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I'm 35 years old with a joint income of $490k, live in New York, and work as a program manager

0️⃣Section Zero: Background
Hello, MD! I hope you're all doing well, and are safe and healthy. I've gone back and forth for a while about whether I should share my money diary. I signed up to do one last year to chronicle our home buying process but chickened out (I'm so sorry mods!). I was worried I'd be judged for what I spent money on, not having a college education, or what might be perceived as frivolous habits. I don't know. Internet strangers terrify me. But I'm finally sharing this money diary because I want this to be a data point: you can have a career (or two!) without a college degree.
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
I moved to the US right before entering elementary school. I spent half my childhood in a simple four room shack with no running water or electricity (mom's side of the family) and the other half in a large house with a nanny and domestic help (dad's side of the family). From a young age I was told that college was chance at a better life and I believed it -- not going to college wasn't an option. My mom completed a healthcare related degree in our home country but she couldn't practice in the US. My dad dropped out of college in our home country due to his work as a student protester. Both of them worked blue-collar jobs to support our family and were always working. As with just about every parent, they wanted more for me.
I was accepted to a top ranked private university but didn't get a sizable scholarship so my parents and I took out loans, separately, to fund my tuition. I dropped out halfway through my sophomore year due to poor mental health stemming from an assault. No one knows (except for my fiancé and now, internet strangers) the real reason why I left school.
Did you worry about money growing up?
Yes. My parents never talked about their money struggles with me, but I knew money was always tight. After my youngest brother was born, I remember how excited I was to find a jar of peanut butter in our cupboard. We hadn't had any for a while. It had a "WIC" sticker on it and I didn't know what it meant at the time. My parents never talked about receiving government support but I'm thankful that we had a safety net available to us when we needed it most.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I started paying my parents rent to stay in my childhood bedroom when I moved back home. I didn't pay for groceries or to use one of their cars, which was nice. I was about 21 when I was completely on my own. My parents and I had a falling out over me dating a much older man who I'd come to learn was very abusive. There were a few months where I slept on a friend's couch because I barely had money to feed myself. My early 20's were rough. But if I were to go completely broke now, my parents would be there to help me. They're doing much better financially.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
No. I've never received an inheritance or any other passive income.
Finally, a note on Erik: he also doesn't come from money or finish his college degree. He immigrated to the US less than a decade ago and does not receive or provide monetary support to his mom or dad.
1️⃣Section One: Assets and Debt
Combined net worth: $3.7M
Combined brokerage balance: $2.14M $317,587 (mine) + $1.82M (Erik)
Combined retirement balance: $195k $116,300 (mine) + $78,700Erik). We're behind on funding our 401ks. I finally convinced Erik to take advantage of his employer match program two years ago. He was concerned about the ease of withdrawing funds since we plan on living outside of the US when we retire.
Joint checking account balance: $111k We have a lot of cash on hand right now because we need to prepay income taxes, and will be furnishing our place.
Equity: $1.42M We put 40% down on a 2 bedroom/2.5 bath condo (<1,200 ft2) in a new construction last summer. Our down payment came from the sale of some of Erik's RSUs.
Mortgage: $1.61M For our financial situation, an interest-only mortgage made sense. We have a 2.35% APR 7/1 ARM since we don't intend to stay in NYC longterm. Our plan is to pay off the remaining mortgage in full after five years and either sell the condo or hold onto it as rental property.
Combined credit card debt: $0 We pay off our credit cards in full every month. We put between $6k - 20k on our cards every month in a typical year. He's also the authorized user on my credit cards; I added him to my accounts about six years ago to help him build his credit file since we knew we'd eventually buy a place together.
Combined student loan debt: $0 I finished paying my student loans two years ago. Erik received free tuition as an EU resident but had some cost-of-living loans which he's paid off.
2️⃣Section Two: Income My fiancé and I ended 2020 with a total cash compensation (base + bonus) of $493,750 but with last year's vested RSUs, our overall compensation is:
Mine Erik
Base $131,250 $268,750
Bonus ~$13,125 ~$80,625
Vested RSUs $121,500 $835,500
Total Compensation $265,875 $1.18M
Income Progression I don't recall my salary increases so I'm listing my starting base salary for each role. I'm also not including additional compensation such as bonus or RSUs.
Main Job Monthly Take Home
Deductions Mine Erik
Retirement 15% of paycheck to Roth 401k 7% of paycheck to 401k
M/D/V under Erik's employer; my employer also provides free M/D/V but we would have different providers covered by his employer + $~250 for mine
Life insurance and AD&D covered by my employer covered by his employer
Short & long term disability covered by my employer covered by his employer
Net monthly take home $7,000 $10,00
3️⃣Section Three: Expenses This is what our YNAB budget roughly looks like (for annual expenses, I set aside an amount per month towards the expense):
Housing
Transportation These would be significantly higher in normal times. We rarely leave our place and if we do, we walk.
Entertainment
Donations: $10,000 annual We donate to Children International on a monthly basis. The remaining amount is donated throughout the year to different causes. Last year, we supported AIDS research, mental health and addiction support, food banks, and international food programs.
Hobbies:
Fields
Savings & Finance
Food & Drink Pre-COVID, we'd budget $3,000 to a "Restaurant", increase "Cafes & Bars" to $1,500, and decrease "Delivery & Takeout" to $1,000.
Wedding: TBD Our original budget was $75,000 (international, <50 people). We've had to reschedule it twice now and have already spent $10k in lost deposits and rescheduling fees. We'll re-evaluate our budget later this year when we start planning again.
4️⃣Section 4: The Diary
Day 1: Monday | Total: $111.84
8:00am - First day back from holiday break for both Erik and me. He's still snoozing so I turn on the bedroom TV to see if our dog is still sleeping too. We adopted a senior dog, Fields, over the summer and quickly became one of those dog owners that installed cameras everywhere so we can watch him anytime, anywhere. Fields is still asleep so I check my work accounts and respond to anything urgent.
8:30am - Normally, this is when I'd take Fields for his morning walk while Erik makes our coffee. But our espresso machine is broken so we can't use it until the replacement parts arrive next week. Erik and I both start getting dressed to take Fields for a walk together. Before that happens, I take the dog outside to relieve himself and we quickly head back to the apartment for his breakfast.
9:30am - We walk to our favorite coffee spot in our neighborhood and get our usual: cortado with whole milk for Erik, cold brew with a splash of oat milk for me, and a breakfast BLT to share. We walk back to our apartment and get to work. $23.69
12:30pm - I take Fields with me to pick up our lunch at Sweetgreen: a kale caesar salad (hold the tomato and swap for the blackened chicken) for me, and a hot honey chicken plate for Erik. $27.71
4:30pm - Erik and I are dire need of coffee. We take the dog for another walk, this time to our other favorite coffee shop. The decor is very IG-friendly and their coffee is fantastic. I get their matcha latte with oat milk, Erik gets a cortado with whole milk, we split an avocado toast with smoked salmon, and Fields get a whole lot of snacks for being a good boy while he waits for our order to be ready. $29.95
4:45pm - We walk past a cute mochi ice cream shop that I've been meaning to try. I pick up eight mochi ice creams: ube, chocolate hazelnut, passion fruit, mango, and some seasonal flavors. $30.48
5:00pm - We get home just in time to feed the dog. His food is laughably expensive but we think it's worth it and most importantly, Fields is worth it! He's the best dog and we want to spoil him during his final years. Especially since the poor pup was returned to the shelter twice within a year. I can't imagine giving up this sweet old guy.
9:00pm - I log off work and head down to our building's gym to workout. I've been working with a trainer through the app, Future, and like it so far. Pre-pandemic, I was in really good shape as I was training for a half marathon and our now-postponed wedding. Since the lockdowns started, my healthy eating habits and will to workout has gone down a very messy spiral. I do a mile run on the treadmill followed by a set that includes split squats and deadlifts. Ouch.
10:15pm - I walk into the apartment to find Erik's made dinner from yesterday's leftovers: tacos! I quickly eat two tacos, then tidy up the kitchen while Erik takes Fields out for his last potty break before bed.
10:45pm - I rinse off in the shower and start my nighttime routine. Erik won't see me for another 45 minutes, at least. Tonight, I use a dermaroller on my arms and legs before rubbing in vitamin C lotion. While the lotion dries, I start on my face: facewash, essence, serum, niacinamide and azaleic acid, eye serum, and all topped off with a nighttime cream cream. This is a typical nighttime routine for me.
11:30pm - Finally in bed. We put on a Netflix comedy special while I finish my routine in bed: foot cream, hand cream, and cuticle oil. Erik is browsing on the iPad looking for pots and planters. We call it a night just after midnight.
Day 2: Tuesday | Total: $199.41
8:30am - We're both really tired. I want to lay in bed a little longer but Erik has a call at 10am and we need coffee. Since his pants are on first, I convince him to take the dog outside so I can get ready. He agrees. I put on sweats and prepare Fields' breakfast.
9:15am - We walk to a cute Australian coffee shop and order: a cortado with whole milk for Erik (it's the only thing he drinks), a cold brew with oat milk for me, and share one of my favorite breakfast sandwiches. It's got prosciutto on it and a perfectly runny egg! $23.58
12:45pm - I lost track of time and forgot to order lunch. I place an order at Chop't: avoketo chicken club salad sans tomatoes for me and a kebab cobb wrap for Erik. Once it's ready, I take Fields with me to pick it up. $25.67
1:15pm - While eating lunch, I order Ess-A-Bagels to be sent to two girlfriends across the country as very belated Christmas gifts. I meant to send them their gifts earlier but they've had family visiting them and I wanted to make sure they got to enjoy their gift. I know they both really love Ess-A-Bagels and wouldn't be too keen to share. $213.90 - $100.00 AMEX offers credit = $113.90
3:00pm - That salad was not enough. I pull a Daily Harvest mint + cacao smoothie from our freezer to make a smoothie with oat milk and split it with Erik.
