Hi, I’ve never posted nor used Reddit, so this will probably be the only time I’ll post something. I’ve omitted some nitty gritty things to keep things short so feel free to ask for some clarification on things.
I, 18F, am planning to attend college this year. My parents were slightly upset at this decision as I’ve told them I’d join the military. To be honest, I’ve never wanted to, always wanted to have the “college experience” and all, and frankly I’m just not fit for the military (under 100 lbs., never worked out a day in my life, easily cave under pressure, and have a lot of sensory problems). To be fair, I applied to college very last minute, so I can see why they were upset about this.
My dad is currently active duty, and plans to give me half the GI Bill to pay for my tuition and housing. Now I should say I do not have a job and don’t have a license or car yet, so I was hoping on renting an apartment I found which was a 14 min. walk from campus, came fully furnished with utilities included too.
I also have a boyfriend, 18, and was hoping to room with him to save us both some money; I’d pay for the first two years of rent with the bill and we’ll finish out the last two as by then I’ll have a job and he’s currently working. My parents weren’t happy with this idea, saying that they A) didn’t want us to move in together, B) weren’t running a charity for some boy and C) the plan wasn’t well thought out. It ultimately resulted in them saying I had two options: rent the apartment and LOSE the GI Bill entirely, or continue living with them for $1,000 and keep the bill.
My parents are still insistent on me joining the military, but I’ve already tried to explain to them multiple times that I don’t want to enlist for the reasons I’ve mentioned earlier and also it’s just not what I’m interested in.
Had my parents been more understanding and all, I could definitely hear them out, and with the way I’m describing things it seems like these interactions are somewhat okay. But ever since I’ve committed to this college, they’ve done nothing but claim how disappointed and ashamed they are, especially my mom.
My mom has made me cry over these interactions more than three times in the past two weeks alone, has yelled at me once for “crying like a little bitch”, and has more than once called me stupid over this conflict. I’ve never raised my voice at my parents, maybe once but to be able to put in some of my two cents (only to be interrupted and misinterpreted further). I’ve constantly heard “Well we’re stressed out over YOUR future”, “We wish you joined the military”, but what about what I want to do? Isn’t my future in my hands? If it ends up being hard for me then it’ll be hard for me, and it’s up to me to figure out ways around it too! They’re still upset at my decision and I honestly don’t know if I’m the bad guy for wanting to do my own thing.
So, AITA?

My cat is on the verge of death. Doctor said we can't save her. She is in pain and can't even lift her head up anymore. I love cats in general. But she was the only cat I owned. Her mother had 2 kittens and just left it at our house. They were both girls. One of them became really fond of me and hence my cat. Her name is Misha. She really loved me man. Used to wait for me outside my door. Whenever she'd hear my voice she'd jump up. They used to stay on the ground floor, my mother wasn't fond of them. Sometimes she'd wait for me outside my bedroom door. A few days earlier, the other cat disappeared and my cat got seriously ill. I failed to save her. She is whimpering in pain since morning. I feel like there's a void inside my heart. She is so young. It hurts so much man.
This is the second time someone l love is dying right infront of my eyes and I cannot do anything to save them. The first time was last year. My grandmother passed away. She really loved me. Even in her frail state, when she had gotten half mad, she could recognise me. I regretted not visiting her earlier. She was my mother's best friend. She still has her contact in her phone. But yea no calls.
It's like, everything I love dies. My parents are getting old. They are really elder to me. It's not hard for a stranger to assume that they're my grandparents. I will loose them when I'm still very young, my father particularly. I have cried countless nights imagining my parents ' death. Everytime I hear that a friend of my father is dead, my heart shrinks.
I got pretty avg marks in icse and my parents were disappointed but even then, they didn't blame me. But I could feel the disappointment in their voice. It's like I have failed them.
The person I love has cancer. Well had malignancy to be exact. Luckily it didn't spread otherwise he'd die in 8 years. They performed a surgery to get that part removed. But his immune system is pretty much shaken and his lifespan has been shortened significantly. He already has a chronic disease. He is still in hospital recovering from his post surgery wounds. He's the nicest human I've met. He's kind, academically smart, good looking and has good morals. He even donates to charity. Yet he got nerfed with diseases since he was little. He doesn't deserve any of this. This is the reason I stopped believing in god. Fuck God.
Yea so everything I love dies or will die soon.

Please Guide Me
Greetings of the Day! This is going to be a long post so please bear with me and give me the best advice/ plan you have. All suggestions are highly appreciated.
I am currently a final year student at a Top 15 Indian University (institute of national importance) in India, majoring in Economics. My degree is called Bachelors of Arts (honours) in Economics and my current GPA is 6.9/10 and I hope to cross the 7 mark. I will graduate in 2 months. I don’t have any stellar academics 85% in 10th and 92% in 12th with commerce and maths stream.
Till now, I have 5 internships (2 consulting, 2 research and 1 finance and accounting) with 3 being well known brands. I have a published academic paper under my name. I have 3 PORs from college ( Founding Joint Secretary, Director and Project Research Head) and 1 from school (House Captain). I love participating in case competitions and have won EY CAFTA Championship and a few more university level competitions. I don’t play any sport at national level. I am not a first generation applicant, I don’t belong to any perceived backward community.
I wish to break into consulting (strategy) but am also interested in IB.
Moving on to what exactly my problem/ question is, I want to break into an Ivy League/ top university in either US or UK with scholarship either for a MBA or an economics programme. It won’t be possible to apply for the 2024 season as I have missed the deadlines by far and my profile isn’t even close to be accepted.
My plan is to take a GMAT attempt and get a good score (770-780/800 range) and start working in a consulting role or banking role for a few years and then apply to these top colleges. Now I want to know what are some other things I can do to boost my application like courses, certifications, NGO work etc. Please help me with a plan for the future. Thanking you all in advance for your kind advice.

Hi all,
I wasn't sure where to ask this and couldn't find information regarding this online, so apologies if this seems like a redundant question. I'm a US student admitted into the Gates Cambridge Scholarship this year and will be pursuing a PHD at Cambridge this coming fall. I was wondering if there were any other GC Scholars here who know if housing is also funded through the scholarship, and if so, (1) how much would be covered? (2) would housing still be covered by the GC scholarship even if I choose to live off campus rather than at my assigned college at Cambridge?
Thank you, and again, apologies if this is a trivial question!

