Bogleheads.org

Sorry, but I’m going to have to disagree with you here. Lived in Seattle for over 30 years due our jobs and couldn’t get out of there fast enough when we retired. Moved south for more year round sunshine. The long dark, grey, drizzly winter months should not be underestimated. Spring is also typically rainy and mostly cold. Summer is a short 2 months, but you may get lucky with a September Indian summer. I get that some folks love that type of weather. We did not fall into this group. In case anybody reading this thread is now curious, this is what Weatherspark says about Seattle weather: https://weatherspark.com/y/913/Average-Weather-in-Seattle-Washington-United-States-Year-Round. Partly cloudy or clear at least about 50% of the time from...

If you start investing at age 30, you’re probably investing for a 50+ year timeline. Over that timeframe, a lot of different things will happen. Taleb pointed out in 2007 that black swans affect the investing world about once a decade, and the decade and a half since then has proved him right. I certainly don’t have the expertise or foresight (or interest) to predict what’s going to happen in the market. And you don’t seem to either.

The point of the Boglehead investment philosophy is to keep it simple and get rich slowly over a lifetime, not to get rich quick by predicting every trend. Getting rich quick almost never works for long.

Kids who check almost all the boxes *are* getting into decent colleges. They’re just not getting into elite colleges. A decent college is plenty good enough to launch a career from. Fordham and Purdue aren’t Harvard or MIT, but they’re very good schools. As far as getting into college, the kids should take a healthy academic load and do well in those classes. It’s also helpful if they do things outside of academics. Music, art, sports, scouting, volunteering, robotics, something like that. One or two things they do well and are enthusiastic about is more interesting to admissions people than a bunch of things they did just to pad their resume. As far as the financials, it might be good to make a post about that, using the template at https:...

Wife had the same problem on her renewal. We both renewed during COVID. Mine got immediately approved, and I had the card in a couple of weeks. She sat for ten months, then got conditional approval, and had 730 days to do the interview. We checked about once a week for interviews and were never able to get one. Finally, after about 18 months, they just approved it and sent the card. Go figure.

Anyway, interview on arrival is pretty much your best option.

roamingzebra wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 7:43 pm UCSB used to be known as "the party school".

I wondered if it still was.

Yep. It's the no. 1 party school in California.

Top 25 Best Party Schools in California (2023)

That article lists pretty much every college in California.

A shame he didn’t get accepted to UW or any of the UC’s for CS, since those would be the obvious choice. Of the ones he got accepted to for CS, I think they’re all fine second tier schools, and he can have a good software development career from any of them. If it were my kid, I would probably gently nudge him towards SCU, but really, if he continues down the path he’s already on with good grades and internships, he’ll be fine at any of these schools.

phositadc wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 4:55 pm

shiftleft wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 4:07 pm [snip]
Seattle weather is blah...Will he be able to put up with it? I know I wouldn't.
[snip]

This is a bit of a myth.

…

Apologies for derailing the thread. Just saying for the OP, IMO Seattle weather would actually be a positive of UW -- not a negative.

Southern Californians, like OP’s kid, tend to suffer a lot in Seattle. I know I did, and most of the Southern Cal transplants I knew ended up going back south before very long. Summers were amazing, it was the other 10 months that were the problem.

When this exact thing happened to me, I called the collection agency and told them that I would pay the original bill but none of the fees or interest. They took that, and it was done.

18 years. If I could push it over and build a house half the size at a reasonable cost in the same neighborhood, I would be all over that. It is ridiculously large. Smaller well built single family homes are indeed hard to find. Fired on my current retirement place late least year because it was either buy it when the timing wasn't great or spend another year or two or more looking for something similar. It is well built and to a high standard but is about half the size of most houses in the neighborhood. Even the newly built townhomes are 50% larger. To OPs question four months. Older urban neighborhoods. Our 1920’s-30’s neighborhood has single family homes ranging from 700 to 3200 sqft. Probably 2/3 are less than 2000 sqft. Well built wi...

