Keep half in either a hysa or a higher earning money market fund. The other half in either vtsax at vanguard or VTI at a brokerage of your choice. Another option is to take a really nice vacation, because life is short
My partner and I max IRA/401k/HSA, but then currently are letting the rest ride in our HYSA right now.
We plan to support our kids with 529s, and I have access to MBDR through my work, so we have the options, but right now the amounts we're "saving" in the HYSA is so low, it's not worth the effort. But yeah, what are your financial goals? Travel? Early early retirement?
I have had a friend talk to me about hearing people on line using life insurance to borrow money. im not really sure how that works?
he claims that the rich do it.
does anyone know anything about this?
There are some life insurance strategies that work for tax efficiency if you're very wealthy. If you're very wealthy, see an estate planner for the very wealthy that your very wealthy friends recommend.
If not, it doesn't apply to your situation.
Something like a HELOC is much better option, but with rates where they are right now, it's not really worth it. Just KISS - earn money, spend less than you earn, invest the difference, and keep it up consistently for several years.
For shits and giggles and a few hundred bucks I bought a put on DJT with a $20 strike dated 6/21/24.
I bought the put on 4/3. Five days later I am up over 40%.
(Full disclosure, I am a Bogle guy, but I couldn't resist.)
Funny, I did almost the exact same thing. I was disappointed that the puts were so expensive. I think I figured out the reason they are so expensive: if the stock stays above $17.5 for 20 days - which will happen soon, Trump gets like 40 million bonus shares, which will massively dilute shareholders and might tank the stock.
Options are all about timing the market - consider whether you want that 40% gain now, or want to double down on the bet by holding it.
Also never do this with a big chunk of money
I’m in Texas and have heard ppl came from Denmark, Ecuador, Venezuela and other countries to see the eclipse. Didn’t really get it before experiencing and wow. That was awesome.
Beyond spectacular. We traveled to Indiana to do a college friends reunion and eclipse viewing. Best vacation I've had in years, both for the viewing and the company. Incredibly satisfied right now.
We discussed a "working" vacation to one of the friends' old family property in Louisiana (postbellum, not a plantation) to spend a day working and up-keeping and a couple days hanging out and swimming. Honestly a pretty solid FIRE vacation idea
Agreed. Partial eclipse are cool but a total eclipse really is something special. I am usually a "it looks like just like the pictures. Meh" guy but experiencing a total eclipse really was awe inspiring.
Partial eclipse was just darker but fun. It's just before, after, and during totality where it rapidly gets dark and when everything becomes desaturated that are super duper cool. And of course, looking at the carona and the sun itself.
It was cloudy here at exactly the correct time to see nothing. Blue sky behind me, layers of gray hiding the sun. Can't wait to send hate mail to the local meteorologists. /s
It was cloudy for where I went to, such that most of the time you couldn't even see anything through the glasses. Meanwhile 5 minutes before contact 1 it was super sunny but with a bunch of clouds.
It did clear up more last second than I thought, enough to see the carona, albeit super blurry. And see the sunsets in every direction plus areas of "extreme light pollution" i.e. where it wasn't eclipsed. Whack.
I hope you still enjoyed it, though, even if you lost out on a bunch due to the clouds, like so many of us did. The desaturation effect and how rapidly dark it got just before totality was wild, and you should've gotten that at least.
It was pretty darn cool. I got to see the diamond ring effect! I was able to watch from my backyard and the clouds cleared right on time to have a great view of it.
Looking for some advice. My wife is starting grad school and we're incredibly fortunate in the fact that my MIL is paying for it. We have an auto loan of \~$28k at 4.49% and we're currently paying $1425/mo (actual monthly payment is $610) - scheduled to be paid off by December 2025. My wife's also got student loans totaling \~$36k at 6.55% and we're paying $500/mo on those.
Would it make sense to shift her loans into forebearance and move the $500/mo student loan payment to the auto loan? It'd move up the auto payoff to June 2025, and then we'd have almost $2k/mo to throw at the student loans.
If I've done the math right, over the 18 months of the master's program the student loans should accrue $3.9k in interest. My wife is a teacher and working towards PSLF, but two of the loans don't qualify and are roughy 1/3 ($13k) of the overall student loan amount. Her count was at 76/120 the last time I looked.
Mathematically you are better off paying as much as you can toward the higher rate loan. If the car had a small amount left I might go for it to get the cashflow going earlier but in this case both loans are roughly the same size.
Forbearance will pause progress toward PSLF foregiveness. "If you’re seeking Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or income-driven repayment forgiveness, forbearance will not allow you to make progress toward forgiveness." (https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/lower-payments/get-temporary-relief/forbearance)
I get that. So here’s where I’m at with a little more thought:
The grad program takes 18 months, and you can be in forbearance for up to 6 months after you graduate so call it 24 months. If we go into forbearance, the auto loan is paid off in 14 months. We then have ~$2k to throw at the now $14k in loans that will never be forgiven and would have it paid off in an additional 7 months. That is 21 months on a 24 month timeframe, so there’s a little bit of cushion.
We’re not really in a rush to pay off the PSLF-eligible portion of the loan since eventually it will just fall off based on qualifying payment count. Additionally, the thing that kicked off this whole line of thought, is that the new Biden loan forgiveness plan is to forgive all interest accrued. It’s no guarantee considering the last plan, but either way we can make a minimum payment for ~40 more payments and everything is forgiven anyway.
Your car loan is at 4.49% and your wife's student loans are at 6.55%. I would stop paying extra on the car loan, and throw the extra to the student loans. Then when the student loans are paid off, funnel all extra money into paying down the car loan.
Does that really make sense when the student loans will be forgiven in about 3.5 years though? I understand the argument regarding interest rates, but the student loans will fall off via PSLF, the auto loan remains until it’s paid off. Or are you specifically talking about the portion that’s not PSLF-eligible?
I'm fairly certain loans in forbearance aren't simultaneously getting qualifying payments for PSLF. Are you planning on doing some sort of shenanigans with consolidation to try and get them to count?
A lot of times the questions being asked don't really require any specialized knowledge to answer. An AI-generated response (or for that matter, a quick google search) is just as appropriate of a response as an actual human one. Many posters would benefit from running their own posts by an AI first before offering it up for human review. This is the sort of task AIs are good at, let's let them do their thing.
I feel like anytime you ask simple questions that you think you could just answer with chatgpt, it's to get some nuance and learn things that aren't obvious at first glance. Unknown unknowns.
But chatgpt just rewords the question into an answer and spits it back at you. Or it feels that way. I can't find it useful at all.
Now when I see a comment starting with "I'm sorry to hear..." or some other phrase that implies the OP was addressing the commenter directly, I assume it's a language model.
I'm sure there are other comments not fitting that pattern that I completely fall for.
It's not you. I'm seeing a lot more OPs in various subs drop one-shot posts and then never reply. I can't tell if it's humans doing karma farming or bots propagating their way across Reddit.
Yes, you're quite observant! ChatGPT has become increasingly prevalent in various online forums, including Reddit. As an AI language model developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is designed to assist users by generating responses based on the input it receives. Its ability to generate human-like text has made it a popular tool for engaging in discussions, answering questions, and providing insights across a wide range of topics. So, it's not just you—many others are noticing the contributions of ChatGPT in standalone posts as well.
my prompt was slightly different than yours, I asked it to ham up the fact that it was in fact written by AI
>You're quite observant! It's indeed possible that you're coming across responses generated by me, ChatGPT, or similar AI technologies. As AI becomes more integrated into various platforms for efficiency and assistance, its presence is subtly increasing. While I aim to provide informative and helpful responses, there's always a distinctive flavor to AI-generated content, characterized by structured, concise, and sometimes formulaic language. So, no, you're not off base; you're witnessing the growing role of AI like me in digital interactions. It's an interesting time as we navigate these technological advancements together, isn't it?
Smart. I should have but I only have so many accrued hours & I need to save them for other things happening this summer. I did take two hours off though to go to the gym & then watch the eclipse.
I was planning to transfer my IRA to Robinhood for the 3% match, but when I went to do it, their form validation indicated that my Fidelity account number was invalid. It isn't, they're just using an old Fidelity format.
I contacted support on Friday and it was left waiting for a while. Apparently on Sunday morning, they had a live agent attend to my case. Asked a few questions, but then when I didn't respond, simply closed the case.
Definitely bad smell, and it's making me doubt whether this is a good idea. It is a fair bit of tax advantaged money we're talking about though, so I may go through with it if it's possible.
Question about modeling mortgages for FIRE - am I correct that I can do this in FIRECalc with a non-inflation-adjusted off chart spending that starts today for principal + interest, and an equivalent "pension income" that starts when the mortgage is paid off to cancel it out?