Even before he really knew what it meant, Allen Wong wanted to be rich. As a kid, he didn’t yet equate the word with “luxury” or “status” or “expensive things.” He didn’t think wealth would bring him 85-inch televisions and Jacuzzis, a one-of-a-kind rose-gold Lamborghini in the garage, a wearable Iron Man suit that shoots lasers — though he does, actually, have all of that now. What “rich” seemed to dangle was something simpler, more elementary, more a feeling than anything else: freedom from pain.
Wong’s parents had fled poverty — at one point, his father used tennis balls as flotation devices to illicitly cross waters from Guangzhou into Hong Kong — in order to raise a family in a more opportune land. But growing up in New York City, Wong watched one parent peddle medicinal herbs all day long while the other toiled away in a Chinatown sweatshop. They barely had time to slough off one workday before trudging into the next.
“I didn’t want my life to end up like that,” he told me. “I didn’t want to be absent from my family and only show up a few hours each day after work. I didn’t want my life to be monotonous and stuck in a repeating loop until I die.”
Then, in 2008, right as he was graduating from college, the family convulsed. Wong’s father was ousted from his business, sank into a depression and committed suicide; his mother tripped down a spiral of mental illness. Suddenly, Wong’s entry-level computer programming job was the household’s only source of income, and there was a world financial crisis going on. He had always dreamed about digging out of the middle-class quagmire — striking gold, pulling in enough money from a one-off idea that he would never have to work the way his parents did. But it was now, as anxiety and medical bills piled up, that those idle daydreams began to feel urgent and necessary. So he turbocharged his ambitions. He started coding around the clock, tinkering on D.I.Y. software ideas whenever he wasn’t at work, barely sleeping. He doggedly pushed one project after another to the App Store, praying for something to take off.
Eventually, one did: an app that let users tune in to police scanners around the world. Then another. Their runaway success took even him by surprise. By the time his peers were splurging on their first West Elm sofas, he was a self-made multimillionaire.
Wong found his day job interesting enough, and he liked his colleagues. But submitting himself to a boss’s whims, spending his days trapped like a houseplant under corporate fluorescence, grated at him; it reminded him too much of his parents’ suffering. What, he wondered, could a so-called career really offer him if he had already secured enough money for a good life? The whole point of working was to get what he had just gotten. So, at 25, he bought a $250,000 sports car painted a shimmery lime green — it wasn’t so crazy a purchase, he reasoned, because his police-scanner app was by then generating that amount of revenue in a single month — and announced that he was retiring forever.
It was only after he bought a second exotic car, a five-bedroom house in Celebration, Fla., a dog and a Disney World annual pass for his mother that Wong learned that there was an entire online community of people seeking to do what he had just done. Wong had heard of the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement before, but he didn’t think it really applied to him because of its focus on frugality. FIRE got its start in the early 2000s with a mantra of extreme saving — you may remember hearing about stoic ultraminimalists living off beans and friends’ couches — but it has since come to include all the people who would like to exit the work force on their own terms, at an age of their own choosing, rather than hustling for a paycheck all the way into their 60s. After Wong made a Reddit post sharing his story, it attracted such a flurry from FIRE adherents that he quickly became the quasi president of one of the group’s biggest online enclaves.
Some FIRE aspirants still get to early retirement by the traditional route of simply saving madly. Others, though, truffle-hunt for high-paying W-2s, tax loopholes, bold and risky market bets or big entrepreneurial ploys like Wong’s. The overarching credo of FIRE is that in today’s unpredictable financial landscape, 9-to-5s and decades-long careers have become bad investments: Old-school benefits like pensions and job security are a thing of the past, and wages aren’t even keeping up with the galloping pace of inflation. According to a 2023 survey, one-quarter of Americans would like to retire before age 50. After decades of tolerating workaholic culture as the norm, employees are tired, unafraid to show it and yearning to yank back control of their lives. To fed-up workers willing to do a little bit of math, FIRE offers a straightforward antidote: You can just leave it all behind.
Like Wong, and like so many other people who chase financial independence, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money — which might be why I became obsessed with it.
Long before “side hustle” became Merriam-Webster lingo, I was working Costco snack arbitrage on the elementary-school playground and hawking homemade bookmarks to my teachers. In adulthood, I moved on to online surveys, research studies, plasma donation, vintage resale, parts modeling and dog-sitting in other people’s homes in lieu of paying rent. I have left no income source unturned. I’ve trawled every page of NerdWallet and The Points Guy. I have made questionable margin calls. I have woken up at the crack of dawn to day-trade $NVDA, $TSLA, $TSM. I have “flipped”; I have “churned.” When I feel sad, I open my phone to check on the interest rates in the five-pronged CD ladder I’ve lovingly assembled in my Marcus account, like a tic, to feel better.
Come on, Kids. Let’s Grab Drinks. ImageWong in his Ironman suit standing next to the bathtub. Wong created a police-scanner app that was so popular that it allowed him to retire at 25.Credit...Maggie Shannon for The New York Times Is this all embarrassing to confess? Incredibly so. Would I characterize my relationship to money as “unhealthy”? Also yes. But I often wonder if anybody in this economy, in this country — where more than 60 percent of the work force lives paycheck to paycheck, where the average American is in five- to six-figure debt and often has only cursory knowledge of how he or she got there — has a healthy relationship to money. Simply learning to understand your own finances can feel, several FIRErs said to me, like acquiring a “secret weapon.”
The original FIRE doctrine revolves around delay of gratification. Save your money — ideally as much as 50 to 75 percent of each paycheck — instead of spending it immediately, and when you’ve amassed enough of a nest egg, quit your job and take the rest of your life for yourself. “It’s simple, because the main principles fit on a Post-it note,” Jacob Lund Fisker, a Danish former astrophysicist who is often thought of as the father of the FIRE movement, told me. “However, it is not easy, because everything the typical middle-class consumer has been raised and trained to believe goes against these principles. People have grown up associating success with money and spending money with happiness. They’ve been trained to sit still and perform repetitive work, first by a teacher, then by a manager. They’ve been educated to be specialists in a narrow field and never think outside that box.”
Fisker’s 2010 book, “Early Retirement Extreme” — written mostly while he lived out of an R.V. on $7,000 a year — is one seminal text for early retirees. Two others are “Your Money or Your Life,” a 1992 personal-finance bible written by Joseph R. Dominguez and Vicki Robin, and the blog Mr. Money Mustache, started in 2011 by Peter Adeney, who retired from his software-engineering job in 2005 at age 30 and figured out how to shrink his family’s expenses down to just $24,000 a year. The tao of all three tomes is that minimalist spending and anti-consumption can offer the keys to better living. (Adeney has professed to be “really just trying to get rich people to stop destroying the planet,” but his tens of thousands of monthly visitors tend to be more fixated on his other mantra: “Make you rich so you can retire early.”)
Conventional FIRE adherents are not necessarily big earners or genius mathematicians with incredible impulse control. Their superpower is their expert planning; it’s the ability to see the finish line from miles away that has allowed even some minimum-wage workers to achieve early retirement. One simple FIRE rule of thumb is to first calculate your target “FI number” by multiplying anticipated annual retirement expenses by at least 25, and then squirrel away as much as possible into interest-accruing or tax-advantaged buckets like 401(k)s, low-fee index funds, certificates of deposit, HSAs and Roth IRAs until you hit that number. As an example, if you bring home $150,000 a year, can save half of that and plan to spend $50,000 per year in retirement, then it will take only 16.5 years before you can kiss your job goodbye. For those who earn less or spend more, it will take longer — but for still others who can endure greater sacrifices, FIRE can be possible as early as their 30s.
From these plain origins, many offshoots of FIRE have sprouted up — some much more brazen than others. It’s rare to find anyone these days who actually wants to get to early retirement by living off beans; those people, with their stringent penny-pinching, are largely known in the community as LeanFIRE. A lot more people aim for CoastFIRE (a more measured approach that involves front-loading your retirement savings and “coasting” on compound interest and working lightly until you’re ready to quit) or BaristaFIRE (quitting your job but buttressing your retirement with a side gig, such as that of a part-time barista, to receive health-insurance benefits) or FatFIRE (a luxurious, no-sacrifice approach to retirement, the polar opposite of LeanFIRE — and the subset to which Wong belongs).
You might be tempted to regard early retirees as layabouts, soaking up sunshine while everyone else toils. But why not see them as brave maniacs, daring to build an entirely new vision of the world? Retirement has long been framed as a reward for a job well done — social reformers started pushing for mandatory post-work benefits in the early 20th century, and policies like Social Security later codified the tipping point between labor and leisure — but if FIRE’s incredible popularity of late (the Fire subreddit alone boasts nearly half a million members) is a defiant reaction to economic hardship, then it’s also a plea to re-evaluate the centrality of work to modern living. Maybe, the movement suggests, we should have always been in it for ourselves, and nobody else, from the start.
To my left was a woman who runs a phone-sex hotline; to my right, a cruise operator, a disaster-response volunteer, a kitchen-appliance entrepreneur, a public-school teacher and a former Off Broadway actor who now lives out of the back of an 18-wheeler and puts 70 percent of her weekly paycheck into index funds. It was a chilly spring weekend, and we had all flown to Cincinnati for EconoMe, an annual all-flavors-of-FIRE conference in which hundreds of people of all ages, from all over, bandy about tips on financial independence from dawn to dusk. The point of FIRE meetups — EconoMe is the largest, but others take place all over the world, some of them at a monthly clip — is only partly to give fiscal advice. Every person’s retirement plan is a highly individualized choreography, after all, so the manifold workshops and breakout groups are meant to offer only high-level ideas. The broader purpose of these get-togethers is more a sort of group therapy, geared to help people achieve their common goals and forge through their common struggles.
Much of the crowd was timid but curious — like Laura Rojo-Eddy, who decided on a whim to fly out from Texas. “My family doesn’t know anything about FIRE,” she told me. “I’ve been really shy talking about it. It’s hard to talk about finances with strangers, but in a way it’s even harder with people you love.” She chanced upon the movement in 2021 via a former colleague’s LinkedIn post, which made her consider for the first time that she may not have to work until the standard age of 65. The friend “posted she was retiring thanks to FIRE, and I was like: That’s really cool! But what the hell is she talking about? And, holy crap, this person’s my age — 40 — and what if I could do that? Should I do that?”
At EconoMe, bank-account totals were traded more freely than phone numbers. The conference’s organizer, Diania Merriam (retired at 33), introduced speakers like Jeremy Schneider (retired at 36), who spoke about how to pick a good financial adviser; the retired divorce lawyer Aaron Thomas, who evangelized the importance of prenups; the real estate tax strategist Natalie Kolodij, who discussed real estate investing and recommended employing your children starting from the age they are able to do household chores, which offers a double benefit of reducing a parent’s taxable income while building an investment-accruing tax shelter for the 7-year-old. Stephanie Zito’s two-hour seminar on the nitty-gritty of “travel hacking,” a.k.a. traversing the world through strategic deployment of credit-card points, had the crowd on the edge of their seats.
In one morning session, a brave volunteer named Krista put her life’s “balance sheet” up on a big screen so that 500 strangers could critique it for blind spots. She is 35, with four kids ages 16, 15, 9 and 7, and makes $32,000 working in a library in Wisconsin. Over the last seven years, since discovering FIRE, she and her husband had slowly paid off $200,000 in credit-card and home- and auto-loan debt. But she knew, she said, humbly dipping her head a bit, that she still had a long way to go, especially when compared with all the younger, already-retired millionaires in the room.
“Wait a second,” Frank Vasquez, one of the conference’s speakers, interrupted. “No. Do you all see this? Krista was a teenage mom who grew up in poverty. We are looking, right now, at a map of a hero’s journey.”
Jackie Cummings Koski of Dayton, Ohio, grew up on food stamps, learned about FIRE in her early 40s and retired at 49 with $1.3 million in savings.Credit...Brian Kaiser for The New York Times During a break, Jackie Cummings Koski, an Ohio local, shared her story with me: She grew up on food stamps and had a “wake-up call” with money after an acrimonious divorce left her a single mother. She learned about FIRE in her early 40s. Newly enlightened, she started saving 40 percent of the salary from her five-figure job, reached financial independence at 47 and pulled the trigger on retirement at 49, with $1.3 million in savings. “My corporate job had nothing to do with what I want to do,” Koski told me. “I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.” She added: “While most FIRE people brag about having an old car with 200,000 miles or whatever, I drive a luxury car. But nobody’s going to chastise me, because I still retired early, even with that car, even with having made some mistakes!” Koski spends her time nowadays creating financial content and advocating for personal-finance classes to be added to high schools, and she recently wrote a “FIRE for Dummies” manual.
