Thump said:

Gray may be coming back to fersey sleeves, replacing black!

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I proudly wore my fersey in Rendville last week.

sparcboxbuck said:

Yeah, can't overestimate how important good planning is. We worked with our (fee based) planner for nearly 20-years developing our portfolio. While accumulating is important, where you accumulate your assets is equally important. Retirement / tax advantaged accounts are great, but if you have any intentions of going early, you better have plans for post-tax retirement accounts ('hero' accounts) to get you over the bridge until you can start to access that other stuff without penalty.

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For sure in most cases, although in our case with two defined benefit pensions, that wasn’t really an issue for us. The pensions won’t keep up with inflation over time (no annual cost of living increases for the first three years and minimal ones that will lag inflation thereafter), and we won’t get SS barring a fair amount of future working, but they’re enough that our retirement accounts should be able to grow untouched until we’re required to take minimum distributions, at which point income from those will make up for the decline in the real value of the pensions.

It seems like the pitching has recently taken a major leap forward.

Jagdaddy said:

If you don't have a fixed fee-only financial planner or a tight financial plan, I strongly suggest using one and making one before making the retirement leap.

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Yeah, can't overestimate how important good planning is. We worked with our (fee based) planner for nearly 20-years developing our portfolio. While accumulating is important, where you accumulate your assets is equally important. Retirement / tax advantaged accounts are great, but if you have any intentions of going early, you better have plans for post-tax retirement accounts ('hero' accounts) to get you over the bridge until you can start to access that other stuff without penalty.

Brian Kelly Couldn't Win a Title at LSU—Why He Thinks Lane Kiffin Will​

The ex-Tigers coach assessed his successor in a Wednesday interview.

On Wednesday, Kelly—currently unemployed—sat down virtually with John Brice and Blake Toppmeyer of USA Today. During that conversation, he offered interesting thoughts on his LSU successor—well-traveled former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin.

Kelly thinks Kiffin can do what he could not—lead LSU to a national championship​

“I think so,” Kelly said when asked whether Kiffin will win a national championship with the Tigers. “Here’s why I’d say yes. I think that they have invested in NIL for him. I think they have given him the opportunity.”

Kiffin has already started to do damage on that front, nailing down (per 247Sports’s rankings) the highest-rated transfer portal class in the nation. Though it’s early, he’s making strides in 2027 recruiting as well, convincing five-star tight end Ahmad Hudson of Ruston, La., to stay in his home state on Sunday.

“There’s a lot of good things moving in that direction. The recruiting classes, they’re really in solid shape,” Kelly said. “Lane’s a really smart football coach. I think it’s in a really good place, and I believe that because there’s been an investment in that NIL, he’s going to be able to be Lane Kiffin.... he’s not going to take the 18-year-old kid and develop him all the way through the ranks, and that’s fine.”

Re: Kelly said. “Lane’s a really smart football coach....he’s not going to take the 18-year-old kid and develop him all the way through the ranks, and that’s fine.”

Just sayin': OK, why didn't Kelly just try to do what Kiffin is doing?. Apparently Kelly is conceding that Kiffin is just a smarter football coach ....

Missouri Star Ahmad Hardy Shot and Wounded at Concert in Mississippi​

The running back was an All-American for the Tigers last season.

Missouri running back Ahmad Hardy was shot and wounded early Sunday morning while attending a concert in his native Mississippi, the Tigers said in a statement.

“Ahmad Hardy was the victim of a shooting at a concert in Mississippi early Sunday morning and sustained a gunshot wound,” Missouri said. “Ahmad underwent surgery Sunday and is in stable condition.”

Per the Tigers, a timetable for a return to play—or any football activities—is unknown. ESPN’s Pete Thamel did report that “there’s optimism” that Hardy will eventually return to play.

“Ahmad is deeply loved by his teammates, coaches, friends, family and fans,” the school said. “We will continue to stand beside him and his family through this difficult time, offering our love, prayers, strength and support.”

He originally signed with Louisiana-Monroe, running for 1,351 yards and 14 touchdowns to lead the Sun Belt in 2024. After that season, he transferred to play for Missouri, where he quickly established himself as one of the SEC’s best running backs.
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HEARTBREAKING: The worst people you know just did something really smart.

I hate giving Michigan credit. It physically pains me. But the Wolverines made an incredible investment in OpenAI, putting $20 million into one of the AI lab’s earliest fundraising rounds, according to exhibits from the Elon Musk–Sam Altman litigation.

That investment could end up making Michigan an absurd amount of money.

The documents don’t fully explain the terms of the stake, but Michigan reportedly set a “target redemption amount” of $2 billion. It’s also unclear how the school would use that kind of windfall, but if Dusty May and Kyle Whittingham ever get access to some of that cash, Ross Bjork better start investing in whatever comes after AI.

Just sayin': Ain't that "the shits"?

From 13-37 (5-25, 17th) to 26-22 (15-12, 7th), this has been a massive jump forward. Glad to see as I hope Haire is here long term.

This kid and Whyce (along with others of course) would just be mayhem up front.

NFBuck said:

Drew Allar?

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ugh, same - Dunker is the best pick just for his hair, overall draft was a dud IMO

There's always the retirement transition job.
I traded a high paying, high stress, long hours job for a much lower paying, low stress, shorter hours job 4 years ago.
Keeps my brain working with plenty of free time (and good insurance). Not enough to live on but enough to be comfortable with subsidy from saved funds.

