IT Insights Blog — Network+

It is a little known fact that there is a THIRD Jonas brother. Actually, there is even a fourth Jonas brother. His name is Frankie and he's about a decade younger than his more famous older siblings. He is also a musician, however, unlike with some famous brothers, where they do not all follow the same path in life. Mark and Donnie Wahlberg, for example, are both musicians and actors, whereas Paul Wahlberg is a chef and owns a restaurant.

For people who are not independently wealthy, retirement is no sure thing. Not the way that, say, death and taxes are. It's like you can't quit your job before you die because you had to pay so much in taxes that you never managed to save anything for retirement. This upbeat outlook brought to you by the Center for Positivity, Optimism, and Hopeful Platitudes.

For most people here in the United States, during most of the calendar year, the Internal Revenue Service taketh away. Tax withholding, for nearly all Americans, is as automatic as pouring milk on cold cereal, or contributing to a 401k. It's practically the same thing as contributing to a 401k: you agree to give someone else money with the expectation of getting some back later on.

Sometimes change is incremental and unpredictable, as illustrated in the following exchange from Season 6, Episode 12 of The West Wing, "365 Days:" "Of course we want to avert a disaster in South Dakota, but I can't take this to the president just yet." "Trouble in South Dakota?" "In about a thousand years. Mount Rushmore is on the move." "How far has it gone?" "About an inch."

Sometime this weekend — just before midnight on Saturday, to be precise, quite literally at the eleventh hour — the next potentially winning combination in the Powerball lottery will be announced. The current jackpot stands at roughly $435 million, with a "cash value" (whatever that means) of $273.1 million. Maybe that's the after-tax payout? Maybe it doesn't really matter to the winner? What's a quarter of a billion dollars between sweaty-palmed suckers hoping to turn a multi-tens-of-dollars investment into a multimillion-dollar American Dream?