aidenfire

I saw this website, put out by the US President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability, entitled Money As You Grow -- 20 Things Kids Need to Know to Live Financially Smart Lives. In theory this is a great idea; the website is simple and eye-pleasing, the information is presented in small easily understood chunks, but I have some concerns about what they're presenting as need-to-know information, especially for the older ages. For example, yes, technically you shouldn't use a credit card unless you are able to pay it off in full every month. But there are instances when you do actually need to buy something that you can't pay off in a month. My computer broke when I was in college. I needed a new one for my school work, and I didn't make enough money to buy even a not very nice one outright in a month. I feel like teaching kids to never use a credit card is like teaching abstinence only sex education -- they're going to do it eventually, but if you just say no no no, they're not going to know how to do it responsibly.

Also, the website advocates having 3 months living expenses saved by the age of 19. I didn't live an extravagant life when I was 19 by any means, and I worked at an above-minimum-wage job 20+ hours a week, while going to school full time. I wasn't even making enough money per month for living expenses, let alone saving anything; I was getting by on student loans, help from my family, and yes, credit cards. By presenting that as a basic necessary life lesson, it seems to frame people for whom that is not a possibility as failures. I recently came into some money unexpectedly, and I used it to buy a car, which I needed for work, and to pay off a good chunk of my credit card debt. It would have been fiscally irresponsible to just put that money in a savings account to gain at most 2% interest (and probably more like .5%), instead of pay off debt that's got a 18%, or even higher, interest rate. And I haven't even touched on my thousands of dollars of student debt.

I'm disappointed that the US administration seems to be tailoring its advice to people and families that already have money (starting your Roth IRA at 16, really?). I don't know these people that have 3 months living expenses on hand, and that don't need credit cards, and that can start investing as teenagers. I think more useful money lessons would be things like how to know if a credit card is offering you a good rate or not, that late payments mean you'll have to pay more later both on your bills and due to your credit score, how to deduct everything you qualify for from your taxes, or why it's good to pay down debts as fast as possible.

Thoughts?

Ugh I had like four paragraphs written and dreamwidth freaked out and ate it :////. I'll try to recreate!

So, Hunger Games! ( spoilers (for all 3 books as well as movie) and rambling this way! )

As for ( Game of Thrones... )

In my shame list update, I've knocked The Crucible and Catcher in the Rye off my list, and I really, really enjoyed both of them. In some ways for similar reasons -- I think they both did a great job of really exposing humanity, of taking a character and just breaking him down for the world to see inside him. The Crucible took me a bit to warm up to, it was a little slow going in the beginning, especially during the exposition bits, but when the action picked up, holy hell did it pick up! Catcher had my attention essentially from the first sentence; I think I read it in close to one sitting.

In the flist participation section of this post, what should I read next? Great Expectations, or something by either Steinbeck or Faulkner?

Life. Sometimes the drama forces you to assess things more clearly, you know?

In other news, I finally read Neil Gaiman's Stardust yesterday and it was fabulous! For those of you that haven't read it, it's a fantasy/faerie tale/quest novel featuring a cusp-of-adulthood young man searching for a fallen star. It was a pretty quick read; I finished it in one (pretty slow) shift at the boy's house. I loved the fairy tale tone of it. It's hard to hit on that tone and still maintain a complicated plot and multi-faceted characters. He did an excellent job though. I wasn't sucked in immediately, but all of a sudden I was like half way through the book and couldn't put it down. I definitely had some straight up hand-to-mouth gasps at certain points of the action, and it also had a whole lot of heart. I always love watching completely disparate plot threads converge, and I was so satisfied with the ending of this one. He didn't cop out; the ending followed the plotlines that he'd set in motion; but he did it so elegantly. It was a true pleasure and I highly recommend it. :)

Nothing grinds my gears like inequality, and we've been seeing a lot of it these days: racism, sexism, homophobia, and poverty-phobia (yes, that's definitely the technical term). Here are some links for your perusal.

An infographic spelling out the war on women in 2011. Ugh.