To my surprise, a sizable portion of the FIRE crowd at EconoMe was older. This wasn’t so surprising to Bill Yount, a 58-year-old retired physician who recently started up a podcast with Koski and another friend, Becky Heptig, that speaks to older demographics. “The average American is a late starter,” Yount told me. “That’s just who we are, living in this consumption society and not having the mentality of saving often or early.” And things are no longer “9-to-5, 40 years and a gold watch” the way they were for his parents’ generation: “I’m not in the gold-watch generation. Gen X got lost, got forgotten.”
Heptig, who is 68, found herself in dire financial straits in her 50s, when her husband’s small business faltered. “I got really scared, thinking we will never get out of this debt and we will never retire,” she says. They took a course from the financial-advice radio host Dave Ramsey, and her husband signed up for a W-2 job. After that, they started saving madly. “We were net-worth zero at 50 years old, and he retired at 63 — so for us, where we started from, we consider ourselves retiring early,” Heptig says. She had made the same wild discovery that everyone in FIRE does: that it can really take as little as a decade to hit early retirement, from the moment you learn about it and start planning. But as Yount put it to me: “You don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t even know to go looking for it.”
Maybe it’s because I know too much about looking for money that I found myself, while reporting this article, especially drawn to the subculture of FatFIRE — and to the lavish, unapologetic, in-your-face money philosophy that Allen Wong and others of his ilk prefer. FatFIRE flies in the face of all the other variants of FIRE. It is anti-anticonsumption. Its typical benchmark is to accumulate enough wealth that you can comfortably spend at least $100,000 a year in retirement, but some highfliers aim for much, much bigger sums. It espouses an unbridled maximalism, a have-it-all abundance.
While most other FIRE communities steer toward the friendly and pragmatic, FatFIRE’s adherents tend to be jaded, brusque, laser-focused. They hunt for the “exit,” in the tech-world manner of speaking: a fast, lucrative way out. On the FatFIRE subreddit, aspirants ogle severance packages, geo-arbitrage, REIT, tax loopholes, high-risk options straddles and potential business moonshots. Successful FatFIRErs applaud one another for hitting double-digit-millions net worth, debate the merits of private jets versus second homes and agonize over how large a trust fund is ethical to set up for their kids. And just as Fisker and Adeney were beacons to early-era FIRE devotees, Allen Wong is FatFIRE’s mythic hero.
Wong is quiet and unassuming in person. When I finally met him this spring — three years after we first began chatting online — near his childhood home in Queens, he wore jeans, Asics and a wary self-consciousness. Now in his mid-30s, he has comfortably enjoyed nearly a decade of leisure; he spends the bulk of his days playing pickleball and counseling strangers online on how to follow in his footsteps. He’s not particularly interested in fame, so he posts, as the senior moderator of FatFIRE, under his app company’s name. For someone who is a living talisman against the tenets of conventional living, he speaks with a surprising calm — though his eyes flashed with a certain pride whenever we talked about his childhood or his father. Even though it sprouted up only seven years ago, FatFIRE is on the verge of overtaking FIRE in size, Wong told me. Membership doubled during the pandemic despite moderators’ intentionally hiding the forum from Reddit’s homepage, he said, showing me a graph, and he added that most of its members seem to be “early-career American men.”
This makes sense. Millennials may have been ushered into the work force with the encouragement to hustle, but we soon found ourselves jerked around by utterly unaffordable housing, pandemic layoffs, salaries that flopped flat while costs went stratosphere-high. Nearly half of young adults have “money dysphoria,” according to a recent survey from the personal-finance company Credit Karma. Online, trends like “quiet luxury” and “dupe culture” glorify totems of wealth while making it clear how depressingly inaccessible that echelon is for the average Joe. If the recent “antiwork” movement laid bare the disillusionment of the young work force, then FatFIRE represents those feelings put into action.
Some FatFIRE success stories are like Wong’s: a result of obsessive entrepreneurism. Just as many are a byproduct of grinding away at a regular, albeit high-earning, job for enough years. (Fisker, for one, argues that FatFIRE is just an aesthetic rebranding of the work-smart-not-hard ethos that has been woven throughout American history.) In San Francisco, Sam Dogen faithfully saved his finance-job paychecks for 13 years before retiring in 2012 to live off passive investment income. He initially budgeted $100,000 for him and his wife to spend per year, but they upped the target to $200,000 after having their first child, then to $300,000 after a second child — and recently again to $350,000 to account for the recent bout of unchecked inflation. “We choose to live in an expensive coastal city and choose to have two children,” Dogen told me. “But you look at the $300,000 budget I made for a family of four, and you’re like, This is a pretty middle-class lifestyle. FatFIRE is almost a necessity if you want to live in San Francisco.”
“I think more people should aim for FatFIRE, because even if you don’t hit it, you’ll be at regular FIRE,” Jeff Underwood, a San Diego-based FatFIRE aspirant who started chasing financial independence after he lost his house and sank $10,000 into debt, told me. “The idea of LeanFIRE makes me super nervous. Health care costs are going up. There are all these unknowns. You could really find yourself in trouble.” Through smart tips he picked up on financial-planning forums, Underwood’s net worth steadily climbed from $0 in 2011 to $1 million in 2023. He is drawn to FatFIRE’s cheeky energy and its emphasis on securing a big safety net: “I had spent so long in the survival mind-set,” he says. “My default position is to plan for the worst, because I’ve already been through the worst.”
Wong now splits most of his time between houses in Celebration, Fla., and in New York City. He wakes up early to play pickleball and can keep at it for hours if the weather is nice. Because he has so much free time to practice, he has gotten good enough to compete against elite players and coach novices. (He offered to teach me how to play, but it was a wind-whipped 35 degrees when we met up in early April, so we went to have soup dumplings instead.) Otherwise, he reads up on tech and cybersecurity news, plays video games and undertakes home-renovation projects. His houses have been burglarized three times, although he managed to halt the latest attempt with a self-programmed alarm system. He used to make videos about his exotic car collection on YouTube, a few of which went viral, but he grew tired of being a “content creator” because it felt too much like having a job. Plus, he had already done the whole rack-up-a-huge-number thing before — with money.
“It was as if I fast-forwarded through an entire movie, and the end credits are slowly rolling,” Wong told me recently, recalling his first, restless years in retirement. “There was nothing more to watch, and all my peers were still busy watching the movie that I already finished. After I traveled the world and had done just about every possible fun thing I could possibly do, I often found myself wondering, What now?”
Life after early retirement: the elephant in the room. What to do after the cruises, the skydiving, the teetering stack of books on the night stand? The main danger of FIRE is that you might be running hard away from something rather than toward it — that you’re propelled only by the too-nebulous idea of escape. And then, even for those who lay out a clear road map for decades of nirvana, the loneliness can eat at you.
That’s why some, like Merriam, EconoMe’s organizer, host regular social events in their local cities. The online community ChooseFI maintains a sprawling network of hundreds of local FIRE groups in cities around the world. Amy Minkley, who retired by working in Asia as a teacher and saving up to $90,000 of her salary each year, organizes an annual FIRE meetup in Bali as a way of keeping up the community that saved her from depression: “It just felt like someone had thrown me a life raft, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she told me.
A lot of other people go the Mr. Money Mustache route: They blog. Their posts about income spreadsheets and VTSAX returns then attract the like-minded, as potential friends or even lovers. Koski has heard of romances blossoming among fellow FIRErs — though many of them prefer the company of a FIRE Luddite. “A good chunk of my friends are on my phone,” Gwen Merz, who began saving up for FIRE when she discovered the Mustache blog at age 22 and reached CoastFIRE at age 32 with $400,000 in savings, told me.
A common worry is when to stop. How much is enough? Why not make more? Since there is an upper limit to money’s effect on joy — studies have shown that global happiness tops out at income levels of about $75,000 a year — chasing infinite wealth may be psychologically futile.
“I think people can accumulate money to the detriment of their health and happiness,” says Alan Donegan, who with his wife, Katie, lives a nomadic lifestyle and coaches FIRE newbies toward their resignation letters by “trying to show money is a tool to create your version of an extraordinary life.” There are also those like Oliver Truong, a 27-year-old who cares less about the dollars and cents of it all than about fulfilling a self-imposed challenge: “I think FIRE people are some of the most creative people I’ve ever met,” he told me at EconoMe. “At least for me, it was never about the money, honestly. It was more about just doing something I wanted on my own.”
For those who succeed at early retirement, especially at the FatFIRE level, a surprise depression can set in. “It’s quite alarming and sad to see how many people are lost after they do this,” Wong’s FatFIRE co-moderator, Mike Doehla, told me. Doehla himself thought he was prepared for the social segregation when he FatFIREd at 40 in 2022 through his nutrition-coaching business. He wasn’t. “It has been pretty isolating, and almost awkward at times,” he confessed. Based in a small town in upstate New York, Doehla doesn’t know anyone in real life who has retired early, and all his friends are still working. But, he told me, “I think I’m psychologically broken from ever working someone else’s schedule again,” and he is keen to discover who he is, as a person, outside of work. If the quest for happiness were a tangible metric, Doehla reckons he is about 60 percent of the way there: “I have this FOMO, this empty cup, regarding what is going around me that so many people have experienced, that I just want to taste a bit.”
At EconoMe, I met a 52-year-old architect who considers himself “FattishFIRE”; he and his wife spend about $8,000 a month in Boston and would like to keep up that lifestyle in retirement. But, he told me, “I pretend I have a lot less than I do.” He lives in a building where many of his neighbors “have very little money, live off government assistance and are critical of wealthy people. They don’t know we’re like ‘stealth wealth.’ Would they not like me anymore?” (For this reason, he asked not to be identified.) He has saved enough money to retire within two or three years if he wants to, but he worries about how he’ll be perceived within a field that takes pride in its workhorse culture: “I’d always thought ‘architect’ was my personality and was going to be until I died,” he said. “Am I being too nervous? Am I crazy? I’m still a little ashamed.”
Sam Dogen budgets $350,000 a year in expenses for his family of four: “FatFIRE is almost a necessity if you want to live in San Francisco,” he says.Credit...Maggie Shannon for The New York Times After a decade in retirement, Dogen, the San Francisco FatFIREr, recently did the unimaginable: He decided to go back to work. He doesn’t really need the money, but the endless leisure has begun to wear on him. “I can’t do pickleball all day,” Dogen told me. “So what’s the responsible thing to do? And the responsible thing to do is to find a job that has good purpose, good meaning, where you can work with some smart people and have a lot of camaraderie.” He added: “It just feels good to be part of something. I think it’s really important that we all feel like we’re part of something, contributing.” He took one gig but quit because it ate up too much time, and he is now looking for a less demanding part-time position.
Wong, these days, loves to volunteer. He donates to charities, serves on neighborhood boards and of course plays both chairman and soothsayer to the fraternity (for it is largely male) of FatFIRE. Wong doesn’t so much mind being solitary in real life — he considers himself a lone wolf and is often wary of making new friends for fear they will try to take financial advantage of him. He has been duped in the past by family members or acquaintances, including a friend who falsely claimed to need support for lifesaving heart surgeries. It’s not uncommon for him to get Venmo requests from strangers. (Many of his pickleball acquaintances learned about his wealth when a photographer showed up on the court to shoot him for this article.)
I asked him what he plans to do in his second decade of retirement — or his third or fourth or beyond. He doesn’t know yet. He told me he has been intrigued by the rise of A.I. and has flirted with the idea of a D.I.Y. project in that space. Ultimately, though, he hasn’t pursued it. He fears even self-employment would bring back the manic stresses he fought so hard to leave behind. “When I FatFIREd, I freed myself,” Wong told me. Inner peace, then, is the precious goal. He treasures all the time he has been able to spend with his mother and may one day share his wealth with children of his own. “Should I have worked more and made even more money? I’ve definitely left many millions of dollars on the table by stepping away from it all,” he told me. “But I always end up coming to the same conclusion: There’s no point in making so much money if you’re not going to be happy. I’d rather be free.”

