Liberty

I think these should be included. Mortgage falls into housing IMO. And student loans, credit cards, etc.. I don't see why that should be excluded, unless it's a loan to invest, or something that is clearly not a "living expense" (education falls in that broad category, I'd say).

Unfortunately I can't remove just one vote. I see an option to reset everything to zero and nothing else. Maybe mods can edit single votes...

Listened to this yesterday on ride home. I've been listening to to different podcasts from the iphone much more lately during commute. Just wonder how much podcasts might be a threat to SIRI? This free podcasting business seems to be picking up steam. Like Sirius, there are thousands of different podcast 'channels'. Most currently 'interview-based' though and not music. Just a thought ran through my mind. Malone and company certainly know the business. I think it's a threat and an opportunity. But even if they're growing fast, podcasts are still tiny tiny compared to, say, terrestrial radio. But nothing keeps SIRI from assimilating some of the good things about podcasts. They could have channels that are curated, 'best of' podcasts on certain topics (getting on SIRI could be what podcasters aspire to, getting you in front of a big audience that probably wouldn't find you otherwise). What SIRI sells is a curated, easy-to-use product that has prime real estate in the car. What they call a "lean back experience". Podcasting is a nice platform/technology, but it's not a product by itself, and how its packaged will matter a lot in how it appeals to different types of people IMO.

Discussion in a different thread has made me curious about the average yearly living expenses of the members here. I'm sure there's a pretty wide range of lifestyles, and I'm curious to quantify that a little bit (I tried to give a broad range of poll answers yet keep some granularity so not everybody ends up between 50k-100k or whatever). Please don't include taxes, money invested, business-related expenses, etc. Only housing (including mortgage), food, clothes, entertainment, transportation, non-business travel, credit card bills, etc. If you want to give more context, please post about the number of people in your household and what your biggest expenses are. If you are way above or below the average (and thus more interesting! ;) ), consider telling us your secret (how/why do you spend so much/so little?). Thank you.

I get from mrholty's post that he was planning/hoping to retire at age 40 with $4M. If you are planing to live off of your investments for 30-50+ years, you need to think about inflation. Of course. I was referring to this line: "I don't know what 40 yr old or 50 yr old wife'd and kids'd up me will spend since that's 15 or 25 yrs from now, but it's probably a lot more than $160K." 4 million in 15-25 years is different from 4 million today, is what I meant.

True. But the Mr. Money Mustache lifestyle is probably more like retiring on 600k, so 4 million is more like Mr. Money Monocle :) assuming a 4% withdrawal rate, $4mm = $160K isn't exactly champagne and caviar. that's just getting by (albeit nicely) in some parts of the country when you factor in housing/kids/private education a decent vacation here and there etc. I don't know what 40 yr old or 50 yr old wife'd and kids'd up me will spend since that's 15 or 25 yrs from now, but it's probably a lot more than $160K. The median household income, 2009-2013, in the US was $53,046. That's usually two people working. It can definitely be done on less than a million. It doesn't mean that you can do it, or that you would want to do it, but you certainly don't need 160k/year to live well (or 200k at a 5% withdrawal rate with 4 million). And if you go into the frugal lifestyle of Mr. Mustache and co. (at least partly) and get a lot more money-efficient than the average US household which spends on tons of crap they don't need (and which would probably also include moving out of very high-priced cities like NYC...), you don't need much. It depends what it is that makes you truly happy; for me, it's being in control of my time, spending time with my family, good books, music, and TV series/films, internet access. Nothing very expensive. I won't work 10 extra years to have a nicer house and car if I know these things won't make me happier. But maybe people who grew accustomed to a very spendy lifestyle feel they need the finer things in life to be happy - I know that my wife and I have trouble thinking up gift ideas for each other because we have everything we need - to each their own. Also, I was talking about retiring soon, which is what mrholty was close to doing, so inflation wasn't something I thought about in my previous post.

Some people are already trying: http://www.seasteading.org/

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/80104000/gif/_80104798_cscl_globe_cargo_ship_624in.gif http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30696685 Thought this was an interesting piece. Found via @asymco on twitter. http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/80091000/jpg/_80091792_global1_get.jpg

https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/01/08App-Store-Rings-in-2015-with-New-Records.html 50% growth in one year! And if developers earned 25 billion, Apple got something like 11bn (their 30% cut on everything sold on the app store, must be extremely high margin). There's your stimulus, US economy. You're welcome.

