Post by Thomas E.Post by -hhPost by Thomas E.Post by -hhPost by Thomas E.Post by Thomas E.Post by Thomas E.Post by AlanPost by Thomas E.Post by AlanPost by Thomas E.Post by AlanPost by Thomas E.Post by AlanPost by Thomas E.At age ~61 has Alan finally given up on his bakerMEDIA site, and business? The lame excuse for a website, bakermedia.ca, is unreachable. Linkedin says he claims to have a full-time job, working for a Toronto-based financial consulting company. The company site shows him as an employee. RIP bakermedia.ca. You won't be missed.
Do you check my website and my LinkedIn page (the one you called my
"company website) every day...
...or just once a week?
:-)
Maybe every month or two, at the most. Of course, you deflected, dodged the question, so typical of you, dickhead.
Wow.
You admit to regularly stalking me...
...and you don't think you deserve to be called a "dick".
Not stalking, exposing your lies. Your only defense is to attempt to discredit the source of truth.
"Maybe every month or two" you look at my website...
...and goodness knows what else...
...and you don't think that's creepy, dick?
I haven't lied.
Sorry.
You lie by omission all the time. You simply cannot answer a straightforward
question if the answer contradicts the false image you have created of yourself.
Not wanting to answer a question posed by a stalking DICK isn't "lying
by omission...
...Dick.
Oh, but yes it is a lie. Your lie is that you are/were supporting yourself as an independent consultant.
Got cite? Or is that merely your assumption?
Silence still from Tommy.
Post by Thomas E.Post by Thomas E.Post by Thomas E.You have been a full-time employee of a Toronto firm for some time now.
So? Times have changed since the 1970s: generations after yours don’t stick
to just one or afew companies for their entire working career: it’s now common
to change every ~5 years.
Post by Thomas E.Your independent consultancy failed to support you so you became an employee,
or at least you claim full-time employment.
Speculation, plus no proof that it was ever exclusively full time.
Post by Thomas E.The bakerMedia site was disappeared. Can't afford the url renewal fee?
Hasn’t the Farmecon LLC website has disappeared too?
Ouch. Projecting your own “can’t afford it?” paradigm onto yourself.
Post by Thomas E.You claim to be an elite FF driver at the local track, but your record does not support that claim.
“Elite”? Really? Let’s see the cite.
Plus this isn’t the only time that you’ve gotten jealous & petty when you can’t be the
sole center of attention, especially for when it’s someone who has some skill clearly
better than you: you should go fly for 30 minutes on just 15 minutes of fuel to show
readers that you’re halfway good at at least one thing. /s
Post by Thomas E.You have a selfie photo of yourself on your employer's site that in no way resembles
your current appearance on LinkedIn.
So?
Is there a condition of employment that requires image synchronization that’s being violated?
FYI, the professional headshots a stalker may find of me are also out of date.
Post by Thomas E.Another lie. In fact when I pointed out that the company photo resembled the unflattering
LinkedIn version you changed it to what makes you appear healthier and without scraggly
facial hair. Which is the real you?
Because we all know that a random picture on the Internet is profoundly important! /s
The FarmEcon site disappeared because I shuttered the business over 2 years ago
So? You could have left the reports up, and just said you’re no longer actively consulting.
Post by Thomas E.Search for FarmEcon.com in Google. Takes you to https://www.hugedomains.com/domain_profile.cfm?d=farmecon.com where I have the URL for sale. Will I ever get that advertised price? Likely not, but
per WHOIS I own it for a few more years, until 2027. It's assigned to the GoDaddy URL sales site until expiration.
< https://www.godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal/appraisal/?domainToCheck=Farmecon.com>
Post by Thomas E.Then try a bakermedia.ca search.
not as “bad off” as you’re trying to imply.
Post by Thomas E.... On WHOIS it shows a 2032 URL expiration date. ..
On LinkedIn …
Stalking by Tommy.
Post by Thomas E.The deletion of the company site and a full-time job all suggest that bakerMEDIA is defunct, or nearly so.
That wasn’t the question. The question was if it ever was represented as full time.
Post by Thomas E.Actually, 2018 was a very interesting year for Alan…
Even more stalking by Tommy.