Megapost: A list of statements, press releases, and other sources reporting and expressing concern and criticism about Israel's war in Gaza and related aspects of the war. (Part 2)

Notes: This is a work that is currently in progress; please check back for updates. Titles have been edited to provide details. Part 1 is here: /Social_Democracy/comments/1clx1uc/megapost_a_list_of_statements_press_releases_and/
Israeli Assurances to Use US Arms Legally Are Not Credible: Oxfam and Human Rights Watch provide evidence of Israel's violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza, undermining credibility of assurances for President Biden's NSM-20 arms policy (March 19, 2024): https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/19/israeli-assurances-use-us-arms-legally-are-not-credible
Humanists UK: Call for ceasefire in Gaza (March 21, 2024): https://humanists.uk/2024/03/21/call-for-ceasefire-in-gaza/
NEWS: Bernie Sanders on State Department’s Statement that Israel Has Not Restricted Humanitarian Aid to Gaza (March 25, 2024): https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-on-state-departments-statement-that-israel-has-not-restricted-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza/
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: A/HRC/55/73: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 - Advance unedited version ["After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population has been forcibly displaced. Thousands of families have lost loved ones or have been wiped out. Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble. Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come. By analysing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. One of the key findings is that Israel's executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people."] (March 25, 2024): https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5573-report-special-rapporteur-situation-human-rights-palestinian
In New Letter, 140+ Global Christian Leaders Call for Permanent Gaza Ceasefire, Halt of Arms Sales to Israel (March 26, 2024): https://cmep.salsalabs.org/ps-mar262024letter
Over 1,000 People Join 22-Mile Interfaith Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage (March 26, 2024): https://oaklandvoices.us/2024/03/26/over-1000-people-join-22-mile-interfaith-gaza-ceasefire-pilgrimage/
‘We cannot be silent’: A statement from the Jesuits on Gaza (March 28, 2024): https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2024/03/28/jesuits-gaza-israel-ceasefire-247605
Former officials speak out against Biden’s Israel support after aid worker killings: ‘No one can change his mind’ (April 4, 2024): https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/joe-biden-israel-arms-gaza-b2523435.html
Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide: “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Warren said of the case before the ICJ. (April 8, 2024): https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/08/israel-gaza-war-elizabeth-warren-00151120
Los Angeles County Federation of Labor joins labor groups calling for cease-fire in Gaza (April 10, 2024): https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-04-10/l-a-county-fed-joins-labor-groups-calling-for-a-ceasefire
Young European Socialists (YES) calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. More than 30.000 civilians have been killed in Gaza following Israel military actions. We recall that the protection of civilian lives is a fundamental principle of international law. (April 10, 2024): https://twitter.com/YESocialists/status/1777993174654275791
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EuroMed Rights): 13,000 Palestinians reportedly missing in the Gaza Strip (April 11, 2024): https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6264/13,000-Palestinians-reportedly-missing-in-the-Gaza-Strip
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland: Prayers and statements on violence in Israel and Gaza (April 16, 2024): https://ctbi.org.uk/prayers-and-statements-on-violence-in-israel-and-gaza/
Amos Goldberg, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Yes, it is genocide (April 18, 2024): https://thepalestineproject.medium.com/yes-it-is-genocide-634a07ea27d4
Statement from U.S. Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Joaquin Castro, Nydia Velázquez, Lloyd Doggett, Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Becca Balint, Greg Casar, Mark Takano, Jim McGovern, Barbara Lee, Earl Blumenauer, Judy Chu, Hank Johnson, André Carson, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Jesús “Chuy” García, Jonathan Jackson, and Jill Tokuda on the Israel Security Supplemental (April 20, 2024): https://jayapal.house.gov/2024/04/20/statement-from-jayapal-castro-velazquez-doggett-khanna-ocasio-cortez-balint-casar-takano-mcgovern-barbara-lee-blumenauer-chu-johnson-carson-watson-coleman-jesus-chuy/
NEWS: Bernie Sanders Statement on Amendment Votes on National Security Supplemental (April 22, 2024): https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-statement-on-amendment-votes-on-national-security-supplemental/
NEWS: Bernie Sanders Statement on ‘Dark Day’ in U.S. Senate (April 23, 2024): https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-statement-on-dark-day-in-u-s-senate/
PREPARED REMARKS: Bernie Sanders on Ending Unfettered Military Aid to Israel and Restoring UNRWA Funding (April 23, 2024): https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/prepared-remarks-sanders-on-ending-unfettered-military-aid-to-israel-and-restoring-unrwa-funding/
Senator Jeff Merkley: Netanyahu’s War Campaign at Odds with American Values (April 23, 2024): https://www.merkley.senate.gov/merkley-netanyahus-war-campaign-at-odds-with-american-values/
Bishops, delegates join rally sponsored by United Methodist Kairos Response for Palestine (April 26, 2024): https://www.umnews.org/en/news/bishops-delegates-join-rally-for-palestine
Statement in solidarity with student protests for Gaza [Signed by: 350.org US; 18 Million Rising; 198 methods; Adalah Justice Project; Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; AF3IRM; Afghans For A Better Tomorrow; Al-Haq; Alliance of Baptists; American Baptist Churches USA; American Baptist Churches Palestine Israel Network; American Friends Service Committee; American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC); American Muslim Bar Association; American Muslim Community Foundation; American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action); Arab American Civic Council; Arab American Institute; Asian American Advocacy Fund; Better to Speak; Beyt Tikkun: A Synagogue without Walls; Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism (BLUU); Blue Future; Borderlands for Equity; Borderlands Resource Initiative; Breach Collective; Brooklyn For Peace; CAIR Action; CAIR California; CAIR Minnesota; CAIR Oklahoma; CAIR-WA; California Coalition for Women Prisoners; Cameroon American Council; Carceral Tech Resistance Network; Ceasefire Democrats; Ceasefire Now NJ; Center for Constitutional Rights; Center for Popular Democracy Action; Center for Protest Law & Litigation @ Partnership for Civil Justice Fund; Chicago Area Peace Action; Chicago Faith Coalition on Middle East Policy; Christians for a Free Palestine; Civic Ark; Civil Liberties Defense Center; Clockshop; CommonDefense.us; Communities United for Status & Protection (CUSP); Council on American-Islamic Relations; CWA-News Guild Local 38010; Defending Rights & Dissent; Delaware Democratic Socialists of America; Delawareans for Palestinian Human Rights; Detention Watch Network; Disciples Palestine Israel Network; Diverse & Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM); Doctors Against Genocide; Dream Defenders; Dutch Scholars for Palestine; Eindhoven Students 4 Palestine; Emgage Action; En Conjunto; Episcopal Peace Fellowship-Palestine Israel Network; Faith for Black Lives; Faith in Texas; Fellowship of Reconciliation; Fight for the Future; For All; Freedom Farm Community; Freedom Oklahoma; Freedom To Thrive; Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA); Future Coalition; Gen-Z for Change; Gender Justice Action and Gender Justice; Get Free; Global Campaign to Reclaim People's Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power & Stop Impunity; Green Mountain Solidarity With Palestine; Green New Deal Network; Greenpeace USA; Hawai'i for Palestine; Health Justice Commons; Helena (Montana) Service for Peace and Justice; Highlander Research and Education Center; Hindus for Human Rights; Historians for Peace and Democracy; Human Dignity Project (THDP); IfNotNow Movement; IfNotNow New Jersey; Immigrant Defense Project; Immigrant Justice Network; Immigrants Act Now; Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC); Indiana Center for Middle East Peace; Institute for Policy Studies New Internationalism Project; Interfaith Ceasefire; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; International Mayan League; InterReligious Task Force on Central America; Iowans For Palestine; Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); Islamophobia Studies Center; Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); Jewish Voice for Peace; Jewish Voice for Peace-Hawai’i; Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ); Just Foreign Policy; Justice Democrats; Just Futures Law; Justice for All; Kairos USA; Libyan American Alliance; LittleSis / Public Accountability Initiative; Living Water Inclusive Catholic Community; Long Island Progressive Coalition; Make the Road Nevada; Malaya Georgia; Massachusetts Peace Action; Mennonite Action; Mennonite Action WA; Migrant Roots Media; Minnesota Peace Project; Mondoweiss; Movement for Black Lives; MPower Change Action Fund; MSA West; Muslim Advocates; Muslim Community Network; Muslim Counterpublics Lab; Muslim Power Building Project; Muslims for Just Futures; Muslims for Progressive Values; National Arab American Women’s Association (NAAWA); National Domestic Workers Alliance Staff Union, CWA Local 1180; National Iranian American Council; National Lawyers Guild; National Lawyers Guild - St. Louis Chapter; National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR); National Partnership for New Americans; New Hampshire Veterans for Peace; New York City Veterans For Peace; The New Justice Project Minnesota; NH Peace Action; North American Students of Cooperation; No Separate Justice; North Carolina Peace Action; The Oakland Institute; Office of Peace, Justice, and Ecological Integrity/Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth; Our Revolution; Palestine American League; Palestine Legal; Palestinian American Community Center; Palestinian American Organizations Network (PAON); Palestinian Feminist Collective; Partners for Palestine; Pax Christi New Jersey; Pax Christi New York State; Pax Christi Pacific Northwest; Pax Christi USA; Peace Action; Peace Action New York State; Peace, Justice, Sustainability NOW!; Pediatricians for Palestine; People’s Action; PeoplesHub; Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies; Presbyterian Church (USA), Office of Public Witness; Presbyterian Peace Fellowship; Progressive