JS

That's scary. Think about how dumb the average American is, and then think about the fact that half of all Americans are more stupid than that. In other words, half of all people in this country are of below-average intelligence. Fact.

Even if the wealth was spread evenly in the form of gold, or real property, within months society would be back to a pyramid-type structure that I talk about above. Why, because some people are smarter and more competitive than others, and will just work with what they have to in order to better their situation. Anyone ever wonder why the Bill Gates Foundation (along with things like the Clinton Initiative) have most of their focus on global issues instead of domestic issues? See my above arguments about our relative wealth compared to the rest of the world.

Here's my problem with the whole debate, is life for Americans really unfair, just because others have more wealth? These poor Americans, who are the global richest 1%, would probably not garner a lot of sympathy tears from the average Nigerian or Indonesian. I just find it funny that the "poverty line" has to be redrawn every time there is a new technology or quality of life breakthrough in the states. We have all heard about how even the poor have a roof over their head, cable TV, cars, and most importantly, smartphones to text each other with and keep up with politics. So, yes, I for the most part agree with the numbers in this video propaganda piece about the distribution of wealth, but why don't they mention the absolute values of all of that wealth - even the lowest 20% - compared to the global average??? All I have to say is that all those people on the bottom should thank God every day that this entire statistical distribution takes place in the States. I mean, those really poor guys on the bottom literally have more wealth and a higher standard of living than the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Caesars of Rome, and all the kings and queens of the Middle Ages. So back to reality - this is why I am a fan of the "a rising tide lifts all ships" theory. Why the fuck should someone making $15K care that the wealthy have 10 millions time as much wealth? In our society, $15K is enough to get a decent roof over your head, heating/cooling, a used car, and enough food to make you morbidly obese by the time you are 10 years old. Oh, you can also afford a nice smartphone, complete with data plan, on that money too, if you budget wisely enough. Every form of government and every society - monarchy, communism, capitalism - since time immemorial has had a pyramid distribution structure of talent, competitiveness, wealth, strength, or whatever. It's just that our current system affords everyone to have a decent standard of life. And every future government system will have a pyramid structure, and every system must have a pyramid structure. Why, because God made all of us with unequal skills and talents. I kind of agree with this, for the most part, but I really don't think it will be an issue in our society until people are getting thrown out of their homes/apartments (laws make that a pretty long and difficult process), or not having means to provide basic necessities of food and cellphones for their family. Food is actually crazy cheap here, and for those who mis-allocate their wealth on cable TV, drugs, playstations, they have access to food stamps, or debit cards, or whatever they are today. Bottom line, in my opinion, yes, wealth inequality can be dangerous in some more desperate societies, but probably not until peoples security, belongings, home, family, or food is in danger - things that I think we are very far from.

Ha ha. Actually, the policy is that you can use it for a 2nd master's in IR or a 2nd master's in a foreign language. Two masters is going to be the gold standard to make captain in a few years.

And the rest of them are caused by the tires just wearing out due to normal use after not getting caught during post-flights.

Oh, yes, having negative equity can be bad. I assume you have a VA loan, like the title of this thread, or you are paying PMI, which I was set up to do before I put down an extra $15K or so from my savings like I detailed in another post. PMI, or the inherent higher rates from an FHA is really pissing away money without adding to your long or short term wealth in the form of equity or whatever. Dave Ramsey would be proud. That's probably the best thing about the VA loan - you are pretty much going to get the same rates and terms whether or not you have 20% equity, correct??? Or is there a penalty/higher rate of some sort if you don't have any equity? Either way, we got a good deal with a non-VA loan after weighing all the options and just plopping down the extra $15K in order to get us right at the 80% LTV, thus avoiding pissing away the PMI money. I chose that instead of paying the crappy "funding fee" I would have had to pay for a first VA loan.

Here is the look on the face of the guy at the Dental Clinic when I tell him "I am a Reservist on an Active Duty tour and would like to make an active duty dental appointment." I get the same look from the lady at the billeting desk after she asks for my active duty orders and I tell her "I am a Reservist on inactive duty and we don't get orders for that, but I still am entitled to a room."

