Bogleheads.org

Well, to my chagrin, when I turned off the computer after the last posting the Killawatt went back to reading 18 watts. I just tested 2 laptops which were off but plugged in. Both registered around .5 (point 5) watts. If this is a laptop you are testing, you may have a faulty power supply. He said ...

Yeah, I don't understand why they don't just kill the fan too. By the way, I feel like they should have offered a few options. My mom's utility in California had three "stages" and at the lower stage, the AC shutoff was extremely rare--something like 10 times or fewer for the entire year ...

I recently received a letter from my power company that had a graph showing that our electricity use was above the average for my neighbors and offered a savings opportunity involving them controlling my heat pump. I have that with FPL (Florida Power and Light). I get at $9 a month credit on coolin...

The people who were most successful in the switch were highly regarded for their technical expertise, had very, very good communication skills, and had an extensive network of peers within the company. In order to justify high salaries in a technical role, the project leader or technical expert has...

I think it is a great gift idea. I had a godfather who used to buy me investments of one kind or another when I was a kid for my birthday. He would buy me one share of a stock in a DRIP plan and write me a little letter on investing (the single share of Coca Cola he bought in 1977 is now worth about...

I have several family members who are in the antique business and have picked up some from them over the years, plus I have dabbled some in antiques and art a little over the year. Ebay is really hit or miss for art. I have seen stuff go real cheap compared to what I have seen in an auction house bu...

Seems to me it really comes down to the non-financial stuff. It looks like to me with the above benefits you list the gap between A and B has narrowed a bit more. Minus $1300 for additional health care costs at Company B (assuming benefits are the same which is probably a big assumption) so about a ...

So far, do you guys think that Company B sounds like the better deal? Insufficient information has been provided. What are the other benefits like? As others have mentioned things like health insurance could easily eat up the rest of the difference. Also you make no mention of vesting (I assume you...

Good luck. I do think paying to have your number unlisted makes a big difference. I rarely get marketing calls and when I do they are usually looking for the previous owner of the line. That said a lot of these telemarketers are overseas and so largely beyond the reach of our law and they are freque...

I don't have any hands on experience with it and it does seem popular but when I was researching an IP based music distribution system I was underwhelmed with Sonos based on what I would get and at what cost. I ended up going with Logitech's Squeezebox. Much more flexible and powerful in my opinion ...

$17,500 is you are under 50. That number is for all 401k contributions, in any mix of Roth and Traditional. The answer is a little more complicated than that depending on what OP means by "after-tax". You are correct that pre-tax traditional and after-tax Roth contributions are limited to...

I have been buying tires from Costco for years, but the last time they striped the stud bolts on one wheel. This is a dangerous nuisance, and I may just start buying my tires from my local repair shop. They don't strip stud bolts. If you ever watch the tire guy mount a wheel he always uses the torq...

Be careful putting window tint on double pane windows. My brother in law put tint on some south facing windows. Some time after that (not sure how long), one window (a large fan shaped window) failed (I think the glass actually cracked). Yeah I have read it can cause heat to build up between the pa...

I appreciate all your comments about the impracticality money wise of spending $20,000 on a used Prius or similar hybrid in order to reap fuel savings. Would even spending $10,000 on a 10 year old non hybrid car with low miles that gets 40mpg be unwise from a financial standpoint? What about spendi...

Spouse agrees that renovations are necessary as well (e.g., spouse has discussed how great it would be to finally renovate our old, small kitchen and the need to replace the bathroom with the sink that is cracking), but spouse is less concerned than me about getting this done sooner rather than lat...

OP in my opinion it makes no sense for you to buy a hybrid with your annual mileage. In general my take is that it is rarely worth upgrading stuff for improved efficiency alone where the cost of acquisition is near to or greater than the cost of energy usage over time. For example, it totally makes ...

Since fuel prices are so high, why aren't people abandoning traditional cars and buying hybrids in droves? Am I missing something? When I looked at new cars three years ago the numbers for a Hybrid were not compelling. I ended up buying a new Honda Fit and I am happy with it. I get about 29-30 in s...