Democrats of America (PDA); Project ANAR; Project South; Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice; Reparation Education Project; Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment; Rise for Palestine; Rising Majority; Rising Tide North America; Rochester Committee on Latin America; RootsAction Education Fund; Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre; Sacramento Regional Coalition for Palestinian Rights; Sound Vision; Starr King School for the Ministry; Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at the University of Hawai’i (SFJP); Sunrise Movement; Sur Legal Collaborative; TakeAction Minnesota; Tech Justice Law Project; The Gathering for Justice; The Hague Peace Projects; The Social Justice Center; The Uncommitted National Movement; The Whatcom Peace and Justice Center; Transnational Institute; UndocuBlack Network; Unitarian Universalist Association; Unitarian Universalist Church of the Larger Fellowship; Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice; Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry of North Carolina; Unitarian Universalist Mass Action; Unitarian Universalist Peace Ministry Network; Unitarian Universalist Service Committee; Unitarian Universalist Young Adults for Climate Justice (UUYACJ); Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East; United Church of Christ Palestine Israel Network; United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR); United Voices for America; Until Freedom; US Campaign for Palestinian Rights; Veterans For Peace; We Are All America; Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club; Wind of the Spirit Immigrant Resource Center; Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press; Working Families Party; World BEYOND War; Young Democrats of America Black Caucus; Young Democrats of America Environmental Caucus; Youth Leadership Institute] (April 26-29, 2024): https://www.mpowerchange.org/gazastudentprotests & https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdhlWqDQghbVaPb6K7coBoi0o3w1YDfmrPOSbUw5bqNKEnrhg/viewform
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton: Brief thoughts on the wave of campus protests across America (April 28, 2024): https://robertreich.substack.com/p/my-thoughts-on-the-wave-of-campus
Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders: "I'm hearing disturbing reports that students face suspension if they don’t end their peaceful protests in #Columbiauniversity in the USA. This is a clear violation of their right to peaceful assembly" (April 29, 2024): https://twitter.com/MaryLawlorhrds/status/1785020792197038101
Cas Mudde: Why are US campuses facing an orgy of state repression in the ‘land of the free’? The right has painted nonviolent protests against the war on Gaza as hotbeds of ‘woke’ terrorism. It’s a pretext for repression (April 30, 2024): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/ap30/us-campus-peace-protests-overreaction-gaza
Joint letter to President Biden on humanitarian risk of Rafah operation in Gaza [Signed by: 350.org; ActionAid USA; Alliance of Baptists; American Friends of Combatants for Peace; American Friends Service Committee; Americares; Amnesty International USA; CARE; Charity & Security Network; Children in Conflict; Christian Aid; Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP); Center for American Progress; Center for Civilians in Conflict; Center for International Policy; Church World Service; DAWN; Demand Progress Education Fund; Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Humanity & Inclusion; IM Swedish Development Partners; Indivisible; Islamic Relief USA; Islamic Relief Worldwide; KinderUSA; Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns; MedGlobal; Médecins du Monde / Doctors of the World International Network; Mennonite Central Committee; Middle East Democracy Center; Minnesota Peace Project; MoveOn; Nonviolent Peaceforce; Norwegian Refugee Council USA; Oxfam America; Pax Christi USA; Premiere Urgence Internationale; Presbyterian Church (USA), Office of Public Witness; Refugees International; Save the Children US; SEIU; The Episcopal Church; The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP); The United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society; Truman Center; Vento di Terra; Win Without War] (April 30, 2024): https://www.nrc.no/news/2024/may/joint-letter-to-president-biden-on-potential-incursion-into-rafah-gaza/
Michael Gould-Wartofsky: Trump Is Wrong. Columbia Isn’t Anything Like Charlottesville: I survived the deadly violence in Charlottesville, and am now a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia University. To compare the two is unwarranted—and unconscionable. (April 30, 2024): https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-wrong-columbia-isnt-anything-like-charlottesville
United Church of Christ Officers issue statement amid ongoing unrest on college campuses; offer continued solidarity with partners and people in the Middle East (April 30, 2024): https://www.ucc.org/ucc-officers-issue-statement-amid-ongoing-unrest-on-college-campuses/
United States of America: UN Human Rights Chief troubled by law enforcement actions against protesters at universities (April 30, 2024): https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/united-states-america-un-human-rights-chief-troubled-law-enforcement-actions
Comment from United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on Mass Arrests of Anti-War Protestors (May 1, 2024): https://uaw.org/comment-from-uaw-president-shawn-fain-on-mass-arrests-of-anti-war-protestors/
Mike Littwin: As a veteran of the ’60s campus unrest, I know the value of free speech: Despite what you may hear, most of today’s campus demonstrations, including the one at Auraria, are typically nonviolent. (May 1, 2024): https://coloradosun.com/2024/05/01/israel-gaza-student-demonstrations-opinion-littwin/
On Gaza, NY Catholic Worker community echoes Pope Francis: 'Please! Stop the war.' (May 1, 2024): https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/gaza-ny-catholic-worker-community-echoes-pope-francis-please-stop-war
The Democratic National Committee's College Democrats of America Slams Biden On Gaza And Backs Campus Protesters (May 1, 2024): https://www.huffpost.com/entry/college-democrats-of-america-statement-biden-gaza-campus-protest_n_663278fce4b0849b2edded55
Tope Folarin, director of the Institute for Policy Studies: We Stand with the Students Protesting the Slaughter in Gaza (May 1, 2024): https://ips-dc.org/we-stand-with-the-students-protesting-the-slaughter-in-gaza/
Bernie Sanders in CNN interview: 'This may be Biden’s Vietnam' (May 2, 2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6rQmvko18M
Catholic Relief Services representative for Gaza fears possible Rafah invasion (May 2, 2024): https://www.ncronline.org/news/catholic-relief-services-rep-gaza-fears-possible-rafah-invasion
Helen Benedict, professor of journalism at Columbia University: ‘US student protests seeking peace in Gaza are the new anti-Vietnam War movement’ (May 2, 2024): https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/us-student-protests-seeking-peace-in-gaza-are-the-new-anti-vietnam-war-movement/articleshow/109766893.cms
Hundreds of U.S. Catholic leaders and laity sign letter urging Permanent Gaza Ceasefire and End to Injustice in Israel and Palestine (May 2, 2024): https://cmep.salsalabs.org/ps-may22024 & https://docs.google.com/document/d/16K1RvL3YdSgSChwO_eWB9iSvIglNP59ahqtAQ1aZiGM/
PREPARED REMARKS: Bernie Sanders on the Nationwide Student Protests and the Ongoing Humanitarian Disaster in Gaza (May 2, 2024): https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/prepared-remarks-sanders-on-the-nationwide-student-protests-and-the-ongoing-humanitarian-disaster-in-gaza/
Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University: Opposed to Genocide in Gaza, This Is the Conscience of a Nation Speaking Through Your Kids (May 3, 2024): https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/rashid-khalidi-columbia-gaza-speech
Where pro-Palestinian university protests are happening around the world (May 3, 2024): https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/03/world/pro-palestinian-university-protests-worldwide-intl-hnk/index.html
100-year-old Jewish activist Jules Rabin is speaking up again — this time about Gaza [In a podcast on the nonprofit news site VT Digger, Rabin referred to the tragedy unfolding in Gaza as “a piecemeal Holocaust.”] (May 4, 2024): https://forward.com/culture/609442/jules-rabin-vermont-activism-gaza-ukraine-israel/
Anton Boonzaier: As a South African during apartheid, I admire pro-Palestine protesters’ tenacity (May 5, 2024): https://dailybruin.com/2024/05/05/op-ed-as-a-south-african-during-apartheid-i-admire-pro-palestine-protesters-tenacity
Union workers join students in rallies Saturday calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza [More than 200 people attended the Maine Labor for Palestine and Maine Students for Palestine rally.] (May 5, 2024): https://www.mainepublic.org/news/2024-05-05/union-workers-join-students-in-rallies-saturday-to-free-gaza
Patrick Gaspard, president of the Center for American Progress: American politicians forget: disruption and disorder are the point of protests: I have trespassed in peaceful protest. I have shut down government offices in civil disobedience. I have made the powerful uncomfortable. That’s the point (May 6, 2024): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/06/campus-pro-palestinian-protests
Save the Children warns of deadly consequences for children following new relocation orders for families in Rafah (May 6, 2024): https://www.savethechildren.net/news/save-children-warns-deadly-consequences-children-following-new-relocation-orders-families-rafah
The campus protesters for Gaza are making America great again: Readers on the demonstrations sweeping colleges and their hopes for the next generation. (May 6, 2024): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/06/campus-protests-gaza-palestine-vietnam/
United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF): There is ‘nowhere safe to go’ for the 600,000 children of Rafah, warns UNICEF: With hundreds of thousands of children in Rafah injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized or living with a disability, UNICEF calls for children to not be forcibly relocated, and the vital infrastructure on which children rely to be protected (May 6, 2024): https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/there-nowhere-safe-go-600000-children-rafah-warns-unicef
US campus protests of Israeli ‘genocide’ offer hope to students from Gaza (May 6, 2024): https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/5/6/us-student-protests-of-israeli-genocide-offer-hope-to-students-from-gaza
750+ Jewish Students Affirm Support for Pro-Palestine Campus Protests [In Response to Biden’s Speech, 750+ Jewish Students on 140+ Campuses Stand Against Israel's Rafah Invasion, Urge Jewish Institutional Action to Halt Gaza Assault] (May 7, 2024): https://www.commondreams.org/news/jewish-students-support-gaza & https://mailchi.mp/israelpalestinecomms/jstudents