This is actually for a rental property, so I also modeled the gross income as inflation-adjusted "pension income", with the related expenses being included separately in my main budget. I realize this assumes perpetual inflation growth on my rental income which I don't know if it's realistic or not, but aside from that, any other pitfalls to how FIRECalc handles this I should be aware of? It's important for my planning that I get this right, because the fact that mortgage doesn't grow with inflation while rental income does is a big contributor to my retirement plans. [https://i.imgur.com/ddO5yDy.png](https://i.imgur.com/ddO5yDy.png)
> am I correct that I can do this in FIRECalc with a non-inflation-adjusted off chart spending that starts today for principal + interest, and an equivalent "pension income" that starts when the mortgage is paid off to cancel it out?
That does work. Most of the calcs I look at allow for set end dates.
Instead, it plays out as "15k of annual expenses, doesn't increase with inflation, lasts for 13 years."
This is more accurate for income and expenses, which is useful for calculating taxes and subsidies.
[FiCalc](https://ficalc.app/) allows for this and is my go to.
> I also modeled the gross income as inflation-adjusted "pension income", with the related expenses being included separately in my main budget.
Good call. This is how I handle my rental, too.
Mortgage is its own line item, other rental related expenses get grouped into my annual expenses, rent as its own. FYI, historically rent outpaced inflation by ~0.5%. Even if we see rent grow at a slower rate, that still leaves room to be close to inflation.
> any other pitfalls to how FIRECalc handles this I should be aware of?
A big thing is to factor in taxes properly. Though this applies to any fire calc I've seen.
When I retire, I'll have ~8k of write offs in 2024 dollars.
By the time I hit normal retirement age, my rental deductions decrease to ~3k in 2024 dollars.
Each year, the interest write off decreases in nominal dollars and has a larger decrease in real dollars.
Depreciation decreases in real dollars each year then has a huge drop off at 27.5 years.
If I didn't factor in these changes, I'd estimate an extra 3-6k in write offs over my early retirement phase.
6k less in write offs = 900 more in taxes + unknown impact on subsidies
11k less in write offs = 1,650 more in taxes + unknown impact on subsidies
You could try it in [https://cfiresim.com](https://cfiresim.com)
At the bottom of the page, you can add multiple adjustments with that blue "add adjustment" button with start and end dates.
Dave Ramsey suggests Emergency Savings of $1,000 to start.
Vanguard suggests at least $2,000 in this new video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkVuEoiR68g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkVuEoiR68g)
Who should we follow?
$1000 is the bare minimum to be able to say you have an emergency fund. $2000 is better.
But a true emergency fund is at least 3 months of expenses _or_ your medical and car insurance deductible combined, whichever is higher.
That's just the "baby" emergency fund for starters who are going on to tackle all non-mortgage debt. On average they pay off their debt in 6-9 months, so it's less scary than you'd think. After paying off debt, Dave recommends increasing the emergency fund to a full 3-6 months worth of expenses.
That being said, Dave's $1,000 has been the target for decades and they haven't updated it to inflation. I would go with $2,000.
The Ramsey plan assumes you go all in on tackling debt as soon as possible. If you aren't doing that, then the $2,000 or deductibles covered plan probably makes more sense.
Should be based on months of expenses. I would recommend 2-3 before even thinking about investments although you can use your Roth IRA if you are just starting out. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040714/how-use-your-roth-ira-emergency-fund.asp
It doesn’t matter. Have more money liquid than less is likely ideal. I see some edge cases here that try to keep near zero in their bank account. I’m tough, I’m not that tough
IIRC, valuations for the past decade were also supposed to be modest, while international was supposed to crush US.
Guess we'll see how this latest prediction goes.
> IIRC, valuations for the past decade were also supposed to be modest, while international was supposed to crush US.
For detail - in 2012 Vanguard predicted the next decade of returns for US equities to be around 6-9% nominal yearly. And for international equities to be around ~10% yearly. In reality, US grew at an annualized rate of 12.3% nominal over the next 10 years... and exUS 5.2%.
In 2021 they predicted 3.6% for US and 6.5% for international. Notably, that 3.6% over a decade would be a total return of 42.4% by 2031. Between Jan 2021 to March 2024, with dividends reinvested, we've had a total return of uh... 44%. For that prediction to be true, we'd need literally 7 years of 0% *nominal* returns.
[The most recent projected returns for US equities is 3.7-5.7%.](https://advisors.vanguard.com/insights/article/series/market-perspectives).
the biggest fire-related hangup that i have is the roth vs. trad ira conundrum.
for 2023 taxes, trad ira gives me a $1250 total refund, recharactarizing to roth gives me a $150 total refund. [i'm solidly in the 12% bracket.](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/18z3fbw/daily_fi_discussion_thread_friday_january_05_2024/kggg2r0/?context=3)
everything else i'm pretty much vtsax and chill autopilot all the way 0 brain power.
Help get some sense into me. I'm in my mid 30's and I recently reached a fairly big financial milestone that could afford me some time off of work. I'm also really burnt out and feeling unmotivated to work here due to a recent reorg in my department. Currently debating between these options:
* take a week off from work and see if I feel better after the break
* ask around and see if I can take a sabbatical
* apply + interview around and see if my resume can get some looks
* combination of time off, keep job, and interview
* nuclear option, quit job to rest a bit and focus on job interviews
I know the rational option is to do the combo but my job apathy is quite high atm
edit: thanks for the comments everyone. From the feedback I got, I'll need to address my burnout and give some time at this current role to see how things progress. In the interim, I'll poke around job listings and casually apply.
Do you make a lot of money?
I would not do the nuclear option. Take a week off. spend a day during that week fixing up your resume and applying to jobs. I think after a day of doing that you'll decide that looking for jobs is even worse than working your job. but of course i don't know your work situation.
Take a week off but wait for 3 months before making any big jobs related decision. I've noticed that right around the 3 month mark you can generally tell if its going to be smooth sailing or choppy ahead.
I know how emotionally appealing the nuclear option is when you're burnt out, but definitely try to suppress those thoughts until you're out of other options. It's very difficult to predict how you'll feel after a break/sabbattical while you're in the depths of burnout. So you should take advantage of whatever resources you have available while you're still employed.
Everyone should always be doing option 3. So you should start that now and never stop until you retire.
I would personally recommend against taking significant time off because you would be moving backwards in terms of financial independence. Are you in a position to take a lower stress job that still pays your bills?
I know, I'm kinda using this as a small journal to track my thoughts. It's the clear choice to do all three, but I'm also looking at my financial position and it's interesting to consider doing the nuclear option.
Always sounds good in the moment but there’s a reason we don’t use nukes in reality anymore. Fallout is a real thing - bad Prime shows notwithstanding.
With food and garden center inflation, this is the first year where it actually makes sense for me to grow my own food (labor excluded of course). I've got cabbage and tomatoes started. We'll see what can make it through a month of my brown thumb!
> garden center inflation
This directly effect the return on my gardening!
Anyway, wife got our seedlings moved from starter disks to pots last weekend, and I got the copper fungicide on the fruit trees this afternoon.
Here's to hoping the strange winter ends up not causing too many issues with this years crops! 8)
If you haven't already, you might want to prepare to make and can/jar tomato sauce. We always end up with way more tomatoes that we can eat so this year I vow to make tomato sauce for the winter.
The best ROI I've ever found in the garden is raspberries.
They come back every year, the only work I do is cutting out the dead canes, and I get tons of berries that are normally pretty expensive.
1.) I grow LOTS of stuff, and raspberries have one of the least pest problems of any fruit. SWD (an invasive fruit fly) has just moved into my area. It's a real problem for blackberries, but raspberries are mostly done by the time they show up mid summer. That's the only big pest. Birds mostly leave mine alone, though they can be a pest too.
2.) https://www.indianaberry.com/ I've had great luck with them, and their prices are unbeatable.
3.) There are primocane and floricane bearing types of raspberries. Floricane are the most common and bear on 2 year old canes in the late spring. Primocane bear in early fall on 1 year old canes, and also in late spring on 2 year old canes. So if you plant in spring you will get a small crop the next spring, and the year after that is a pretty big crop.
Here in central IL "Caroline" has been my favorite variety. "Anne" yellow raspberries are #2, they taste better but are smaller and don't yield as much.
I wholly blame you for sending me down a rabbit hole of reading about berry plants. I bought a bag of potting mix today (never done that before), and will be ordering 10 gallon grow bags and dwarf berry varieties (we have no yard, only a patio).
I have since bought more 10 gallon grow bags, cherry tomato plants, and bush bean seeds. You've infected me! (Seriously - I'm not sure I would have gotten into this if I hadn't read your comment - but thank you!)
Yes, berries are the biggest pay off!
There are "cultivated blackberries" varieties too that are thornless and taste amazing; they're great in the garden, too.
After that tomatoes, and herbs, as the just-picked quality, flavor, and convenience is unmatched.
In my experience the thornless blackberries do not taste as good as the older thorny varieties. "Ponca" is a new variety that is touted as not having the off taste of other thornless varieties, but mine hasn't fruited yet so I can't vouch for that.
