I think they want to encourage multiple tickets. But by having only a couple of machines at each location it would normally be very difficult to purchase millions of tickets in the timeframe from when it’s determined that no one won the last drawing and the cutoff for the next one.
The safeguard was reasonable and it was skirted by conspiring to get additional machines.
I mean, I guess they could make a rule that you can’t purchase more than 500 tickets or something. That might be just as effective without preventing the kind of repeat sales they actually want.
Of course, that’s ultimately what I was getting at. The government is incentivized to separate citizens from their money so they want people to buy as many tickets as they can - until that’s inconvenient to the government.
Obviously these people found a workaround, but the workaround was a foreseeable end result of the government’s short-sighted, revenue-focused policy. Which is why I referenced - admitting the analogy isn’t quite 1:1 but is close:
Apologies for the gibberish, I don’t see how to remove that preview.
At the bottom of the image you see my mom’s normal Social Security direct deposit. I’m struggling to understand how she got a separate deposit of $20,805. My mom has plenty live on but is not remotely wealthy and has no income apart from that and a pension.
Any ideas? She’s out of the house so I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet.
Not sure how it works with SS, but if they have messed up the SS benefit calculation, could it not be a correction for the back-payments owed?
They would normally write to you to let you know (about the error and the lump payment) over here in the UK, but who knows with what is going on right now in the US.
I talked to her and gave her the number for SS we’ll see what we find out. The $1,000 was a cash withdrawal by her this morning so nothing suspicious there. It was just so recent that there wasn’t much description offered.
I got a letter that one of my medications is being cut off, and I’m forced to switch to a biosimilar.
A few days later my insurer calls me to talk to me about the same, and in the same call informs me that I have a $2,900 bill outstanding for my last dosage of medicine.
That was supposed to be covered by a patient copay assistance program. However, the pharmacy I have to use per my insurer is the absolute worst and probably f’ed things up once again. Hopefully not in a way that I end up stuck with that bill.
In the meantime, I’m hoping that a copay assistance program crops up for one of the biosimilars, since my assistance program is only for the drug my insurer is no longer covering. If not, annual_medical_expenses = annual_medical_expenses + 4000.
Hopefully the biosimilar works as well as the original drug, too.
Trying to decide what I should do with my gummint student loans. I’m at 85 of 120 months in for the PSLF teacher forgiveness process. Should I try to wait for the courts to finish deciding on the basically-dead SAVE plan? Or should I switch to one of the other income-based plans that still count toward PSLF and just prepare to make 35 more payments?
i think in retirement we are likely to drop down to a single car (from 2). this will take some planning and spreadsheeting to confirm. or at least there will be an age where the final 2 car lineup is set and at some age we will certainly slow down to only needing one.
Helping my wife with some investments in Brazil and their private markets are offering some pretty incredible returns for investments into certain sectors (real estate and agribusiness). Far cry from what you tend to see in the UK.
Tax-free fixed annual 10%+ returns, AAA rated (credit backed by Govt guarantee). Main downside is you have to keep the money till maturity (5Y) and you can only invest if you are a resident.
Yes. But since we maintain a house in Brazil (with associated liabilities in terms of utilities, property taxes etc) I usually prefer to have assets/income in the local currency to pay for those things.
Saves you the headache of FX risk (specially for Brazil whose currency (Real) vs GBP/EUR/USD has steadily been getting worse).
Our mortgage is at an incredibly low rate (1.875%), because I stupidly picked an ARM that ends in late 2027. Could have gotten something like 2.5% for 30 years but the past is the past
I’ve been overpaying on it with the intent to be done with it in 2032, but briefly stopped the overpayments to repair our emergency fund after a big tax bill that came up.
Debating whether to resume the overpayments. It should be superior to just invest the difference and I could always lump-sum pay it off, but it’s nice to see my balance go down more rapidly each month. When the rate adjusts, I might decide it’s best to simply lump-sum pay it off anyway. And ideally, I’ll have had 2+ years of compounding gains.
Altogether it’s a personal psychological decision, since mathematically I should chuck it into at least a HYSA if not the stock market.
