gumbo2176
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Re: how to retire

PaulF wrote:I have heard of situations like this require a 'due diligence' search for claimants and a time involved for those potential claimants to come forward. And also heard that if there is an overwhelming percentage of the potential claimants who waive their rights to the property, it can then be probated to a free and clear title.

Out of the woodwork claims will most likely occur if you fix the property up and give it some real value. Then you will have a couple of 5th cousins you never heard of. I just hope it works out.
Therein lies the problem. The relatives are scattered to the wind in all parts of the country now and the property as it sits is only really worth the land value since the 2 houses on it are in such disrepair. I would opt to build my own home on it, but before I'd invest in the neighborhood of $100K or more in building my house, I'd surely want free and clear title on the property.

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Circumstances have necessitated postponing retirement by several years. I have a few marginal revenue streams or trickles that I need to augment. In my field, some people work into their late seventies. I admire anyone who takes steps toward self-sufficiency. I have at least two siblings who seem to think that I will figure greatly in their retirement years, but I think that's because I cared for both of our parents into their nineties.

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digitS'
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I'm the oldest in the neighborhood and if you bring 10 Americans together, I will be older than about 9.1 of them link :wink: . The little lady in the duplex a half block down now has a job as a crossing guard at the elementary school nearby. Two doors down, the guy who retired last year has gone back to work. He accidentally set off his car alarm at 4:20am, recently. It's exactly the same time he was leaving for work in 2015 ...

Our youngest DD wants me to "retire" from the post-retirement job of selling produce at a farmers' market.

Let's see, seasons come and go, there are holidays thru the year, garbage day comes once a week, the mail carrier drops junk in the box about noon, except on Sundays. There are the meds an hour before breakfast, others a half hour after ... let's see, have I forgotten anything? I'm sure I will, you know the mind is the first to go.

Steve :wink:

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tomf
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So many people can not retire due to a number of reasons, I know some people who barley got by and found it hard to save fro retirement, and I know some spent like crazy and did not save. Also pensions are not there for many people and it is hard to get by on SS. My mom worked and due to divorce she lives on SS, us kids try to do what we can for her. Her only real vacation is when I fly her out to visit us she lives north of Boston. I was lucky to have worked 39 years in a good job at Boeing and get retirement benifits. Go Sox! Had to add that last part.

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rainbowgardener
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We are going to have a generation in crisis as the baby boomers age. I worked hard, got advanced degrees, never spent much. I did pay for a lot of education for me and helped pay for my son's education. But I worked in public sector service jobs and I never worked anywhere that had a pension; fewer and fewer people will have those-- they are disappearing. I will be OK, partly because I learned how to live on not very much and partly because I used good judgment about a few things (like working hard to pay off a house). I retired with a tenth as much savings as the financial advisors say you should have. It will work because I am debt free and frugal and would rather stay home with the chickens and gardens than take fancy vacations.

But I did retire with savings. At least half of the boomers coming behind me (I am the leading edge of the boomer curve) will be retirement age with NO savings. The reason the Social Security system is in trouble is because Congress stole from it. SocSec money comes from Soc Sec taxes. It was supposed to be kept completely separate from regular government money, not used for regular government operating expenses, "firewalled." That did not happen. If we don't do something to protect Social Security and get Congress to pay back the "borrowed" funds, a generation of us (including me) will be starving...

I guess we're going to be like the Eskimos, who allegedly put their elders out to die.

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Social security is failing because it was not started until after the great depression in 1935 with FDR. The reason for choosing 65 was because at the time, I think the average life span was 68. Before then people counted on their families to look after them when they got older.

Although a lot of people still do that, more and more of them are ending up in nursing homes instead and medicare only pays for 3 months a year for that, the rest has to come from insurance or they have to be declared poor enough to qualify for other government payments like medicaid.

Advances in medicine have extended the life span so people are living longer and sicker requiring more care. The government works against itself because it forces doctors and hospitals to do tests they know are low yielding because they are required to go through certain steps to get paid or because they don't want to get sued for not doing an available test. C. Everett Cooper said in testimony while the original affordable care effort was being debated was that no insurance company or the government could afford to keep spending money on futile care. The most medical dollars spent are spent in the last months of life, often with aggressive care instead of palliative care. The decision but not the cost of continuing futile care rested with the emotional families. At some point someone needs to say that continuing heroic efforts are futile and only offer palliative care.