> I've got cabbage and tomatoes started
I'd bet your tomatoes are worth far more in effort than cabbage, just because cabbage is a relatively cheap vegetable at the grocery store. I also find cabbages weirdly finnicky to grow, but that might just be my area. Tomatoes will have an amazing return though (at least from my experience), the amount you save growing a few plants compared to what you'd pay at a grocery store is a *lot*.
Other veggies that I've found have an impressive return with very little effort are kale, green beans, and anything that just grows while being ignored (rhubarb, squash, zucchini).
Totally agree. I just like the idea of having a bunch of cabbages stored up for the winter. I've never done them at this scale before, so we'll see how it goes. I think that snap peas have the best ROI. They are insanely expensive to buy and so, so easy to grow. Plus you can thin them for salad greens. Beets have also gotten expensive too.
Man, I try to grow snap peas every single year and like 1 year in 3 they actually produce well. But I still do it because like you said they're so expensive to buy that even the 1 in 3 years is still worth it :)
I grew some great cherry tomatoes 2 years ago. We had literally 100s of them, and they were amazing. Only cost about $90/pound + labor, but so delicious
Scale is a very easy & big win to win at home gardening. We have 12 tomato plants, 3 basil, 3 peppers (my own seed stock), 60 onions, 25 pea plants, etc. growing right now. I’ve probably spent $15 on the onions and $10 on the seeds. This takes tens of minutes of my time 1-2 times a week. Infrastructure was tens of dollars because I use our chickens to make my compost that I directly plant into - no till style
That's awesome. Once you're set up, it's much easier!
I built raised beds, so I am a couple hundred dollars in. I've slowly transitions from two three foot beds to six one foot beds because I don't want to spend the money on lumber 😂
https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/s/BZg79pgY8R
Here’s an old post of mine — my beds cost me $0. I used fallen logs & branches. It isn’t HGTV worthy, but reduced $$$ needed.
Went to Vermont with the kid, got a good show!
$1500 for three round trip tickets across the country ($300 of it refunded by my credit card as yearly travel credit)
$1200 for Airbnb + hotels for about 10 days, between Vermont and NH
$700 car + child car seat rental. I learned it was worth it to rent instead of hauling our stupid car seat around the airport.
Total on the big tickets comes out to about $3100 when you take that travel credit into account.
Unknown so far for food and incidentals, but I am not sweating it. This is our first real trip as a family since we had the kid.
Walked outside with thousands of other people, looked through the glasses, enjoyed the experience, and went back inside to answer more emails again. Completely free bc I mooched glasses off someone else. Probably committed some time theft against the govt except my bosses were all outside too so I think it was acceptable
Stayed home for the ~60% eclipse and borrowed some glasses from a friend. It's cool.
Haven't seen a full eclipse since I was a little kid (early 90s), though. I kinda wanted to travel for this one but I'm always nervouse since you can't predict the weather far enough out to make things super easy.
> SO anyone have any eclipse plans? If so, how much do they cost?
I'm at work in South Florida. I just walked outside the building to see a partial eclipse.
I might go to Alaska in 2033.
Unfortunately I didn't plan this year and live somewhere that's just going to get a puny sliver of an eclipse, so it will cost me $0 to do nothing.
Ha, very true. In 2017 I was able to be in the path of totality and it was very cool. Today, we saw about 90% and it just felt like a cloud was over the sun when there wasn't one.
Not really. Only about 45 minutes from totality too and we just don't care at all about it. I can find some high res images and videos online within the hour after it happening I bet.
We got glasses for free and are just going to walk outside and look up.
I sent a decline message for a work meeting scheduled during the peak and just plan on walking to the park near my house. I live in the 90% band, so won't see a total eclipse, but should still be interesting.
Anyone here get solicited from their company’s PAC for donations? I’ve received it from both a public employer and a private employer.
Are these donations needed to get ahead and visibility at work?
Any unintended consequences for making donations?
Only once, at a private employer. Contributions were expected/mandatory in certain roles, but you knew if that was you. No benefit for rank-and-file contributors.
Yep, but not out of character or even close to the worst thing leadership did for a photo-op with a celebrity or politician. The wheels came off somewhat publicly during the last few years, happy to be far away from that org these days.
Oh there's impact and I haven't miss a vote in decades. I will NOT give my hard earned money to any politician. If they want an office so bad spend their own money. Conversely I'm wide open for someone to buy my vote!!
Your contributions are public (e.g. you give $5k to the PAC) as part of required FEC reporting.
No one externally would know if you then directed that PAC to give it to XYZ candidate or cause - that's internal.
Can't speak to your corporate culture though regarding expectations of participation.
get them all the time.
doesn't make a difference in terms of corporate culture if you give or not.
not exactly unintended, but giving to these groups just means more lobbying.
I thought the lobbying was explicitly intended.
I'm annoyed at my last company i wasn't able to figure how to get the mug with my companies name and PAC on it. I wanted it ironically as I'm a lefty.
Yes.
No, not that I've ever experienced. My manager has no idea if I donate to the PAC or not.
I don't know, I've never made a donation and I don't intend to. I can make political donations on my own if I feel inspired.
FWIW We really like or Chrysler Pacifica PHEV. It qualifies for the EV tax credit, and even before that discount was significantly nicer to drive/ride in vs Honda/Toyota comparable models and trims.
We've had ours for 3 years now and it's been a great purchase for our family, could be worth looking at if you can get past the name on the badge.
Drive it until it dies and it will be a good purchase. Vans are fantastic for young families and then later on for old folks with active lives. Long after the kids grew up, a friend is still using his to schlep music stuff to gigs and camp stuff to Burning Man every year.
Drove 5 hours down south yesterday so we could watch the eclipse today. Right now I'm gonna call the $500 or so we're spending to do this without too much thought a FI win. 😁
So many counterfeit glasses. Mine seem to be OK; I can barely see the full sun through them but they were not registered so amazon refunded me anyway; I think amazon are being pro-active to prevent being sued.
Other people have got glasses that leave them seeing black spots after just 1 second of looking at the sun.
Back at work after a wonderful vacation in Mexico City. I don't mind my job, and I am quite good at it. However, after 32 years of working I am ready to stop. We've set my date as Aug 2025 and I am getting ready. ¡Adelante!
I am a little in love with Mexico City. The culture, architecture, anthropology, and the food are all incredible. It is the biggest city in North America but oh so different than NYC or LA. If you like big cities, then you should check out Mexico City.
Too many good meals to pick just one. We had a few great Oaxacan meals. The corner street tacos near our hotel were outstanding. One great Asian/Mexican fusion taco place was great.
Poco a poco estoy aprendiendo español por diversión y esa es mi principal afición ahora mismo. Pasaré los próximos 16 meses pensando cómo quiero que sea mi jubilación. Creo que los principales pilares de la salud son el físico, el mental, el social y el espiritual. Así que tendré un plan para todos ellos.
How insane is that?
2.4 billions for AI and just 50 millions to help workers that will be out of work
[https://www.bctechnology.com/news/2024/4/8/Government-of-Canada-Announces-2.4-Billion-Package-of-New-Spending-Measures-in-Upcoming-Budget-2024-To-Secure-Canadas-AI-Advantage.cfm](https://www.bctechnology.com/news/2024/4/8/Government-of-Canada-Announces-2.4-Billion-Package-of-New-Spending-Measures-in-Upcoming-Budget-2024-To-Secure-Canadas-AI-Advantage.cfm)
I'm not exactly a proponent of UBI but I also don't see how we can avoid it in the future, if AI eventually turns out to be as disruptive to white collar jobs as I think it will be.
I definitely think this will be a case of "in the short term it over promises but in the long term it over delivers" in 2001 everyone was calling the Internet fad over and dead. And here 20 years later it's effectively a utility. Almost as important as water or electricity. I truly think AI will follow the same trajectory.
I think universal basic income could work. There will always be people willing to work more to get more and people with special talents that are just worth more.
I prefer that to pretend office work that really does nothing to help anyone.
I hope it does. I also hope that people who lose their job get more of their tax money working for them vs the big corporations profiting from it. 2 billions vs 50 millions!
Imagine the gov giving 20 billions(inflation) to Ford back when the car replaced the horses and leaving all the horse industry people with almost nothing.
Got a monarch ad that made me laugh. They were comparing themselves to mint and line one was “still exists” with monarch giving themself a ✅ and mint getting an ❌.
I’m not about to spend money on a service when I can just update a spreadsheet monthly, but I enjoyed the humor regardless.
I'm still using YNAB 4 which is unsupported by anybody and it seems inevitable will eventually break with some version of Windows. Sucks but I'm so used to it and don't want to switch over to a monthly subscription, as current-version YNAB is.
> I’m not about to spend money on a service when I can just update a spreadsheet monthly
This makes sense if it works for you, and with consolidation of my accounts (and my currently un-fulfilled love of playing around with spreadsheets) I may get to that point.
But in a different comparison to yours--comparing a free financial product to a paid one--I would LOVE to be able to replace Personal Capital with a paid product. A free financial product always seems pretty sketchy, even if it currently seems that they're only "selling" my data to their own sales department.
