Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone here at the hall. Hopefully 2008 will bring us closer to a release!!

Hopefully you all had a great new years.
 
Taxes? Bwahahaha!

I invest, have savings, and live off the interest. I take a small amount and pay an accountant to handle my taxes for me. I suppose that makes me Bourgeoisie! How interesting.

*gets tackled and pummeled by radical socialists*

~Dune~
 
Taxes? Bwahahaha!

I invest, have savings, and live off the interest. I take a small amount and pay an accountant to handle my taxes for me. I suppose that makes me Bourgeoisie! How interesting.

*gets tackled and pummeled by radical socialists*

~Dune~

Nah, that just makes you sound rich. <.<;
 
I'm really only just doing well. If I spent money at anything but a subsistance level I'd be out of money real quick. I just live off of close to nothing.

I spend, on average, $4.37 daily on food. My rent is very cheap because I'm a student at a small college in a small town in a state with lots of land and relatively few people. I don't buy luxuries, I make things last, and I enjoy having only what I need because that way I can actually carry it when I have to move, which is frequent due to college life.

Still, after college I don't plan on spending, even once I have a nice stable job. Savings will eat most of it up, and the rest will go toward things like transportation and better health insurance and stuff. I'd like to have a reasonable fallback of savings in general, and then of course there's the cost of starting a family if I ever do. Retirement also.

Really, my biggest luxury is travel expenditures, but I fly cheap. Very cheap. Cargo hold cheap on two occasions even. So it works out.

~Dune~
 
How can you live of $4.37 of food, every meal I eat costs more than that except the ones that are free...

called cooking at home lol. a pack of ramen noodles cost 10 cents :P *shudders thinking about the college days* I would eat ramen noodles 3 times a day to just save my food money to buy games :P
 
Nah, ramen is far too low for me to stoop.

I have a good meal plan which averages to near that price per meal, and I abuse the "all you can eat" / "all you can cram in a pair of take-out boxes" policy. I also line my pockets and slip stuff in. They throw out the uneatten stuff anyways, so it's not like I'm cheating anybody.

The other way is that I know how to bargain shop for cheap home cooking stuff. At bakeries, even ones in grocery stores, the reject bread that comes out looking funny is perfectly fine to eat, but no one will buy it. If you ask, some places will sell it to you for a huge discount. I get huge loaves of bread for around 30 cents at my favorite bakery, and not your silly "sandwhich bread" neither. We're talking fresh baguettes, both hard and soft; full pound rounds of rye, pumpernickel, and white mountain bread; loaves of asiago cheese bread and savory rosemary herb stuff; delicious focacia and ciabatta; and potato breads, dinner rolls, and more. So what if they got mangled in the bread machine? It's still warm and fresh and scrumptious.

The most money I spend foodwise is on drinks, but I drink a lot of water and I know how to make my own sodas at home for cheap (taste better too). Plus, bargain shopping can get me four two liters at just a quarter each. Fruit juice I make at home sometimes, or buy when on sale. I miss orange juice, but hey, where I am nowadays it's kinda expensive to get regularly. I supplement with whatever fresh fruit I can get.

I walk most everywhere, so no gas costs, no insurance or maintenance on a car, because I don't own one. No parking tickets, no parking spot fees. No television (it's all junk these days anywho), no subscriptions to magazines, I don't see movies much at all (again, junk) and when I do it's with coupons and "student" pricing. I don't smoke or drink, so no costs there, and I have no medications. I wear all my clothes fully before doing laundry and I never do half-loads.

I might invest in a bike one of these days, in order to be able to go farther out than walking, but for now I'm happy with having everything I need on or around campus. Plus, there's a ton of pretty parks and residential areas to walk through, and lots of driving friends to bum rides off of when I do want to get into the city or something. Aside from that, a robust computer and a (until recently) decent internet connection that came with my room payment and I'm set.

~Dune~
 
I like ramen actually... But I usually buy expensive stuff and often eat at panera (around $10 per meal) for dinner or lunch after work. I suppose I should be more thrifty considering I make hardly any money but I still am in college and to be saving money is an even bigger waste! Not to mention I have no faith whatsoever in the US dollar or american economy so no investing/saving for me.
 
Perhaps invest in Candian markets then. Or Japanese. Or German. I do a little bit of all three. I keep getting advised to invest in Chinese markets, but I simply have two words about that: Free Tibet.

~Dune~
 
I have some european investments to offset the dollar issues. Also, saving/investing is never a waste whether you are a kid, in college, an adult, or in old age. Hell even just throw some money in an ING or comparable account if you don't want to go into stocks or mutual funds.

I've had mutual funds growing since I was a little kid, thanks to my dad and grandparents. Every birthday/christmas I would take some of the money I got and put it in. Now I'm 25 and essentially have a part time job's worth of profits coming in each year. Just money making money. And no my family wasn't rich so it wasn't insane quantities of cash being invested each year, just a kid choosing to follow his parents' advice to invest instead of get a few more toys or games or junk food.

Never too late to start, and even if you choose a nice safe cd, you can make more than 4%. My mutual funds are making along the lines of 9-12% even with the economic woes.
 
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