Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Getting Ready
As part of my pre deployment preparation we have been getting our financial house in order in case of something bad happening to me. We have gotten a general power of attorney for Wifey. Most folks don't need this but if you are going to be gone for a year something will likely come up. We also have a couple special powers of attorney specifically for random Army stuff (finance to do pay inquiries, etc and for her to get a new ID card if she needs to).
We are making sure that Wifey can get to all of our money and knows how to do all the usual financial stuff. She of course is on every account and can access the generic household checking and savings. However a couple of the other accounts I have handled up to now. We are going to go over how to get to them and conduct our normal transactions.
The smart money people say to have about 10 times your income in life insurance. After looking at everything we decided to purchase some more life insurance on me. We were close to 10x but since I am the bread winner and a couple other factors we decided that wasn't sufficient. It will get finalized tomorrow.
One somewhat unusual thing is that I/ we do not have a will. We talked to a lawyer about it. He he said that if you have significant assets, a blended family or don't want your posessions to go to your next of kin you should definitely have a will. Otherwise you don't really need one. Wifey and I talked about it some. We should get a will in case both of us get waxed. However since Wifey is headed home and I am going to Afghanistan the odds of us both dying at once are quite slim. We have a lot going on right now and this can be put off. So a will goes on the list for vaguely in the next few months.
I started going over running the blog with Wifey. She is smart and unlike me knows HTLM so she will do awesome I am sure.
This is all probably good stuff to have taken care of anyway.
We are making sure that Wifey can get to all of our money and knows how to do all the usual financial stuff. She of course is on every account and can access the generic household checking and savings. However a couple of the other accounts I have handled up to now. We are going to go over how to get to them and conduct our normal transactions.
The smart money people say to have about 10 times your income in life insurance. After looking at everything we decided to purchase some more life insurance on me. We were close to 10x but since I am the bread winner and a couple other factors we decided that wasn't sufficient. It will get finalized tomorrow.
One somewhat unusual thing is that I/ we do not have a will. We talked to a lawyer about it. He he said that if you have significant assets, a blended family or don't want your posessions to go to your next of kin you should definitely have a will. Otherwise you don't really need one. Wifey and I talked about it some. We should get a will in case both of us get waxed. However since Wifey is headed home and I am going to Afghanistan the odds of us both dying at once are quite slim. We have a lot going on right now and this can be put off. So a will goes on the list for vaguely in the next few months.
I started going over running the blog with Wifey. She is smart and unlike me knows HTLM so she will do awesome I am sure.
This is all probably good stuff to have taken care of anyway.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Be Advised
If someone ever wants you to go to a remote camp in the Arctic or extreme northern Canada to investigate what happened to the people that were working and or scientifically experimenting there and subsequently died/ vanished you should not go. Can't say exactly what will happen. Maybe there are ghosts or aliens, strange scientific phenomena or foreign soldiers or just some psycho with serious cabin fever. I can however say with a high level of confidence that it never ends well. There is also a very realistic chance that you will die.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Quote of the Day
"Some say freedom is free, well I tend to disagree. Some say freedom is won at the barrel of a gun."
-A line from an old cadence.
Corrected and edited to note. The d and the s are right next to each other on the key board.
-A line from an old cadence.
Corrected and edited to note. The d and the s are right next to each other on the key board.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Read This And Think
What kills you after an Economic Collapse
Think about it. The truth isn't as sexy as fighting off hordes of poorly armed and ill trained people with a semi automatic assault rifle but well, it is what actually happens. Yeah you should have a rifle but you should also pay attention to this sort of stuff.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Oregon Trail Series #2 What The Oregon Trail Taught Me About Survival
1. Mr. "I'll take 4 oxen and all the bullets $1600 will buy me" was amusing. At least he was amusing to me, Wifey who played the game as a kid also didn't see the humor, I think that was because every boy went the all bullets route at least once. Our results were invariably unsuccessful. Breaking down or starving to death way before getting anywhere near running out of bullets. You have got to allocate your resources to meet many different needs. All the bullets in the world will not feed you. All the food in the world will not help a sick kid. Medicine doesn't make up for not having a spare jacket or a broken axle. Prudent people allocate their resources diversely to meet their many needs.
