The BOV plans to completely stop and and all planning and funding for previous Student Life Village, in addition they are canceling the demolition of Slusher Hall. This might be part of a larger plan at the school to curtail large expenses.
https://news.vt.edu/articles/2022/04/sa-041222-studentlifevillage.html
https://bceva.com/virginia-tech-board-approves-19-5-million-for-planning...
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
9 Hole golf course is saved.... for now.
Praise portal?
So $20m went to a project we completely canceled before it got going?
Boy does that ever seem like we got taken for a ride
And that is just for phase 1. There is no way just the planning process for the first phase could cost this much. My company would have loved to get this contract.
But hey, now they get to go out and praise themselves for saving us a bunch of money by canceling ventures, just ignore that $20m we lit on fire last year.
Sounds like my company .... that is currently laying off about 50% of the workforce one by one today
It is very fucking tough "out here" right now. Very. But the Eagles can't sell 2K dollar sphere tickets fast enough and Davidson hoops boosters light money on fire to try to win the A 10.
Hmm...wonder what could be going on here.
Meanwhile, U.S. debt tops $36 trillion.
It's ALL related.
An interesting side to that will be if they can actually pass a law capping credit card interest rates at 10%. I think credit cards are going to be all more frugal about limits and who qualifies.
Somehow we've worked our way into believing that everyone should all have the same stuff, and due to credit and credit cards, we pretty much do.
Identify need, save, buy...rinse and repeat...except very few do this.
When people with 890 credit scores are being charged 8% interest for a new car or motorcycle- they should fix that first. I think credit card interest should be MUCH higher than transportation and housing.
Part of my credit score is that when I buy a car I pay half down and then pay off the other half in next six months so I don't really care that much about the interest rate. I was advised continuing to pay cash for cars was actually hurting my credit score.
One thing I detest in life is car repairs, unreliable cars, etc. Yes I know I eat depreciation, but I buy a new car before mine reaches 150-200K miles or so. When buying a 50K car, half down and paying off 6 months later is a chunk of change.
Sure, but you manage that by making car payments. Not to them, but to yourself.
Your next car will likely be bought for cash, if you want it to be.
It does help that my truck is mainly used for to and from work mainly. Work travel is in a company car. When we travel, we use my wife's SUV as it gets better gas mileage.
After my first car loan ended, I continued to put that same payment into an account for the vehicles replacement. So effectively I put money aside every month for car repairs/replacement and it adds up. The current truck has 78k miles on it, the wife's car has 114k. Hers was bought new, mine had 13k miles on it. I normally have enough cash easy available from high rate savings, vanguard money markets, or other investments to pay cash for it outright, but financing it for a couple years and paying off early never hurts the credit rating.
I HATE car repairs and have had lots of them as I love cars... most of the last 20 years I've been driving various German Super Saloons... Audi, BMW, Merc and so on. My AMG was bonkers... but sooo expensive to maintain. The only reason I kept it was because my buddy was a certified Merc mechanic and did my work out of his garage for food and beer. Woo hoo! Eventually I hit 200k on the E55 and sold it. The point of my little story? I took a flier on the Model X for the tax write off and fuel savings. I am four years into it and I'll I've purchased is energy (at home charging overnight at the lowest rate), one set of tires and windshield wiper fluid. I am at 50k miles and so far so good. The only real bummer was when Elon did a price drop a year ago and overnight 10k of value was wiped out. Not cool at all. That being said, not having the million or so parts that come with an ICE is amazing. Seeing what Model 3/Ys cost now to me makes it a very intriguing proposition... especially when you consider how freaking fun Teslas are to drive.
Politics aside, Tesla is objectively a subpar car company nowadays. Just this week they recalled effectively every single Cybertruck sold (not an exaggeration, >46k recalled of <50k sold) due to rear quarterpanels becoming unglued from the body.
There are so many better EV options over Tesla. The EV only mfrs (Rivian, Lucid, and Polestar, etc) are all better reviewed, and the traditional mfrs make better EVs now too. Shoot, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 has won Car and Driver's EV of the year every year since it was released (and that was before they dropped the N model).
And I'm seeing reports that Liberty Mutual just decided to not renew insurance policies for anyone with a Cybertruck, and that's after Geico decided not to do so last year, so its likely that the issues Tesla are having are only going to get worse.
