#anyways first one ill never forget was grade 2 little 8 year old me

[manqo]

this is so funny i’ve only ever taken my shot at girls i never do shit w boys

[krebstar]

hey so like i feel absolutely silly doing this but it has been really rough and i’m not sure i can really Handle my mom anymore

this is mostly planning in advance but, i’m in a mentally abusive household and i really need out of it. however, i am a minor so i’m unable to for at least another year. i would really appreciate having the money to move out as soon as i can, which is why i’m making this post.

my paypal is here, and you can buy me a coffee here. i do commissions, too if you would prefer that.

more details about what’s going on are under the cut. it’s... really long but has like. everything i can remember, so.

so... this has been going on as long as i can remember (~10 years old or so). it used to be both of my parents, but my dad passed away and now it’s just my mom.

the earliest thing that i can remember is from the later years in elementary school (3-5th grade? around 8-10 years old?). my dad was terrifying when he was angry and was very loud, and my mom had a tendency of getting me in trouble, and then telling him how awful i was and she would have him yell at me for something he knew very little about (she would make him just jump into the conversation.) this was one of those times, and i was curled up on the floor with him yelling at me, and her standing over me. i remember afterward, i wrote something along the lines of “my happiness is ruined” or “i’ll never be happy” or something of the sort about.. not being happy, then i tore it to shreds.

around middle school (11-14 years) was where everything sort of picked up? my mom began to pick on me with constantly telling me i was breaking out, i looked bad, smelled bad, and so on and so forth. i asked her to stop numerous times and she refused to, laughing in my face whenever i asked. it started to make me feel bad about myself, and is the root of why i’m self conscious.

one day (7th grade) when she was telling at me for something i can’r remember, i told her “i hate myself because of you” and she replied “if you hate yourself because of me, you need to get a life.” thus, marking when i stopped telling her anything.

there was one time at a restaurant, where my mom wanted me to try and do the math for the bill. despite me refusing due to my math learning problems (possibly dyscalculia, but she refuses to get me tested), she continued to try and press it on me. when i continued to say no and got stressed and upset that she was trying to force me to do something i didn’t understand, she reacted badly. she told me that we were joking and laughing (we weren’t, she was very serious) and then told me that i had a “personal problem.”

my mom and i were at my grandma’s over the summer and she told me that she always jokes with me after arguments (meaning: she yelled at me a lot and made me have a panic attack) so i “get over it quicker” / “forget about it”

at one point laptop broke, and my mom called the people to send it in and get it fixed despite already taking her medicine (which wouldn’t have kicked in for another 30 minutes). I was grateful and thanked her, though i was still panicky and crying due to being so dependent on my laptop. i was yelled at for being in that state, and it was another instance when my dad yelled at me as i was curled up on the floor. he yelled at me for not being grateful when my mom called even though she took her medicine, and for some other stuff i can’t remember right. (i do remember pulling my hair hard and calling myself a horrible ungrateful daughter.)

one time when my dad and her were fighting (they were on a brink of a divorce before he passed away) she said that if i wasn’t around, that she would kill herself. she said that.. when i was right there in the other room with the door wide open.

(my dad was always neglectful of me, and never? really gave me the time of day to the point where i didn’t entrust that he could take care of me, and if he payed attention to me, he would just yell at me.)

in 8th grade, my dad passed away by drowning (i feel uncomfortable giving more details about that, if you need them you can PM me, but otherwise i won’t disclose the rest. i have a post about it in my archives somewhere as it was happening.) i grieved “weirdly” i suppose, i didn’t wish to hear the word “dad” or look at the river, let alone be around it. i didn’t want to talk about it with my mom, though i talked about it with my friends.

i continued to not to want to look at the river, and would refuse to, for a couple months. my mom didn’t like this at all and told me to “get over it” several times. and even though i asked her not to talk about him several times, she did anyway, constantly and always.

around freshman year things sort of.. escalated. the rest of this will be taking place from freshman year to current (14-16/almost 17). these might be out of chronological order, but ill try to keep them in order as much as possible. i started writing stuff down around here so im going to start off with the dated ones:

