Bogleheads.org

planetmike

If not for the health insurance, I think I'd be gone. The pay isn't much, the level of respect from management isn't much, the responsibility is high, the chance of catching Covid is low to medium. If I stay two more years I get a pension. Sigh. Burnout is real. Compassion fatigue is real.

planetmike

I've been very happy with PCloud as my DropBox replacement. DropBox had been shifting strongly towards business uses away from consumers. PCloud has a monthly or lifetime (99 year) purchasing price, as well as optional strong encryption upgrade.

planetmike

I'd guess the photography place. Most every business placed fast and loose with our data nowadays. My wife started getting junk mail within two weeks after we moved. I try to give out tagged names and addresses for things I need to provide an address so I can track how it is shared. For example at L...

planetmike

4327.55

planetmike

No raise, hours cut. I'm in a non-patient care position at a hospital emergency room. Significant raises given to caregivers via hourly base wage, hourly incentive pay, and an extra week of vacation.

planetmike

Make sure you have backups. Time Machine is a good local backup system. BackBlaze gives you offsite backup. I set up my Mac with a regular user, and then do all my work as that user. The administrative user is only used to install applications or system updates. Yes, it's sometimes annoying, but I l...

planetmike

DiamondplateDave wrote: ↑Sat Oct 31, 2020 11:40 am If I could easily upgrade my iMacs to SSDs, I would do so, but they are not easy to open and work on.

I added an external SSD to my iMac, then set the boot drive in System Preferences to use that drive instead of the itnernal HDD. Works great.

planetmike

A lot of more modern vehicles use equipment inside the key to pair with the car ignition. Without the correct pairing, the car won't start. The key will unlock the door, and turn the starter over, but won't engage so the car won't start.

planetmike

Don't answer calls from any number you don't know. If possible, get a cell phone number from a different area code. Then when the spammer/scammer calls and spoofs a "local" number, you'll know you can ignore that call. If you want to cancel a number (cell or landline), start telling all of...

planetmike

You might consider using WordPress.com instead of your own WordPress on your own hosting. Costs may be similar or less expensive, plus the security and updates are on someone else's problem. You pay a fee to use your own domain name, and they have a lot of professional minimalistic themes to use.

planetmike

My wife and I watched Greyhound on Apple TV +. Tom Hanks movie about WW II. "Early in World War II, an inexperienced U.S. Navy captain must lead an Allied convoy being stalked by Nazi U-boat wolfpacks." Was supposed to be released to theaters, but Apple bought the rights and put it on Appl...

planetmike

Coin collecting is a lot of fun. And fairly/kind of easy to do while locked at home the past few months. eBay purchases have kept me quite busy.Don't knock anyone's hobbies, we are all different and relax in different ways.

I second the vote for https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/ .

planetmike

The region we moved to had two cities and a county meeting at a point. I was self-employed, working from home, so I looked at the business licensing and taxes for each jurisdiction for home-based work. It was much less expensive to live in the county, so we told our realtor we wanted to live in the ...

planetmike

Look into filing a Form 1500, Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order - USPS, with the Post Office. Available at: https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf Basically, the addressee and addressee alone is allowed to deem any mailing to be "sexually suggestive." And then that mailer i...

planetmike

I still use my iPad 2 daily, for a few games that have new daily puzzles or levels to accomplish. It's used for FaceTime once a week with family. And sometimes used for Wikipedia or IMDB during tv shows or movies. Definitely want an upgrade, but not a need yet. Maybe Santa will be nice to me this ye...

planetmike

Look at getting a ScanSnap scanner. Does double sided, can do scanning to text inside PDF so articles are searchable. If the staples aren't covering important text, just cut the corner of the page off. Set the scanned documents folder to be one that stores docs in the cloud, such as PCloud or DropBo...

planetmike

A few years ago we had a 200 year flood, and the basement got several inches of water. Insurance paid me replacement value for the non-salvageable CDs, almost five figures. I lost about half of my collection. Now the remaining CDs are in plastic crates, up off the floor, still in the basement corne...

planetmike

I used to run a network of Internet radio stations featuring Christmas music. I had a few thousand CDs I had been sent by artists and labels, all ripped to my computer, labeled and tagged correctly for legal webcast. The original CDs and cases were stored in cardboard boxes in a corner of my basemen...

planetmike

First backup is automated, Mac Time Machine, a USB external drive. Second backup is automated, offsite, via BackBlaze. I've had one hard drive failure where I needed to get data back from BackBalze. I got a hard rive from them in the mail and was up and running quickly. Important files (financial st...

planetmike

Ugh, thank you for posting this. The link to the Accounting web site was useful. I was planning to wait on hold for hours on Monday to see if they got my paper return yet. So that ordeal is saved, but I guess I'll get my refund and stimulus check when I get it.

planetmike

BV3273 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:49 am One word. Flowbee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK7_VSpTyVY

planetmike

I am 51, wife is 49. We are at 75% equities, 25% bonds. Based on last night's balances, we need to rebalance soon, at 64%/36% then. We will re-evaluate tonight and maybe rebalance tomorrow. We'll probably change the asset allocation ratios when I hit 55, planning to retire at 65, and start getting m...

planetmike

I agree 100% with ikowik, buy a Brother Laser printer. They don't clog like ink, the toner lasts forever. I bought the HLL2395DW after passing my HLL2380DW on to my mother. I use the scanner every once in a while.

planetmike

Cox tracks customers by address. so me cancelling our service then having my wife call to get new service won't work until at least four months have passed. After 4 months, we would be new customers again. Lack of competition sucks. And the mountains around here block most of the over the air signals.