As an aside, over the winter I put $100 down on a Scout. EV with a gas generator to recharge the battery giving it 500 miles of range with the instant torque of an EV motor with the ability to essentially fill up the tank when its low? And its made in SC, and they're planning to go direct to consumer?
Yes, please!
I saw VW dealers are pissed that Scout is cutting them out of the equation. I'm personally all for eliminating the middle man if that means us consumers see the savings.
As an aside, VW manufactures the ID.4 (and Atlas) in Chattanooga. So there's another EV option that's assembled in the USA.
Yeah WV dealers are putting on a full court press to get the direct to consumer options shut down in all states. With that said, it only takes one state to allow it for Scout to make it work. Just set up a Scout office there and consumers will flock to it. You're only delaying the inevitable by fighting it like the dealers are.
And at the end of the day, the dealers are up in arms because they know they provide absolutely no benefit to the consumer, and only exist to set insane markup prices to gouge the consumer at the point of sale.
Honestly not surprised that Tesla didn't get the Cybertruck tested by the Highway Safety crew and it has a 0 star rating. They glued panels to the body... My mind shudders at that.
Canada started refusing to insure it a year or two ago.
We have a '22 ioniq5 and we love it. Has nearly 50k miles on it. We test drove a model 3 and it was fun but the Hyundai is far more comfortable. I still believe tesla has the best ev tech and their infrastructure is superior but the quality of the vehicles themselves is meh.
I'm happy to invest in companies other than tesla that will spend r&d money on ev tech. It's not perfect, by any means, but I think it's good for everyone to have a diverse set of options with investment going into new technologies
I have a friend with an Ioniq and he likes it, his only gripe is traveling and being able to charge it on vacation.
yeah, traveling requires a bit of planning and some patience, for sure. But, when you're buying an EV in the 2020's you kind of have to expect that. I knew what I was signing up for when we bought it so I am okay with that part of it. It worked out really nicely for us at first, actually, because we had an infant at the time and we couldn't really do long trips even if we wanted to. When driving anywhere more than 1 or 2 hours away we'd have to stop and get the kiddo out for a little bit anyway and we always lined that up with a charging stop. The cool part with the Ioniq5 is that it charges relatively quickly so in most cases the car was ready to get back on the road before we were. Now our kiddo is older and could go further but we're so used to those pit stops that it's just a part of the routine for us.
My gripe with it is that the body panels are super thin and dent really easily. We have lots of door dings
Only in America will fucking idiots buy the ugliest "truck" on earth that serves no more practical truck purpose than a CRV for 6 figures. Nowhere but idiot americans with too much money to spend. Those things are an abomination.. The rear of the "truck" bed is 8 inches off the deck... yeah dad we can haul alot of shit in this. Stupid Americans.
Makes me sad that ford's attempt at an ev truck went so poorly. I'm hoping Chevy does a better job.
The company has a Lightning and one of the new hybrid F150's. The hybrid is far better so far. I really think the government should have pushed hybrids while battery technology is still being worked on.
I still laugh that the mustang e beat the tesla in a drive across America because it can coast.
I honestly think if Scout nails it with their Harvester platform, where its a 4 stroke gas generator recharging the electric battery, it'll completely course correct where the technology should be right now. Battery technology just isn't where it needs to be in order for us to go completely electric, and the power grid is already showing cracks of not being able to handle the excess demand from everyone going EV. But, a gas generator just powering an electric engine and recharging batteries on the fly, potentially reducing the strain on the power grid as well as being able to still give you the quick 10 minute refuel we currently have while getting immediate torque and more range? Well, now that is something that would appeal to everyone. It would potentially be as big a development to the EV industry as the iPhone was to mobile devices, and its worth noting that Scout was formed with a partnership of VW and Rivian, so if that engine works, it'll be quickly adopted by a couple other major players in the EV space.
I have a lightning and it's an awesome truck (slash super fast golf cart)
We can use it next time. Shorter round, more time for drinking afterwards.
We'll get to my slices in a hurry
I'm glad you got a lemon!/s
I loved the Lightning when it first came out and was super excited about it. Then I heard that they were having all sorts of issues and I've met a few people in them at charging stops and they've been less than thrilled with them. Genuinely, though, I am happy to hear that you are happy with yours. I've hated Fords for a long long time but the Lightning was a cool idea and I was pleased that Ford was diving into that market with both feet. I hope Chevy does well with their truck too. I think the tech is still probably 10-20 years from being really useful in a proper truck but investing in the research might get us to a place where you can get a decent truck that actually does decent truck things on an ev platform.