2. To capture this significant issue in its own lesson; bullets will not solve every problem or keep you reliably fed. Sure you can hunt but even a great shot might not see game that often. You need to store food.
3. Sanitation and hygiene are important lest you want to die of dysentery. That pretty much speaks for itself.
4. Something will happen so you don't want to spend all of your money. If anything the game under emphasizes this point. You don't know what is going to happen. It could be running low on oxen or the need to replace that extra spare axle. People take cash so you better have some available.
5. People die and not just random strangers but people you know. The game made this almost laughable with like a 30 percent mortality rate but lets not ignore the point. To think that your family will get through a prolonged dangerous period without outside assistance is probably naive. [Especially if that time included multiple violent confrontations it is almost laughable. If you think some guns, maybe a bit of body armor and a day once in a blue moon in the backyard trying to do battle drills will mean you come out heroically and surprisingly and completely unscathed you're more optimistic than I am. Once you consider that these contacts are more likely to be defensive than offensive the odds get even worse.] Getting your medical training and supplies squared away is a darn good start. Being careful and using proper safety equipment is prudent also. Someone truly out in the hinder boonies probably needs to worry a lot more about a slip with an ax then a gunfight. However while I encourage you to prepare as fully as possible for all these situations it is worth squaring yourself up with the fact that someone could die.
6. Whatever the risk don't be afraid to seek opportunities. There are always risks in life. However if you refuse to pursue any opportunities because there is some risk involved you won't get much of anywhere. It could be moving to another state for a new far better paying job with some real potential or deciding to become a single income household. It might be moving to a rural home, into alternate housing or even off grid. All of these possibilities have some risks (though death from dysentery is low on the list) that need to be accepted. Don't be afraid to accept some risk.
7. Be prepared for a long journey. No matter how much you spend or how hard you work the road to preparedness, like the trail from Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley, is very long. Some times it is going to seem like it will never end but unless you keep moving the end never comes. Then you just end up in Nebraska or Wyoming which are nice enough places but much harder to farm in than the Willamette Valley.
2. To capture this significant issue in its own lesson; bullets will not solve every problem or keep you reliably fed. Sure you can hunt but even a great shot might not see game that often. You need to store food.
3. Sanitation and hygiene are important lest you want to die of dysentery. That pretty much speaks for itself.
4. Something will happen so you don't want to spend all of your money. If anything the game under emphasizes this point. You don't know what is going to happen. It could be running low on oxen or the need to replace that extra spare axle. People take cash so you better have some available.
5. People die and not just random strangers but people you know. The game made this almost laughable with like a 30 percent mortality rate but lets not ignore the point. To think that your family will get through a prolonged dangerous period without outside assistance is probably naive. [Especially if that time included multiple violent confrontations it is almost laughable. If you think some guns, maybe a bit of body armor and a day once in a blue moon in the backyard trying to do battle drills will mean you come out heroically and surprisingly and completely unscathed you're more optimistic than I am. Once you consider that these contacts are more likely to be defensive than offensive the odds get even worse.] Getting your medical training and supplies squared away is a darn good start. Being careful and using proper safety equipment is prudent also. Someone truly out in the hinder boonies probably needs to worry a lot more about a slip with an ax then a gunfight. However while I encourage you to prepare as fully as possible for all these situations it is worth squaring yourself up with the fact that someone could die.
6. Whatever the risk don't be afraid to seek opportunities. There are always risks in life. However if you refuse to pursue any opportunities because there is some risk involved you won't get much of anywhere. It could be moving to another state for a new far better paying job with some real potential or deciding to become a single income household. It might be moving to a rural home, into alternate housing or even off grid. All of these possibilities have some risks (though death from dysentery is low on the list) that need to be accepted. Don't be afraid to accept some risk.
