vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
That's not true - insurance companies can manage that risk and look to Re-insure that risk with very large pools of risk capital through reinsurance.   Government agencies traditionally have not looked to buy insurance but are now starting to insure such catastrophic risks.  I believe the NFIP has some sort of excess risk cover such that if losses are greater than $500 million, then it triggers a payout from large private insurers.
An example, where I live. When you buy a house, the seller wants 'black' money. This is because that way the seller pays less taxes. However, it's not smart for the buyer to pay in black, as the tax reductions are lower. Eventually, when the buyer tries to sell the house, he has to declare the difference, so a higher buy price should not have affected... apart from the notary minutes.
I like this part:  &gt;Because insurance companies are required to take all applicants, healthy people (especially the young) would be wise to pay the penalty rather than buy the insurance. This makes the pool of insured individuals sicker and more costly, on average, and their premiums will higher. With higher premiums, more people will choose to pay the penalty, and a downward spiral will unfold.  Which is the exact opposite of reality.  If you have more people in an insurance pool, premium costs go down, which is the whole point of the individual mandate.  It's like they're trying to scare people to not buy health insurance and waste it on a fine instead.  Real nice.
"There are 2 maxims that help make sense of insurance: Following those 2 rules, ""normal"" insurance makes sense. Can't afford to replace your car? insure it. Can afford to lose your TV? Don't insure it. People with a net worth in the low millions have very similar insurance needs to the middle class. For example, they might be able to afford a new car when they total it, but they probably can't afford to pay for the long term care of the person they accidentally ran over. Similarly, they probably need to insure their million dollar house, just like average people insure more affordable housing.  ""Very wealthy"" people still have the same basic choices, but for different assets.  If you are a billionaire, then you might not bother to insure your $30k childhood home or your fleet vehicles, but you probably would insure your $250m mansion, your $100m yacht and your more pricey collectible cars.  It's also worth noting that ""very wealthy"" people are at much higher risk of being sued for negligence or personal injury. As such, they are more likely to purchase personal liability or umbrella insurance coverage to protect against such risks. Multi-million-dollar personal injury suits would never be filed against a poorer person simply because they couldn't afford to pay even the plaintiff's lawyer fees when they lost the court case. Insurance also makes sense when the insurance company is likely to (grossly) underestimate the risk they are taking.  For example, if I am a really bad driver, but i have a clean record thanks to my army of lawyers, then insurance might actually be a good deal for me even on average. To take the ""very wealthy"" stereotypes to the extreme, perhaps my eccentric billionaire neighbor and I are in an escalating feud which I think will result in my butler ""accidentally"" running his car into my neighbor's precious 1961 Ferrari."
I don't think that's the only reason. You can buy a big house in Colorado and pay very low taxes compared to other parts of the country. I think family sizes are just going down and people aren't starting families as early in their life as they have historically.
Greek bank deposits are backed by the Greek government and by the European Central Bank. So in order to lose money under the insurance limits of 100k euros the ECB would need to fail in which case deposit insurance would be the least of most peoples worries. On the other hand I have no idea how easy or hard it is to get to money from a failed bank in Greece. In the US FDIC insurance will usually have your money available in a couple of days. If there isn't a compelling reason to keep the money in a Greek bank I wouldn't do it.
The insurance company issued the check.  I'd contact the insurance company to have the current check voided and a new one issued to the pharmacy.
"Gandhi said once, that no body is a bigger threat to you than yourself.   The point is , if communists and socialist governments were doomed to fail, which they did, USA wouldn't have to spend a dollar towards its fall.  But I understand, sometimes you buy insurance just to be safe and to ""aid""/help the fall."
When you are saving for money you need in 5 years or less the only real option is a savings account. I know the return is nothing at this point, but if you cannot take the risk of losing all of your money that's the only thing I would recommend.  Now you could try a good growth stock mutual fund if, when you look up in 2 - 3 years and you have lost money you wait it out until it grows enough to get what you lost back then buy your house. I would not do the second option because I wouldn't want to be stuck renting while waiting for the account to recover, and actually thinking about it that way you have more risk. 3 years from now if you have lost money and don't yet have enough saved you will have to continue paying rent, and no mutual fund will out preform that.
While this is a totally personal decision, I still think it would be a good idea to have some life insurance simply because you have someone that is currently dependent on your income.  Yes you have about 22 years in retirement, but if you consider taxes and market risk, there's still some uncertainty there.   Also, while your wife may be willing and able to work now, will she want to do that for years just to earn living expenses?   I would look at the costs on 10-year term life insurance and see if it's worth the extra peace of mind to you and your wife.  If your wife is fine with using your retirement as life insurance, then you can probably be OK without it. So to answer the question, it may be acceptable, but it's generally a very cheap way to get a lot of peace. I would not worry too much about the opinions of your parents - unless they are going to pay for the insurance, it's your decision.
