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That's one thing I don't understand about the common reactions on this forum to questions like this, seems that often when folks suggest super easy things one can do to be safer that are beyond easy to do, one is called out for being paranoid or flat-out told they're wrong. Baffles the mind, because why not do the easy thing that has a higher likelihood of success? Because a lot of what you're describing has diminishing returns. Example: to avoid pickpocketing, just put your wallet in your front pocket, and if you're in enough of a crowd to be bumped, put your hands in your pockets. A decoy wallet is a lot of extra thought, planning, and work for no improvement in effectiveness. Ok, sure. The decoy wallet that got stolen was in my front po...

I think the point the poster was trying to make, and I agree, is that by making your bags look more "locked" up or secured than luggage normally would look if there was nothing inside, your inviting a thief to just take the bags because it looks like your hiding something valuable there. I'm not sure why people think we attempt to make our stuff look more locked up - we don't, quite the opposite. They wouldn't know the bags are locked until they pick one and try (they're just normal bags with built in locks). They might have to try three or four to find the right one. They'd have to break the locks on three or four to be sure they found the right one. It's all just a super easy deterrent. There's nothing obvious about any of it. ...

I'm shocked at the number of folks who use the hotel room safes. They can be opened so easily by pretty much anyone, it's probably the least secure place you can leave something in your room. And so your recommendation is? Assume something has to be left there for any number of reasons. We lock our laptops in our suitcases, sometimes with zip ties that would have to be broken to open it, and we don't have soft sided suitcases where the zipper can be easily pried open (with metal rimmed sealing suitcases, there would be real evidence of someone having gained access). We don't take valuables with us to hotels, generally, but the suitcase suffices fine for our laptops. Then we put the suitcases under our other bags and generally out of sight....

It’s not as easy to open a safe as it is to open my fits-under-the-seat spinner or the desk drawer. I suspect the room safe occupies the right space between cavalier and paranoia for many of us. It's WAY easier to open an in-room safe than to to gain access to a locked bag. Both might be easy in some regards, but those safes, well, just google it.... i promise you, they're no deterrent whatsoever. As I said above, I don’t need to open your bag. I just need to be able to lift it. And find it, and figure out which bag contains the items that may or may not be of interest to you, and cut the not obvious cable tying it to something in the room, all while trying to avoid being detected doing it. That takes way longer than popping open a useless...

I'm shocked at the number of folks who use the hotel room safes. They can be opened so easily by pretty much anyone, it's probably the least secure place you can leave something in your room. I did read once about someone who travels with a security camera that he places facing outward in the safe, and that texts him a picture whenever the safe is open with a nice mugshot of whoever opened it. That idea amuses me. It’s not as easy to open a safe as it is to open my fits-under-the-seat spinner or the desk drawer. I suspect the room safe occupies the right space between cavalier and paranoia for many of us. It's WAY easier to open an in-room safe than to to gain access to a locked bag. Both might be easy in some regards, but those safes, wel...

I'm shocked at the number of folks who use the hotel room safes. They can be opened so easily by pretty much anyone, it's probably the least secure place you can leave something in your room. And so your recommendation is? Assume something has to be left there for any number of reasons. We lock our laptops in our suitcases, sometimes with zip ties that would have to be broken to open it, and we don't have soft sided suitcases where the zipper can be easily pried open (with metal rimmed sealing suitcases, there would be real evidence of someone having gained access). We don't take valuables with us to hotels, generally, but the suitcase suffices fine for our laptops. Then we put the suitcases under our other bags and generally out of sight....

I'm shocked at the number of folks who use the hotel room safes. They can be opened so easily by pretty much anyone, it's probably the least secure place you can leave something in your room. I did read once about someone who travels with a security camera that he places facing outward in the safe, and that texts him a picture whenever the safe is open with a nice mugshot of whoever opened it. That idea amuses me. It’s not as easy to open a safe as it is to open my fits-under-the-seat spinner or the desk drawer. I suspect the room safe occupies the right space between cavalier and paranoia for many of us. It's WAY easier to open an in-room safe than to to gain access to a locked bag. Both might be easy in some regards, but those safes, wel...

