been able to put away for emergencies (earning 0.00001% or whatever) is now double what I had four years ago.
Starting 5 years ago or-so, I started making plans to get back into music and to start a small product distribution company. My needs were light and my sons would soon be leaving the nest. That time, of course was 2008, so my plans to make money from these pursuits had to be re-evaluated (but not dashed). I did start the small business, with plans to grow it over time instead of a big launch that wouldn't have been possible as the economy tanked. The biz provides slow and steady monthly income while my day job gives me less and less opportunity.
I met a wonderful woman, a single mom of a boy with high-functioning Autism, and finally last year we tied the knot. We pooled our resources, and figured out a way to buy a small house in a good neighborhood, walking distance to my step-son's school. It's cheaper than renting, even without the mortgage deduction and other benefits. Home values have already been inching up, so we actually have some equity.
Some have noted that my response is selfish. Yes. And the question is selfish. As the dust settles on my new life and house, we are starting to give back what we can, a pittance, really, to help those who do not have what we have.
About half of us Americans own stocks - much in 401(k)s or other individual investments. A generation (or two) ago, our employer took care of this as a pension, and anything extra the average person had earned us 5% or-so in savings interest. Now, it's stocks, which are essentially a losing proposition for a buy-and-hold family investor, whether in mutual funds or individual stocks. Investments I got when my marriage ended in '97 halved, and now are valued at a little more than then (not accounting for inflation...). I have continued to nickel and dime my investments, even through the recession, and my employer finally saw the light, started a 401(k) a few years ago, and I have been both aggressively funding this from my paycheck and lucky in what I choose, so my total investments, and what I've been able to put away for emergencies (earning 0.00001% or whatever) is now double what I had four years ago.
Starting 5 years ago or-so, I started making plans to get back into music and to start a small product distribution company. My needs were light and my sons would soon be leaving the nest. That time, of course was 2008, so my plans to make money from these pursuits had to be re-evaluated (but not dashed). I did start the small business, with plans to grow it over time instead of a big launch that wouldn't have been possible as the economy tanked. The biz provides slow and steady monthly income while my day job gives me less and less opportunity.
I met a wonderful woman, a single mom of a boy with high-functioning Autism, and finally last year we tied the knot. We pooled our resources, and figured out a way to buy a small house in a good neighborhood, walking distance to my step-son's school. It's cheaper than renting, even without the mortgage deduction and other benefits. Home values have already been inching up, so we actually have some equity.
Some have noted that my response is selfish. Yes. And the question is selfish. As the dust settles on my new life and house, we are starting to give back what we can, a pittance, really, to help those who do not have what we have.
#WeBuiltThis Well, yes. My late father didn't have money (what he did, my mother is living very comfortably on), and all my life, I have worked in society, not against it, to grow my life. My college education was a combination of taxpayer-guaranteed loans, scholarships, work, and my parents' savings. The stability a Union job gave my Dad gave me Hope. I saw that work, and working together, is a way to take you where you want to go in life, with luck.
If you say that you have built a job, business, life, or family solely by your hard work and ingenuity, you are just wrong and clueless. Hubris is not an attractive characteristic. We band together. We humans always have. Subsistence hunter-gatherers in the bush unite in tribes to survive, and to prosper in some cases. We united to defeat the British a few centuries ago. They would have eventually tossed us, but we banded together to fight for our independence. It wasn't just a musket, but our muskets in a militia. It wasn't just rogue revolutionaries, it was the people who stayed behind to farm, and tend to houses and families, working with their neighbors to build the nation.
Am I better off? Yes, and even if you are a billionaire, so are you.
If you say that you have built a job, business, life, or family solely by your hard work and ingenuity, you are just wrong and clueless. Hubris is not an attractive characteristic. We band together. We humans always have. Subsistence hunter-gatherers in the bush unite in tribes to survive, and to prosper in some cases. We united to defeat the British a few centuries ago. They would have eventually tossed us, but we banded together to fight for our independence. It wasn't just a musket, but our muskets in a militia. It wasn't just rogue revolutionaries, it was the people who stayed behind to farm, and tend to houses and families, working with their neighbors to build the nation.
Am I better off? Yes, and even if you are a billionaire, so are you.
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Wow, Republicans...
Your parents sure were pathetic losers. No wonder their children grew up to be what they are.
