Hey finance people! Question?

I have a SEP with a little over 5,000 in it. It's time to renew it, or move it. The current rate is 1.99%. I know precious little about investing, but I think 1.99% sucks... I need some direction on what to do with the money.I don't even know the questions to ask. I want reasonably low risk and a rate of return better than what I have now. I just don't trust the bank to have my best interests at heart.

Thanks.

Unfounded Random thoughts after midnight

First of all, these sodahead.com ads from google piss me off. Most are nothing more than inflamatory troll bait. They make money for the site, (I clicked a few because they got my attention) and I want to keep them, but I don't have to like them.

I'm afraid that lots of folks voted for Obama because they believe what he says, because he fills them with hope for positive change, because he is an excellent speaker and seems more like a human being (almost Kennedy like) and less like a filthy politician... Even I want to like him, and I don't trust ANY politician.

But even an attractive prostitute is still a prostitute

I don't see how he can actually deliver on the promises he has made. I can only imagine the huge number of favors he owes for all the money he raised. Lots of folks own a piece of that man and he is going to be spending a lot of the next 4 years doing folks favors now that he has made it to the top. This is true of all presidents I'm sure. But more money means more favors...

He wants to make goverment bigger to fix problems, When was the last time more beauracracy fixed a problem?

I believe that Obama is like all politicians, and the only color he cares about is green. I don't know how his African American supporters will feel when they see their great hope turn out to be like all the rest. At a Chicago rally  I saw women crying, half collapsed with faces full of emotion, hope, joy, and disbelief. Their hope for the future had won the  presidency, Now things would start to change for the better.

However, there is an entire political system already in place that will resist change. For better or worse his attempts will be greatly slowed.People have a lot of themselves tied to Obama. When he lets them down...what then?

He has a lot of dreams, I fear that reality is going to slam him (and us) hard. There is a reason being president ages people so much.

I don't think there was a right or wrong person to vote for this time around.

On the plus side, voter turnout was up, folks are getting engaged in their goverment, even if it was for just for a short while..

And yes I did vote, then I went home and took a shower.

Your brain is the enemy

Found a good article. funny but sad.

...SIGH

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/three-more-reasons-why-your-brain-is-not-your-friend.html

ARTICLE FOLLOWS

Last week, I explained some of the ways that our brain tricks us. There’s more ways than just the three I listed that the brain works in odd and mysterious ways, causing us no end of mischief. Here’s three more:

I am not a racist!

In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was beaten and killed in an attack witnessed by dozens of people, none of whom intervened. In studies to understand this phenomenon, psychologists discovered the “bystander effect” (sometimes called the “Genovese effect” after the victim), which says that the more bystanders witness an attack, the less likely it is that any individual will intervene. Each individual witness believes that someone else will intervene, and that their action is therefore not needed.

In a follow-up study to explore the effect of race in this equation, psychologists found that if a lone individual witnessed an attack by a white person on a black person, they were more likely to intervene than when they witnessed a white-on-white attack. When confronted with a racialized situation, most people feel compelled to intervene because not to intervene would make them feel like racists. In cases where other witnesses were present, the subjects were actually less likely to intervene in a white-on-black attack than similar subjects witnessing a white-on-white attack. In these instances, the presence of other potential interveners allows the subject to avoid the self-accusation of racism — they can tell themselves that they’re staying out of it because someone else will intervene, not because they’re racist.

These results are repeated in a similar study in which subjects were asked to play the part of jury member in a trial against a black defendant. Each subject was supplied with the details of the case and then watched recordings of 11 jurors explaining why they felt the defendant was guilty. In cases where the recorded jury members were all white, the subjects were very likely to find the defendant “not guilty”, feeling that the other jurors were racists and they were standing up against the other jurors’ racism. When one of the recordings was replaced by a black juror with the same argument, however, the subjects were much more likely to find the defendant “guilty”. If a black person thought the defendant was guilty, then it couldn’t be racist to agree, right?

Pay no attention to the man in the gorilla suit

In The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki describes a study performed with college-aged subjects in which they were asked to watch a video of several people passing a ball around and count the total number of passes and catches. At one point, a man with a gorilla suit enters the scene, thumps his chest a bit, and hangs out for 9 seconds.

