Hey all, John here. If any of my fellow Delawareans are like me, you want to try and help the economy as best you can, while maintaining the ability to live comfortably. Additionally, you'd like to eat more naturally, and healthy. With that in mind, I figure I would open up a thread asking you for the names and info for all of our local businesses and their locations. Specifically, farms selling local produce, locally raised meat and eggs, local bakeries for breads, etc. Local places that sell these products would be great too, as well as the candy shops, the mom-and-pop specialized stores, etc. I figure there's no better way to help the economy than to take the money we've already earmarked (pun intended) for food, and use it to eat more healthy, local alternatives, keeping our money in Delaware (the reasonable vicinity thereof, i.e. Milburn Orchards in Elkton) instead of going to some big corporation.
So let's hear what you've got, people. I'll be popping in from time to time to edit this post with a list of what we have so far!
Just curious. If I make a ton of money for any reason, among the first things I'll do is help my parents pay off their house and retire. I don't, however, have a separate wallet set up for them that can grow on its own. Just curious why people do this.
I got into a debate about whether we should improve the system/mechanisms for auditing the pentagon. Long story short technically Congress has the ability to audit the Pentagon but they will typically pass that responsibility off to the pentagon. Basically the Pentagon audits themselves.
So the person I was arguing with said βyou canβt audit the pentagon because that would reveal our special forces operationsβ
To which I replied βyou can earmark specific funds for βclandestine operationsβ and keep the contents secret. Having a line in your expenditures that says βClandestine Operationsβ doesnβt reveal where the money went and it isnβt any different than saying βVA Benefitsββ
Basically what I said is that you donβt have to itemize clandestine operations, you can just report how much went to clandestine operations without itemizing where it went.
So who is right? Would earmarking funds for clandestine operations harm national security?
Note: I only took accounting 101 so if my verbiage is off I apologize.
Edit: I am not some lefty dumbfuck who is anti-military spending. I do have first hand experience with defense spending and can say with absolute certain that are a fuck ton of places related to defense that can and should be cut. Like the conservative virtue signaling about βour high debt and deficitβ could be addressed by auditing and making appropriate cuts to our defense spending. The lefty meme about βour defense spending is too highβ actually has validity and you could cut it in half with almost zero impact on our national security. There are a fuck ton of niche bureaucratic aspects within our defense department that creates unnecessary waste and an entire staffing/contractor industry that sucks money for stuff that is literally useless.
President Trump has recently spoke in favor of bringing back Earmarking and the debate has once more reignited. Earmarking is basically putting unrelated provisions to attempt to get more votes.
People against earmarking claim that it bred corruption while it was legal while people in favor of bringing it back say that the corruption that does come with it is worth it to end the gridlock in Washington
So, should it be brought back?
Let's say I have $70K invested in taxable accounts. Of that, $40K is saved for retirement (in 20 years), $20K for a car (in 5 years) and $10K for a vacation (in 1 year). I'd like to use a different asset allocation for each goal, and I'd like to be able to track my progress for each one.
I was thinking about opening separate Vanguard brokerage accounts for each goal. But Vanguard doesn't have a way to "nickname" the accounts; I'd have to keep track of them myself. Is that the best approach, or is there any other way to make this more convenient? Do other brokerages offer something like this?