That decision should be left to the person which is why a good advanced directive is important. The generic one the hospitals have are not very specific. I saw an advanced directive once that was well drawn up. This person made sure his designated spokesperson who had medical power of attorney understood exactly what he wanted. His advanced directive was very specific in defining quality of life. He said he wanted to be able to play golf, engage in conversation and be able to live independently. He specifically said spending his last days in a nursing home unaware of his surrounding, being feed through a tube and having someone wipe his butt everyday with no hope of improvement was not what he wanted and preferred a death with dignity. He even set a time limit in case there might be a chance of improvement of 1 year. If there was no improvement after a year all supportive care would be stopped.

In the beginning social security was flush with cash with the post war boom. Then in the 60's social security funds were tapped not only for retirement but for aid to dependent children,disability, medicare and other social programs that cost more than the fund was making. Money was spent and an IOU was put in its place. The social security fund on paper should still have money but most of it is money that it is owed. Today there is so much red tape to go through to get reimbursed and the government has cut the payments to doctors and hospitals so much that some doctors are not accepting any new medicare patients. They have to have other insurance. Hospitals depend on insurance payments to pay their costs. They have to cut back on personnel, services, hours since they often are mandated to provide x amount of services for medicare patients even though they are being underpaid.

The early retirees still got good payments and most of them also had pensions.

Today, there is no guarantee that social security or medicare will be around for the next generation. When people are young and able to make money, they really don't think about putting any of it aside for emergencies, healthcare, life insurance, or retirement. Even buying a house is far out of reach since few of them even have saved enough for a down payment.

Since I am technically not of full retirement age yet, and social security is only funded until 2035, even I don't have any guarantee it will be there for me when I most need it.

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tomf
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What both of you are saying is true. But SS should have plenty and had they invested it and not taken it for other uses it would be flush.
I think this is could be getting a bit into the area of politics and we should leave it at this before we cross the line. One thin people need to plan better for retirement, but to many it is a long ways away and until it is almost too late they do not think about it.

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Gary350
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When I lived in Arizona solar was very popular. There was a lot of companies that would tell you things that are not true. Solar City was the most honest but still only in business to make money. I interviewed 8 companies finally decided not to have solar on the house. I had solar on my Tennessee house several years ago. If you put solar panels on the roof the roof always leaks. I removed my own panels and put them on again 3 times to repair roof leaks last time I removed them and put on a new roof I did not put the panels on the roof again. I have 28 solar panels in a storage shed in the back yard I will never put them on the roof again. The plan was to build a place in the yard to put the panels up on legs. A 4 leg roof frame work just for the solar panels never need to work about roof leaks again. When I lived in AZ lots of houses had roof leaks from solar panels the companies promised to maintain the roofs but when it came time to do roof repair everyone got the run around and nothing ever got repaired. The solar companies claimed solar will save you money and make you money. The contact is basically a lease contract for the company to lease YOUR house roof to mount THERE solar panels. Solar electricity was sold to the power company during the day at the high price day rate then bought back at night at a lower price that is suppose to be a savings. All the sales people told me stuff and I took notes then I did the math and none of there claims added up. I took engineering in college I know what I am doing. Math was telling me it will take 20 years to break even I will probably be die of old age before I ever break even so why have solar. My neighbor had solar that has not worked in 2 years the company already made their money and had no interest in repairing his solar panels. Neighbor was trying to sell the house but every buyer wanted a new roof but the solar company contract said no one can remove the panels but the solar company because they own the solar panels. Neighbor lost 6 chances to sell his house because everyone wants a new roof. Attorney found a loop hole in the contract so the neighbor sold the house on the agreement that he would pay for the new roof after the house was sold. New owner had signed NO agreement with the solar company so he had the solar panels removed. The house got a new roof and everyone was happy. LOL. I bought my solar panels when the government was offering the tax break so I got them 10% cheaper. I built my own system using with battery storage. I could use electric in the day and charge batteries too then use electric at night. I still had electric service with the power company my electric bill dropped 90%. The money I saved on electric bills just about broke even to pay for solar but it never saved enough money to pay for 3 new roofs. My solar power ran out about 4 or 5 am every morning I used the local electric service for a few hours until the sun came up. About 3 months after I moved away from AZ power companies in AZ started charging everyone with solar a $50 per month service fee this is an extra fee added on to the monthly electric bill. Power companies claim since they are not making a profit selling electricity to houses with solar they are not making enough money to pay for maintenance and up keep to the power lines to those houses. The $50 per month service fee is suppose to be for maintenance of the wires to the houses with solar. To make a long story short be careful what your getting into with your solar company.