That gif is also the same look you get when you go into the MPF (during non-training hours, of course) and ask for something non-standard or something off the wall like "I am here to get a new ID card."

Calculating a break-even point is the best thing you can do. Most people only look at the lower payment and then totally disregard the closing costs simply because they were rolled into the loan. As I mentioned in the other thread, closing costs are real, no-shit money flowing from your pot to someone else's without helping your equity or principal - regardless if they are rolled into the loan. I was going to refinance about 2 years ago and got into an argument with a dude from Quicken Loans. He did the high-pressure bullshit and tried to convince me that I would save $70K in interest, or whatever. Of course, he was talking about over a 30-year period, even though I told him I estimated we would be in the house 5-10 years more. I told him the $5K closing costs were a concern, because I had to recoup that (at the time, rates were in the mid-4s and the differential between that and my old rate was not as significant, thus pushing my break-even out like 3-4 years, which was a concern if we were only going to be there for 5 years). He sent me a new estimate with negative points, which he simply told me was "no closing costs," and failed to point out that the rate was actually higher. Of course, those maneuvers with points just move the breakeven point either forward or backward, depending on how long you estimate you will be in the house. That's why I harped on the "how long will you have this loan/live in this house" in that other post - it is by far the most important thing you have to estimate when making an informed mortgage decision. But either way, you had to pay closing costs, as it is just the cost of doing business. But good on you for at least thinking about a breakeven point instead of just blindly jumping into a new loan based on the sales pitch of saving XXX dollars per month, making it a "no-brainer," in the exact words of the high-pressure salesman from Quicken who got us into this mortgage mess in the first place. In looking through my documents, I stand corrected. The reamortiziation thing was not in my 80 pages of closing documents, it is on their online "fee schedule." They charge a flat $100 "Recast" fee. Here is an article describing it: http://qna.mortgagen...cast-a-mortgage In reading that article it might not be exactly what I was talking about previously because it talks about making your loan spread out over 30 years again - sort of like refinancing without refinancing. But either way, you want to make sure if you are paying extra principal each month/year that they are taking that into account when calculating your monthly interest. This website is pretty good for visualizing what is going on: http://www.bankrate....calculator.aspx Type in the terms on top, then click on the bottom blue button "show/recalculate amortization table." You can visually see what is going on, and then you can add your $250 per month and recalculate it. On a $200K loan at 4%, the extra $250 actually pays the loan off 10 years early. BUT - as I have argued in other threads. I would take the extra $250 per month you are paying on the mortgage and invest it. That mortgage is probably only costing you 3%, plus you get a tax deduction on that interest, pusing the cost of that money down to like 2.5% or 2.75%. Most financial experts (with that idiot Ramsey as the sole exception) would tell you to invest the $250 elsewhere, because you will likely earn more than the 2.5% or 2.75% that money is costing you. The other thing you have to balance is the "feel good" affect of paying down the mortgage (Dave Ramsey's way of talking people into losing long-term wealth) and the risk balance of having money essentially safely "invested" in the walls. floor, and ceiling of your house versus having it sit in an investment or retirement account. There are risks with putting it into the house - lower housing prices and the lack of liquidity if you need that money. Me, personally, I pay the minimum required amount on my mortgage and keep feeding the difference between my old and new mortgage into my Schwab investment account buying relatively safe ETFs and other funds. I am pretty sure I can beat 2.5%.

