Costa Rica Bound...

Welcome back everyone! The past few weeks have been hectic to say the least and unfortunately that has prevented me from being able to share our recent experiences. Last week we were in Costa Rica looking for our next home and this week I was in CA for business…

Well, let's start by rewinding a couple of weeks to the Costa Rica house hunting trip….

Day 1: It started with the usual 6 hours of flying. Two over to Dallas and then 4 down to San Jose. When we got to Costa Rica it was already dark, keeping its secrets of CR hidden just a little longer. By Costa Rica standards we got through immigration and customs with great speed and ease…a nice start considering G3 (Grandma Gi-Gi) was a little nervous about the whole ordeal ;-) But that was about where the whole thing started to unravel… We made our way over to the rental car stand and were quickly getting on the shuttle to go to the off site location. When we arrived I was informed that we had a reservation for a mini-car and not a mini-van. Hmmm, why exactly did I call to confirm the reservation with National in the first place? Anyway, the interchange with the rental car agent goes a little something like this:

Agent: "No worries, Mr. Cavagnaro…oh wait, we don't have a mini-van. Maybe we have a mini-bus…nope. Where is your baggage?"
Cavitaition: Points to left
Agent: Looks to the left and sees 4 adults, 2 kids, 6 suitcases and various small items like car seats and handbags. "Uh oh".
--- Time passes ---
Agent: "We have a land rover but that only seats 5 with room for luggage…you want that?"
Cavitation: Tilts head to side and says "huh?"
--- Time passes ---
Agent: "We can take you to the hotel in the shuttle bus and try to find you a mini-van tomorrow."
Cavitation: grumble, grumble, grumble…"ok".

So we finally get to the hotel and get the kiddos settled in for some rest. Oops, we remember that we left the car seat base at the airport…so I head up to the hotel front desk to see if anyone can help me. We try calling the airport…closed…but you can call tomorrow. I am too tired to pursue…fine….off to bed.

Day 2: AM comes around and I call the rental car place…they have found a mini-van and they are driving it over to the hotel…the day is looking good so far. Then I call American at the airport…"Yup, your car seat base is right here, we can hold it or you can come get it."..the day is still looking good so far. We head down and get some breakfast - which is pretty good….day is definitely looking up. We checkout, hop in the car and head down to the coast for the weekend. Before leaving, I got directions from the tourism desk so we were good to go. Within 30 mins we had taken a wrong turn and headed into Alejueja. There we proceed to drive around a lot, ask for directions repeatedly (no one speaks English) and continue to be lost. After about 45 mins we find a Burger King by the International Mall…why someone here must speak English….uh no. Oh wait, a customer overhears us and offers to help…in English. Bingo…within 2 mins we are on our way. We finally reach Jaco, on the beach, and due to the excursion in Alejueja we are late and everyone is hungry. So we head up to the hotel restaurant and eat…mistake! The food is terrible and expensive…but we choke it down, pay the bill and head to the beach. As yu can see from the pics, Kade and I had a blast building a big sand castle. Payton got a bunch of sand everywhere and started crying so she ended up taking a nap. After the beach, we headed into town and had a good dinner (at a restaurant that I had been to before and knew it was "safe"). Overall for the day…it wasn't too bad except for getting lost, a horrible lunch and the heat was pretty intense too.

Day 3: Pretty uneventful day. Kade and I spent the morning at the pool and the afternoon on the beach again making another sand castle. Kade did take the time to throw down some gang signs as you can see from the picture at the left... For lunch we ended up at a Gourmet Taco Bar which was good but pretty darn expensive. For dinner we ended up at the Hut…that's right…Pizza Hut. It was great. They had air conditioning and the kiddos ate a huge meal which was the real reason for going there. Then it was back to the hotel to put the kiddos down and to pack for our trip back to San Jose.

Day 4 onwards was where things got really interesting…. On the way back to the hotel in San Jose, we did stop at the crocodile bridge. Kade loved it and he informed me that he was going to tell all his friends about the big crocs he saw and that crocs were now his favorite animal ...

more about days 4-7 later...

