#tollway

[somewhat-a-sigma]

oasis 4.7.16

[spockvarietyhour]

Houston, 1989

[music-for-them-asses]

It's normally 25 minutes to the venue from my place, but there's multiple wrecks so it's over an hour now 🙃🙃🙃🫠🫠🫠

[mrsmoose54]

Rental Car Toll Charges

TIP: Do your research before booking and compare rental companies. I received a message from my daughter 24 hours before her flight to New York in regard to paying for tolls in a rental car. Her route was from JFK to Maryland and couldn’t work out her options. I have previously written about the Orlando Visitor Toll Pass – Save up to 80% and Illinois Tollway on 2023 road trip States 46 & 47…

[rohans-daughter]

bored bored bored bored

[insert arietty clock from the 1997 borrowers here]

[digitalfilipina]

MPTC Units Gear up for Road Safety Month

Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC), the leading mobility infrastructure and solutions provider in the Philippines, joins the country in celebrating the road safety month with ‘Mission: Road Safety’. MPTC is undertaking this initiative to reinforce its expressways’ road safety mission based on the 3 pillars of safety – safe self, safe vehicle, and safe roads. “Mission: Road Safety”…

[raskies456]

now that I commute tho I am always thinking about that tweet that’s like “why does traffic exist. just drive forward”

[yikes077]

I’m sorry, but the fact that old people just know where highways are is such a mind fuck for me. I was talking to my uncle the other day and he was just like “yeah, you’ll have to go through Indiana if you take I-57, but if you take Z-92 or L-004 then you should be able to avoid the city, and go right to Oregon”

What knowledge do you posses, what wizard do you kill, to just know the highways? Just fully understand not only where you’re going, but the name of the exit? I could never

[trivialbob]

Baraboo was fun. I have more to write about it, but that will wait until I am home and using my computer.

Today's drive to Chicago was uneventful. I took my time and didn't speed or try to make good time. Which probably explains why I am not stressed out right now.

I also stopped at the Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha. Mmmm, Wisconsin cheese and beef sticks.

I hate paying highway tolls to Illinois. Sheila's car (which I drove) has the EZ Pass transponder, to easily pay tolls without stopping. In Minnesota it's for the carpool lanes, but works on the Illinois tollway.

F that. I set my Waze app to Avoid Toll Roads. Instead of driving down I-90 or I-94, I took US 41, a toll-free road. That route only added 12 minutes to my journey.

I saved about six bucks in tolls 😀

[somewhat-a-sigma]

oasis

[annakie]

My family was supposed to all be out of town by now, but Stuff happened and they're not leaving til next week.

Asked my mom on Sunday if we were going to do any kind of Thanksgiving and she was like "Oh I bought sliced turkey at the deli!" Me: lol no

Spent an hour or so googling for options and H.E.B. (Texas grocery chain) had a full Thanksgiving dinner for four (4 - 6 lb Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, gravy and real cranberry sauce), all pre-cooked, and for under $100. Just unbox, stick it in the oven for an hour, and voila, easy dinner.

So I ordered that. They bought some pie when they went to Walmart, mom's making bread from scratch because she loves using her Kitchenaid stand mixer for bread, I bought a little cheese tray for appetizers, and we've got the easiest Thanksgiving ever for four.

Went to pick it up and:

A) Forgot that everyone gets out of work early today thus getting on the road at 2pm was like usually getting on the road at 5pm, especially heading away from downtown.

B) Forgot how far this grocery store was. I used to work right by there and completely forgot how much I hated that commute. I took the tollways. Worth it.

C) HOLY CRAP the grocery store parking lot was like Mad Max. Trying to get in and this idiot cut me off badly before getting into the parking lot, then I guess they got scared when I followed them into the parking lot and were driving erratically trying to get away from me? Even though I was just, you know, being normal. Maybe they were just THAT dumb. Then they nearly hit a family on foot while making a shitty blind turn. Terrifying. I offered the family my dashcam footage, but since nobody was hurt and they were leaving, they just wanted to get out.

D) CANNOT IMAGINE what it was like in that store, the parking lot looked FULL full. Thank the retail gods for curbside pickup. Didn't have to get out of the car. Wasn't allowed to tip the girl who brought the groceries out. =\ Only downside is that I'd ordered an extra side of pre-made Parmesan Garlic carrots for more veggies. They substituted the carrots for more green beans. Nobody in my family likes green beans much already. :p

E) Driving home was almost as bad, but traffic was better going south.

F) Thought it would take me 45 minutes. Entire trip took an hour and a half. Glad to be home.

G) I hate putting groceries away. The box with dinner juuuuust barely fits in my fridge. I had to duct tape the door shut. No, I'm not kidding. :D IT'S FINE. It's for like, 18 hours!

