Category Archives: Money

Start it in your twenties!

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So much is possible if you have 50 years to do it in. Young people always think they are going to be young forever. It don’t work that way. One minute you’re struggling to make it through high school and the next minute you’re retired. Say I had bought a 1 ounce silver bullion coin a week starting when I was 21. I could have sold them for $62,400 this past week (2,080 coins at $30 ea.). Say I had just bought 1 a month, at the average cost of $5.75. That would be $14,400, for $5.75 a month! Precious metals of course just being 10% of your investing. And that’s just silver. What if you had also bought 1 ounce of gold a year for those 40 years? 40 ounces of gold at $2,000 an ounce is $80,000 for a really modest investment. Gold for many, many of those years was at $250 – $600 an ounce. Only in this past year did it shoot up to $2,200.

And that’s for just precious metals you only put in the price of a Starbucks for. True our own government has screwed us when it comes to savings accounts (we used to get 4.5% risk free), but other safe investments do exist. Probably the 2 best being  S&P 500 index ETFs, or a dividend reinvestment plan monthly contributed to that is paying 4%. Just $300 a month is a million bucks. With employer match you’re looking at 2 million. Part of the thing with the coins when it really kicks in, is with that longer time frame of a child, 60 years. Yeah, imagine if you start buying bullion coins when your kids are born?

[Man, some things never change. Having dealt with both coins and guns, I can tell you there are a lot of shady characters in both businesses. The first thing I realized today, coin shops don’t post their prices! An honest business if it was built on spot pricing (prices that go up or down according to the commodity reference point) would post the spread for each item. It wouldn’t be all this verbal shit that changes depending on what mood they’re in, or who you are, or what day it is. So there were no changes, no bait and switch. Buffalo’s were this, Maple’s were that, American Silver Eagle’s were this much, bars had this spread, etc. An honest business would post the spread. Chester’s in Ames changed the spread between when I called on Wednesday, to when I went to the store on Saturday. I hadn’t been there for a dozen years specifically for that reason. And even with new management they’re still doing the same shit. So I’ll never go back there. It never seems to occur to them, “You know, if I was honest with people, I’d have repeat business!” That has to be better than just gouging someone once. The best prices from what I can see in central Iowa is at Coins Stamps & Stuff on Hickman in Des Moines. On the gun side the one you want to stay away from is that shyster in downtown Boone called Lindy’s.]

 

Bait & switch: It was a road – now its a bike path!

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When a community takes their share of the gas tax, and the vehicle registration tax, and the general highway fund, its with the implied/legally stated purpose of road use for cars and trucks. People pay this tax as a tradeoff of having nice roads for their cars and trucks. When the City of Ames converts roads to bike paths, they are stealing the tax dollars paid for the use of motorized vehicles. They said they were going to use the money for roads, not bike paths. They are taking 50% (4 lanes down to two) of the tax money and then using it for bike lanes on the roads. The bicycle users didn’t pay for those roads. They are being gifted these lanes by the automobile drivers. The City of Ames took their share of road use tax intended for cars, and broke the agreement and used it for bikes.

This idiocy for the most part goes on in college towns. The governing bodies of those towns are wired into what was “Agenda 21”, and is now Agenda 2030. Towns just down the road like Boone, aren’t so stupid, they’re not a college town. These town councils like Ames feel they have The Vision of the Anointed. Its “the green agenda”. “Alternative forms of transportation”. Its to “mitigate climate change”. They actually believe this crap. They took this money under the pretense of taxing the drivers of cars and trucks to build roads for their use. Hence, the “road use tax”. Instead they are converting lanes of travel meant for cars and trucks, for the exclusive use of bikes. They are stealing that money.

If they want to make bike paths out of the roads, well, there’s no legal way to do that.

All this idiocy is driven by the “green agenda”. Take roundabouts. I haven’t read it, but I know its about keeping cars moving so they don’t idle at stop signs. Having cops not patrol is about saving gas. They totally ignore the reasons cops patrolled in the first place, making a visible presence and knowing who’s who in a neighborhood. One of the funniest “energy savers” in Ames is the Cadillac bus system we have here. While it is heavily used in and around the university during the school year, the rest of the town has these very fuel efficient “green diesel” behemoths driving around empty.