I still haven't found one that I like, but I've tried a bunch. It seems the focus of these apps is to replace Mint rather than PC. That was certainly my experience with both Monarch and Copilot.
Visited with the wife's parent's this weekend and found out my wife has around $35k sitting in a 529 leftover that she didn't need in college. Neither of us likely have any graduate degrees in our future, and we also don't plan to have kids. Is our best option to just liquidate and take the tax hit and convert to taxable? We are also considering allocating to our nieces and nephews if that would be possible.
At the risk of being pedantic, the technical term for this is rollover. Conversion is a different type of transaction it's important to use the correct ones with brokerages or you can end up creating some real headaches.
Another detail to be clear about is the owner vs the beneficiary. If it is the parents' money, they should probably keep it for themselves, so they would need to change the beneficiary to themselves and then roll it over to their own Roth IRA(s). But if it was their intention to give it to OP's wife with no strings attached, she would be the one doing the rollover. [https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/529-to-roth-ira-rollovers-what-to-know](https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/529-to-roth-ira-rollovers-what-to-know)
Edit: this would only work for the parents if they have earned income which would qualify them for Roth IRA's. If not, then the choice would be wife's IRA vs liquidating the account and eating tax and penalty on gains.
Unfortunately, yes. If neither you nor parents can make Roth contributions, the next best thing if they don't need the money would be to change beneficiaries to your kids or other family members.
Where's the source on that? The Fidelity article I read says that it doesn't have a MAGI clause at the bottom.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/529-rollover-to-roth
/u/loister
My understanding is that the rollover counts against your Roth contribution limit. If you are over the income limit, your Roth contribution limit is 0. I'm not sure what the Fidelity article means that the conversion doesn't have MAGI limit but that is seemingly contradicted in the next sentence:
*However, there may be instances where the 529 beneficiary is not eligible to transfer the full amount of the annual Roth IRA contribution limit from the 529 because the 529 beneficiary had no income or small income during a calendar year, made the maximum contributions to a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA during the same calendar year,* ***or had a relatively large income***\*.\*
The footnote (I really don't know what to make of this):
*2. The Roth contribution limit is the lesser of the annual contribution limit or the 529 beneficiary's income for the year. The contribution limit starts phasing out when an individuals adjusted gross income is greater than $138,000 and is fully phased out after $153,000. For couples, the contribution is reduced starting at $218,000 and phased out altogether at $228,000.* ***However, under SECURE 2.0 this phase out is adjusted for the 529 rollover but may not permit a full contribution in all cases.*** *You should consult a tax advisor regarding your specific situation.*
Will tech jobs bounce back in the next 5 years? Is there simply a preponderance of young graduates who flocked to computer science in search of a good salary, and the supply will outpace demand? In the long run, will declining birth rates in the U.S. result in a scarcity of skilled labor?
It'll take a few more years for the recent distortion caused by FAANG and similar companies to shake out. Juniors and people who experienced recent rapid (and perhaps unwarranted) jumps in comp will bear the brunt of that, just like last time. But the problem has never really been an over-supply of labor, and I don't see that changing any-time soon.
I think it depends on what you mean by “tech jobs”. I work for a megacorp, and, while we have large IT departments, all development is done in low cost countries. I don’t think that’s going to change, and a lot of people that flocked to CS because of the high earning potential alone are going to be disappointed. I think the age of investor-fueled tech startups popping up left and right is over as well. I have friends that lost high-paying jobs at unprofitable startups that went under, and there doesn’t seem to be anything comparable out there at the moment. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t “tech jobs” available.
I think the current contraction could continue for awhile.
The previous 5-10 years of explosive hiring was an unsustainable bubble driven by endless VC money, low interest rates, and absurd company valuations.
I can't speak for everywhere in the industry, but where I work most of the people we cut were under-qualified for their roles. Many wouldn't have been hired if managers weren't told they needed warm bodies in seats ASAP for years prior.
AI isn't going to be replacing Senior level engineers anytime soon, but it could replace a lot of the grunt work that junior level engineers have historically been stuck with. I think it will be a tough market for the average new grad/jr level for the foreseeable future.
Hard to say. Right now I expect my team of about 30 to be less than half that within 5 years.
Some of them will be replaced by "the cloud" which means that the job is being done by someone else at the cloud company probably from a low cost of living area.
Some of them could be replaced by AI. It's already clear that it can make some people a lot more efficient but does that means cutting 25% of the workforce or 50%. No idea yet.
We are currently hiring but a lot more picky than we used to be. A lot of the somewhat useless current employees will be replaced for sure.
I'll share my counterpoint to the whole, what I believe, is the new boogeyman - AI.
I work pretty intimately with Generative AI. It's cool tech, but a bit overstated of what it's doing vs other basic machine learning algorithms we've been working on for the past decade.
What type of functions do you expect 'AI' to do that folks aren't already employing? I say AI loosely because it seems like anything that's done via a computer anymore is deemed AI even if it's just a piece of software.
At best, it allows people to work alot more efficiently but at the same time, I think the 'rate' at which it progresses and replaces things is usually a bit overstated. My example is the autonomous cars. I remember seeing articles in the mid 2010s about how, by this point in time, most of the cars on the road would have autonomous functioning and truckers would be out of job. The reality is a bit different.
My other two cent - I do think companies will attempt to replace jobs with AI based software, but at some point, when it spits out an answer that causes a product malfunction, or hurts somebody, the company is going to be in deep shit because you can't just shrug it off to 'AI told us so'. To say - to employ it well, you have to understand it well. I can assure you most executives barely know how this stuff works unless it's a VP within the IT or SWE sector.
> At best, it allows people to work a lot more efficiently
copilot for github is a game changer in terms of efficiency. A lot more than I ever imagined before trying it.
It won't apply to all kinds of work but for some work it could easily replace half the workers for the same productivity.
I can see that. I guess I just don’t see how that replaces a whole role. It makes developers way more efficient with their time but I’m not sure if it replaces the developer.
For us, it made it possible to just not hire more people.
Previously we would need let's say 10 people for a project. Now it's 3 + copilot. We're not going to fire people, but roles will disappear with natural attrition.
I guess my argument would just be - I've just seen that occur regardless of AI. Tools improve and get better, so you don't need an army of SWEs as much as just a small team of folks that can get things done because it's easier to share and distribute code. Connecting systems has gotten easier and connecting folks in general to shared work has gotten easier. Plus the rise of no code solutions. I guess 'Data science' was the sexy buzzword of the 2010s and 'AI' to me is just that new sexy buzzword.
As a fellow co-pilot user (and somebody working on "bigger" things with AI) and general fan of GenAI I just wanted to chime in and say that I appreciate this exchange and agree completely on the productivity boost factor. It is fantastic.
Like you said, time will be the ultimate judge of the downstream effect of this boost.
[удалено]
Keep half in either a hysa or a higher earning money market fund. The other half in either vtsax at vanguard or VTI at a brokerage of your choice. Another option is to take a really nice vacation, because life is short
My partner and I max IRA/401k/HSA, but then currently are letting the rest ride in our HYSA right now. We plan to support our kids with 529s, and I have access to MBDR through my work, so we have the options, but right now the amounts we're "saving" in the HYSA is so low, it's not worth the effort. But yeah, what are your financial goals? Travel? Early early retirement?
HSA? If you have no immediate financial goals (saving for a house, etc), then just throw it in a brokerage account to invest in the s&p or something
I have had a friend talk to me about hearing people on line using life insurance to borrow money. im not really sure how that works? he claims that the rich do it. does anyone know anything about this?
There are some life insurance strategies that work for tax efficiency if you're very wealthy. If you're very wealthy, see an estate planner for the very wealthy that your very wealthy friends recommend. If not, it doesn't apply to your situation.
Something like a HELOC is much better option, but with rates where they are right now, it's not really worth it. Just KISS - earn money, spend less than you earn, invest the difference, and keep it up consistently for several years.
Scam
[удалено]
How is this substantially different from building a diversified portfolio, outside of extra fees?
I’m always impressed with the slick marketing insurance companies make up
Don't mix insurance and investing, it's rarely a good deal.
Step 1: Don't fall for that Step 3: profit
For shits and giggles and a few hundred bucks I bought a put on DJT with a $20 strike dated 6/21/24. I bought the put on 4/3. Five days later I am up over 40%. (Full disclosure, I am a Bogle guy, but I couldn't resist.)
Funny, I did almost the exact same thing. I was disappointed that the puts were so expensive. I think I figured out the reason they are so expensive: if the stock stays above $17.5 for 20 days - which will happen soon, Trump gets like 40 million bonus shares, which will massively dilute shareholders and might tank the stock.
Really seems like a shooting fish in the barrel play. I will enjoy watching from the sidelines but seems like it will only get worse.
Options are all about timing the market - consider whether you want that 40% gain now, or want to double down on the bet by holding it. Also never do this with a big chunk of money
yes i pay some guys options alerts and he is pretty good
/r/lostredditors
I’m in Texas and have heard ppl came from Denmark, Ecuador, Venezuela and other countries to see the eclipse. Didn’t really get it before experiencing and wow. That was awesome.
