vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Obama never helped with the debt overhand on households as he promised.  All the overleveraged household debt due to homes with first and/or second mortgages that exceeded the value of the home was more or less unrelieved by his HAARP program, and other programs that were supposed to relieve overleveraged households.  So the debt overhand was never addressed and is still being worked through as  millions of homeowners pay down mortgages.  It's going to continue for a few more years, until people start building up equity again.  This all affects the economy, as consumers have less money to buy things with or maintain solvency, as trillions are still being funnelled to finance companies and investors in real estate derivatives.  For example, a large part of the student loan bubble is due to this debt, since many homeowners who would have, in the past, taken out tax deductible equity loans to finance their kids's education, can no longer do so.  Instead, a portion of student debt is being carried by the kids themselves, whoo graduate under debt and can't buy their own homes or spend their paychecks, for years or decades.  There has been widespread non-compliance among banks with Obama's HAARP program and other measures intended to provide homeowners from the housing bubble debt overhang, but the Administration never followed through or engaged in enforcement actions that encouraged compliance.  Those programs were therefore ineffective and/or were always intended just to be window-dressing, or faux achievements.  The banks are still raking in trillions of undue profits from overpriced mortgages created during the housing bubble their practices helped create.  Those trillions are coming out of the rest of the economy, where the dollars would be better spent.
You can sometimes get hand-me-down copies, rent ebooks or physical books from online companies, creative searches for PDF copies, get your book from off-campus local stores, etc. It isn't tuition, but money is money. Look into the option of being a half-time student, which is usually 6-8 credit hours, if you can't afford full-time tuition. There is generally a greatly reduced rate, you still qualify for aid programs, and you are still working towards the degree - so you still get access to student resources like internships and job listings that may not be publicly posted. While this varies hugely by institution, make sure you check into scholarships you can apply to (even if they are just a few hundred bucks, it helps a lot) in your school (I don't believe the big online searches help, ask the school - but YMMV). Also inquire about any sort of possible help the school provides to students who've had life emergencies, such as your medical issues. Many have programs that are not advertised, designed to help students finish their degree and recover from personal hard times. It's worth the inquiry if you are willing to ask. Any little bit of assistance can help. Don't be afraid to talk with an institution's mental health councilors either, who can help you deal with the psychological difficulty of your situation as well as often being able to connect you to other potential support resources. The pressure can take its tole, and you'll have better long-term opportunities if you build up your support network and options. If you are trying to save up every last dollar for tuition to finish the degree, but you have to pay loans now, call up the provider to ask about temporary delays on your student loan payments. Many have time-limited hardship allowances, and between the medical bills, low income, and returning to school, they may be willing to give you a few months break until you get back to school and the in-school provisions kick in. If you can only raise enough for one semester, then need to skip a semester to build up more funds, that happens, it's OK. Be strategic, and check on loan forbearance.
Here's something you don't hear too often: in this country there are 22 million children under the age of 5 who are obese. What are the economic implications of this? In ten years a significant portion of our population will have been diabetic for 15 years. There are medical costs associated with taking care of 20 year olds who need amputations and extreme medical care, and there are costs associated with a significant portion of our population underemployed because they are disable.
"The mortgage has a higher interest rate, how can it make sense to pay off the HELOC first?? As for the mutual fund, it comes down to what returns you are expecting.  If the after-tax return is higher than the mortgage rate then invest, otherwise ""invest"" in paying down the mortgage.  Note that paying down debt is usually the best investment you have."
It's even nicely reciprocal - once you work through your hard times and get things on track, you can return the favor and help give back to programs like the ones that helped you. Make Sure Your Long-Term Goal Makes Sense Finally, this is all predicated on pulling out all the stops to finish your degree. But this assumes that this is a good plan. Not all degrees are helpful for all people in all areas of the country. Do your own research to make sure you aren't throwing good money after bad, and are pursuing a goal that will make sense for you and what you want. The cost of a degree keeps going up, but it remains true that many sets of skills and degree-holding candidates are in demand and can command high salaries that blow away the cost of college in comparison. If you actually have a good chance of going from struggling to make $8/hour to making $50k-90k a year, based on your developed skills, experience, and professional network, then reasonable student loan debt is a worthy investment. If, on the other hand, you wrack up tens of thousands of more dollars in debt just to say you did and still have to work the same kinds of jobs, that's not really much of an investment at all. Good luck on your journey, and best wishes towards better days - regardless of what path you choose. Finally, make sure you aren't paying unnecessarily for text books, once you do get the money for tuition. You can sometimes get hand-me-down copies, rent ebooks or physical books from online companies, creative searches for PDF copies, get your book from off-campus local stores, etc. It isn't tuition, but money is money. Look into the option of being a half-time student, which is usually 6-8 credit hours, if you can't afford full-time tuition. There is generally a greatly reduced rate, you still qualify for aid programs, and you are still working towards the degree - so you still get access to student resources like internships and job listings that may not be publicly posted.