Saturday, January 9 2016: admitted to wanting to slap me Wednesday, January 20 2016: admitted to wanting to slap me Monday, February 22 2016: Oak Court mall in a dressing room: grabbed me by my shirt Wednesday, March 30 (6:00am): “You know one day in the morning you’re going to cop a little attitude and i’m just going to smack you.” (a minute afterward coming and saying she loved me) Monday, August 8th (5:36am) “if you give me a sarcastic attitude this early in the morning, I’ll end up smacking you in the face.” Wednesday, August 31st (9:41am) she was throwing an eraser at me, and when I was showing discomfort, she said “be glad I’m not throwing something bigger at you” and pretended to hit me with my tub of icing

August 9th, 2016: i suggested we leave so we can go feed the cats [that i was catsitting]. she didnt get that, and got mad at me for “never listening to her” because she wanted to feed the cats afterwards. she said i always get what i want, and she wants to get what she wanted. started talking about how i “lived a charm life” and i always “get what i want” and asked me what i “didnt have” and “nothing? yeah”

told her i was upset because i felt like she was so mad at something that wasn’t that big of a deal. the conversation below happened (her voice was slightly raised)

my mom: you always say i get upset with you for nothing me: when was the last time i did that? my mom: the last time we fought me: and when was that?? my mom: my mom: it doesnt matter

she started talking about how it was a problem i think i “always get what i want” and if i didnt think it was a problem that i had a “serious problem” with her. i started to be unresponsive, just looking ahead and replying with “okay” and not being on my phone. she started to try to talk to me, and turned on the radio station i like to listen to. she started to tell me she loved me. she apologized afterwards, and its the only time i can ever remember her apologizing for anything.

there was a time we got into an argument, she said that we “dont have [my] dad to be peacemaker,” completely ignoring that it was NEVER his role to be peacemaker, and that she only ever made him yell at me more.

she talked a LOT about my dad and how awful he was, and about their marriage problems. she told me at one point that her bipolar is so bad because my dad never had sex with her enough.

she attempted to have .... something with one of my really close friend’s dad at one point in time, in the past couple years or so. i walked in on them making out sometime. she wanted to date him-- and lied about it-- and he didn’t because he was a bit weirded out because my dad had still somewhat recently passed away. she cried for a whole 24 HOURS, ignoring sleeping time, about him and about how much she missed my dad, but never let me grieve in my own way.

we were at perkins when the subject of dating was brought up and i told her i was uncomfortable with it (it hadnt even been a year, or had just been a year or something) and she told me, again, to “get over it”

and, then, she got her boytoy (who we’ll call larry) and successfully got (and still has) a friend with benefits. she lied to me a long time, and told me that they weren't together or anything despite them fucking while i was home, and NOT being silent about it, either. i eventually told her i knew and that it made me uncomfortable that they had sex while i was at home. she told me to get over it at first, that i always got everything i asked for, so on and so forth.

after a while, and me continuously asking her not to have sex while i was home because i already walked in on her once, she told me that it was her house and that her friends couldn’t “believe the audacity [i] had asking her not to fuck while im home” and she.. hasn’t stopped. ive actually found her bondage gear recently.

(sidenote on larry: hes... really disgusting. he watched one of my friends take a shower while she was over, and when i told my mom that she said “well not everyone is perfect.”)

and then... the night that prompted me to start this post, which happened october 8th. she left me home alone for ~30hours (and i only saw her for 2 of those), which... i had already told her numerous times that i dont like to be home alone at night because it causes my delusions to act up and makes me very paranoid. on the third night she was gone, i texted her a handful of times asking how she was because i hadn’t seen her, and i missed her (a novel concept) and.. that was apparently the wrong thing to do.

she came home at 2am that night and started to ask me why i could never be home alone and making it way deeper than it actually needed to be. she called me a coward for my delusions, selfish, and told me that she didn’t think i was going to be a functioning human being. she told me that im faking my mental illnesses because i want an excuse to be scared (which ill get into later*) and refused to acknowledge the research i had done on these mental illnesses. at one point she was guilt tripping me, and i gave in and admitted it was my fault... and then she..? guilt tripped me? for that. she said that i was just “saying that to make [her] feel bad.” she told me that i was making up my mental illness symptoms by telling me that they’re.... “in [my] head” and that i cant be mentally ill because ive stood up for myself twice. (the only reason that i’ve stood up for myself is because the things that were happening were very hazardous to my health and i was close to killing myself)

i had been sleeping in her room because my air conditioning upstairs wasnt working and it was too hot to exist up there at all, and so i packed the items i brought down with me, and was moving to go upstairs. she forced me to stay downstairs because i was “running away from the conversation” (which ill also get into later**) and forced me to stay the night downstairs. after the conversation was said and done, she returned and told me “do you ever think your delusions and hallucinations are overactive imagination because of your ocd and you think of the worse possible scenario when you hear a noise?” which is...not how anything works.

the following morning, she was EXTREMELY petty and wouldnt let me leave her side since “i missed her so much!!” and continued to force me to spend time with her and refused to let me on my laptop or phone. she started to yell at me again (which i cant really remember what she said, but she called me selfish for.. wanting her around?)