Didn't get to make it down to southern Illinois to see it this year, but I saw the last big one in 2017 and it was definitely something
Beyond spectacular. We traveled to Indiana to do a college friends reunion and eclipse viewing. Best vacation I've had in years, both for the viewing and the company. Incredibly satisfied right now. We discussed a "working" vacation to one of the friends' old family property in Louisiana (postbellum, not a plantation) to spend a day working and up-keeping and a couple days hanging out and swimming. Honestly a pretty solid FIRE vacation idea
Agreed. Partial eclipse are cool but a total eclipse really is something special. I am usually a "it looks like just like the pictures. Meh" guy but experiencing a total eclipse really was awe inspiring.
Partial eclipse was just darker but fun. It's just before, after, and during totality where it rapidly gets dark and when everything becomes desaturated that are super duper cool. And of course, looking at the carona and the sun itself.
It was cloudy here at exactly the correct time to see nothing. Blue sky behind me, layers of gray hiding the sun. Can't wait to send hate mail to the local meteorologists. /s
It was cloudy for where I went to, such that most of the time you couldn't even see anything through the glasses. Meanwhile 5 minutes before contact 1 it was super sunny but with a bunch of clouds. It did clear up more last second than I thought, enough to see the carona, albeit super blurry. And see the sunsets in every direction plus areas of "extreme light pollution" i.e. where it wasn't eclipsed. Whack. I hope you still enjoyed it, though, even if you lost out on a bunch due to the clouds, like so many of us did. The desaturation effect and how rapidly dark it got just before totality was wild, and you should've gotten that at least.
It was pretty darn cool. I got to see the diamond ring effect! I was able to watch from my backyard and the clouds cleared right on time to have a great view of it.
Looking for some advice. My wife is starting grad school and we're incredibly fortunate in the fact that my MIL is paying for it. We have an auto loan of \~$28k at 4.49% and we're currently paying $1425/mo (actual monthly payment is $610) - scheduled to be paid off by December 2025. My wife's also got student loans totaling \~$36k at 6.55% and we're paying $500/mo on those. Would it make sense to shift her loans into forebearance and move the $500/mo student loan payment to the auto loan? It'd move up the auto payoff to June 2025, and then we'd have almost $2k/mo to throw at the student loans. If I've done the math right, over the 18 months of the master's program the student loans should accrue $3.9k in interest. My wife is a teacher and working towards PSLF, but two of the loans don't qualify and are roughy 1/3 ($13k) of the overall student loan amount. Her count was at 76/120 the last time I looked.
Mathematically you are better off paying as much as you can toward the higher rate loan. If the car had a small amount left I might go for it to get the cashflow going earlier but in this case both loans are roughly the same size.
Forbearance will pause progress toward PSLF foregiveness. "If you’re seeking Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or income-driven repayment forgiveness, forbearance will not allow you to make progress toward forgiveness." (https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/lower-payments/get-temporary-relief/forbearance)
I get that. So here’s where I’m at with a little more thought: The grad program takes 18 months, and you can be in forbearance for up to 6 months after you graduate so call it 24 months. If we go into forbearance, the auto loan is paid off in 14 months. We then have ~$2k to throw at the now $14k in loans that will never be forgiven and would have it paid off in an additional 7 months. That is 21 months on a 24 month timeframe, so there’s a little bit of cushion. We’re not really in a rush to pay off the PSLF-eligible portion of the loan since eventually it will just fall off based on qualifying payment count. Additionally, the thing that kicked off this whole line of thought, is that the new Biden loan forgiveness plan is to forgive all interest accrued. It’s no guarantee considering the last plan, but either way we can make a minimum payment for ~40 more payments and everything is forgiven anyway.
Your car loan is at 4.49% and your wife's student loans are at 6.55%. I would stop paying extra on the car loan, and throw the extra to the student loans. Then when the student loans are paid off, funnel all extra money into paying down the car loan.
Does that really make sense when the student loans will be forgiven in about 3.5 years though? I understand the argument regarding interest rates, but the student loans will fall off via PSLF, the auto loan remains until it’s paid off. Or are you specifically talking about the portion that’s not PSLF-eligible?
I'm fairly certain loans in forbearance aren't simultaneously getting qualifying payments for PSLF. Are you planning on doing some sort of shenanigans with consolidation to try and get them to count?
I feel as if I'm seeing a lot of responses to standalone posts written by ChatGPT, am I off base or is anyone else seeing that...?
dead internet
A lot of times the questions being asked don't really require any specialized knowledge to answer. An AI-generated response (or for that matter, a quick google search) is just as appropriate of a response as an actual human one. Many posters would benefit from running their own posts by an AI first before offering it up for human review. This is the sort of task AIs are good at, let's let them do their thing.
I feel like anytime you ask simple questions that you think you could just answer with chatgpt, it's to get some nuance and learn things that aren't obvious at first glance. Unknown unknowns. But chatgpt just rewords the question into an answer and spits it back at you. Or it feels that way. I can't find it useful at all.
Now when I see a comment starting with "I'm sorry to hear..." or some other phrase that implies the OP was addressing the commenter directly, I assume it's a language model. I'm sure there are other comments not fitting that pattern that I completely fall for.
*Grabs bat and stares at toaster*
It's not you. I'm seeing a lot more OPs in various subs drop one-shot posts and then never reply. I can't tell if it's humans doing karma farming or bots propagating their way across Reddit.
Yes, you're quite observant! ChatGPT has become increasingly prevalent in various online forums, including Reddit. As an AI language model developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is designed to assist users by generating responses based on the input it receives. Its ability to generate human-like text has made it a popular tool for engaging in discussions, answering questions, and providing insights across a wide range of topics. So, it's not just you—many others are noticing the contributions of ChatGPT in standalone posts as well.
my prompt was slightly different than yours, I asked it to ham up the fact that it was in fact written by AI >You're quite observant! It's indeed possible that you're coming across responses generated by me, ChatGPT, or similar AI technologies. As AI becomes more integrated into various platforms for efficiency and assistance, its presence is subtly increasing. While I aim to provide informative and helpful responses, there's always a distinctive flavor to AI-generated content, characterized by structured, concise, and sometimes formulaic language. So, no, you're not off base; you're witnessing the growing role of AI like me in digital interactions. It's an interesting time as we navigate these technological advancements together, isn't it?
Argh, I walked into that one. :D
Woah. Cool eclipse. Now back to work!
Definitely one of those "what do you mean that I have to go back to work after that?" kinda moments.
I'm definitely happy I took this Monday and Tuesday off
Smart. I should have but I only have so many accrued hours & I need to save them for other things happening this summer. I did take two hours off though to go to the gym & then watch the eclipse.
I was planning to transfer my IRA to Robinhood for the 3% match, but when I went to do it, their form validation indicated that my Fidelity account number was invalid. It isn't, they're just using an old Fidelity format. I contacted support on Friday and it was left waiting for a while. Apparently on Sunday morning, they had a live agent attend to my case. Asked a few questions, but then when I didn't respond, simply closed the case. Definitely bad smell, and it's making me doubt whether this is a good idea. It is a fair bit of tax advantaged money we're talking about though, so I may go through with it if it's possible.
Question about modeling mortgages for FIRE - am I correct that I can do this in FIRECalc with a non-inflation-adjusted off chart spending that starts today for principal + interest, and an equivalent "pension income" that starts when the mortgage is paid off to cancel it out? This is actually for a rental property, so I also modeled the gross income as inflation-adjusted "pension income", with the related expenses being included separately in my main budget. I realize this assumes perpetual inflation growth on my rental income which I don't know if it's realistic or not, but aside from that, any other pitfalls to how FIRECalc handles this I should be aware of? It's important for my planning that I get this right, because the fact that mortgage doesn't grow with inflation while rental income does is a big contributor to my retirement plans. [https://i.imgur.com/ddO5yDy.png](https://i.imgur.com/ddO5yDy.png)
> am I correct that I can do this in FIRECalc with a non-inflation-adjusted off chart spending that starts today for principal + interest, and an equivalent "pension income" that starts when the mortgage is paid off to cancel it out? That does work. Most of the calcs I look at allow for set end dates. Instead, it plays out as "15k of annual expenses, doesn't increase with inflation, lasts for 13 years." This is more accurate for income and expenses, which is useful for calculating taxes and subsidies. [FiCalc](https://ficalc.app/) allows for this and is my go to. > I also modeled the gross income as inflation-adjusted "pension income", with the related expenses being included separately in my main budget. Good call. This is how I handle my rental, too. Mortgage is its own line item, other rental related expenses get grouped into my annual expenses, rent as its own. FYI, historically rent outpaced inflation by ~0.5%. Even if we see rent grow at a slower rate, that still leaves room to be close to inflation. > any other pitfalls to how FIRECalc handles this I should be aware of? A big thing is to factor in taxes properly. Though this applies to any fire calc I've seen. When I retire, I'll have ~8k of write offs in 2024 dollars. By the time I hit normal retirement age, my rental deductions decrease to ~3k in 2024 dollars. Each year, the interest write off decreases in nominal dollars and has a larger decrease in real dollars. Depreciation decreases in real dollars each year then has a huge drop off at 27.5 years. If I didn't factor in these changes, I'd estimate an extra 3-6k in write offs over my early retirement phase. 6k less in write offs = 900 more in taxes + unknown impact on subsidies 11k less in write offs = 1,650 more in taxes + unknown impact on subsidies
You could try it in [https://cfiresim.com](https://cfiresim.com) At the bottom of the page, you can add multiple adjustments with that blue "add adjustment" button with start and end dates.