Really, when you refinance, your choices are pretty much the 15 or 30 year loan (ARM or fixed), so unless your loan has 15 or 30 years remaining, you are either going to extend your loan terms or shorten it by paying more per month with the 15 year loan. Either way, you should have chipped down your principal at least a tad by paying it over the past four years, so even though your new loan was back to 30 years, it should have been a slightly lower monthly payment even before taking the lower rate into account. Good on you for paying more principal up front. A word of caution - a lot of people don't really understand how this process works - especially about paying extra into principal each month. When you took out your new loan, say it was for $200K at 4% for simplicity, the bank reverse engineers the numbers assuming you are going to pay it down over 30 years, and are going to pay 4% interest on the balance yearly. In other words, you are going to pay $8K interest the first year, $7.8K interest the second year, $7.5K interest the third year - all divided by 12 months of course - or something similar to that as your overal principal decreases over the years. This math is reverse engineered assuming your principal is going down by the scheduled amount over 30 years. The "scheduled amount" gets all fucked up when you start paying extra and chipping down principal ahead of schedule. Paying down principal, of course, should favor you, but a lot of times the bank rigs the rules to favor them. It looks like you are going to plop down an extra $3K in principal each year, but the bank is still going to charge you interest according to the original payback schedule. Usually, all they do is take off payments at the end of the loan, which greatly favors them. It just changes your pay-off date, not the yearly interest paid, which is based on the old, higher amount of principal. In other words, say, for simplicity that you came across $100K and paid that in addition to your next payment. The numbers were originally crunched for you to pay 4% of a $200K balance the first year, 4% of a $198K balance the second year, 4% of $195K the third year, or whatever - hence my example interest numbers above of paying about $8K interest per year. If you paid the extra principal, $100K in this example, you should only be paying like $4K interest in the first year, $3.8K in the second year, $3.5K in the third year, etc. But your monthly overall payment and monthly interest payment will not change. Your loan will simply be paid off earlier, depending on how much extra you had pre-paid over the years. In other words, you are paying interest on a principal amount that is actually higher than the principal amount that you actually owe. Total robbery. The way around it is that you have to periodically tell your bank to re-crunch the numbers, known as amortizing the numbers. I believe my bank calls it "re-characterizing" the loan, as I remember seeing that small blurb on page 69 of my stack of 150 pages of mortgage documents we went through on closing day. Most banks charge a $50 - $100 fee for the trouble of hitting the refresh button on their Excel program after typing in the new amount of principal that you actually owe. Not sure if you want to pay $100 to re-crunch your loan each year after paying it down $3K extra per year, but you will have to do it periodically if you want your extra principal payments to lower the overall amount of interest that you pay over the loan (which is the goal). Some banks might automatically recalculate/reamoritize it for you with each additional payment, but I know a lot of banks don't.

No, it was "interest only" loans, sub-prime loans, and people just generally biting off more than they can chew with the expectations that property values will always increase that actually got us into this trouble. Interest only loans are particularly bad - sort of the mortgage version of making the minimum payment on a credit card and never chipping away at the principal. After my 7 year ARM is up, the max the rate can go up is like 4 points - and that is only if Prime is soaring (i.e. total market recovery, inflation and the next internet/housing bubble on the rise.) The ironic thing is that even if the worse case transpires for me - we decide to stay for more than 7 years, the economy is booming and rates soar, and we can't refinance due to shitty credit - our rate can only go to about what it was before we refinanced. And after paying it down for 7 years, the math works out so that our new, worse-case scenario payment would actually be less than what we were paying before the refinance. These worse-case payment amounts were all spelled out in my Truth-in-lending disclosure, plain as day. Also, the 5/5 ARM that Penfed has is pretty awesome. They cover most of the closing costs, and it can only adjust by 2 points in 5 years, and then another 2 points 5 years after that. Again, worse case scenario, in 10 years you wind up paying the rates that you paid in 2008 or so, which was when I had my original loan. So if you are saying that I will regret saving $600/month for 7 years ($50K total, for those bad at math), and then possibly, worse-case going back to my old monthly payments, you are one of those who doesn't understand money or high-school math, and you are a prime candidate for Ramsey's junk. Besides, I know that I am not going to be here for 30 years, so if I bought a 30-year loan, I am throwing away the closing costs the moment I sell or refinance. Mapplby is dead right. I have said time and again, Ramsey's shit is for those who truly don't understand money or numbers. His prescriptions and strategies will lose you wealth over the years - and lots of it. Making people think that investments and capitalism (oh, I am sorry, if you are on the receiving end of someone else's capital investment, it is known by its evil name - debt) is always bad, is just ludicrous. Telling people not to take out the max amount of money at 2.5% with a 30 year term so you can invest it and gain 5-10% is complete and total financial idiocracy, by definition and by the numbers. All because of his scare tactics that "all debt is bad." Absolutely crazy. I wish my bank would let me load up on another $200K of that evil debt at today's mortgage rates with a 30-year lock in. I could make a killing with that money - especially 10-15 years down the road when rates go up. Borrowing at 3% on a mortgage today is basically like free money, due to the effects of inflation. But at the end of the day, why the fuck would someone lock themselves into a financial product for 30 years, knowing full well that they won't be in that house for 30 years, and thus enjoying the benefits of the 30 year lock in???? By definition, if you know you are only going to be using a financial product for, say, no more than 10 years, why would you buy a product, appropriately labelled, with "30 year" in the title? The higher rates you are paying by not going with a 7 or 10 year loan is just Dave Ramsey-type money - pissed away as a penalty for those who don't understand math.