BONUS CONTENT :) aka stuff that i wasnt able to put in to keep it chronological

my mom has always threatened to ground me because of crying (though she said she would “never ground me because it would ground [her] too”) and im basically... not allowed to feel anything but happy, because if i express any other emotion it always results in her yelling at me for some reason.

*she gladly admits that i inherited OCD from my dad (who had an extreme case, as well as almost my dad’s whole entire family) but refuses to admit that i also inherited psychosis from her. ive brought up that im pretty sure i have DPDR, but she also refuses to even learn what it is and tells me that im just faking it. she won’t get me help, and says she won’t.

**my mom walks away whenever she doesnt get her way in an argument. she has left me in the middle of a museum in another state (not without shouting “fuck you” at me from across the room first), in the middle of a parking lot for at least 5 minutes, walked out of my grandma’s house twice, and then walked away from me another time downtown (thankfully i was with a friend.)

she shits on literally anything i enjoy. we go to the movies, i show her shows, i talk about things i like and she always has to find something she hated about it. even when she cant find anything specific, she replies with “eh it was okay” and doesn't fake it to ever let her child enjoy something. i always feel bad immediately after. the most recent example i can think with this is seeing moana with her.

if anything Major Happens(tm) ill probably reblog this and add it on, but until then.................. yeah

[themoneybuff-blog]

Questions About Checking Accounts, Nintendo Switch, iPods, TSP, and More!