International Financiers

I also forgot to mention that the process of closing on a house from CR was very interesting. Joey at the Group and The Hotel Melia Cariari made it as painless as possible. We got the signed contract in PDF, printed/signed at the hotel and the hotel took care of faxing back to Joey...all in all relatively easy. So thanks to Joey and the Melia Cariari!

And for the record, that now makes Jen and I international financiers!!!

Home For Sale...

As I mentioned before, the Cavitation's were in quite a hurry before we left for Costa Rica. The main scurry was trying to get our house ready for sale so we could show it over the week that we were in CR. Well, here is the MLS info for those of you who want to see our diggs. In the pictures...it should be noted that Payton was sleeping in her crib at the time ;-)

Oh yeah, and I should mention...it went on the market the day we left (March 16) and we got a full price contract on Tuesday! 5 days on market to contract - and for full price!!! I guess the pain of cleaning, getting pictures taken, getting an inspection done and getting the house measured was worth the thrash on the fambly ;-)

BUT...now I guess we have to move somewhere ;-) Here's to hoping that the contract holds.

Cavitation Finance Blog - Opens

Since we will be gone next week, looking for our new diggs down in Costa Rica...my posting will likely be greatly diminished.

Additionally, I realize that not everyone likes to crawl through my financial ramblings...

As such, I have decided to break out my financial chatter into a new blog area. I have been posting there slowly the past two weeks so I could leave you all with a little lite reading while we are gone....I hope you enjoy!

Dancin' Dumplings

Some footage from Kade's recent Dancin' Dumplings class. He enjoyed himself immensely...not sure if it was the dancing/gymnastics or the fact that he was the only boy in the class ;-)



Ah, makes the father proud!

FYI - this was not taken with the Elura-100...it was just taken with our point and shoot SD-500.

The power of a list....and a clean life...

Two weeks ago I realized that I was falling behind in life...and I mean rapidly!!

Between my job driving me nuts, taxes, 529 plans, relocating internationally, a house hunting trip coming this week, getting our house on the market (this Friday), cleaning house (my fav), finances (like paying that pile of bills staring at me), getting my truck ready to sell (might have to actually fix that coolant leak after all) and just generally trying to keep up with the kiddos............I was getting B-E-H-I-N-D!!!

So, I took a deep breath and spent a few hours cleaning my work office, my home office and consolidating all of those yellow stickies lying around - reminding me of the things still needing to get done. Jen even pitched in and sent me about a dozen reminders (a.k.a., "tasks") in outlook so they slid into the fold seamlessly...that was nice of you dear ;-)

The result...an absolute miracle! The clean spaces around me actually make me feel better and the list has proven an invaluable tool in improving my efficiency. I have been looking at it religiously throughout each day. I have found many times that I actually CAN make use of those occasional 15 min breaks in the action and get a little task completed (like calling the newspaper to cancel...something I have forgotten to do for ~2 months). I now find myself with more energy, the ability to stay up a little later and getting a lot more done. I know that this is old news for many of you...but it was a much needed "find" on my part...I can't imagine my life right now without my list!

And lucky for you...it got me to the point where I still have a few minutes every night to post!

Funded my 401K/IRA and Lost $$ - but my investments went up...What's the dealio?

Funded my 401K/IRA and Lost $$ but my investments went up...HUH?: So from the title I know that you are already scratching your head..."how does one lose money with a 401K/IRA if the investments have not gone down??" It's simple if you follow the Cavitation way ;-) ...let me explain... For the past ~10 years Jen and I have been putting money into both our 401Ks.

Rob: I contribute regularly to my work 401K which is matched generously by my company. For 2006, the maximum contribution allowed was $15K. I unfortunately do not do that...I only put in ~$10K (not including employer contributions), meaning I am losing out on both the tax deferred gains on $5K as well as the income tax deduction I could have gotten (lost $$ #1). The reason for not kicking in the extra $5K was plain and simple --> comfort. I am not quite yet willing to take the $400 per month bite that would be necessary. [I am sure that someone will point out here that not all $400 will show up as a net decrease due to offsetting tax benefits.] The interesting thing is that a one time contribution of $5K this year (age 32) would compound into $116K by age 65 (assuming 10%)...and that would translate into $5800 per year in dividends for every year after 65 (assuming a 5% rate of return on the $116K). Hmmm...that seems like a no brainer....