Hybrids depreciate just as fast (if not faster) than conventional counterparts. I don't have the source handy (you may be able to locate it on google) but found this to be true also in my independent analysis. The high resale value of the Prius reflects that it is a Toyota not a hybrid. Look at use...

I put may hit it. My plan allows post-tax contributions and in-service distributions so I have been converting taxable to Roth space as I sell and re balance each year on the taxable side (so for example this year I am on course to put away $51k including employer contributions to 401k--about 2/3 ar...

What's a subcontractor insurance company? Are they farming stuff out to smaller companies? I believe Garrison is a wholely owned subsidiary of USAA. USAA like all large insurance companies has multiple different subsidiaries. For example I am a non-military member and I technically have insurance w...

Interesting. Had not considered induction. What do you like about induction over gas? Biggest advantages are less waste heat than gas or resistance heat since only the pot is being heated (the induction coils excite the atoms in the pot to cause heat, the coils themselves don't get hot). Thus the k...

I haven't reached my goals yet but seem to be on track to be able to retire in 12 - 13 years around the age of 55. Direct savings have ranged from 10% (early in my career) to 35% (before I was married/kid). Current rate is around 25%. On top of that both wife and I have had the luck to work for empl...

I am looking for a new kitchen range/oven - 30 inches. Any recommendations for brand? I have a gas range/oven right now - GE Profile Performance. I heard it's better to have gas stove-top, electric oven. Any other features to look for? I am a foodie and can use something high performance. According...

I can't imagine a reason for overpaying Federal taxes to receive a refund that size. One reason folks do it (not me) is for credit card rewards. If you have say a 5% cashback credit card and you have to pay 2.5% in fees to pay your estimated taxes on said rewards card, you clear 2.5% of 40,000 in t...

I can't imagine a reason for overpaying Federal taxes to receive a refund that size. One reason folks do it (not me) is for credit card rewards. If you have say a 5% cashback credit card and you have to pay 2.5% in fees to pay your estimated taxes on said rewards card, you clear 2.5% of 40,000 in t...

The concern with Kumon (or similar) is the rote, repetitive aspect of the drills might put off a lot of kids. How many long division problems can the kid take before rebelling ? Clearly it works for some kids, but not clear it will work for everyone. We had my son in Kumon when he was in K and 1st....

I am going to differ a bit with LadyGeek. At least for large financial institutions (and probably most financial institutions) the by far weakest link in the security chain is the end user PC and, to a large extent, the end user themselves (see how may fall for phishing scams and the like). Thus I w...

...I would recommend you retire in Arlington, VA than Bethesda.... much more closer to DC I think you mean Bethesda is further from *downtown* DC. Parts of Bethesda actually border on the DC line. My parents zip code (20816) in fact was a "DC" zip code (20016) until it was changed in the ...

Montgomery County politics, and Maryland state politics, should be looked into if that's important to you. Maryland is a one party state, and Montgomery County is a laboratory for some of that party's ideas. If you agree with those ideas, perfect! If not, you may feel disenfranchised. This is true ...

I pay $200 and change for $2M in umbrella. Most of my assets are judgement proof (homestead, retirement accounts), but I wanted to protect against wage garnishment during my prime earning years. I think that's a good price. I pay $208 for $1M. Another million in coverage boosts the premium to $312....

This new device sends data to your smartphone - a big improvement over Kill-a-watt? http://www.indiegogo.com/meterplug Possibly but at 3x the cost of my Kill-a-Watt it better be. For identifying vampire loads I don't think remote monitoring is necessary. For ongoing monitoring of a device that has ...

So it sounds like everyone who has an e-bank also has a local brick and mortar bank? Not me. I have Ally and USAA only. Last time I was in a bank branch was probably 07 or 08 when BofA bought out Countrywide and then killed their decent interest rates. I showed up at BofA long enough to close out m...

I'm not a CPU expert, but have been around long enough to know that Red Hat made a lot of money off commercial software support for big enterprise, which always needs some sort of customer support. It's not a big deal for consumers who can individually take whatever time is needed to look up how to...

While I think the PI is awesome I will say that most folks are probably better off going with a more mainstream x86 chip from Intel or AMD. You would have many more options, much more power, you will lose some power efficiency at idle but unless your system is on 24x7 it is probably not a major deal...