Whats inside? Here are the questions answered in todays reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. Great advice for job seekers 2. Old hometown checking account 3. Making your own seasoning mixes 4. Inexpensive Nintendo Switch games 5. Partner has extreme debt 6. TSP contribution questions 7. Uses for old iPod? 8. Job search not that simple 9. Value of authenticating sports cards 10. Financial independence and career plans 11. Advice for selling books 12. True hourly discretionary income question I wanted to offer a little update on my switch to a standing desk for professional purposes. About two weeks ago, I moved my main workstation to a standing desk. The purpose for doing this was to significantly reduce the amount of time I spend sitting in a given day, because sitting for your job all the time has some negative long term health consequences. I did recognize that doing this fully cold turkey is a bad idea, and so I planned from the start to do it in stages. My plan was and still is to use the desk until I felt noticeable discomfort, then switch to a laptop in a chair for a while, then maybe alternate back later in the day. My goal was to simply raise my average time at the standing desk a little each week as I strengthen different muscle groups. After a couple of weeks of doing this, Ive found that the big impact has been on my lower back, with a smaller impact on my feet. Im able to work for about four to five hours a day at the standing desk, with other work time spent sitting in a comfortable chair with a laptop. What generally happens is that my lower back starts to get sore, not in a something is broken way but in a this is a muscle thats getting taxed due to exertion and needs a break way. Ill sit down for a while and itll feel much better. However, its constantly experiencing a low-grade soreness, the kind of soreness that happens when you exercise a muscle group. Theres nothing wrong here if I felt something wrong, I would stop using the standing desk for a while. However, it can be a little uncomfortable. Ive had some very minor foot discomfort, mostly on my heels, but nothing significant and it honestly seems to be fading over the last few days. Its hard to tell yet whether or not the standing desk is improving my health in any notable way. I certainly dont think its been bad, but I havent noticed a big health improvement. I do exercise most days, so thats definitely a positive factor, but its hard to extract the benefits of standing with the other benefits of exercise. I think its very likely that there have been some minor benefits, and I likely would have noticed more if I didnt already exercise. Its all about feeling healthy for as long as possible. On with the questions. Q1: Great advice for job seekers I wanted to share some advice from my own experience as an interviewer [in a large corporate HR department]. The big thing is that you shouldnt be hard on yourself if you interview for a job and dont get it. Often, there is already a candidate that is pre-selected and the interview process is a mere formality. Someone thought you were a good candidate and brought you in, but you didnt actually have a real chance at the job no matter how you interviewed. In fact, you should treat all interviews like that. Dont get stressed about them, because theres a good chance that theres already an anointed candidate. I would say that 75-80% of the time, we already have our minds made up regarding which candidate to hire before the interview process begins and interviews virtually never change our minds. Sometimes we will interview someone great and put them on a list of people to call in the future but almost without fail those people already have a job when we call them back. So please dont be hard on yourself if you dont succeed at an interview! And dont get overly stressed about it because theres a good chance that theres already an anointed candidate anyway. Just go in there and answer the questions and learn about the company and let the chips fall where they may. Alison This is great advice, and in line with some of my own hiring experiences in the past. I have been on all sides of this coin at various points. I have been the anointed candidate in a hiring process. I have also been one of the other candidates in a hiring process (where I knew someone else was anointed for an absolute fact). Ive also been involved with several hirings, some of which had strongly preferred candidates and some of which did not. The thing is, you never really know which kind of situation it is when youre interviewing. It may be a more open position where you actually have a good chance, or it may be a situation where you are one of the other candidates in an open process engineered to bring in the vastly preferred candidate with minimal questions. I think the mantra of dont worry about it is the right one here. Just go in there, answer the questions, ask some questions about the company, and move on and keep looking for the next interview or opportunity. If youre the right candidate, theyll call. Often, you wont be, and it wont be due to a fault of your own. Q2: Old hometown checking account I have left a checking account open at my old hometown bank for the last 20 years. It pays a very small interest rate 0.05%. I have a balance of about $1,200 in there. I have always looked at it as a last ditch emergency fund. If anything seriously goes wrong, Ill go there and use that money. But its just sitting there. Isnt there something better I could be doing with it? Dana I dont think theres anything wrong with having a last ditch emergency fund in a bank thats not easy to access. That idea is fine by me. However, its probably just going to sit there for a long time, so you might want to consider doing something with it that earns a better return. The next time youre in your hometown, stop by that bank and see what other options they have. Simply explain that this is an emergency fund for you and you want it in a place where it earns a little more, doesnt lose value, and could be withdrawn in an emergency but isnt likely to be withdrawn. Its very likely that theyll suggest a certificate of deposit, which is akin to a savings account except that it earns a bit higher interest rate and theres a small penalty for withdrawing it early. It wont take very long at all for the CD to earn more than the penalty for early withdrawal and then, after that, its onwards and upwards. Make sure that the bank allows you to automatically roll over the CD