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As a 16-year home owner, I never did any HVAC maintenance except for changing filters regularly and blowing leaves out of the condenser. You should budget for repairs/replacement though. Gutters must be cleaned regularly (or the water will go where you don't want it to go). I do it 1-2 times a year, but it depends on how many trees you have around the house. Easy to DIY if a single story house (need a ladder, a bucket and a gutter scoop). Water heaters tend to last 10 years or so and need to be replaced when they fail. I never bothered to do any preventative maintenance. Sprinklers need to be checked regularly - they tend to clog/leak/get chewed on by squirrels. Rodents/termites/other pests can cause troubles. You may want to check regularl...

MileKing wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 3:23 pm May want to double check and confirm that your policy covers the fence if you are thinking about submitting a claim. Many homeowner's policies do not provide coverage for fencing.

Yes, this is a good point, I will check.
I read the policy and it does not say anything about fencing, but has coverage for "other structures".

I recently replaced a Schlage electronic lock under their lifetime warranty. The lock lasted about 4 years and was replaced promptly with a new one.
I took the broken one apart - the electronics are not designed well. The thin wire was rubbing against the moving parts and eventually shorted. Surprised it even lasted this long. But at least you can rely on their warranty when it breaks.

As a software security engineer, I avoid smart locks. But, perhaps, if I were a locksmith, I would say avoid mechanical ones.

If the bankrupt company gets bought, its 401k may get merged into the new company 401k.

Yes, wooden privacy fence with concrete footers. It is an old (many decades old from the looks of it) fence which was in need of replacement anyway.
Several wooden posts snapped and wooden boards flew all over the backyard. Does not look fixable in a durable way and a new fence is in order.

I am considering DIY. If it were not a shared fence, I would have done it myself as a fun project taking my time. Probably would take me a month working weekends (vs one day for the fence company). But as it is shared with a neighbor, it is probably not worth the hassle.

The backyard fence was blown down by a storm.
I think the cost to replace will about 8-10K. It is a shared fence with the neighbor so it will cost me 4-5K.
Should I file a home insurance claim (1K deductible) or just pay out of pocket to avoid them hiking the rate?

We used a "measurable" way and went with the agent who has been around for many years and sells the most houses in the area. At least it gave us confidence that they knew what they were doing.

Good: our house sold quickly
Bad: the agent was laser focused on selling (i.e. getting paid) fast, not on fetching the best price for us.

When buying the house, if I know what I want and how much I want to pay, I just deal with the sellers agent directly.

My employer allows up to 40 hrs negative vacation balance so it is definitely OK to spend the vacation time you did yet earn.

I would wait and see if it gets worse. A bit of moisture is not really a big deal.

We spent zero (except for the license fee). We don't like big parties so did not have any.
No regrets 30 years later.

I filed a claim with my insurance and they took care of everything (this is why I have the insurance after all). If you were not at fault, the other insurance will pay.
In my case although damage was small, I got a new car.

Alternatively, you can file a claim to the other insurance directly. I don't think there is any financial advantage of doing so in your case.

European countries were issuing negative interest bonds at the time and people were speculating that US will do the same so they could go lower, but didn't.

Seems totally fine. You have 22x fixed expenses saved and a good job (hopefully two soon).

Unless I have some miles from business trips that I can burn, I simply use expedia to sort the flights by price and filter out red eye flights and bad connections.
All cross-continental flights are more or less the same. Some people dislike certain airports for connections, but in my view they are also more or less the same.
I then check if booking directly from the airline is cheaper, but it usually is exactly the same.

If my plans are flexible, I try multiple dates and nearby airports too. Sometimes it is cheaper to fly to/from a different airport.
E.g. if it is significantly cheaper to fly to Madrid, I may instead choose to spend a couple days there and drive or take a train.

For a family trip we stayed in Silver Spring, MD near the metro station.
It was nice, did not need a car. Definitely not within walking distance of any touristy places, but easily accessible by metro.

All of these destinations are great.
But note that summer in Italy/Spain is hot. Early summer should not be as bad as late summer, but we visited in Rome in June and did not enjoy the heat.
France of England would be my choice.