I'll tell you something...my mother grew up on a farm in a small midwestern state. She worked every day, didn't have much, but never wanted for the basics. As a teenager, she worked in a small restaurant started by her older sister, saving for college. She met my father as she worked there slingin' hash.
My Dad was a Navy vet, back from WWII, serving on Guam in the waning days. He got electronics training through the GI Bill, a job at the Phone Company, and set his sights on this cute young brunette.
They married. Had a son (my brother), then another (me). Bought a little old house, within walking distance of work and schools. Had no problem paying for medical care. Saved for a modest vacation every year, usually driving to beautiful places around the Midwest and Eastern part of our great country, staying in cheap motels, eating affordable food. Put aside money so the kids could go to college. Put aside money and worked second jobs, planned for retirement.
Do you think a heroic, to this crop of Republicans, life like this would have made them choose the Republican Party of clawing your way to the top? My dad probably voted for Nixon, but changed his allegiance Eugene McCarthy subsequently. Why? My dad was a Union man. Working for Ma Bell, how else was one family man to have a voice against this monopoly? How else would he have been able to retire on a pension (that is still supporting my mother, by the way)? How else could he have medical and dental care for this little family? Was he going to entrepreneur his way to start a competing phone company? My mother's family had always been members of the Democratic Party, even though her parents were conservative, church going farm folk (I never heard Grandpa or Grandma say anything but a loving word about anyone - they walked the walk).
Watch this video montage:
NBCNews.com video: Montage: RNC speakers talk about money struggles:
Do you believe these stories? Do you think that everyone but them got where they are through handouts, the government, and the work of others? Do you think Barack Obama personally had destroyed centuries of self-determination in the US and replaced it with a Marxist/Socialist/Communist redistributive regime?
Instead of choosing a life of lobbyist and taxpayer largess, my parents chose to live a life of work and giving. Instead of being able to sell stocks to pay for Harvard, they were able to use arguably the most beneficial government program ever enacted, the GI Bill, to set the stage for generations to come. Instead of relying on decades-old stories of your parents' self reliance to prop up your decades-long career of leeching off taxpayers and the corporate teat, my family lived their version of the American dream.
I'll tell you something...my mother grew up on a farm in a small midwestern state. She worked every day, didn't have much, but never wanted for the basics. As a teenager, she worked in a small restaurant started by her older sister, saving for college. She met my father as she worked there slingin' hash.
My Dad was a Navy vet, back from WWII, serving on Guam in the waning days. He got electronics training through the GI Bill, a job at the Phone Company, and set his sights on this cute young brunette.
They married. Had a son (my brother), then another (me). Bought a little old house, within walking distance of work and schools. Had no problem paying for medical care. Saved for a modest vacation every year, usually driving to beautiful places around the Midwest and Eastern part of our great country, staying in cheap motels, eating affordable food. Put aside money so the kids could go to college. Put aside money and worked second jobs, planned for retirement.
Do you think a heroic, to this crop of Republicans, life like this would have made them choose the Republican Party of clawing your way to the top? My dad probably voted for Nixon, but changed his allegiance Eugene McCarthy subsequently. Why? My dad was a Union man. Working for Ma Bell, how else was one family man to have a voice against this monopoly? How else would he have been able to retire on a pension (that is still supporting my mother, by the way)? How else could he have medical and dental care for this little family? Was he going to entrepreneur his way to start a competing phone company? My mother's family had always been members of the Democratic Party, even though her parents were conservative, church going farm folk (I never heard Grandpa or Grandma say anything but a loving word about anyone - they walked the walk).
Watch this video montage:
NBCNews.com video: Montage: RNC speakers talk about money struggles:
Do you believe these stories? Do you think that everyone but them got where they are through handouts, the government, and the work of others? Do you think Barack Obama personally had destroyed centuries of self-determination in the US and replaced it with a Marxist/Socialist/Communist redistributive regime?
Instead of choosing a life of lobbyist and taxpayer largess, my parents chose to live a life of work and giving. Instead of being able to sell stocks to pay for Harvard, they were able to use arguably the most beneficial government program ever enacted, the GI Bill, to set the stage for generations to come. Instead of relying on decades-old stories of your parents' self reliance to prop up your decades-long career of leeching off taxpayers and the corporate teat, my family lived their version of the American dream.
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