I see a lot of parents spend large sums of money thinking they will come out ahead with a full ride. My son is in 7th grade and plays competitive lacrosse. We spend maybe 15k a year on club team fees, private coaching, travel, gear, etc. He is pretty good but we have zero expectation that he will get a scholarship or play college lacrosse. We are just supporting his passion. The parents who are in it for the scholarship are frequently irrational and would be better off saving all that money. One of my friends from high school got a full soccer scholarship from Northeastern, which at the time was about a $250,000 value. I was talking to her parents about it after graduation, and they estimated that with all the money they'd spent on traveli...

26 years. One major bathroom remodel, minor kitchen remodel, and some landscaping changes.

The biggest change has been the neighborhood. It went from being a transitional neighborhood with a lot of urban blight, to a gentrified urban neighborhood with a trendy business district and some of the highest price per square foot real estate in the metro area. We went from calling the cops about something practically every week, to not worrying if our doors were locked or not.

I've had pretty good luck with Warby Parker. My biggest beef with glasses is that, at some point in the last 30 years, something has changed about the composition of high-index lenses and they scratch far too easily. Before I tell the rest of my story, let me say that I work in a business where cleaning professional optics that cost $85,000 or more is routine for me. I only clean my glasses once a day, in the morning, under warm, almost-hot water, just using the microfiber cloth they supply to mostly pat dry. There are times where I have to gently wipe away grease. I rinse the microfiber cloth and let it air dry a couple times a month or so. I don't use soap, or launder the microfiber. The glasses are fine for a while, but eventually (4-6 ...

Retirees living off of savings pay taxes based on what they actually withdraw from their accounts, not what their SWR is. So this investment also has to be able to overcome the tax drag of both the extra withdrawals to pay the mortgage, and the taxes paid on the investment gains. If someone already has a 2% mortgage, it might be doable right now. But in general, you’re not going to find a safe investment that will beat the rate on a new mortgage, especially not by enough to overcome the tax drag. Fair point, but you’d also have to factor in the tax savings on your mortgage interest Assuming you itemize. Early retirees will also have to factor in lost ACA subsidies, and people on Medicare, IRMAA. There’s also the fact that investing is abou...

I prefer local news, which is filled with enough 'world news' anyway, and can be had with an antennae. There are lots of free streaming news channels though, pluto.tv has a whole category of "News + Opinion" channels. There are free options for sometimes different perspectives on 'world news', in english, as well, https://www.aljazeera.com/live/ https://www.rt.com/on-air/ https://www.ntd.com/live The farther you get from away from local Notable Events, Weather, and Sports the more clearly it's all propaganda though. Don't want to get political at all, but you might want to query the worth of RT, which is "a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government." Ntd.com is also ...

We used Jack Harter back when Jack himself was flying the helicopter. At the time, he was far and away the best, mostly because of Jack himself. I don’t have any idea how things stand now, but I suspect they’re still very good.

Retirees living off of savings pay taxes based on what they actually withdraw from their accounts, not what their SWR is. So this investment also has to be able to overcome the tax drag of both the extra withdrawals to pay the mortgage, and the taxes paid on the investment gains.

If someone already has a 2% mortgage, it might be doable right now. But in general, you’re not going to find a safe investment that will beat the rate on a new mortgage, especially not by enough to overcome the tax drag.

The Joy of Cooking. Seriously. Learning to cook for themselves will save money and improve their health over their entire lives.

Besides the employer match, the bulk my money went into the 401k at a 28% marginal rate. My rate now that I’m retired is 12%.

People with large pensions might be in a different position, but people who are primarily retiring on savings will almost always withdraw at a lower rate than they contributed.