Yoooooo you pissed??? At least have the courtesy of leaving a TL;DR cus that's exactly what I did.   I worry about myself and my family. We're capable of picking and paying for the insurance coverage that works best for us. I don't like the idea of being forced to buy something I don't want. Worse yet, I wouldn't like paying for some drug addict/lazy asshole who can't get a job to get medical care with my money indirectly   Anyway, thanks for the rant. Introduced me to some new ideas that I don't agree with, but I always like hearing multiple sides of the argument.
You're being too hard on yourself. You've managed to save quite a bit, which is more than most people ever do. You're in a wonderful position, actually -- you have savings and time! You don't mention how long you want/need to continue working, but I'll assume 20 years or so? You don't have to invest it all at once. Like Pete B says, index funds (just read what Mr. Buffett said in recent news: he'd tell his widow to invest in the S&P 500 Index and not Berkshire Hathaway!) should be a decent percentage. You can also pick a target fund from any of the major investment firms (fees are higher than an Index, but it will take care of any asset allocation decisions). Put some in each. Also look at retirement accounts to take advantage of tax-deferred or tax-free growth, but that's another question and country-specific. In any case, don't even blink when the market goes down. And it will go down. If you're still working, earning, and saving, it'll just be another opportunity to buy more at lower prices. As for the house, no reason you can't invest and save for a house. Invest some for the long term and set aside the rest for the house in 1-5 years. If you don't think you'll ever really buy the house, though, invest the majority of it for the long-term: I have a feeling from the tone of your question that you tend to put off the big financial decisions. So if you won't really buy the house, just admit it to yourself now!
The problem is that there is no magic number to use for this because the cost will very a lot. For us, it was cheaper to not have insurance. Even with a pre-existing condition that takes constant attention, it's just better if we set aside $500 a month then it is to try to pay $750 a month. That might not hold true for everyone. For some people or conditions it may be better to pay the $750 then to try to handle it themselves. So for my negotiations I would go with x+$6,000 without insurance or x+$4,500 with insurance. Now as an employer it's a lot simpler. Usually you have a ""group plan"" that offers you a pretty straight $x per year per person or $y per year per family. So you can offer exactly that. Salary - $x or Salary - $y. AS a starting point. However this is where negotiations start. If your offering me $50,500 and insurance, I would rather just have $57,000 and no insurance. Of course your real cost is only $55,000 cause you don't care about my heath care costs only about insurance costs. So you try to negotiate down towards $55,000 and no insurance. But that's not good enough for me. So I either go else where and you loose talent, or I accept $50,500 and insurance (or somewhere in between)."
"&gt; It is amazing to me how ""middle class"" can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and not spend even a few thousand to get some real advice.  i have seen to many ''middle class'' buy a $100k+ house and not even spend $1000 on a decent home inspection..."
The house next door to the one I grew up in just sold for $45k. Just because they build bigger houses doesn't mean that you have to buy one. I'm sure my parents could have bought a much bigger house.  Did you ever look into community college for core classes, I had many friends in college that go about 1/3 of their credits out of the way for about 1/4 the state college. College has always been expensive, it's nothing new. And a new car is a pretty idiot investment, a good education in an indemand field not so much. I was able to graduate debt free, but after a year of college was able to land jobs at more than 2x minimum wage. Remember, few unskilled people, mostly high school age are the ones earning minimum wage, [5.2%](http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm).
Follow your own logic. Millennials have less capital, so they have to borrow more for any given house. Sure you can expect some amount of reduction in prices, but it will not make up for the lost cash of losing the deduction. If you buy a $200k house ((100% financing @4% just to keep it easy). Say the price drops 10% to $180. That saves you $800/yr. Say 25% tax rate. @ 200k your deduction is $2000. I don't think prices will drop 10%,but you need 25% for this to be better for millennials.
"I strongly doubt your numbers, but lets switch the question around anyway.   Would you borrow 10k on your house to buy stocks on leverage?  That's putting your house at risk to have the chance of a gain in the stock market (and nothing in the market is sure, especially in the short term), and I would really advise against it.  The decision you're considering making resolves down to this one. Note: It is always better to make any additional checks out as ""for principal only"", unless you will be missing a future payment."
Yes, that would qualify as a scam to me.  I didn't think they could do most of those things, especially buying insurance without your permission.    When my area was reclassified as a flood area, they told me I had to provide proof of flood insurance, and if I didn't, they would get it for me at a price that might be higher than if I did it myself.  But there was no problem with my choice of an online flood insurance company that was much cheaper than my AAA insurance for the same.  I think that at least some of the rules are from the underwriter (?) like Fannie Mae or whoever it is that they work through.  I don't really know all the ins and outs, though.  I do know that when I had a loan through Wells Fargo, I had to increase my insurance in one area to match the value in another - I forget the details, but I think I could have reduced coverage in an alternate category if I had so desired.
