Liberty

New rumors of an Altice bid ::) http://www.reuters.com/article/altice-loans/lpc-bankers-work-on-us70bn-debt-for-altice-charter-tie-up-idUSL8N1LN4NK

http://www.csisoftware.com/2017/09/2778/

Marc Cohodes now going after Turtle Creek: http://upturtlecreekwithoutapaddle.com

New Nissan Leaf: https://electrek.co/2017/09/05/nissan-leaf-2018-next-gen-3/ http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/09/20170906-leaf.html

This unfortunately falls into the category of slogan solutions that theoretically exist but politically un-attainable. Real life is not a slogan. Will China remove all trade barriers? Tax only Apple and Google? Won't happen. Unfortunately democracy is a b.... Call it the friction in this political economy. Sometimes there's no solution other than to slow down the leap into the utopia and take a step back. I realize that. I'm talking about what I think should be aimed for, which is different from what many others believe (nationalists who believe their country/group is special because they were randomly born in it and such). Goals and slogans are different. If you don't have goals and just do whatever is politically expedient or advantageous at the moment, you just float around with the currents and rarely get anywhere.

Seems to me like the best solution for all is to remove all trade barriers everywhere, with clearly justified exceptions. Why should I pay more for something just because it comes from some other country (on top of shipping and natural expenses, etc)? Just because some imaginary line is between us? I'm closer to many US states than the Western Canadian provinces, why should I pay more for something close by in the US than something far away in Canada? Because we have different passports? One side sets up tariffs to "protect" some industry that has political clout, then the other side does the same, and now like Buffett's people standing on tip toes at a parade, everybody's in the same relative spot, except that the citizens of both countries are paying more for goods and services than they otherwise would. Seems to me like protectionism only benefits special interest groups with political clout and is bad for citizens on average. It's also useful for demagogues who want to gain power by creating a "us vs them" dynamic when in fact, strangers in my country are just as much strangers as strangers in another country. If we judge that some groups deserve to be helped, that's fine, but help them directly, rather than by indirectly adding friction in the system that reduces productivity and makes everyone poorer. It's always easier to point to the losers of trade because they tend to be more concentrated and the winners tend to be more diffuse, but the winners are way more numerous and in aggregate win a lot more. It's fine to help the losers, but it's not fine to make everybody lose just to slow down what is usually inevitable (when a country goes from 3 automakers to 20, of course the original 3 will have to reduce their output and some people will have to find new jobs, etc).

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09/turns-out-the-chevy-bolt-is-a-lot-of-fun-to-autocross/

https://electrek.co/2017/09/04/how-tesla-model-s-holds-up-time/ How 5-year old Model S holds up.

That's basically what "retired" means in the context here. There are no rules about not working, the whole point is you aren't forced to, and when you do, it's better because it's voluntary and your lifestyle doesn't depend on it, reducing stress.

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/8/31/apple-in-china Neil Cybart's analysis of Apple's position in China.

http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/overcoming-your-demons/ Good personal post by Morgan about his fight with stuttering. I have an acquaintance with a very strong stutter, and this helped get a better idea of what it must be like. But it's also about more than stuttering, of course. We all have things to overcome...

If you follow the link, they have one for age, and there's a lot of comments below the post with more info. I think charging cycles is the main thing for these types of batteries.

Interesting data on battery degradation (for those who worry that you have to buy a whole new battery frequently): https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/tesla-model-s-battery-degradation-data/ Note that after hundreds of thousands of kilometers, ICE vehicles also have wear and tear and aren't as efficient (aka have a lower range on the same amount of fuel) than when they were new.

My wife works from home full time. I work from home some days (and nights and weekends). I would not want to do it 100% though. Lack of direct contact with colleagues and socialization sucks. But yeah for some this is the way to go. Our company is very spread out and mostly work-at-home friendly. We have people working from home in Alaska, boondocks of Maine, various Euro countries, etc. I worked remotely for 11 years. I've known people who it has driven crazy (mostly extroverts), but it works perfectly with my personality type, which is why I knew I'd have the discipline to be productive at home without a traditional job. I used to sometimes work late too until we had our first child 3 years ago, then that went out the window... Now my wife is pregnant with our second, so I'll probably enjoy the flexibility when the kid comes...

Happy birthday (a little late)!

I can't find a source right now, but I think that even if it isn't off-grid, that Tesla is still sourcing its power from clean sources. This doesn't mean that the actual electrons at the station are from those sources, but that Tesla's power bill $ goes to clean sources rather than the local coal plants (since the electrons are fungible, it's more or less the same... it encourages the equivalent production of clean power to that used by the charging station somewhere else).