planetmike

I'm really curious about the expected expenses of $90K/year. With Dad having dementia, those expenses may change quite a bit. I'm not thinking healthcare, I'm thinking they may go down if they aren't able to get out as much.

planetmike

Thank you for your help. We ended up deciding to go into the Peak 2035 fund. It was an ordeal to do this. We spent a long time on the phone with a customer service rep. In order to make any changes to the account, we had to physically mail a letter signed by my wife with the order/request to change....

planetmike

It's a horribly slow process. I have a closet and several storage boxes of stuff like what you mention. Plus the basement storage room. And the utility room. And a huge shelf of books. Sigh. We are ever so slowly going through it, and every time we visit a set of parents, we resolve to go through it...

planetmike

I'm working full-time, wife is on permanent disability, receiving social security and a monthly disability check. Emergency funds: Yes, funded for six months, in a HYSA Debt: None, no mortgage anymore. Tax Filing Status: Married Filing Jointly Tax Rate: 15% Federal, 5.75% State State of Residence: V...

planetmike

"Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History" by Peter Houlahan.

A bank robbery gone wrong in Southern California in 1980. I keep imagining this as a movie.

planetmike

Check your state's listing of unclaimed property. Look for your name, spouse's name, kid, etc. If you find anything, you'll need proof that you used to live at the property or otherwise had an account there. Once you've done that, you can get rid of that older paperwork. My wife has unclaimed proper...

planetmike

I have a handful of spreadsheets that are updated monthly. Net worth, asset allocation, details of stock purchases. Balance the credit card and bank accounts in the financial software (iBank, now called Banktivity).

planetmike

We used to scan and save PDF copies of all bank and investment/retirement statements. Now we can download them. We've kept them all, especially as they are electronic, so there is no cost to it. I guess we could back in time and add up our balances and see how our net worth (or lack thereof) has cha...

planetmike

3582.19

planetmike

The series was well worth the investment of time. I missed one episode, and my local library has a looong waiting list to check out the series.

planetmike

The outside strands I have are solar rechargable. Happens automatically. Only downside is that on cloudy/rainy/snowy days that evening they don't turn on. 72 foot strand was $40 at Amazon, still working great after three years. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EHPO0C2/

planetmike

My wife and I give two things: (1) money. To our church, and to groups we've investigated and agree with their mission. We have an annual giving budget planned. (2) our time and work. We volunteer with various groups. Local rescue squad. Food bank. Crisis pregnancy center. Anyone who cold calls us g...

planetmike

I also put my Google Voice number into Personal Capital so they're never able to bother me.

It seems that Personal Capital has made it more difficult to manually update your figures. No huge loss, maybe I'll just delete my account.

planetmike

IF YOU CONTRIBUTE EVEN $1 to 401k plan in 2019 , unfortunately you will not be able to take the tax deduction on Traditional IRA contribution. Ummm, what? Really? I work at a non-profit hospital,and have to have at least 1% of my paycheck go into a 403B. I dislike the fund choices, so I do the mini...

planetmike

If you get a new number, get one that is in a different state than where they are living. Then when the robocalls/spammers/idiots try to call in with a phone number from that other state in their spoofed caller ID, you will know it is a call to not answer. Set your ring tone and vibration to silent/...

planetmike

And on Friday we got a check back from Wells Fargo for a whopping $0.69! It's been a while since I laughed so hard.

planetmike

Any time an ad shows up on my feed, I choose the option to block that advertiser. For a reason, I choose it is irrelevant to me. If you do that enough, ads stop showing up. Every six months or so, FB creates new categories of ads, so I have to block them as well.

planetmike

LibreOffice is pretty good. It's read 99% of my old MS Office documents I've thrown at it. PowerPoint slideshows either open really well or not at all. Transition effects disappear. https://www.libreoffice.org/ I use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) for pictures. It has a steep learning curve, ...

planetmike

Thank you everyone! It turns out that a wire from Suntrust costs $25. A certified check is free, so I could either overnight it for $24.95, or 2 day mail for $7.95. Or first class mail for $0.50. I did the two day mail, had the check prepared for an extra three days of interest, just in case. The fi...

planetmike

My wife and I decided to pay off the mortgage. We only owe around $2,500. When I generated the payoff letter at Wells Fargo, it said we have to wire or mail a check. It seems really odd I can't set a payment up through their online tool. I'll be calling them this afternoon to see what they say. They...

planetmike

How does the final payment work if you are doing autopay of your monthly payments? Is the final payment the actual payoff amount automatically?

planetmike

This isn't new technology & it can be obtained cheaper than the Apple Watch option. The trick is: the person has to be wearing the device. I did a quick search, and you're right. I'll look through those options and see if my parent would maybe do one of those instead. She hated the necklace but...

planetmike

I still own 10 shares of Apple. I originally bought 20 shares in early 2000s, just so I could say I owned some. I'm so glad I didn't sell a couple years later when my stockbroker suggested I sell. Since I didn't need the money at that time, I held.

planetmike

Something to consider would be the newest Apple Watch. It has fall detection and can automatically call 911 and an emergency contact. https://9to5mac.com/2019/04/15/apple-wa ... detection/

planetmike

Two largest hobbies for me: 1. Volunteer with the local rescue squad. A fair bit of time commitment to get certified, then a weekly shift requirement. It feels good to give back. You meet a lot of good people. 2. Just started learning to play the banjo. Smaller hobbies include: 3. Swimming. I need t...

planetmike

Yeah, the whole idea of buying low is gone, because if the market tanks, you've got no income to buy more while "it's on sale." I feel like such a wimp. Isn't this what an asset allocation is for? Sell off some bonds to buy stocks when the stock prices fall? Or does that not work once we ...

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