4:30pm - Ok, we really need coffee. We head back to cute IG-friendly coffee shop we went to yesterday and order the same drinks but skip the sandwich. $12.74
4:45pm - On the way home, I tell Erik that I need to eat something more substantial. I was feeling hangry. We stop by our favorite mediterranean cafe. I order a kebab bowl and Erik gets the kebab sandwich. $23.52
5:15pm - We get home just in time for me to get ready for my last meeting of the day and feed Fields his dinner. Today, he gets lamb and red quinoa.
8:45pm - My trainer has a run scheduled for me today but I'm so tired; I don't think I slept well. I message my trainer to tell her I'm taking the day off but will make up the run tomorrow!
9:30pm - I catch up with some girlfriends on the west coast over text while watching an old Dateline: Secrets Uncovered episode. I remember we have mochi ice cream and eat two of them. This is a great night.
10:30pm - I need to sleep earlier tonight since I need to get a run in tomorrow morning. I have a Morpheus8 appointment at 11am and I can't workout after that.
Day 3: Wednesday | Total: $290.44
8:00am - The alarm goes off and I yell at Siri to stop. I roll back over and snuggle Erik. The run isn't happening.
9:00am - I receive a call from the clinic where I get my Morpheus8 done. My esthetician has a family emergency and can't make the appointment. I'm secretly excited to reschedule for a later date since I have a face lipo, neck lipo and buccal fat removal procedure in exactly a week. I know, I know. Scheduling procedures so close to each other isn't the smartest idea, but I wanted to finish my Morpheus8 series before more invasive procedures. To get the kind of results I wanted, I needed three Morpheus8 sessions booked about a month apart. Today was supposed to be my last one.
9:20am - Walk Fields with Erik to get our usual coffee order and split a bagel with smoked salmon, alfalfa sprouts, picked red onions, chili and dill. $27.85
3:00pm - During our team meeting, my director asks me if I've seen the news. I grab my phone to look at the news and feel my anxiety spike as I learn that the Capital is actively being breached. I know my mental health is going to take another hit after this. Instead of working, I doom scroll the rest of the day. I also realize that salad isn't going to cut it for lunch. Not today. I need something more comforting and warm. We decide on Chinese food: ma po tofu and black pepper beef with a lot of fluffy white rice. $64.52
4:45pm - It's time for my sort-of monthly nail appointment. I go every three weeks to this amazing salon that specializes in nail art but they're also superb at taking care of your nails. I pick a sunny yellow color to offset the shit that happened this afternoon. They're pricey ($75 + $20 tip) but my nails and cuticle beds have never looked healthier. I also buy a ceramic cuticle pusher tool ($15). $114.40
7:15pm - I convince Erik to meet me at our neighborhood pizza spot to pick up dinner. We order: a pepperoni Sicilian slice, Hawaiian slice, ham and cheese calzone, and four slices of cheese, root beer and diet soda. $46.65
8:30pm - While scrolling through IG, I see a dermatologist use snail extract for her NuFace. I've been meaning to buy more NuFace gel and this seems like a good cost-effective replacement. I find the same bottle on Ulta and add an eyeshadow brush to get free shipping. I'm project panning my eyeshadow palettes so this will be a fun new tool to play with. $37.02
12:00am - Bedtime.
Day 4: Thursday | Total: $112.13
8:00am - Same routine as the days before: get dressed, take Fields out, give him breakfast, and head out for our family walk.
9:00am - Another day, a new cafe. We order our usual coffees, and split a breakfast sandwiche: herb omelette on a toasted baguette slathered with spicy aioli and topped with bacon. $27.22
9:15am - I realize that I dropped Erik's credit card somewhere between the cafe and our apartment (I didn't bring my wallet so I asked Erik for his card at the cafe). I call the cafe and ask if they'd seen it; they hadn't. And just as I'm about to call the bank to cancel the card, the cafe calls back -- someone found it on the sidewalk and turned it in! We thank them for following up and tell them we'll pick it up tomorrow.
1:00pm - I wake Fields up from his nap so we can walk to get our usual Sweetgreens order. $27.71
7:00pm - Erik and I take Fields on a walk to pick up Thai food for dinner. We order beef pad kee mao, shrimp tom kha soup, chicken pad thai, and mango with sticky rice. $51.75
9:00pm - While reconciling this week's expenses, I see that my Sephora credit card payment was returned and I was charged not only a late fee, but a finance charge! I signed up for the Sephora card over the holidays to take advantage of their cash back program and this was my first payment to them. I go on the website to investigate what happened and find that I missed entering a "0" to my linked bank account. I call their customer service rep to explain everything. I ask her if she could waive the late payment fee ($35) and the finance charge ($5.45) if I paid the balance in full. She said she's able to waive the late payment fee but not the finance charge. I thank her for her help and hope this doesn't affect my credit score too much. $5.45
12:00am - Zzzzzzz.
Day 5: Friday | Total: $245.56
8:00am - Same morning routine as yesterday.
9:00am - Same breakfast routine as yesterday but add additional tip since they held onto Erik's card. $28.67
12:00pm - Wake Fields up from his nap for a quick walk to Just Salad. I get a chicken caesar salad while Erik gets a chicken poblano salad. $23.70
7:10pm dinner - Friday's are our date nights. Before the pandemic, we'd get dressed up and go out for a nice meal and spend quality one-on-one time. These days, we usually order in fancy sushi and watch a movie. Between us, we order 19 pieces of sashimi and nigiri like uni (my favorite), zuke, wagyu, and tamago. $193.19
10:30pm - As soon as Erik gets back from taking Fields out, we pile onto the couch to watch Jurassic Park.
1:00am - Sleep.
Day 6: Saturday | Total: $375.24
9:00am - It's a late start to the morning. After feeding Fields, we walk to pick up breakfast. We get our usual coffee order, a bagel with smoked salmon and a chocolate croissant. $34.12
1:20pm - I saw someone post in a cooking subreddit about seasoning that a local restaurant uses on their wings. Of course I google the restaurant and get hungry from looking at their photos. I end up ordering lunch from them: wings (of course), coconut crab curry, shrimp chips and chili jam, thai iced tea, and khua kling. It was all delicious but holy cow everything was so spicy. Definitely will order from them again though! $93.40
3:45pm - I see a notification pop up for a charge on our card. I assume it's something for Erik's current house project (building our custom closets). I ask him about it and it's actually a router extender. $125.85
8:00pm - We've been missing Mission-style burritos lately and haven't found a good replacement in New York yet. But we did find a restaurant that makes delicious Mexican food. I get two spicy pork tacos and one al pastor taco, Erik gets a spicy pork burrito and a mandarin Jarritos, and we split a large chips and guacamole. $49.87
10:00pm - While browsing Reddit), I see someone post decants for sale of fragrances I've been meaning to try. Fragrances were a serious hobby of mine for a while, to the point that I hired a fragrance "fixer" on a Paris trip to take me around the local shops. I've since scaled back my collecting and have been focusing on learning to differentiate scents better. $72.00
11:00pm - Goodnight!
Day 7: Sunday | Total: $134.57
9:00am - Another late start to the morning. We do our morning routine with Fields and walk to get breakfast. This time, we head back to the cafe that found Erik's credit card. We get our coffees along with the herb omelette baguette with bacon. $27.56
12:00pm - There's some leftovers from yesterday's very spicy lunch so we eat that for lunch. I think the food might actually be spicier today.
6:00pm - I FaceTime with a girlfriend on the west coast who shares some amazing life news. Her and her husband are moving from the west coast! While I'm sad they're not moving to New York, I'm thrilled that they'll be closer to us and that she has an amazing new role. This is a huge win for her career and I'm really proud of her.
9:40pm - We realize we haven't had dinner. We both want something much less spicy so we order in Italian: caesar salad, pasta alla gricia, and a spicy vodka pasta. $107.07
11:00pm - We owe a response to our wedding planners about our wedding date. Do we move forward with a summer 2021 (originally summer 2020) wedding or do we postpone another year? I have strong feelings about trying to hold a destination wedding in the middle of a pandemic. I don't want to put our friends and family at risk since we won't know when vaccines will be widely available. But Erik is worried that his dad won't make it to 2022 since his dad already isn't in the greatest health. We agree on a new game plan: we hold off on our wedding celebration until 2022. In the meantime, we'll travel to his dad as soon as it's safe and get married with him in attendance. I email the wedding planners our decision to postpone (again) and go to bed.
5️⃣Section 5: This Week's Total & A Brief Reflection
Food & Drink $1,000.57
Fun & Entertainment $0.00
Home & Health $125.85
Clothes & Beauty $223.42
Transport $0.00
Other $119.35
GRAND TOTAL $1,469.19
This was a pretty normal spending week (during the pandemic) for us, minus all the coffee trips due to our broken espresso machine. I know we spend a lot on food and we're okay with our level of spend, for now. It gets us out of the house, gives us a reason to take Fields out for a walk and explore the neighborhood, and allows us to support our favorite spots. My goals for this year are to increase the amount we put into investments and learn more about tax-efficient strategies.
Apologies for any and all typos!
EDIT: typos and a few words
submitted by tyrannosauruscub to MoneyDiariesACTIVE [link] [comments]

Kaiserreich Beta 0.15 - 'Leaving for Syria'

The Ottoman rework has been teased for a long time so I know you’ll be happy to hear it is finally here and ready for you to enjoy! Not only that, but the National France rework comes with it two, along with several other new focus trees. We’ve also spent time working on other changes, such as letting you recall volunteers, along with many bug fixes and performance improvements. We hope you enjoy the changes and have fun playing Kaiserreich!
Note: As always this patch isn’t save-game compatible. If you would like to continue your game please use the manual download found here:
- The KR4 team
Changes
Notable Additions
New Focus Trees
Reworked/Expanded Focus Trees
Tweaked Focus Trees
New Events
Tweaked Events
New Decisions
Tweaked Decisions
New Custom Country Paths
GFX
Music Mod
Mapping
Miscellaneous
Fixes
Notable Fixes
Other Fixes
We hope you enjoy playing Kaiserreich as much as we did making it!
