saccharum: No offense--I am a natural exaggerater, but do my best to restrain myself. As for the copper fungicide's toxicity. I have noted in these forums before my suspicion that it has some toxicity to sapwood if it soaks down inside a tree and gets at it from the inside. I have not reported all the things I have tried with this, but I did try applying this stuff to real extremes, and at what I would call almost ridiculous over applications I suspect some marginal toxicity. One pine tree that I poured this stuff on in amounts I cannot accurately document had a portion of the side of the trunk under the application zone die. But this was a tree that a storm broke half of off, the broken part being about 14 inches in diameter, and where it broke there was a sunken area where I could actually pool this stuff. But in my experience, the part of the trunk under this really huge broken area may have died anyway. In another instance where I applied it very, very liberally I noticed some bleeding beneath the cut, which was a cut to remove half of a forked tree and the cut was about 5 inches across. I did this experimental overapplication on this tree, a Norway spruce, because it was a weak tree growing in the shade of other spruces and a white pine. A stronger tree growing in full sun may not have shown the same symptom. The tree, however, is still alive and has not shown any loss of vigor. It is in substantial shade but is "plugging along" nicely considering that. Both of these instances were cases where the cut or the break was across the grain and the cut or break faced upwards and absorbed all the rain that fell also. I noticed no other instance of anything I would suspect was a toxic effect, and for a while--until I learned better, I applied more than needed. So I think it is in all probability safe. As for research--I have been talking to people for at least 20 years in several universities trying to get someone interested, but no luck so far. This liquid copper fungicide is the third thing I tried--it seemed obvious very soon that it was working, so I have tried nothing else since. But of course there are other things one could try. Part of my reason for trying this liquid copper fungicide is that it was my understanding that the copper itself was the active agent, and I thought that the copper would have some stability in the outdoor environment and would not break down so fast as other fungicidal compounds. Also, it is my understanding that the "liquid" copper fungicide is, in fact, a true liquid solution, and as such it would soak into the wood in a way that a wettable powder would not. A great many trees get fungal infections through injuries to the trunk or from pruning cuts made to remove very large limbs. It pains me to see this and I am convinced (I understand research needs to be done, if only to convince others) that it can be easily prevented. Many of the trees are trees loved by their owners, and in many cases these trees have a monetary value that would exceed several thousands of dollars. What a waste! Oh, I must note--even though I admit to a frequent tendency to exaggerate, I am not exaggerating about the ability of this liquid copper fungicide to stop fungal infections. Just to be clear--over the last 20 years, I have probably used this stuff on 200 trees. About 60 or 70 of these were spruce and pine trees (Norway spruce, white pine, red pine) that were forked. I cut half the fork off, leaving big ugly cuts, mostly sloping, but not always. Some of these cuts were at least 6" across. Many took 10 to 15 years to occlude, and some, after 20 years have not yet occluded. I have seen no evidence that I could recognize of any fungal infection whatsoever. And the wood at the surface of these cuts is as fresh and hard as a board in a lumber yard. I am not exaggerating this one tiny, tiny bit. I have also used this stuff on logging bumps and scrapes, some really huge, on various species of hardwood trees and hemlock, and as I reported above--no trace of fungal infection that I could detect. I have tried to renew this stuff every year--in some cases I missed a year or two, especially on the logging wounds which require a lot of walking to get to every year. One thing I would like research to show is how often it is necessary to reapply this stuff. I have wanted to be on the safe side, hence my reapplication every year, as far as I have had time and energy. Getting to all the treated trees over the 300 acres I have is a four day job, and an exhausting one at that. --Spruce

I have watched the TSP quarterly. I'm not totally sure of the % of the total goes to which fund, but I believe we are fairly diversified and have some funds in 4 or 5 of the different funds (not sure that's the right word). Our pay goes into each according to the % that we alloted the last time we did it. =0) You're doing yourself a disservice to your future retirement if you don't know in what funds your money is allocated, how the bi-weekly pay is allocated and especially how much growth you've had. I only say this because you have recently put your retirement planning to the forefront of your brain and that should include monitoring and learning about the TSP since it will be the vast majority of your husband's retirement. BTW is he under CRS or FERS? Since I started watching the TSP several months ago, I learned that this is not the best time to be in the "F" fund because the USD is constantly down. The domestic US economy is 39th in the world with many of the countries in the "I" fund way higher and close to the top. I originally had everything 20% into each fund, but have since moved things over to the more profitable funds since I"ve learned alot about how the TSP works. 