My partner had a mild heart attack. I freaked. I saw my life ending. In recent days, I read, studied, visited doctors, including a wonderful cardiologist, called Bill Slater.
They did tests and talked me down. My chances are slim because I don’t drink, don’t smoke, exercise every day (tennis and biking), avoid stress (more about that later) and don’t weigh a lot.
I could have stopped stressing about my heart attack by simply reading what the Mayo Clinic posted:
The BIG thing I learned, courtesy Doc Slater:
I need to get myself to a hospital’s emergency room when I have some mild tightening and/or pressure in:
+ My jaws
+ My chest
+ Down my arms
+ In my upper back.
I should not ignore this “feeling of discomfort.” As Slater said, “Severity is not important.” Getting to the ER is critical.
It seems too many people ignore these signs, Later they have a whopper and it kills them. Getting to the hospital quickly lets the doctors figure out what went wrong, do a roto-rooter job and drop in stents. And maybe give you a year or two longer.
In short, stay thin, eat the Mediterranean Diet, exercise, don’t smoke, and watch for signs of mild discomfort.
Meantime, if you want to figure your chances of getting a heard attack — it’s all statistics — check out this web site. Click here. There you’ll find this form to fill out.
Everything is controllable. Weight. Exercise. Booze. And stress.
Stress is the hardest one. I walk away from small mistakes. Take the $$ hit. I now avoid long-term investments. Selling at a loss is much less stressful than the agony of hanging around for years. I invested with “big” institution funds — from the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citibank and others you haven’t heard off. These things were meant to have ten year lives — at most. But they’re still alive and still stretching above 15-years, going on for twenty. It’s insane to agonize over their miserable returns every quarter. Better to do what I do now — buy only liquid salable securities (stocks and bonds) and stay with honest syndicators who have lots of their own skin in my game.
It really DOES matter where you live.
Donald Trump is moving to Florida, from New York City.
I wondered what that meant.
This is what New York State charges:
New York City is one of the few cities in the country that actually hits you with its own income tax. It seems if you also live in New York City, you would pay double these State taxes, shown above.
At the top — $2.155 million plus — you’r actually paying 17.64% on TOP of your federal taxes which everybody pays. That a sh*t load of money. Living in New York City is ridiculously taxing — sales taxes, real estate taxes, mansion taxes, high gas taxes, bridge and tunnel tolls …. We got them all.
What about other states? I checked a few:
But there also are some tax-friendly states:
In the old days you could deduct your state (New York) and local taxes (New York City) from your liability for Federal taxes. But that’s now limited to $10,000 — which really messed up a lot of people and led to:
+ A major drop in the value of pricey homes in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and California.
+ Many people fleeing these states for places like no-tax Florida.
You can look up your own state here.
And from England….
My latest favorite video.
I’m very selective about the videos I post. They have to make me laugh. Enjoy.
I’m loving my new iPhone 11 Pro Max
Here’s a selfie I took with it and some weird photo settings:
And now Elizabeth Warren
What worries me about Elizabeth Warren is less the higher taxes, and more about her ideas on restructuring the economy — especially breaking up successful companies. As the Economist recently wrote here:
However, if the entire Warren plan were enacted, America’s freewheeling system would suffer a severe shock. Roughly half the stockmarket and private-equity owned firms would be broken up, undergo heavy re-regulation or see activities abolished. And over time Ms Warren’s agenda would entrench two dubious philosophies about the economy that would sap its vitality.
The first is her faith in government as benign and effective. Government is capable of doing great good but, like any big organisation, it is prone to incompetence, capture by powerful insiders and Kafkaesque indifference to the plight of the ordinary men and women Ms Warren most cares about. When telecoms firms and airline companies were heavily regulated in the 1970s, they were notorious for their stodginess and inefficiency. Ms Warren’s signature achievement is the creation in 2011 of a body to protect consumers of financial services. It has done good work, but has unusual powers, has at times been heavy handed and has become a political football.
The other dubious philosophy is a vilification of business. She underrates the dynamic power of markets to help middle-class Americans, invisibly guiding the diverse and spontaneous actions of people and firms, moving capital and labour from dying industries to growing ones and innovating at the expense of lazy incumbents. Without that creative destruction, no amount of government action can raise long-term living standards.