- The KR4 Team: Alpinia, Arvidus, Augenis, Blackfalcon501, DSFDarker, Carmain, Dr. Njitram, Drozdovite, Edouard Saladier, Eragaxshim, Flamefang, Fort, JazzyHugh, Jeankedezeehond, Jonjon428, Jonny BL, Krco, Liegnitz, Maltesefalcon, Matoro, Nijato, NukeGaming, OperationsManagementDecisions, PPsyrius, Pietrus, Rei VL, Rylock, SPQR, Starguard, Telcontar101, The Alpha Dog, The Irredentista, Thomahawk2k, Vidyaország, WordZero, Yard1, Zankoas and Zimbabwe Salt Co.
submitted by Alpinia_KR to Kaiserreich [link] [comments]

Oil on Mars

Submission statement: This is a short collapse story written by my good friend who died in 2019. He gave me a USB stick that contained some of his unfinished and completed work before he passed. As far as I know he only self published one novel on smashwords.com. He was not interested in fame or fortune but I know he would have wanted more people to read his work. I know nothing about publishing so I will submit this to collapse readers for your consideration. He wrote his novel under the pseudonym Gregory Truman and I will use that name as the author.
Oil on Mars
By: Gregory Truman
The shocking news was sent back to Earth by the lander Seeker relayed from its Martian atmospheric drone Revealer. The drone was sent specifically to check out the water seepage from the sides of the cliffs bordering the vast Valles Marineris canyon near the Martian equator. The seepage had been discovered from photographs taken on previous missions. The drone took samples hovering over several seeps and did an onboard analysis of the liquid’s content. The result was conclusive. It was a mixture of water and crude oil, equivalent to West Texas Intermediate.
This was unbelievable news. We had all been told that Mars was a dead world; completely lifeless. And that may be true recently, but scientists hurriedly hypothesized that over a billion years ago when Mars was temperate with oceans and rain, the land could have been covered with some kind of primitive plant life. There may even have been a Carboniferous like epoch that could have lasted for several hundred million years.
Just by looking at the highly eroded mountains of Mars and the ancient dry river beds and flood plains one can plainly see evidence of rain and floods and from the multiple times the water ice caps had melted that would have buried almost everything that once lived upon the surface. The combination of heat and pressure and time had done the same thing on Mars as it had done to deeply buried organic material here on Earth; it was transformed it into crude oil. The world was astounded. The debate started immediately; how to take advantage of this discovery?
Conditions on Earth had worsened since the beginning of the 21st century. There was still some oil in the ground, but it was costly to drill for it. The market for oil had been drying up for years, with very few planes still flying. The oil that was left was needed to generate electrical power. It was expensive and beyond the reach of most people who were still switching to bicycles to get around. The cities and suburbs and country side were mostly depopulated and littered with the hulks of rusting automobiles. Plagues, pestilence, bad weather and crop failure had more than decimated world populations. People had become resigned to a harsh world. Few had any hope for a better future. Governments and the ruling classes were more vicious in their attempts to hold on to their power and privileges. Every endeavor had been corrupted. Every attempted reform and revolution was ruthlessly crushed. Things were getting worse for the wealthy also. They were finding it difficult to buy wine, hire servants, and to eat fancy foods.
The economy everywhere had been propped up by cheap credit for decades. Profits and taxes had been strip-mined from every enterprise that used credit to survive and were soon bankrupted when credit was denied. There were not enough jobs, not enough customers, and not enough profits left to pay their debts. The world economy had not only stopped growing, it was continuing to contract.
The central banks of the world had tried flooding their markets with monetary liquidity, but they could not create more jobs. They reluctantly had to give free money to their citizens to increase spending and revive growth. In the U.S., to avoid another inflationary spiral the monthly stipend was only a little more than for subsistence, just enough to prevent more rioting. It wasn’t enough money to get people spending again the way they did before the crisis. Economists believed that growth could only begin again after a fresh start. But what could a government do to contrive a fresh start? Someone in a think tank convinced powerful people that what was needed was a new reason to grow the economy, some goal to revive the animal spirits of a dejected populace. This news from Mars seemed to provide the perfect prescription. Headlines and news channels around the world soon screamed out the idea: WE ARE GOING TO MARS!
Almost everyone knew it would be too expensive to ship oil from Mars to Earth, so the plan was to go to Mars and burn the oil there, to generate power for the first pioneering colonists. All the other products derived from petroleum would soon be available to those colonists from Earth. The public were told not to think too much about the details, those would be worked out by experts. The point to keep in mind was we were finally going to Mars! And that thought did arouse some animal spirits in a population that seemed to have lost all enthusiasm.
People wanted to know exactly who and how many were actually going. They were told that after careful screening, the number of colonists would be decided according to technical and practical considerations. Hopefully the minimum number would be around a dozen people for the initial launch and many more on subsequent launches. Everyone was encouraged to apply if they were interested in going, but they must be prepared for hard work to acquire the skills that would be needed for survival on Mars. The selection process would be long and arduous. The whole world would be contributing to this grand adventure; the expansion of mankind to a new world. Old rivalries would be forgotten as we forged a new commitment to the future of the human race. This optimism inspired more than a few to hope for a brighter tomorrow.
Many wealthy people had been preparing to retreat into their underground bunkers for years, when conditions became severe enough. They were hoping their precautions would allow them to ride out the projected mass extinction for a little while longer. Most had accepted that it was inevitable by then with the mounting evidence all around them. Some millionaires had become billionaires over the years buying out the means of production and the supply chains for the bare necessities of life the impoverished masses depended upon. The average person had no chance for any upward mobility.
Most of the public realized by then that the root of the problem had something to do with wealth inequality; the growing gap between the vast wealth accumulated by a few families and the poverty of the majority of people struggling just to survive. Whether this was the cause or a result of the decline, or if it was the fault of capitalism itself was hotly debated. The great grandchildren of the baby boomers had all grown up wondering how their elders could have been so complacent; satisfied with bread and circuses instead of addressing or even acknowledging the growing crisis. Older people often defended themselves with standard responses: We didn’t know; we were preoccupied with personal problems; we had no real power to change anything; and life is short, we did not evolve traits to cope with long range problems. These and other excuses were unacceptable to the young. Many were becoming increasingly angry by the fact that billionaires could exist in this world while millions of people, mostly children, starve to death every year. To them, this was proof enough of a great crime against humanity. And this was an ongoing crime, because when wealthy people died their great fortunes lived on and continued to grow as they were passed down within the family to the next generation of trust fund babies, who would acquire that wealth only by an accident of birth.
This process of wealth accumulation and inheritance appeared to be a hold- over from at least the feudal times of lords and kings in the middle ages. The lords would take a percentage of the peasant’s crop. More recently they take a share of income. But there are still no taxes on wealth. There have been some improvements in human affairs over the centuries but the rules of wealth and inheritance remain unreformed most likely by the power of the wealthy themselves who have institutionalized and benefitted from the status quo. Those people who cared enough about this problem could not see a way to remedy the inequity. To do so would require major changes to the political and economic system, but none of them could even conceive of a way to accomplish the drastic reforms necessary to make those changes. And even if there was a way to do it, they knew the vested interests of big money would never allow those changes to happen. The situation appeared hopeless. A growing percentage of the world’s population were angry, believing that one way or another; the rich still ruled the world and were ultimately responsible for most of the suffering in it.
Very wealthy people were often vilified for their avarice and sometimes physically attacked in their homes and fortified compounds. In spite of their precautions, they were increasingly anxious about the locations of their bunkers becoming known. They could no longer feel safe anywhere. They were becoming so afraid of their less fortunate neighbors that several billionaires petitioned the government to grant them passage to Mars, and they were willing to pay their own way to get there. They hoped they could maintain their lifestyle in a more secure place, and possibly even escape the progressing mass extinction here on Earth.
Because of the lost tax revenue from the financial collapse, the U.S. government always needed more money that it didn’t have to barrow or create for itself. It had become accustomed to accommodating the well to do and making promises it could not keep. So it just made sense to take some wealthy families to Mars if they would be willing to pay the exorbitant ticket price of 500 million dollars per person. A few in the top tenth of the one percent were eager to pay that amount for each family member if it meant a continuation of their privileged life on another world they believed would be safer from the risk and the squalor on this one. For their financial help they demanded and were promised their own small city of rich people where they would not be troubled by rubbing shoulders with the technical rabble that would be needed to maintain the colonies. The cost of the Mars project was estimated to approach half a year of the United States’ gross domestic product. The public were told this infusion of funds from the world’s wealthiest families would help to mitigate that cost by many billions of dollars. Even though they would contribute nothing else to the project, their money made it worthwhile to take them along.
Needless to say, there was a huge amount of skepticism about this plan. The Russians and the Chinese were the first to pour cold water on the scheme. They would not participate in what they called a desperate boondoggle by a degenerating empire to swindle the last remaining wealth from its people. The scientific community was divided. Most reputable scientists scoffed at the idea, calling it impractical to impossible. Others, especially from the aero-space and mining industries and those receiving grants from the government, supported the plan. Economists believed it would revive the economy with large construction contracts and increase employment. It didn’t seem to matter to them if the project succeeded or not. Most of the public who were never going to Mars were against the idea. Even those who were uninformed about all the technical problems involved laughed about it. Rational objections were raised about every aspect of the plan and responses to them were supplied by the president and his supporters. Here are some of those objections:
Q. There is no oxygen on Mars. What will people breathe? And how can you burn the oil without oxygen?
A. “We will take enough oxygen to Mars to get us started. Scientists from the mining industry are working on extracting oxygen from Martian mineral deposits.”
Q. There is no energy source on Mars. Where will you get the power to do anything?
A. “A small nuclear plant will be set up on Mars initially. It will be cooled by melted water ice dug out of the sub-soil of Mars. Eventually there will be oil fired power plants. Adding more carbon dioxide to the Martian atmosphere will actually help to warm the planet in the long run.”