7. Be prepared for a long journey. No matter how much you spend or how hard you work the road to preparedness, like the trail from Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley, is very long. Some times it is going to seem like it will never end but unless you keep moving the end never comes. Then you just end up in Nebraska or Wyoming which are nice enough places but much harder to farm in than the Willamette Valley.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Little Bit of Life: The Dreams We Were Sold and Reality
This relates to a series of posts I did awhile back (1, 2, 3). My Generation of mid 20 somethings to 30ish were largely sold a pack of exaggerations and outright lies by our parents, teachers and society at large. We were told that the roads are paved in gold and if we get a college degree or a skilled trade (mostly a degree) it is going to be easy and we will quickly settle into very comfortable lives a la the American Dream.
My values and beliefs do not allow me to absolve people of responsibility for their actions. Somebody who chooses to go to a private school and take 50k in loans to get a degree that correlates with a job whose starting salary is 27k is in a tough spot of their own choosing. A person who makes 30k somehow got a loan for a 350k home then go figure can't pay it is a fool who deserves their misfortune.
It is hard to look beyond what most parents, almost all teachers and society tells us. Especially for teenagers who are sold a dream of how awesome a private college, or college at all it is hard to see the truth.
The thing is that baring programs at a few elite schools which get you internships that lead to crazy high starting salaries things aren't cake, even for those who manage to leave college with that piece of paper. When people graduate or otherwise enter what I call the big boy job market there is a choice. You can get stuff/ whatever rather quickly by borrowing money or you can wait and slowly accumulate things by paying cash.
A person with a normal albeit modest starting salary who goes out and buys a new average but respectable car (Honda Civic, Toyota, etc) and furnishes their apartment/ townhouse on a store card then gets a nice entertainment system on a payment plan will have some nice things 2 months into their job. However they will be paying for those things forever with lots of interest. Also they will be so busy paying all those loans, not to mention their student loans as well as rent, food, utilities, insurance, etc. That means instead of getting ahead they are just trying to catch up to the stuff they don't need they already have bought.
If you follow this blog halfway you already guessed we went the cash route. I am not going to lie it kinda sucks. There are times I get pretty down on the whole thing. Some days the knowledge that you are making the right move doesn't matter much when you have a hard time getting your piece of S car to sputter its way to work, come home after a long day to sit on a beat up hand me down couch your parents bought 25 years ago and try to watch a piece of junk TV without a remote control. I work hard and save and don't have much to show for it. You worked hard to get through school and get a solidly respectable job, made the right choices and things just come so darn slowly.
Life is so often two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes it is one step forward and two steps back. We scrimped and saved for a long time to have a half of a decent emergency fund. Wifeys car died and that cash became a low end used car. That used car four hundred dollar'ed us a couple times and then proved entirely unreliable and died. So we had no emergency fund AND no second car. We started saving again and finally built up a comfortable 3 month emergency fund. We then saved up and bought a decent used car which should run well for a long time. We put money aside every month for furniture and slowly but surely our house is filling up with halfway decent stuff. In a year or so it won't look like a college kid apartment anymore. At least in our life things are slowly but surely coming together.
We are now focused on getting my student loan wiped out in about one year instead of the projected three. In the last two years we will save what was going to the loan and that will be a solid down on a modest home. We will then work to pay that home off at an accelerated rate as well as saving and other such stuff.
Even though it sucks some days I like that we only have one outstanding debt. Student loans suck but since it got me into a job with a solidly decent income and benefits it was a worthwhile investment. No car payments and couch payments and TV payments or whatever. Of course I would love if things could go faster but I am happy with the direction we are moving in.
