Love the graphs on this article showing exactly how many small businesses are affected by Obamacare (hint:  not many).

Femme Frugality discusses the cost of walking.

Izzy mom is sick of lazy spineless parents and their bratty kids.  She says so.

Wandering Scientist with advice on informational interviews.

Mother Jones discusses potential harmful anti-women legislation criminalizing still-births and miscarriages under manslaughter laws.

I want to see this at the zoo.

I waste so much time weighs in on cats vs. dogs.

Get out of there cat.

Wonders and marvels explains how to wear a hoop skirt.

Dominic Deegan had his last comic!

A colleague and I co-advised a student who graduated a couple of years ago. The student is now getting married and the colleague and I are both invited to the wedding. The colleague wants to buy a present together and split the cost, which is a great idea. The problem is that the colleague wants to buy three little-ish things that together cost $90 and split that in two. I think that’s too cheap. If we were grad students, sure, that would be a good amount, but we are both grownups with salaries and I think we should be able to buy something bigger. (I haven’t talked with the colleague about this yet as I am not sure what to say.)

How much would be customary to spend in this type of occasion? Someone told me it depends on whether they feed you or not etc. but I find it hard to believe it’s just tit for tat (i.e. I should spend no more than the price of my and my husband’s meal and drink or whatever). So what’s the etiquette?

Miss Manners definitely frowns on the idea of tit for tat.  And there really is no specific etiquette– you don’t have to buy a gift at all if you don’t want to.  I tend to give $50 in cash for friends and acquaintances and $100 in cash to family and close friends (sometimes more depending on the circumstances).  When it’s a friend who has a lot of money already, I just buy something between $45 and $80 off the registry depending on what catches my eye.  But most folks just starting out could use the money more than they can use household items, to pay off the wedding if nothing else.  (About.com has guidelines, as do many other websites.)

Honestly, you can give whatever you want.  At our wedding, we got many large checks from DH’s side for our wedding, and only trinkets from my side.  The difference being the need for social insurance in the two cultures.  If you feel like giving more than $45, then just tell your colleague that you’re planning on cutting a check, and cut the check.  Or if there’s something else you have in mind, tell the colleague you have something else in mind.

The real etiquette answer here is that you can give whatever you want, but you cannot dictate what your colleague should give.

Grumpy Nation, how much do you spend on wedding gifts?  What advice would you have for grad advisor?

Here are some of the things you should stop saying on the internet, behind people’s backs, or to their faces:

1.  Why do gifted kids need to be challenged anyway?  Why can’t we let kids be kids?  What’s the rush?

Gifted kids who are not challenged are at a greater risk of dropping out than normal kids.  They’re also more likely to have bad behavior than gifted kids who are sufficiently challenged.  And, if they’re not challenged early on, they can flame out spectacularly when challenged later as young adults.  (All of the previous statements are verifiable from pretty much any research-based book on gifted children.)

On top of that, most children find learning to be fun and to be part of childhood.  It is only adults who seem to feel the need to make learning not fun.  Fight that.

2.  It’s so important for kids to be with their same-aged peers.  It may not be important in elementary school, but just wait until they’re old enough to drive/go to prom/go to college.  Then you’ll see.

Gifted kids are often out-of-synch with their same-aged peers.  It would be great for them to hang around other gifted kids their same age, but many populations don’t have a large enough population to support gifted classes, and tracking is not currently in vogue.   A Nation Deceived makes a clear and convincing case that gifted kids actually do *better* socially on average when accelerated than when with same-aged peers in a normal classroom.  As for driving and prom… those are not the end-all and be-all.  Not all kids go to prom.  Many freshmen go to prom with seniors.  If a freshman hangs out with juniors, hir friends will be driving anyway even though ze can’t, and not all kids have cars or get licenses at 16 anyway.  In terms of college, there are many possibilities not limited to going early, taking a gap year, taking courses at the local college or community college, and so on.  There’s an exciting world of possibilities that may be even better than the status quo.

3.  I knew a kid who skipped grades and ze was totally messed up.

Correlation is not causation.  Gifted kids are often odd and out of synch compared to other kids.  Chances are they’ll seem messed up in the view of some subset of the population whether or not they’re accelerated.  Compared to gifted kids who are not accelerated, those who are accelerated do better academically AND socially, according to A Nation Deceived.