I have the general impression that a hybrid with two systems (ICE and EV) in one car has less advantages than just going to a full EV. I thought one of the significant advantages of an EV is much less maintenance. But seems like with a hybrid you would have the maintenance disadvantages of both ICE and EV vehicles (just look at all the discussion of battery replacement here, which, btw, does not seem like a big issue to me from what I've read). This was my thought also. I work from home, my husband commutes about 20 miles per day. We have a 2016 ICE Toyota Tacoma that I want to keep until 2036 if possible (20 years), he usually drives that to work. We also have a 2006 Honda Civic which sees very little mileage, I want to replace it in 4 ye...

spammagnet wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 11:45 pm Since health insurance premiums are tax-deductible, they may determine whether we itemize deductions or use the standard deduction. Since the ACA subsidy is a credit, does it reduce the ACA insurance premium I can claim? Or can I claim the entire premium, regardless of subsidy received?

If you’re not self employed, ACA premiums aren’t deductible. Or, more specifically, they’re only deductible if you itemize, and your total health spending, including premiums, is >7.5% of your income.

knightrider wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 9:26 am Doubtful there is a chance in tennis, but squash is a lot easier. I've seen many kids pick up the game in high school from scratch and make it onto the teams. Not the Ivy league, but third and some second tier schools..

Around here, the ambitious kids that want to go to good schools use water polo to get recruited.

Lots of good feedback. My nephew was a varsity tennis player since 8th grade in a CA school district that had good tennis and good athletics. He was all county, all region, etc. in tennis. Captain of the team. He got into USC for his academics and attended. He tried out for the USC club team and barely made it...the tennis club team, not their varsity D1 team. He could not believe how good the club team kids were. He told me he could beat half the kids....and he'd lose to half the kids...on the club team. And then he told me the actual D1 team....the level of their play is miles away from the club team. At a school like USC, every player on the D1 team could play professional tennis now, but professional tennis at the low levels is expensi...

...just have to see the local inventory, prices and mileage... When you're in the used car market, it really just comes down to this. It's more efficient than, say, the antique furniture market, but less efficient than the stock and bond markets. Asking price to value will vary widely. So a Corolla or Prius would be great, but not if the only deals in town for them are significantly more expensive than for younger, lower mileage, better maintained cars of other makes and models, even if those other cars get worse gas mileage. I think you can't start with a particular model in mind like you would when buying a new car. I'd make a short list of what you actually see available for under $15k and then report back here for advice. True dat. Exa...

We lived together for 14 years before we got married, so this is a little different than your situation, but we started by creating a joint account for household expenses, that we contributed to in proportion to our income. We paid things like mortgage and utilities from that, and all of our individual expenses still came out of our individual accounts.

As the years went by, we started dumping more and more things into household expenses, and less and less into individual. By the time we actually got married, all of our finances were already combined.

We get like 20 channels with an antenna. All the major broadcast networks, plus a bunch that we’ll probably never watch.

As mentioned in other threads, the Prius can be a target for catalytic converter theft. I believe Gen 2 and Gen 3 are targeted due to the metals in them. Also some Prius have head gasket issues. Prius chat and the reddit sub have lots more info on these issues. It may be better to go with a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla for ease of maintenance. Good luck! Catalytic converter theft is a very real issue with Prius. I was about to buy an old Prius when I bought the C-Max, but the seller had their catalytic converter stolen the day before. The same seller happened to be selling the C-Max, so I bought that instead. This is not a reason to not get a Prius, but it is a very good reason to have comprehensive insurance on the car if you do get one.

A few months ago I got a low mileage 2013 Ford C-Max hybrid from a private party for $6600. The previous owners got 43 mpg, we get closer to 40. C-Maxes were wildly unpopular, but I do not understand why. It’s a lovely car.

What state are you in where renewing gives you a different number? I’ve had the same number since 1987. Even when I moved out of state for four years than moved back, they gave me the same number.

Oh gosh, we don’t let our kids wander off in places like that. Too many weirdos out there. We don’t either, but when I was a kid I was prone to running off by myself when my parents attention wandered for even a minute. I think one time I was missing for an hour. In those days, you never see leashes that you see some parents carry today. My kids fortunately did not inherit my behavior in this area. We lost a 50 year old engineer in Beijing that way. His wife wasn’t paying attention, and he wandered off. We didn’t see him the rest of the day. Fortunately, he had some cash and the business card for the hotel. You're kidding - right? Not at all. We lost him in the Forbidden City, and didn’t realize it until we were outside and couldn’t go bac...