Town councils like Ames have forgotten what their mission is, its not to save the world from climate change, its to provide a clean, safe town that people want to live in for the taxpayers. Its not a toy where they get to exercise all their fantasies for creating a liberal utopia. Their nonsense wastes money and causes headaches for the people. What’s horribly ironic about it is their stupidity actually wastes more energy. At the busy intersection (30th/Duff and Grand) where they took 4 lanes down to 2, there was a traffic tie up yesterday (and that was on a sparse Saturday, imagine what its going to like at rush hour on a weekday?). The left turners were blocking the people who would have normally just went straight in the right lane! But because there is only 1 lane, they missed the light and had to idle through another cycle!

It all reminds me of probably the biggest municipal boondoggle of all time: B.A.R.T. This was the Bay Area Rapid Transit. Looking it up, I see that greenies had envisioned it in 1946! Construction actually began in the 60s. My sister had visited it in the 70s and thought it was the coolest thing ever invented. I suppose considering the money and energy spent making it, it was. They said at one time it would have to run until something like the year 2340, to have saved the amount of energy they spent making it! Like all liberal utopias, San Francisco is now an unlivable hellhole where the homeless shit on the sidewalk and litter the park with heroin needles. But they do have a very fancy green train system.

Their nonsense doesn’t make sense in another way to. At this particular intersection where they snarled traffic to put in bike lanes, the Duff side is gotten there byway of a hill. As a biker I can tell you bikers avoid hills! We wouldn’t come that way anyway! And as stated earlier, it doesn’t make sense that bikers moving at 9 mph would want to ride inches from 3,000 pound vehicles moving at 25/35/45 mph. And the other thing whether its Ames or Des Moines, why do city leaders always choose the working class and poorer neighborhoods for their nonsense? Why never the rich areas like Jordan Creek? If this bullshit is such a great idea, why don’t you take EP True Parkway down to 2 lanes? Because its stupid and rich people hire lawyers.

Why don’t you take the Interstate down to 1 lane and put in a bike lane?

Shoppers update

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Clearly the hero of this pandemic has been Target Corporation, at least in Ames. When you walk into the store you notice 2 stark differences with Walmart. The first is a whiteboard right inside the door updated daily with a list of the things they’re out of. This way each shopper doesn’t have to wander around the store wasting 20 minutes finding out for themselves. Secondly, they have the row of sanitized carts ready to go. Walmart doesn’t attempt to wipe off the handles of their carts. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, Target has had a consistent supply of toilet paper, even from the start. Not in great quantities, and not always all the way till close of business, but a surprisingly good supply nonetheless. Walmart was letting toilet paper go out the store by the carton into April. Its only recently they actually started to enforce their own edict limiting quantities.

Of a more general nature its interesting to see where the toilet paper is. I’ve said from the beginning the surest judge of what stage this pandemic is in will be how the shelves are stocked of toilet paper. A surprise source, Ace Hardware, hasn’t been replenished from the start, March 15. Two smaller stores are almost back to full capacity, Dollar General and Dollar Tree. Walmart depending on the time of day is nonexistent. Its almost like their ordering system is so unwieldy, or they had no desire, to increase their stock. I refuse to go to Hy-Vee, so I don’t know on them. Fareway has had zero of the multi packs, though in a burst of ingenuity they came up with an off brand of single rolls that they have been well stocked in after the initial 3 weeks of the crisis.

But the biggest surprise has been the prices at Target. Using milk as my basis I have been buying their store bran, Good & Gather gallon for $2.29. So I can literally buy 2 gallons for the price of what I was paying for Anderson Erickson at Fareway or Walmart. Okay, so you say that’s comparing generic to name brand. But the Anderson Erikson is a dollar a gallon cheaper at Target too! That is weird, not .25 cents, or even .50, but an entire dollar? They do have their quirks. They have bad dates a lot of times on the milk because they load them side to side, instead of front to back. So what ends up happening is people see the best date and buy it, and they end up with a lot of unsold milk.

Their tuna for some reason they only sell cans that you have to use a can opener on. Their frozen food selection is limited. Their not doing a good job on getting rubbing alcohol. But all in all I like their attitude. They’re trying.

Charmin 9-5:30 EST 1 800 777 1410

Quilted Northern 8 – 10 pm EST 1 877 312 0964

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Jigsaw puzzle pieces were different 80 years ago.