Been about a solid 4 minutes straight, and I still can't stop laughing - tears coming down my face and everything. And finally when I was able to click away, I went back to it for another laugh. Top 10 posts of all time on Baseops. The look in the eyes just about says it all when it comes to using common sense in the Air Force.

I actually just refinanced my house, so here are some thoughts: For me (Reserve), the biggest question was how long I thought I would be here. Depending on a litany of factors - family size, possible other jobs, etc - I think we won't be here much longer than like 5 years. But we could easily be here for another 10. Either way, I was not going to go with a 30-year fixed because you are just paying a higher rate knowing with full certainty that you won't be in the house for 30 years (and the 30-year terms are essentially wiped out when you sell). With that in mind, we did a 7-ARM (not VA), with negative points. The negative points raised the interest rate a tad, but basically reduced the $4K in closing costs down to nothing. With no points, the "breakeven" point for this loan when comparing it to other loans was around 7 years. By doing negative points, we basically moved the breakeven point closer to like 5 years - again, sort of hedging that we won't be here much longer than that. I did not do the VA loan for my primary or the refinance due to the funding fee being so high. Even when they "roll the closing costs/funding fees" into the loan, that is still cold, hard cash that you are parting ways with - never to recoup again. Our first loan, a traditional, had the closing costs rolled into the loan because we didn't have a down payment. It has taken many years, plus my having to write a check for about $15K the other day to bring our current equity level down to the 80% required not to have to pay PMI (of course, PMI is not a factor with VA loans, but you are paying that penalty in the form of the funding fee instead - again, calculate a breakeven point between the two if you can). Even though you will recoup the $10K in a few months, that is still $10K of real money that flows from your wealth in to the pocket of another, without adding to your equity or principal in any way shape or form. Ultimately, that is the cost of doing business with mortgages, so to speak, but I just tried to find a different way to optimize my numbers. If you have the funds to put down 20% down-payment, I have found that the traditional rates (minus PMI, because you have 80% LTV) is a much better deal than paying these horrendous funding fees - especially if you are not going to hold onto the loan for a very long term. Sorry to muddy the waters, but you asked if there were other things that should influence your decision. I researched the shit out of this thing, and one of my best friends was a mortgage broker for years. He agrees with my line of thinking. The biggest and most important variable is to try and make an educated guess as to how long you will keep the property/loan. I know it is a lot of guesswork, but a very educated guess will help you optimize your cost structure. The amount of time spent in the loan heavily influences which path you should take: (assuming you don't have a down-payment of 20%): -If you know for a fact that you will keep the property for 30 years or more, get a traditional 30-year fixed (VA), and pay the shit out of as many points as they will allow (rolling into the closing costs if needed). This will move your break even point several years down the road - like 10 or 12 - but every year after that you will be laughing all the way to the bank. - If you think you will keep the property for more like 10 years, look into a 10-year ARM, or the 5/5 ARM that PenFed currently has a deal going on, with no points. I am not sure if you can do ARMS with VA loans, but you can definitely just pay PMI in lieu of having your 20% down. - If this is a relatively short term thing, get a 5 or 7 year ARM, and use negative points to keep closing costs down. This will bring your breakeven point much closer to like 2 or 3 years. The downside is that for every year after like 3 or 4 years that you have the property, you will be kicking yourself because you have a slightly higher rate than had you now taken negative points. Whatever you do, don't take on the line of thinking "I will just refinance again if I decide to stay longer and have them roll the new closing costs into the loan." That thinking will again have you piss down the drain another $5K of closing costs, and your principal will somehow, magically not reduce at the speed you were expecting it to. I was hell bent on avoiding paying PMI, paying the VA funding fee, or paying the inherent penalties associated with an FHA loan due to not having 20% equity. That's why I robbed my savings account (and had to forgo planned investments in the TSP) for the $15K to put down on my refinance. The way I look at it, any extra dough you have to put into the loan (at closing or monthly) due to not having 20% is just money pissed away. It is not helping your equity or wealth, it is just going into the pockets of the lenders and private mortgage insurance underwriters. My thinking in writing the $15K check was that instead of that money going to someone else's pocket, it would be "invested" and stored in the walls, ceiling, and foundation of my house to be taken out at a later date. And with those $15K of dollars temporarily stored in the walls of my house, I was able to avoid pissing away almost $80/month, or $1000/year of necessary PMI. To me, that's like a 7% return on my "investment" that I will be able to cash out on when I sell the house (assuming level housing prices, etc). Sorry for the long answer, but you do have to try and balance the factors of how long you will stay, funding fees, PMI costs, down payments, length of the loan, points/closing costs, and a few other things. Just wanted to give you my 2 cents on some of those variables.

