Lion ponderings

  Feel the pain of 30 million rejections.  Truth be told, polyamory & cohabiting replaced most of that.  The percentage of truly single men is much higher in silicon valley.  60% is a more likely number here.    ------------------------------ As expected, the delayed trades after Friday's inflation miss executed over the next 2 days & then we were down 3% from the all time high in August. Then the fall accelerated after the interest rate hike. Now they're saying to expect 4% by year's end.  It could be more jawboning to lower long term yields.       The retiretube permabulls of the last 5 years are now bailing out of the S&P index fund because for the 1st time in 20 years they can get a bigger return from bonds than stonks.  The Dave Ramsey plan just about died in as much time as it grew. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------  The day job completed a long awaited...

 Running some spreadsheets, with 3% interest, no inflation, & no stonk market gains for 20 years, the retirement fund would drop by 25%.  The cash would drop by 1/2.  We all know over 20 years, interest rates are headed down & stonks are headed sideways or up.  3% & a negative stonk market seems plausible for at least the 1st 10 years.  Applying very conservative 3.5% inflation as a renter, the retirement fund would drop by 50% & the cash would be gone in 20 years. The stonk segment needs to average 4% growth for the portfolio to come out flat in 20 years.  There could be no transfers to the cash segment. Rebalancing to keep the cash constant would drain the stonk segment by 1/5, assuming the stonk went up 4% every year.  The stonk now has to go up 5% every year to break even.  Definitely better to not rebalance, but that would leave a 100% stonk weighting in 20 years.  10% annual stronk growth would yield the dream, etern...

 Lions were around to see fixed income give way to house flipping as a path to wealth after 2004.  Then they saw house flipping give way to rental properties after 2008.  Then they saw rental properties give way to cryptocurrency after 2016.  Then they saw crypto currency give way to 100% index fund portfolios after 2020.  Now, the pendulum is undeniably swinging back to fixed income. In the current stonk market with a 50/50 allocation, lions would run out of money without working.  A 100% fixed income would be so dramatically improved, it would provide enough to stay in Calif* & leave a small amount left over.  Move to FL & have a lot left over.  A lot of gootubers are making the same discovery. Previous gains from stonk came manely from buying dips rather than static positions.  The 50/50 allocation doesn't allow buying any more dips.  Most gootubers bought all at once in 2022, when 100% index funds hit the news.  The...

 Besides senioritis, other trends from college have returned after 50.  Lions noted working part time instead of borrowing was what the over achievers did in college & the path to success.  Working part time after retirement is now being seen as a similar path to success, as if our college phase was starting over again.   The abundance of gootubers worth many millions yet continuing to work after retirement was the 1st big sign that the part time working, college over achievers were coming back for retirement.  Instead of uploading copyrighted music & producing value, they choose to jump all the hoops for monetization, produce rehashed click bait, comply with AI art requirements.  It definitely feels like the desire for a higher standard of living is going to create the same hierarchy of over achievers & slackers in retirement as college.  Working in retirement is going to be a new rite of passage.  At the same time, in the l...

Baby it's clear outside   Introducing the negative split 1000m. Just kicking the last 100m up a notch. Been rapidly getting more intense since daily stretches of the hamstring tendons & daily knee activations. Vastly more intense than it was before the last marathon, but much less distance. Stretching the tendon just to the point of triggering it seemed to really boost the recovery.   Helas, 18.7 miles the next day ended in hamstring cramp. It responded briefly to electrolyte drink, but it took a lot of electrolyte drink to massage it all the way home.  Stretching the hamstring while standing seemed to keep it alive. It seemed to originate in the tendon. At least the lion kingdom aligned the end with the supplies, based on prior knowledge. 18 has consistently been the bingo point, no matter the pace, the nutrients, or the weather.    That yielded the final photos of the theater demolition. Noted what appeared to be the curtain in the rubble. 1 of th...

https://code.videolan.org/videolan/dav1d  There is finally a software decoder for AV1, after many years of only hardware decoding.  It's very difficult to compile, requiring yet another large build system, specific versions of nasm, yasm.  It got stuck on some kind of checkasm.asm file.  Upgrading nasm & yasm to the latest versions, deleting & recreating the build directory got it to compile.   Av1d seems to be funded by alphabet corporation which requires them to use no less than a certain number of academic dependencies.   ffmpeg has simply https://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html#dav1d  --enable-libdav1d     It requires package_cfg so you have to run 'ninja install;ldconfig' in dav1d-master/build.  There's no local library option.  The latest dav1d actually compiled with ffmpeg 5, but couldn't output any frames to Cinelerra.  The standalone ffmpeg transcoded properly.  It's proven easier to use ffmpe...