Q. How will you get the oil out of the ground? From the seepage on the canyon walls the oil deposits are believed to be more than six miles deep.
A. “We will drill laterally from the seeps in the canyon walls.”
Q. There is no real soil on Mars. How will you grow any food?
A. “Most food will be grown hydroponically. We will take some soil with us and create more using Martian dirt. We will only have to take food with us in the beginning.”
Q. Almost everything you need must be taken with you to Mars. How much material by weight must you take to support one person for one year?
A. “At first supplies per person will be quite substantial. Heavy lift robot transport rockets will be built to move supplies to Mars before humans are sent there.”
Q. There are harmful cosmic rays, solar radiation and small meteors reaching the surface of Mars. How will your habitats be protected?
A. “Habitats will be constructed mostly underground. Boring machines will be sent to Mars before people arrive, with enough fuel and oxygen to run them when they do.”
Q. The amount of sunlight reaching Mars will not allow you to grow crops the way we do here on Earth. How do you plan to solve that problem?
A. “We will use grow lights and solar collecting and distribution mirrors.”
Q. How long will it take for humans to become self-sufficient on Mars?
A. “Current estimates are in about ten years.”
Q. That seems overly optimistic. Most scientists say it will take at least twenty years. How did you derive your estimate? And we don’t have twenty years left.
A. “The President has determined that all these challenges will be overcome. Idle speculation of this sort does not help us accomplish our goals. We should all be grateful for the jobs and opportunities this great endeavor has provided for us, and we should all get back to work.”
Despite other objections from many quarters the program was rushed through congress and approved. The European Union soon backed out of the deal, with one French wag declaring the Americans had discovered a new way to dig holes and fill them in again. Contracts were let to major defense contractors and smaller companies also got onto the gravy train. Finally even the Japanese and the British dropped out and the Americans, as the self-proclaimed leader of the free world, had to soldier on alone.
Only a few people would be going to Mars and the rest would have to stay on this world that was rapidly winding down to ruin. It was difficult for most of them to get excited about this grand enterprise. They respected the brave and well trained Martian colonists with whom they would vicariously share the great adventure. But they had developed a loathing for the wealthy people they viewed as parasites attaching themselves to the best of humanity and escaping from a world they had already wrecked with their greed. The common belief was those billionaires would end up ruining Mars too.
Within two years the first of the robot freight hauling ships was launched towards Mars. No more would be launched before the first one touched down successfully after a seven month journey. It was on a one way trip; there was no fuel to send it back. Some of its parts were designed for duel use by the colonists when they arrived. They would dismantle the ship and use many of its parts for other construction. The first of the colonists would be a skeleton crew of technicians to prepare quarters for the next group to arrive.
During the next three years fourteen more robot transport ships landed on Mars, four more than originally planned. The project was now a year behind schedule. Three trillion dollars had already been spent. Project designers refining the plan discovered unexpected expenses and huge cost over runs in every department. The cost in fuel alone to lift miles of insulated steel pipe into orbit far exceeded the original allocation for the task. Another nuclear power plant had to be constructed and shipped to Mars just to heat enough water pumped into those pipes plus the chemicals needed to make the oil eventually flow. More containers of compressed Earth atmosphere and oxygen were needed to supply the growing list of the world’s billionaire families who were buying tickets to escape from the depredations in their lifestyle here on Earth. Many complained about having to live like the peasants around them. Their luxuries were becoming almost impossible to find.
The government early on had classified the whole project. Cost over runs and promises never meant to be kept were a routine method of government operations. They accepted any prospective migrant willing to pay for a ticket. The government would not give up that revenue stream. Even pets were accepted; 300 million for a dog, 200 million for a cat, 100 million for a bird. They drew the line at hamsters or rats. They knew the project was over-extended but as with the F35 fighter jet, the usual solution for government failure is to throw more money at the problem.
Public relation firms were hired to give periodic optimistic progress reports about the project. Commercial artists were employed to render beautiful Martian landscapes featuring futuristic looking colonial buildings and enterprises that were displayed on television and over the internet. By then most of the world’s billionaires had decided that the option of living on Mars was their best choice to insure the safety and the future for themselves and their heirs. There were now more billionaires going to Mars than the trained specialists needed to maintain the colony.
Within the nexus of the classified program were the intelligence agencies with access to all the data. They could see the project for what it truly was; an out of control boondoggle just as their presumed enemies had described it. The wealthy and well-connected had swindled the American public once again. Some of the perpetrators who became billionaires embezzling government funds had themselves bought tickets, unaware that the project had become a complete scam. There was not going to be enough money to build a city for the wealthy people. There was not enough equipment or supplies for half the people signed up to go or enough rockets to carry them all to Mars.
Those intelligence agencies considered it their duty to cover up government ineptitude and to extricate politicians from policies and situations that would make them look like complete fools to the rest of the world. It had always been a tough and nasty job and they were not known for their scruples while doing it. The U.S. government had no intention of refunding billions of dollars to billionaires. To accomplish the government’s objective the agencies came up with a plan that also included, as an incidental bonus, a remedy for the wealth inequality dilemma.
Revisions to the project’s schedule were forcefully suggested. Notice was given to the ticket holders that they would all be leaving on the last rocket to Mars after the elaborate preparations for their arrival were completed. They would embark on the journey in a completely refurbished freighter with all the amenities they were accustomed to. Some passengers demanded to leave sooner, conditions on Earth were getting just too insufferable to stay any longer they complained. They were mollified with illustrations of the luxurious state rooms, the fine dining opportunities and the grand ballroom aboard the ship.
Seven years after the first appropriations from congress, and two and a half years behind schedule, the first of the highly trained colonists were launched into space for the historic trip with great fanfare. Social interactions among the twelve crew members were avidly followed by the world’s citizens during that long journey to Mars. Some of the live coverage was real and some was scripted to enhance the drama. Four more ship loads of astronauts, engineers, scientists and technicians eventually touched down on the red planet. For the foreseeable future, those sixty pioneers would be the full complement of humans on Mars.
They managed to get the small nuclear plant at the base camp working well enough, but the one designed to pump hot water to liquefy the oil had broken off the cliff edge during assembly and tumbled down the boulder strewn slope to the bottom of the Valles Marineris Canyon. The technicians never did get the hydroponics going, but there would be enough food and oxygen to last for several years if the wealthy families were not coming. On the advice of the intelligence agencies, and after spending more than eight trillion dollars, the politicians and those in charge had secretly decided to cut their losses and pulled the remaining funding from the project.
As the last great ship filled with over seven hundred wealthy colonists on their way to the fabulous new city on Mars, they were relieved of their cellular devices as they entered. They were informed their use could interfere with the ship’s operations, and they would not work at all on Mars. Accommodations inside the ship were nothing like those they had seen advertised. There were no crew members on board. Not a single acceleration couch could be found, just empty decks and compartments stripped bare of equipment and supplies. It was too late to complain about them. They lifted off automatically at the appointed hour but failed to reach orbit and burned up in the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean. A technical error was blamed for the mishap. The intelligence agencies and most of the people on Earth cried only crocodile tears for those who had been lost, believing both Mars and this old world would stand a better chance without them.
submitted by thecurseofhope to collapse [link] [comments]

Old Austin Tales: Scenic Trips to Watters Park on the A&NW Railroad Available for Two Bits (25¢) - 1890s

The other day someone posted here in /austin a nice video of the granite blocks that remain from train derailments that occurred back in the 1880s when the Capitol was under construction and trains would bring granite from quarries near Burnet. Apparently they left most of the blocks where they stood. There has been much discussion about the blocks here before, but I wanted to share with y'all some newspaper clippings of when this happened. Unfortunately I couldn't find any!
But one thing I ended up finding when searching for news of the granite block derailments were advertisements for Watters Park, and for excursion trains on the Austin and North Western Railroad, the railroad that was built for the purpose of bringing the blocks into Austin. The route the train followed back then is the same one the MetroRail Redline uses today. It went as far as Marble Falls. But Watters Park was the first stop outside of Austin and after the capitol was completed, the train route was used most often to ferry excursionists to and from this place. Today Watters Park is little more than a street name exit off of N. Mopac and an entry on TSHA site. But back in the 1890s it was a recreational destination like we think of Zilker Park today. It wasn't a water park with slides, but more of a natural area with a train station, a bandstand and dancing area, a few shops, a few permanent resident farmers and lots of livestock.
There are no photos of these old trains or of Watters Park that I know of. So I thought I would copypaste for y'all a few articles describing the beauty of the place and what kinds of events took place there, and of the excursion trains that would go out to the hill country northwest of here.
But first let's get the small bit I could find about the granite blocks out of the way. This old KXAN article that was submitted here a little over a year ago explains them for those who don't already know:
Why capitol builders abandoned these granite blocks in Austin in the 1880s
The Texas capitol turns 131 years old Thursday, but you don’t have to visit the building to see the history surrounding its construction.
Massive granite blocks are scattered along rail lines throughout Austin, dotting the landscape visible from Capital Metro’s MetroRail routes between Leander and downtown. The blocks — at least 50 of them in all — are accidental monuments to the effort that went into building the statehouse in the 1880s.
“They would have been in the capitol if they’d gotten there,” Mike Cox, a longtime Austin writer and amateur historian, told KXAN.
Cox’s latest book, “Legends and Lore of the Texas Capitol,” published in 2017, tells stories about the iconic pink dome, including how the massive blocks of almost-capitol arrived at their new homes along Austin’s rail lines.
He first started hearing the tale as a kid. “My grandfather’s father…was actually among the laborers who helped build the capitol,” he said, so when he was young, his grandfather would point out the granite along Airport Boulevard and explain a piece of Texas history.
Back in the 1880s, when construction began, a quarry in Marble Falls agreed to donate all the “Sunset Red” granite needed to build the 302-foot-tall capitol. Contractors originally planned to use limestone but realized it became discolored when exposed to the elements due to iron in the rock.