One point I think some people might be overlooking a tad. One of the OP's interests is getting better pictures of birds . Here's a little known fact: birds are relatively small! Smaller than big five African mammals, smaller than bison .... getting a decent shot of a songbird requires either getting darn close or a lot of magnification. Otherwise you have this little critter with a lot of stuff around it in the frame. If I'm taking pictures at a zoo (many different sized animals), for example, my 100-400 (12x magnification on my crop-sensor camera) works pretty well. If I'm trying to get songbird pictures, my 500 on the same camera (15x) often leaves me wanting more reach. When things are small, you want a lot of magnification. The 2000s s...

One point I think some people might be overlooking a tad. One of the OP's interests is getting better pictures of birds . Here's a little known fact: birds are relatively small! Smaller than big five African mammals, smaller than bison .... getting a decent shot of a songbird requires either getting darn close or a lot of magnification. Otherwise you have this little critter with a lot of stuff around it in the frame. If I'm taking pictures at a zoo (many different sized animals), for example, my 100-400 (12x magnification on my crop-sensor camera) works pretty well. If I'm trying to get songbird pictures, my 500 on the same camera (15x) often leaves me wanting more reach. When things are small, you want a lot of magnification. The 2000s s...

gavinsiu wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:58 am

snackdog wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:22 pm Oh gosh, we don’t let our kids wander off in places like that. Too many weirdos out there.

We don’t either, but when I was a kid I was prone to running off by myself when my parents attention wandered for even a minute. I think one time I was missing for an hour. In those days, you never see leashes that you see some parents carry today. My kids fortunately did not inherit my behavior in this area.

We lost a 50 year old engineer in Beijing that way. His wife wasn’t paying attention, and he wandered off. We didn’t see him the rest of the day. Fortunately, he had some cash and the business card for the hotel.

I sit down once a month, log in to each bank, brokerage, or credit card account, and eyeball all the transactions. I also get alerts on my watch in real time whenever there’s a transaction.

I used Quicken back in the day, but realized I was spending lots of time finding and fixing my own errors. If I need to know how much money is in the account, I log into the bank or brokerage, and see what it says.

The $40 camera (hopefully) won’t have the light leaks that your current setup does. But your cell phone camera is already a better camera. And you’re gonna go through a *lot* of AA batteries to get the blurry bird pictures.

The $279 Canon someone else linked to will likely do what you want.

You get what you pay for.

livesoft wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 6:57 pm I'm not sure how people decide what percentage of fat is in the ground meat. Do butchers use specific gravity or something like that?

Google says they cook up a bit of the meat, and run the drippings through a “fat tester.”

SavinMaven wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 6:00 pm It isn't just the increased cost in premiums I'd be worried about. Homeowners' insurance is the classic example of insurance designed never to be used by most - its for true catastrophes. Some insurance companies will drop an insured after the first claim, many will drop after the second. So, for 3k, for me I wouldn't even think about it, I'd just pay out of pocket.

Nobody is going to drop anyone after a single $3k claim.

We use one of the smaller Britas in the motorhome. The water has already been through some filtering to remove sediment and larger things before it gets to the Brita. The Brita takes care of the smaller organisms. Physically, it’s a lot smaller than a Berkey.

I carry a Sawyer in my pack when I’m hiking, as one of the ten essentials. I’ve been in situations where for one reason or another, we ran out of water hiking, and the only water available needed to be filtered.

They’re applying bond math to CD’s. They are, technically, correct. Whether that matters to you or not, is up to you and what your investment goal is for buying the CDs in the first place.

My reading of this is you have roughly $1M of savings, $400k of home equity, a COLAed pension that pays 100% of your expenses, and $2k apiece in social security.

Even if your expense estimate is low, you can retire yesterday.