The reason I am not currently stressing about the $5K (well at least I wasn't until I I wrote the last paragraph) is due to the fact that my employer kicks in another ~$9.5K on top of my contributions...so in total I am actually putting ~$20K/yr into my retirement fund...and at age 32, I think that is pretty good...but we shall test that in a later post. For now, the money being lost here is tied back to the $5K shortage in my contribution levels.

Now for Jen: Ever since Jen stopped working a few years ago to take care of the kiddos, we rolled her employer 401K into a rollover IRA and continued contributing at the max rates. In 2006 and 2007 that max rate is $4000 per year. In 2008, that will increase to $5,000. So in the case of Jen, it is not a question of not putting in the max allowable...it is a question of timing! I tend to wait until the end of the year when I am pulling together my taxes and then I realize...oops...I forgot to put that money into her IRA back in Jan of the previous year. So I cough up the dough and fund the max IRA contribution for the previous year. Needless to say, that means I am losing on average about $400 in gains (assuming market average of 10%) just because I make the contribution later than I could have. And to make matters worse, then there is the subsequent impact of lost compounded gains due to the delta in the two start dates --> the delta on $400 invested 1 year apart (again assuming 10% market growth) equates to a delta of about $800 at age 65! (lost $$ #2)

So the moral of our story: Just because you think you are doing great by making the effort to plow lots of cash into your retirement account...chances are you can still do more. Just a little tweaking here and there can make a huge difference in the end!

Taxes and lost $$

Last week Jen and I completed our 2006 taxes. For the record, I always use TaxCut because I really like the interface and it does a nice job handling special situations (like when we had dual residency in CA and CO). I originally used TurboTax, but it got the boot quite a few years back 'cause I once got two different results from the same data (I think it was using AMT on one calculation and not on the other). Anyway, as any normal human, I do not like the process of doing taxes. I try my hardest to maintain a folder of tax related activities through the year...but it always ends up taking me a few evenings and fetching lots of paperwork in between to get'r done. The interesting thing (or maybe not) is that I love completing my taxes. Not because I typically get a refund...but because you always have a much better understanding of your financial situation coming out from completing your taxes.

So this year I completed our taxes and we did in fact get a large refund this year (about $15K). The driving factor behind the big refund is simple, I still have my W-4 deductions set to my bachelor days. Now this is quite obviously a waste of potential money, seeing as I let the government keep about $1250 per month of my money thus I lost out on all the interest. Assuming I had placed this $1250 per month into a MMA acount making 5% interest, I figure I just lost out on ~$350 (a free 2.3%) ... ok, so now I am sure Jen is a little upset with me! Here is the table I used to calculate the loss:

Now one thing to point out here...one must be disciplined enough to actually save all $1250 per month and put it into the MMA. If you don't and instead spent anything more than ~$350 then you are break even or even lower. In the end, is $350 a huge price to pay for a "zero interest savings account"? OF COURSE IT IS! Instead, this year I plan to change my deductions and direct deposit the extra money into a separate high interest savings account like AmTrust Direct which earns 5.36% (just don't go over the 6 transfers per month or the fees will get you)!

Spring has Sprung

The temps are soaring with the high today of 71F. So I guess that means that global warming has officially reached Fort Collins ;-) The crocuses have sprung up in our front yard which means its time to head on outside for some much needed playtime! Today when I got home from work, I found the kiddos and the Mrs. playing in the backyard. I tried to snap a few pictures before I was discovered but that was not to be with Kade always on the prowl. He was playing "mailman" with Jen and once he saw me, he rushed over to me with my first delivery...a huge and very much used diaper. Nice, quite the welcoming committee!! I did manage to grab the new Canon Digital XTi and snap off a few pics. The first 4 are ones that I took from the sliding door - I would guess about 20 feet with the 300mm lens and a low F-stop to get the fence/school out of focus. The fifth picture at the bottom was one that I found on the camera from Jen. Not sure about distance and camera settings...you will have to ask her ;-) Also, these are saved at an extremely low resolution. The raw files on my computer are about 3-5 Megs in size each, whereas when you click on these you are only seeing the ~200K versions. God help those without high speed!!

