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6 SEC teams won 6 games between Dec 20th and March 15th... 6 games in 3 months- and got in the dance. Total crock of shit. Oklahoma would have likely gotten in with 4 SEC wins.

Inquiring minds want to know about the cows....

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.

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.

Apparently NC has a really good Speck bite around Harkers in the Spring. My good buddy fished creeks this morning with his dad and they caught over 40 on topwater and mirrolures, second day in a row doing this. He landed a 24", his dad caught a 28". Lots of other upper teen fish.

A buddy of mine moved to VB and found stripers tailing on flats. Sent me a video of one clearly in the upper 20s rooting around like Redfish.

Shad should be moving into the James. My casting client today said he is catching them in the Chickahominy River. Everyone else can have them, I might get one day in fishing for them.

I need to do some serious boat work, which I'm sure will take a few days. Would love to be on the water soon but also trying to make a dollar to recover from the winter adventure.

Great shout, just added this to my book list and excited to give it a look. We live in Roanoke and I'm super taken with the upper James, just beautiful country.

Looking at VT vs UMD comparison for out of state costs. With this increase it will be more expensive to go to VT than UMD. UMD is the 44th best university by US news and world report, VT is the 51st.

Using bank rates cost of living calculator, $60,500 in Bethesda/Gaithersburg is work $42,224 in Roanoke. So why is VT so much more expensive?

Using the Knight commission's data base for we see that VT, received $2.15m from institutional support and $13.59m from student fees in 2023. While UMD received $6.12m from institutional support (which jumped in 2023 and would support the co-location of facilities) and $11.78m from student fees. So yes it looks like they are milking students more. But look at an actual athletic department from the Big Ten. PSU $0 institutional support, $0 student fees. They have 4x the donations UMD has. They have 4x the ticket sales of UMD. They have better licensing agreements too. (VT is around 40% of they ticket sales and 20% of their licensing). OSU has a similar profile to PSU but are 3x their licensing and almost double their ticket sales. Bama does get institutional support at $2.5m but no student fees, it comes from licensing, tickets sales, donations just like the other big schools. Michigan, looks the same, these schools are doing 3-4x in ticket sales to VT.

I agree with DC saying we should have more transparency, but the fact of the matter is looking at the data we have VT's student fees are high across the board. VT is just as expensive as most other universities despite being in a low cost of living area. I'd say that Virginia has a pretty low lack of transparency if VT cost as much as a school inside the DC beltway. Where is that $18k going? And VT's fee transparency still doesn't even address that the big programs don't need student funds because the donor, ticket sales, and licensing all handle the differences we make in student fees, they don't need them because they have other streams of money. Michigan makes as much in licensing as VT makes in student fees, ticket sales, and institutional support combined (VT makes $3m for licensing).

One thing I detest in life is car repairs

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)

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Getting down to it, playoffs rapidly approaching. Any Bulls fans out there? They're kind of a fun watch right now. Giddey just won me a fantasy league!

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.

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