Post by Thomas E.If his consulting practice had been lucrative why is he not still not doing that full-time?
Don’t know, don’t care, because it’s none of my business. But I do know that a lot
of people are seeking a better work-life balance than what old Boomers tolerated.
Post by Thomas E.My consulting was, in contrast, very rewarding personally and financially.
Because you got travel boondoggles? /s
Post by Thomas E.I worked it actively from 2003 to 2022, and even collected my last income in 2023.
Net income, IRS basis, was about $1.3 million before 401K contributions. As you
know, some expenses become deductible just because you are running a business
from home, so this is lower than actual.
SS & Medicare is 15.3%, but only half of that is unique to self-employment to be
comparable to a regular job. Plus write-offs for laptops, office, etc and it’s a 10%
variance or so in total. Another are business travel costs, which of course are usually
customer-approval specific, but not a big money suck…unless one wants it to be.
Plus wasn’t there also a corporate donation to a local theater for tickets too, eh?
The write-off game is very much just that for some folks.
Post by Thomas E.Since I also had pension and SSI income I'll admit I did not solicit many projects.
They were referrals for the most part.
You were nevertheless still hustling for work for more than decade beyond normal
retirement age. That shows that you weren’t anywhere near ‘comfortable’ without it.
Post by Thomas E.Simply Google "thomas elam farmecon" for a small sample of my non-confidential
projects that made it into the public domain.
Despite how you still own the domain and could have just left those papers up?
Post by Thomas E.Why go to all this trouble? Alan has repeatedly called me the "lying little shit" and
a liar in general. I am neither. My body of work for numerous clients …
…is not representative of the crap that you regularly tried to pull here. As such, your
consultant work is irrelevant and not a defense for your poor behavior here.
Yes, I was not comfortable at all with where I was in early 2003. I did some teaching and
started consulting. I was offered a 6-figure job with AVMA out of Chicago, but did not want
to move there.
Your loss, as that would have enabled a higher retirement savings rate and been able to shave,
oh perhaps 20-25% off of the years that you worked since 2003, so maybe your retirement could
have been at age 70 instead of 75 or whatever.
Post by Thomas E.The consulting grew organically to the point where I could not meet classes and travel to see clients.
The conflict there was classes vs travel. You chose travel. As I called it, a "boondoggle" motivation.
Post by Thomas E.Consulting won, and within 15 years or so I had built up a sizable net worth and income stream.
Started slow, ended slow, and averaged well under six digits. Shouda' gone to Chicago /s
Post by Thomas E.I took the site down just to make sure no one would see it and call me anyway.
Self-contradiction of wanting us to find your papers but hiding them. "Check!". /s
Post by Thomas E.All my clients have my contact info and know how to get in touch if they need something from
a past project. That happens occasionally. 95% of the work I did was not on the site anyway.
Which based on your numbers, effectively didn't happen for your last three years (94% retired).
Post by Thomas E.The work was rewarding because it helped people solve problems. I took about 5 or 6 international
consulting trips.
"Five or Six"? How is it then that your old "brag" spreadsheet that you shared has 21 international trips
listed for business for the years of 2004 - 2015?
Post by Thomas E.The wife went on 4 international trips, Canada, Germany, France, and Austria.
That was less than 5% of the work.
4/21 = 19% of international business trips.
Post by Thomas E.She did go on some short U.S. trips. Yes I enjoyed the travel, she did too, so what? All the work
was done right here in my office. The trips were for client-requested meetings to present results.
That's been discussed before, where you've tried to imply personal wealth from leveraged business
trips paid for by others (and including using frequent flier miles thereof as well): there's been quite
a bit of the proverbial “yee-haw, I’m traveling and you’re not...I’m rich!" over the years.
Post by Thomas E.You got the 10% number about right. My gross margin over business deductions was about 90%.
Yet another instance of where you've had to admit that my parametric are close enough.
Post by Thomas E.The Social Security contributions added to my eventual benefits. I get within a few dollars of the
maximum for age claiming at 66.
Which was $45K/yr; I'd figured ~$35K for each of you, as I figured that yours would be the
higher of the two; hers can be as low as $25K/yr and the prior numbers are still on track.