Jen's big day...

Happy Birthday Jen!

This past weekend was Jen's birthday! She made her decision a few weeks ago that this would be a day of rest...and so it was. It started with her sleeping in (as best she could while in a house with the tazmanian devil...a.k.a., Kade) and then we dined on her favorite breakfast ... Rob's secret breakfast burritos. Then it was time for the gifts! Jen and Kade started, as always, by going through the cards. As you can see from the first picture on the left...Payton couldn't wait for them --> see hand in lower left of picture ;-) The it was on to the main event...opening the big gifts. As you can see from the first picture on the right, Jen did not have to do much to get her gifts open! Her big gift from the kiddos and moi was a new Epson photo printer. So far we have only printed out a few pictures but the quality looks fantastic compared to our old inkjet printer.

After the gifts were opened we horsed around for a little while until Jen had to leave us - seeing as she was heading off to the spa for a 90 minute massage. During this playtime, Kade thought it would be especially funny if he took daddio's glasses off and ran around screaming like an out of control wild-man. We managed to snap some pics of both him and Payton with the glasses on (Kade decided Payton should wear them too). If you look really closely at the picture of Kade wearing my glasses - you will notice the song playing on our mediaPC (above Kade's head)...very appropriate indeed.

While Jen was at her "wonderful message", it was time for Rob to start working on Jen's birthday cake. This cake was a time consumer, seeing as it is 100% from scratch. It is a double layer chocolate cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting and strawberries/ chocolate shavings on top. I named it "triple sin". It was really good...especially with the fresh strawberries on top!

Later in the evening the Zups came over to celebrate. The kiddos all had a great time staying up way too late as you can see from the photos! For Jen's dinner, I made her Chicken Cordon Blue with wild rice saute (wild rice pilaf with mushrooms, chicken stalk, onions and garlic). Ellen brought over some salad and then we all had our fill of Sin for desert. Overall, I think Jen had a great day!

(Seeing as how I am a man and I have not developed that ability to read my spouse's mind yet - I am not 100% sure.)

And then we went and ruined it all by spending the entire next day getting our house ready to sell....I am still feeling the pain today from that one.

Financial Fitness - FREEDOM!!!

Back in February I wrote a piece regarding financial fitness for gen-X/Y/Z. In general, I wanted to continue to benchmark our personal performance through time. While I have not had time to recompute our numbers lately (too busy with B-Day parties and getting ready for the upcoming move) what I can say is that Jen and I have officially kicked all of our non-house related debt!!! That's right....we now own both our cars outright (got the title for our Nissan Maxima just a few weeks ago) and have completely paid off all our student loans (we payed off Jen's back in 1998 but mine hung around a little longer). It feels absolutely great to know that those monthly payments will now be moving into the savings account instead of heading out the door (~$750/mo)! Since Jen and I have always harbored strong negative feelings about carrying credit card debt, we have never had to deal with that common ailment thankfully. So all in all, the only remaining monthly payment we will be making from here on out will be our house (which we hopefully will sell in the next few months). Note: if we were staying at our current residence, our next move would be to refinance our mortgage and put even more monthly $$$ into our pockets.

Something I should point out here: Up until 2006 the interest rates on my loans have been very low (~4%) but so were the interest rates on safe investments like CDs, MMAs and savings accounts (~2%). This meant that there really was no incentive to either pay off my loans (as they were already cheap) or to put my money "under the mattress" (to make no money). This really only left one option: to put our money to work in the equities markets with some risk to principal. Consequently, that is where a lot of our savings have been - in the equity markets. To be honest, that has payed off relatively well seeing as how our index funds have gone up ~10% each year for the last 4 years. As most of you are aware, over the past 1.5 years interest rates have been steadily moving up. Thus the incentive to take the risk in the equity market has been dwindling. Option 1: I can pay off my loans and make a sure 7%. Option 2: I can put my money "under the mattress" and make 5%. Assuming the market holds course at 10%, the incentive to be in the market has dropped from ~6% to only about 3%. Now, how much risk are you willing to take to realize that last 3%? My vote was to take the 7% and run...and sleep well at night.