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rainbowgardener
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I don't know. I don't have experience yet. But I certainly have some friends that have had solar panels on their houses for some years already and have not heard any stories like that.

Our company is TN Solar Solutions which has a very good reputation. They tell us everything is warrantied for 20 years and they will do all the monitoring and maintenance.

I was disappointed to realize that in fact our panels will not be powering our house, just generating electricity for the grid which subtracts from our utility bills. You can do it the other way, but then you have to have battery back up and it is more thousands of dollars. Or you have to have a hybrid system which can switch from one to the other, but that is expensive also. The way this is, if the grid goes down, we have no power the same as anyone else. We talked to them and we can retrofit later to add the batteries and be powering ourselves. I would like to do that when we can, but for now we have spent all the thousands of dollars we can for awhile.

We are 70 years old. It is a toss up whether we will live long enough for this to pay for itself (they say 8-10 years). That partly depends on what happens to energy prices. The more expensive energy gets, the faster it is paying for itself. But we didn't do it for the money. We did it because reducing our carbon foot print is the right thing to do.

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@Gary350 Omg, I haven't ever heard anything about solar panels causing leaks on the roof. Are you sure it was not the roofing material that did all the trouble, or perhaps the company you hired didn't have professionally-trained employees (?).

Nowadays, solar gains popularity all over the world, which gives more space to fraud as well.

Also the remarks about the house sale surprise because I have heard only the opposite - that solar panels increase the property value on the market.

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rainbowgardener
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Yes, I know people who have had solar panels on their roofs for years and never had any issues. We had our roof inspected before putting the panels up, just to be sure and the inspector (independent, not connected at all with the solar panel company) said it would be fine. And yes, usually the solar panels do increase the resale value of your house.

"In a state like California, for example, a small 3.1-kilowatt (kW) system can add an average of $18,324 to the value of a medium-sized home. The property value advantages of solar energy only increase as you scale up. Installing 5kW of solar panels adds an average of $29,555 to the retail value of a medium-sized home." https://costofsolar.com/is-my-home-worth ... ar-energy/

We aren't expecting to move again unless it is to a nursing home, but it seems like if you do sell your home, you can pretty much recoup the entire cost of the system in added value.
solar panels.jpg
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tomf
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People love giving advice and before I retired a number did. Mostly they told me that I should keep busy. I had to smile, they obviously don't know me well.

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rainbowgardener
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I was just looking back at this thread and noticed this:

"In a state like California, for example, a small 3.1-kilowatt (kW) system can add an average of $18,324 to the value of a medium-sized home. The property value advantages of solar energy only increase as you scale up. Installing 5kW of solar panels adds an average of $29,555 to the retail value of a medium-sized home." https://costofsolar.com/is-my-home-worth ... ar-energy/

The system we installed is 8 kW. So it sounds like if we do sell this house, we will get more back than we paid for it, not even counting all the money it saves us in the meantime.

gumbo2176
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rainbowgardener wrote:I was just looking back at this thread and noticed this:

"In a state like California, for example, a small 3.1-kilowatt (kW) system can add an average of $18,324 to the value of a medium-sized home. The property value advantages of solar energy only increase as you scale up. Installing 5kW of solar panels adds an average of $29,555 to the retail value of a medium-sized home." https://costofsolar.com/is-my-home-worth ... ar-energy/

The system we installed is 8 kW. So it sounds like if we do sell this house, we will get more back than we paid for it, not even counting all the money it saves us in the meantime.
You really need to check that in relationship to property values in your part of the world. These things are skewed in places like the left coast, especially California. I'm betting your home in California would be worth 3 times what it's worth in your current location.

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rainbowgardener
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Oh easily three times as much. More depending on what part of Calif. My son lives in Oakland across the bay from SF and property values there are crazy. He has a house that is one third the size of ours with a teeny little fringe of yard around it (vs our almost half acre) and he paid more than three times as much for it as we paid for ours. Five years later he's getting ready to sell it for five times as much.