when it matures. Right now, with interest rates a bit higher than they were but still fairly low, Id choose a medium term CD, something in the range of one to two years. That will give you a higher interest rate than a short term CD but wont lock you in to these relatively low historical rates forever. Set it to automatically roll over, then forget about it until that last ditch emergency occurs. Q3: Making your own seasoning mixes Have you ever written an article about making your own seasoning mixes instead of buying mixes at the store? You can buy the component spices and mix them yourself and save a lot of money if you use seasonings a lot. I make an Italian seasoning and a chili seasoning and a toast seasoning myself. Margaret Toast seasoning? Youre going to have to send me that one. I have a bagel seasoning mix that I like to use on buttered toast sometimes I wonder if theyre similar. Although Ive mentioned seasoning mixes before and noted how its cheaper to make your own, I dont think Ive ever written a listing of the various spice mixes we have and how we store them. I store most of my spice mixes in large baby food jars that we still have from when our children were babies. I usually make them by mixing other spices by the teaspoon into a bowl and then stirring them thoroughly so theyre mixed, then I fill up the jar with the spice mix. I use masking tape for labeling. Using a mix is a learning experience. Over time, you start figuring out how much to put in stuff. Our chili mix, for example, usually takes a tablespoon and a half per batch, and a batch fills up our slow cooker about halfway. I could write a full post about this if theres interest, including some of my recipes. Just send me a message on Facebook if youd like to see that. Q4: Inexpensive Nintendo Switch games My husband and I bought our son a Nintendo Switch for Christmas. It is his first video game console and he had been asking for it all year so it was really fun to see him open it. Both sets of grandparents got him a game for it so he has had two games to play. His birthday is coming up soon and we asked him what he wanted and of course he wanted a Switch game. We asked him for a list of the ones he wanted and it has 15 or so games on it. The problem is that they are all $50 or more. Why are Switch games so expensive? Our full birthday gift budget for him is $50. Can you help? Anna This is a consistent challenge with Nintendos consoles, and it has been since the 1980s. Nintendo makes very high quality exclusive titles for their consoles those are usually the ones that wind up filling wish lists for console owners but they rarely go down in price until later in the consoles production cycle and the Switch is a pretty young system. Trust me your son isnt being greedy here. Hes probably listing most of the best games for the console, but they all happen to be expensive ones. I would guess that in a year or two, Nintendo will have a line of some of their top titles from a few years prior as Platinum titles for a much lower price point around $20 but were not there yet. So what can you do now? My recommendation is to visit a video game store that sells used games, like Gamestop, and see what they have available for the Switch thats used. Switch games, as you know, come on small cartridges, so its very easy to test a game to make sure it works you can ask them to test it before you buy. Getting a game used in the original packaging will still cost 50% to 75% of the sticker price and the selection may be a bit limited, but this is probably a fairly safe bet for getting one of the games he wants within your price point. A used Switch game is just as good as a new one in terms of someone focused on actually playing the games, so Id look there. Another approach would be to give him a gift card to the Nintendo eShop. There are a lot of very good downloadable titles for the Switch, and you use those gift cards to buy those downloadable titles. While this wouldnt give him any of the games he specifically wants, it would enable him to get a couple of games at least, and there are some very good games for $9.99 or less on the eShop. Q5: Partner has extreme debt I recently discovered that my bride-to-be (June) has about $140K in student loan debt. She had said that she had some student loans in the past but I did not have any idea how much. I am very uncomfortable with being saddled with that much debt. This has caused a great deal of conflict between us over the last few months and I found this out during the holidays. I am not sure what to do. Daniel The biggest factor Id look at is her day to day behavior right now. Is she a frugal person? Does she watch her nickels and dimes? Is she committed not in words but in actions to getting that debt paid off? Is she making extra payments on that debt? If you see that, then I wouldnt fret about it. On the other hand, if she seems to think that such a big debt isnt a big deal, she spends money frivolously all the time, and she isnt making much progress on that debt I would think very, very carefully about this relationship, because thats a value mismatch thats going to chafe for years and years. Beyond that, I would also consider what kind of field that her degree is in. Was the degree she earned in a field with a high income potential, or was it something that will never earn a substantial income? Also, Id look at other factors, like whether or not parental support was promised and then denied. If shes aiming for a high paying career, such as medicine or law or some types of engineering, I wouldnt worry too much about it. If she took out that much debt for a career path that has a very low likelihood of earning a high salary, I would be really concerned. I would also be concerned with that level of debt if there was also significant financial support from her parents where did all of that money go? The challenge with marriage is that you are financially tied to each other in a very deep way and her choices regarding the debt she took out for her education are indicative of the decision making process she will likely employ going forward except now youll be financially liable for them. Having that much debt unless you are both high income earners will significantly affect your life decisions for a very long time, likely for the rest of your life. It will delay your ability to have children that you can support financially, for starters. It will alter both of your career choices and possibilities. It will delay your ability to have a