Now that our debt is all cleared out...and we have cashed in our 7% gains...we have more money each month to "put back to work". This time the math is not quite as easy, seeing as the equity market premium is now at 5% (10% Equities vs. 5% MMA). So here we are again, at another fork in the road... I will write more about this decision process over the coming weeks...

9 Month Comparison

9 Month Comparison: Jen took the time this past week to compare the two kiddos at 9 months for everyone's enjoyment. Here's the result (remember you can click on it to make it bigger):

Cavitation Milestone!

Viewers: Cavitation viewer count surpasses 1K readers! It took 3 months to get there so we are on a slow pace...but still...at least people are reading it ;-)

Revenue: Cavitation revenue from advertising surpassed $25. Now I know you are thinking "them's be some small peanuts"...but it is still 25 bucks the kiddos didn't have before (since all advertising revenue from the blog heads over to the kiddo's 529 plans). FYI - typical revenue runs between $0.03-$0.25 per click depending on the content. Having said that...if there are too many clicks at one time then they can disable my account.....So don't just go click-crazy for no good reason. Kade and Payton appreciate the contributions ;-)

My Birthday

As Jen correctly pointed out in the comments section, there was a lot of good family time on my birthday. We started by heading out early to The Egg and I...our favorite local breakfast joint. It was a nice little breakfast as it usually is...with the additional bonus that Kade sat in his seat the entire time and didn't knock over the water pitcher.

Then we headed home and before putting Payton down for her nap, decided to open the gifts. The kiddos got me a bike helmet, some bike pedal clips and a bike computer (for measuring time/distance/temp/etc). Jen also bought Kade a new bike helmet (see picture to left) since Payton will be needing the little helmet now. Jen got me a second hiking backpack which we will desperately need in Costa Rica for all our outings into the rain forests. We already have one Kelty Ridgeline backpack but that is the one that we currently lug Kade around in. So I got on Ebay and found a second Kelty backpack...this time a Trek backpack. You can really pick them up fairly cheaply on Ebay...as well as some of those kid stores like "Once Upon A Child" and "Harmony Kids". Anyway, it was what I really wanted so we could all enjoy CR a little more later this year. Then we had a light afternoon heading into the evening festivities.

Jen and I decided to finally try and host one of those murder mystery dinner parties. It was a lot of fun for the most part. It did take us a little while to understand what was going on and how to really play the parts. By the time we started to figure it out, Joe and were pretty tanked so our participation was probably less than desired by some...but hey, it was my birthday. I played the role of a world class tennis player (Hi K. Lesteral)...thus the goofy yellow sweater-vest thing. Jen was a business woman named Cherrie Ghubellee ;-) Mark was a business man (Ray Zhor Sharp) and as you can tell from the picture he looked like most of us do during our work staff meetings ;-) Jill played an incompetent TV producer (Tilly V. Isone). Chris was a chef (Marin Nate) and Amy was a homemaker (N. Vee Ausse). Finally, Joe was a handman (Toto Lee Smytten) and Ellen was a homemaker (Borissa "Bor" D. Stiphe - married to Reilly Stiphe). Everyone came in costume and gave it a great go...most of the men heavily aided by the bar.

Finally, Jen baked me a super good strawberry-rhubarb pie...one of my all time favorites. She cut "32" into the top of the pie which turned out pretty good for freehand. So in the end...it was a relaxing day with the family and a fun evening with our friends!

Pre-Birthday Anticipation

This week has seen a flurry of activity around the Cavitation household...but none as important as the festivities Saturday night...my 32nd birthday. In anticipation of the great event, on Friday I braved the elements (cold and windy) and made the long trip over to the mailbox to see what good fortune has been bestowed upon me. As I open the mailbox the first things I see are two keys to the package boxes below...ahhh a good sign indeed. Then I notice that the mailbox is absolutely stuffed to the top....another good sign. So I quickly grab the two keys, get the packages below, grab the loot from the mailbox and dart back to la casa de Cavitation. On the walk back home I am pleased by the sheer weight of the pile...oh I can almost taste the spoils of another wonderful birthday! Once safely back in the warmth of our home I settle in for the moment of truth. Seeing as I was impressed with the sheer weight of my boooty, I decide to pull out the scale and give a peek...oh good times indeed...the mail alone (minus packages) topped off just a smidgen over 6 pounds!! So I decide to do a quick count of the mail...a monster 32 pieces of mail! So now, the moment of truth...