Kentucky adds Washington transfer C Franck Kepnang, who will be in his 7th year in college. And the media acted like 4-year player Aaron Craft had been around forever ...
https://www.yahoo.com/sports/articles/kentucky-adds-center-transfer-entering-110230347.html

CincyInterloper said:

Deciding when to retire is a tough decision. For those of you who have retired, what was the tipping point? Do you wish you had kept working longer or that you had retired earlier?

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My wife and I were both career Colorado state employees. Our jobs were both nonpartisan but involved working in a political environment, and my job, in particular, involved quite a lot of night and weekend work and sleep interrupting, weight gain promoting, short temper inducing stress.

We don't have kids, have been pretty conservative with money and savings excluding travel, and had started our careers long enough ago that we were lucky enough to be locked into a generous (not NY, California, or Illinois crazy generous and overly gameable, but generous) defined benefit pension plan (which has since been modified several times to become progressively less generous for more recently hired state employees so that virtually all new hires choose a defined contribution plan instead) that let us retire without early retirement penalties at 55 with any number of years or service or after 50 with thirty or more years or service.

A big factor for us was our mortgage, which we'd been rapidly paying down with significant extra principal payments and paid off in full in September of 2024. My wife retired just before that on July 1, 2024, at 57, and I called it November 1, 2025, at 56. I'm an attorney, and post-COVID, public sector attorney compensation generally rose a lot faster than it had previously, and I got promoted in 2021, so, to capture much of what easily were the best raises of my career in my pension benefit (which is based on the average of the three highest years of salary with some guardrails to avoid "bumping" abuses so I got super-lucky with the post-COVID public attorney market reset), I worked one more year than I'd initially planned to. Even with that, I actually left quite a bit of pension money on the table by not working another additional year, but the extra money wouldn't have changed how we live and I'd simply hit the wall. Ultimately, I felt as though the combination of being surrounded by the toxicity of politics and the workload over the last few years was starting to age me 3-4 years for every 1 that I worked.

I think I retired at the right time in that I both improved my pension considerably by working one more year and also allowed my wife to adjust to retirement for over a year before I joined her. We also had a lot of turnover in my former office, and especially on my team, in the last few years, and working the extra year allowed me to keep training up and supporting younger attorneys and plan the transition for the woman (who I worked with for 26 years) who took over my position. While one more year would have both allowed me to do more of that and improved my pension quite a bit more, as I said, I'd hit the wall, especially when being made aware on a daily basis of the difference in my retired wife's stress level and mine. I just couldn't stand it anymore, maybe most of all the daily effort of maintaining a positive face and doing my best not to be the burnt out old guy that makes the younger employees question what they're doing with their careers. I never wanted to be that guy.

While I haven't yet figured out what retirement is going to look like for the medium and long term, without the stress I have slowly lost 10 or so pounds total while adding muscle and getting measurably stronger through better sleep, more exercise, and more intentional eating habits while reading more books, trying to learn a foreign language, and slowly feeling my brain, which I truly think was being impaired by my work, get a bit sharper. I likely will do some sort of work again down the road, as I am struggling a bit with feeling "unproductive", but I think it's going to be a reinvent myself kind of self-employment or side gig thing rather than anything to do with law or government. Year one of retirement is mainly about getting my body, mind, and house (literally in terms of decluttering and some repairs ) in order, and reconnecting with people who I like and have frankly neglected for quite some time. We've also got some pretty great travel plans. Sometime late this year or early next year, I think I'll be ready to get more intentional about what the long term looks like in terms of "productive" living.

As for your own decision, leaving the more personal questions, like "how much of my identity, if any, is related to my work/how much might I miss it?" "will I be bored without it?" etc ... aside, make sure you, and your wife/partner if you have one, know and are on the same page about what your retirement wants/needs/expectations are and how much they'll cost and know how much income you'll have to pay for them. Insurance generally, and especially health insurance, is a bitch, at least pre-Medicare, unless you have some sort of subsidy for it.

If a defined contribution retirement account is a big part of your plan, make sure you KNOW how much you can take on a monthly basis without putting it at risk of running out. My in-laws actually saved enough to retire on, but my MIL, who we didn't know didn't know about things like the 4% rule, grossly overspent their retirement accounts until they ran out (spent on what I don't really know), and they are now in a position they don't like to be in and didn't need to be in even after my wife and I bailed them out of the credit card debt that she'd been too embarrassed to tell us she'd taken on once she drained the retirement accounts (we had to do it as by the time she got desperate enough to tell us about it the balances were snowballing at a horrifying rate). If you don't have a fixed fee-only financial planner or a tight financial plan, I strongly suggest using one and making one before making the retirement leap.

calibuck said:

Believe it's been said that one has to get on the court to impress. And the decision is to sit on the pine at a great school, or play more minutes at a lesser school. It's a decision I never had to make ;(....academic rigor at Kent St poses less of a hurdle, and on court competition probably less as well. But is it better to be a big frog in a small pond, or a small frog in the big pond? I'll let you decide, grasshopper.....

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This kid was never an Ohio State caliber kid IMO. I coach HS basketball we played them. He was not impressive at all. Was surprised that he even held an offer, let alone be committed at the time. I get wanting to keep kids home, but some of the In-state talent Diebs has gone after is very questionable.