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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...

The other outdoor chores can be hired out, but if I wasn’t capable of getting the mail, I think I would also be considering moving to someplace more amenable to aging in place.

dknightd wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 11:33 am

Wannaretireearly wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:56 am
Sounds fantastic! In tech (in the US) we do not have that option at all to my knowledge.

You might be underestimating your options.

I knew plenty of people who worked part time when I was in tech in the US. It can be done if that’s something someone wants to do. It’s not the norm, but it also isn’t that hard to accomplish.

Harry Livermore wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 9:47 am Being active an fit is not a guarantee for a long life, but it sure seems to stack the deck... so regardless, if you keep hiking and climbing you have an excellent chance at being a healthy old person!
Best of luck!
Cheers

I play in a 50+ basketball league. The current oldest active player is 97. There are plenty in their 70’s and 80’s who are traveling the world, hiking, biking, and living high quality lives. My 82 year old teammate just got back from a medical mission in Ghana. The commonality is that they’re physically active, and most of them have been physically active throughout their lives. It isn’t like someone active turns 70 and all of a sudden they’re doomed to spend the rest of their lives on a Rascal scooter.

gavinsiu wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:37 am The following is the best explanation of what happened.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ASfMqrE0ISg

1. Use phishing to deliver malware script.
2. Malware script runs as user so can decrypt cookie db that stores session token.
3. Decrypted session token is copied.
4. Using vpn. Attacker logged in from Canada to bypass geolocation check.

2fa won’t help because the site thinks you are already logged in.

I wonder one way to mitigate this would be to log out of the site. Doing so should invalidate the session token.

Not being logged into the site when he clicked the link would be a mitigation, yes. Not clicking the link to open an unexpected pdf would be even better.

A golf cart for an 80x80 yard plot of land?

Wannaretireearly wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:57 am 45 months. That scares me. Enough to keep me on a path to start utilizing those months the way I want (I cannot now).

Bottom line: The window is very short where you control your own time 100% AND you are in 100% good health. Doesn’t this scare others? Losing my dad before 60 made this very real for me….

I think if this were what was keeping me awake at night, I would be making changes *now* to make my life closer to what I want it to be. The idea that the ability to live life the way I want is some sort of on/off switch predicated solely by whether or not I have a job seems kinda sad.

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. This relies on a lot of assumptions I wouldn't be comfortable making for such a significant decision because the failure mode of this decision is really unpleasant. 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 w...

KlangFool wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:02 pm Folks,

I am not interested in starting a debate on whether there is a future for CS. My question to OP and to an extension, OP's son is this.

Are you limiting yourself and your future by going to an undergraduate degree in CS?

Would an engineering degree open more doors for you? Robotic, drone, biomedical, and so on.

Over the next 20 to 30 years, would you know what you will be working on? What foundational undergraduate degree will help you to go further?

KlangFool

I’ll ask it from another direction. Why would he limit his future career by choosing EE?Everything is done in software now.

Printer ink is one of the most expensive substances on earth.

What is probably happening is since you don’t use it often, the ink dries, and your printer has to go through a self cleaning cycle pretty much every time you print. What self cleaning means is that it squirts a huge amount of ink through the print heads to clean them out. Since HP makes its money on the ink, not on the printer, there’s no attempt to be economical with your ink.

I solved the problem years ago by going to the FedEx store and paying by the page the rare times I needed anything in color.

We have had a family with two toddlers camp next to us who left before bedtime. Terminal child unhappiness was the diagnosis. We were very glad they left. The crying was getting on our nerves.

A kid like that will be successful wherever he goes. Fingers crossed for CMU.

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.

Just to chime in on the future of computer science bit, with chatGPT being the elephant in the room. Computer science has a bright future. It’s software engineering that doesn’t. They have been predicting the end of need for software devs for decades. Bold prediction, it will NEVER EVER happen. Let's revive this discussion in a 100 years. This. Spoiler alert for all the doomsayers: software engineering is much more than simply writing functions. The code is often the easy part. People have been predicting the demise of software engineering in favor of some automated thing or another at least since I was in college in the 80’s. Making software faster and easier to write has caused the opposite to happen. There’s more software and more softw...

carne_asada wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2023 6:42 am As someone who hires lots of CS majors for a well known megacorp. Both Purdue and Pitt would be considered equivalent from a candidate quality perspective and frankly we stopped caring where candidates went to school years ago. Nearly everyone gets an interview and has an equal shot.

Everyone gets an equal shot, but grads from some schools do better than grads from others, both on the interviews and once they get hired.

Also, not everyone ends up working for a megatech. I suspect Purdue has a better CS recruiting pipeline among the companies that aren’t just trying to scoop up every warm body who can pass a coding interview.

ram wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 6:48 pm For an EV what is the equivalent of AAA bringing a gallon of gas to you because you ran out of gas.

How often do you actually run out of gas?

For me, it was when I was in college in the 80’s, driving an ancient VE Rabbit with a broken gas gauge.

You can get anything you want, they still do sell regular ICE cars. But my ten year old hybrid Ford C-Max gets 43 MPG and accelerates faster than my old 28 MPG Mazda3 (which was no slouch either).

In 250k miles, you *might* need to change the battery once, or you might not, but over the course of 250k miles, you’ll save at least $10k on gas.

Some of the NY state parks are really interesting and have have excellent camping. I think my favorite was Watkins Glen, but Glimmerglass was nice too. Especially if you like baseball.

The problem with cutting it too close is by the time you find out you don’t have enough, you’re often not in a position to do anything about it. A lot of people *can’t* get a job as a Walmart greeter to make ends meet at age 70, because the illness that has caused their medical expenses to balloon out of control has also made them too disabled to work.

It’s hard to imagine that happening when we’re in your 40’s, but increasingly likely to happen as we mature.