In exchange for the granite, workers built a rail line to haul stone from the quarry up to Burnet, where it was shaped by masons from Scotland, and then down into Austin.
Some 4,000 train-loads stacked with nearly 190,000 cubic feet of granite rolled into the capital city during the six years of construction leading up to the building’s dedication on May 16, 1888. But not all of it made the entire trek.
Hauled on flatcars riding a small-gauge rail, some of the blocks simply fell off the train; since the state was getting them for free, it made more sense just to haul in more instead of spending the effort and money to pick them back up.
Most of them are still where they fell more than 130 years ago. “Not likely to be going anywhere at 168 pounds per cubic foot,” Cox said.
MetroRail commuter trains now follow the same route as the granite-haulers; though the tracks have been modernized, the blocks have stayed put.
A large collection sits along the track at Waters Park Road, near Mopac and Parmer Lane. Less than a mile south, several more blocks are visible at the crossing on Gracy Farms Lane, and a smaller chunk is hidden in the brush where the tracks cross 38th 1/2 Street in east Austin.
In at least one instance, train cars derailed completely while crossing a bridge over Brushy Creek in northwest Austin, sending about three dozen blocks into the creek bed below. The Brushy Creek Greenbelt grew up around them, and visitors can see and explore the piles of almost-capitol granite. The state installed a historical marker near the site in 2008.
Cox also found a solitary block in Bertram. There are likely more along the miles of track between Burnet and Austin, he said, but they’re either hard to access or covered up by brush.
One place he can’t find them, though, is the spot that spawned his interest in the story and in history more generally.
“The only ones that I know that have been reclaimed were the ones that I used to see on Airport Boulevard,” he said. In all his research, he’s never come across a reference to the stones being removed, and can only speculate as to what happened to them.
“I’d sure like to know if somebody does know where they went,” he said. “It’s not the kind of thing you can just go over there and pick up and put in the trunk of your car.”
That’s why many of the blocks haven’t moved in the last 130 years. They’ve withstood the test of time, each one a memorial to the work that went into the capitol all those years ago; each one a piece of almost-capitol.
Back in 1962 a Statesman history writer named Hamilton Wright wrote an article on the history of Watters Park. Quoting some of it:
Waiters Park Excursions Popular And Real Bargain in Good Old Day
Sights and Incidents you would have seen in the 1890s in the Austin country: A "dummy-line" railway engine standing at the west side of Congress Avenue at Fourth Street. It was in the early 1890s,...
THE LITTLE "pleasure resort" of Watters Park, 10 miles north of Austin on the narrow gauge Austin and Northwestern Railroad. A regular summer Sunday excursion train "toted" you to and from that pleasure retreat for the insignificant sum of two bits--25 cents. Watters Park had a beer saloon where big, white collared mugs were pushed over the well lined bar. Also a cotton gin, a store and a section house for gandy dancers of the railroad. Just south was the bayou-like Walnut Creek whose origin was a bubbling, fern-fringed fountain. Watters in the 1890s was on the popular wagon route called "The Georgetown Road." Two miles west of Watters Park was Duval, a rail station before Austin welcomed the I&GN, now the Missouri Pacific. It contained bare stone walls just below the Walnut Creek which legend said had been a water driven grist mill when Austin was in its swaddling clothes. Some of the ruins remain to this day.
FIND REPORTED
Near Watters Park in the late 1890s natural asphalt was reported found seeping out of Walnut Creek banks. The report created a sensation in Austin and The Statesman related a company might be formed to develop the find. Doubtless the asphalt still seeps from the deposit there.
The same Statesman history reporter made an even better article in 1963 about Watters Park and some of the other nearby places that are long gone:
Austin has come a "fur piece" since 1890.
As a boy I used to sit on the gatepost of our county home 10 miles north ol Austin, on the old Round Rock-Georgetown Thoroughfare, and watch long strings of Longhorn cattle slowly driven northward, monopolizing the narrow lane and making buggy-travel perilous. And farmers still drove yokes of oxen big animals, slow but obedient. And we used to ride in a straw-covered wagon to church at Merriltown, three miles away.
The man and his wife sat on the seat and the children and I was one of them dangled our feet out the endgate and other adults sat in rickety rawhide-bottom chairs. The conversation to the church was anticipation and that on the way back comments on the contents of the long-drawn-out sermon. Usually we children had not survived the long passage but fallen asleep and, like stovewood, fondly laid to rest and slumber in the hay in the wagon. Them was the the good days nonetheless!
There was a little frame school house at Summitt where we lived. It had 20 or 30 nondescript boy and girl pupils. It ran only a few months in the year. I was too young to "matriculate." All about were cotton and com fields. Corn really made a good yield in those days. In the spring, roasting ears were a delicacy for a time. And mustang grapes matted almost every stunted tree and produced great clusters of grapes. The green ones saturated with brown sugar made excellent cobblers. And some of the "anti" men of the community had developed a very pronounced taste for the ropy, language-provoking wine they made. Sometimes tramps caught between towns after dusk stole into fields of corn, got a handful of ears, and buried them with shucks on, into the hot ashes. After a long stay they were taken out and eaten. Nothing better!
Before my departure from the Summit community the highway through there was macadamized. County prisoners and convicts with chain and ball about each one's feet did the arduous job of making big lumps of limestone into little ones. The road through there was a long time under construction. But it effectively lifted the farmers and sheepmen of the Duval-Watters-Summitt communities out of black mud which after slow rains clogged wheels and completely disrupted transportation and communication. Running about a quarter mile back of our farm house was the Austin and Northwestern Railroad, built a narrow-gauge to handle huge blocks of granite from Granite Mountain to the site of the present State Capitol.
Many a time I waved at the engineer on the dinky, smoke-spitting and grumbling locomotive. And sometimes the train made a contribution of free blocks of granite when they tumbled off the flat cars on which they had been perched, they were never picked up.
About a mile farther on the way to Austin was a small board designating the "station" an empty place on the line where a chance passenger waved his hand with a "washout signal" to get the train to stop and pick him up. And about half a mile west of our house the International and Great Northern Railroad (now the Missouri Pacific) ran through big corn-held. A little shed 6 by 3 feet, covered, bore the name Amboy, where passenger trains stopped on flag. Originally the station was Mount Juliet and boasted a store and a postoffice.
Duval, 2 miles farther north, was an important station back in the 1880's and 1890's. It once had a depot, sectionhouse and a large mercantile establishment, once visited by Sam Bass and his gang. Duval was noted for its gushing spring, the source of Walnut Creek. The spring once furnished enough water for a grist mill, probably long before the Civil War. Copperhead and rattlesnakes were numerous.
Now Duval, Amboy, Watters, Mount Juliet do not rate a station whistle from speedy freight and passenger trains. No longer does one see a yoke of oxen, and the once-modern macadam road is now paved. And the boy who sat on the Summitt gate-post and watched the long string of Long-horns go by and longed for the long tarrying buggy of his dad to return from Austin 8 miles away then but now inside Austin and the sack of mixed candy he was bringing to his tot sits in a rocker trying to understand the riddle of life a man of nearly 79, still full of wonderment.
I've always wanted to know more about what kinds of festivities took place in Watters Park so I went looking further in the old Weekly Statesman editions from the 1890s and very early 1900s in the UNT archive. There was a lot to find! Mostly farming reports and news from the police blotter. But some of the reports were advertisements for the park. Quoting one from 1897:
THE GLORIES OF WATTERS
An Ideal Place for Romancers and Picnickers.
Every observing traveler over the Austin and Northwestern Railway has been struck with the variety and beauty of the adjoining landscape the solid and well kept roadbed and the substantial and picturesque depots at stopping points which prove that the road is under the management of a man of fine taste and good judgment. One of the most noticeable stations is at Watters fourteen miles by rail and ten by road from Austin on the headwaters of Walnut creek. Watters is a pretty little village which threatens by its popularity as a holiday resort to soon develop into a town it not a city Not only is the village itself interesting but it is surrounded by a country so varied in character and favored by nature is rarely met with in Texas. Before the advent of the railroad the village was known as Sumnerville after one of the old settlers but the railway builders gave it is present name as one of the natives explained because tho waters of the two branches of Walnut creek met there but of this deponent is not in a position to speak. It has always been a favorite camping place for the lovers of Outdoor religious meetings.- and under the spreading branches of the giant pecans that now shade the new bandstand and dancing platform. Many a sinners has been shaken up and steadied down to a new order of life.
There is nothing narrow or intolerant about Watters and its community. The festive pleasure seeker and the devout worshiper are alike welcomed and made to feel at home. This was noticeable twice during a recent week, when a protracted meeting was in full swing at the campground about 100 yards east of Watters while the coloired folks enjoyed' themselves in Pecan park 100 yards west without any conflict of interests or enjoyment
We are a cosmopolitan people
Visitors to Watters can always join heartily in singing "I have been there and still would go" as it supplies unexpected sensations and revelation to the "cribbed cabined and confined" denizens of the city and the residents of less God-favored sections of the country.
A brief description of the more interesting scenes near Watters are now in order. The first place of interest to the holiday maker is Pecan park, which adjoins the depot and covers about ten acres. It looks as if specially designed for picnic purposes being studed with noble pecan trees many of which would be in full bearing when Columbus said to the king of Spain: ''I will go and discover America."
Under the umbrageous limbs of one of these patriarchs, Capt. Leitnaker erected a neat, sensational and commodious bandstand and platform which will be found equally well adapted for' social political and religious festivals. Benches and tables are supplied free, 'pro bono pulblico'.
Within the park is a spring of never-failing water of the purest brand. If Watters had nothing beyond' the park as an attraction for pleasure seekers, it would have a solid and sufficient excuse for inviting strangers out; but with an aggregation of natural beauties and scenes made famous (locally) in pre-state and antebellum times she should become the Mecca of pleasure seeking pilgrims.