 

Ames’ secret snow removal plan: Spring

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5th Friday in a row with snow and without snow removal. I took a walk down at Carr Park on east 13th yesterday. Every inch of the bike path was plowed even back to the most out of the way areas. The loop drive that only goes to the soccer field was plowed. The city streets? Not so much. Well if they don’t need plowed because the snowfall was under 2″, why do the bike paths need plowed? Why do parking lots for ball diamonds that won’t be used for 3 months need plowed? If 2″ is a problem there, why isn’t it on the city streets?

Speaking of Carr Park,  this will be the 3rd summer 1/3rd of the park will be unusable. They closed it off in spring of 2018 to do some work on the dam. All they did was move in materials for a couple of weeks in May of 2018. No work was done again until 2 weeks at the first of August in 2019. So far its been closed all of 2 years, with only 4 weeks of actual work being done. Ames Parks and Recreation sees no problem with this. Writing incredibly lackadaisical contracts so that taxpayer assets sit idle for years.

I swear I’m going to go door to door with an advisory sheet for Ames City Council elections to bring accountability back to city government. I’ll call it my: “Fire City Manager Steve Schainker” campaign.

 

“What the hell is it?”

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An inanimate carbon rod! (aluminum or magnesium actually)

Consumers get ripped off so bad. And what’s doubly funny, the same government that worries about lightbulbs and the size of your toilet tank, doesn’t give a lick about a huge environmental throw away, your water heater. They last about 10 years if you do nothing to them, 30 or more if you do simple maintenance! Drain a gallon a month from the bottom spigot, and put in a $25 anode rod every couple of years. See all that rust and mineral buildup on the old rod? That’s what will eat out the bottom of your heater if you don’t change it. But plumbers want that $1,000 every 10 years to put in a new heater. And the government is too stupid to see the environmental impact.

And guess what? There are 2 other environmental disasters that don’t have to happen. There are asphalt roof shingle coatings that easily double the life of your roof. And there is a metal coating called Rust Reformer that when sprayed to the underside of your car makes it impervious to rust. Can there be any bigger harm to the environment than throwing away a 2,500 pound car every 10 years? And your roof every 20?

FYI manufacturer Bradford White in an extreme case of bullshitery puts their anode rod internal to the input pipe, therefore making it impossible for the homeowner to change, and guaranteeing failure at 10 years. Drain Tech sells Bradford White.

 

Let’s run the numbers

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[This is the pedestrian gate on the east side of Meeker with 20 feet of half foot deep snow left by the crew clearing snow. You can’t drive a truck through a pedestrian gate, and you wouldn’t want them to have to get out of their truck and use a shovel would you? I’ll clear it in the morning before the kids come.]

The city of Ames has the worst snow removal in Iowa. Okay that’s my opinion. What we should have are the facts to compare to similar sized cities, instead of just my opinion. This is Friday January 17, 2020. The local meteorologists have been prepping us for a week that ‘Snow-mageddon’ was upon us. So of course we cancelled schools (which is an automatic on a Friday) and clogged the grocery stores buying storm groceries! The city had snow removal for a couple of hours in the afternoon, then headed for the barn about 4:15 pm, I assume to get off at 5. That’s great, but half the city is unplowed (the snow also stopped about that time).

If we get any more snow tonight, those streets are going to be impassible for a passenger car, should an emergency happen where they need to go to the hospital or the like. They will be SOL (shit out of luck). Not to mention the rise in vehicle accidents due to uncleared streets. Life and limb, property, associated costs, its not just about being inconvenienced. Funny how in this day and age of computers, crunching the numbers is quite difficult. Its almost like the city governments don’t want you to know how they’re doing. How they compare. Its almost like they don’t want to be held accountable. A Performance Audit. That’s how citizens need to be evaluating city services every 3 – 5 years. How is our money being spent? What’s the ROI? (return on investment)

There’s a few key questions that an intrepid reporter at the Ames Tribune could use to see where Ames stands, and at the same time provide a public service through improved services rendered. How many miles of streets are in Ames? How many city plows does Ames have? How many miles does Ames contract out? How many personnel does Ames have on a shift? What is their yearly snow removal budget? In Des Moines I’ve gotten the impression over the years that they are running their plows close to 24 hours a day. When one shift gets out of the plow, another takes over. Ames plows sit. See how this works? You measure the amount of time, money and resources Ames commits to snow removal and compare that to similar cities. Its not rocket science.

Where are the real life results of Iowa’s open records law? 

