The Beginner’s Guide to Index Funds

The Beginner’s Guide to Index Funds

"Jack Bogle is the founder of the Vanguard Company and created the first index fund in 1976. He set out to create a way to invest passively instead of relying on mutual fund managers making buy and sell decisions in an effort to outperform the market. His research found there's no way for a mutual fund to consistently outperform the market long term, but they can consistently underperform the market due to excessive costs such as management fees and taxes. Index funds simply aim to match the market returns as closely as possible."

Median Cash Assistance

Traditional welfare, aka Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) is a very modest benefit to very poor families, typically with children, to provide them with a few thousand dollars each year in funds for basic necessity. This map shows the average TCA benefit per census tract for those who receive cash welfare. TCA is relatively difficult to get, which is why in many Census Tracts the data is unavailable or the sample size is too small to be reliable.

Data Source: SELECTED SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS IN THE UNITED STATES, 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_16_5YR_DP02&src=pt

May 24, 2018 Morning

Good morning! Happy Thursday. Sunny and 59 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞 There is a north-northwest breeze at 7 mph. πŸƒ. The dew point is 44 degrees. A pretty nice and sunny morning.Β  Too bad this really weather couldn’t have held off a few days until the long weekend. I’m blaming Trump for the bad weather, as I always do.

Today will be sunny 🌞 , with a high of 78 degrees at 4pm. Six degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 46 at 6pm. Northwest wind around 8 mph. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 77 degrees. The record high of 92 was set in 1964.

Today is Thursday, the night before get-away day before the long weekend. So I will have to go to the store and buy some groceries and a few other supplies. πŸ›I’m on the fence about replacing the lawn chair that I bought last fall as somehow I’ve managed to break it. Part of the problem is it got a bit too hot next to heater, especially on the frigid morning in West Virginia. Plus the material it was made out of wasn’t great, despite being a more expensive chair. Sometimes they hold up a long time, other times not so much.πŸ’ΊI have a few other things I also need at the store, namely food. We will see. β›ΊI was on the fence where I will go, but I’m definitely leaning to the Southern Adirondacks.

The sun will set at 8:20 pm with dusk around 8:53 pm, which is 55 seconds later than yesterday. πŸŒ‡ At sunset, look for clear skies and 71 degrees. The dew point will be 49 degrees. There will be a west-southwest breeze at 6 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 55 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 39 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be clear πŸŒƒ, with a low of 54 degrees at 5am. Four degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 50 at 6am. South wind around 6 mph. In 2017, we had partly cloudy skies with more clouds in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 54 degrees. The record low of 30 occurred back in 1956.

Went down to the park for a while last night with a book.Β I read for a while and then headed home when it got dark. I am having trouble with my wireless headphones, after six months it seems like one of the channels isn’t working. I guess it’s been a good run over the past six months with these headphones. 🎧 Usually the wired ones don’t last this long, at least not the ear buds which I use every day on the bus and end up tossing in my pocket.

Sat out back for a while last night,Β but then went in because it was a bit cool and I was tired. I also was working on moving some of the wires around on my Arduino Variable Message driver board, to switch it over to a Hardware SPI connection. I am still having a problem with sometimes stuck pixels and stuck modules.πŸ–₯ Resetting the code helps, but in the hotter weather (over 75 degrees) I’m seeing more errors. I’m thinking the Arduino processor is malfunctioning in the heat, or that somewhere resistance is increasing. I’m thinking the Hardware SPI will be faster and more reliable.

Last night, there apparently was a fairly bad crashΒ πŸ’₯ on Delaware and Cherry at around 10:40 PM. I heard the screeching tires and the crash noise and somebody stumble out and ask if they were okay, but I couldn’t see much more from my apartment. The firetrucksπŸš’ and meat wagonπŸš‘Β were there in under five minutes, and there was still some shredded car parts and lots of oil dry still left on the intersection in the morning. I stepped outside to look around 11 PM but it was pretty dark, and I couldn’t see well didn’t want to get to close. Lots of grinding and crushing noise when they towed away the cars, it must have really been quite the collision. At that hour probably a drunk driver. At least they were conservative with the sirens at the late hour, but they sure had a lot of crunching as cleaned up the scene.

Looking ahead, there are 26 weeks until Thanksgiving πŸ¦ƒ when the sun will be setting at 4:27 pm with dusk at 4:57 pm (Standard Time). On that day in 2017, we had rain, cloudy skies and temperatures between 46 and 34 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 45 degrees. We hit a record high of 70 back in 1931.