Dean Machine

The Gallardo walk off double is a moment in my life I will never forget. I was in Europe for the first time and we were in Paris and we woke up early to catch a train to Brussels so I grabbed my phone to check the Brewers score and saw the game was still on so I turned on the radio feed and heard the final half inning while my wife was in the shower. We had been out late so I didn't have much sleep and my wife came out of the bathroom in only a towel right as he got the hit and the surrealness of being in Paris and the Brewers game being on in the morning when I woke up and the absurdity of the way we won and my topless wife doing a little celebration dance when she realized what happened just my just made life feel like some sort of wonderful fever dream. The Woodard homer was obviously amazing as well and is something I will never forget but the circumstances were just so memorable for Gallardo's hit.

Eh, I don't think that's as true and you want it to be. I remember sitting near the SkySox bullpen a few years ago and overheard [sarcasm]Brewer's great[/sarcasm] Mike Zagurski say "I really don't like baseball but I like what it pays me." To varying degrees, I'm sure this is the feeling of the vast majority of players. Ryan Braun told me he wasn't a baseball fan at spring training one time. It made me sad but but it also made me realize for the first time at age 30whatever that many if not most of the players don't love the game anywhere near as me. It's an even bigger problem in basketball where simply being tall can be enough to push people to play.

14 play-off teams feels like a deal breaker to me. The excitement would be gone from the regular season much like Bucks regular season means nothing this year and I cannot pretend to be excited.

He had three memorable movie roles. Eddie in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Door man in "Wayne's World" and Bob B**** T*** in "Fight Club". I too had randomly brought him up the other day when my wife was making a play list of her favorite break up songs and I told her "2 out of 3 Aint' bad" should be on there. I had my google speaker play it and the next song was his version of "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and while he was a pretty good singer he probably should have stayed away from doing a song Celine Dion made famous. Great career. I believe he got his start on Broadway which makes him pretty legit in my book. They also made a musical about his life which I heard Quentin Tarantino say was pretty good.

The in-fighting would be great watching them try to figure out a salary structure. I don't see anyway where you could get that many people to agree to anything.

When I originally did this years ago it was a correct statement and it still pretty close the way I was thinking of what a payment is but when I say one extra mortgage payment I was including the entire payment including your escrow tax and insurance (which I guess varies by user). I am also thinking it may depend on interest rates as rates are very low right now.

That's what I did when I owned property. I ended up making one extra mortgage payment a year. One extra mortgage payment a year knocks something like 6.5 years off a 30 year loan. We always used our tax return for such purposes.

The easiest way IMO is to project out what your income needs would be. Most places I've seen say that you need 80-90% of your current income in retirement (based on whether you have a mortgage or want to travel, etc..) Then your income times 25 would be your retirement need to last approx 30 years. https://www.fool.com/retirement/how-much-do-i-need/ If you are X years from retirement, you can project your current 80-90% income by the typical 2-3% average inflation and use that as your target. Of course, there are many special circumstances that may factor in. Your retirement income needs might drop considerably from current if you have kids that move out of the house. Or pay off your mortgage. Or you may have kids still living with you... The idea is to project out your potential future annual income needs. Do a best case and worst case scenario and see what variations might be there. I did this for myself a year ago and feel much better about my plan to retire at 59.5. Plus, I know what my variables are and can work on them to mitigate the "worst case" scenarios (e.g. pay off my mortgage sooner). 80-90% of current income would allow for a pretty decent upgrade in lifestyle for most, I would think. You're probably paying less taxes at that point if you did a little planning. You are no longer forced to save a significant portion of your income at that point (probably 10-30% for many). There's a decent chance you'll no longer have a mortgage payment, at least through much of retirement. Right now my wife and I have nearly 50% of our income going to retirement/savings and our mortgage payment. Those are all expenses that will be gone at retirement with some planning. I completely agree with you about the 80 or 90 percent being an over-estimate as like you said we put 33 percent into retirement but I think people are doing this to be safe with inflation over the long-term. I use the Personal Capital retirement calculator and I tell you what if you even move inflation up half a tick from the 3.5 norm to 4% your net worth craters over the next 40 years. I am also going to be mortgage free when I retire but when I look at the numbers the actual mortgage we carry is probably around than half the cost of living in a house (obviously everyone's numbers will be different depending on price paid and interest rate etc.) and those numbers increase unlike mortgage payments. To live in our mid-size house and to pay the insurance, property taxes, heat, electric, garbage, water and everything you HAVE to pay (not counting things like internet and cable) still costs over a grand a month. I basically keep track of every penny we spend and it comes out around 4k a month with mortgage over the last 3 year sand I have entered into the calculator anticipated spending of 5k (without mortgage) just to be safe and have the inflation set at 4 percent and then I start reducing our spending at around the age of 75 by 1 percent a year. I find the calculator to be fascinating to play with all the scenarios. I'm planning on retiring in 7 years at 55 and it's pretty scary with (hopefully) that much time left to live (especially since my wife will be 49) and basically cutting off any major sources of income.