Mine is almost 2 years old now but not from the first batch (which may have had issues but I don't know). Never had a problem with mine. You have to plan more than with a gas engine but otherwise it's one of the quietest, most comfortable rides on the road
I've got a two year old Lightning and love it too!
Tesla had always been subpar, they just were cool for a while. They have never released their 3 year reliability numbers so when you see them on reliability reports they aren't being compared to the same stats as other cars. They had tons of panel issues with the model 3. They had something like 13 piece of paneling on their rear end, while most car companies just goes to corning and have them make 1-2 pieces that are designed to be mounted by a robot. The main car companies have already removed labor where they can, it's really hard to build a car differently due to how efficient a lot of the companies are.
The other thing about reliability is that an EV has like 20% of the parts a ICE car has, they should be way simpler to build yet Tesla's have more problems that most ICE cars.
I admire them for doing a lot of work in America as a lot of the American cars are from Mexico (and Toyotas are often the most American built car). But whatever Tesla is doing is not keeping up with BMW (south carolina), Toyota (WV, Il, TX, TN AL, NC), and most of the American cars built here, they are way better quality.
Teslas rank overall in the middle of all manufacturers for reliability but are improving each year as you would expect with a new car company. The Cybertruck is a bit of an outlier as it is just crazy and even Elon said he wouldn't do it again. Funny thing to me is just how much misinformation gets thrown out there by people about Tesla who have never even owned/driven one. Very American. My buddy sold his X to try out the Rivian SUV and sold it within six months because of the poor workmanship compared to his X. My experiences are firsthand. The model X (which my neighbor also has had for five years) has been bulletproof for me.
Oh oh! I have a real life anecdote that just concluded today about this!
I dropped the key to my Camry last week (the only key i have btw). Exploded into pieces. Nbd, I thought. Scrounged up the battery, buttons, and casing and put it all back together.
Get into my car. Turn the key to ignite the engine. Nothing. Try again. Nothing. Get my buddy jump my car. Nothing. It would turn over, but it refused to start. Long story short, I came to find out after two tows to a local car shop and a dealership that my car was no longer recognizing my key. Apparently the chip in the key was damaged. As that was my only key, I was SOL.
Cost to program a new key and a spare key? $761. (And twelve cents)
Reminds me of the barbershop scene from Gran Torino about getting the brakes fixed. One of the funniest scenes of all time.
The modern car key is the biggest racket on earth. They could be free to program, etc and the car company wouldn't lose a dime. Harley gives you ONE key now when you buy a brand new bike. - Lose it/Damage it? You are fucked. Cost of an additional key? $275.00 and at least an hour of your time waiting for it. Scam. Now most car places dock your trade in value if you don't have both key fobs. Total racket.
Yep. Learned this the hard way recently. Definitely something you can negotiate for when you buy a car.
The last two Honda's I have bought new each came with 2 fobs and a valet key.
I did pay for the security system (only way to get ABS). Also comes with a pin so even if Both my keys have a dead battery, I can start and ride it with the pin.
I might be showing my age, but I actually still prefer a real key to a start button fob style only car. We had a company car that the battery died on. The fob style didn't have a place to manually unlock the car so we could pop the hood and change the battery. The maintenance people ended up spending a lot more time and money on what should have been a five minute battery replacement.
I agree, I do not think the electronic keys bring much value but lots of cost and potential for failures at the wrong time.
I know some like the convenience of remote lock/unlock and such but, I ten to keep vehicles forever and these kind of things only bring potential for costs and failures.
Same as much of the additional "features" that drive up modern cars. I don't want electrically operated windows, backup monitors, electrically operated seats, etc. They only add cost for minimal convenience.
Having a seat to heat my balls and buttocks while I drive is way more than a minor convenience
I might agree with that for my motorcycle as I ride it home from work at 5 AM at 38F butt, in a car? Nah, I don't need it. Frankly, I have considered heating things on the bike but only handgrips, for safety. I have not done it so, I suppose that means that I find it not all that important.