Within a mile of the park can be found bits" of scenery and historical spots that may some day inspire a latter-dav Cooper and Sir Walter Scott. Old settlers have thrilling tales to tell of adventures in combats with Indians who had their headquarters at a spring which forms the head of Walnut creek at Duval, and they point out spots where settlers were scalped and red men dispatched to the happy hunting ground. Innumerable mounds adorn or disfigure the landscape below which the warriors' mortal remains together with those of their faithful ponies and other personal belongings still lie.
Leaving Watters and following the course of Walnut creek in a westerly direction the traveler with an eye for the beautiful and a slightly impressionable imagination will find scenes that will serve as a good substitute for the fabled beauties of more fashionable resorts in other parts of the world. The views are inspiring and suggestive rather than over-awing. Here you get hints of mighty canyons and dizzy peaks as you look upon the towering lichen-covered bluffs that rise above the dark and gloomy caves. Over one of these bluffs you will be told that a Comanche chief hard pressed by a party of settlers whose homes had been raided leapt for life and falling about 150 feet found a hard rock bottom and death.
Close by the spot is a cavern known as the "Robbers' cave" which is believed to be connected with the Sam Bass cave at McNeil three miles distant. Its extent and interior arrangements still remain a mystery in spite of the enterprise of many adventurous spirits who have Sinbad tales to tell of what they saw or imagined they saw. In the course of their explorations. A little further on in the bottom of the creek is a large boulder surrounded by dry sand and pebbly shingle except in times of flood known as the "popping rock." As tradition says that one of our old governors there "popped tho question" to his loved one while they sat there enjoying the beauties of nature and each others' society. As the popper was perfectly satisfied with the reply, many lovesick swains have by one subterfuge and another lured their loved ones to the same spot and the result has never been known to be unfavorable. In fact a well known geologist has declared that the popping rock of Walnut is almost identical in character with the Blarney stone of Kilarney.
A few yards further west the course of the creek is barred with an utmost perpendicular wall of rock which in flood times forms a miniature Niagara and causes an atmospheric disturbance that can be heard at a great distance. When the creek is in flood many people come to see the falls of Walnut and seeing them feel repaid.
These are but a few of the interesting places in the district but there is practically no limit to them. Not only will those tired with the confinement of the city enjoy the freedom of country life but the student the artist the naturalist and the scientist will each find gratification and reward for a day's outing in this favored district. It is the fashion of the day for people to travel great distances at great cost and inconvenience to "do" scenes rendered famous in song and story while they remain utterly oblivious of greater natural treasures close at home. --AN OBSERVER.
So there you have a good description of what the place was like. Now what kinds of events took place there? Well from about 1897 to about 1902 there was an annual Labor Day event that attracted thousands. This is a page of the Statesman from 1902 that is too long to copypaste but describes 10000 people filling the park for the festivities. After a parade downtown they took the train to Watters Park, and got rained out later in the evening, having to wait for the train in the mud. Similar events took place in 1901 the year before.
However, around 1902 or 1903 everything changed for Watters Park. Asphalt was found seeping into the creek and that led to much speculation that there might be undiscovered oil deposits underground. There was a land rush as this 1903 article talks about, including interest from Standard Oil. By the end of 1903 the bandstand and pavillion had been taken down and there was barely an acre that hadn't been leased to oil drillers. This activity apparently went on well into the 1920s as this 1925 article tells us. But as we all know from the lack of oil wells in the area today, apparently they found nothing worthwhile.
As the TSHA article linked earlier says, the end was nigh for Watters Park:
During and following World War I the tourist industry diminished, and the park was mostly used by residents. During the Great Depression many of these moved to other communities, such as Dessau, Austin, and Pflugerville. The school closed after the war, and children were sent to Summit School, a mile south of the community. Additional depopulation took place during and after World War II. Most of the structures were abandoned and eventually collapsed. Some families remained on the land until death or hard times caused their departure. By 1980 only one family descended from original residents occupied the townsite. During the 1970s commercial structures were built in the townsite. More recently, the construction of a north extension of Loop 1 from U.S. Highway 183 to Burnet Road caused the remaining family to depart and destroyed a large part of the buried remains of the town. Archeological and archival investigations of the community were conducted by the Texas Department of Highways in advance of construction. Housing developments have eaten away at the edges of the original site. Little remains today except Waters Park Road, the dam over the creek, and portions of the baseball field (that's mostly gone now too).
That's all for today. I don't have any photos for Bonus Pics so I'll link a few Bonus Articles.
Bonus Article #1 - What a Statesman reporter saw on an excursion train trip to Marble Falls on the Austin & North Western Railroad - September 12, 1889
Bonus Article #2 - Advertisement in Swedish for a concert in Watters Park from a Swedish-language newspaper called The Texas Posten - August 9, 1900
Bonus Article #3 - "One Killed in Centex Car Violence" (Collision with Granite Flatcar) - January 15, 1955
Bonus Article #4 - Ad for "Grand Labor Day Celebration" (in Watters Park) - September 3, 1900
Bonus Article #5 - "Oil Boom Promised for Watters Park" - June 4, 1903
submitted by s810 to Austin [link] [comments]

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Best Amazon FBA Courses (With In-Depth Summaries/Reviews of Each One)

For the past several years, a partner and I stepped hard into the Amazon Marketplace, and since knowledge is power, we went through a lot of FBA courses to fine-tune our product listings and shipping procedures.
In this review, I will cover the 6 Best FBA Courses to take in 2020 below:
From 2016 until recently, I dove deep into the Amazon FBA world to really get a feel for how to do it but also to see how it compared to my first business model.
These are the "big guns" of the Amazon Private Label Community, and I not only rank them here, but I also offer full, in-depth reviews for each of them as well as quick bio of each Amazon coaches.
DISCLAIMER: UNBAISED REVIEW-NO AFFILIATE LINKS
To show you that I am qualified to write these reviews, you should know that my partner and I have created two 6-figure product lines on Amazon.
So I have been very active as a seller on Amazon, using the fulfillment services offered by Bezos' company.
That said, I am not a know-it-all type guru, just a millennial intent on maximizing the value of the internet.
The Bottom line:
All I can give you is my own experience and reflections on what has worked best for my business. (If you want the in-depth story on one of my FBA products, read up on my Amazon Case Study)
Read My Amazon Case Study Here
Reminder: I'm not an affiliate to any FBA course.
Wondering what criteria I use to evaluate each course?
I rate my courses based on the presence and quality of:
My goal is that this bird's eye view into each FBA course will enable you to pick the online training program that is right for you and your situation.
Not one of these FBA courses is right for everyone, as each course instructor has their own teaching style that jives best with certain personalities better than others.
At the end of this post, I show you why lead generation is still my top recommendation in 2020. (aka how it stacks up against Amazon FBA)
But first things first:
My Top 6 FBA courses for 2020
6.) Amazon FBA Ninja by Kevin David
Course length: 10 hours and 19 minutes. Price: $3,997 (but often 50% off on the website)
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PROS
CONS
FBA NINJA MASTERCLASS COURSE DETAILS:
The FBA Ninja Masterclass does have some holes, but Kevin displays his brilliance when it comes to his FB Ads Training that he includes.
Kevin doesn't pull an punches, he's more of a straight-to-the-point personality type. His videos aren't long and drawn out, but use time efficiently.
If you are an apply-it-on-the-fly kind of person, you'll definitely enojy the spped at which Kevin delivers his education.
Are you the reading type?
Looking for written course content?
Kevin shows a lot of value here as well providing pdfs in most of his modules. But as a heads up, there's unique content in both the vids and papers, so to get the max value, you should both watch and read.
📷
I'd say this course is for you if you can handle a firehose of rapid fire information. If you're a little on the ADD side (as I am), you'll not be bored like in your senior year english classes.
You do need to be able to take concepts and run with them, problem solving as you go, as Kevin doesn't cover all the hypotheticals in his mini-lectures.
Just be ready to run with your laptop, paper and pen if you opt-in to this course.
Overall, the Amazon FBA Ninja Course is affordably priced and enables you to exchange gold nuggets with other Private Label Ninjas in the FB group.
The Bottom Line
Best selling point
Biggest Issues
Conclusion:
Just like his Lambo, this course is Fast and Furious! If you are ready to rapidly build an FBA business, you'll enjoy Kevin David's ninja approach. #thatlifestyleninja
Just as a warning, Kevin teaches a product selection model that worked really well in 2017 when the marketplaces was not nearly as crowded as it is now and Chinese Suppliers weren't selling their own products on Amazon (like many are doing now).
But if you find a substitute product selection method, you'll have most of what you need.
FBA NINJA MASTERCLASS RATING: 3.0/5
Click Here to Read My Full In-Depth Review
5.) Nine University 2.0 - Kale & Taylor
Course length: 16 hours of Video Content Price: $1,997
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PROS
CONS
NINE UNIVERSITY 2.0 COURSE DETAILS:
Kale and Taylor's Nine University 2.0 does have some age to it being made in 2017, but K&T have come back and updated their course, providing more details in certain modules like adding more research techniques to their product selection section.
One helpful hack that you might appreciate if you are new to the FBA game is to be sure that you ask your supplier for both the unit price and the shipping price of your products.
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**Warning: Kale is sometimes a little short with his explanations, leaving out some of the risks of his suggestions, like the fact that adding icons to listings could get your listing shut down (per Amazon's TOS). *\*
Kale & Taylor do a pretty good job at covering a lot of the details product listing construction as well as providing specific suggestions on product shipping and packaging, like how to tell your supplier where to label your items and proactively fixing some of the issues that shipping your products via plane brings.
Finally, if you need motivation or hype, this course is for you! Kale brings the fire in nearly every lesson he teaches!
The Bottom Line
Best selling point
Biggest Issues
Conclusion:
Overall, KT Nine's course provides value, but for what it is it's overpriced.