I'm shocked at the number of folks who use the hotel room safes. They can be opened so easily by pretty much anyone, it's probably the least secure place you can leave something in your room. And so your recommendation is? Assume something has to be left there for any number of reasons. We lock our laptops in our suitcases, sometimes with zip ties that would have to be broken to open it, and we don't have soft sided suitcases where the zipper can be easily pried open (with metal rimmed sealing suitcases, there would be real evidence of someone having gained access). We don't take valuables with us to hotels, generally, but the suitcase suffices fine for our laptops. Then we put the suitcases under our other bags and generally out of sight....

I'm shocked at the number of folks who use the hotel room safes. They can be opened so easily by pretty much anyone, it's probably the least secure place you can leave something in your room. I did read once about someone who travels with a security camera that he places facing outward in the safe, and that texts him a picture whenever the safe is open with a nice mugshot of whoever opened it. That idea amuses me.

For our home, I have a simple fire resistant box for our important papers. I thought about going the whole fire-proof and water-proof route, but they're far more expensive, and since we live in a large building, I think the odds of recovering it if something tragic were to happen would be slim anyway.Not too worried about a thief finding them, because that sort of thing would be much easier to steal online, so if they're burgling my house, it's for other types of valuables than pieces of paper. I also have scanned copies of those documents on encrypted hard drives, which live in secure offsite locations, and an encrypted copy of them stored in an encrypted cloud service. When we travel overseas, we each have an encrypted thumb drive with ou...

I don't think you are idiotic. If you are a details kind of person, you could work out sinking funds for each of the anticipated repairs, but I personally like having a big pot of cash that I feel could cover whatever might happen. Just makes me sleep better at night (and it's way less work than planning out sinking funds).

If you can find a good zero percent balance transfer offer, that's what I'd do. Even if there's a 3% fee, the savings in interest can be significant if it will take you some time to pay it off. I'd also reduce 401k contributions to just enough to get the employer match, and plow the extra money into the debt. And it sounds like you are all over this part of it, but giving your expenses a major haircut will help too - you might even be able to go super low on expenses for a while to get this cleaned up more quickly. Good luck!

+1 for caffeine pills, I never travel anywhere without them. They're great for mornings in hotels, especially now that many hotels don't put coffeemakers in the rooms anymore.

Big Dog wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:28 pm Big fan of the oral-b Ultimate Clean at costco. It's also the one my dentist recommends, after being a long-time Sonic fan. (But it may be more than you want to spend.)

I noticed my dentist recommending Oral B as well last time I was in, and I was perplexed since I know from experience it doesn't clean as well as sonicare. So I asked him why they were recommending it, and he hinted that the Oral B rep gave his employees either free or deeply discounted toothbrushes. And he told me not to switch, lol.

Nothing cleans as well as Sonicare. I am on my second one (after trying a different brand inbetween and realizing the cleaning abilities of Sonicare are way better). My first one lasted about 8 or 9 years before it died, my second one is still going strong three years in... not a bad investment at all.

Best Buy?

I got the same email. If I were still a user, I would probably ask for a new sim card.

To the person who asked where else to go - we left Fi after having consistent problems with them charging us for data even when our mobile data was turned completely off. So we ended up leaving and going to xfinity mobile where we pay a grand total of $15/month for two lines all in. Xfinity uses verizon towers, so the service is a little better in our area, and though xfinity also has a habit of charging for ghost data just like fi, we realized that if we simply don't put their app on our phones, the ghost data doesn't happen.

I agree with others that you are wrong here. You could do other things like encourage them to hire someone to manage it for them, if you feel that the workload is truly a burden. But it might just be a thing they enjoy doing, and so I say support them in whatever way makes it easiest for all of you.