Packages Received:

1. A sample of Enfamil formula. Not quite what I was hoping for...but still, free formula is free formula.
2. A package of presents for Kade and Payton..."Self, huh...what is the deal with that?".

Not to be deterred and my optimism still in full swing, I rip into that big juicy pile of mail....yes all 6 pounds of it!!!

1. 5.5 pounds of catalogs and magazines for Jen...not a good start...
   
2. A few pieces of junk mail
3. One bill for our local garbage company (to haul off the 5.5 pounds of catalogs and magazines)
4. One birthday card...yes you read right I did NOT get shutout!!!
   

Thanks to the Albunukie relatives it was a grand success. You see, while it may seem like getting as many bills as birthday cards would be depressing to some...the fact that I did not get blanked was a big plus in my book!

PS - I did get one more birthday card on Sat, technically making the deadline. This was from Albunukie's mother...seems those gals have their stuff together.

PPS - Monday I got two more cards...the first was from our NC 3/4 Marine relatives (who ALWAYS take the time to send a card) and the second was from dear old Danno... so in the end I got 4 cards and 3 bills from Fri-Mon which is arguably a huge success...

PPPS - I know that Jen will totally kick my butt as she is already starting to get cards...you see, her b-day is this upcoming Sat!

Clipmarks.com: Evaluation

Last week I was cruising through Lifehacker and ran across a utility called clipmarks. It basically allows you to quickly cut out portions of websites you are viewing and save them to an online area (video and pics too). You can organize them into categories and label the entire mess. From there, it allows you to view, blog, print and/or email the clipped content. At first I was skeptical as it always seems that any effort I make to organize my life ends in complete disarray but I gave it a shot anyway and installed it on my Firefox browser. Well, I can honestly say that so far this little gem has proven to be a great asset. It is the equivalent of an electronic "thought notebook" and has allowed me to stop the bookmark hemorrhage that I typically use for capturing future blog topics or follow-up activities. The interface is really easy to use once you get the hang of it and even though I have used it for nothing more than capturing and saving ideas it has been a huge plus.

So I told myself I was not going to do this...

Seeing as how I absolutely love it when all the liberal media elite get together and spend tons of money on themselves (while preaching to us that they are "for the common people"), I really did not want to acknowledge this topic. BUT...the more I sat back and thought about it, the more this one intrigued me....particularly as Al Gorleone was almost our 43rd El Presidente. Now, let me preface this by saying that this is not just another dumb right wing attack. I will willingly point out that there are many huge polluters on the right side of the isle as well (i.e., The Terminator and the Great White hunter)...but at the end of the day you have to ask yourself, who is this man --> The great conservationist or the great hypocrite? Here is the excerpts from the article I saw:

POWER: GORE MANSION USES 20X AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD; CONSUMPTION INCREASE AFTER 'TRUTH'

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Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

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Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

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Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

Since I am now expecting a full court press from Mr. Farr (he likes to keep my right lean in check)...I will post the Gore camp response:

1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint.

So there you have it...both sides of the story.

In the end, it can be clearly observed that Mr. Gorleone is attempting to reduce his carbon footprint via buying things. I find this interesting. I thought the challenge set forth by his "brilliant film" (a.k.a., An Inconvenient Truth) was for everyone to look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Now when I look at this, I am not sure that is what he is actually doing. It seems to me like he is using a LOT of energy and then buying his way out (keep in mind that he still uses 20x the national average AFTER the actions above are factored in!!). Not everyone can afford to do this and would have to do it the old fashioned way...by actually impacting the way they live (i.e., actually using less energy vs. buying solar panels to offset consumption).

So I guess in the end analysis, I would label this "mildly hypocritical". I credit him for taking the above actions to reduce his net-net footprint. But in the end, he is not actually modifying his lifestyle to achieve a minimum footprint as the rest of us less fortunate souls are being asked to do....an inconvenient reality.