[ouropharynx]

Glory to the Illinois Tollway Oasis

[mrsmoose54]

Orlando Visitor Toll Pass - Save up to 80%

Toll FL Having enjoyed the freedom of the Illinois Tollway on my recent Road Trip  to visit Nebraska and North Dakota I was researching Central Florida for any of the latest attractions to write about but came across the joined up thinking of Toll FL instead. The issue in the past has been trying to avoid the horrendously greedy charges that rental car companies try to get away with by providing…

[exitrowiron]

Investing 101

Part 3 of ?

In the first installment of this series I discussed stocks. Stocks are also referred to as Equities, because if you own a company's stock, you own Equity in the company. Stocks entitle you dividends and you can benefit from growth of the stock price. But stocks can be volatile. Fortunately there are other securities you can purchase which usually offer less risk.

Bonds, are essentially loans made to companies and government entities. Bonds can have a variety of maturities (i.e. length of time until the loan is repaid) and interest rates. Companies can issue bonds instead of getting a loan from a bank. Likewise, government entities (ex. cities, counties, school districts, states and the US Treasury) issue bonds. A school district might issue a bond to build a new high school; a state might issue bonds to build a new tollway. The US Treasury issues bonds to fund the operations of the government. For as long as you've been an adult, you've heard about the US Budget Deficit, right? But do you know what it is? The budget deficit is simply the yearly government spending which exceeds the government's revenue (taxes). The sum of all the annual budget deficits is called the National Debt. The US Treasury issues bonds throughout the year to borrow the money necessary to fund the budget deficit. The interest on government bonds is usually tax exempt - that makes them a favorite of people who want to lower their tax bill. Because government bonds are tax exempt, they pay lower interest than a comparable corporate bond.

In general, bonds have lower risk than equities and pay interest regularly. With the exception of US Treasuries, bonds can be less liquid - i.e. take longer to sell in the event you need your cash back immediately. Bonds are also usually considered lower risk than equities, so an investor might purchase them to lower the overall risk in his/her portfolio (more on that later).

Each bond pays a fixed interest rate for the life of the bond (ex. 4%), but the price of the bond can go up and down based on market demand. On the day of issuance, let's assume you bought a 10 year, corporate $100 bond paying 4% interest. You paid the corporation $100 and every year for 10 years you will receive 4% interest and at the end of 10 years the company will repay the $100. If you wanted to sell the bond the next day, you could probably sell it to someone else for $100. Because you can sell for it face value, the Yield is the same as the interest rate. Let's also assume that 1 year later the company's only factory burned in a fire and it wasn't insured. It is much less likely that the company will be able to repay the bond you bought. If you tried to sell the bond to someone else, you'd probably have to discount the bond - perhaps sell it for $80 instead the $100 you paid. Now the Yield has declined, even though the interest rate is still 4%. Conversely, assume the factory never burned and instead the stock market tanked. Now everyone is desperate for an investment paying 4% and is willing to pay $120 for you $100 bond (an exaggeration to be sure); in this case the Yield on your bond has increased above the 4% interest.

The safety of bonds is measured and reported by rating agencies and impacts the price/yield. The bonds of companies which are less likely to be able to repay are rated lower than those with strong earnings and cash flow. Lower rated bonds have more risk, but they have higher interest rates and yields. Junk Bonds are bonds issued by high risk companies. Investors can make a bunch of money from junk bonds, but they can lose their investment too. (The 2008-09 financial crisis was caused in part by rating agencies not accurately reporting the risk associated with bonds composed of home mortgages.)

Historically, a broad portfolio of equities will generate greater returns over the medium/long term than a bond (debt) portfolio. If you have a long investment horizon (ex. >5 years) you want to invest in stocks. Occasionally, however, the stock market will have correction or there will be a recession etc and the stock market will drop. If you need cash during one of those periods and have to sell your stocks, you're going to sell at the bottom of the market and lose money. For this reason, investments with a short time horizon tend to favor bonds; the price (yield) of bonds is generally less volatile and you can count on the cash flow of regular interest payments. That's why as investors age, they start to shift the balance of their portfolio from equities to bonds. If I'm 70 years old and the market tanks, I can't wait 5 years for the market to recover; so I'm going to keep more of my money in bonds. The return on my bond investments is low, but so is the risk.

Only 12 people or so are reading these things, so if you have questions please ask.

[digitalfilipina]

MPT South’s BAYANI KA Bags an Anvil Award

“Cavi”, a road safety advocate character for Bayani ng Kalsada or “Bayani Ka” created by the Metro Pacific Tollways South (MPT South), took home a Silver Anvil Award, the company’s 4th trophy for the country’s “Oscars of Public Relations”. On the 58th Anvil Awards Gabi ng Parangal held at Newport City on Wednesday, March 8, the Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) recognized MPT…

[critterspaws]

do you think balaga took the tollway from moscow to tula