My wife has that option in her car. It's superfluous as far as I'm concerned. If I need my butt warmed, I'll do something less expensive and less cost if it fails like, a blanket or similar.
really gonna piss you off when you Google how easy it is to program and repair Broken key fobs for Camrys 😬 probably could have saved 5 to 600 usd
Needed a new ignition module for my 2012 ram. Dealership wouldn't even give me quote without bringing it in for a "diagnosis" even though I knew exactly what it needed. A little internet sleuthing and a 50 dollar android app later and I swapped it out myself after ordering the module online. I fully expect i saved at least 750-1000 dollars.
As someone who is trying to get out of the automotive repair world, we badly need better right to repair laws. One of the few times I wish I could discuss a bit further, but I want to respect TKP's no politics rule.
Who is charging 8% with perfect credit? Maybe on a 7-8 year jumbo loan? Just last month, local credit union gave me 4.8% for 60 months on a used car.
In PHX.. Harley and Honda- new... that is the going rate or there abouts 48 month loans
Wow. Guess the 50% down helped me out with more than the monthly payment.
Bought a CPO Subaru in December and landed a nice 7.4% loan on 48 months. Prechecked with my credit union and the rate was 7% but would have required significantly more on the down payment 🤷♂️ still tough in some spots. We have stellar credit too
I think this would kill or severely knee-cap the credit card industry as a whole. There are only a few tangible benefits to using a credit card when you're financially responsible: security and points. Security probably still stays but debit accounts can be nearly as secured now. Points are gone if the interest rate is capped at 10...the only reason points exist is extreme profits from bad borrowers.
Read an article this morning that said the points and rewards are there to get the people with good credit to use the cards more often. They spend more as a whole - and the card companies make a profit off the 2-4% they charge the retailers even after giving the rewards. The people with credit risks use cards because they need to. Those that don't use the cards instead of writing checks or debit largely for the points, cash back, or rewards.
That could be, I pay my CC off every month and only use it for the points.
I 100% believe this - and also, am part of it. My wife and I have a joint credit card that we use to pay all of the bills that we're allowed to pay with credit cards plus all of our other expenditures. Everything under the sun that we can pay for with credit we do so. We pay off our card every month so we don't pay any interest and we get lots of points that we leverage, mostly for travel benefits. It's a great, secure, way to spend money and comes with nice perks (for now) and as long as it gets paid off every month its an easy way to finance our life and get some nice benefits along the way. We also focus on budgeting and we make sure not to buy things we don't have money for. Ever since I got my first credit card nearly 20 years ago I have operated on the idea that I don't spend more than I have. Even though our credit card limits are pretty high we never come close to them because we keep our spending limited by our actual cash on hand, not the credit limit.
We do this too, they people that use the credit cards and pay them off are the stable low risk income for the companies, if you are carrying a balance then you are higher risk. there is a balance between low risk and stable money and the higher risk and higher reward of the people carrying balances.
It used to be that way. Credit cards were fairly uncommon in the 70s. Almost all (maybe all) states had usury laws that prevented charging high interest rates. Therefore, credit cards were only offered to those with good credit and/or the means to pay things off. So if your state had restrictive usury laws, you could only be charged the allowed rate there. The courts ruled that, no, the bank could charge the interest rates allowed in the state where the bank was located. This caused banks to move their credit card departments to states with the most liberal laws so they could charge higher interest. The higher interest allowed them make money on people with poorer credit because, eve though more would default, they could make it up with the lower credit people who did pay. Led to the explosion of credit cards with all the associated benefits (people can get credit when needed ...) and drawbacks (people get hosed with high rates if they use too much of that credit ...).
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/how-supreme-court-ruling-killed-usury-la...
I'm sorry brother. I recently went through that and it really sucks. A lot. I wish you the very best
Man that just happened to me a month or so ago. Was hired in November on a contract to hire with a 90 day wait before being brought in. New CTO comes in and on a whim cancels all contracts overnight, no questions asked, thousands of people let go. And I had about 2 weeks to go before I would convert.
Joke's on them, found another role by the end of the day that came with a raise over what they were paying me. Morons
Mind you, this company had its stock trading at a 5 year high with record profits in 2024. There was no need for the layoffs, they just wanted to look good for shareholders.
Sorry to hear that.
