Random Banter #239 - Now 50% more tangible!

[Jasdoif]

I just thought of something: If you win a million dollars or more and you still working at a job that's just like saying you're at full HP and you're still using healing spells to heal yourself. Does anyone understand what I'm saying?

I...think you're saying you believe a million dollars is the most a person could ever have?

[Mystic Muse]

I just thought of something: If you win a million dollars or more and you still working at a job that's just like saying you're at full HP and you're still using healing spells to heal yourself. Does anyone understand what I'm saying?

Depending on where you live, a million dollars might not be enough to retire. Also, if you don't have insurance (often gotten through one's job), the right kind of medical complications can take that million dollars down to nothing really quickly.

[Bartmanhomer]

You can't save your HP from retirement, though.

That's true.

[halfeye]

Yay for eye surgery.

But yeah Anon is right. Hold your head high DataNinja! You are beautiful and will find someone eventually!

If and only if you want to.

[Bartmanhomer]

Depending on where you live, a million dollars might not be enough to retire. Also, if you don't have insurance (often gotten through one's job), the right kind of medical complications can take that million dollars down to nothing really quickly.

Really? That's interesting. I thought a million dollars will hold them up for a good while.

[Rater202]

Inflation is a thing, Bartman.

A million dollars now just isn't worth what it used to be worth. It's a good start-up fund or a good nest egg, but i's not "I ain't gotta be working" money.

Great example: My Great Grandmother had a million dollars saved up that she didn't know about, we only found ot about it after she died becuase she left everything to be divided up among my mother and her siblings.

Split three ways, and after taxes, it was enough to pay for... My mom jokes that we bought the land and the house came with it. The house we live in is kind of crappy but it was a hell of a lot worse when we moved in. My Aunt and Uncle's share just kind of disappeared into the aether.

...Though, having a million in the bank would give you greater ability to be selective with your work. If you boss is being an ass you can just tell him to piss off and go live on your savings for a little bit till you find another job.

But if you want to be in the position where you don't have to work at all you'd need either a couple HUNDRED million dollars, or a continuous passive income of at least a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.

...And good luck getting a passive income that high without already being rich.

[Bartmanhomer]

Inflation is a thing, Bartman.

A million dollars now just isn't worth what it used to be worth. It's a good start-up fund or a good nest egg, but i's not "I ain't gotta be working" money.

Great example: My Great Grandmother had a million dollars saved up that she didn't know about, we only found ot about it after she died becuase she left everything to be divided up among my aunt and her siblings.

Split three ways, and after taxes, it was enough to pay for... My mom jokes that we bought the land and the house came with it. The house we live in is kind of crappy but it was a hell of a lot worse when we moved in. My Aunt and Uncle's share just kind of disappeared into the aether.

...Though, having a million in the bank would give you greater ability to be selective with your work. If you boss is being an ass you can just tell him to piss off and go live on your savings for a little bit till you find another job.

But if you want to be in the position where you don't have to work at all you'd need either a couple HUNDRED million dollars, or a continuous passive income of at least a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.

...And good luck getting a passive income that high without already being rich.

I believe you.

[Peelee]

Yay for eye surgery.

But yeah Anon is right. Hold your head high DataNinja! You are beautiful and will find someone eventually!

DataNinja, you're also super fun to play Halo with. That definitely counts for a good bit as well.

I just thought of something: If you win a million dollars or more and you still working at a job that's just like saying you're at full HP and you're still using healing spells to heal yourself. Does anyone understand what I'm saying?

You live in NYC, right? A million dollars won't even buy a decent house there. Even ignoring that you'd be coming out with something like 700k after taxes.

[Bartmanhomer]

DataNinja, you're also super fun to play Halo with. That definitely counts for a good bit as well.

You live in NYC, right? A million dollars won't even buy a decent house there. Even ignoring that you'd be coming out with something like 700k after taxes.

Yes. I've been living in NYC for my entire life.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yay for eye surgery.

Congrats! Everything went well?

Back home, eye is uncovered, and I'm currently seeing okay enough to walk to the shops. Only time will tell if it all went well. Starting to hurt a bit, but eyes do that when you remove part of them.


As to the million quid, money isn't the only reason people work jobs. I know somebody already being paid more money than they want, but they'll continue doing their job as long as possible because they find it fun. Which I'm glad of as they're a scientist and advancing science is great.

[Peelee]

Back home, eye is uncovered, and I'm currently seeing okay enough to walk to the shops. Only time will tell if it all went well. Starting to hurt a bit, but eyes do that when you remove part of them.

Got my fingers crossed.

As to the million quid, money isn't the only reason people work jobs. I know somebody already being paid more money than they want, but they'll continue doing their job as long as possible because they find it fun. Which I'm glad of as they're a scientist and advancing science is great.

When I first went to the fed job, the first day was about finances and budgeting. They straight up say that for most people, this is going to be the most money they've ever made by a long shot, though there are some who take a reduction in pay to get in. If I was being grossly overpaid currently, I'd still be in that second, much smaller group.

[Mystic Muse]

Yes. I've been living in NYC for my entire life.

From a quick googling, to live alone comfortably in New York City, you have to make $40,000 a year. Assuming this figure is accurate, that million dollars is gone in 25 years assuming absolutely nothing goes wrong and you live normally.

[Jasdoif]

Starting to hurt a bit, but eyes do that when you remove part of them.