First of all thank you so much for all the replies, I didnt think this would get so big. I have read pretty much all of them (special shout out goes to the person who says this was fake solely on the fact that I write like a man, whatever that means XD)
Also thanks for all the gold and silver, it's appreciated although if you wanna spend money give it to charity or something.
​
I went and talked to him this morning I told him that his father is not going to look at me and he needs to respect that. He was adamant that it needs to happen and accused me about lying about my virginity. I was trying to be calm and rational but he was not having it and just became more and more angry. I told him if he really loved me he would stand by me on this and tell his father no to which he slapped me and said he didnt need to prove anything.
so I ended it and left him. I am currently back at my friends house being miserable and eating pizza which is pretty fun.
so yup. Thanks everyone :)

I’m taking the LSAT in about a month ahhhh!! Just wanted to express how grateful I am to this community for always keeping a positive outlook (most of the time) and really encouraging me through posts/comments/etc.
This is such a random post and really has no end goal so excuse my informality and all of the place topics.
I’m SO excited to get my first test over with but also incredibly nervous! I think I’ve been making incredible progress (for me). I started studying back in January with the LSAT trainer book and drilling from the official fical preptests. Once I finished the book I moved on to the 7sage curriculum and I’m just now starting to really focus on drilling and practice tests! I’ve only taken a full diagnostic test and scored a 151 which I thought was pretty good. I haven’t taken a second PT but I plan to tomorrow. I’ve been drilling 1-2 RC passages a day as well as 10-15 LR questions a day both with blind review. I haven’t really touched LG recently because my diagnostic I got 20/23 without prior experience so it’s my easiest and strongest section (I practice now and then and get -1 to -3) on full sections).
My goal score is just above a 163ish. My GPA isn’t the best because of Covid and dual enrollment in high school :( but it’s still a 3.15 and going up (plus my school has weird gpa calculations and I think my lsac recalculation will improve my gpa).
My top 2 law school picks are FIU and Stetson. Mainly based on location. Also I don’t want to take out a bucket ton of loans so I’m choosing schools I think I have the best chance of a merit scholarship with. I’m also going to apply to some reach schools and some more mid tier schools (Florida/Georgia area). I work in sports right now in a marketing role and I love it so I would love to stay in the sports field as an in house counsel or something (not solid on that yet).
Feel free to express any opinions or shirt on my top school picks lol.
I don’t have a lot of people in my life because I’ve been so invested in my studies so having y’all to talk to is refreshing :)
Love y’all!

At 18, I began working part-time while studying economics. At 19, I switched majors and started a business. By 21, I had made $100,000 USD from the business and recreated a coffee formula worth over $25,000,000 USD. However, I left the business to study computer science.
At 23, I ventured into the stock market, won $200,000 USD from SPY calls, only to lose that and suffered lost in total more than half of my business profits. During that time, I also perfected a flan recipe, that selling 10,000 flans daily. By age 24, I tried raising funds for the coffee business but received bad offers. I managed to recreate the Pho Hoa OG recipe by 80% and figured out what to improve to finish it. The “potential investors” for the coffee wanted to offer me a few hundred thousand USD but demanded 50%, so I didn't proceed. I returned to school, focused on my studies, and secured an internship at NASA, along with a full time engineering offer from the Lockheed Martin Space division, even though I was just a first year in my CS degree. I also won the largest scholarship at my school from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
I voluntarily withdrew my defense job offer because renouncing Vietnamese citizenship was too long, and I didn't want to make my manager wait for an unknown amount of time. Then, I interviewed for internships at the White House and other companies before switching from computer science to commerce.
At 25, I interned as a SWE at the biggest bank in the U.S. At 26, I spent a year in a co-op program at one of the top four U.S. airlines. I graduated at 27 and spent the next four years as an Air Force officer and finished as a Captain. By 31, I had earned 2 million USD from investing and retired.
From 31 to 33, I studied at the world's leading culinary school (CIA), then continued at the top pastry school (Ferrandi) from 33 to 35. From 35 to 39, I won the best baguette competition in Paris and took first prize in multiple croissant competitions.
From 39 to 40, I focused on Vietnamese banh mi while becoming a Portuguese citizen. From 40 to 42, I made the best banh mi and pate in Vietnam, and from 42 to 43, I developed the top pickled vegetable recipe for Vietnamese banh mi. By 44, I perfected the Pho Hoa recipe, and from 44 to 47, I recreated the Pho Holic recipe.
I moved to Japan to learn ramen and further improve my broth making skills, gaining inspiration to enhance my pho broth from 48 to 55. When I returned to Vietnam at 56, I won the top award for pho. From 56 to 60, I expanded my banh mi business to 100 stores nationwide.
At 60, I sold the banh mi chain through an M&A deal. From 60 to 65, I started and sold a pho chain, repeating the success I had with banh mi.
If I'm at 33, should I continue or adjust my path? I’m pretty sure with my ECs, I can get into any schools I want in the world. Should I do a MBA at Oxford or another top MBA school?

Previous Post: https://www.reddit.com/AmItheAsshole/comments/e1oy5c/aita_if_i_cancel_christmas_because_i_cant_afford/
So, it's been 2 weeks and somehow the messages are still coming in. Thankfully the offers of charity have stopped (here's hoping they were redirected to their communities) but a good deal of them asking whether or not I stopped being a grinch and started being a good husband and father again. So, to get those people placated first, here you go: I DECORATED. Pics without our faces only, sorry.
https://imgur.com/H4b2Cak
https://imgur.com/QySEGOS
https://imgur.com/w074cpg
​
I also spoke with a financial advisor, who is helping me set up a budget for 2020, and a counselor who helped me realize that I was worth more than the goods I could offer someone. She recommended 2 separate therapists to me, and neither are taking new patients before the new year, so for now, my wife and I are working on our budget and cleaning out various corners of the house for things to sell. So far, we've gotten rid of some unused basement furniture, a mini fridge that has been empty for 2 years, a bunch of wine racks and paraphernalia (we don't drink at home since the baby was born 2 years ago, so no need to keep it around) as well as some other things and made about $750, more than enough to pay all the overdue bills, put some money in savings, and groceries in the cupboard. It's going to be a long road to pay off this cc debt, but we're finally addressing the issue head on and moving in the right direction.
Since my last paycheck (that covered mortgage and utilities, no worries there, for those who asked if I was behind, thank you) I have also been offered (and taken) 3 DJ gigs for Holiday parties. 2 for personal friends/acquaintances businesses, 1 for a charity. I refused payment for the children's charity gig, instead offering to give the money right back to the kids instead, which was gratefully accepted by the organizer. The extra cash from the 2 paying gigs paid down some more debt, and was enough leftover to allow me to have bought some nice new books and a Moana doll for my little girl to open on Xmas morning, (to say nothing of the bags of presents from both sets of grandparents full of clothes and toys, so she'll be fine from a presents standpoint).
Inspired by everyone's offers of charity, I volunteered again at Paul's Place in Baltimore, where this time I donned the hairnet and apron and served hot meals. Cell phones are prohibited inside, plus taking photos of yourself doing charity work defeats the purpose of said work. I also organized a food drive at my office to provide meal kits for Christmas for needy families, and we were able to donate 574 lbs of food to the MD Food Bank!
Thank you to all who reached out and made me realize that I really was an asshole. I let my personal shortcomings almost ruin a holiday for my wife and child. It won't be as fancy as our last Christmases, but I have a feeling that this year will be very special to me, no matter how little is under my tree. I realized that I have all the gifts I need, and I cannot thank the beautiful people who offered up so much charity to a grumpy stranger. I didn't need to accept your gifts to accept your love, and the offers alone changed my life.
​
Happy Holiday's y'all.

