The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread 36

[Cutlass]

How much do you trust social security's solvency for someone under 40? When I include my social security benefit in any retirement calculator I blow my goals out of the water, but social security makes up about a third of my projected retirement income. Not sure if I should be leaning on it that much or if that's fine.

This is a political question, and not an economic one. If Republicans continue to win elections over the next 30 years at the rate that they have won them over the past 30 years, then the retirement age will be raised, and benefits will be cut. You won't be able to rely on the US government for anything. If they start losing elections enough for the political center to swing back as far left as it was when Eisenhower was president, then Social Security is safe.

 

[civvver]

Eliminating SS would be a significant change and most people and most of Congress don't want to go there. When Congress has made changes in the past they generally don't touch those currently getting benefits, only future benefits. If the past is an indicator, you can expect a later retirement age to get full benefits and perhaps lower benefits overall. SS income is already taxed. When I added my wife's SS amount for 2018 ($13,000+), our taxes went up about $1,000. That is about a 7.5% rate.

What are you using as your monthly amount from SS? Do SS tables give you a number for your current age projected into the future? SS is like a shadow portfolio that throws off X dollars a month and one that you have no access to the principle.

You can get a projection based on today's dollars on the SS website. I max it which is like $2900 a month. If I add a 50% spousal benefit my retirement shoots up really high. Idk how spousal works, she has some credits but hasn't worked since we had kids 6 years ago. Do you get whichever is greater?

This is a political question, and not an economic one. If Republicans continue to win elections over the next 30 years at the rate that they have won them over the past 30 years, then the retirement age will be raised, and benefits will be cut. You won't be able to rely on the US government for anything. If they start losing elections enough for the political center to swing back as far left as it was when Eisenhower was president, then Social Security is safe.

I'm sure the age will go up to 68 or 69 at some point in my lifetime. People live so much longer now, it kind of has to, and by the time I retire in 2050 or so I'll be life expectancy will be high 80s. I don't think they'll cut the benefits so much as tax more income. They should just remove the caps on it, tax all earned income and consider taxing capital gains if needed.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You can get a projection based on today's dollars on the SS website. I max it which is like $2900 a month. If I add a 50% spousal benefit my retirement shoots up really high. Idk how spousal works, she has some credits but hasn't worked since we had kids 6 years ago. Do you get whichever is greater?

I'm sure the age will go up to 68 or 69 at some point in my lifetime. People live so much longer now, it kind of has to, and by the time I retire in 2050 or so I'll be life expectancy will be high 80s. I don't think they'll cut the benefits so much as tax more income. They should just remove the caps on it, tax all earned income and consider taxing capital gains if needed.

Right now your spouse gets to choose which amount she wants to get. She can then change it later. Once you retire you can earn as much extra money as you want without affecting your SS payments.

http://socialsecurityhelps.com/spou...spousal benefits&utm_content=spousal-benefits

$35,000 in SS is like having a portfolio of over $800,000 from which you can draw 4% from annually. Your wife's SS only makes that better. If you have your own fixed value portfolio of $500,000 that you drain at a 4% rate, you get another $20,000 per year. If you then retire without a mortgage or other debt, you just have to decide if you can live off $60-70,000 a year.

 

[Samson]

How much do you trust social security's solvency for someone under 40? When I include my social security benefit in any retirement calculator I blow my goals out of the water, but social security makes up about a third of my projected retirement income. Not sure if I should be leaning on it that much or if that's fine.

My point of view is "Do you want to rely on a pyramid scheme to fund my retirement?" and go from there.

 

[civvver]

Right now your spouse gets to choose which amount she wants to get. She can then change it later. Once you retire you can earn as much extra money as you want without affecting your SS payments.

http://socialsecurityhelps.com/spousal-benefits/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=socialsecurityhelps.com&utm_term=ssi spousal benefits&utm_content=spousal-benefits

$35,000 in SS is like having a portfolio of over $800,000 from which you can draw 4% from annually. Your wife's SS only makes that better. If you have your own fixed value portfolio of $500,000 that you drain at a 4% rate, you get another $20,000 per year. If you then retire without a mortgage or other debt, you just have to decide if you can live off $60-70,000 a year.

I'll have way more than that, but you have to adjust for inflation. Remember we're talking today's dollars, so really in ~30 years you're going to need 2 to 2.5 times that amount. 20k today will be like 40-50k in 30 years.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'll have way more than that, but you have to adjust for inflation. Remember we're talking today's dollars, so really in ~30 years you're going to need 2 to 2.5 times that amount. 20k today will be like 40-50k in 30 years.

Yes, to simplify things I've ignored inflation and other dynamics like growth of your portfolio. The key is to start saving as young as you you can and let time and compounding do much of the work. Saving is hard work, especially if you have a family.

