Hasta La Gadget!

The whole concept of living beneath your means is so simple that it’s virtually “old school”. There’s nothing high-minded about it, and no product to sell to help make it happen. For that reason, it’s a concept that is generally ignored in favor of more technical financial applications. And yet it is virtually the foundation of financial independence.

There are a number of ways in which living beneath your means can virtually revolutionize your entire financial life.

Debt — The Inevitable Result of Living Above Your Means

There are various strategies available to enable people to get out of debt. All of them ultimately point toward living beneath your means, although they will generally use much more technical language, as well as more advanced sounding concepts.

The reason should be obvious, until you can begin living beneath your means, you have virtually zero chance of ever getting out of debt.

In fact, it’s essential that you recognize that the inverse of living beneath your means is the very cause of being in debt in the first place. Debt is the result of living above your means. If you earn $50,000 per year, but you spend $55,000, you will add $5,000 to your debt each and every year.

The only way to break that cycle is to reverse the trend. If you can reduce your spending to $45,000 per year, you will have the funds available to begin paying down your debt. But that reduction must occur in order for you to make any progress.

Chasing Higher Income Can Be a Catch-22

It’s a common belief that financial independence will ultimately come as a result of a higher income. That can prove to be true but only if you are successful in keeping your spending level as your income rises.

This is often the opposite of what happens in reality. A higher income more typically leads to lifestyle inflation — your cost of living rises in proportion to your income. The end result is that income never outstrips expenses, no matter how high your income goes.

This is why people often feel that they aren’t any better off even with a higher income. This isn’t to say that increasing income is in any way a negative thing. But it does have to be properly managed, otherwise it will not have a positive impact on your overall financial situation.

The Less You Spend, The More You Can Save

The most obvious benefit of living beneath your means is that it creates the ability to save money. Savings provide you with a cash cushion, that enables you to weather the storms of life, and to do so with less worry. But it also keeps you out of debt. After all, if you have sufficient liquid savings, you don’t need to borrow money.

True Prosperity is Defined By How Much Money You Have, Not How Much You Earn

Though wealth in America is often measured by income, true prosperity is really a matter of how much money that you actually have. We can think of this as your surplus; and if you have enough of it you will have more control over your life and your future direction.

Financial independence is typically found in a strategy that steadily increases savings, which can then be invested to produce even more income. A perfect financial strategy is one in which investment income steadily grows until it fully replaces your earned income, and you can retire.

But none of that will happen until you first begin living beneath your means.

The Many Benefits of Living Beneath Your Means

Even apart from growing wealth and retiring, living beneath your means offers a number of attractive benefits:

Not being trapped in a job. People often stay in jobs they don’t like because they are heavily dependent upon the level of income. But if you can live on less than you earn, you’ll be free to take a lower paying but more satisfying job elsewhere.

You will become a natural saver. So many people are in debt because they never learned how to save money. But if you live beneath your means, you will always be putting money into savings, because that’s what you do with money that you don’t spend. Saving money is an underestimated survival skill. And if you have savings – and particularly if you don’t — you probably already know that life is better when you have a fully stocked bank account.

Being liquid. As a result of living beneath your means, you will always have extra money. This will afford you the freedom to go where you want and to do what you please in most circumstances. This will not be possible without the surplus that living beneath your means provides.

You’ll have less stress in your life. When you have extra money in your budget, extra money in savings, and little or no debt, you’ll worry less and sleep better at night. You’ll probably even work more efficiently at your job, because you won’t have concerns about not being able to pay your bills.

Living beneath your means is sort of like going on a diet. You know that there’s something good about the lifestyle, and especially about what awaits you when you stay on course. But you have to make that initial decision to make the changes necessary in order to enable you to do it.

And once you do, you’ll quickly realize that living beneath your means is the true path to financial independence, whatever your income level may be.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A male guard at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex repeatedly raped two female inmates, a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges.

The suit, which seeks class-action status, accuses Correction Officer Benny Santiago of sexually assaulting the two women for years, and punishing them when they resisted his advances or threatened to report the attacks.

The guard’s actions are part of a “pervasive culture of rape and other sexual abuse” inside Rikers’ all-female Rose M. Singer Center that is “common knowledge within and without the facility,” says the suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan by the Legal Aid Society.

WARNING: Graphic material.

“Correction officers and other staff know not only that women are regularly abused, but also which officers abuse which women, and when and where the abuse occurs,” says the suit.

The lawsuit, which names Santiago and the city as defendants, seeks unspecified monetary damages, as well as a court order requiring the city Department of Correction to stem sexual abuse at the jail.

The two women plaintiffs asked to proceed with their lawsuit anonymously, saying they fear of retaliation from Santiago.

The woman identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe 1 says the abuse started in 2008, when she was working a janitorial shift. Santiago, she says, stared at her buttocks while she mopped the floor. A week later, he invited her to his desk, where he allegedly unzipped his pants and masturbated.

A week later, the lawsuit says, the guard told Jane Doe 1 that he “wanted her to be his.” When she tried to walk away, he grabbed her arm, telling her, “I’m not done talking to you,” the lawsuit says. He then instructed her to meet her that night in the “dayroom,” while he worked the overnight shift.

The woman, who the suit says has “limited intellectual capacity,” showed up, fearing what would happen if she didn’t, according to the suit. In the dayroom, Santiago raped her the first of many times, the suit says. He assaulted her as many as four times a week in the room, where there are no security cameras, according to the suit.