Turns out easier access to contraceptives -- and abortions -- actually lowers abortion rates. Who'd thunk it? This goes along with what I've been saying since I was 16 -- no one, not even pro-choice heathens, WANT women to get abortions. However, women are going to get them anyway, so we need to make it safe and accessible for them to make the best possible decisions about their own health. Contraceptives lower the need for abortions! I don't understand how you can be against both!

Martin Luther King vs. Mitt Rommney. Guess which one sounds like a dick?

Ron Paul is a bigot, y'all. Quotes from him or his newsletters include, "I think we can assume that 95 percent of the black men in that city [Washington] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."; "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."; "Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came "out of the closet," & started hyper-promiscuous sodomy?". He was also the only member of Congress to vote against giving Rosa Parks a Congressional Medal of Honor, and he opposes the Civil Rights Act. He also claims that he can't be a racist, because he's a Libertarian, and they don't see people in groups. Clearly guys, not a racist at all.

An op-ed about kids and gender from the NY Times. Always an interesting read!

A big THANK YOU to the anonymous who bought me paid time. I appreciate it so much and can't wait to get some new icons! Very much appreciated, and thank you. :)

That moment when you look in the mirror at the end of the day and you're like "oh my GOD that's what I've been going around looking like all day?!?!?!"... sigh. Hahah. Anyway, on to the main point! As promised, some Yuletide recs. Just Friday Night Lights and Tamora Pierce today; some more random fandoms in a few days. All these fics are pretty short (the joy of Yuletide! So many great short fics = so much immediate gratification!) unless otherwise noted. :)


( Tamora Pierce recs! )

( Friday Night Lights recs! )

I'm sure I've messed up some coding somewhere, so let me know if you catch anything!

If ever you needed more incentive to at least backup your journal somewhere, LJ has been deleting comments made by people who've deleted their journals. If you've been around more than a couple years, check some of your old entries. I didn't make it five entries without finding entire threads where every other post was [Deleted Comment]. Never mind if I still wanted to read those comments, if they were from some of my oldest and dearest friends, if they recorded information I still wanted to have. FUCK you livejournal.

(FYI, you can import your entire journal including comments to Dreamwidth. Even if you decide not to use it, you can never have too many back ups.)

So upset. :(

Hi y'all -- I've been thinking about this for awhile and I am officially making the move to Dreamwidth. I will be posting over there (but cross posting to this journal) and primarily reading flist over there. I've imported rss feeds of my flist, so theoretically I should still see public posts. I'll still be skimming flist over here for a while yet, but if I'm missing something you think I should see, please don't hesitate to give me a nudge! I am aidenfire over there as well. I've friended a lot of familiar names but again, please let me know if I've missed you! Especially if you have a different user name. Suggestions for comms to follow would also be appreciated.

Now, the why. I hardly even know where to start, but it essentially boils down disrespect from Livejournal, and a lack of trust of Livejournal. ( tl;dr under the cut )
I'm tired of putting up with a new shit storm every eight weeks, especially when Dreamwidth is making itself a more viable alternative all the time. Just for a thought exercise, read Dreamwidth's latest news post. New changes that are opt-in, rather than either opt-out or just rolled out whether you like it or not! Responses to user concerns! Acknowledgement of current bugs! Admitting they made a mistake, and what they're doing to amend it! New features that are actually useful and that people want, rather than random shit they've come up with for the hell of it or something! Donating 10% of their profits for a month to a pro-women-in-science organization, I don't even. And then, maybe more importantly, read some of the comments. Look for someone asking a question, and you'll also find their question being answered, promptly, politely, and thoroughly, by a senior staffer. A senior staffer mentioning a feature as being implemented particularly to improve a kink meme! Acknowledgement of fandom? Customer service? What is this? Amazing! Yes, it's not perfect by any means. But I don't feel like they are actively disrespecting my friends and I, or trying to fuck their users over for their own gain.

I really encourage you to think strongly about moving. You can import your whole LJ with just a couple simple clicks -- including, as I said in the beginning, RSS feeds of many of your friends' journals. Hope to see you on the other side. :)

Sorry for the length... < / strong feelings!>

Originally posted by digitalsidhe at Mississippi Personhood Amendment Close to Passage

so my train back to school hit a semi and killed the driver, and a junior at my school got stabbed to death at a frat party on campus last night.

what the fuck, world.