Because people who work with practical skills work for their own means, and not for corporations.  The banks are HEAVILY invested in Corporations.  The banks are also HEAVILY invested in debt.  Our entire system is orchestrated by the banks. They want a workforce that is highly specialized and in debt- this ensures that they are entirely dependent on Corporate jobs for money to pay debts and on big agro for their food....  It's all a trap.   Any one want to blow off the Corporations and go live/work directly for our own needs on a homestead/commune farm?
"&gt;I don't know, they focus solely on debt as if it's the reason for the recession.  Well, if you remember that personal debt is largely mortgages, and that the housing situation is what drove the bubble and collapse, it seems pretty reasonable.  There are factors that attenuated it.  Banks leveraging heavily off of investments that were ultimately backed by housing made the collapse worse.  And you could say that the longer-term story, the thing that really drove unemployment changes that won't change quickly, is long-term shifts in the economy.  China opening up to trade, automation reducing demand for people to perform simple tasks.  The bubble collapse just exposed some of those, drove companies that were ultimately in trouble across the line.  &gt;At least they acknowledge that it would have to happen gradually, but they act like any and all debt is terrible.  Well, it's not great, and people have been saying ""we should deal with our debt problem"" and not doing anything about it for a long time, because it's easier to just borrow from the next generation...  &gt;Plus, you know, it's Business Insider asking us to put aside politics, which is pretty funny.  Yes, the article was not apolitical.  Another point...one reason that we're spending more on health care is because we've figured out ever-more-expensive ways to make people live longer.  A person will almost always spend all the money required to extend their life.  Once their resources are exhausted, a medical company has to go looking for someone else to foot the bill if they want to keep selling product.  In this case, taxpayers are an option.  Ditto for people living longer after retirement, and having a longer-and-longer Social-Security-funded vacation; Social Security was designed in a world where most people didn't *have* all that much ""retirement"".  But remedying that has real implications, and it's worth being aware of those.  You can send people back to work.  They're increasingly fragile and maybe a bit senile.  You can simply refuse to subsidize medical care as much, which will result in people dying earlier."
"The HSA tax deduction comes when you contribute money to the HSA, not when you take money out. So you can contribute up to the max and take your maximum deduction each year, regardless of what medical expenses you have.  If you have medical expenses, but no money left in your HSA, you will just have to pay for them out-of-pocket. However, in the future when your HSA has money in it again, you can reimburse yourself for medical expenses you have now. As long as you have an HSA in place (even if there is no money in it currently), there is no time limit to reimburse yourself for those medical expenses.  Reimburse yourself for what you can, and keep track of whatever expenses you are unable to reimburse at this time. Hopefully, in a future year your health will improve (or your medical coverage will improve), and you can ""catch up"" reimbursing yourself for these old expenses.  Regarding your question about tax benefit: The HSA acts similar to a traditional IRA when invested, growing tax-deferred. So if you contribute, and choose not to withdraw but instead invest, there are tax advantages, similar to an IRA. However, if you are already investing a sufficient amount in retirement accounts, there is nothing wrong with reimbursing yourself now for the expenses if you need the money. You get the primary tax deduction either way."
I disagree.  It's clear that the only issue, is that almost all governments run programs in an inept and incompetent way, or, those programs are not financially sustainable.  Let's take the simple case of Social Security for retirement: not only that you can't live off the benefits paid, the program will go bankrupt because more people take out of it than pay into it.  No AI or automated Economy can help you here.  The only solution: most people, who are very responsible people, should save on their own for their retirement. This is done by certain portion of their income in life that must go into a personally controlled retirement accounts.  The rest of people:  - The true disabled who can't work and earn: they will be provided for off taxes.  - The irresponsible unemployable, will get a miserable bare minimum stipend off taxes paid by others.  And all this will force the government to make sure everyone is employed and paid well.  Take the government out of the retirement business.