Two movies with 8 in the title? Next up, Super 8? Hateful 8? lol I'm watching my movie library alphabetically. Hateful 8 and Super 8 won't be on the docket for quite some time, but I will get to them eventually. Weeding out some movies for space reasons... I have 700+ dvds, so it will take a long time. Next up was "9" which was interesting, but not a keeper. Watched "10" today. Hadn't seen that one in a long time. Bo was something, but again, nothing I'll need to see again. Now to figure out what to do with all these dvds that I'm sure will be adding up over the next few months... I would recommend buying this on Amazon and save them all. You never know when they won't be streaming somewhere or more likely when the woke police start editing older movies and the original will be gone forever. I was going to get rid of all of my movies but bought this at the last second and am glad I did. Plus you will have a hard time selling old DVD's and even at a garage sale probably wouldn't get more than a dollar or two. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FPJDQZ6?pd_rd_i=B09FPJDQZ6&pd_rd_w=llNbB&pf_rd_p=7ea8e9d0-fed1-49e8-a002-f2d3f5cb151d&pd_rd_wg=AKCGv&pf_rd_r=BZ1P0KRR3NX8YQKRY2ZW&pd_rd_r=7ba3737b-7311-4e1c-887b-fb9c9582ff58&th=1

I was in favor of trading him last off-season. I was of the belief that I would have dumped him to anyone willing to pay his salary going forward as I thought he was just too big of a risk. I'm assuming now we would have to include prospects but I would still think hard about doing it. Whether his problems are physical (knee, back), mental, or he was being signaled the pitches I just don't see any kind of meaningful rebound.

I said the same thing last off season and last year it may have been possible.

I think it's also fair to take it a step further and note that in addition to stating his desire, he also clearly indicated at numerous points that he wasn't/didn't devote any of the offseason to football activities to 'clear his mind', etc. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what his typical/previous offseasons have looked like from a 'football activities' standpoint, but yesterday it certainly looked like he hadn't devoted much time to football vs. other things this offseason.... I can't help but think of last year when Brady kept getting in trouble breaking lockdown to throw to his receivers in a park. I think Brady lives only for winning championships and Rodgers not so much.

I drove an hour to watch this game primarily to see Mitchell and he was terrible. Looked like he had a hole in his swing and broke the wrong way on a ball to center that dropped in front of him. At some point my wife asked if he was really the reason we drove out Although I should add that I love that Pensacola stadium and it was a good time.

I was talking to Ryan Braun at spring training one time and I can't remember what lead to him saying it but he told me that he wasn't really a baseball fan which made me kind of sad. I told my wife I doubted he was going to stick around past the contract as he was already filthy rich. I was also probably near 40 and for the first time I realized that a lot of these guys are there because they happen to be good at baseball as oppose to love it like I did.

I will never forget this game either as I was on vacation in Paris and we needed to wake up early to catch a train to Brussels and the game was still on (it must have been a long game) and it felt like I was in some sort of fantasy world listening to the end of the game in the deserted streets of Paris right before dawn. I literally jumped for joy when he got that hit. I've listened to or watched a lot of Brewers games in my life and most of them blend together but there are certain moments that will live forever in my head and I will always cherish.