Nine University 2.0 does include a couple of helpful bonuses (Quick Start Bootcamp and FB Ads Mini Course) that increase the value of the their course a bit.
Since they have gone through and updated their course, it is current for 2020.
NINE UNIVERSITY 2.0 RATING: 3.0/5
Click Here to Read Our Full In-Depth Review
4.) FBA Sales Accelerator - Ryan Rigney
Course length: 14 hours and 29 minutes. Price: $495 (1-on-1 coaching is extra)
📷
PROS
CONS
FBA SALES ACCELERATOR COURSE DETAILS:
The FBA Sales Accelerator does have some holes, but Kevin displays his brilliance when it comes to his FB Ads Training that he includes.
Ryan's course is clearly laid out from A to Z, covering most of what's needed to get going on Amazon, but it's important to note that Ryan has geared his course to help those who are already selling a product or two on Amazon.
If you already have the basics of FBA, this course might provide the next level for you as Ryan shows how to get more traffic (from Facebook) and get more reviews (using Many Chat and his own SaaS, BoostRooster).
📷
I'd say this course is for you if you can appreciate an amazon seller being fairly open about how they do their own business.
While he's not quite as vulnerable as Tim Sanders (Private Label Masters), he does share what's working for him and which platforms he focuses the majority of his attention on.
Ryan's a pro at bringing in external traffic onto Amazon (which helps his products pop to the top).
In addition to FB Ad training, he also provides insight on how to partner with Instagram Influencers such as what reasonable to pay them.
The Bottom Line
Best selling point
Biggest Issues
Conclusion:
Ryan provides excellent material for those who are in the intermediate stages of buidling their Amazon FBA businesses.
His course is not for those who are just getting started as he doesn't spend much time on the basics (product selection, listing creation, etc.)
He does provide excellent value through his brand mindset trainings.
FBA SALES ACCELERATOR RATING: 4.0/5
Click Here to Read Our Full In-Depth Review
3.) Amazing Selling Machine (ASM 11)
Course length: 19 hours Price: $5,000 (USD)
📷
PROS
CONS
ASM 11 COURSE DETAILS:
Matt Clark and Jason Katzenback started selling on Amazon in 2012.
Matt was already making money via private label on Amazon at the time and Jason had a history of selling educational materials on the internet dating back to 2003.
Matt brought Jason on because Jason wanted to learn to sell on Amazon and allegedly, sell he did. A variety of sources on the web indicate that he was soon doing 100k in revenue each month.
That same year, 2012, the two put together the Amazing Selling Machine and the rest seems to be history.
📷
When I started on Amazon in 2016, I went through their course and it helped me get the basics of selling on Jeff's ginormous platform.
The instructors (Rich Henderson and Mike McClary) do a very thorough job teaching the fundamentals of marketing private label items via FBA.
The fact that the course is taught by someone other than the founders (who are supposedly super successful on the platform) is a red flag to me, because that begs the question, do they really know what they are talking about?
But I saw a lot of reviews of people becoming successful through the course when I began looking into selling FBA in late 2015 (when starting a business, due diligence is a must, my first coaching program taught me that).
And it was through ASM in 2016 that I got my start in FBA.
Over the next 24 months, I built 2 brands to 6-figures.
Where the Amazing Selling Machine course falls short is that every year they proclaim to "update it," but really they simply add a few other features (like the "Profit Miner" chrome extension you can now get for free on their website if you opt in to their email list).
So when you buy into it now, you essentially get an old course (albeit a massive old course because of the add-ons) with some bells and whistles. #profitminer
The way I like to think of ASM now is as a 100 level, gen-ed college course.
You get the basics of the field, which is really helpful, but the practical strategies are outdated because it took so long for the course to be packaged and approved by the board of directors before it could be offered.
So it's a really beneficial course, even today, because of the grand perspective it gives you of the way that Amazon Private Label works.
The primary barrier to success is the same as with the FBA Ninja course:
Biggest Barrier to Success
The product selection process is outdated as the market has become super competitive for products sourced through Alibaba (a platform that connects sellers selling in the US market with inexpensive manufacturers and suppliers based in China).
The Amazon Marketplace will only become more crowded because the Chinese suppliers themselves are learning to sell on Amazon therefore being able to offer the same product at lower costs to the shoppers, essentially undercutting private label sellers.
Why might you want to be in ASM 11?
If you want to get a well-rounded education on the FBA system and a lot of what's involved in selling on Amazon, this course will really help you get there, but it's unlikely that you'll be able to successfully select your products through the strategies taught in the course.
The Bottom Line
Best selling point
Biggest Issues
Conclusion:
I got my start with ASM because the strategy worked back then.
It's still a great course to get most of your FBA education from (setting up your biz license, launching your product, etc.)
But remember, it's a gen ed course.
You'll have to take more if you want to be successful on Amazon in 2020.
AMAZING SELLING MACHINE 11 RATING: 4/5
Click Here to Read Our Full In-Depth Review
2.) Product University by Sophie Howard
Course length: 26 hours Price: $3,495
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PROS
CONS
PRODUCT UNIVERSITY COURSE DETAILS:
Product University was made in 2016 by Sophie Howard, an Amazon Seller based in New Zealand, selling into both the US and the AU marketplaces as well as her home country.
Sophie started on amazon part-time in 2014 while she was on maternity leave from her job.
She scaled quickly and established her first brand, Higher Tea.
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It's a consumable, responsibly sourced, organic tea so it demands ongoing sales as well as it has a unique appeal to those who want to enjoy health and take pride in supporting ethical manufacturing.
Sophie says that while she was able to get into tea when she started, she wouldn't recommend it now as the category is supersaturated.
Sophie doesn't teach how to set your Seller Account or how to get a business license, or other basic things like that, because, she says, you can find those resources elsewhere.
She shares her experience and really helps you discover markets to sell products to that are hard for copy-catting dealers to mimic because they don't have access to your uniquely sourced products.
The Bottom Line
Best selling point
Biggest Issue
Conclusion:
If you are willing to take on the basics yourself, like how to set up your account and your basic amazon listing, Sophie will give you the strategies to create brands that sell well for the long haul, and being able to exit as she does, building a brand worth 7 figures, then selling it off to an interested corporation.
PRODUCT UNIVERSITY RATING: 4.5/5
Click Here to Read Our Full In-Depth Review
1.) Private Label Masters by Tim Sanders
Course length: 20 hours and 18 minutes. Price: $4,997
📷
PROS
CONS
PRIVATE LABEL MASTERS COURSE DETAILS:
Private Label Masters is taught by Tim Sanders.
Tim has been selling on Amazon since 2016 and was able to rapidly scale his business so that in less than a year he had achieved an upper 6 figure revenue.
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Tim's course is well-structured with 8 sequential modules, covering the ins and outs of selling on Amazon, with the exception of teaching a strategy that is losing effectiveness rapidly as more sellers enter the Amazon arena.
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Tim over-delivers in this course in a few areas:
If you are seriously considering going into Amazon FBA, then this is one of the better courses out there.
The Bottom Line
Best selling point
Biggest Issue
Conclusion:
Tim's course is an excellent one for learning the entire process of FBA from start to finish.
You can get it at a affordable price. (When I called their sales department, they offered $1,500 off if I bought the course on the call).
But before you and buy it, be sure to take into account the additional costs of selling on Amazon (FBA fees, product cost, packaging design, pay-per-click ads).
PRIVATE LABEL MASTERS RATING: 4.5/5
Click Here to Read Our Full In-Depth Review
So, Which FBA Course is right for you?
If you are low on dough, you could go with Ryan's FBA Sales Accelerator, which offers some sound strategies that are current to selling on Amazon in 2020.
But with FBA, you don't just need the right education.
I'm not going to lie to you...
To really get a solid start you need money.
Funding.
Cash.
Capital.
Money.
I realize that this thought is not popular as it would be more acceptable to be all rah rah, saying,
"Go out and achieve your dreams! You can do it!"
But that's not why you are here.
You chose to read this because you want to start an online business that will generate income to fund your lifestyle, whatever that may be.
And if you want to eventually start a collection of products on Amazon because that's what really makes your heart sing, then please don't take what comes next as a damper on your dreams, but choose to see it as your path to success, actually doing the things that you dream of.
To truly get started well on Amazon, you need more than most course sellers will tell you.
In my experience, most course creators seem to say you can get started with a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
In my experienced opinion, that number is actually higher.
To do FBA well, you need 15,000 dollars, the reason being that once you have bought a course for 3.5k, then you only have 11.5k left for actually building your business, which, in real life, is a really a tight budget because you have to take into account the fact that you probably will have to launch multiple products to find one that really sells.
Want an example?
Check this out:
Sophie has pushed over 500 items into Amazon's marketplaces.
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Do you think all of them sell super well?
Hell no!
(That would be awesome, but does real life turn out that way?
No, not very often.
The truth is much more grim:
Some of the launched items sell more than others, while still others don't sell at all.
In my own experience, I had launched 3 products before I saw my first sales on Amazon.
What I've found and others as well is that it often requires testing the market to find "home-run" products.
Think of it as trying different lures to see what the fish in Bezo's ocean will bite.
Baiting the FBA hook (to continue the analogy), takes a good deal of money and time, that, honestly, most people in our world today don't have.
But those who have the funds end up putting up many different listings and launching a multiplicity of products into the marketplace at once.
And to be completely candid with you, if I didn't already have money coming in via my first business, lead generation, I wouldn't have had the money to become successful on Amazon.
And to illustrate that, check this out:
My FBA Experience Selling Honey on Amazon
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At the start of this article, I let it slip that I've sold products on Amazon for nearly 4 years.
One of them was organic honey.
I saw the thousands of health gurus were touting the importance of eating clean, organic foods and started scoping in on potential FBA products.
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After looking high and low all over the web, my product idea ending up coming from a trip to my grocery store.
I was picking up some fruit when I noticed a sign next to me promoting locally produced sticky sweetness: organic honey.