Yep, tales of woe are increasing, it seems. Glad I'm retired.
damn, dude! that is brutal AF. Sorry to hear that for you. Here's hoping you land on your feet somewhere. i'm sure you will, you seem to always do so
Read the next paragraph, lol!
I had about 3 hours of WTF before my contact at my recruiting agency told me they already had something else lined up. And even better, its more of a consulting role rather than hands on keyboard, which should make things a little easier to navigate over the next few years.
And let me tell you, my manager from the first role was pissed about the layoff. He had absolutely no say whatsoever who stayed and who left. There were some terrible FTEs he was forced to keep and would have loved nothing more than to let go and keep a contractor, instead (which would have saved the company money in the long term, but....). And he had spent months building out an entire team, utilizing contract to hire just because he was told to build it out fast and it was the easiest way to get it done. In one move, everything they had done since the summer was wiped out. And if I told you what company this was, you wouldn't exactly be surprised. Anyway, last I heard he had already requested a transfer to somewhere else within the company, and I don't blame him at all for it.
But yeah, a couple weeks ago I definitely moved my entire 401(k) into moneymarkets and bonds just until the current turbulence calms down.
I dont really get that last part. You probably have 15+ years before you're touching your 401k, the current volatility doesn't mean anything unless you're actively trading. Just total markt etf and chill
Without trying to go too close to the TOS, I always told myself after watching the 2008 collapse (and basically seeing it wipe out my in-laws retirement cause they had a corrupt AF investor handling their money) that if I felt extremely strong about the market being on the verge of a major downturn, I would freeze assets until it settled down. And the whole threat of tariffs and a trade war with our biggest trade partners on the global market had every single red flag going off. And the way in which it has been happening definitely seems a bit like market manipulation with every threat being foreshadowed and every implementation being met with an immediate hit to the stock price of those being impacted.
And I'm not actively trading, definitely can't on that account, and even on the ones where I can I have so little equity left that I'll get hit on capital gains for anything I move to money. I'm just going to let the dust settle before throwing it all back into the funds it was in before. I mean they got me 200% returns in 3 years, absolutely going to ride that wave again.
I am a big fan of dividends and dividend focused ETFs. So when the market goes down, I just tell myself my dividend reinvestment is buying extra shares. Unless they cancel or suspend the dividends, which rarely happens unless something else is going on, you are safe.
The problem with moving out is having to try and judge the bottom.
Completely agree with this take. I get the logic about time in market being better than timing the market, but when the market is this easy to time, why not? I mean, I moved from the C and S funds (in TSP) to the G and I funds at the beginning of March, and it's working out for me so far. As long as I buy back into C and S sometime after the market bottoms out but before it gets to the levels I sold at, then I'm gaining. I don't have to time the market tightly; it was pretty obvious that the market was entering a downturn, and I'm pretty confident I'll have a lot of runway from the bottom to where I initially sold from.
Besides, I just hit 7 figures back in September, and I really want to stay above that threshold. Considering that the government lost my initial allocations, and I spent the first 4.5 years fully in the G Fund, I'm damn proud to be where I'm at right now.
Glad you were able to land on your feet so quickly. This means I'm not going to have to start legging your comments now, as you have plenty. I'd feel guilty and have to leg you, otherwise. ;^)
Yeah pretty much this. A downturn couldn't have had a more predictable downturn than it did over the past month, and given we're still hearing about tariffs with more likely coming in April, the worst is likely yet to come. And as you said, don't need to time it perfectly, just need to buy back in before it reaches the level at which I sold out for me to come out ahead, and when the market is already 10% lower than it was when I sold, there is plenty of buffer there.
Also, I'm just thankful that turkey legs aren't taxable. 😬
As Buffett said, "Be fearful when others are greedy; be greedy when others are fearful." Lots of noise and reports out there about the tariffs that are causing the pullback more than the tariffs themselves. Investment banks and hedge funds were bound to take some profits at some point and they did, now the options markets have been surging so they're going to make more money on the way down, then buy up all the shares from panic sellers and ride it back up. Dollar cost average in and buy the dip! (Disclaimer: not financial advice, none given and none solicited!)
Orrrrrrr.........I could stick in my G Fund / I Fund combo (the F is up 2.5% since I switched vs the C which is down 3.1%) and still buy (transfer into) the dip!
