• 0 Posts
  • 273 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 5th, 2025

help-circle

  • Honestly, people driving huge vehicles are usually distracted by their phones and the amount of accidents dt that are pretty high. They hit pedestrians and cyclists (both bicycles and motorbikes) as well as other autos. One has to be very alert. There are also the assholes who speed weaving in and out of traffic cutting you off that you have to be alert to. Additionally, we have a lot of drivers under the influence since pot became legal.


  • I really had to take a hard look at my spending habits. I determined that I can probably shift at least 75% of nonfood/grocery purchases to secondhand goods like clothing, appliances, tools, furniture . I can’t do much about services (and don’t really want to since they are local businesses) but prices are still higher and I have some savings goals to meet that I had to decrease d/t increase in the cost of basic living (groceries, fuel, electric/gas). There are also some items I want to purchase for independence in case of emergency events since FEMA is basically useless now (eg. like a solar generator, a water tank with manual pump, rain barrel system, garden fencing, woodchipper, trailer hitch for car and wagon trailer, solar ebike) so I need to save because I am not willing to go into debt.






  • When I was in high school, our track team all met at the high school and got on a bus to the other schools matches, often they were long rides. However, the school provided the bus transpo. I think that was true for all the HS sports leagues. I think the same occurred for the middle school. The elementary school? I don’t know, I don’t think they had inter-school sports. Mostly kids were in local leagues where businesses sponsored teams and they played in local parks. (At least that was how it was in a village I lived in Long Island. We had a few ballfields and just rotated through them. For winter sports like basketball, they used the church gyms and local rec center. Believe me, my parents never drove us to any activity other than a school drop off.







  • My grandparents never lived rich… my grandfather’s father did build a fortune in Long Island but most of it was lost during the 1929 crash and subsequent Depression. However, what they did do was save and invest and land values were inexpensive in the late 30s so they bought a house for $3K a few blocks from the bay. They always lived really modestly and volunteered, worked civil service type jobs, required all their kids to work after school and really just socked away and invested every dime they could. When my grandmother retired, they bought a condo in Florida and became snowbirds. Our family still has that condo. After my uncle died (he was left the house for his lifetime), his brother sold it for over $600K. The rest of the Trust after my grandparents died was divided among the brothers and survivors of the ones that were already gone. They were never Hamptons rich though.