So yes, in $$ value our solar panels wouldn't likely add as much here as they would in Calif, but in % of the home's price, probably similar. But that part is all academic, because we won't sell this place unless we have to go into a nursing home.

gumbo2176
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rainbowgardener wrote:Oh easily three times as much. More depending on what part of Calif. My son lives in Oakland across the bay from SF and property values there are crazy. He has a house that is one third the size of ours with a teeny little fringe of yard around it (vs our almost half acre) and he paid more than three times as much for it as we paid for ours. Five years later he's getting ready to sell it for five times as much.

So yes, in $$ value our solar panels wouldn't likely add as much here as they would in Calif, but in % of the home's price, probably similar. But that part is all academic, because we won't sell this place unless we have to go into a nursing home.
I've just turned 65 last month and am waiting for the wife to reach retirement age in a few years. Our plan is to sell this house in the middle of the city and buy something a bit smaller with more land in a rural setting and that will be the last house I will live in until we can no longer survive on our own or just go to the great unknown. I can sell my house and buy a house in the country and still put a nice chunk of money away because of the disparity in home prices between the two.

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rainbowgardener
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I admire that, gumbo. I'm 70 and we bought this place a couple years ago. Many of my friends around my age are down-sizing selling their big houses and gardens and moving to a smaller, closer-in place or even a condo or apt, saying they are tired of gardening, don't want to work so hard etc. We up-sized! Similar sized house, but more yard, more gardens, more animals.... I love it. It is what makes me happy.

gumbo2176
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rainbowgardener wrote:I admire that, gumbo. I'm 70 and we bought this place a couple years ago. Many of my friends around my age are down-sizing selling their big houses and gardens and moving to a smaller, closer-in place or even a condo or apt, saying they are tired of gardening, don't want to work so hard etc. We up-sized! Similar sized house, but more yard, more gardens, more animals.... I love it. It is what makes me happy.

By the time my wife retires, I'll be pushing 71. I would love a place for a bigger garden, some fast growing fruit trees, blackberry bushes, grape vines, etc.

I would also have chickens for fresh eggs, possibly some ducks too, but no big farm animals like cows and such. I just hope my health is much like it is now and if it is, that move will be a piece of cake.

And I agree, you need to do what makes you happy in life, and if living rural on a nice big piece of land makes you happy, then go for it.

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tomf
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11 years ago I sold my city home on ¾ acres where I did have a garden to move out of town where I eventually wanted to retire. I worked in a suburb of Portland on the same side as where I moved to (between Portland and Mt. Hood) and drove 40 minutes to work. We are not far from shopping the next town over has stores, the mall and hospital are 35 minutes or so the other way. We did not down size as we went from a 2150 SQ foot home to a 4600 SQ foot home on 21+ acres. We have the smallest yard on our street and we are surrounded by miles of forests. There are only 4 homes on our road, 2 of them have over 40 acres so we are not on top of anyone. The house is somewhat big and I needed to put a lot of work into it but we have a room for all our activities and extra bedrooms for people to visit, and a nice music studio. I was luck and smart in that I had been putting away in my 401K for many years and working for almost 39 years at Boeing gave me a good pension, and I have had no need to touch my 401K so far. I retired last year at 62 with no penalty on my pension (new contract allowed that). I worked since I was 14 years old by starting working construction with my dad so even though I do much out here it is so nice not to have to go to work.I love living out in nature. gumbo plan for a tractor and a ton of tools when you move.

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I do believe a tractor will be needed for some of the things I want to do, especially if the wife and I can take over her late father's land which consists of 2 tracts, one being 6.75 acres and the other being an even 10 acre tract. The one with the house and shop on it now is the smaller of the two and only has about 1.5 to 2 acres cleared with the rest heavily wooded. I would want to clear off some more of that land and manicure it a bit for a walking garden with paths in the woods.

A friend of mine did this on his property in Mississippi and it is very peaceful walking his trails with the occasional bench, gazebo, garden spots with native flowers, etc.

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rainbowgardener
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Very nice... I would love to have a little bit more land. But compared to where we were, I'm pretty happy. Our little half acre so far has two peach trees, two apple trees, two fig trees, two serviceberries, two elderberries (just like Noah's ark for trees! But a lot of things do produce better with two), one hazelnut, one hawthorne, all the new foundation plantings, a couple dogwoods, AND eight vegetable gardens (soon to be ten) and our chicken enclosure. I really want a bee hive sometime, to take care of all the fruits and berries.

