Fraser

Depends. Are your current clubs a pile of junk? Personally now is a great time to start saving and investing, especially if you have an interest in the stock market. Not quite as lucrative as a few months ago but I had some spare cash in a checking account and threw it in a fund I'd read about, made almost 50% on it in less than 4 months. I think it is always good to start saving a bit each month from a young age. Whether Einstein said it or not the saying 'compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe' is not far off the truth.

I really could be here all day! A few randoms that spring to mind: -People who dawdle down the street/mall/pathway blocking the way so you can't get past. Don't get me started on moving walkways at airports and the like. -People who understand nothing about flying (especially frustrating as I contribute on a number of frequent traveler forums) and blame XYZ airline because they were stuck in security, or don't know the difference between customs/immigration/security. -Those who ask for a question then when they hear an answer they don't like chew you out. -Obnoxious sneezers. One person at work rattles windows! -People who chew gum with their mouths open. Same here...and people look at me weird when I grab the door handle with a paper towel. Yeah, that's because you didn't see Mr Diarrhea walk from the stall right to the door! OK, here's my bad driving list: -Running red or late yellows. I've lost count on the number of times I've had the green arrow allowing me to cross the street and have still had a stream of cars passing in front of me. -People who hang out in the middle or left lanes. -People who hang out in the middle or left lanes and then get pissed off when you flash them and refuse to move over. -People who don't use indicators. -People who use cellphones and then can't drive properly. -People who cut across multiple lanes at once. -People who don't turn their lights on when it rains/is getting dark/is dark/is overcast. -People who can't park. -People who park their trucks obnoxiously across multiple parking spots. Funny you mention this, on my drive home from work a minivan was stopped in the right lane about 100yrds short of some traffic lights. I rolled right past it and then it moved in behind me with the woman waving her arms about and flashing me. Maybe people round here are telepathic but if she had her indicator on I'd have known you were trying to change lanes. Are we related? My MIL does this all the time. Drives me nuts. OMG. This absolutely kills me, seems to be done less in the US than back in my home country. I did once get some odd looks, I was at a party soon after I moved over to the US and a guy I didn't know turned up wearing a jersey of some sports team and was talking to someone else about his team in that 'we' manner. I'd had a few drinks and for devilment sake said to him how impressed I was to have a professional sports star at the party. I never saw him again! Freudian slip? In the UK it isn't and lane splitting is seen as one of the benefits of having a bike...

It actually started off long distance. We 'met' through an internet forum we both participated on and started talking on email/phone/messenger. She was living near a city I went to visit about 9months after we first 'met' and we chose to meet for dinner. At that dinner we both realised how much we really had in common, had some kind of feelings for eachother off the bat and it all kicked off from there. Utterly bizarre, I still can't believe it turned out the way it did. Yes, but whether or not your survive a ten story office drop is outside of your control. A relationship is something you forge and affect all on your own doing. Sure the statistics are generally against you but as I said earlier if they both want it to work hard enough it can. There is one thing I forgot to mention, if you really want a relationship that becomes long distance to work out you've got to create an exit strategy for the long distance aspect. In my case we decided after going back and forth across the Atlantic for a year that I was going to emigrate and so that was something we aimed towards. Without that light at the end of tunnel it'd never have worked for me.

Strip club gift cards.

Funny that because mine did. 3700 miles and 8hrs on a plane apart. I lasted 2 1/2yrs going back and forth every six or eight weeks and we have now been married for almost 4yrs. I was at University too. If the guy and his girl both want to make it work, it will. However, I get the impression he knows it is over already...

Same here (though I'm not a broker, our company is set up a little different) although it was a lot busier for us earlier in the year. My first couple of months on the job I was doing 70+hr weeks. Now I'm down to about 50. Although I'm salaried I get paid overtime, otherwise I'd have gone insane!

Yes. I was working in investment planning but then my company moved cities and I didn't opt to move with them. Now working in the mortgage business.