I've been using OpenOffice/LibreOffice for years ... until I switched to Google Docs.

I understand that property tax in California is fairly locked in so 1k / month in property doesn't doesn't seem bad and probably will be an even better relative deal in 10-15 years if you keep the same house. I'm sort of surprised they are that low for a 2 million dollar home -- I pay about that much for a $700k home in Portland Oregon and I always thought California had higher property taxes than Oregon. Yes, OP has low (for California) property tax because they locked it in many years ago. Our property tax for a similar ~2M house in California is 2x what they pay. Oregon's property taxes are relatively low because the houses are cheap compared to California. Your 700K house is probably comparable to our 2M house, but our tax is much high...

For 8 days I would go to Andalusia. If driving, stop by Toledo on the way from/to Mardid.
Go to Granada, Seville, Cordoba. Do a tour of the white villages.

In our area they have been closing stores due to the out-of-control shoplifting.

One of the (big tech) companies I worked at has its stock growing 30% per year for many years in late 90s until it collapsed in 2001 and never recovered.
We were paid in stock options back then so I could not even sell at a lower price as my options were under water.
The company went belly up several years later.

I have a Pixel 6a as well. It is a good phone.

This is what this fund is for. Seems totally appropriate.

When stocks are low, buy VTI. When stocks are high, buy VTI.
You don't really know if they are high or low at any given moment, but you don't need to as you buy anyway.

Options are usually limited in 401Ks. These options seem typical.
From these, I would make a three fund vanguard portfolio and balance manually.

401k vesting is sad. I wish companies stopped doing it.

Sixt is fine. I used them before (in Europe) with no issues.

Yes, my experience with HD installers is that they will only hook up the appliance to the existing hook ups (which you can do yourself in 15 minutes).
If any additional work is needed, they won't do it.
We had the cheapest W/D from HD in out townhouse for many years. Not great quality, but worked fine until we moved.

Regarding chip and pin vs chip and signature, most places have contactless payments now which typically do not require either. Occasionally, I had no success with contactless and had to insert my card which then required a signature. Funny fact, because they don't use signature cards in europe, the cashier may not have a pen for you to sign the receipt. I haven't been asked for a CC signature in years other than restaurants. The chip works on it's own when contactless doesnt. Is this different in Europe these days? No, the chip technology (EMV) is not different. I think it depends on the bank and vendor and I suspect they may be more likely to ask for a PIN/signature if it is a foreign transaction. On a recent trip, I had to sign on multip...

Regarding chip and pin vs chip and signature, most places have contactless payments now which typically do not require either.
Occasionally, I had no success with contactless and had to insert my card which then required a signature.
Funny fact, because they don't use signature cards in europe, the cashier may not have a pen for you to sign the receipt.

When you are moving and finding multiple boxes you never unpacked from a previous move, it is the right time to toss them out.

I am in a somewhat similar situation - burnt out and stressed out in my current job. Considering taking a break from work (i.e. resigning).
There is a lot of work-related stress, mostly self-inflicted so quiet quitting won't make it go away. Will still be waking up in the middle of the night obsessing about work not getting done.
For now I took a month off (felt great!) and now changing projects within the company for a change of scenery. Will reassess in a few months.

Regarding family health issues, I had to deal with these in the past on more than one occasion. My employer was very understanding and accommodating allowing work from home, flexible hours, no travel, lightweight assignments etc.

Generally i would hire a pro for a major job that requires pulling permits like major plumbing, electrical, HVAC, roofing work.
I would diy the rest - drywall, floors, doors, locks, kitchen, bathroom, lights/switches, appliances, landscaping, painting, deck, insulation, fencing, minor repairs.

After waiting three days once for the furnace repairman to come during the winter, I learned how to fix it myself...

It feels good to have the mortgage paid off and it probably does not make much sense to keep the money in a 3.5% account, except for liquidity.
If you don't need the liquid cash, maybe put it in a 5% CD instead?

1976 is considered newish around here and I would not have any concerns renting.
You can test water for lead and/or drink bottled water.
AFAIK lead paint was banned around 1976 (our house is 1977 so does not have it), but that should not cause big concerns unless the child peels and eats paint.