You will never find anything satisfactory in the $30-50 range. All that will happen is that you’ll waste $50, multiple times, as you try different things that don’t work. You *might* be able to get a used super zoom for $300 or so that’ll do what you want. A decent DSLR, tripod, and lens that’s long enough for birds is gonna end up being at least $1000 by the time you find something satisfactory. Most bird photogs spend $5k+.

Bird photography is a very, very expensive hobby, up there with horseback riding and bike racing. Trying to cheap out will just lead to frustration.

RMO87 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:00 pm

quantAndHold wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 10:35 am Pre 2022 Kias and Hyundais had a security flaw in their push button start that made them easy to steal. 2023 models don’t have that problem.

Do you have a link? I don't think that is correct. If you are referring to the vehicles without an engine immobilizer, then the push button start models are the ones you want, as they DO have an immobilizer.

I could have gotten it wrong. I was reading quickly to figure out what year they fixed the theft problem.

For a long time I’ve set the deductible so that I would be willing to pay 2x what the deductible is. Currently, the deductible is $2500. And yes, I filed a $7500 theft claim. It was the only claim in 20 years, and my rates didn’t go up.

I have a general contractor that I’m on good terms with, and when I need something done, he hooks me up with one of his guys who wants night or weekend work.

My brother has a guy who does good work and is reliable. He pays the guy $65/hour. Which is probably why the guy is reliable. The days of paying someone $25/hour plus materials are over.

Pre 2022 Kias and Hyundais had a security flaw in their push button start that made them easy to steal. 2023 models don’t have that problem.

I worked my way through college cooking in restaurants. One place was a fancy burger place. Beef - we never used anything fancy, certainly not as nice as what regular grocery stores have now. Grocery store ground beef works fine. The main thing is having enough fat in the meat. Grocery stores usually have multiple types of ground beef with different amounts of fat. Pick the highest fat one. Prep - form the patties and salt them liberally. Make nice patties, but don’t press too hard. You want them to hold together on the grill, but just. Thick vs thin is a matter of preference, but thinner is faster to cook and easier to get right. Wait for a few minutes to cook. You want the meat to come up to room temperature, and absorb the salt. Cooking ...

knightrider wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:48 pm

rob wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:44 pm Sometimes a phone is not the camera you need... I know that's not popular. There are lots of options depending what your doing but the trick attachments to phones are not a solid answer.

Here's an example of something I took with my cell phone/Nikon method:

The biggest issue with this picture is that it is one giant light leak. That’s what all the haziness is. Maybe try wrapping the whole thing up with black gaffer tape.

A super zoom camera will do what you want much better than what you’re currently using. It’s doubtful you can get one that’s fully functional, with a good battery, for $30-50, though.

Don’t have over $250k in gains in a single year.

What you’re doing is called digiscoping. A quick google turns up several digiscoping adapters for phones. I have no idea how well or badly any of them work. I suspect there are some optical limitations that you’re going to have trouble resolving without throwing some money at the problem. The people I’ve known who were into this always got results that were interesting, but not satisfactory, at least to my eye.

Sounds like they used a targeted phishing attack to steal session credentials, an attack type that’s at least a decade old. If you’re logged into an account and click on the link, game over. The main defense is to not click on links. It's well-known not to click on email links if you're not sure of the sender. I was wondering about other situations. Suppose for instance you are searching for a product and arrive at a website you're not familiar with. Is it potentially unsafe to click there on the link to the product or is that different from an email link? Basically any untrusted website is a potential malware vector. And even on trusted websites, there’s a long history of the ads being malicious. That said, modern browsers sandbox each br...

I think the key phrase for the OP is "I don't have to worry". Other people can worry about what-if financial disasters, but I find threads like this refreshing. At some point the bigger worry should be running out of time. Failure mode here is going to work at McDonalds for 10 years at 56. I will let you decide how unpleasant that is. I highly doubt the McDonalds part. I've never met a former millionaire who's investments went to near nothing and is forced to work at near minimum wage for 10 years. I read a blog post once about someone FIRE'ing and had to go back to work, but if I recall correctly got a software engineering job -- not a job at McDonalds. How many people who are 55+, who haven't worked in a decade, have you ever h...