Post by Thomas E.There were no charitable donations taken on my LLC Form C. Those all were on the Schedule D
at the time, now are QCD adjustments to income take out of IRA RMD funds. The matching came
from my ex-employer, not my LLC.
That doesn't explain how Farmecon was the listed benefactor: was it done as an advertising expense write-off?
Post by Thomas E.I was not hustling for work. I cannot remember soliciting for anything except one project.
Someone in a meeting asked if anyone knew how to do X. I volunteered and got the assignment.
The rest were all people who approached me with requests. I turned down a few that I knew were
beyond my capabilities.
LOL, I've had enough time with contractors to know that there's *always* hustle for the next gig.
Post by Thomas E.My behavior here is intended to defend myself against Alan Baker's assaults on my character.
Too bad you're doing such a poor job at it.
Post by Thomas E.And you are the person who falsely claimed to have had an FAA friend in London who could
look at my flight logs and make a judgement on their accuracy! That is reprehensible!
No, what's reprehensible is that you claim that it is a false claim. For example, I never said where
they lived in UK, just that one would fly into London to go visit them. Go look it up. In the meantime,
they are retired, but still working in the aviation industry, consulting for Boeing and L3. They also
had a nice snow ski trip last season to a place I've never heard of: Val du Claret, Tignes.
Post by Thomas E.You also criticize disguised as personal finance advice while not having complete knowledge of
a person's strategy, goals and investment portfolio. Look in the mirror yourself.
Nope. My mirror doesn't have the hypocritical cracks from frequent brag attempts about my income
or net worth. Just take a look at how many you stuffed into just your last reply.
Incomplete data extrapolated to fit your version of reality and wildly wrong.
Nah, it’s already been parametrically narrowed down that your average wage
was under $100K/yr, and IIRC more like $78K, so “six digits” would be easily
20% higher.
Post by Thomas E.I hope your retirement projections are better.
They’re doing fine, which is why I’ve mentioned Roth-ifying near term, so as to
limit & manage taxable RMDs when they eventually kick in…
Post by Thomas E.WE DID NOT want to move to Chicago. That was a mutual decision. It worked
out great from my perspective. There is more than money.
It’s quite ironic to hear you try to claim that there’s more to life than money after
repeatedly posting what your net worth is, as well as working an extra decade+
longer than average. If you could have retired at 63 with a $200K income stream
before SS or 401k/IRA distributions…would you have taken it?
Silence from Tommy on the $200K at age 63 question.
Post by Thomas E.Just to make your head spin a little fast I offer the following.
To get off to a good start we paid off the house in 2003. Knowing that we had no debt was a confidence booster.
Your parametric "wage narrowing" is a joke as is the claim that taking that Chicago
job was a good idea for speeding up retirement.
You're the one who tried to brag that the AVMA was a six-figure job. You've not only
admitted that that was more than you were making where you were, but the other numbers
you've provided have enabled a parametric estimate of at least how much more.
Post by Thomas E.The limits on retirement contributions at the offered Chicago salary were a fraction
of what I was able to put away in a self-employed 401k.
And the AVMA didn't offer any pension? Because the reason why the tax code allows
self-employed businesses to have such higher 401k provisions is because there isn't an
employer pension.
Post by Thomas E.By putting away the max in my own 401k in 2003-2023 (last 2 years were 0) through my own
contributions and capital appreciation I built what is now an IRA worth well over $1 million today.
Which if we KISS apply the 4% rule for an annuity equivalent is a pension of just $40K/year.
Post by Thomas E.If I take what we put in minus RMD withdrawals the non-discounted net cash IRA outlay
has been $197k. I about 4 years the net will be zero. An employee plan with its lower
contributions would never have done that for IRA current value or past and future $RMD.
But that assumes no employer match on the 401k, as well as no pension benefit.
Since the self-employed 401k is ~2x what an individual employee can set aside in an
employer's 401k, we can parametrically model the What-If of you taking that AVMA job
and making the same max individual 401k contributions as ~1/2 of what you've now
ended up with, which would be $500K ...
... and the ramifications of this are that the the employer's pension portion only needs
to be just $20K/year to be at break-even. Less, if there was also an employer match
going into the 401k.