It really is largely about your time horizon. If longer than ten years til you will need the funds, generally the best strategy is to decide your risk appetite and stick to it through the ups and downs IF your goal is to maximize long term returns.
Missing the Market's Best Days Has Been Costly
S&P 500 Index Average Annual Total Returns: 1995–2024
I mean of course if you miss out on the best 10 days of the market in the span of 30 years your ROI is going to be lower. But lets also see what happens to your ROI if you avoid the 10, 20, 30 worst days.
Of course the people whose job it is to invest your money and handle your finances are going to develop stats and studies that show its in your best interests to keep your money with them no matter performance.
The issue is no one - and that includes the 'experts' -can consistently determine which those days are(even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while); as the additional chart below shows , the biggest gain single days often happen in the middle of bear markets or very beginning months of bull markets. Which is why a long term view -tempered by how soon you are likely to need the money(eg are you 2-5 years from needing to tap those resources)-is the best overall strategy.
Over time the market as a whole is a net gain(if it weren't the value of the indices would be zero)
Using this site https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/DJIA_SP_NASDAQ/ and comparing the growth rates on an annual basis over my lifetime to date 1965-2025 for the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ(the three most commonly used market indexes) , the returns were 6.67 and 7.32% respectively - the NASDAQ was not computed daily before February 5, 1971. If we start 20 years later, the results are 9.26, 9.31, and 11.51 respectively; even if you cherry pick the worst ten year period of the 200s from 2001-2011 which include both of the bear markets of the 21st century, the respect results were .78, -.37, .86% respectively.
Over the last 100 years - the average bull market was 6.6 years with a cumulative return of 339% and the average bear market was 1.3 years with a cumulative loss of 38%. YES - if that bear market hits in the years at or around retirement , it can be painful ; but if you are still 8-10 years away from withdrawing funds , you are better off staying the course.
Good Days Happen in Bad Markets
S&P 500 Index Best Days: 1995–2024
As mentioned, time in the market>timing the market. Watching downturn in the past should teach you more about risk tolerance than how to time the market. This should make you adjust your stock/bond/fixed income ratio. Keep in mind that the majority of those people who do this for a living also lose to the s&p 500. You dont need a financial advisor to keep your $ in the market. I think their best quality would be stopping someone from selling at the downturn if someone's mentality would be to consider doing so.
Amen. Biggest lesson I have learned is that if you're a retail investor and you're trying to time the market, you're going to lose 99% of the time. Time in the market is way better than trying to time it or trade in and out for a quick pop. I budget each pay day what I'm going to have left over after retirement contributions, deductions, living expenses, etc. and first make sure I have a comfortable cash reserve in a high yield savings or money market account. I try to keep 2-3 months of expenses there for liquidity. Then the rest I dollar cost average into my investment account. I transfer in the same amount each pay period. When share costs are high, that fixed amount is buying me fewer shares; conversely, I'm still investing the same fixed amount even when the market is down, and it buys more shares when prices are lower.
I try to keep around a 70/30 growth to income asset allocation. Since this is money I don't need in cash currently and treat as a long term investment, I'm comfortable skewing more heavily toward growth, with some bonds and income-based holdings to balance things out. At least once a year I rebalance my portfolio, since the growth-based investments tend to appreciate much faster, they become a larger part of the portfolio. I rebalance and sell some of those assets to maintain the 70/30 ratio. And my regular investments I break up by weighted average of each investment to maintain that balance.
Plenty of really easy S&P and growth index funds/etfs out there to make it simple and give you good diversification and exposure. You don't need 50 different funds in your portfolio. Basically just set it and let it ride. Treat my 401k the exact same way.
Yeah, the moral is have a reasonable (ideally written) plan that you can and will stick to and do it. Don't change your plan on a whim.
plus there is plenty of data that if you only ever invested at all-time highs over the last x years or whatever, you'd still be up.
To just follow-up...
This is why I froze. This market rout was foreshadowed. Economists have been calling for a recession for a while, saying the market was artificially propped up and the current administration is actively pulling every lever they can to make it happen, and telling everyone when they're going to do it.
We aren't at the floor, yet. It's only getting worse before it gets better, and I'm real damn glad I froze what I did when I did.
"Economists have been calling for a recession for a while"
What's the old joke? Something like economists have correctly predicted 9 out of the last 3 recessions.