The difference won't be as large as it might seem since EVs are so much more efficient than ICEs (thermal efficiencies in the real world of maybe 30%, often less), so even charged 100% from coal they can be comparable with some gas cars (there's a range between a Prius and an Escalade, of course). The "virtual tailpipe" of the EV is also a lot farther away from where people breathe, and since they're mostly charged at night, it tends to use a coal plant when it's almost idle, rather than add to the day's peak and lead to demand for new plants. Also any time you use a Supercharger it likely won't be coal (https://electrek.co/2017/06/09/tesla-superchargers-solar-battery-grid-elon-musk/). If you live in a sunny part of the world, you might want to look into putting solar panels on your roof. In many situations it can actually lower your monthly energy bills even paying/leasing the system (can be amortized over a long period), or you can sign up for "green power" with your utility and pay a bit more so that your payments go to non-coal sources of power (https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/green-power.html). Or you might not care about any of this and do nothing, but chances are that over time the grid where you are will get cleaner and your car will automatically get cleaner too, unlike an ICE.

I keep track of how much capital they deploy each quarter/year to see trends, and I keep an eye on press-released acquisitions because I know these are >$10m, so if over time their number increases, that's another good sign. It's also interesting to see which industries they deploy capital in. But in general, you can't track things at the BU level, you have to look at the aggregate. In the end what matters is organic growth (especially in maintenance revenue -- they're ready to sacrifice other things to focus on the high-margin, recurring stuff), capital deployed, ROIC, and whether they can land a big company like TSS once in a while. Leonard also provides extra info once in a while about what's going on underneath the aggregate-level numbers. For example, he talked about some large shrinking assets that they bought in the past few years that made organic growth look low, but they were still meeting their hurdles on these assets (in other words, they got them cheap enough that the IRRs are still high -- I think it's very good that they'd rather create value than focus on the optics).

The point is that most people don't use them to haul tons of things and go off-road, so it is indeed a good symbol of gross waste. Doesn't mean it's accurate in 100% of cases, like any other symbol or example. And MMM regularly makes jokes about Teslas and iPhones too. I think the point is to do things for the right reasons, with your eyes open, understanding the costs and benefits. If you lease a big gas guzzler every 4 years because you want the image that a big SUV provides despite living in a suburb, never going off paved roads, and rarely carrying more than a few bag of groceries, you're putting a huge financial (ie. time) burden on yourself for not much gains. How many hours do you have to spend working to pay for all those leased SUVs and the gas they burn over a lifetime, and is it worth whatever benefit you have? On the other hand, if you need towing and hauling and off-road capabilities, then it makes all the sense in the world to get a SUV. MMM wouldn't disagree with that, he'd probably just recommend buying at least slightly used since these depreciate really fast the first couple years. Buying a Tesla is also fine, as long as you know it's not a frugal option. Same with an iPhone. It's more about being good at making rational choices rather than just blindly keeping up with the jones or being too influenced by some outer scorecard (what will people think if I drive an old car? etc). It's just another manifestation of "price is what you pay, value is what you get".

Wise words. I suppose I just read some things and felt that with the readership of this forum (probably 1000 lurkers for every poster, this thread already has over 7k views) it would suck if some young people were exposed to this idea for the first time here and came out with the impression that all this was was BS coupon clipping for weak meek welfare queens being fooled by hypocritical charlatan frauds, etc. That just felt a bit sad to me. But I think I've said what I had to say at this point. To each their own. I don't pretend this is for everyone, just that it's a nice option for some, and that this "retirement" isn't the stereotypical retirement for old people, it just means more time, freedom, control and less stress, not doing fewer things.

This is one of the problems with the word retirement, which I mentioned at the beginning of this thread. People read it and imagine this kind of stuff, when this is just one tiny subset of what someone can do with more freedom and time. Personally, I am way more productive than when I had a job because I only work on things that interest me, so I tend to do more of them. Ask yourself if you would still do your current job if you weren't being paid? What would you change about it to make it even better? What other things interest you more? If your current job is indeed your dream job and perfect, good for you! You are a rare bird. Stay there. Having financial independence makes any job better, so there's that too and I'm sure it helps. Any job is less fun when you live on the edge and wouldn't survive long without it (people on this forum are mostly way wealthier than average, so that's an atypical situation).