Just some random thoughts. First off you seem to be running more from something than to something. My general observation in life is when I have run from something in haste rather than been drawn to something it has been a mistake. As at least one other person has pointed out most of your pros could...

I agree with others it sounds like for whatever reason Win7 is sometimes not detecting the native resolution of your display and thus is defaulting to a lower resolution (why things are larger) and is probably not displayed correctly which probably accounts for the disappearing scroll bar. Your prob...

My two cents, if you want to take a gamble on art, this is the best to do it, period. Buy an original piece from an up-and-comer and get it cheap. . If you like an artist you might also want to look at the secondary market. I have Ebay, Craigslist and Google alerts setup for a few artists I like an...

Using Paypal doesn't mean that you can't be scammed with the payment. What prevents the buyer from filing a complaint about item never been received. You'll need to pay extra for tracking preferably Priority Mail with Signature Confirmation. Shipping with Craigslist is just asking for trouble. Peop...

OK here is how I see it, based on this thread so far. gas now = > replace with another gas unit (high efficiency and Consumer Reports reliability record) electricity now & gas to the house connected => go for gas (assuming location etc. OK) & no gas & electricity price relatively low an...

Ok electric or gas? if electric, the anodes 'fir up' (I think it is the anode). Electric water heaters are basically 100% efficient (but with an expensive energy source) and so what matters if you replace is more insulation on the tank. There are high efficiency 'heat pump water heaters'. I don't k...

Also, don't Windows 7 and Server 2008 share a common code base while it's Vista and Server 2003 that share a common code base? Server 2003/2003 R2 is based off of the XP code base. Server 2008 is off of Vista code base, Server 2008 R2 is based off of Win7 code base and Server 2012 off of Win 8 code...

Runaway threads that consume 100% of the cpu often don't have to do with the operating system at all, They have everything to do with an operating system, one of whose primary tasks is managing the available resources. Why should an operating system allocate 100% of the CPU to a thread if there's a...

Sidney wrote:didn't the W2K also have significant parts (kernal?) from NT which, if true, pushes it back even further in terms of rigorous use.

Yes it did but that gets to the dawn of my time in IT so things are a little hazy for me but 2k was a follow on from NT 3.1, 3.51 and 4.0.

Windows 7 Tops Vista in Performance By 0% to a blistering 15% in those benchmarks. I wonder how many folks can really tell a 15% increase in boot up performance? Also the benchmarks I referenced show instances where Win7 was slower so it is not exactly a home run. I don't see 15% being terribly imp...

Interesting but... I wish I could say more. but it strains credibility to say Vista had more in common code-wise with XP than Win 7 has with Vista Call me a liar if you'd like. But in doing so, you're doing the discussion and readers of the thread a disservice. I wasn't calling you a liar but I bel...

Windows Vista was a disaster when it was released because it was such a massive overhaul to the windows platform and MS did a lousy job executing on their QA and deployment plan for the upgrade. This is in stark contrast to Windows XP, which was also a major overhaul, but was masterfully managed fr...

I'm not "betting". I cannot discuss my sources, but rest assured, there is far less Windows Vista in Windows 7 than there is Windows 7 in Windows 8, or even as compared to how much Windows XP there was in Windows Vista. For a single-step OS upgrade, Windows 7 was remarkably devoid of prev...

I've run Vista and then Windows 7 on the same hardware and it's night and day in terms of performance. Where Vista was sluggish, Windows 7 was not. To me, that's an indication of the OS hogging resources. Bad drivers and buggy applications can contribute to this but performance-wise, in my experien...

I know I am probably in the minority but honestly I run both Vista and Win 7 at home and there is a lot less difference between them today (I'd argue almost no difference in their operation and performance). Vista did have a lot of teething problems that MS has corrected over time (in my opinion Vis...

THY4373, We often wondered why the inside of one of our kitchen cabinets was always warm or cool (winter or summer). It had a toe-plate vent coming out the front. We had a HVAC friend relocate the vent to come up through the floor in front of the cabinet. Did a major renovation including replacing ...