"From a purely financial standpoint (psychology aside) the choice between paying off debt and investing on risky investments boils down to a comparison of risk and reward.  Yes, on average the stock market has risen an average of 10% (give or take) per year, but the yearly returns on the S&P 500 have ranged from a high of 37.6% in 1995 to a low of -37% in 2008.  So there's a good chance that your investment in index funds will get a better return than the guaranteed return of paying off the loan, but it's not certain, and you might end up much worse.  You could even calculate a rough probability of coming out better with some reasonable assumptions (e.g. if you assume that returns are normally distributed, which historically they're not), but your chances are probably around 30% that you'll end up worse off in one year (your odds are better the longer your investment horizon is).  If you can tolerate (meaning you have both the desire and the ability to take) that risk, then you might come out ahead.   The non-financial factors, however - the psychology of debt, the drain on discretionary cash flow, etc. cannot be dismissed as ""irrational"".  Paying off debt feels good.  Yes, finance purists disagree with Dave Ramsey and his approaches, but you cannot deny the problems that debt causes millions of households (both consumer debt and student loan debt as well).  If that makes them mindless ""minions"" because they follow a plan that worked for them then so be it. (disclosure - I am a listener and a fan but don't agree 100% with him)"
Wal-mart pays their employees so little, many of the workers need to be on foodstamps, in fact, the store has programs helping their workers apply for foodstamps.  Are you ok with that? The only reason wal-mart gets away with paying them so little is because the government is basically propping them up by paying the employees the missing part of their salary that actually allows them to survive on the shitty pay they give....
A completely stocked medical bag is a bunch of medically proven and tested products that can be easily used during any sort of practise of sports or while exercise as well. These are for supporting any body part while their excessive exercise.
I'm not sure why people are down voting you. There is no question the math and stats will be more intensive than what I used as an undergrad, but most of the programs I have talked to haven't suggested taking calc 3. But then again the programs i'm applying for aren't quant focused ones, defiantly not as quant heavy as a MS in comp finance would be.   Just curious, if your already at a BB how come you decided to go back for the MS and not an MBA?
Well, my point was that this shift will pool money from research and graduate programs as well.  Undergrads pull in a decent amount of money for schools, some of that money goes to research.  Further, more technological inovation (like medical research) needs academic facilities to be conducted.
This can mean asking parents and close family if they can contribute to help you finish your degree, but this also means checking with your local community programs to see if you qualify for anything. Many communities have food pantries and related programs that will help you even if you don't qualify for something like SNAP (aka food stamps), because they know times can get hard for anyone and they want you to spend what little money you have on building a better life. Your university may even run a food pantry for students in need - use it. Get what assistance you can, minimize spending in any way you can manage, put all the money towards doing what you need to do to get to a better place. It's even nicely reciprocal - once you work through your hard times and get things on track, you can return the favor and help give back to programs like the ones that helped you. Finally, this is all predicated on pulling out all the stops to finish your degree. But this assumes that this is a good plan. Not all degrees are helpful for all people in all areas of the country. Do your own research to make sure you aren't throwing good money after bad, and are pursuing a goal that will make sense for you and what you want. The cost of a degree keeps going up, but it remains true that many sets of skills and degree-holding candidates are in demand and can command high salaries that blow away the cost of college in comparison. If you actually have a good chance of going from struggling to make $8/hour to making $50k-90k a year, based on your developed skills, experience, and professional network, then reasonable student loan debt is a worthy investment. If, on the other hand, you wrack up tens of thousands of more dollars in debt just to say you did and still have to work the same kinds of jobs, that's not really much of an investment at all. Good luck on your journey, and best wishes towards better days - regardless of what path you choose."
"But sending money overseas doesn't help here, and government programs that feed people (especially children) and keeping people working or in school (medical programs) do have direct economic benefits to this nation, in addition to being ""nice"" or ""moral"".  I am not advocating the end of all suffering by giving things away, rather I am advocating the judicious use of government spending to make the world better for everyone."
These aren't just any old run of the mill unions, these are ***Public*** unions. These are unions of ***government*** employees. Government employees already get special benefits by dint of their government jobs, such as wonderful pension and medical plans that the rest of us can only dream about. When they unionize, they demand even more and get it.        Seems to me that if government workers want to unionize then they should forfeit their government benefits and be paid as non-government contractors or something similar.
&gt; Not asking for any societal benefits.  Sure you are. You want to live in a society with other educated adults, with roads &amp; other utilities, property rights, safe food &amp; water, a medical safety net, , etc. You just don't want to have to pay for any of it yourself.  It's this kind of hypocritical attitude why people can't take anti-government zealots seriously. If you really believed what you say you do, you'd move out of the country, leaving behind every single benefit you ever got from living in a first-world country, and then live by yourself not paying any taxes. But you don't.