4.  Being bored/miserable/picked on/the only person doing work on a group project is a part of adult life.  Kids need to learn to get used to it in school.

When you’re gifted and do well in school, you can often sort yourself into a profession in which you’re more likely to be surrounded by other competent hard workers doing interesting things.  Being picked on is not normal as an adult.

5.  I’m so sick of hearing X complain about the problems she’s having with her so-called gifted kid, if the kid is actually gifted, which I have my doubts.  Gifted kids don’t need special treatment, not like real special needs kids.  She should just shut up.

It is not easy being the parent of a gifted child.  Gifted children are often intense.  They often do not sleep much, are energetic, are sensitive, act out, get depressed, can be crippled by perfectionism, and many other things, particularly if their needs are not being met.  And society is not set up to help meet their needs in many places.  Additionally, parents of gifted kids often do suffer from isolation.  They often cannot talk about their kids to other parents.  It is wonderful being a parent of gifted children, but there are also challenges.

6.  Kids aren’t really gifted, they’re just hot-housed by over-achieving parents.

We don’t believe there is a such thing as over-achievement (that’s an opinion).  However, gifted kids often achieve quite a bit without the least bit of hot-housing (that’s a fact).  Parents do often provide more academic enrichment for gifted kids because that is what the child needs to help behavior and happiness, but there are generally no flashcards or pressure involved.  Gifted kids often teach themselves to read.  And reading is fun!  All kids are sponges, and gifted kids seem very eager to soak things up.

Remember, opinions and facts are not the same thing, and sometimes incorrect opinions that are not based on actual facts can do real damage.  Do you really want to be one of those people who hurts an entire group?  Well, we know that none of *our* readers would, but occasionally people find their way to us via google.  If you’re in that situation and you say stuff like this, knock it off.

What are incorrect “opinions” that you find annoying, gifted-related or other?

I throw salt over my shoulder whenever I use some in cooking, or spill some elsewhere.  I want to appease some sort of spirit with that.

There’s a song that whenever I hear it I get bad interpersonal luck.  I hate that song.

I like to think when something bad happens to me, it’s saving up karma for something good in the future.

I cross myself when the airplane takes off.

I believe it is tempting fate to say something like, “I’m all caught up on all my work!”  (Related:  “I have no more referee reports to do.”)

What are your superstitions?  Or are you too rational to have any?

I feel like I hit the total jackpot ‘cuz I found an awesome Bed and Breakfast through tripadvisor.com.

And it was the same price or less than the convention hotel, as well as being only half a mile away (which hopefully is a lovely walk in the early summer morning right past the national zoo and not too hot yet, I hope!).

I WIN!!!!!!!!!!!

tripadvisor.com is my new BFF, sorry #2.
What do you all use to help plan trips?

Bonners billions neatly explains how amortization works differently than revolving debt, and that means prepaying your mortgage might be better than paying off a higher interest debt depending on the numbers.

New information on the Medicaid experiment from Oregon.  We’ll be talking about this in a post more at some point in the future if we ever get some time to write it.

“The big news is that Medicaid virtually wiped out crippling medical expenses among the poor: The percentage of people who faced catastrophic out-of-pocket medical expenditures (that is, greater than 30 percent of annual income) declined from 5.5 percent to about 1 percent. In addition, the people on Medicaid were about half as likely to experience other forms of financial strain—like borrowing money or delaying payments on other bills because of medical expenses.”

“The other big finding was that people on Medicaid ended up with significantly better mental health: The rate of depression among Medicaid beneficiaries was 30 percent lower than the rate of depression among people who remained uninsured.”

Miser mom has been updating.

Justin Wolfers makes me laugh sometimes.  Cupcake deflation.

We were in this week’s carnival of personal finance.

My employer switched health insurance companies/networks recently and a service that used to cost $75 with the old network’s discounts now costs $175 with the new network, apparently there is no discounted price. It’s the exact same service and a month apart, so it’s not like prices went up in the meantime. I told the benefits department at my company this and they gave me a bunch of bullcrap about how the new network is supposed to save us money and unfortunately my case is one where it costs more than twice as much. There’s a distribution list and I asked and there are other people seeing similar increases in service costs.