Hello, I am just posting here for advice. I was working as a trainee educational psychologist (apprenticehship) but had a psychotic episode last June and had to leave my university course for the forseeable. I am 40. My psychiatric nurse from the home treatment team referred me to a charity connected to the mental health team that helps with benefits. In time, and from July 2023 I received LCWRA and subsequently high rate PIP (March 2024 - long wait for assessment), but to be honest the whole period was such a blur, and I was out of it on quite heavy duty medication. My psychiatrist can verify all of this. I had a paper based assessment for LCWRA and PIP with the advice worker helping with my forms, so my contact with the DWP was limited, and it being my first time claiming, I thought that council tax support would be paid to the council. I know, I was wrong about this before I get shot down.
I was starting to feel a bit better (i.e hearing less voices) in January this year, and would say I had mental capacity again to sort my affairs. I used to be a capacity assessor and my ability to understand and retain and communicate a decision at in 2023 was impaired when psychotic. I did not have an advocate for me other than my CPN.
I informed the council that I wished to apply for council tax benefit in February 2024, and they have written a bill for £563, on instalments, to cover the period between July 2023 and March 2024. The have waived any ongoing payments. This issue is I was exempt, did not tell them, and they cannot backdate. My income is benefits only (for now, but I am starting to look for some part time, minimum hours with support of the Shaw Trust in something not that cognitively taxing). We have agreed 12 hours per week is a good thing to try for 6 months to see if any of the psychotic symptoms return.
I know I am liable for the charges from Jan-March of this year when I had capacity. From March 2024 they have been waived. I am happy to see the magistrate as the court charges cannot be recovered from me on benefits. I also asked to go on the vulnerability services register for council tax (I am with them with Octopus too, and when I didn't pay the direct debits last year, they did not disconnect me. I have since paid what I owe them back on a repayment plan of £30pm+£130pm for gas and electric).
TL, DR:
Can I appeal to waive the charges during the time I was mentally unwell and was actually eligible for council tax exemption, but had mentally gone to Narnia. I.e. no capacity? This was July-December 2023 and is £565
Can I set up a payment plan to pay off the debt when I was liable for it (i.e. from Jan this year when I had capacity but did not apply for council tax support through my own ignorance)- this is coming in at £220, and I could make instalments over the year?
Income - £809 a month as my PIP is disregarded
Mortgage - £450 (before anyone jumps in, I don't claim housing benefit and have owned since 2012. Always been in work. I own 70 percent of my house currently but don't want to lose my house)
Gas/electric - £30+160
Food bank/pantry - £80 a month. No supermarket shopping in a long time
Bus pass - £28 pm
Council tax repayment - if not written off, £58pm. If partially written off, £25pm
Home insurance - contents only - £24pm
Fareshare water - £8pm
Basic dental plan (no NHS dentist and I needed three extractions) - £12pm
Total = remainder £22 pm. I could get by on this for emergencies etc
No savings, would be prepared to give a used laptop and my10 year old television to a bailiff if need be if it settled the debt??
Thank you for reading

Hello, I am just posting here for advice. I was working as a trainee educational psychologist (apprenticehship) but had a psychotic episode last June and had to leave my university course for the forseeable. I am 40. My psychiatric nurse from the home treatment team referred me to a charity connected to the mental health team that helps with benefits. In time, and from July 2023 I received LCWRA and subsequently high rate PIP (March 2024 - long wait for assessment), but to be honest the whole period was such a blur, and I was out of it on quite heavy duty medication. My psychiatrist can verify all of this. I had a paper based assessment for LCWRA and PIP with the advice worker helping with my forms, so my contact with the DWP was limited, and it being my first time claiming, I thought that council tax support would be paid to the council. I know, I was wrong about this before I get shot down.
I was starting to feel a bit better (i.e hearing less voices) in January this year, and would say I had mental capacity again to sort my affairs. I used to be a capacity assessor and my ability to understand and retain and communicate a decision at in 2023 was impaired when psychotic. I did not have an advocate for me other than my CPN.
I informed the council that I wished to apply for council tax benefit in February 2024, and they have written a bill for £563, on instalments, to cover the period between July 2023 and March 2024. The have waived any ongoing payments. This issue is I was exempt, did not tell them, and they cannot backdate. My income is benefits only (for now, but I am starting to look for some part time, minimum hours with support of the Shaw Trust in something not that cognitively taxing). We have agreed 12 hours per week is a good thing to try for 6 months to see if any of the psychotic symptoms return.
I know I am liable for the charges from Jan-March of this year when I had capacity. From March 2024 they have been waived. I am happy to see the magistrate as the court charges cannot be recovered from me on benefits. I also asked to go on the vulnerability services register for council tax (I am with them with Octopus too, and when I didn't pay the direct debits last year, they did not disconnect me. I have since paid what I owe them back on a repayment plan of £30pm+£130pm for gas and electric).
TL, DR:
Can I appeal to waive the charges during the time I was mentally unwell and was actually eligible for council tax exemption, but had mentally gone to Narnia. I.e. no capacity? This was July-December 2023 and is £565
Can I set up a payment plan to pay off the debt when I was liable for it (i.e. from Jan this year when I had capacity but did not apply for council tax support through my own ignorance)- this is coming in at £220, and I could make instalments over the year?
Income - £809 a month as my PIP is disregarded
Mortgage - £450 (before anyone jumps in, I don't claim housing benefit and have owned since 2012. Always been in work. I own 70 percent of my house currently but don't want to lose my house)
Gas/electric - £30+160
Food bank/pantry - £80 a month. No supermarket shopping in a long time
Bus pass - £28 pm
Council tax repayment - if not written off, £58pm. If partially written off, £25pm
Home insurance - contents only - £24pm
Total = remainder £42 pm. I could get by on this for emergencies etc
No savings, would be prepared to give a used laptop and my10 year old television to a bailiff if need be if it settled the debt??
Thank you for reading

Has anyone actually been able to receive their SummeFall financial aid awards? Not scholarships, but loans, grants, etc. They won’t answer the phone- it just hangs up after being on hold for 15 mins. Especially if anyone is having to do a dependency status change form or the school needs to make corrections on their FAFSA, please let me know how that is going for you. I move into student housing for the summer in less than a week and still have no idea how much it will cost me. They just say to wait and do an emergency payment plan for an amount I won’t know for weeks…
Why would I want to do that?

I'm being desperate. 2 years ago I was in my home town, with a girlfriend and a gang of very good friends that I was so happy with. I left home and went to study abroad to pursue my dreams and study my passion psychology in Amsterdam. But life has never been the same ever since the first day of my journey. On the first day I arrived, I smoked a lot of pot on my own out of excitement (after 4 years of smoking), I experienced depersonalization and derealisation that ended with a panic attack. It was traumatic and smoking weed is no more comfortable, but I kept on smoking cause it was still fine but not as fun as before. After one month, my girlfriend told me that she cheated on me with a guy when she was drunk with a kiss. It was devastating and she broke up cold heartedly saying she doesn't regret it and she will be hooking up in the coldest tone ever, she looked like an evil out of nowhere after 2 years of a fairytale. She used to be home, I used to feel heard, seen, loved and everything with her. She used to be my gf, my sister, my friend and my mother. I was suffering the break up for 3 months, until I got back home for holidays. On the first day I arrived home, she calls me and tells me that the guy she cheated on me with is one of my friends. She went with him for a situationship that included sex. And they had sex in the house of my other best friend who gave them the keys to stay there. That was even more traumatizing, first, they fucked and thinking that sex was sacred to us, im her first and she was my second and the first was nothing, a one night stand. Seeing her jumping to another guy in no time and having sex with him after a month of distance shattered me into pieces. And secondly, the heartbreak and betrayal of my best friend who gave them his place. I had to cut him off at some point and that was another grief. I had to snap out of the whole friends group. I remember the morning of my flight she was kissing all of my body including my feet out of love and tension of how much she's gonna miss me. We were in tears for a week before my flight. It was a big lesson on how much people can change in no time. There are many other details about the betrayal and the explanations (not justifications) of it that I won't dig into, but in a nutshell, she regrets it so much, and she's in remorse ever since. I blocked her and we didn't talk since then. The betrayal took a toll on me for at least 1 year of deep pain. The pain of betrayal is different. You feel like you're stabbed in your heart, but without bleeding. This misfortune gave me a lot of anxiety and depression for a long time and triggered 2 mental disorders that I have been dealing with till today. I developed pure O (form of OCD but only with thoughts) and and the second, depersonilization and derealization (DPDR). They usually comorbid. These two are like a virus in your brain that does NOT let you enjoy the simplest joys of life. Without digging deep in how these 2 manifest themselves in my life, but to say the least, they stole most of my good moments from my life here in Amsterdam. To be fair i was smoking weed while going through the pain of the betrayal, and that did not help with both of them. Anyways, life is nearly tasteless since a long time, but music and guitar were my escape and my relief. During that first painful year, I endeavoured and made it to the honours program with a scholarship in the best university of psychology in Europe. I also became satisfyingly expressive in guitar (to me at least) and recorded my first solo. I was succeeding, but I was miserable and mad. In the midst of all of this, I always told myself it's okay as long as you can delve in music and psychology. Months passed, and the most unfortunate thing happened in my life. I got two conditions that comorbid too, Tinnitus (T) and Hyperacusis (H). Tinnitus is constant ringing in your eas, and hyperacusis, the worse one, hypersensitivity to sounds, normal sounds seem loud with feeling of fullness in your ears. Only 1% of the population have it. As you might guess, the H put my musical career in jeopardy. I was patient at first after a lot of anxiety and worrying, and a doctor gave me meds, the H faded away within 2/3 months and the T persisted. I was okay when the H faded cause I know I will still be able to play guitar. I stopped taking the meds and I experienced withdrawals, which are symptoms of tardive dyskenesia, which is involontary movements. They're subtle and they say they go away but they didn't so far. The whole ear injury worsened my Pure O and DPDR, which is so much overthinking and discomfort with thoughts. Yet I still got back to living normally with extra care for my ears (earplugs) for a month. But a couple of days ago I got a setback and I got back to nearly square 1, my ear is sensitive again and the discomfort and handicap got back. Which worsened my Pure O and DPDR even more. For the actual moment, I am clueless. I don't know if I will ever be able to one day just grab a guitar and rock it with a good amp comfortably without worrying. I don't know if I will be going to concerts of my favourite bands or to live bands in bars. I derive my joy from music. It is the biggest passion and most meaningful part of my life. There is no cure of the H, only a couple of doctors, and I don't know if I fit the surgery requirements or not, as they don't treat all types of Hs. I sometimes dunno if I still have tears to pour over what happened to me for the last 2 years.
If you finished reading all of this, all my appreciation for listening to me. I hope it was a good read at least. I never thought of just sharing and vent my story to the public, but I said fuck it, do it. I have no friends and I needed to get this off my chest.
Thank you
A human being who's unhealthy, broken, desperate and lonely.