This is snarky, but I really consider life insurance only to be an investment for THE INSURANCE COMPANY, if you don't have dependents who will need the insurance in case you are hurt or die.
"I'm going to address a couple of extra issues over and above mhoran_psprep's great answer. Insurance A lot of the jobs you describe require that you have additional insurance over and above what you currently have, normally insurance that lets you drive for payment. You should insist that anyone you rent to has this insurance. If not, you may find yourself liable and uninsured. Also you should be aware of this story: ""Quebec Uber drivers have cars seized, fined up to $7,500""."
"Just brainstorming here, but my gut feeling is it should be possible to sell your home to yourself with the sole purpose of resetting your basis. Taken at face value it feels illegal, but since I think we all would agree that you could sell your house to a third party and purchase the identical house next door for the same price (thus resetting your basis), why can't you purchase the same home right back? If one is legal, it seems odd for the other not to be. That being said, I have no idea how to legally do it. Perhaps you truly need a third party to step in which you sell it to, and then buy it back from them sometime in the future. Or perhaps you could start an LLC and have it purchase your home from you. Either way, I highly suggest finding an expert real estate attorney/accountant before attempting this, and don't be surprised if you get multiple opposite opinions. I suspect this is a gray area which will highly depend on how tax ""aggressive"" you are willing to be."
Why do people take out life insurance on their children? They do so largely because it's being sold to them.  The insurance companies generally push them on the basis that if you have to pay for a funeral and burial, the cost would devastate a family's finances.  In some rare instances that might actually be true, but not generally. Should I take out a policy on my child? Generally no.  When they sell you a policy they have to dance around a catch-22 - if you have enough money to afford the 'cheap' life insurance, then you have enough money to pay for a funeral and burial that's probably not going to happen.  If you don't have enough money to pay those expenses in the rare case that a child does die, then you really can't afford the insurance, even if it's only 'pennies a day for peace of mind.' And why would schools send these home to parents, year-after-year?  The schools are paid a commission.  It is not much more than a fundraiser for them, just like school pictures. Am I missing something? Yes, in fact, you could be making money hand over fist if you were willing to prey on parental insecurities.  Just set up a stand outside the hospital and get parents who are just about to deliver to sign up for your amazing insurance plan in case the tragic occurs.
&gt; Where I live, the delivery people are so bad they just leave super expensive packages on the stoop/porch. It is very risky to have anything of value ordered to an address in my neighborhood.  If you live in an area that's so risky that you can't leave a box outside, why would you give a company and anyone who works for them, including local labor and thus their friends, a key into your house?   &gt; Amazon Key solves that problem, and probably has enough insurance if anything goes wrong. What is your issue with it?  I'm not willing to take that bet. I think anyone else who wants to is an idiot.
"The government forced JPM to buy Bear Stearns (essentially acquire its assets) otherwise the bank's liquidity would have faltered, which would have threatened the entire system (basically Bear Stearns couldn't service its own loans or leverage so it had to be bought otherwise those loans and leverage would appear as a default). Consequently the US government gave them the money to do it and forced them to do so, without regard to what JPM wanted to do. The government, the Treasury and the Fed then proceeded to attack JPM for being ""too big to fail,"" something that the government literally forced it to become. I'm not a banking apologist or a crazy libertarian (I would vote democrat if I lived in the US) but this is NOT accurate. The purchase of Bear Stearns was forced. It would've made more sense for JPM to just let Bear Stearns fail.  Following your analogy, it's actually more like you already having a million dollar house, while the government forces you to take money to purchase the derelict house across the street, while leaving you with the bill for amalgamating your properties into one huge estate. Then, the government tells you your property is too big, that you are a threat to the neighbourhood and have to subdivide all over again."
As I tried to point out to people before the ACA went into effect, the 80/20 rule applied to premiums but did nothing to address copays or deductibles. Furthermore, it's not like anyone was going to audit the insurance companies for strict compliance with the rule. But everyone thought that making sure more people could buy a policy from a for-profit company would fix American healthcare. Now here we are a few years later with an unaffordable system that doesn't cover everyone and the for-profit companies still in charge, and paying Congress to do away with what few protections we have. Who could possibly have seen this coming?