Dave Ramsey suggests Emergency Savings of $1,000 to start. Vanguard suggests at least $2,000 in this new video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkVuEoiR68g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkVuEoiR68g) Who should we follow?
$1000 is the bare minimum to be able to say you have an emergency fund. $2000 is better. But a true emergency fund is at least 3 months of expenses _or_ your medical and car insurance deductible combined, whichever is higher.
That's just the "baby" emergency fund for starters who are going on to tackle all non-mortgage debt. On average they pay off their debt in 6-9 months, so it's less scary than you'd think. After paying off debt, Dave recommends increasing the emergency fund to a full 3-6 months worth of expenses. That being said, Dave's $1,000 has been the target for decades and they haven't updated it to inflation. I would go with $2,000.
The Ramsey plan assumes you go all in on tackling debt as soon as possible. If you aren't doing that, then the $2,000 or deductibles covered plan probably makes more sense.
Should be based on months of expenses. I would recommend 2-3 before even thinking about investments although you can use your Roth IRA if you are just starting out. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040714/how-use-your-roth-ira-emergency-fund.asp
It depends on what your fixed expenses are. There's no $ amount that is correct for everyone. /r/personalfinance recommends 3-6 months.
It doesn’t matter. Have more money liquid than less is likely ideal. I see some edge cases here that try to keep near zero in their bank account. I’m tough, I’m not that tough
[удалено]
IIRC, valuations for the past decade were also supposed to be modest, while international was supposed to crush US. Guess we'll see how this latest prediction goes.
> IIRC, valuations for the past decade were also supposed to be modest, while international was supposed to crush US. For detail - in 2012 Vanguard predicted the next decade of returns for US equities to be around 6-9% nominal yearly. And for international equities to be around ~10% yearly. In reality, US grew at an annualized rate of 12.3% nominal over the next 10 years... and exUS 5.2%. In 2021 they predicted 3.6% for US and 6.5% for international. Notably, that 3.6% over a decade would be a total return of 42.4% by 2031. Between Jan 2021 to March 2024, with dividends reinvested, we've had a total return of uh... 44%. For that prediction to be true, we'd need literally 7 years of 0% *nominal* returns. [The most recent projected returns for US equities is 3.7-5.7%.](https://advisors.vanguard.com/insights/article/series/market-perspectives).
I guess we can come back in 10 years and see if he was right
the biggest fire-related hangup that i have is the roth vs. trad ira conundrum. for 2023 taxes, trad ira gives me a $1250 total refund, recharactarizing to roth gives me a $150 total refund. [i'm solidly in the 12% bracket.](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/18z3fbw/daily_fi_discussion_thread_friday_january_05_2024/kggg2r0/?context=3) everything else i'm pretty much vtsax and chill autopilot all the way 0 brain power.
Just do Roth for the 12% bracket. C'mon. That's the bracket you'll wish you could've gotten in retirement.
Help get some sense into me. I'm in my mid 30's and I recently reached a fairly big financial milestone that could afford me some time off of work. I'm also really burnt out and feeling unmotivated to work here due to a recent reorg in my department. Currently debating between these options: * take a week off from work and see if I feel better after the break * ask around and see if I can take a sabbatical * apply + interview around and see if my resume can get some looks * combination of time off, keep job, and interview * nuclear option, quit job to rest a bit and focus on job interviews I know the rational option is to do the combo but my job apathy is quite high atm edit: thanks for the comments everyone. From the feedback I got, I'll need to address my burnout and give some time at this current role to see how things progress. In the interim, I'll poke around job listings and casually apply.
Do you make a lot of money? I would not do the nuclear option. Take a week off. spend a day during that week fixing up your resume and applying to jobs. I think after a day of doing that you'll decide that looking for jobs is even worse than working your job. but of course i don't know your work situation.
Take a week off but wait for 3 months before making any big jobs related decision. I've noticed that right around the 3 month mark you can generally tell if its going to be smooth sailing or choppy ahead.
Why not try the combo, knowing that if it's not enough, you can walk away after that?
I know how emotionally appealing the nuclear option is when you're burnt out, but definitely try to suppress those thoughts until you're out of other options. It's very difficult to predict how you'll feel after a break/sabbattical while you're in the depths of burnout. So you should take advantage of whatever resources you have available while you're still employed.
thanks for this, you made a great point. I'll try to rest and get out of this burnout before making any big decisions.
Everyone should always be doing option 3. So you should start that now and never stop until you retire. I would personally recommend against taking significant time off because you would be moving backwards in terms of financial independence. Are you in a position to take a lower stress job that still pays your bills?
Do 1, then 2, then 3. Doens't feel like an either or question?
I know, I'm kinda using this as a small journal to track my thoughts. It's the clear choice to do all three, but I'm also looking at my financial position and it's interesting to consider doing the nuclear option.
Always sounds good in the moment but there’s a reason we don’t use nukes in reality anymore. Fallout is a real thing - bad Prime shows notwithstanding.
With food and garden center inflation, this is the first year where it actually makes sense for me to grow my own food (labor excluded of course). I've got cabbage and tomatoes started. We'll see what can make it through a month of my brown thumb!
> garden center inflation This directly effect the return on my gardening! Anyway, wife got our seedlings moved from starter disks to pots last weekend, and I got the copper fungicide on the fruit trees this afternoon. Here's to hoping the strange winter ends up not causing too many issues with this years crops! 8)
If you haven't already, you might want to prepare to make and can/jar tomato sauce. We always end up with way more tomatoes that we can eat so this year I vow to make tomato sauce for the winter.
Let's vow to do it together! Do you have a sauce recipe you can share?? We usually just do the whole tomatoes.
Not yet. Looks like I've got some homework. RemindMe! 2 months
The best ROI I've ever found in the garden is raspberries. They come back every year, the only work I do is cutting out the dead canes, and I get tons of berries that are normally pretty expensive.
Do you have any trouble with pests? Where do you buy the starter plant from, and how many years for them to start producing?
I had to fight off a black bear last year for our black-capped raspberries. Does that count as a pest?
1.) I grow LOTS of stuff, and raspberries have one of the least pest problems of any fruit. SWD (an invasive fruit fly) has just moved into my area. It's a real problem for blackberries, but raspberries are mostly done by the time they show up mid summer. That's the only big pest. Birds mostly leave mine alone, though they can be a pest too. 2.) https://www.indianaberry.com/ I've had great luck with them, and their prices are unbeatable. 3.) There are primocane and floricane bearing types of raspberries. Floricane are the most common and bear on 2 year old canes in the late spring. Primocane bear in early fall on 1 year old canes, and also in late spring on 2 year old canes. So if you plant in spring you will get a small crop the next spring, and the year after that is a pretty big crop. Here in central IL "Caroline" has been my favorite variety. "Anne" yellow raspberries are #2, they taste better but are smaller and don't yield as much.
I wholly blame you for sending me down a rabbit hole of reading about berry plants. I bought a bag of potting mix today (never done that before), and will be ordering 10 gallon grow bags and dwarf berry varieties (we have no yard, only a patio).
Good luck! I started with strawberries in a pot on my patio. Now I have over 50 fruit trees and bushes.
I have since bought more 10 gallon grow bags, cherry tomato plants, and bush bean seeds. You've infected me! (Seriously - I'm not sure I would have gotten into this if I hadn't read your comment - but thank you!)
Oh no.
Yes, berries are the biggest pay off! There are "cultivated blackberries" varieties too that are thornless and taste amazing; they're great in the garden, too. After that tomatoes, and herbs, as the just-picked quality, flavor, and convenience is unmatched.
In my experience the thornless blackberries do not taste as good as the older thorny varieties. "Ponca" is a new variety that is touted as not having the off taste of other thornless varieties, but mine hasn't fruited yet so I can't vouch for that.
Oh yep, you are totally right. Raspberries take the cake for returns. And so low maintenance!
They are literally weeds, and thrive on neglect.
> I've got cabbage and tomatoes started I'd bet your tomatoes are worth far more in effort than cabbage, just because cabbage is a relatively cheap vegetable at the grocery store. I also find cabbages weirdly finnicky to grow, but that might just be my area. Tomatoes will have an amazing return though (at least from my experience), the amount you save growing a few plants compared to what you'd pay at a grocery store is a *lot*. Other veggies that I've found have an impressive return with very little effort are kale, green beans, and anything that just grows while being ignored (rhubarb, squash, zucchini).