Not sure if any of you Corvette drivers have seen this on any Corvette forums you may post in. Gave me a chuckle though! Corvette driver didn't see the Mercedes that had stopped in front of him for a school bus unloading children.

"Adrenaline junkie Dirk Auer takes on the Mammoth roller coaster at Trips Drill theme park in Stuttgart, Germany " We're not that crazy!

I don't really collect golf stuff... Breitlings are a bit of a hobby. Only got three which is pretty small by collectors standards but I've got a few more on the horizon and at 25 I've got a fair few years yet to buid up my collection: I also collected Concorde memorabilia for quite a few years. I got interested in the aircraft at a young age and we had a Concorde pilot in the village took a book I had to NYC and back and got it signed by the crew...plus he gave me a ton of the paperwork from the flight and various other goodies. That was 1997, a few years later I flew aboard it to New York and then found out it was retiring so started gathering some more. Ended up with a decent amount of stuff. Around the time it was retired I could have easily offloded it all for the best part of $10,000 but decided to keep it all. I'm not sure if supersonic travel will be available to the general public for quite a few generations yet...and the stuff isn't worth near $10,000 anymore, and the best part is I don't care!

I've got residual fitness. When I was at boarding school I was incredibly fit. We'd play sports for an hour six days a week, plus my own working out schedule which is usually obsessive but generally short lived programs I'd religiously follow! My favourite, and one I became pretty notorious for was my press up routine. At the age of 14 I started off doing 50 a night, then 75, and within a couple of months I was up to doing 300 a day. I then started timing myself to get competitive! I'd do 75 pressups take a 15 second break and do another 75 until my 300 were done. At my best I was able to do 300 including breaks in about 6 mins. If I missed a day then I'd do 600 the next day. I remember going on a bandtrip with the school we had to share rooms and my roomie was ill so didn't bother to go out in the evening so went to bed early. After going out I came back and did my 300 pressups in the dark. A year or so later we were talking about working out and the roomie found out I did the pressups obsessively. He said he was disturbed because he woke up when I came back from the night out and thought the groaning was me ahem , pleasuring myself! I also used to run a fair amount, 7 miles every other day, again I'd time myself. I think the fitness aspect was counteracted by the fact I'd always have a chilled pint of Newcastle Brown Ale in the fridge ready for me when I got home I need to get back into doing some working out. My wife has gym equipment in the house but I think I'd rather try out a team sport, maybe some soccer or field hockey...

I grew up using Windows, from 3.1 up until XP. When I emigrated I started using my wife's Macbook. I hated the damn thing from the start, being frustrated using my Windows habits and learned the quirks of it but when it was time for me to buy my own computing power (I did last 3yrs!) I went back to a Dell, Vista powered PC. My wife's a graphic designer so the Mac is logical, my brother-in-law works in computer special effects and uses both. For my simple needs the second release, more reliable version of Vista was fine for me. There were a few things I did like about her Mac, fairly simple things like I didn't have to worry about drivers when connecting printers, digital cameras etc. but that's essentially history now on my Windows PC. I also liked that shortcuts were intelligent enough to note a file had been moved rather than just tell me to piss off like Windows does if I shuffle my music folders around Then there's the more general things like the rest of the world using Microsoft based products and easy availability of those... I'm not completely anti-Apple. I've got an ipod touch which is fantastic! I'm happy with my PC, my wife's happy with her Mac. We're a happy household.