home of your own. I guess, in this situation, what I would really look for are signs of financial maturity beyond that of the student loans. Is she focused on repaying that debt with or without you? Is she making the most of her degree? Does she spend frivolously? I cant answer for you whether this woman is worth it to you. She may be perfect for you in every other way, in which case youll be happier with her. However, having that much student loan debt, and given the alarm bells it sets off in your head, is a sign of likely incompatibility over financial issues, and thats not a recipe for a great marriage. As always, conversation is key, as is paying attention to her actions. What kind of steps is she taking (not just talking about, but taking) in her life knowing that huge debt is sitting there? If youre struggling to answer that and this debt makes you this uncomfortable, this may not be the best situation for you. Q6: TSP contribution questions I am 36 years old, single, no children, no plans to ever marry. I just got a government job that I hope to keep for the rest of my life. Knowing that I am receiving FERS and Social Security already in retirement, how much should I contribute to my TSP to be able to have a comfortable retirement?Want to retire at 65 and have about the same amount of disposable income when I retire. Janine For those unfamiliar, FERS is the pension plan for US federal government employees. TSP is an optional 401(k)-like plan for additional retirement savings. Based on this, FERS should provide about 33% of your final salary when you retire. Social Security, depending on your income level, will provide somewhere around 30% of your income. That means you need to make up about 37% of your income from TSP. If you contribute 5% of your salary to TSP, the federal government matches another 4%. Above that, theres no matching. Given all of that information, I ran some back of the envelope calculations and conclude that given your age and your aim to retire at age 65 with your full salary intact from your various retirement sources and that you want to be able to draw from TSP for the rest of your life, you should contribute 15% of your salary to TSP. This should enable you to withdraw enough from TSP each year to make up your salary shortfall when you retire at age 65 and the TSP balance should last for the rest of your life. Youll want to invest TSP fairly aggressively the target retirement options should work. While I cant guarantee that 15% will get you there, I can certainly say that it is extremely likely that it will either get you there or get you very close to your goal. Q7: Uses for old iPod? Found an old iPod in a desk drawer along with charging cable. Is there any use for this or should I just junk it? I powered it up and it turns on just fine. Adam I dont own an original iPod (I had one way back in the day but I sold it off circa 2007-2008), but a friend of mine keeps one in her car and listens to music with it every day using a cassette tape adapter. You could do the same thing with an auxiliary cable if your car has an AUX port. Just load it up with mp3s of a bunch of music and/or podcasts that you like, keep it in your car, and listen to it during commutes. If you have a charger that hooks into the cigarette lighting receptacle in your car, then you can plug into that and keep it permanently charged. My friend has hundreds of albums that she loved in her teens and twenties. If you like alternative or indie rock from about 1990 to about 2007, theres a good chance youll find a ton to love on her iPod. Just fill yours up to the brim with stuff you like and youll always have something to listen to. You can fill it up with the full archives of a podcast and listen to the entire run of a podcast, too. Old iPods are great for these kinds of things. In other words, use it for what it was intended for. Load it up with audio. Q8: Job search not that simple While I appreciate your regular encouragement to go find a new job if your current one is sapping you, its not always that simple. I have been working as a legacy systems programmer for the same company for 16 years. Most of my day is maintaining old code, migrating it to new machines, and dealing with corporate [nonsense]. I literally hate going into work each day. There arent any available jobs nearby that match my skill set. Trust me, Ive looked. I cant move because my daughter has particular health care needs and needs to be near a top notch medical facility. That also means I need good insurance. I cant just go into work and say, Well, time to find a new job today! Thats just a pipe dream. Terry All right, so what jobs are available in your area that are close to your skill set? Youre obviously in a metro area of some kind. I guarantee there are programming jobs in that area. Whats actually available? What things are most similar to your skillset? Once you know that, start honing your skillset at work so that you can make that leap. Learn how to write tools that will help you with the legacy coding you already do. Start trying to port your legacy code over to a new language for modern systems during your downtime. Use this as an opportunity to learn new languages and paradigms. Get involved with any and all local software development groups. Try to go to their face to face meetings and get heavily involved in any online spaces they have, being as helpful as you possibly can there. Build up some good relationships in your field, then just casually ask about positions that match your refurbished skill set. Also, keep your resume honed on LinkedIn so you can be discovered by people who might be looking for folks in your area. Dont aim for hopelessness. Aim for a light at the end of the tunnel. You can do this at any job. I had a job where I was literally shoveling dirt for hours and hours during the middle of the night by myself and yet I found ways to aim that toward my next step. Q9: Value of authenticating sports cards I have a bunch of sports cards mostly baseball and basketball from the 1960s. I have looked at selling some of them individually but when I look online almost all sales are authenticated cards in a special holder. I looked into this and it looks like you send your cards to an authentication service and pay them a fee and they put them in a special plastic holder with a tag that says its authentic and gives it a grade for its condition. Is this worth it for selling trading cards? Are there ways to sell cards without this kind of service? Marvin