1. Is there a max on the TSP? Hubby says it "used to be 10%", but he thinks that changed. Max amount for 2007 is $15,500 or 20,500 if you're over 50. The max contribution does not include the matching, so that is over and above the limit. We allocate a specific number, not a percentage. We put $425 per pay period into the TSP and that is nowhere near the max, but is over 20% of dh's pay. The more you put in, the more matching you get. If your husband has received any pay increases, then it might be a wise option to increase the TSP contributions. That's what we do whenever dh gets a raise. It allows for a greater tax benefit and more matching dollars. No, I don't mind differing opinions, it helps my brain entertain new ideas and learn something. =0) I know that I am focused on the rental properties and mortgages on them, because at the moment, those are closer to paying off, than the IRA or TSP. I believe in diversification, so the rental properties are currently part of my "retirement plan". They are a part that will begin to pay off long before we retire, and continue once we do retire (or at least that's the plan). I am learning the IRA and TSP world and language (and remember we're looking at 27 years before taking anything out of them, and we are already putting funds into both), but I already understand the houses. =0) It's good that you're looking to diversification and that you're open to look at all avenues. I think what you're missing is the tax benefit to the TSP, especially if you can afford higher deductions because it reduces your taxes that could be offset by the additional tax you pay with your rental properties and paying them off early. Having said that, I prefer to have a home paid for, which goes against many other people's belief here that the funds should go to investment vehicles. I try to diversify that as well by having money in a high yield account plus pay a bit more to principal. Sorry, I thought you were closer to retirement than 27 years to take out of the TSP. That gives you a long time to make the most of your investment opportunity there and is even more reason to learn everything you can about it. If your funds are diversified btwn the 4 or 5, that means you're losing a strong growth opportunity because you would have some money allocated to the G and/or F fund, which aren't producing very well these days. I was extremely overwhelmed when I first started paying attention to the TSP. It's definitely a long learning curve, but I am learning. It is imperitive that you know in what funds you are invested, how much is going into each fund and how they are doing - an not just quarterly. At minimum, you would be best served by checking weekly.

I think most people in this thread are emphasizing that even though we own, from a purely financial perspective, typically owning is not the best financial decision. We realize that about ourselves and acknowledge we own homes for different reasons such as pride of ownership, not having to deal with landlords, etc. Housing doesn't decrease in value like, say, cars do. But housing typically gains value, on average, at a small rate, much smaller than investing in the stock market. The weird thing to wrap your head around is that, from an economic perspective, even a slight gain feels like a loss if you know you could be making a bigger gain somewhere else. The nest egg I have sitting in my house wants to get bigger. And from the egg's perspective, it knows it could be doubling a lot faster if I had it put somewhere else besides my house. That pain my nest egg feels by missing an opportunity to make even more of itself is called an opportunity cost. So even though my nest egg isn't getting smaller while it's sitting around in my house, it knows it could be getting a lot bigger if I had it somewhere else. The difference in returns between investing a chunk of money in a house and investing it in the stock market is so great that for most people, it more than makes the difference compared to the monthly out of pocket cost of renting. And actually the bigger the nest egg you had at the beginning (down payment) the more sense it would make to rent, because you'd be able to put more money to work for you sooner, covering even more of the rental costs. It takes a special person to be so financially prudent that they choose the wise financial decision over the emotional decision even when it comes to something so fundamental as where you live. Those people do exist, and they'll be retiring early and thumbing their noses at me from their suite balcony on their cruise ship as I keep whittling away at my job until I'm 70. This financially prudent person might not own a car and doesn't eat out a lot. Wine is right out for the most part. They lift weights at home instead of the gym. Their cell phone might still have push buttons. Their low cost lifestyle doesn't need a giant nest-egg to support it when they retire, so they're able to retire earlier. But the trade-off for being tighter than a gnat's butt is that they have increased freedom and financial independence and they accumulate wealth much quicker. They're the ant instead of the grasshopper. The person Pal described is a grasshopper. And sad to say, I'm probably closer to a grasshopper than an ant. But my father in law is a super ant so I get the best of both worlds. Governments have typically encouraged home ownership through social policy. However there is little overall evidence that high rates of home ownership are a social good. Indeed 2008 showed us that there are many people who wanted to own homes that likely should have been renters. For a good overview of the pros and cons of encouraging home ownership through public policy: http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/882 To note, many very successful countries have very low rates of home ownership. In fact Switzerland and Germany have the lowest rates of ownership in the OECD, while Lithuania and Romania have the highest. Singapore has the third highest at 90% home ownership but they also have a unique view of government involvement in the housing market. 80% of the population lives in publicly built and funded housing.