Had a Tommyknocker Hop Strike Black IPA last night. I really love most of the Tommyknocker beers - most of them are "high gravity" and high in taste as well. The regular IPA (Pick Axe) is also very good, and very hoppy. As far as this Black IPA - it didn't taste quite as hoppy as I would expect for 78 IBU, but I guess the dark, malty flavor sort of counteracted it (kind of the point, I presume). Either way, it seems like a good beer for my transition from winter dark/porter/stout type beers to more springtime type beers such as IPAs and Hefeweizen.

You will be taken care of, dude. If the 815th closes, you will become a Hurricane Hunter and still fly the J at Keesler. And no, there is no chance of getting plucked out to fly RPAs instead. The 403WG under AFRC "owns" you, and as of right now, AFRC is not randomly reassigning people to other units (would kind of go against the whole Reserve/Guard join a unit in your hometown thing).

Not sure if this is the best thread for this, but the online Airman Magazine issue this month had a pretty good spread on the Boneyard. Make sure you either click one of the pictures of click the link at the bottom of the article to look at the slideshow. Also note there is an "info" button in the upper right of the slideshow that I didn't realize until after I viewed all of the pictures.

No annual fee for the Blue Amex if you are military? Wish I new that 3 years ago. So much for being smart with my credit cards. Along the lines of automatic discounts - I usually "swipe" my military ID into thin air at the checkout of Lowes and Home Depot and get an automatic 10% off. Not questions asked (except for about 5 years ago when HD said it was only on Veterans Day or some crap. Got the discount every time since).