Upon reaching out the supplier, I did some due diligence, learning how many units were sold at one time (MOQ) as well as how much they'd charge to ship it stateside ($$$)
After verifying that hordes of honey-hungry vegans were shopping Amazon, I sketched out a list of what needed to be done before I could expect my first sale:
B4-FBA-Money To-Do List:
  1. Complete Product Due Diligence
  2. Create Product Listing (Optimized Title, 6 Bullet Points, 400 word description, back-end keywords as well as 3 kinds of images)
  3. Purchase UPC's and Get FNSKU Labels from Seller Central
  4. Arrange for Freight Forwarder to Pick Product from Port and send to Amazon (aka lots of phone calls and emails)
  5. Create Amazon Sponsored Pay-Per-Click Campaigns (both Auto and Manual)
  6. Monitor PPC Ad Spend
  7. Construct Review Funnel System (with Product Insert)
  8. Track the Locations of Shipments
  9. Be Mindful of Product Inventory Levels
  10. Handle Out-of-Stock Situations
With all that going on, I felt like a juggler riding a unicycle on a never-ending treadmill: never any time to travel or spend time with friends. #nopassivity
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But after some 8 months and about 13k out the door spent on inventory and product launch, I had things jumping.
9 months into the organic honey venture, I had my first sale!
Thanks to me split testing my main product image and the fact that it was April, the peak of allergy season
The best month was over 52k in sales in 30 days!
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It looks like an FBA success story, doesn't it?
But tap the brakes a minute, and take a look at how my costs & profits breakdown:
What?! 36 G's! you'd think I must have been rolling in the dough, right?! Oh wait, Amazon Fees...
Total Amazon Fees: $11,328.5
Referral Fees: 18% of Overall Sales ($9404.40)
Fulfillment Fees: $5.42/pack, since each pack was a hair under 3lbs ($1,924.10)
Sponsored Ad Cost: 14,264.37
Total Costs: $25,592.87
Left over net profit: $11,131
$11,131 in a single month sounds pretty good on the surface, but for the 2 years I sold organic honey, that was my highest month.
My partner and I also did all the work ourselves, so the time per hour didn't really add up to much between us.
This is when I began to realize how low the true profit margins of a physical products business really are.
3 Reasons Why Selling on Amazon is difficult:
1. Yes, you can have some high dollar months, but seasonality is a bitch.
2. If you do find a home-run product, you can be certain that someone else will come along and copy your product.
3. Constantly trying to stay ahead of the competition is exhausting. It takes tons of energy, focus and a little hope...
Yes, I did make a few bucks during that month, but if I factor in the dollars I spent on testing different variations of my product listing (swapping images and copy), the money definitely wasn't the gangsta income I'd hoped for.
I also learned that customer service wasn't my thing. The world of dealing with reviews and product refunds sucked the energy from me like a vacuum on carpet.
When I wrapped up the organic honey excursion, I understood that to bank on Amazon, you won't get rich off of a single product.
You need to scale from 1 item to 10 while keeping your eyes peeled for more product opportunities.
Is it worth it?
In my opinion, since I've done both, Amazon FBA is waaay better than having a 9-5 job as I'm pretty sure that anything is better than being stuck in that office.
That might be why so many of these FBA courses sell so well.
Many people want the freedom that running their own business can provide: like choosing what hours they work or how much money they want to earn.
Nobody wants to be just a cog in a wheel.
On the other hand, the FBA model wasn't cutting it. It took too much time and energy for the (lack of) desired results.
If you want more details on what it takes to start an Amazon FBA business, I wrote a guide on the entire process. Just click the button below:
Read My Amazon FBA Guide Here
Competitors Copying Your Private Label Business
Most FBA courses, even the best ones like the Amazing Selling Machine and Private Label Masters, teach the method of researching the competition and copying what other FBA sellers have already made. Tim calls it "market intelligence."
But here's the kicker
You can literally copy & paste someone's private label product in a matter of hours by matching their Amazon product on the popular FBA seller outlet, Alibaba.
I found this one in 10 minutes.
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This copy and paste method literally takes all the guess work out of it. There's no skill involved. Even a teenage could do it.
In fact, check this out:
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While this "Xerox Private Label" method sounds great on the surface, I'm not a fan.
Here's why:
What's to stop another seller from copy and pasting your private label business?
This makes Amazon FBA a short term play at best because:
A business model that allows someone to enter the space and literally clone your entire business in a matter of hours, simply cannot be a long-term income strategy.
Think about it
As time goes on, the niche becomes saturated, Amazon's Pay-Per-Click pricing will increase, and the product will no longer be profitable to sell.
That being said, the power players on Amazon create long lasting businesses by investing large amounts of money in creating their own unique products and supply lines that make duplication extremely difficult.
And to do that, you not only need to be an innovator, but also have at least $27k for the development and production.
When it comes to business, you don't want things to be "easy."
Key Takeaway
My rule of thumb is: If everyone can do it, you probably shouldn't. #saturation
Why do you think doctors make a boatload of money throughout their careers?
Because they've developed skills that few people have.
That's why I put my chips on businesses that actually require a high skill level to leverage, like lead generation. It's almost impossible for a person to come in and "Xerox" your business.
What is Lead Generation Exactly?
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I'm not a fan of copy and paste business models.
So as of 2020, I'm putting my entire attention on lead generation, which has always provided the best ROI.
Here's how it works
You build and rank simple websites at the top of Google that send customers to small businesses.
Lead generation still has both a high profit margin because we use free traffic to generate leads
Once you rank these sites, they have a high level of passivity, because after the site clicks into the top, you don't need to touch it.
Here's a site that I made in 2015 and haven't touched since
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Here's a few more reasons why I value lead generation over Amazon FBA...
Why Lead Generation Over Amazon FBA?
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Amazon FBA
Lead Generation
Don't get me wrong
I made some good money with FBA, but the need to constantly monitor the metrics (inventory, ad spend, etc.), I cashed out.
That's why I believe that many FBA sellers switch to offering courses sharing how to sell on Amazon, as the digital courses offer a much simpler (and more profitable) way to make money online.
But not everyone has an expertise that can be easily packaged into a ecourse.
Lead generation is a lean and mean business model because you are repeating 6 simple steps over and over
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These are the top reasons why the lead generation model remains my #1 recommendation in 2020.
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Want more details?
Check out how I went from 32k per year to 32k per month in 24 months via the link below:
Source: Local Lead Generation Course – Top Marketing Coaching Program
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The subject of the request must be: "$ 500 - no deposit bonus" - the transfer of the ownership of a bonus ", account number and name. The application is submitted by e-mail or in the client's Private Office. 4.12 Partial withdrawal of the profit is impossible. 4.13 Getting bonus and/or trading bonus funds ON TWO OR MORE ACCOUNTS with same IP-address is prohibited. 4.14 Trading through an ... Grand Capital Presents NO Deposit Bonus for all new clients. It’s time to start your live trading with a 500 USD Forex no deposit bonus. Make an account and get verified to reward with a NON DEPOSIT CREDIT. Take the best opportunity to start your trading while all profit received from trading the bonus funds is withdrawable according to terms and conditions. The bonus remains in the account for 7-days, after the period is over, the bonus funds are deducted and all open trades ... No-deposit bonuses and interest on deposits, bonuses for trading volume, promotional offers for particular categories of instruments. Just choose your path, and we'll take care of bonuses for your trading plan. Choose profit — choose Grand Capital. Choose bonus. Any Deposit Bonus 40%. Probably the best bonus for traders! All profit received from trading the bonus funds is freely withdrawable ... *Bonus is granted for trading for a period of 7 days! $500 Bonus is the best no-deposit bonus for those who dream big. Master the real Forex in full! *Profit is converted according to the formula: 5 USD per 1 lot. $500 for 7 days for real market trading . Great choice for beginners. Bonus can’t be withdrawn Bonus is grated only for trading. The profit can be withdrawn after depositing a sum ... *Bonus is granted for trading for a period of 7 days! $500 Bonus is the best no-deposit bonus for those who dream big. Master the real Forex in full! *Profit is converted according to the formula: 5 USD per 1 lot. $500 for 7 days for real market trading . Great choice for beginners. Bonus can’t be withdrawn Bonus is grated only for trading. The profit can be withdrawn after depositing a sum ... Sign-up a Bonus $500 Account with Grand Capital. Need to verify your Phone Number in the clients area. Automatically Bonus will be credited into your account. This $500 No Deposit Bonus only for 7 days of Real Trading. Grand Capital is offering a big no deposit forex bonus for his clients. Under this promotion, you can receive $500 credit for your trading. This promotion is for those who dream big and want to achieve big goals in the forex. This bonus is also a great choice for both beginners and professional traders to convert their skills into the cashable amount by fulfilling the promotion conditions. You will have 7 days for trading over the bonus. After that, the amount you make can be withdrawn if ... Grand Capital is offering its clients 7 days no deposit bonus. Using it to trade and you can keep your profit by depositing some deposits. This offer is however not available for the residents of the USA and Japan. The requirements of getting the $500 no deposit bonus: New account registration is required. Guys, most no deposit bonuses have screwed up conditions. Please show me a borker that allows you to withdraw your profit on no-deposit bonus. I also want to know about such broker!! From what I understand, what this Grand Capital broker offers is a test-drive on the real account with free $500. I think it is a pretty cool idea, considering so ...

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$500 bonus No deposit on Free account profit Best deal ...

This video will show you how to open an account, and accept the $500 welcome bonus. ----------------------------Telegram channel ---------------------https://t.me/easyFX4u---------------------------------------------------------------------... New! No deposit bonus larger than offered by other brokers! How to get bonus Register Verify your phone number Open Welcome bonus $500 account Start trading ... Start #trading with amazing $1000 STARTUP no #deposit #bonus. Get $1000 to a live trading account. Earn with no risks involved and no deposit required.How to... ----------------------------Telegram channel ---------------------https://t.me/easyFX4u---------------------------------------------------------------------...

no deposit bonus grand capital

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