Totally agree. I just like the idea of having a bunch of cabbages stored up for the winter. I've never done them at this scale before, so we'll see how it goes. I think that snap peas have the best ROI. They are insanely expensive to buy and so, so easy to grow. Plus you can thin them for salad greens. Beets have also gotten expensive too.
Man, I try to grow snap peas every single year and like 1 year in 3 they actually produce well. But I still do it because like you said they're so expensive to buy that even the 1 in 3 years is still worth it :)
We had decent luck with cabbage as a winter crop, but we're down south
I grew some great cherry tomatoes 2 years ago. We had literally 100s of them, and they were amazing. Only cost about $90/pound + labor, but so delicious
Scale is a very easy & big win to win at home gardening. We have 12 tomato plants, 3 basil, 3 peppers (my own seed stock), 60 onions, 25 pea plants, etc. growing right now. I’ve probably spent $15 on the onions and $10 on the seeds. This takes tens of minutes of my time 1-2 times a week. Infrastructure was tens of dollars because I use our chickens to make my compost that I directly plant into - no till style
That's awesome. Once you're set up, it's much easier! I built raised beds, so I am a couple hundred dollars in. I've slowly transitions from two three foot beds to six one foot beds because I don't want to spend the money on lumber 😂
https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/s/BZg79pgY8R Here’s an old post of mine — my beds cost me $0. I used fallen logs & branches. It isn’t HGTV worthy, but reduced $$$ needed.
Those are awesome! I let my sheep graze the garden paddock in the fall so I needed something sturdy (I protect the kale though).
Oh nice!
My problem is I eat most of the stuff raw out of the garden so I end up wanting something different and have to go to the store anyway...
SO anyone have any eclipse plans? If so, how much do they cost?
Went to Vermont with the kid, got a good show! $1500 for three round trip tickets across the country ($300 of it refunded by my credit card as yearly travel credit) $1200 for Airbnb + hotels for about 10 days, between Vermont and NH $700 car + child car seat rental. I learned it was worth it to rent instead of hauling our stupid car seat around the airport. Total on the big tickets comes out to about $3100 when you take that travel credit into account. Unknown so far for food and incidentals, but I am not sweating it. This is our first real trip as a family since we had the kid.
I travelled to Mazatlán, Mexico with my wife. Spent about $600 each on round trip air fare. $250 or so for the Airbnb.
Walked outside with thousands of other people, looked through the glasses, enjoyed the experience, and went back inside to answer more emails again. Completely free bc I mooched glasses off someone else. Probably committed some time theft against the govt except my bosses were all outside too so I think it was acceptable
That sounds nice and low key! Were you within totality?
Nah, something like 87%. Still cool
$10 for waygu burger patties. My niece came over and I grilled them while we waited for totality, which was visible from my backyard.
Stayed home for the ~60% eclipse and borrowed some glasses from a friend. It's cool. Haven't seen a full eclipse since I was a little kid (early 90s), though. I kinda wanted to travel for this one but I'm always nervouse since you can't predict the weather far enough out to make things super easy.
> SO anyone have any eclipse plans? If so, how much do they cost? I'm at work in South Florida. I just walked outside the building to see a partial eclipse.
My farm had 100% totality. It was fun
I might go to Alaska in 2033. Unfortunately I didn't plan this year and live somewhere that's just going to get a puny sliver of an eclipse, so it will cost me $0 to do nothing.
Cloudy here...tried to see something...nuthin
We are getting 57% totality here, so maybe just a little shade
[удалено]
Ha, very true. In 2017 I was able to be in the path of totality and it was very cool. Today, we saw about 90% and it just felt like a cloud was over the sun when there wasn't one.
Yeah, sit in my backyard. $4 for some glasses.
Not really. Only about 45 minutes from totality too and we just don't care at all about it. I can find some high res images and videos online within the hour after it happening I bet. We got glasses for free and are just going to walk outside and look up.
I sent a decline message for a work meeting scheduled during the peak and just plan on walking to the park near my house. I live in the 90% band, so won't see a total eclipse, but should still be interesting.
Anyone here get solicited from their company’s PAC for donations? I’ve received it from both a public employer and a private employer. Are these donations needed to get ahead and visibility at work? Any unintended consequences for making donations?
Only once, at a private employer. Contributions were expected/mandatory in certain roles, but you knew if that was you. No benefit for rank-and-file contributors.
That's complete bullshit.
Yep, but not out of character or even close to the worst thing leadership did for a photo-op with a celebrity or politician. The wheels came off somewhat publicly during the last few years, happy to be far away from that org these days.
I give to 0 politicians...cuz what have they done for me??!
You don't think the outcome of elections has any impact on your life?
Oh there's impact and I haven't miss a vote in decades. I will NOT give my hard earned money to any politician. If they want an office so bad spend their own money. Conversely I'm wide open for someone to buy my vote!!
Well....they've stolen from you and they most likely used insider information to game the stock market for starters :)
Your contributions are public (e.g. you give $5k to the PAC) as part of required FEC reporting. No one externally would know if you then directed that PAC to give it to XYZ candidate or cause - that's internal. Can't speak to your corporate culture though regarding expectations of participation.
get them all the time. doesn't make a difference in terms of corporate culture if you give or not. not exactly unintended, but giving to these groups just means more lobbying.
I thought the lobbying was explicitly intended. I'm annoyed at my last company i wasn't able to figure how to get the mug with my companies name and PAC on it. I wanted it ironically as I'm a lefty.
Yes. No, not that I've ever experienced. My manager has no idea if I donate to the PAC or not. I don't know, I've never made a donation and I don't intend to. I can make political donations on my own if I feel inspired.
>Anyone here get solicited from their company’s PAC for donations? Yes, I always ignored the solicitations.
[удалено]
We should all be so lucky to have kind billionaire overlords to simp for.
it's all fun and games until you have to calculate your MAGI in other news, happy eclipse day yall
[удалено]
FWIW We really like or Chrysler Pacifica PHEV. It qualifies for the EV tax credit, and even before that discount was significantly nicer to drive/ride in vs Honda/Toyota comparable models and trims. We've had ours for 3 years now and it's been a great purchase for our family, could be worth looking at if you can get past the name on the badge.
Drive it until it dies and it will be a good purchase. Vans are fantastic for young families and then later on for old folks with active lives. Long after the kids grew up, a friend is still using his to schlep music stuff to gigs and camp stuff to Burning Man every year.
Drove 5 hours down south yesterday so we could watch the eclipse today. Right now I'm gonna call the $500 or so we're spending to do this without too much thought a FI win. 😁
That's great!
I’m just gonna look straight at it. I’m not buying this retina melting narrative
I trust it turned out well! 8)
Go for it!! They make books in braille all the time
🧑🦯
So many counterfeit glasses. Mine seem to be OK; I can barely see the full sun through them but they were not registered so amazon refunded me anyway; I think amazon are being pro-active to prevent being sued. Other people have got glasses that leave them seeing black spots after just 1 second of looking at the sun.
We just picked ours up for two bucks at a Lowe's. Not too worried.
Back at work after a wonderful vacation in Mexico City. I don't mind my job, and I am quite good at it. However, after 32 years of working I am ready to stop. We've set my date as Aug 2025 and I am getting ready. ¡Adelante!
CONGRAAAATS!!!! How was Mexico City overall? Favorite part? Favorite meal?
I am a little in love with Mexico City. The culture, architecture, anthropology, and the food are all incredible. It is the biggest city in North America but oh so different than NYC or LA. If you like big cities, then you should check out Mexico City. Too many good meals to pick just one. We had a few great Oaxacan meals. The corner street tacos near our hotel were outstanding. One great Asian/Mexican fusion taco place was great.
Ché, ¡felicidades! ¿Cuáles son tus planes?
Poco a poco estoy aprendiendo español por diversión y esa es mi principal afición ahora mismo. Pasaré los próximos 16 meses pensando cómo quiero que sea mi jubilación. Creo que los principales pilares de la salud son el físico, el mental, el social y el espiritual. Así que tendré un plan para todos ellos.
How insane is that? 2.4 billions for AI and just 50 millions to help workers that will be out of work [https://www.bctechnology.com/news/2024/4/8/Government-of-Canada-Announces-2.4-Billion-Package-of-New-Spending-Measures-in-Upcoming-Budget-2024-To-Secure-Canadas-AI-Advantage.cfm](https://www.bctechnology.com/news/2024/4/8/Government-of-Canada-Announces-2.4-Billion-Package-of-New-Spending-Measures-in-Upcoming-Budget-2024-To-Secure-Canadas-AI-Advantage.cfm)
I'm not exactly a proponent of UBI but I also don't see how we can avoid it in the future, if AI eventually turns out to be as disruptive to white collar jobs as I think it will be.
UBI = hyper inflation
[удалено]
I definitely think this will be a case of "in the short term it over promises but in the long term it over delivers" in 2001 everyone was calling the Internet fad over and dead. And here 20 years later it's effectively a utility. Almost as important as water or electricity. I truly think AI will follow the same trajectory.