I was a professional driver in Ames for 31 years. I have a very keen idea of the cities capabilities or the lack thereof. I got stuck. I hit things. I had close calls for 31 winters. I’ve seen the injuries, the property damage, the lost time, the aggravation of uncleared streets. Those 5 questions in the previous paragraph would answer a lot. You could chart that and compare. You could find out exactly whether I’m full of it or not. You could find out real quick whether Ames taxpayers are being well served or not. You could find out real quick if heads need to roll. In fact I’m not aware of an annual survey the city sends out garnering how the customer rates their services. They should have numbers going back to 1970, they could see the trend lines. Are they going up? Or down? How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re at?

You can tell where the ‘fat’ is in a city budget. One of the most laughable is Parks & Recs. In the winter probably 70% of their responsibility isn’t used. The soccer fields, the softball diamonds, the water park and portions of parks and bike trails. A lot of area. Before the city streets are cleared the parking lots of those unused soccer and softball fields will be cleared. They won’t even be used for another 3 months. But there is so much fat in their budget, such an expenditure of tax dollars, their parking lots will be cleared before the city streets. The City of Ames is fat and needs to go on a diet. I’m tired of paying them to gorge on tax dollars.

  1.  How many miles of streets in Ames?
  2.  How many plows?
  3.  How many operators?
  4.  How many contract miles?
  5.  What is the plow utilization rate per day?
  6.  What is the cost per mile?
  7.  What is the time per mile?
  8.  What is the contractor rate per mile?
  9.  Why isn’t  there an annual city services survey?
  10.  Why isn’t there a citizen audit of City services every 3 years?

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The baseball diamond at the west end of Brookside Park. No game was scheduled today (or for 3 months), but they had the parking lot cleared before all the streets were. And no, its a single-use facility, so it didn’t need to be cleared for something else.

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This is coming down the hill on 6th Street coming towards Brookside Park. This city street wasn’t cleared as well as the parking lots for the softball & soccer fields that won’t be used for 3 months.

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This is the parking lot for the athletic fields on E 13th Street. They also are single-use, and also were cleared before all the city streets were, and also won’t be used till spring.

Denny’s Automotive

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Every business you deal with is free to screw up, but you have to pay. I always chose an independent auto shop based on the theory of they had the most to lose if they weren’t honest and good at their job. I spent $700 plus getting the air conditioner running on a minivan. What they didn’t do was replace about five $5 dollar connectors that took the cold back to the back. So for the price of five connectors, I put $700 down a rat hole. Thank you Denny’s.

The same shop couldn’t find the cause of the overheating. When they finally checked the thermostat and found it bad, “Oh I thought we had checked that!” Everybody is allowed to screw up, but you pay. I had Ben Franklin plumbing out to fix a drainpipe leak. Did they start to tear into the wall at the point of the water? No! They went to the point furthest from the leak on the theory “it was draining there”. A couple of hundred extra dollars to the $609 bill because they’re idiots.

A different auto shop. They put in $1,500 in suspension and steering, take it to the outside shop for alignment, and they find the bad ball joint (the ball joint being the most critical component to actually keeping the wheel on the car). And screwups always take me back to the government. I read a financial analyst the other day who thinks we’ll spend the latter part of the 2020s going through a “global bankruptcy”. That makes sense from the 2024 or 2026 timeframe when Medicare cashflow goes negative and national debt will be pushing $30 trillion. The government creates this financial Armaggedon, but guess who will pay? You.

The train keeps steaming full speed ahead. Everybody knows the tracks are out, but they just keep the hand on the throttle. 

 

1-303-967-1090

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In the old days (the early 2000s) technology was rather cool. I could type a friends name into Google and get their address and phone number (in those days we had what you call a “landline”). On my TracFone 9000 I could block a telemarketer by hitting the ‘block‘ button. My MSN email program allowed me to “Block Sender” of annoying emails. A very handy free program came on computers called Microsoft Works, now you have to rent or buy a word processor, in addition to your computer. None of that stuff works now. You have to pay for it.

So now I have a  goddamn son of a bitch Visa/Mastercard telemarketer in Denver calling me multiple times a day and I am completely impotent to stop their invasion of my privacy. They load up my answering machine, they wake me up from naps, they destroy the tranquility of my day. I have their phone number, which cost me a dollar to get, thank you Century Link, 1-303-967-1090. Can I get their address in Denver so I can go have a conference with them? No. Will the Federal Communications Commission in charge of the phone system do anything? No.