 Lions always assumed the father in Cats In The Cradle-Harry Chapin ended up never having any contact with his son, ever since 1st discovering the lyrics in 2016.  It was 1 of those 1st songs lions heard over & over on AM radio without ever noticing the lyrics.   Finally reviewed the abundant documentation on it & the internet assured us the father did have contact with the son but it represented the growing latchkey kid movement of the 1970's, what became normal in the 80's.  It's certainly normal in a divorce for the father to disappear completely.  The Cats In The Cradle chorus was intended to keep it from becoming too depressing.  Young lion thought it was 2 gangsters saying "we'll get together then, man". It made lions ponder whether staying out west just to get the rule of 55 might be too greedy, especially if they hit the bingo point.  The rule of 55 would provide only 4 years of lower taxes & won't amount to...

 15 deg cooler, proper glucose supplements, & things went a bit better than 6 days ago.  If only it could have been due to training. The mounting tendinitis of old age definitely makes it like pushing on a string.  It's causing earlier onset of sciatica.  Started stretching the offending tendon after 6 months for shits & giggles.  They traditionally don't recommend stretching a hamstring tendon.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The current prime demographic is going to outlive the lion kingdom.  It's surprising to find Alanis Morisette is going to outlive the lion kingdom.  Let that sink in. Got some recommendations about parent vs kid wealth & boomers vs genX again.   Gootubers are pessamistic about gen X because #1 engagement but also because the only ones currently online came from the top of the baby boomer wealth.  Chances are they're not doing as well as the top ...

    Who knew SC had higher income tax below $40k than Calif* & SC has higher sales tax than Calif* did 30 years ago.  Lions are dropping to 8% before they leave Calif*.  They already dropped into lower social security tax brackets.  A lion would be better off renting in Palm Springs than a great many other states.  Also, if there were no parents, the entire country was on the table & finances weren't as tight, lions still ponder if they would move to FL.  Influencers seem happy in the rainy northwest, but lions aren't convinced it's real.  Dave Plummer is an indoor guy with 12000 sq ft.  Ray Delahanty travels more often than he's in Portland.  Happy on Monday &  Ms Gen Xodus are definitely indoor women.  Lions were indoor animals 40 years ago. The rainy northwest might have worked for 10 year old lions & created a lot of warm fuzzy memories, but there's no going back.  Lions have to bring back food & ex...

Continuing the lion kingdom's real estate saga  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/102857268473278281/1225684921613193845   Finally signed the contract disposing of the lion kingdom's land of 20 years.  That left no land, no equity, & no tax deduction.  At least there will be a small payment in 1 year.  There is an option to repay all the payments, fees, & exit from the deal, but the buyer can collect additional money for damages.  He's going to invest a lot on improvements.  Suspect by the time lions retire, the cost of exiting the contract will  be greater than any alternative .  There's another chance he won't really have the money & will exit on his own.  He is deferring the payments as long as possible. There were still ideas for building a man cave but lions don't envision ever living there now or finding another buyer.  Someone else could buy the property by buying out the contract, but they'd have to pay...

  Top tier compensation makes you feel small.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VwEOyAcvJM    He has to contend with stack ranking & commuting but he's paying $400 more rent for a lot more space in Union City.     No view, but  a kitchen.      His commute is from Union City to Menlo Park, probably a long combination of BARF & company shuttle. Worth $400k by age 24, making $20k/month, because he had exceptional academics, Magna Cum Laude at UC Riverside. He front loads all his 401k contributions like everyone else but has another $70k in roth 401k benefits.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondwzeng/  https://www.youtube.com/@raymondwzeng/videos He joined face/meta/ai/whatever 1 year before that video & has survived every round of layoffs since then.  Outside work, he gets the hell away from programming & sews clothing.  His expectation of retirement by age 40 with over $6M resemble...

The combination of losing 401k catchup contributions & not getting any raises has led to 1/2 of the lion kingdom's income now going to the 401k.  Lions don't take home a paycheck until June.  There's a growing chance lions may have to cut back on deferred compensation in order to bridge the next 4 years & have some of the roth conversions go directly to expenses.  Such is the price of moving large sums of the taxable cash to stonk to avoid taxes. The 401k has really lousy returns compared to the IRAs, but nothing is going to see significant gains in 4 years.  At the same time, there's been enough passive income to offset the paychecks, which creates a huge tax advantage.  As long as passive income can replace the paychecks, it's hard to reduce the deferments. It felt good to meet expenses without selling any stonk, but if we're going to be shifting assets around to optimize taxes, there has to be some stonk selling & payment for capital gains if the ...