 

[rah]

And if your company offers any type of matching on 401ks, to at least contribute enough to maximize the match.
In the old days the standard was match 1 for 1 up to 5 % but these days some companies are only matching half, which sucks.

 

[civvver]

And if your company offers any type of matching on 401ks, to at least contribute enough to maximize the match.
In the old days the standard was match 1 for 1 up to 5 % but these days some companies are only matching half, which sucks.

That's what I do, only enough to max the match. They match 1 for 1 up to 3, then half for next 3, so I put in 6% and they match 4.5% for a total of 10.5. I'd like to up it a few more points but I'm also saving for kids college in 529 plans and paying off some credit cards. Bah life is just expensive.

 

[rah]

Sounds like sound decisions to me. For me the most important was getting off the vicious Credit Card cycle. It was clear sailing after that.

 

[civvver]

When we built our house we put our landscaping, window treatments, some furniture, water softener, radon mitigation system, stuff like that, on 0% credit cards. I thought the 20 month intro offer would be enough time to pay it off but nope lol. I'm on my second 20 month offer now. Such is life. I can't complain too much, it's my own fault for not properly budgeting.

 

[rah]

Life does get in the way. Hope you have no other issues that slow it down.

 

[Samez]

What is a radon mitigation system?
I am aware that there are several sources of natural radon in a house like stones and concrete.
Here we just open the windows to get fresh air in and the stale air out, as it is also necessary for humidity control.
Is it used in zero emission homes (low energy) due to the limits to air ventilation or what is the concept behind it?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Radon mitigation depends upon how the house is built. Houses on slabs have to be treated differently than those with basements or crawl spaces. You have to determine where the gas is accumulating and then vent that to the outside.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

(sidenote: a homeowners' association can legally order people to have a flowerbed? In the land of the free?)

They can legally order just about anything, no matter how unreasonable, unless it's extremely illegal. And even then it's hard to get it stopped, fixed, and the perpetrators dealt with.

One of my lottery fantasies is to own an apartment building that mandates that all tenants must have a cat (with proper checks to make sure they're properly cared for, of course).

Yes, well… here I've seen a marked rise in the proportion of apartments and houses owned by individual landlords, but an actual legally incorporated company dedicated to owning residential real estate is pracically non-existent.

The company that owns the building I live in has buildings all across Canada. That's why the people staffing the 24-hour call centre have to be bilingual. You never know when your after-hours call about plumbing or some security matter could get re-routed to a call centre in Quebec. How that works is the Quebec agent would email the on-call staff here in Red Deer (or vicinity; one time the after-hours maintenance guy who came here had to come in from Innisfail and was quite peeved about it). It gets even more bizarre if said on-call person happens to be the guy who lives on the floor above me.

My dad is allergic to shellfish like that. Can't eat it, can't eat anything that's been prepared with it, can't eat anything that's been prepared in a place that touched it without being washed. This is why I never had lobster, shrimp, or any other shellfish growing up.

Have you tried any of them since then? It would be a shame to miss out on them.

I seem to have lost a word.

Isn't there a word for sports cars and the like that captures that they are high-maintenance because they are high-performance? They need lots of fine-tuning to keep them operating at their peak, but the owners bother with doing that fine tuning because the peak performance is worth it.

It's not finicky, but like finicky, I think the word in question can be applied to people as well as machines, i.e. that when you call a car this word, you're personifying the car.

Persnickety.

Do people prefer lots of smaller gifts or one large gift?

As Synsensa says, "Yes."

Actually, it depends on the person and situation. With a lot of small gifts, there's a greater chance of there being one that the recipient likes. But a bigger one could be something they've been wanting but can't afford themselves.

I legitimately have something planned as a gift for CFC but it depends on a particular rocket launching in the future. It's beginning to look uncertain that this particular rocket will ever launch so I am unsure I'll get to give my gift. That I'm even mentioning it is a sign that I don't think it is going to happen. I've been working on this surprise for a while...

But that's just a coincidence. I was curious how other people felt about gifts because my birthday is coming up so it got me thinking of what I want.

Hm... you're going to name a starship after us? The U.S.S. CivFanatics?

He's going to blow up the moon and save us from the lycanthropic curse I assume we all share.

No blowing up of the Moon, 'k? Besides Jupiter, it's the only celestial object I can still reliably see. (hopefully the surgery will help my night vision so I can actually do some stargazing if I ever get somewhere that has no light pollution)

Is it definitively known what the Spades symbolize in cards?
I read a few different/conflicting things. Eg that they are supposed to be a bell and thus symbolize farmers (apparently in germanic cultures), or that they represent a cane (latinate). Maybe the cane also can refer to lower class, though.
Also, what does the Jack symbolize? Again from reading some etymology it seems to mean (at least in italian) either an infantry man (fante is of the same root) or an infant/child. Btw, apparently "infant" means "voiceless" (?) - referring to infants not yet being able to speak.
A different theory is that it comes from spanish (the fante part) as infanteria, and thus is tied to a prince's bodyguard. (ps: it can also mean servant, eg in the french name, valet).