This is really not a partisan thing. I recognize that politicians I don't like, like Obama (who I think was damaging to the country), are basically good people and not unbelievably corrupt. Ironically, though, from my perspective, I would prefer to have Clinton as President than Obama b/c she's Machiavellian and corrupt and won't do anything to jeopardize her ability to hold on to power as long as possible, so she's more likely not to push the envelope with far left propositions like Obama, who I think actually has political convictions (unlike Clinton who stands for nothing). The Clintons, unlike leftists who actually have ideological belief systems they care about, care about benefiting and enriching the Clintons. That's the entirety of their value system and any contributions they may happen to make to the world are secondary to enriching the Clintons and expanding their power. Th foundation is just an extension of that... With all of the facts about the foundation, it is hard for me to picture anyone defending it, to be honest. From their own tax returns, the foundation raised over $500 million from 2009-2012. More than $25 million went for travel expenses; almost $110 million for employee salaries and benefits; and $290 million for 'other expenses. Very odd that if these "other expenses" were actually going primarily to legitimate and honest charitable purposes, that there wouldn't be more detailed disclosures. If you are running a charity, you don't pay millions for private jet travel or thousands of dollars a month to Clinton cronies like Sid Blumenthal ($10K a month for Sid b/c Clinton couldn't get him in at the state department and had to put her old family friend on the payroll somewhere). When you look at even their own lists of what they actually DID, it amounts to very, very little. No way do these "initiatives" and "programs" they describe add up to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of charitable donations. And even their supposed "charitable initiatives" are rife with controversy. Take Haiti- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c2oBh1yDhc In January 2015, there were protests outside of the Clinton Foundation for wasting billions and awarding contracts to non-Haitian companies.The activists also said Haiti as a cover for foreign governments to funnel kickbacks of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation Potesters at the Foundation's Harlem offices say the money was wildly mismanaged and did not provide the relief Haitians desperately needed. "Only 900 homes were built, and they were not even built in the area where the earthquake took place," said Ricot Dupuy of Radio Soleil. "So much inconsistency, so much irregularity." This is not even getting into the sketchy donations from foreign governments and people with business before the state department and the accusations of pay-for-play. Millions from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with HORRIBLE records on women's rights as Clinton proclaims herself to be for women and children. The there was the uranium deal.... In 2010 the State Department approved a move by the Russian state-owned company Rosatom to purchase a Canadian mining company with uranium mineral rights on US soil after a bank with ties to the Russian company paid Mr Clinton $500,000 for a speaking engagement in Moscow. The Canadian company in question was founded by million-dollar foundation donor Frank Giustra. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32441222  Or how about when Clinton's State Department approved of "$165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation," including "Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar," according to International Business Times- http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187 Or when the Clinton Foundation admits breaking ethical rules by taking money from Algeria. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/11437994/Clinton-Foundation-admits-breaking-ethical-rules-by-taking-money-from-Algeria.html  Or reports that: "More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president." http://bigstory.ap.org/article/82df550e1ec646098b434f7d5771f625/many-donors-clinton-foundation-met-her-state