There's something deliciously ironic about this statement

For me the perfect car is a zero compromises blend of luxury, speed, handling and something that looks the part either in the supermarket or outside a casino in Monaco. IMO there are only a few cars that I feel are close to this, a handful off the top of my head (each slightly skewed to different elements of the above); Mercedes CL65 AMG, Ferrari 599, Aston Martin DBS & Mercedes CLK63 AMG Black Series. A great car doesn't need to knock all of the above out of the park but must excel in most of the areas. Frankly I couldn't be less impressed by 1/4 mile times. With time and money I think you could get a Kia Rio to do an 11 second quarter, it proves nothing other than it is a one trick, fast-in-a-straight-line, pony. I'm far more impressed by quick times for road cars around the Nurburgring Sudschleife, something that the latest Corvettes (since a few of you mention them) do very well on. That's just my opinion. It isn't wrong, it isn't right, it's just how I value what a great car is. Shoot me

I used to do the mountain biking excessively in my early teens. It was one of those fads at school that everyone got into but my brother and I kind of stuck with. I remember scoring a great deal on a pretty nice Giant that was supposedly the previous year's model so it as going cheap. I spent a few hundred quid upgrading the brakes (Shimano XTR V-Brakes) and putting some downhill bars on it. I loved that thing! Over the course of a summer I'd ride 30 miles four of five times a week, before I got into golf. When I was about 19 our garage got broken into and it got pinched. I hadn't ridden it for a few years, my time went into travel and working so it didn't get much use out of it. I took the cash from the insurance payout and didn't buy another...

A pretty fast 1/4 mile time does not a great car make.

Oh, ok. I guess I'll have to disagree on the fact those are 'great' cars. Besides, the GT500 has an MSRP of $43k (and lets face it how many people really pay MSRP?), that sounds like average guy territory to me

Which cars are we talking here? Saleen, Panoz and the like that make up a tiny proportion of the US car market?

We aren't stuck at 35mpg, the American market doesn't really care for much for what is beyond it. Over the last few years with the hybrid fetish and $4.50 gallons it is has begun to change a little. Diesels really are the way forward for those with fuel economy in mind. They have a pretty bad image in the US but where I'm originally from they are perfectly acceptable. In the UK the best selling Mercedes S Class from 1998-2006 was the diesel variety and pretty much every car at the S Class/BMW 7 Series/Audi A8 level and below has a diesel. My father has an A8 diesel and loves it. He had a BMW M6 before and when he told me he was switching to an A8 oil burner I thought he was nuts but the performance is excellent. 0-60 in 6 seconds and 40mpg is pretty admirable! THANK YOU! The 'buy American' philosophy is so bunk, especially when the cars produced are generally poor. My wife and I drive German cars and it'd take a hell of a lot to get me to switch over to an American vehicle. I ride in one every now and then (my wife's parents have a hateful Jeep Cherokee and of course we play the rental car lottery!) and every time I wonder why anyone would buy that instead of a European, Japanese or even Korean (!!) equivalent. I really am coming round to believing that people buy American cars just because they are American! I'm all for supporting local business and companies but only if the product is any good in the first place. I can't remember the last American car I rode in where I was genuinely impressed with the product.

Ahhh...Emma Watson. Glad to know it's not perverted to find her attractive now ;)

The crooks maybe but the investors ? Did greed get the better of them all? Well, on the face of it yes but can you blame someone for investing money with someone who had a second-to-none reputation before all this came out? After all 30% returns aren't, or should I say, weren't all that crazy if you invest in the hedge fund world.

Not a big Scotch person though am more partial to a good single malt than blended. My father's very big into single malts and on my trips over to see him he might break out a good'un that he thinks I might like. Most of the time they're wasted on me... British Airways have JW Blue open pour in their First lounges and in longhaul First cabin. Can't stand the stuff neat but have been known to order it with Coke just because

Actually I think you've got a point

Not at all! Just seems like you've been talking to all the right people already (if not since posting the initial question). Personally there are several things I would never seek the advice of internet forums for and financial advice is one of those

The company I work for does zero closing cost refinances and with rates comparable, if not better than all the major lenders. We don't do loans in TN but see if there are any lenders who do the same in your area. I am slightly confused though, if you spoke to several unaffiliated FAs, and your father who is a financial genius why did you stop by here?