I'm Christian. Say what you will or don't, but I don't push my religion onto anyone. I believe in free will.
We were hit by a tornado recently and we needed to get our stuff out of the house quickly before more water damage happened. So we called Samaritan's Purse and these people were wonderfully helpful. I really can't say a bad word about how supportive and kind they were.
BUT. There was a man traveling with them named Rand. He didn't wear the Samaritan's Purse tshirt and he didn't stay to help us. I think he was affiliated, but his goal was different.
He came into our house and asked to be introduced to my sister-in-law. I think he singled her out because she had facial piercings. I was in another room listening and at first thought he was just being friendly to her. When I caught on it was already happening and I didn't know how to extract her without getting tangled up in it too. It was crazy awkward and we were depending on their charity. Although I'm still not sure he was with Samaritan's Purse. He said something about Billy Graham.
So, he went up to her and introduced himself as if he was just being friendly. And then he went into this VERY rehearsed spiel. I know it was rehearsed because he caught me when he came back later and said the exact same stuff to me WORD FOR WORD. Being Christian, I got out of the conversation faster, because he couldn't "save" me.
He said something like, "I'm going to ask you a question that my wife says I should never ask a stranger. Is it alright if I ask you this question, Pam?" Mind you. He is acting like he's just making conversation and has in no way received permission to induct her into Christianity. And we're in a very vulnerable position relying on Samaritan's Purse for help, so we don't want to be rude.
Anyway, he goes on to ask how she'll go on to heaven. And to explain why she'll make it. My sister-in-law is trying to be polite but feels super awkward and is wondering if my Mom set her up. My sister-in-law is agnostic. We don't care that she is agnostic, a lot of people in our family are. Meanwhile, my Mom is horrified that he's concentrating on Pam so intensely. After grilling Pam about heaven, he asks if he can pray for her, and Pam feels pressured to agree and thinks he can say what he wants, it doesn't affect her.
Well. In his prayer he welcomes her to Christ and Christianity. Then he gifts her a beginner's Bible with highlighted passages and introduces her to the volunteers with Samaritan's Purse, that are helping us with our house, as "sister Pam" who has recently accepted Christ into her heart. Then he told Pam he had saved 9 people during all this and left.
It felt predatory and like he was just collecting notches on his belt by setting up people conversationally into "accepting" Christ.
Pam didn't accept Christ. She got socially pressured into an awkward situation because we needed help.
This is the kind of stuff that pushes people away from religion, the exact opposite of his goal.
Even the Samaritan's Purse leader seemed done with Rand when everyone gathered into a circle to introduce themselves. She's all like, "And you've all met 🙄 Rand."
When my brother showed up with the moving truck he had gone to pick up, he was pissed to hear about Rand's manipulation with Pam.
Funny enough, Rand only targeted us females. He didn't try any of that with my Dad, my brothers, or my brother's friend. And I know Pam could have told him off, but she was afraid of offending the help we desperately needed. And honestly, so was I.

I recently committed to UMiami for their Foote Fellows Honors Program and PRISM program, but I just got off of Tulane's waitlist. Which option would be best if I am aspiring to med school? Which schools would I get better grades at (have grade inflation)? I received sizable scholarships for both so cost is not a factor).
UM offers smaller, discussion-based classes with a set STEM curriculum for my first 2 years as well as more accessible research opportunities, and I would be exempt from my gen-ed's. Experience in a lab and strengthening relationships with professors is another benefit. After the first 2 years, I will be a regular student. On the other hand, the PRISM program is notorious for being a GPA-killer and housing would be an issue after my first 2 years (maybe even after my first).
I feel like Tulane has more name recognition and prestige, and its strength in the natural sciences and focus on service and research correlates with my interests in biology and public health. I feel at Tulane, the benefits of Miami's honors program can be realized due to the plethora of opportunities present -- it would probably just take more work since they aren't hand-fed to me.
Please let me know your thoughts, thank you!

We have 50/50 custody. I don’t pay child support but I cover the health insurance as well as the school tuition for our 6 kids, 16, 16, 14, 13, 9 and 8 — which works out to about $3,000 a month with their scholarships/aid. In the divorce in 2021, I also paid her out $100K USD and gave her the car as well.
She used the money last year to go half on a multi-generational home with her ex-fiancée’s parents. It was a split level and her intention was that her and the kids would live there forever. They moved there in January and the engagement ended maybe two weeks ago. She showed up with the kids last week, told them to go inside and that she needed to speak to me outside. She told me her situation and asked about my apartment that I own in a nearby town. That’s been rented since 2012 and I cannot just put that tenant, who is an elderly woman, out. At any rate, the rent would be $2,000 USD/month (nearly her entire salary) and it’s a 1 BR nearly an hour away.
They’ve told her as this is their son’s house, she and her children have no right to live there as they are no longer engaged and the fiancée’s parents are actually intending to leave the house to all of their children. It seems to me that she was scammed and was never actually in a good faith relationship with the ex-fiancée. I’ve told my ex-wife she doesn’t need to rent an apartment. She has a house. They can be as mean as they’d like, her name is also on the title and everything. They are counting on her just acquiescing to this nonsense. Told her She needs to go back to her house…and see a lawyer as well as the police, if necessary, because those people are out of their minds if they think they can put someone out of a house they just dropped $100K on. 100KUSD is about $50,000,000 in our currency. She said she’s tried the “this is her house too” approach but the situation became so ugly and abusive that she didn’t want the kids there anymore. She went back and has been texting me non-stop to “please do something.” I’ve given her the contact of my boy who is a lawyer and asked him to take this on as a favor, but outside of that there isn’t much that I can do. Matters of property could be in litigation for years though. That’s what concerns me. I know she doesn’t need the “This was a dumb decision” speech and I’ve refrained from giving that to her but this was a very dumb decision. She could’ve gotten a decent house on her own with $100K around here. She didn’t need to go the joint ownership route with these people.
This situation has the kids with me full-time going forward. She doesn’t want the kids at the house even on the weekends because of how volatile things are there. Her doing visitation here makes my wife uncomfortable. My wife thinks I’ve done enough and that Id be overstepping by offering a space here for visitation. The house can accommodate her visiting to see the kids without them having to see each other. There is the patio that is entirely out of the line sight of the main house. There is also a sitting room inside that we rarely use. My ex-wife’s family is in Panama. She’s a migrant to this country; came here to study. So she has no family support here. I want to balance my wife’s comfort but also my ex wife is my kids’ mother and she is entitled to see them. I also do not want them in a situation that has deteriorated that much.

Hi Everyone! I really need your help and advice. I got accepted into UCLA which was my dream school, and I was very interested in attending it! So, I applied to this research program, PEERS, and I got in! I am going the pre-med route and I am majoring in biochemistry. UCLA is ranked very high in my major, and is a pretty respected school. However, I also applied to University of Pittsburgh, which was my safety school, and I got invited to apply for the Chancellor's scholarship.
Benefits of Chancellor's Scholarship
The Chancellor’s Scholarship is a four-year undergraduate award covering:

• Full tuition
• Mandatory fees
• Average room and board plan
• Guaranteed Frederick Honors College housing

Benefits of PEERS

• Pathways in Science seminars (Research Practice 97XA/B)
• Collaborative learning workshops for intro math and science classes
• Personal academic advising
• Career planning and awareness workshops
• Assistance with enrollment in intro science classes
• Research talks with UCLA faculty presenting the latest “hot” research topics
• Social events with other science students
• Preparation and support for undergraduate research
• Information about research scholarships and employment

I was going to commit to UCLA this week, but then I got an email telling me I got this scholarship. It would be really hard to turn down my dream school, but also hard to turn down a full-ride. I am also OOS for both of those schools, and UCLA is a bit expensive, but is it worth it in the long run? Which school do you think would better prepare for me considering I am a pre-med and eventually applying/getting accepted to medical school? Also, I want a school that is an area where I can explore and both schools(LA & Pittsburgh) offer me that. My last question is which school do you think would give me the best "college experience"?

Hi, i'm 24 and i'm french, and i need help creating a better resume when i have so many gaps and little working experience, here my CV : link to a translated version of my current resume
for context i'm going to explain my ''career''.
I graduated the french equivalent of high school with average grade ,then i finished a computer science degree called BTS (equivalent to a community college i think). I was and still am really shy and depressed.
After that things got worse, because i never did anything to get better , i found that getting a job was maddening and i got scared and retreated at my parent house.
I did some small attempt at getting out of this situation with a case worker and i did some short jobs as a cleaner that didn't go well because of my inexperience and social ineptitude.
After one year i got into a 1 year training to become a 3D graphic designer and graduated but at the end i didn't do anything with it.
and now, one year after i'm still here, i did work 3 months as farm worker but nothing else. I'm planing to get another more qualifying degree in computer science if i can get a scholarship because i feel it's the only thing i can do.
How can i spin my resume in a more positive light ? could it be a good idea to embellish my resume ?
thank you and i you took the time to read all of this i love you a lot <3
TLDR: depressed guy trying make a better cv after been a neet for 3 years