Will Iowa AG for life Tom Miller work with the Legislature to craft law protecting Iowans from telemarketers? No. Will Century Link block this number to stop the annoying and harassing phone calls? No. Does the Federal Do Not Call list work? No. So after beating you down for years you can buy a service that will take you off their lists. Its kind of a protection racket like the mob used to run. “Give us a $100 dollars a week and your windows won’t get broke. But you guys broke the windows?”

 

“Buy local!”

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KPSZ ‘Praise’ 940 am has a public service spot where they ask people to “take the buy local pledge”. I should have been in marketing I find business trends fascinating. 25 years ago when Best Buy sprung up they put a hurt on mom & pop appliance stores and smaller computer and electronic stores. Now they are on the ropes from online sales and big box stores like Lowes that have ate into their appliance share. Main street 50 years ago didn’t “buy local”. They went to China to flood their stores with crap. They didn’t give a rat’s ass whose goods they were stocking their shelves with. Now after all the jobs have left we’re supposed to care about them? Then main street got blown out of the water by K-Mart, Walmart, Target and the like. Karma’s a bitch ain’t it?

I was reading an investment book by Peter Lynch he wrote 30 years ago. its funny in hindsight to hear him talk about these stalwarts of business that you could tell he never envisioned dying a pitiful death. Sears, AOL, General Electric. The bigger they are the harder they fall. I wasted a day trying to buy local. Having some dull knives I had the crazy idea I’d be able to drive to Des Moines and buy an electric knife sharpener. Nope. Walmart is the only store in the tri-county area that sells a cheap model for twice what its worth (2 stage for $50). I went online to Walmart.com and ordered a 3-stage for $45, it will be here in 2 days.

I searched all over, thrift shop, Salvation Army, Target, Kohls, JC Penney, nobody had a knife sharpener! If I’d wanted to drive to hell and gone (Altoona or Jordan Creek), Bass Pro and Scheel’s had $50 dollar ones they were selling for $80. Every store had an extensive selection of new cutlery they’d sell you. Its almost like they want you just to buy new stuff rather then just sharpen the old. I noticed that when I had to buy a water heater recently. Oh no you can’t get a tankless! That would last forever and we wouldn’t be able to sell you another $1,000 one in 10 years!

I hate corporate America. What part of their business they couldn’t ship overseas, they brought in Indians and Mexicans to replace American workers at half the price! Which is a lie of course, we the taxpayers just pick up the wages they don’t pay through welfare and other social costs. You cannot beat the system.

 

Played for fools

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There’s a commercial on YouTube that says 6 corporations own 95% of the news outlets in America. That’s probably pretty close. Gannett owns a large percentage of newspapers. Clear Channel/Eye Heart owns a majority of the radio stations. Time Warner/CNN and the rest, who knows? It gets rather murky. The bigger issue is, are we getting “the news”? Or are we being played for fools? It really hit me when I found out Trump hater Paul Ryan sits on the board of FOX News Corp.

Most people don’t put it together but the 3 biggest Trump haters in Washington were on the last 2 Republican presidential tickets (Romney, Ryan and McCain). Most people blithely accept the media propaganda that the ‘war’ is between Democrats vs Republicans. Ha. Last week it came out that GM was moving more production overseas. This is after taxpayers bailed them out just a few years ago. The taxpayers had money stolen from them so investment banks wouldn’t lose their shorts on GM’s mismanagement. And they thank us by moving to China!

FOX News each morning tries to get conservatives angry at Pelosi, Schiff, AOC, Elizabeth Warren or any number of other ‘villains’. Liberal media does the same thing. Creating any number of nefarious boogeymen supposedly scheming with Trump to bring down America and shackle blacks, Mexicans and homosexuals in some grand plan! (I’m not really sure what or why Trump is going to do all this, but just accept it he is!)

They used to say, “When its all said and done, we’re all Americans!” That’s not true anymore, technically or ideologically. We’re going to live as “one nation under God”? I don’t think so. I have a pretty good idea how and why it happened, but absolutely no idea how to reverse the divide. I’d say we’re through. I’d say we’re done for. I’d say we’re toast. Its clear to me a reset is the only option. Otherwise the ‘cold’ civil war will turn into a hot one.

You have Democrat candidates for president perfectly willing to completely circumvent the Constitution to disarm Americans. They continue their advocacy of killing babies. They put illegals first. They want to eliminate what’s left of the free market in healthcare and go to a completely socialist system. These gulfs are too big, too profound to reconcile. This Empire has to be broken up. Just like Big Tech. Neither will be.