As a final thought if we look at history with some perspective we are all just a bunch of whiners; blah blah blah it takes a long time to pay off a student loan or yadda yadda yadda I can't afford a 4,000 square foot mansion on a janitors salary, I can't afford to buy a fancy boat and lastly, I never saved anything and now at 60 when I want to retire it is somebody else's fault. Seriously do a little bit of reading or just google terms like siege, crop failure, famine and black death. Heck take a walk in an old cemetery (pre 1900ish) and read some headstones. I do not know a family who lost 5 kids to cholera or was wiped out by smallpox or influenza or starved to death in a famine. Seriously we have it pretty darn good.
My values and beliefs do not allow me to absolve people of responsibility for their actions. Somebody who chooses to go to a private school and take 50k in loans to get a degree that correlates with a job whose starting salary is 27k is in a tough spot of their own choosing. A person who makes 30k somehow got a loan for a 350k home then go figure can't pay it is a fool who deserves their misfortune.
It is hard to look beyond what most parents, almost all teachers and society tells us. Especially for teenagers who are sold a dream of how awesome a private college, or college at all it is hard to see the truth.
The thing is that baring programs at a few elite schools which get you internships that lead to crazy high starting salaries things aren't cake, even for those who manage to leave college with that piece of paper. When people graduate or otherwise enter what I call the big boy job market there is a choice. You can get stuff/ whatever rather quickly by borrowing money or you can wait and slowly accumulate things by paying cash.
A person with a normal albeit modest starting salary who goes out and buys a new average but respectable car (Honda Civic, Toyota, etc) and furnishes their apartment/ townhouse on a store card then gets a nice entertainment system on a payment plan will have some nice things 2 months into their job. However they will be paying for those things forever with lots of interest. Also they will be so busy paying all those loans, not to mention their student loans as well as rent, food, utilities, insurance, etc. That means instead of getting ahead they are just trying to catch up to the stuff they don't need they already have bought.
If you follow this blog halfway you already guessed we went the cash route. I am not going to lie it kinda sucks. There are times I get pretty down on the whole thing. Some days the knowledge that you are making the right move doesn't matter much when you have a hard time getting your piece of S car to sputter its way to work, come home after a long day to sit on a beat up hand me down couch your parents bought 25 years ago and try to watch a piece of junk TV without a remote control. I work hard and save and don't have much to show for it. You worked hard to get through school and get a solidly respectable job, made the right choices and things just come so darn slowly.
Life is so often two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes it is one step forward and two steps back. We scrimped and saved for a long time to have a half of a decent emergency fund. Wifeys car died and that cash became a low end used car. That used car four hundred dollar'ed us a couple times and then proved entirely unreliable and died. So we had no emergency fund AND no second car. We started saving again and finally built up a comfortable 3 month emergency fund. We then saved up and bought a decent used car which should run well for a long time. We put money aside every month for furniture and slowly but surely our house is filling up with halfway decent stuff. In a year or so it won't look like a college kid apartment anymore. At least in our life things are slowly but surely coming together.
We are now focused on getting my student loan wiped out in about one year instead of the projected three. In the last two years we will save what was going to the loan and that will be a solid down on a modest home. We will then work to pay that home off at an accelerated rate as well as saving and other such stuff.
Even though it sucks some days I like that we only have one outstanding debt. Student loans suck but since it got me into a job with a solidly decent income and benefits it was a worthwhile investment. No car payments and couch payments and TV payments or whatever. Of course I would love if things could go faster but I am happy with the direction we are moving in.
As a final thought if we look at history with some perspective we are all just a bunch of whiners; blah blah blah it takes a long time to pay off a student loan or yadda yadda yadda I can't afford a 4,000 square foot mansion on a janitors salary, I can't afford to buy a fancy boat and lastly, I never saved anything and now at 60 when I want to retire it is somebody else's fault. Seriously do a little bit of reading or just google terms like siege, crop failure, famine and black death. Heck take a walk in an old cemetery (pre 1900ish) and read some headstones. I do not know a family who lost 5 kids to cholera or was wiped out by smallpox or influenza or starved to death in a famine. Seriously we have it pretty darn good.
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