Post by Thomas E.And, of course, there are 4 other retirement accounts and a substantial amount of other
investments not in qualified plans. The wife worked for a while too after we got married in 2002.
Over that same 2003-2023 span we had one lean year with under $150k income.
The average was $204k. The decision to save as much as possible was very deliberate.
Except that you've just admitted that there were 4 other retirement accounts plus RMDs
that were all contributors to these income totals, which parametrically means that your
years of working as a consultant must have always been *less* than the numbers you
just stated above. Golly, more parameterizing.
Post by Thomas E.We currently receive monthly: 2 pension, 2 Social Security, 5 RMD and 1 dividend payments.
Think the SS was already SWAGed at ~$60K/yr in total. Figure two pensions adding up
to about the same sum and you're already at $120K/yr out of your $204K/yr average,
and there's still the RMDs to subtract off (and dividends) before one gets down to just
what the average consultant gig was paying per year.
Post by Thomas E.My ex-employer also heavily subsidizes our Medicare Supplement plans and pays for
my Part B premiums, all tax free.
IIRC, I can expect to have ~five years of 100% free healthcare, after which it drops to
just 70% subsidized. What did I win? /s
Post by Thomas E.And, our investments' market value continues to grow long term. The 2023-2024 YoY growth
after the 2022 slump is over $500k. An unusual yoyo 2 years to be sure, but it all keeps the mind active.
Golly, you already know what your 2024 growth was? /s
Nah, its more likely that you're counting all of 2022, plus YTD, rather than just YoY, so as to
squeeze out a slightly bigger number from the past five weeks' gains to try to brag about.
Post by Thomas E.Life was much simpler when I got only a salary, bonuses and stock options. I say that,
but AMT liabilities arising from Incentive Stock Options income and later reclaiming AMT
after the ISO's stopped was a bit complicated and risky. Not to mention that you may
need to borrow the money to pay for the exercise and then wait at least a year to sell
https://www.esofund.com/blog/amt-tax-calculator#:~:text=If%20you%20exercise%20incentive%20stock%20options%20%28ISOs%29%20you,value%20at%20the%20time%20of%20exercise%20as%20income.
https://www.brightonjones.com/blog/amt-stock-options/
It took me over 10 years to reclaim the AMT I paid, but it was a nice Federal tax liability offset while it lasted.
Of course, there's other ways to manage stock options which are less likely to trigger
AMTs (plus AMT has temporarily disappeared as a real factor, due to the 2017 TCJA).
Post by Thomas E.But more to the point, moving to Chicago would have meant losing family and friend
connections, downsizing, higher taxes and living expenses. It is likely that at that time,
having just paid off the house, we would need to mortgage a home in the Chicago suburbs.
Moving was never seriously considered for many reasons.
Because one can never make new friends/etc. Plus a CAP flight from Chicago back to Indy
is <200 miles. Nevertheless, it is fortunate that you mentioned it and how it was a "six figure"
income opportunity, as that paramaterizes that you were earning less at the time.
Post by Thomas E.I also enjoyed working for myself. It gave me the freedom to do jobs my way. I turned
engagements down too. You should try it, very liberating.
Perhaps I already am, and just haven't bragged about it.
Post by Thomas E.As for the consulting international trip count my underestimate is the result of those
forgotten ones being not very memorable. The few I did remember were mostly the
ones with the wife. The rest were just work. Fly somewhere, a meeting or two, fly
home. BFD. When working for Lilly those OUS trips often included 1-2 weeks, multiple
projects, and multiple destinations. More memorable, and some downtime to sightsee.
Routine business travel does get tuned out ... but then not invoked in brag attempts.
Given how you've kept such meticulous records and even counted air segments, its
not really a particularly believable excuse.
Post by Thomas E.Have you ever run a run your own business to the extent of having a self-employed 401k?
I've never been laid off to have been compelled to strike out on my own to need to: with
an existent employer 401k, any side business affairs don't need to incur the overhead to
go duplicate that capability, as it is easy with multiple income streams to leverage them
so as to facilitate shifting of expenses/income to maximize tax-advantaged accounts, etc.
-hh