Jane Doe 1 left Rikers in 2009, but returned in 2011. Santiago was still there, and he resumed raping her in another off-camera area referred to as the “sprungs.” When Jane Doe 1 did something that upset Santiago, the lawsuit alleges, he would anally rape her.

Jane Doe 1 remains incarcerated on Rikers Island.

Jane Doe 2 is no longer an inmate there. The lawsuit says Santiago asked Jane Doe 2 for oral sex in early 2013, and he began meeting her late at night in a pantry, or inside a cell with an inoperable security camera. The suit says he raped her on multiple occasions.

Two other officers were aware of Santiago’s actions, the lawsuit says, but didn’t report them.

One night in April 2013, after Jane Doe 2 refused to enter a closet with Santiago, the lawsuit says the guard threatened her.

“I can get you set up,” Santiago allegedly said. “I can get you fucked up.”

Jane Doe 2 went into the closet, where the lawsuit says she was raped.

Later, fellow inmates and guards accused Jane Doe 2 of tattling on Santiago for smuggling contraband into the jail, the suit says. One night, Santiago released all the inmates from their cells except for Jane Doe 2. The inmates yelled at her and threatened to hurt her, calling her a “snitch,” the suit says.

Other guards wouldn’t let Jane Doe 2 out of her cell to take a bath or to eat, the suit says. Once, guards didn’t feed Jane Doe 2 for 24 hours. On another occasion, they placed Jane Doe 2 in solitary confinement, though she maintained she had done nothing wrong, according to the suit.

The lawsuit claims the city “not only failed to investigate [Jane Doe 2’s] allegations against Santiago in a timely manner, it also stonewalled Jane Doe 2’s attempts to obtain evidence that she provided to the City during the course of its investigation” of Santiago. Among the evidence, the lawsuit states, was a pair of Jane Doe 2’s jeans with traces of Santiago’s semen.

Santiago is still a guard at Rikers. A city Department of Correction official told The Huffington Post Tuesday that he has been placed on modified duty, and does not interact with jail inmates.

The Department of Correction said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The department said in a statement that it generally “has a zero tolerance policy with regard to sexual abuse and assault, and there is no place at DOC for the mistreatment of any inmate.”

Norman Seabrook, president of The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association — the union that represents jail guards — told The Huffington Post that the lawsuit “is an allegation we have to deal with.” He said the union would “stand by Santiago to the furthest extent of the law.”

“It’s an unfortunate situation, whether you’re an inmate or a correction officer, and it’s something we don’t stand for,” Seabrook said.

Seymour W. James, attorney-in-charge of The Legal Aid Society, said sexual violence is at “record proportions” in New York jails and “rape and other sexual abuse of women are endemic at the Rose M. Singer Center.”

Last month, New York City Public Advocate Letitia James sent a petition to the Board of Correction, asking for rules that would protect female Rikers inmates. She pointed to a Justice Department survey that found that 8.6 percent of the female inmates in the Rose M. Singer Center reported being sexually harassed or abused, compared with 3.2 percent of U.S. jail inmates.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

I knew you would be back, Spartan. Did you miss me?…

For the most part most commercial headphones designed for everyday use don’t need headphone amplifiers. However for the audiophile, there are headphones which function a lot better when it has a headphone amplifier helping to drive it, and if you’re after a headphone amp for your computer, well the good news is that Apogee’s Groove is now available.

The device as originally announced earlier this year in January and according to a blog post by Apogee, the headphone amp is now available for purchase where is it priced at $295. It is admittedly rather pricey for such a tiny device, but if you believe the audio gains are worth the money then perhaps this is a device for you.

The Groove boasts 24 bit/192kHz audio thanks to its built-in Quad Sum DAC. It also comes with a feature called Constant Current Drive that claims to be able to adapt to the frequencies of your headphones to help make them sound better. It is also incredibly easy to use as all users need to do is plug it into their computers and they’re good to go.

Also because it is USB powered, users won’t have to fuss about finding a power source or use batteries as your computer should be good enough to drive it. If you’d like to get your hands on one, head on over to Apogee’s online store for the details.

Apogee Groove Portable USB Headphone Amp Now Available , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

At the moment the only way one can get their hands on an Apple Watch is to place an order online, although given the demand for the device, customers will have to end up waiting until June/July before they receive their order. Now the good news is that if you’d rather pick up the device in an Apple Store, you might not have to wait much longer.

In a recent trip to China, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook had reportedly told Apple employees that Apple’s retail stores should begin carrying the device by June. This is not an official quote so we suggest you not get your hopes up just yet. However this seems to corroborate earlier reports in which Apple’s retail chief Angela Ahrendts stated that the Apple Watch will remain an online exclusive through May, so a June availability makes sense.

Assuming that the reports are true, we’re not sure what the stock levels will be like at launch. Like we said online orders are now seeing shipping times in June and July in certain cases, so will the stock for the Apple store be separate from the online order? Or will Apple work to fulfill online orders first before stocking their retail store?

In the meantime during Cook’s trip to China, he also revealed that one of the reasons he was in China was to work out the details on how to get Apple Pay up and running in the country. Previously Cook had expressed interest in launching the service in China, claiming that the country was considered to be a key market.

Tim Cook: Apple Watch To Arrive In Stores By June , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.