For those curious, I started thinking maybe this thing was a possibility around 15 years ago. First idea came from Your Money or Your Life*, then later I read Stumbling on Happiness** which helped crystallize some stuff about what my goals should be... Then I read The Tightwad Gazette and The Simple Dollar and such in the 2000s, and they had some tricks and helped maintain the right mindset (kind of like how re-reading Buffett letters helps keep you focused on the right things even if you don't exactly learn something new)... But it's discovering MMM maybe 5-6 years ago that helped re-focus me and fully decide I had that goal and go for it. Like the Buffett letters, it's very motivational to read about someone doing it and explaining clearly the simple (but not easy) principles. The problem with frugality without the rest (psych of happiness, early retirement or similarly big goal) is that if you still think that what will make you happy is buying a fancy car every 4 years and buying luxury goods and constantly eating out and such, then whenever you are being frugal it feels like a sacrifice, and the money you're piling on will only be later spent on consumer crap anyway, so there's little point. But if you have a larger goal that you really want, like having "F Y money" to be less stressed, or the ability to start your own business, or to take a year off whenever you want, or work part time, or to not have a job at all and focus on your own projects and interests, then every dollar you save feels tremendously good and motivation is never a problem, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice. The whole thing is a flywheel that works a lot worse if you remove any part of it. If you can't reduce your spending by a lot, you'll never save enough to be independent. The math is impossible to get around. If you think spending money increases happiness (past a certain point - some things are worth it, a lot are not), then spending less feels terrible. If you don't realize it's possible to do things differently than everybody else, then it feels like you're just saving to be rich for its own sake, and to later spend on SUVs and larger houses and luxury vacations, and that's not that motivating (at least not to me). * https://www.amazon.ca/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0143115766 ** https://www.amazon.ca/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert/dp/0676978584/

Skepticism is my default setting when people try to sell me things, because I am frugal. And given the affiliate links, books and seminars on most of the ERE blogs these gurus are definitely trying to sell me something. I'm all for skepticism. I'm not offering a blanket defense of anything, I'm focusing on specific points. As for the general question of "why do you post so much about this stuff Liberty?"... Well, "because I want to" is enough, but on top of that, because I care about this stuff. My main passion currently is investing and I spend a lot of my time on it, and I don't really read about the other MMM stuff anymore. But if I had to pick between "frugality + basic financial literacy + financial independence + early retirement + the psychology of happiness stuff" or "value investing", I'd pick the former. It has had a bigger impact on my life and I think it can have a bigger impact on more people's lives than value investing. I'd rather trade money for freedom than freedom for money. If I had to reboot my life and never hear about either thing, I'd rather not hear about value investing/Buffett/etc. if I didn't have investing I'd be in a similar spot - though poorer - but spending my days on stuff that interests me, with low stress and low annoyances. If I never heard about the FIRE stuff, I feel my life would be appreciably worse (and it's not even about having a bad job -- I had a great job with lots of freedom and good pay, I just wanted this other thing even more). It's not for everyone, but it's for more people than currently even know it's an option. In the end, people try to personalize this stuff so much. I don't care about the gurus, though IMO MMM is the Buffett of the field (and Fisker or Early Retirement Extreme is probably the Ben Graham). I care about the big ideas, which include a lot of psychology and philosophy that people not too familiar with the field discount to focus on the tips and tricks (the same thing happens with value investing, btw).

Writser, why are you so negative about these gurus? Did MMM kick your dog? My replies speak for themselves. If I see something that I think is wrong, or misses the point, or is unfair, I tend to point it out. When someone who became financially independent at a young age is called a welfare queen and a housewife, I think that's worth setting the record straight. When MMM is called a fraud and charlatan when he clearly isn't, to me that's worth setting the record straight. When people who clearly have no idea about these ideas try to misrepresent them totally, I say something because I know that when I was 20, maybe if I had read a forum where a bunch of people say it's all bullshit and nobody who actually knew what they were talking about piped up, maybe I would've shrugged and not looked deeper. Is everything perfect? No. Are some of these blogs low quality and promotional? Sure. I'm not defending that. But I certainly think some people love to focus on any negative thing they can find to try to dismiss the whole thing, and that's not a rational way to look at it.

Wow. Except that MMM and that woman both retired before creating their blog, and that MMM was a software engineer who came from a low-middle class Canadian family and didn't make anywhere close to wall street money. Neither did I, btw, and I don't have a blog, and I've met tons of people who did the same thing and most are pretty regular folks. But anyway, keep inventing scenarios in your head if it makes you feel better.