At the end of each month, I keep $10k in checking and transfer any excess to investments.

Have you checked Scandinavian Designs? Some of their stuff is seriously built and very nice (heavy solid wood). Some of it isn't too, but you can usually tell by the price which is which. My husband bought a desk there and used it for 15 years, and then he wanted something more simple and we went for the Ikea Bekant desk (which interestingly has all your paramaters except for solid wood and drawers).

At this point, with the existence of devices like pads and Chromebooks etc., plus work-related devices, I'm not sure there are good statistics on how many personal computers the average individual owns. I'm just not envisioning either maintaining multiple personal computers (in the sense I'm thinking of "personal computers") or spinning up VMs as being a common activity among the population, outside of Bogleheads. Spinning up VMs at home strikes me as more of a "techie or sorta techie" kinda thing than a BH thing. VMs of course are quite prevalent in large data centers. They are cool. Hard to believe the VM concept is 50 years old. If nothing else this thread seems to indicate a considerable overlap between Bogleheads a...

I earlier said that I couldn't deal with Linux and went back to Windows, because Linux requires too much tinkering. I gave it more thought and did a little research. I discovered that Dell is now selling my exact laptop with linux on it, so I decided to try again, this time installing that same version of ubuntu that dell certifies. Works great, and so much happier. Only a tiny bit of tinkering required, and I think I will stick with it as my daily driver. Now I just have to figure out how to file taxes this year since I only use TurboTax desktop, but that is literally the only reason I can now think of to keep a windows machine handy.

FWIW - Capital One is not only an online bank, and capital one 360 bank accounts are not online-only accounts, they have many B&M stores. Those cafes were from ING Direct, which used to be an online-only bank with these Cafes but no branches. Capital One bought that business and turned it into Capital One 360 accounts and in the beginning, they were not serviced at the branches, but later they changed it. Have you been in a cafe though? I have. The first time, I wanted to do something really simple, deposit some money into mom's account. No can do. They assured me they're a full-service branch but could only point at the ATMs. The second time (this last time), I asked the phone service reps if I could go into one of the cafes to quickl...

Turbotax is always so buggy this time of year - now's the time to kick back and relax while all the early adopters act as beta testers. Patience is key.

I just closed our online-only account with Capital One after experiencing a hot mess with their customer service department. They even have a so-called cafe in our town, but the people there can't do anything except point you toward the onsite ATM machines. Up until I had a problem, online only banking was fine and I never once had a need to contact anyone, but after there was a problem, getting any sort of help was really hard. Now we stick to brick & mortar. I think that's how it goes with online banks, everything's great until it isn't, and that's when regret sets in.

AFAiK, of the big financial companies, only Vanguard uses Yubikey. The others that I’m familiar with Fidelity, Schwab, E*TRADE only support Symantec. If I am wrong, please explain how I can use Yubikey to control access to the three companies I mentioned. You are correct about etrade, I just realized this while setting up our hardware keys. The other super fun thing I realized about etrade is that they have a password character limit of 32 (which they don't tell you, but I looked it up). However, if you use Symantec, the way the system treats it is to append the symantec code to the password, thereby reducing the available password length to no more than 26 characters. Etrade also doesn't tell you any of this, had to figure it out by trial...

A late refund, perhaps? The IRS does pay interest if they take too long to refund.

correct

You mentioned you have a new car you're paying off - do you need a 2nd car right now? If it were me, I'd wait until I have the cash on hand so as not to pay all that interest. If the car really is needed, I personally would put as much down as you comfortably can. Interest is a beast, especially on a depreciating asset.

Agree with the other poster who said to go to the store - I don't know who comcast hires to do phone support, but they are absolutely terrible. The only time things get done is when we go physically to a store. And if you need to blow off steam and have a laugh about them, highly recommend watching this short YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMcny_pixDw

Vanguard and their site updates, sheesh, they really need to hire someone competent to help them. They have a trash site. Seems like it's been forever since they started this website update and things just keep getting more convoluted. Most of the time I just find the little links that say to go to the old website, heh.