Any debit/credit card should work in principle, but you need to confirm with the bank that it will indeed work. I found that my bank randomly block my debit card in certain countries. At some point they advised me to get an ATM card (non-VISA or MC) from them which does not get blocked. Some banks want you to notify them of your travel in advance. Others do not. An american ATM card should work in most ATMs though some countries have their own networks so some ATMs may not work. If one ATM does not work then the next one will. Generally you need to find a logo on the ATM that matches the one ob the card. With credit cards I found that sometimes when I move from country to country, their protection kicks in and the card gets blocked (requiri...

Zillow seems reasonably accurate in my area which has similar cookie-cutter houses on same size lots with many data points.
But they are slow to react to price changes so I would not put much trust in their estimates in volatile markets.
If anything is a good indication of this, Zillow's home flipping business went belly up because they were bad at predicting rapid price changes (though they say it used a different pricing model).

Clicking on a link confirmed to the spammer that your number is active and that you can be tricked into clicking on spam links.
So you will possibly target you with more spam. You can block the spammer, but they will use different numbers to avoid this.

Our spending increased 3.6% from 2021 to 2022.
We did not change how we spent so I take this number as our approximate "personal inflation".
The biggest (by far) expense was the property tax which is capped in California.

I would pay off the mortgage. This is what I did with RSU windfall.
You won't get 5.8% guaranteed return anywhere.

gavinsiu wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 7:15 pm V6 is around $500 so no. I considered Samson but it’s open ear.

V6 is a (very similar) original model which, I think, was discontinued a couple of years ago.

Love my Sony MDR7506. These are cheap professional headphones which Sony has been making since 1980s.
Worked with any device I ever plugged them into. Not particularly pretty, but work well.

The world is very different from what it was 100 years ago which was very different from 200 years ago.
It will be very different 100 years from now.
My great grandfather was a peasant, grandfather worked in a factory, father had a business, I type on a computer all day producing nothing material whatsoever. My job will become obsolete one day too.
At some point in history Egyptian pyramid builders were all out of work, but the world did not end.

The manager possibly gets a quota/guidance each year how many of each of the ratings to assign.
In one of the places I worked at the manager was rotating those so that nobody got two lower ratings in a row.
At some companies these ratings mean a lot, at others they mean almost nothing.
I got a middle rating once and got promoted later that year.

Listen to the boss, ask if there are specific concerns and how you can improve. "Consistent" won't put you on a PiP or set you up for layoff.

Looks like a reasonable plan. Congrats!

I set my 401k contribution to 100% to get the full match early in the year (my employer matches 50% of my contribution on each paycheck so I get the full match immediately).
There are no downsides, but some things to consider:
- your net pay will drop so you need to have enough cash on hand
- if you change your mind and join a different employer which offers a better match, you may miss out
- if you want to DCA your contributions, you need to contribute to a cash fund and then manually reallocate over the year.

Attic insulation and shutters on the skylights.
Removing the old hot tub which foxes turned into a den.

Yes, you can pay it off unless there is a pre-payment penalty on the mortgage or some other condition explicitly prohibiting it.
What I did though was to pay off much of the balance immediately and recast the rest then pay it off over a year or two. Though recasting is not really necessary if you are paying it off anyway.

If the upload speed is capped or you are on a shared cable with neighbors or you are using WiFi then the high speed they advertise makes little to no difference.
I switch plans every couple years to get a lower rate. I cannot tell the difference.

FrugalConservative wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 8:21 pm Ventless dryers are garbage.

Much of Europe has not heard of vented dryers. I do prefer vented though.

700-800K income - is this from one job or two?
If this is primarily one person's income due to RSU growth, it looks very risky.
Incomes like these became relatively common (with some luck) in the bay area tech jobs in the last few years, but I would not bet on this continuing.
Job market is starting to look a lot like 2001. It may not be possible to find another job that pays anywhere near this much.
With two incomes, it is less risky. But think of the scenario where one person loses their job and the other loses their RSU/bonus (these things tend to shrink or disappear in a downturn).