Congrats! Make sure you nail down NOW what happens to the house should you eventually separate. I know lots of unmarried couples who have stayed together for decades and look likely to do so for life; I've also seen some marriages break up that I wouldn't have expected to. Better to have this discussion NOW.  Beyond that: Main immediate implications are that you have new costs (taxes, utilities, maintenance) and new tax issues (mortgage interest and property tax deductability) and you're going to have to figure out how to allocate those between you (if there is a between; not sure whether unmarried couples can file jointly these days).
If you even qualify for a no-down payment USDA loan, which I'm not sure you would. It would be extremely risky to take on a $250K house loan and have near-zero equity in the house for a good while. If property values drop at all you are going to be stuck in that house which likely has a pretty high monthly payment, insurance, taxes, HOA fees, maintenance costs, etc.  My rule of thumb is that if you can't come up with a down payment, then you can't afford the house. Especially with that much debt hanging over your head already. If one major thing goes wrong with the house (roof, A/C, electrical, etc.) you are going to put yourself in a world of hurt with no clear path out of that financial trap. My suggestion: Keep renting until you have enough money for a downpayment, even if this means downsizing your price range for houses you are considering.
Since you mentioned moving, you can buy real state very cheap here in Mexico that will give you income monthly. I will tell you some numbers in case you're interested. Now to investments: you can buy houses for rent, and prices are as follows: Average house $25k which will give about $220 monthly of income. Let's say you buy 20 of these that would be $4400 USD monthly. Now you have a very high standard here and you will never have to work again, and each year the income will increase about 2% and you still have $576k left.
No, but I have blinds that I close at night, and I don't live in a house made of glass to make it easier for them to see everything all at once.   Most importantly, I don't put video cameras in the windows and send the feed to Facebook trusting they'll do the right thing with it.
"There are two types of insurance: whole life and term. I don't recommend whole life insurance, because you are insuring against something that will happen, your death. Maybe you could buy it if members of your family have a history of outliving the averages. This is called ""adverse selection."" Term is different: it insures against your UNTIMELY death. Many people I know take term insurance for the X years until their last child leaves college, or some other well defined ""term."" They don't want to die before this term but will be satisfied with the insurance as a ""consolation"" prize."
Insurance only works if there is a court system, and police, to enforce the insurance contract. So you're still dependent on a government.  Even with our court system, insurance companies regularly defraud their customers and refuse to pay legitimate claims. I would not have any more trust in an insurance company than a government police force.  Large institutions are rarely perfect and have many problems, regardless of whether they are private or government.
Agreed. I tried to use it at a friends' house (I don't live in a cabled area, the one time that I did I didn't have a TV) and I really didn't get what was going on. I eventually managed to change channel and ended up playing with the thumbs up/down buttons.  I'm a technical person and most things come easily to me, but that didn't. Sky's solution may not have any bells and whistles but at least the buttons do what they say.
On topic of Healthcare needs, I think it depend on individual.  For example, my employer's dental plan offer PPO $34 per month and DMO $12 per month. I have my favor dentist that I have been going for years. He only accept PPO. I already had most of my dental works done so I only use him for teeth clean. He charge $100 without insurance and free with insurance. I can only use my insurance for teeth clean twice a year so $34x12 = $408 vs $200. If I go with DMO, I won't get to see my doctor and since I get my teeth once a year why not just save that money and go to my favor doctor instead the DMO doctors and if I need major dental works done which isn't immediate. I can go to Taiwan for dental works that is way cheaper than U.S.  I think if you're a healthy young man/women. You should put more money toward your retirement and only keep insurance for emergency. You can do a medical tourism mentioned in 60 minutes that can be more cost effective and those doctors are U.S. trained.  For older folks, a full Health care insurance is more needed than retirement. Just my two cents.
They need to purchase housing, education (modern day slaves have to secure their own training before they can become adequate servants), and healthcare. You have a really twisted view of what slavery is. I mean, I get that you're doing it semi-tongue in cheek, but it's coming of very /r/im14andthisisdeep. Here, I'll use your terminology: ""Moder day slaves"" get to live in their own house that they paid for with the money that they earned from their consensual slavery. Thanks to capitalism, even without health insurance, they still have access to insanely higher level of healthcare than slaves in the confederate south. Even just the ability to look up and treat a problem on their own. I left out the education part because if you think slaves in america were educated, well... maybe you are a slave. &gt; The masters sure have it good these days, they don't even have to put forth any of the effort their predecessors did. Yea, it takes zero effort to write a business plan, secure investments, manage a team and bring a vision into the world. That's why everybody does it. &gt; And the best part? They can just dump them whenever they see fit. Let the servants worry about their own upkeep! After all, there is always a nice surplus of fresh up and coming laborers! I wouldn't want to force someone to keep another person employed any more than I'd want to force that person to be employed. &gt; *citation Needed* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPH4jl5kGp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLc7VCznliU"