Sorry for the reply to an old post, but I was just looking back through this thread. The Amex Blue Cash is a great card for the 6% on groceries. $75/year, but Walmart, Costco, and Target groceries don't give you the 6% on groceries, like others have said. My break-even is about a month with our grocery habits. And like Archa said, the website is really good in terms of categorizing your expenses if you have a business or are trying the budget thing. It is the best credit card website in my experience. As far as gas, I use a Visa card from PenFed and it gives you back 5% cash on all gas. You just have to become a PenFed "member," which kind of has other benefits too because it is a good credit union (free). I wound up transferring our other car loan there for .5%, I think. And the cash back on the card automatically shows up on the statement - you don't have to "buy" electronic rebates like the Amex Blue card and wait for them to show up on your statement, nor do they fuck around with any kind of points or other gimmick crap. Along the lines of how great multiple credit cards are for you (sorry, ChampKind, but we are in major disagreement here), I also have two Chase cards - a Marriott card and an Amazon card. Both give triple or quadruple points when used at their respective businesses - and we buy a lot from Amazon, so it pays. Plus I put a lot of my travel on the Marriott, so we always have Marriott points to stay free. Of course, I have all 4 or 5 credit cards set to autopay, and have not paid interest since I graduated from college over 10 years ago. Like others have mentioned, the cost of credit cards is already built into the price of everything (vendors get charged 1-3% of all swipes, that's how they make money off us Baseops members who don't carry a balance or pay interest), so you are losing the 3-6% of the purchase price if you pay cash for things in this economy. Sorry, but that is the way it works. Champ is right about one thing, though. You do spend more with plastic versus cash. It is much more difficult to pull out and count large amounts of cash, and many people (myself and my wife included) are much more whimsical with plastic purchases versus cash purchases. But I try to be disciplined and just buy what I need and keep the 5-6% that balance holders are subsidizing for me. On a side note - always take cash rewards and don't screw with miles or points. Remember, if you read the fine print, they make it pretty clear that THEY own those miles and points, and they can take them away from you if they think you are defrauding them or anything like that. Plus the points needed to buy a $300 plane ticket are just not worth as much as $300 cash due to all of the restrictions, etc. Oh, and for the record, Dave Ramsey is an idiot with regards to numbers and building overall wealth. He is good for the people who got behind with bad decisions, debt, aren't good with numbers, etc. But the majority of his prescriptions will reduce your wealth. That's why he is an idiot. I can give more examples if anyone wants to hear, but the only thing that mathematically sound and logical that I ever heard him say is when he lambasted the morons who were paying into the stupid Powerball thing a few months back thinking that they actually had a chance at winning. He and I agree (the only thing we agree on) that the lotto is a tax on the dumb and poor who are bad at math. A truly regressive tax used to pay for the education of higher socioeconomic kids. I guess Ramsey's advice if for the "average" or below average person with regards to financial knowledge. And to paraphrase George Carlin - thing about how fucking dumb the average person is, and then think about the fact that half of all people in the world are more dumb than that.

I am not expert. Similar to wine, I can't quite taste the "hits of peach, ginger, etc." but I sure as hell know that a habano wrapped Rocky Patel Edge will likely knock me on my ass versus some of my favorite, lighter/smoother ones like the CAO Gold, Carlos Torano Casa Torano, etc. I am basically honing out which types I like (full, medium, mild) and then honing in on a dozen or so brands. For heavier, full stomach smokes, I really like the Montecristo classic (still don't think it is worth the cost, but I got a decent deal on a box if petite coronas from Costco, of all places) and the Padilla Miami. Otherwise, I stick to mostly lighter ones. Let me know if you figure out what you like, of what overall categories of sticks you like. Oh, and to stick with the theme of this thread - nothing beats a Cohiba (Cuban) Siglo with a nice 15 Balvenie or 18 Macallen - neat. Yeah, there was an article in a magazine (might have been the Costco magazine) about their scotch and the good reviews it got. Too bad our Costco doesn't sell liquor. I was very close to buying their ale/lager sampler case, though. I have no reservations with buying "fine" stuff like booze from the Kirkland brand. I finally got to try one of the fine oak Macallans when my cousin got a bottle of 15. I had read that the clearer, fine oak line was not as popular as the more ubiquitous sherry oak because it was not as smooth. I didn't think so. It was definitely different from the red Macallans, but it was still very smooth, flavorful and very drinkable. And it went well with a CAO Gold Vintage cigar, too.