This is my version of how to retire and I love it!

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tomf
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gumbo2176 wrote:I do believe a tractor will be needed for some of the things I want to do, especially if the wife and I can take over her late father's land which consists of 2 tracts, one being 6.75 acres and the other being an even 10 acre tract. The one with the house and shop on it now is the smaller of the two and only has about 1.5 to 2 acres cleared with the rest heavily wooded. I would want to clear off some more of that land and manicure it a bit for a walking garden with paths in the woods.

A friend of mine did this on his property in Mississippi and it is very peaceful walking his trails with the occasional bench, gazebo, garden spots with native flowers, etc.
I got an HST one as for doing FEL work with it you can control the speed with your foot and leave the throttle alone, gear tractors are good for plowing big fields.

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[quote="tomf I got an HST one as for doing FEL work with it you can control the speed with your foot and leave the throttle alone, gear tractors are good for plowing big fields.[/quote]

Had to look up those two---HST and FEL since I don't know much about tractors being a city slicker and see they refer to hydrostatic transmission and front end loader work. Yes, that does sound like the ticket and I would probably get a small to mid size tractor for what I plan to do. I would want an attachment to run off the PTO for digging post holes for fencing or setting posts for certain structures like decks, a gazebo, etc.

Definitely need a bucket for moving soil, gravel, other debris and leveling ground. I would also like an attachment for disking soil and forming rows. No need down my way for a snow blower attachment. LOL

I've got time to think about all this since the wife still has a few years to go before she is retirement age. Who knows, this may all be a pipe dream in the end depending on how healthy I am and what I can honestly undertake by the time she can call it a day and retire. I do know if I feel anywhere near how I feel now, it's definitely going to happen.

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gumbo... re " depending on how healthy I am and what I can honestly undertake by the time she can call it a day and retire. I do know if I feel anywhere near how I feel now, it's definitely going to happen." Sounds like by the time you are talking about, you will be just about the same age I am now. I am going strong and enjoying all this. I attribute much of that to being a regular at the gym for years and getting enough exercise. Use it or lose it happens a lot faster at our age!!

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rainbowgardener wrote:gumbo... re " depending on how healthy I am and what I can honestly undertake by the time she can call it a day and retire. I do know if I feel anywhere near how I feel now, it's definitely going to happen." Sounds like by the time you are talking about, you will be just about the same age I am now. I am going strong and enjoying all this. I attribute much of that to being a regular at the gym for years and getting enough exercise. Use it or lose it happens a lot faster at our age!!

Oh, I agree. I have friends and even a couple of neighbors that are younger than me that are much worse off physically just because they lead such a sedentary lifestyle and don't take care of themselves. There's really not much I can't do if I want to do it. I did try to get back into jogging a few months back and that didn't work out. Considering I've had 3 knee surgeries just on my right knee and the pain I started to feel after a few jogs let me know that part of my life was done.

Medicare allows me free gym membership at several local gyms. I'll probably check into that after the new year and all the holidays are done and dusted.

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I have a neighbor who is 92 and he lives in an adjoining house on his sons farm. He goes on walks, takes care of his son's horses, does chores around the farm and has wood working hobbies. Not only is he very fit for his age but he is also mentally sharp.

gumbo2176
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tomf wrote:I have a neighbor who is 92 and he lives in an adjoining house on his sons farm. He goes on walks, takes care of his son's horses, does chores around the farm and has wood working hobbies. Not only is he very fit for his age but he is also mentally sharp.

Sounds like a perfect partner for an older lady I know. She's going to turn 96 later this month, still drives, takes just one medicinal pill a day, is active in her church choir and is out her house for at least 6-7 hours a day doing things for, as she puts it, "The old people I know." I get a chuckle out of that one because many of them are 20 or more years younger than her.

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In October it will be 2 years retired and it is so good not to have to go to work. I enjoyed my job as much as one can, every week I got to run a different set of machines including a number of robotic ones, and I had a verity of jobs and responsibilities to keep it from being boring. Being that everything I worked on was critical to the flight and safety of Boeings jets there was a lot of pressure not to make any mistakes, being retired takes away a lot of stress. What I do miss are some of the fun people I worked with. I have been able to get a lot of work done at home and still have time to have fun and sleep, yes sleep!

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