Indeed....My prescribed one-month regimen of anti-inflammatory eye drops* after my surgery was not enough; I needed acetaminophen backup for the next couple months.

* I mistyped this the first time; but I've decided that "regiment of anti-inflammatory eye drops" implies a large group of cyclops paratroopers somewhere on the elemental plane of fire.

[Peelee]

From a quick googling, to live alone comfortably in New York City, you have to make $40,000 a year. Assuming this figure is accurate, that million dollars is gone in 25 years assuming absolutely nothing goes wrong and you live normally.

Even considering the totality of the city and not trying to pigeonhole into Manhattan's upper east side, that sounds surprisingly low. Though I might have an admittedly different idea of "comfortably" than others.

[Mystic Muse]

Even considering the totality of the city and not trying to pigeonhole into Manhattan's upper east side, that sounds surprisingly low. Though I might have an admittedly different idea of "comfortably" than others.

My note of "assuming this is true" is deeeeefinitely coming with caveats there because yeah, that sounded waaaaay too low to me. I'd have guessed in the 6 figure range, and a million lasting less than a decade.

[Rater202]

Averages aren't necessarily a good measure of this kind of thing.

I wouldn't be surprised if a number of run-down houses in bad neighborhoods or cheap rental apartments weren't skewing the numbers lower.

[Fyraltari]

Though I might have an admittedly different idea of "comfortably" than others.

Hint: sofas are less expensive than hoards of gold.

[Peelee]

My note of "assuming this is true" is deeeeefinitely coming with caveats there because yeah, that sounded waaaaay too low to me. I'd have guessed in the 6 figure range, and a million lasting less than a decade.

Quick googling for me got me two numbers, $67k and $88k. Which seems more in line with my expectations.

Averages aren't necessarily a good measure of this kind of thing.

I wouldn't be surprised if a number of run-down houses in bad neighborhoods or cheap rental apartments weren't skewing the numbers lower.

I didn't see anything that claimed it was an average?

Hint: sofas are less expensive than hoards of gold.

The conversion rate is about even in San Francisco, I hear.

[Rater202]

Quick googling for me got me two numbers, $67k and $88k. Which seems more in line with my expectations.
I didn't see anything that claimed it was an average?

That kind of statistic usually runs on averages, I just assumed.

[Peelee]

That kind of statistic usually runs on averages, I just assumed.

Do they? I've never come across any that try to do simple averages to calculate.

[Rater202]

Do they? I've never come across any that try to do simple averages to calculate.

Really? I was always taught to assume that if they didn't specify that they were using averages.

[Peelee]

Really? I was always taught to assume that if they didn't specify that they were using averages.

Well, you also talk about how terrible your teachers were.

For reals, though, that is not a good standard assumption.

[Jasdoif]

Really? I was always taught to assume that if they didn't specify that they were using averages.

Mean, median or mode?

[Rater202]

Mean, median or mode?

Mean.

The Mean is the average.

Median and Mode are other means of central tendency, but they are not synonymous with average.

Unless two dozen teachers two differant elementary schools, a middle school, a high school, and a university across two differant towns were all teaching from the same flawed curriculum.

[Anonymouswizard]

Mean, median or mode?

Honestly, with these kind of discussions I always wish the mode was brought up more. It's always the mean and median, but I think that the median and mode might generally be more useful. Although you might need to round to two or three significant figures first.

ETA: every maths teacher I had said the mean, median, and mode were all different types of average. Which is why talking about 'the average' annoys me.

[Beeftank]

From a quick googling, to live alone comfortably in New York City, you have to make $40,000 a year. Assuming this figure is accurate, that million dollars is gone in 25 years assuming absolutely nothing goes wrong and you live normally.

Theoretically you could put that million into an SP 500 index fund and live off 70-80k per year of return.
Of course there are going to be years where the market is down so you might need a bit of a cushion for those years so you don’t dig into the million.

[Jasdoif]

Mean.

The Mean is the average.

Median and Mode are other means of central tendency, but they are not synonymous with average.

Unless two dozen teachers two differant elementary schools, a middle school, a high school, and a university across two differant towns were all teaching from the same flawed curriculum.

It's been over a quarter of a century since I was involved in a curriculum related to averages; I don't think that I was taught "mean, median and mode are the primary types of average" is going to mean much

Mean is the usual default, but that carries the assumption that you're looking for a single number representing an equally distributed range (or that you have no clue what the overall range looks like but still require a number to condense the range down into); when the range is already known to be quite uneven, median is more appropriate. Mode is the oddball case for when you're measuring membership in categories rather than values on a spectrum (and thus don't have a basis for adding to get a mean, or sorting to find a median); the category with the highest count is the average.

(File the above paragraph under "supporting details that would have been helpful had they been included in the corresponding curriculum")

[halfeye]

ETA: every maths teacher I had said the mean, median, and mode were all different types of average.

That agrees with what I was taught, it might be a UKian teachers versus USAian teachers difference.

[Peelee]

That agrees with what I was taught, it might be a UKian teachers versus USAian teachers difference.

I had that as well, but I didn't have typical American schooling.

[Rater202]

My cousin managed to get a plea deal on that DUI charge.

Probation, some classes, a small fine.

...Honestly, given my (paternal) aunt's experiences on probation and some things that some of my professors in college said(I took a lot of crime related classes) he might have been better off with jail