Jokes aside, everyone has to follow their risk tolerance. Having 3 decades of investment experience, I've learned to just roll with it. Made the mistake of splitting my initial investments 50:50 into an Index 500 fund and a Treasury Fund. Continued to invest over the years in the same ratio for those 2 funds. Same dollar amount invested over the years and 100% of all dividends reinvested and the stock market index fund is worth ~5.5x the treasury fund. Long term, people are way better in stocks and not trying to time things.
But - more important than any of that - you have to be comfortable with your allocation, so you should stay out as long as you feel uncomfortable. But I do kick myself thinking how much more I would have right now if I was 100% stock investing and not 50:50 when I was in my mid-20s.
Agree the right profile for growth is 100% stocks. I wonder where my TSP balance would be if the first 4.5 years of my career weren't in the G Fund. I remember filling out the allocation (some mix of C/S/I, I remember the acronym), I guess they just never applied it and I never checked. Been catching up 100% in stocks ever since. Putting in 12% right now, almost 24 years in.
I switched to TSP's G Fund (gubmint bonds) and I Fund (international) 50/50 [from 60/40 C Fund (common stock, S&P 500) and S Fund (small cap, unknown benchmark)] as of close on 3 Mar, so I did pretty well. The I Fund was up slightly until yesterday. Yesterday they were down about a percent or so, so I thought I'd monitor over the next few days and see if I needed to move out of the I Fund too. It was down about 5% this morning, so I moved it all over to G, which will execute end of today.
Thought I'd get cute about it, and keep some money in international markets, but now they're starting to tank, too. Oh well, worth a shot.
Here's the percent change of these funds from 3 Mar to yesterday. The I Fund is down about a percent and a half, but that's a heck of a lot better than the C and S Funds are performing over that time period. The final tally of my I Fund foibles won't be known until after COB today, but I'll be out of that without too much damage, and sitting safe in the G Fund until after the bottom hits.
I look at it as I have at least 15 years till retirement. I have known a market correction has been coming for at least 3 years as everything was very overvalued. I have a variety of income stocks, growth etf and mutual funds, and some income and growth etf's. My stocks are blended between domestic and foreign. 95% of everything I own pays at least a token dividend. So in a recession my shares that are reinvesting (go DRIP) are buying more shares. The market will finish its correction sooner or later and recover somewhat. If you buy a stock, buy a stock that you would want to own for at least 10 years.
For better or for worse I heavily tapped my 401K in the last two years to help a young mother with three kids and a 4th on the way who has been and still is facing a lot of extremely difficult circumstances. Used several hundred thousand dollars that would have been worth a lot less after recent drops. So at least it went for good causes and helped more than I could have had it been later this year...
how long do you plan on staying out?
Honest opinion?
Once we settle to where we are going to be with the tariffs. Right now, I don't trust that we are done, we're just in a lull until we go crazy again. Even today the president is threatening more tariffs on countries that don't agree to a deal within the next couple weeks. And as we have already seen, the second they get announced, the market bombs.
Yeah definitely guilty of only reading part of the comment. I got ahead of myself. Congrats on the new (better) role. Feel for your manager. Similarly, in the job I lost the manager had absolutely no say and is expected to hire our replacements from a restricted pool of candidates. She's not enjoying life right now.
Executives with a five year plan for themselves love to do this things that look good in the short term because they don't plan on being there long enough to endure the consequences of their actions.
Hope you survive.
what industry? our company can't find staff (engineering/land development related)
It is a clean energy technology company ... today the layoffs were most of the support staff and our whole project management/development group. I survived as an engineer but we lost a couple other engineers.... ended up being a 55% cut today
Ouch sorry man. Sounds like we may work for similar companies... we're slashing project development budgets but haven't seen any big layoffs (yet).
$20 million was allocated for the project.. not spent.
It wasn't enough. I attended the design pre proposal meetings. It sounded like they were really trying to make concessions to budget, to somehow get it in line. They went so far as to give a variance to the Hokie stone rule. But, the things they were saying they'd do really probably didn't make enough difference. Ultimately, square footage costs more than finishes and systems. It didn't sound like there was much willingness to lose program space. And being required to comply with the High Performance Buildings Act also doesn't help budgetarily.
There was way too much planned to land within that budget. Based on the costs I've seen on that campus, they'd be lucky to get 30k sf. The number of beds they needed to accommodate, based on the phase 1 plans, would have required around 215k sf.