True. But the Mr. Money Mustache lifestyle is probably more like retiring on 600k, so 4 million is more like Mr. Money Monocle :)

What does it have to do with anything? Who cares about anyone who bought during the deal? They could be doing an arb play. The fact is that, like in fairfax, ebix and raina were slandered. The shorts were shouting fire in the crowded theater. The only sad part is the posters here joined the shorts chorus and yelled fire. I've been in this forum for last 10+ years and this was the first time I witnessed something unsavory. You make $, lose $. in the long run $ doesn't matter. Reputation and integrity matter. I don't even have a big ebix position, but have spoken to Raina. I can't congratulate people who had the guts to buy when everybody else was running the other way? Isn't that a lot of what value investing is about? Don't take your frustration out on me. I started this thread and defended EBIX for years. I haven't owned any for a long time, and I don't plan to, but I'm certainly not to blame for the business having been attacked. People can't even admit they were wrong about Apple in 2013, so I doubt you'll see people say they were wrong on Ebix any time soon.

EBIX now up over 100% since the Goldman deal fell through a year and a half ago. Congrats to those who bought then :)

He could be looking for a way to get back in, so it's not to his advantage to praise the company too much and increase the price. He did say last year that his ultimate goal was to be a long-term Valeant shareholder, and he tried to make it one of his biggest positions (if not his biggest) and elected to take all-stock on the AGN deal. I doubt he's changed his mind since.

Off the top of my head, he did praise Hunter Harrison to a similar level.

As Pearson said, the vast majority of all their acquisitions so far have been small and medium private businesses. That's not changing. They've tried to do a few public companies in the past, and will no doubt try a few more in the future, but I think it's erroneous for people to suddenly expect them to go after a lot more Allergan-type deals all of a sudden and change their strategy. They have a 300m FX headwind, so the guidance is pretty strong if you adjust for that. They have more international than many others. Sometimes that helps, sometimes it hurts, but the underlying businesses, regardless of FX, seem to grow really fast. And of course, the guidance assumes no new M&A and no pricing gains, which we know is not realistic. They'll beat it, probably by a mile.

Here's the audio file for anyone who wants it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gtio6sf5b18oci2/2015-jan-VRX-guidance.m4a?dl=0

Valeant 2015 guidance call going on now. I'll post the audio when it's over. Nice touch: Mike Pearson has extended his contract for 5 years, and will now have ZERO base salary. Compensation entirely based on performance now. CFO extended 3 years. Here are the slides: http://ir.valeant.com/files/doc_presentations/2015/Guidance-presentation-Jan-2015-Final2_v001_s494y5.pdf Pearson just said in answer to question about M&A: 'Right now zero appetite to use our stock for M&A, believe we are significantly undervalued'

Thanks for sharing your story and welcome to the forum. I'm sure that what happened to you happens to a lot of people, and I've certainly had my ups and down myself and learned a lot from those experiences. Ideally, we always want to learn from other people's mistakes. That's the rational thing. But sometimes nothing truly teaches the lesson that personal experience and losing significant money does. I hope you will keep posting, I'm sure we all have a lot to learn from you. Cheers!

Here's the audio if anyone wants to download it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g38p1le3242wz7d/2015-jan-LMCA-citi-conf.m4a?dl=0

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/01/07/bill-ackmans-short-list-of-ceos/ Piece about the names on Ackman's desk, which included Sokol. Probably nothing much to it - he wouldn't leave a secret there when journalists are over - but still fun trivia. Here's the hi-res photo: http://www.bloomberg.com/image/i.kKeN7x4TqQ.jpg

^This If you don't want to put in the work to find and follow stocks, focus on asset allocation, dollar cost averaging and rebalancing. Find a plan you and your family is comfortable with and stick to it. ETFs and index funds make this easier and cheaper than ever. Your returns will be acceptable but not outstanding. This is wise advice.

You mean in 1997 when NeXT did a reverse-takeover?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102317846 Ackman: After HLF, I'm done with 'public shorts' Not sure if he'll stick to that if he sees another one that hits him right in the sense of justice, but we'll see..

Thanks for the recommendations, Scott and dcollon. I'm adding those to the list :) Update: Just ordered the Beal book. Lots of very cheap used copies on amazon.

And I expect that by the time the NOLs run out and they have to start paying taxes, SIRI will have been folded into LMCA (the buybacks bring that day closer all the time) and Malone and Maffei will find a way to minimize taxes further.