While I can absorb this, it is rather annoying and I now have the high deductible plan, so it is 100% my cost. I did finally get the bill in the mail from the provider and sure enough, it is $175 like the insurance company’s website said it would be. Do you think that I can call the provider and try to negotiate my own discount since there was such a large discrepancy between back to back visits? I really wish my employer would do something like this since we as individuals have no pull with the insurance company, but they have enough employees that they probably would…

Sigh.

Thanks!

Well, the only time we’ve ever had luck negotiating with an insurance company is when we’ve been in the right. And even then it has sometimes taken multiple phone calls. Still, it’s always worth a shot, if you think your time is worth it– you can report back to us.

What do our readers think? Have you ever had any success negotiating with an insurance company? Any thoughts for L?

This charity, aimed at showing that video games are not evil incarnate, and that gamers can do good, connects children’s hospitals with games, books, toys, and other resources to help sick children keep their minds off their illnesses.  Donations started small– one hospital and the PA guys’ garages as storage facilities, and they made deliveries themselves.  Now they’ve ratcheted up into a large non-profit that connects with and ships directly to hospitals.

You can donate here.

And now for some negative griping.

Compare the PA guys to the onanistic navel-gazing you see from other movements.  The minimalists.  The travel the world folks.  The motivationalists.  [Note:  we are not saying that all minimalists, world-travelers, self-helpers etc. are onanistic con-artists, but you know they exist.]

The Penny Arcade dudes are real.  They have authenticity.

So much of that motivational crap seems so hollow and insincere, aimed just at making money off other people.

For the most part, they’re not actually doing anything.

The P-A guys, OTOH, are teh awesome.

And that, perhaps, is why I don’t expect them to get mid-life crises.  When you’re busy doing things that are real, you don’t have time to feel like life is meaningless.

also:  I like the word onanistic

We’re going to create a new blog.  We’re going to call the guy who owns the blog, Steve.  That way we won’t have to put up with patriarchal BS.  (Shhh “Steve” doesn’t really exist.  He’s just a front man.)

Steve will run a personal finance blog.  He will recycle our old and extremely awesome money posts.  We’ll disappear them from this blog so if anybody notices that there might be plagiarism, only google cache will be able to help.  We may even say that we sold the posts to Steve, so he’s not actually stealing our work.  In theory the controversy would drive up hits, and we could even write a guest post for Steve explaining that we love his blog and sold him a few posts.  Something like that.

We’re thinking of some version of  quitmydayjob.com for the blog host.  We’ve got some back-up plans in case that turns out to be too expensive.

He’s going to start with the plan of making moneys.  He’s going to have advertising.  He’ll do the Yakezie challenge.  He’ll accept sponsored guest posts.  He’ll do all the things that Nicole and Maggie don’t have time to or don’t want to sell their souls to do.  Heck, depending on how much time we have, he might even write paid posts for other blogs!  We’ll see.

Readers will be able to cheer him on as he works to make money so he can quit his soul-sucking dayjob.  We haven’t decided what his current job is, but we know he doesn’t like it.

We’re not sure if he’s single or married or if he has kids yet.  Probably if he has kids, there’s only one.  Hm… maybe he could be a divorced single dad with custody, but the kid has insurance through the ex-wife.  I dunno.  Or maybe he’ll just be a single guy.  So many decisions!

It’ll be awesome.  One of these days when one of us quits her dayjob.

Until then…

On average, once fees and transaction costs are considered, people who try to actively manage their portfolios make LESS than people who just stick money in diversified target-date funds and sit.

That means that the majority of people who sink time in with whatever system they’re following are making less money in the market than the people who just set and forget.  On top of that, they’re making less money than they would be if they were spending that time doing something that actually earns money.  (Cynically, some of these folks are getting advertising $ from their blogs for misleading people into becoming active investors.)

What can you control:

1.  The amount of money you put in
2.  The diversification mix of your portfolio
3.  The fees you pay

What can’t you control:

1.  Market returns
2.  The random walk down WallStreet

And what you might have difficulty controlling:

1.  Man’s (and to a much lesser extent, according to Greg O’Dean, Woman’s) tendency to trade too much and at exactly the wrong times

If you want to invest like Buffett, then buy some Berkshire Hathaway funds.

Even better, pick a target date and buy a Vanguard Target-date fund.  (If you’re not sure about when you’re going to retire, pick a late date.)