There is a rather nice greek expression: "he showed up like the Jack of Spades", meaning out of nowhere, and being unwelcome. Possibly the expression originates in powerful properties of the card in specific games.

"The Queen of Hearts, she baked some tarts
All on a summer's day.
The Knave of Hearts stole the tarts and took them clean away.
The King of Hearts called for the tarts and beat the knave full...
(sorry, I don't remember the rest of it - but the Jack is also known as the Knave)

I tend to think of the Jack as a prince.

I used dish soap and that got rid of a lot of the blue. Now my hands smell like lemons.

Regular soap should lessen that.

 

[Cutlass]

What is a radon mitigation system?
I am aware that there are several sources of natural radon in a house like stones and concrete.
Here we just open the windows to get fresh air in and the stale air out, as it is also necessary for humidity control.
Is it used in zero emission homes (low energy) due to the limits to air ventilation or what is the concept behind it?

First you need your place tested to see if you have a problem. Most don't. It is usually a matter of a basement which has limited airflow and the radon accumulates over time. An installed system will have a large diameter pipe, usually like 6 inch PVC, which extends into the basement, or even below the foundation, and up to roof level of the house to vent, and has a small fan which runs constantly. They can make kind of an annoying noise when running, so run them as far from the bedrooms as possible.

Where you are determines what the risk level you may have is.

But you should have a place independently tested before deciding if you need an install.

More info here.

https://www.cdc.gov/features/protect-home-radon/index.html

Even if you're in the higher risk zone, that doesn't mean your place has the problem. A tight house will more likely have it than an older one. But location and soils matter.

 

[Silurian]

My house is 67 Bq/m3 or 1.8 pC/L. In the UK the action level is 200 Bq/m3.

There are out crops of granite near by which has veins of uranium ore. A days walk up the coast there are uranium ore nodules, 0.3-0.5%, on the beach that they recommend you do not put in your pocket.

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~imw/Budleigh-Salterton.htm

 

[Kyriakos]

You live in Southampton, capital of Brutalism?
I thought you were in London.

 

[Silurian]

You live in Southampton, capital of Brutalism?
I thought you were in London.

That link is from a geologist who works at Southampton University. It is about a section of coast near me which I can see from the cliffs near my house. You can see in excess of 50 miles over the sea but the place with the uranium nodules is closer than that.

I have worked in London, south of the river is best.

 

[civvver]

First you need your place tested to see if you have a problem. Most don't. It is usually a matter of a basement which has limited airflow and the radon accumulates over time. An installed system will have a large diameter pipe, usually like 6 inch PVC, which extends into the basement, or even below the foundation, and up to roof level of the house to vent, and has a small fan which runs constantly. They can make kind of an annoying noise when running, so run them as far from the bedrooms as possible.

Where you are determines what the risk level you may have is.

But you should have a place independently tested before deciding if you need an install.

More info here.

https://www.cdc.gov/features/protect-home-radon/index.html

Even if you're in the higher risk zone, that doesn't mean your place has the problem. A tight house will more likely have it than an older one. But location and soils matter.

I'm in like a zone 2 close to a zone 3. Our level was 5.5 when tested, not high but high enough to fix. New houses are sewn up so tight for energy efficiency the air flow is really bad. My heating bills are very cheap though. My basement, and I think all modern basements in the us are built this way, has pea gravel under the concrete and a hole in the corner so any water from the sides of the house can drain into the hole, which a sump pump then pumps it outside. For the radon system they just seal the sump pump hole with plexiglass and caulk and attach a pvc pipe which then goes outside and up the side of the house. There's a fan on the outside of the house that runs constantly. It's extremely quiet and I can only hear it if I stand next to the sump pump. I have no idea how much it costs to run, I don't track my energy usage that closely but probably a couple bucks a month. Anyway it sucks air from the pea gravel sub floor and blows it outside so you get constant airflow and the radon cannot settle. Now my radon level is undetectable.

The thing about radon is it can change. Maybe in the summer your level is fine but then in the winter when the ground is frozen it raises. It fluctuates over time so I'd rather be safe than sorry and the whole system was only $800.

It looks just like this from the outside.

 

[Samez]

Thanks for all the information. Apparently we have quite some radon levels here but I never heard about it before...

Spoiler Map of ground air radiation levels :