That's a substantial gap. Makes you wonder where they come up w preliminary planning numbers and how out of touch those people are. That's a seven-fold difference. Given the volatility since 2020, I can see two-fold, but seven is simply out of touch.
Look at how much money we have spent making luxury dorms with marble staircases and movie theaters.... they have no idea how to build fit for purpose housing.
I dont know what the topline budget was shaping up to be, but the $20 million was allocated for planning of the new district. based on the scale you're referencing (215k+ sqft) that's a bit less egregious than it seemed at first.
Checks out for a school that paid $1M+ to create an awful alternate academic RC car track looking logo
Slusher needs to be knocked down. My daughter is in it right now.
Wow, that is a harsh attitude towards your daughter.
Shhhh. She's quick and could escape.
hmmmm.... as a father of a daughter and former patron of Slusher hall. I think it's more an indictment on how many boys also live in Slusher Hall one night at a time
Her neighbor is one of those girls' rooms.
My daughter is in it right now.
Biting my tongue when I wanted to type, "ah yes, when I first got to Tech it was called 12 floors of whor....."
I cannot disagree.
Her and her roommate are never there. My daughter is always in the studio and her roommate is Engineering AND in the band. That's one reason why they are moving into an apartment next semester.
They are on the top floor in the corner room.
The top floor is tough because the elevator(s) never works.
She has her own description of what the word "Slusher" means.
Why was this project even started? Was the intent to migrate away from the established dorms and eventually tear those down? I could see that. What I can't see is having all of that space for dorms (doubling capacity?) and then not have enough classrooms to put those students in.
Can they rescind the stupid new logo as well? Let's go back to the good one.
One thing i haven't really seen amplified is that this got scrapped less than a year after the CEO of CMG Leasing (owners/operators of 15 properties including complexes) joined the BOV
Did not realize Jeanne was on there...
Last time I saw her, she could barely walk, and was using a scooter. Don't know if that was temporary or not.
And now that I've scrolled through the list, it's sort of weird knowing multiple people on there.
Check out the high-roller. But it makes sense that a senator would be connected.
Didn't say the connections were good. Just that I know them.
I know lots of people who dislike me.
I mean, can you blame them?
You're a seven-year college student with a 0.0 grade average.
Get your life together, Bluto.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.
If you live in Blacksburg for 30+ years, you know Jeanne.
Or Rural Retreat.
Or work in AE in the area. And Blacksburg is one of the hardest areas (if not the hardest) west of Richmond to do what she has done.
Well, come work with me. We are in Blacksburg and don't do Blacksburg work. It's the perfect arrangement.
Nobody in Blacksburg does Blacksburg work anymore. Twenty years ago, local firms Anderson & Associates, Draper Aden, and Olver did all of the engineering for Blacksburg. After all, all of those companies paid Blacksburg taxes. Then they got a new Town engineer and new council members and all engineering had to be done by big regional or national firms instead of local firms.
Good ole John Olver.....
ETA
does he still have his fingers in any development projects as he did 8 years or so ago?
What has she done?
She has developed a significant portion of Blacksburg and surrounding areas
Ok, so your statement Blacksburg is one of the hardest areas (if not the hardest) west of Richmond to do what she has done is in reference to getting development approved and built?
yes
It depends on which version of the Council is in power at times. We reviewed a subdivision plan that requested over 50 waivers from Town requirements. The Town Council voted to approve it because one member of the Town Council was on the board for that developer. A different subdivision requested 2 waivers and was shot down.
Got to love local governments. Sounds like dealing with NJ state and municipal governments.
I'm assuming you don't have a PUD provision. Planned Urban Development, or sometimes called Planned Development Plan. Typically for mixed use since it doesn't nicely fit inside the zoning map perfectly, and they don't want to subdivide by use. It allows for alterations of the setbacks, parking, some density, etc...to make the site work together better than hard zoning lines. They aren't always clean and neat, nor are all of them approved for the greater good. But it's an option sometimes.
PUD's are a thing in Blacksburg. I've been directly involved in some myself.
That's a small part of it. I don't think I'm out of line in saying the time and effort for a design consultant to even get in front of planning commission in Blacksburg is greater than most if not all other localities west of Richmond. Therefore, "harder".