You basically described the sports card authentication world pretty well. It exists because there was rampant fraud in older sports cards and other trading cards for a while, so some reputable dealers popped up and started offering authentication and grading services so that people would know exactly what they were buying. Its become the de facto standard for any sports cards of significant value. Basically, if the card is older than about 1975 or so, the player has any name recognition at all, and the card is in reasonably good shape, youre going to make more money selling it after authentication than before, even including the cost of authentication. If its a no-name player or its beat up, youre not going to make a whole lot for it anyway, as people will just want those to help complete sets and they wont sell for more than pennies. What Id do is look for Hall of Fame caliber player cards from your collection (or, as a friend of mine said, Hall of Famers plus Pete Rose) and get those authenticated to sell individually. The rest, Id just divide out by set and sell in bulk. (I have an almost complete 1965 Topps set missing just a few commons that Ive worked on for literally decades, so Im fairly familiar with all of this.) Q10: Financial independence and career plans So how much financial independence would a person need to be able to have full career independence where you still want to have a career but you just feel empowered to make whatever choice seems exciting to you without really worrying about salary but still assuming youre earning a decent salary to live on? I make about $80K and think I can live well on about $40K so my savings rate is about 30% after taxes. How many years would I have to do this before money exits the equation as a career consideration? Barney I think the real question youre asking is how much do I need to save so that retirement is fully covered? This calculator is probably my preferred one. Youll want to play around with different settings to see how long youll need to save to hit your goals. The further you are from retirement, the lower your total savings goal will be. Also, if you assume Social Security benefits will come to you at rates similar to whats available today, the lower your total savings goal will be. You may even be at your target in several years. However, Id still recommend that you save for retirement after you hit your goal number if youre earning a good salary. This allows you to walk away even earlier if you just get tired of the rat race before a typical retirement age. Q11: Advice for selling books I have a collection of hardback books I want to sell. What is the best way to get maximum value for them? Tracy First of all, it depends a lot on what books youre exactly trying to sell. Are they novels? Cookbooks? Old Dungeons and Dragons books? Encyclopedias? Youll want to go to eBay and try to get a sense as to what theyre actually worth. You will probably get the maximum value from them by selling them individually. However, that is exponentially more work for only a fairly modest rate of return. You might be able to sell a lot of ten books for $20 or sell them each individually for $3, for example. Is that extra effort in packaging and shipping and tracking and communication for nine additional packages worth the $10 to you? Another note: if youre selling books, USPS Media Mail is your friend. Its a highly discounted shipping rate that applies to sending books through the mail, and it comes with a tracking number. (Its cheap because its slow and USPS knows a book can sit in a warehouse for a day with zero problems.) You should always use this when shipping books and magazines. Q12: True hourly discretionary income question I understand how this perspective helps to highlight the high cost of non-necessary spending now in terms of lost leisure in the future. But I think it overstates the cost of non-necessities in terms of hours worked. In your example where your annual net wage is $34,000 and your annual work hours is 2,740 (so you net $12.41 per hour worked) and your necessities cost $24,600/year, you should account for 1,982 work hours (= $24,600/$12.41 per hour) as covering necessities, leaving 2,740 1982 = 758 hours for non-necessities. In each of those 758 hours, you net $12.41/hour, and that is the cost of your necessities in terms of hour worked. So a $50 board game costs you $50/$12.41 per hour = 4 hours, not 10.5 hours. The key is to see that you still actually net $12.41/hour, regardless of whether those earnings go to necessities or non-necessities. One way to see this is to realize that the approach in the post can lead to unrealistic implications for the hours of work required to purchase non-necessities. For example, suppose in your example above, necessities are only $10,000 year, and non-necessary spending is then $34,000 $10,000 = $24,000. If your hourly wage for non-necessities is really $4.96/hour like the post says, then it would take $24,000/$4.96 per hour = 4,838 hours to earn that $24,000. But you earned the $34,000 with only 2,740 hours, so something is wrong. Max Max is referring to this article from last week, Using Your True Hourly Discretionary Income to Make Smarter Purchases. Youre just looking at the same issue in a different way. Rather than looking at each hour as being subdivided between essential expenses and non-essential expenses, youre doing the same thing with the total hours over a year. In that example, then, 1,741 of the hours you work essentially earn you nothing in terms of spending money, because all of it goes to essentials. So, frugality in essence just means that youre migrating some of the hours you work from your pool of hours spent on essential expenses to the hours you work for spending money. My angle was different. I divided the income from each hour into essential expenses and spending money. The essential expenses gobble up $7.45 of the $12.41 you earn each hour, while your spending money makes up only $4.96 of the $12.41 you earn each hour. So, then, you judge whether an expense is worth it using just the $4.96, since its the only portion you can actually freely spend. In this case, frugality moves a little bit of money from the $7.45 essential expenses per hour pile to the $4.96 spending money per hour pile. Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. Ill attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours. https://www.thesimpledollar.com/questions-about-checking-accounts-nintendo-switch-ipods-tsp-and-more/