Early Retirement Extreme Forums

@AlexOliver--are you sure the prof is not having to pay royalties (or similar) to the original publishers of the articles? When I was in college, that was cited as one of the main reasons for high costs of coursepacks (the custom collection of articles for a particular class).

<t>I think a lot of it is hype.<br/>
If you already have a skill that in and of itself is something people will pay $50/hr for, getting the side income is more a matter of living in the right location and putting an ad up on Craigslist. I'm thinking things like tutoring/test prep, specialized ...

<t>REI does have a pretty generous return policy...so you could conceivably wear something completely out and then return it. I think as long as it isn't abused, the return policy is actually good business sense, since much of the gear they sell is pretty expensive and also might conceivably be crap ...

<t>Agreed that giving yourself reduced rent (especially if you're taking the largest room!) could be contentious. Do you know (or have you looked into) how much it would cost to hire a cleaning service to do the same level of cleaning that you anticipate providing? I think that's probably about the ...

In my experience most home "canning" uses glass jars...not sure if the seals on the lids involve BPA or not, but it sure beats most store bought canned food.

<t>Do you have a sewing machine? If not, taking in pants is a LOT of handsewing and you might find it really is more cost effective to go to a tailor. Or if you have a friend IRL who's good at sewing, you might want to try bartering for a lesson and machine access (maybe once you take down a deer ...

<t>I'm not sure about debt-free, but certainly very low debt can be done. However, it depends on your state (state college tuitions can vary widely), what kinds of AP offerings are available at your HS, what jobs are available in your area when you are in HS/college, whether your parents are footing ...

<t>I was talking about this with a friend a while back and we sat down to crunch some numbers using figures we found for average annual earnings for a HS vs. college grad. We calculated that for the average college grad, if you went to an expensive ($50k/year) school and borrowed half the money ...

<t>My PhD will be in ecology. I would say the economic value of this kind of degree is...debatable. On the plus side, it's better than a PhD in, say, philosophy, since the course of study itself has been fully funded and I will likely be able to find a job that pays more than an adjunct ...

<t>Not sure what your timeframe exactly was, but wasn't there a pretty widespread occurrence of tomato blight last year? I lost all mine to the local Hungry Rabbit Blight, so I didn't get to see the more prevalent blight first hand.<br/>
In general, it is also a good idea to rotate plants around ...

<t>It does seem that if staying home part-time is going to increase your debt by resulting in increased interest accrual, that is a BIG sacrifice to be making for "happiness". And I am someone who is all for not having both parents out working full-time when kids are young.<br/>
I would say everyone ...

<t>I don't want to be combative, but I am not impressed by some of the statements I saw on that website and I see a lot of faulty logic or selective presentation of reality. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is caused mostly by runoff from corn farms in the midwest, and there's very little of that corn ...

<t>I guess in my first post I was reacting somewhat to the tone of the original posting, which did come off as expecting that one's parents should always be thrilled to have their offspring back in the nest, regardless of how the offspring were contributing to the household well-being and ...

<t>I think if you're going to either pay some rent or help out substantially in other ways, fine. If you're just doing it for the financial benefit to YOU though...that's mooching (and then I would say you deserve all the inconveniences that come with it). The arrangement has to be mutually ...

<t>I recall looking into SNAP when I started my PhD program (having heard all the rumors that grad student stipends were frequently low enough that one could qualify--naturally I was curious just what the cutoff was). However, it turned out that having any serious assets was a disqualifier for me ...

<t>I wrote out a huge long response yesterday but apparently it did not go through. Let's see what I can remember.<br/>
Re: Ecological footprints. I do think that there is probably a sustainable level of meat consumption, and certainly if you live in an area (i.e. East Coast) where the natural ...

<r>Well, for online info, there's always: <URL url="http://paleodiet.com/">http://paleodiet.com/</URL><br/>
Personally, I think there are definitely aspects of the diet than make sense--it's certainly an improvement over the typical American diet of super-refined super-corn everything. That said, I ...

<t>I use mine mostly for salad or in sandwiches, sometimes I will toss them into a stir-fry also. I have also seen (but not tried) recipes for bread made from sprouts (wheat berries are usually the main component). A friend of mine likes to eat sprout "soup", pouring some warm broth over a bowl of ...

<t>In general lentils from the grocery store should sprout. Also, in my experience, most/all of the lentils in a spoonful of grocery store lentils will actually sprout--I can't imagine getting them from a specialized sprout source would lead to much higher sprouting ratios. The main motivation to go ...

<t>I have a jar or two of sprouts going pretty regularly in my kitchen. Currently I just do alfalfa (bought in bulk at the local food co-op) and lentils (just chuck in a spoonful of seeds from whatever large bag of lentils I'm working my way through at the moment). If I recall correctly, the price ...