I think this thread got a bit off topic.  The point is that we've decided as a nation that we want to guarantee a basic level of healthcare, as established by government programs.  Companies like wal-mart take advantage of that, paying low wages and assuming employees will utilize the government assistance.  The take-away, is that that's a little goofy and we should just fix our fucking healthcare system.  As for wal-mart.  It's complicated.  They've accomplished huge gains in efficiency, arguably accomplishing more for the environment than any other company, not to mention their moves towards sustainable fish/etc.  At the same time, the lawsuit alleging gender discrimination seemed not without merit, the folks in charge are occasionally aggressively socially conservative, and their march to the bottom for prices has induced quality suppliers to provide lower quality products specifically to be sold in wal-mart, corrupting their brand-name and commoddifying[sic] their products after being suckered in by the big sales numbers.
Grants come in several flavors: federal aid, college aid, and independent aid. We'll immediately ignore the last option, independent aid (usually in the forms of scholarships), as these can come from all sorts of organizations for various reasons and are generally merit-based.  For federal and college aid, you will need to file a FAFSA. Since your parents are divorced, you will need to use the financial information of whichever one of them you lived with more during the last 12 months. Once you submit the FAFSA, you will receive your EFC, which is the amount of money your family is estimated to be able to contribute to your education for the year.  The EFC isn't an obligation, but the simplified formula to determine how much you are in need is: (tuition cost + room and board + overhead (books, transport, etc)) - EFC = estimated need. This need will then allow your school to give you an aid package which is comprised of federal loans, grants, work-study programs, and college grants/scholarships (a scholarship is based on some kind of merit, be it academic or something else, while a grant is either general or need-based). There is no good way to determine how much you will be given, so apply and find out. You may be able to talk with a financial aid officer at your school for an estimate, but it would just be an educated guess. If you have an EFC lower than your estimated yearly cost, you will generally be offered a Pell grant by the government (free money, basically) which currently has a yearly cap of $5775, though you may receive less than this. There are also a few other federal grant programs if you have exceptional financial need, but all of the grants are determined for you, you can't apply for them. Your college may also assign grants based on its own internal programs, and like federal funding you can't ask for them, they are simply given as part of an aid package. Lastly, you will probably be offered a combination of subsidized, unsubsidized, and parent loans to cover any difference in cost vs funding. There are also work-study programs you can opt in for, which is just an on-campus job in some capacity.
For whatever reason, Americans gave up on learning about the world or caring whatsoever about how they are governed. Most people around me have some working knowledge of current events, but aren't interested or passionate enough to do anything about. And the 2 party system perpetuates this behavior, as does the media we consume. A lot of us don't vote because we don't believe at all in the system.  As for military spending vs. social programs, well... it's hard to disagree over facts [so I'll just link to this here.](https://static.nationalpriorities.org/images/fb101/2014/presidents-proposed-total-spending.png) Military at 16% vs. social programs at 50% combined. I'll never defend how large our military is - frankly I think it's a joke at how much we spend today - but there are too many spending issues to count and the social programs are a larger part of that than anything else.  I'm no republican or democrat. Whether they believe it or not, both political party participants are for bigger government and more centralized control of the economy and our daily lives.
Finish off the student loans. If your absolute goal is saving as much as you possibly can for retirement, then you of course will be best off by maxing your IRA contribution every year. However, student loans are just another thing hanging over you, and nothing feels better than getting rid of a large debt. Pay them off, take yourself out to a nice dinner to celebrate, and tuck away what you have left over in your IRA. Paying off student loans is a great accomplishment - celebrate it!  The difference long-term will be negligible.
&gt;People don't think critically about what they're getting for the money- they just see a huge check written weekly.   In at least a few industries, the people have a point about the product. Huge amounts of that money disappears into a black hole of government and administration at exorbant costs.  Let's look at medical education for example. It's completely unnecessary for doctors to get a bachelor's, but they have to anyway because AAMC requires it. Then, they have to attend a four-year medical school, at least half of which could be done at home with $2,000 worth of E-books and computer programs. The end result is about $150,000 of utterly unnecessary loans and subsidies per doctor.  After medical education, there's medical practice, which is anything but efficient.  Let's look at taxis. For decades, supply was artifically restricted by the medallion system. You know what happened next.  Construction. I don't even want to talk about this one - it's *that* bad.   We *do* have an enormous problem of *extremely* inflated costs in many, many upstream industries. Daycare is absolutely one of them.