True, that is classic Finance 101 diversification, so if one or two investment classes tanked, hopefully the others would average your whole basket out to get your 10% return. A few thoughts that I have accumulated over the years on this: - Many stocks are much less risky than bonds. And many bonds are much more risky than stocks. The adage that stocks are risky and bonds are more conservative is wrong. Stock in Southern Company (the power company) is much more safe than buying bonds from Joe's Biotech Research Company. You have to do a ton of research on each and every stock and bond in order to truly get a decent, mathematical diversification of your portfolio. - Precious metals - not sure what to think yet. They can be extremely risky or stable,depending on which metal, the state of the overall economy, and the level of the populace's overall paranoia, ignorance, and stupidity (OK, not really a fair cheap shot at the metals investors - they make money too, I just kind of agree with Buffet about gold being a useless mineral that people just shift around and never has any utility). - Cash is pretty worthless right now. Money market accounts earning 1% or less are losing a lot of money with inflation running at around 3%. Of course, it is safe (sort of, except for the dough you are guaranteed to lose to inflation), so it is a good balancer of a diversified portfolio. I recently read a great article about diversification. People think that diversification, as an example, would look like a portfolio with stocks in airlines, stocks in real estate, bonds in financial companies, and 20% cash. That portfolio is heavily diversified in terms of industry and asset class. But, if the overall economy went up or down, the entire portfolio would likely follow and go up or down - even if you were in funds or ETFs in those respective industries. In other words, you are not really diversified by diversifying by industry sector or by asset class. This guy wrote that you have to diversify by risk, which is much less intuitive and much more difficult to figure out.In other words, I can make a portfolio made up entirely of industrial stocks that would be way more diversified than a poorly planned 25/25/25/25 portfolio. If the 25/25/25/25 portfolio contents (bonds, stocks, etc) all have the same risk profile, as long as the industrial stocks I stacked in my portfolio truly have very different risk profiles, I am more diversified. In that case, if the overall economy went way up or way down, hopefully my portfolio of all industrial stocks would be more stable. Example - I built a portfolio of stocks from a casket manufacturing company, a biotech company, a healthcare company, and a restaurant supply company like Sysco. Hopefully if the economy tanks, the casket company and healthcare company would both go up (recession proof industries - sort of) whereas the other two would likely decline (less people dining out, etc). The opposite would be true if the market climbed. Of course, this is oversimplified, but the concept is there. Bottom line, much research has to be done before just randomly picking 25% stocks, 25% bonds, etc.

Speaking of cigars - anybody into them? I have been dabbling over the past year and have learned a lot about the different types, brands, etc. The cigar field is kind of like the wine or whiskey realm - thousands of different brands, tastes, vintages, blends, etc. It's a pretty interesting hobby.

Good to hear, I guess. Just did my physical not that long ago and had to do both PIP books and the new CCT for the first time. The CCT was, well...interesting at best. Seemed a little more difficult than the PIP books. So if the CCT is for rated guys, what happens if a rated guy fails it? I haven't seen it yet, but every dude in my squadron agrees that it is much more difficult than the book tests and it is only a matter of time before someone who was good with the books fails the CCT.

Good points. That's what I was getting at when I was arguing with my buddy about how "worthless" our local, state school MBAs were. What he was really trying to say was that he was actually worthless, in that he didn't have any work experience or a job. Most everyone else in the program was working full time and going to MBA classes at night to better their already good jobs. We had a lot of IT consultants, engineers from the power company and phone company, a few banking types from the banks with headquarters in the city, and we also had the occasional doctor, nurse, and audiologist. The thing they all had in common was they were moving up in their technical career fields and wanted to learn more about the business and management side of things, hence the desire for an MBA. That's why my buddy swears by the top-10 programs, because he had nothing else to fall back on and was hoping to land some mythical 6-figure job with his MBA, even though he had zero experience. The rest of us were happy to go part-time, have our employers pay for the already inexpensive degree, and further our careers. But in the end, if you are mediocre, with little or no prior meaningful work experience, and you just happen to get into Wharton due to a high GMAT score or some connection, you will not walk directly into a $145K/year job upon graduation simply because that is what the statistics say is the average starting salary for a Wharton MBA. So the bottom line, in my opinion, is that Air Force officers fall somewhere in between needing to leverage the graduate degree to get in the door versus using prior experience as leverage. Let's face it, 10 or 20 years of "officership" experience for a typical Air Force aviator is probably not going to carry a lot of weight if you want to jump right into engineering management for Texas Instruments in Dallas, or start as a product marketing manager at Coke in Atlanta or something. You might be able to leverage the Air Force experience slightly, but in the end, I tend to lean toward thinking that you should try and get a decent degree as opposed to one from Toro University University if you are not planning on doing the airline or government job thing. Here's a good article on how deceptive the median starting salary can be. One guy started at $350K out of Wharton, another started at $25K. The median was $110K.

Yup - most of my arguments about statistics are subjective, so some would claim that they are not debunked, thus putting my success rate at around 95% or so. Either way, the only true statistic I have ever come across and have not been able to debunk is that fact that over 80% of all statistics are just made up on the spot anyway.

Wow. Looking back at it, that is a shit-ton of text. Sorry, but I thought there were some good points in there. For the record, my MBA is from a "bottom-tier," not a top-tier. But I do believe that writing skills are indeed important either way.