After watching the video, subjects were interviewed about what they had seen. A full 50% of the students did not see the gorilla. This phenomenon is called “perceptual blindness” or “inattentional blindness”, and occurs when we become so focused on what we’re doing that we fail to see anything that does not directly play into the task at hand. We basically fail entirely to pay attention to things we don’t expect to see.

You’re such a girl!

Pity the poor college student — here’s another study involving college student subjects. In this one, male subjects were given a personality survey, after which the testers would tell them their character was especially feminine or especially masculine. The results were bogus, chosen at random, to set the subjects up for the second part of the study in which they were asked their opinions on such things as same-sex marriage, the war in Iraq, and President Bush’s performance.

Men who were told that they had “feminine” personalities were much more supportive of President Bush and of the War, and much more opposed to same-sex marriage, than the men who were told they were very masculine. In essence, one group of men were called “sissies” and felt put upon to assert and thus prove their masculinity, while the other group felt unthreatened and thus more able to respond freely.

We’re all doomed(?)

What should we do with all this? Are we simply doomed? Are we just dumb animals dominated by a couple pounds of irrational meat?

I don’t think so. We are, of course, capable of deep reasoning — consider the work of the great philosophers, brilliant scientists, and far-sighted social critics. These quirks of thought don’t undermine our rationality, they coexist with it.

Some of these gremlins in our thinking machine are the product of social conditions that we can change — but knowing they’re there and how they work is a prerequisite for that. Others are features, not bugs — anyone who has ever been deep in the “flow” of their work can attest to the value of perceptual blindness which allows us to “tune out” the inessential and distracting.

Ultimately, knowing is better than not knowing. Those of us who are committed to the idea of personal improvement think a lot about the habits that hold us back and prevent us from achieving our goals, whatever they are. Knowing that we have a tendency to see others through the prism of race and gender, that we often act in ways that only become conscious after the fact, or that might blind us to important events as well as to trivial distractions can, I think, help us to better realize our goals.

At least that’s what my brain tells me to think.

END OF ARTICLE

What happens after?

Something has been on my mind for a few months now, Writing about it will probably get me put on some goverment watchlist (Note to the goverment guys with the sunglasses, and earpieces who are reading this, I wish no harm to anyone, and am only questioning human reactions in "what if" scenarios. Please do NOT kick in my door with guns drawn)

I really don't care to debate who would do a better job as president. What I want to know is... how will people react if whoever is elected dies?

McCain seems so old and of questionable health to me, if he dies and Palin becomes president, Do people celebrate because we can now say have a female president? Many in the womens rights movement are Democrats (my perception, perhaps an erroneous one) How do they feel about that? Is it still a victory for the movement? Is a time of national crisis the time to celebrate? Even secretly?

Obama is even more interesting. There are plenty of racist nut cases in this country, in the North and South. If he gets assasinated, a white guy becomes president. How do people react? Would the world media cast the States in a bad light? Would there be riots in the streets like after the Rodney King verdict? Or lots of black/white tension like after the OJ simpson trial (the first one, not the second. Man what a circus that guys life must be)

I really (sadly) think that there is a good chance the V.P. will assume the presidency, whoever is elected.  What happens then?

Fun with fermentation

With access to a local farmers market, and an especially plentiful garden this year, I decided to try out a few recipies I had been wanting to try for the last few years.

Old fashoned dill pickles, and homemade crock fermented sauerkraut.

Yeah, yeah I know, I saw you all wrinkle your noses and make that face... yeah THAT face. the one that says, "Ew,  gross, weird stinky food that old people and foreginers eat" and " What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you want to spend your time making something like that, much less eating it?"

Because, I'm funny like that. Also, if you made that face, you probably live on chicken nuggets and frozen pizzas, so I can pass a similar judgement on you.

Both recipies use salt/salt brine and anerobic conditions to inhibit bad fungi and bacteria, and help promote the naturally occuring good bacteria that eat sugars and produce lactic acid, giving both foods the characteristic tartness and further preserving them. The techniques were simple, they only required a few weeks to ferment, much faster than making homemade wine or beer (which use yeast instead).

learningstore.uwex.edu/pdf/B2087.pdf making sauerkraut

learningstore.uwex.edu/pdf/B2267.PDF making pickles

The irony is... they taste EXACTLY like good store bought products. But much cooler because I made them.

Next up, homemade Limoncello.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120600243_pf.html