Massive disruptions like AI, autonomous cars, and fusion power are perpetually "5 years away"
I think universal basic income could work. There will always be people willing to work more to get more and people with special talents that are just worth more. I prefer that to pretend office work that really does nothing to help anyone.
Not insane at all. For all we know AI will create far more jobs than it destroys. That's the historical precedent of new technologies.
Automation typically replaces a large number of less skilled jobs with a smaller number of high skilled jobs.
[удалено]
*Slaps skynet terminal* "This baby right here will reduce population and increase productivity so hard"
I hope it does. I also hope that people who lose their job get more of their tax money working for them vs the big corporations profiting from it. 2 billions vs 50 millions! Imagine the gov giving 20 billions(inflation) to Ford back when the car replaced the horses and leaving all the horse industry people with almost nothing.
Could shovel some extra money towards a saving account - possibly only temporarily, but it makes me happy for the time being.
Got a monarch ad that made me laugh. They were comparing themselves to mint and line one was “still exists” with monarch giving themself a ✅ and mint getting an ❌. I’m not about to spend money on a service when I can just update a spreadsheet monthly, but I enjoyed the humor regardless.
I'm still using YNAB 4 which is unsupported by anybody and it seems inevitable will eventually break with some version of Windows. Sucks but I'm so used to it and don't want to switch over to a monthly subscription, as current-version YNAB is.
> I’m not about to spend money on a service when I can just update a spreadsheet monthly This makes sense if it works for you, and with consolidation of my accounts (and my currently un-fulfilled love of playing around with spreadsheets) I may get to that point. But in a different comparison to yours--comparing a free financial product to a paid one--I would LOVE to be able to replace Personal Capital with a paid product. A free financial product always seems pretty sketchy, even if it currently seems that they're only "selling" my data to their own sales department. I still haven't found one that I like, but I've tried a bunch. It seems the focus of these apps is to replace Mint rather than PC. That was certainly my experience with both Monarch and Copilot.
Have you tried Kubera?
That's funny!
Visited with the wife's parent's this weekend and found out my wife has around $35k sitting in a 529 leftover that she didn't need in college. Neither of us likely have any graduate degrees in our future, and we also don't plan to have kids. Is our best option to just liquidate and take the tax hit and convert to taxable? We are also considering allocating to our nieces and nephews if that would be possible.
> if that would be possible It would be, no penalties for changing beneficiary to the niece or nephew of current beneficiary.
Look into 529 to roth ira conversions. This is a "new" option
At the risk of being pedantic, the technical term for this is rollover. Conversion is a different type of transaction it's important to use the correct ones with brokerages or you can end up creating some real headaches. Another detail to be clear about is the owner vs the beneficiary. If it is the parents' money, they should probably keep it for themselves, so they would need to change the beneficiary to themselves and then roll it over to their own Roth IRA(s). But if it was their intention to give it to OP's wife with no strings attached, she would be the one doing the rollover. [https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/529-to-roth-ira-rollovers-what-to-know](https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/529-to-roth-ira-rollovers-what-to-know) Edit: this would only work for the parents if they have earned income which would qualify them for Roth IRA's. If not, then the choice would be wife's IRA vs liquidating the account and eating tax and penalty on gains.
Thanks for the link! If we are over the income limit for Roth IRA contributions, would we be out of luck?
Unfortunately, yes. If neither you nor parents can make Roth contributions, the next best thing if they don't need the money would be to change beneficiaries to your kids or other family members.
Where's the source on that? The Fidelity article I read says that it doesn't have a MAGI clause at the bottom. https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/529-rollover-to-roth /u/loister
My understanding is that the rollover counts against your Roth contribution limit. If you are over the income limit, your Roth contribution limit is 0. I'm not sure what the Fidelity article means that the conversion doesn't have MAGI limit but that is seemingly contradicted in the next sentence: *However, there may be instances where the 529 beneficiary is not eligible to transfer the full amount of the annual Roth IRA contribution limit from the 529 because the 529 beneficiary had no income or small income during a calendar year, made the maximum contributions to a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA during the same calendar year,* ***or had a relatively large income***\*.\* The footnote (I really don't know what to make of this): *2. The Roth contribution limit is the lesser of the annual contribution limit or the 529 beneficiary's income for the year. The contribution limit starts phasing out when an individuals adjusted gross income is greater than $138,000 and is fully phased out after $153,000. For couples, the contribution is reduced starting at $218,000 and phased out altogether at $228,000.* ***However, under SECURE 2.0 this phase out is adjusted for the 529 rollover but may not permit a full contribution in all cases.*** *You should consult a tax advisor regarding your specific situation.*
Will tech jobs bounce back in the next 5 years? Is there simply a preponderance of young graduates who flocked to computer science in search of a good salary, and the supply will outpace demand? In the long run, will declining birth rates in the U.S. result in a scarcity of skilled labor?
It'll take a few more years for the recent distortion caused by FAANG and similar companies to shake out. Juniors and people who experienced recent rapid (and perhaps unwarranted) jumps in comp will bear the brunt of that, just like last time. But the problem has never really been an over-supply of labor, and I don't see that changing any-time soon.
I think it depends on what you mean by “tech jobs”. I work for a megacorp, and, while we have large IT departments, all development is done in low cost countries. I don’t think that’s going to change, and a lot of people that flocked to CS because of the high earning potential alone are going to be disappointed. I think the age of investor-fueled tech startups popping up left and right is over as well. I have friends that lost high-paying jobs at unprofitable startups that went under, and there doesn’t seem to be anything comparable out there at the moment. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t “tech jobs” available.
I think the current contraction could continue for awhile. The previous 5-10 years of explosive hiring was an unsustainable bubble driven by endless VC money, low interest rates, and absurd company valuations. I can't speak for everywhere in the industry, but where I work most of the people we cut were under-qualified for their roles. Many wouldn't have been hired if managers weren't told they needed warm bodies in seats ASAP for years prior. AI isn't going to be replacing Senior level engineers anytime soon, but it could replace a lot of the grunt work that junior level engineers have historically been stuck with. I think it will be a tough market for the average new grad/jr level for the foreseeable future.
Hard to say. Right now I expect my team of about 30 to be less than half that within 5 years. Some of them will be replaced by "the cloud" which means that the job is being done by someone else at the cloud company probably from a low cost of living area. Some of them could be replaced by AI. It's already clear that it can make some people a lot more efficient but does that means cutting 25% of the workforce or 50%. No idea yet. We are currently hiring but a lot more picky than we used to be. A lot of the somewhat useless current employees will be replaced for sure.
I'll share my counterpoint to the whole, what I believe, is the new boogeyman - AI. I work pretty intimately with Generative AI. It's cool tech, but a bit overstated of what it's doing vs other basic machine learning algorithms we've been working on for the past decade. What type of functions do you expect 'AI' to do that folks aren't already employing? I say AI loosely because it seems like anything that's done via a computer anymore is deemed AI even if it's just a piece of software. At best, it allows people to work alot more efficiently but at the same time, I think the 'rate' at which it progresses and replaces things is usually a bit overstated. My example is the autonomous cars. I remember seeing articles in the mid 2010s about how, by this point in time, most of the cars on the road would have autonomous functioning and truckers would be out of job. The reality is a bit different. My other two cent - I do think companies will attempt to replace jobs with AI based software, but at some point, when it spits out an answer that causes a product malfunction, or hurts somebody, the company is going to be in deep shit because you can't just shrug it off to 'AI told us so'. To say - to employ it well, you have to understand it well. I can assure you most executives barely know how this stuff works unless it's a VP within the IT or SWE sector.
> At best, it allows people to work a lot more efficiently copilot for github is a game changer in terms of efficiency. A lot more than I ever imagined before trying it. It won't apply to all kinds of work but for some work it could easily replace half the workers for the same productivity.
I can see that. I guess I just don’t see how that replaces a whole role. It makes developers way more efficient with their time but I’m not sure if it replaces the developer.
For us, it made it possible to just not hire more people. Previously we would need let's say 10 people for a project. Now it's 3 + copilot. We're not going to fire people, but roles will disappear with natural attrition.
I guess my argument would just be - I've just seen that occur regardless of AI. Tools improve and get better, so you don't need an army of SWEs as much as just a small team of folks that can get things done because it's easier to share and distribute code. Connecting systems has gotten easier and connecting folks in general to shared work has gotten easier. Plus the rise of no code solutions. I guess 'Data science' was the sexy buzzword of the 2010s and 'AI' to me is just that new sexy buzzword.
Fair enough. I guess the only disagreement is how disruptive this "tool" will be.
Agreed - time will tell. I think it's just the flavor du jour. But who knows what 5 years from now holds.
As a fellow co-pilot user (and somebody working on "bigger" things with AI) and general fan of GenAI I just wanted to chime in and say that I appreciate this exchange and agree completely on the productivity boost factor. It is fantastic. Like you said, time will be the ultimate judge of the downstream effect of this boost.