Does Personal Capital offer the choice to use an authentication code rather than text message? That would be much safer anyway, and then you could each access the auth app to get the code on your own devices.

I can only compare it to Outlook. It is not as good as Outlook's calendar, but given that it's way less prone to spying, I feel fine at the slight inconveniences. It's not bad by any stretch, just a few more clicks to do things and a bit less intuitive.

Most people I have encountered (myself included) who have standing desks end up sitting at them most of the time after the newness wears off, but the biggest advantage is that you can get the height JUST right to be able to sit properly for your own body type (which can also eliminate back pains). So even if you invest in a sit-stand desk for just that reason, still well worth it.

talzara wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 1:23 pm

TravelGeek wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 12:26 pm I don't think that's safe to assume. I don't usually chase bank account bonuses, but unlike credit card sign-up bonuses I have never seen/heard of a bank account (checking, savings) bonus that wasn't taxable and reported on a 1099-INT.

The IRS considers credit card rewards to be a refund of credit card fees. Since the fees were after-tax, the refund is also after-tax.

There are some banks that tie bonuses to certain activities, including direct deposit and spending on a debit card. In those cases, it is unclear whether the bonus is taxable, non-taxable, or partially-taxable.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the IRS considers credit card rewards to be a discount on purchases, not a refund of fees.

Since I closed the account early in year 2022, I no longer have online access and all statements were online. I do know the amount was $700 so I'll just create a 1099 INT in turbo tax and wait until March to file. The Bank confused me when I contacted them and told me there was no 1099 to report for the bonus and said not to worry about it. On one hand I hate paying tax for something that is not required, on the other I don't want to find out later in the year that the bank sent in a 1099-INT to the IRS. I thought institutions had an obligation to report 1099s buy a certain date? As a previous commenter said, they have to send you one by Jan 31. It’s not Jan 31 yet so they probably haven’t even generated them yet, which is probably why the...

Of course we don't know all the info, but my immediate reaction is that $20k in credit card debt is not the end of the world. Is his credit good enough that he could qualify for a zero interest balance transfer offer with a new card? That's probably where I'd start. But the truth is, if he does not want to change his spending behavior, there is probably nothing that will help long term. If he does want to change and is actively seeking help, then trying to find ways to reduce the interest he's paying to be able to pay off more of the principal is a good place to start.

I tried Linux in the last few weeks thinking I might give it a go (longtime windows user here). I tried both Mint and Ubuntu. It was not easy for me, and my trackpad on my Dell XPS would not work properly. I spent hours finding a workaround for that - for something as simple as a trackpad! And then it just seemed like most other things were sorta ok, but not super workable without a lot of tinkering. I ditched Linux and went back to a locally installed version of windows (without logging into windows). I just am not up to that level of constant tinkering to get the simple things working.

When you buy amazon books, you do not own the book, just the right to read it (so long as amazon deems that appropriate). We recently ditched our kindles for the pocketbook era, and after getting it set up, like it a lot better. I'm not a person who is comfortable breaking DRMs, so I now buy from a non-amazon source that uses adobe DRM, and i can easily read EPUB on the pocketbook. As for those wishing to transfer rights and wondering about inheritance rights, that's easy, you do not have those rights.

Tresorit is an awesome zke encrypted cloud storage. Can't recommend them highly enough.

Yep, this is a problem we are also running into with 1password after trying to set up our yubikeys. I read a bunch of reddits about it, and it seems that 1password doesn't feel that the every-time 2fa is really a thing they need to be concerned about or support. It's a shame because we like 1password and I don't know why they wouldn't just give users the option to have 2fa act how they want it to act. But for now, as far as I know, once you use 2fa to log into 1password, it won't bug you for it again on that device. I wish it was different.

But do you mind sharing why you care so much about some company knowing what websites you visit or restaurants you eat at? That's a really good question, and I don't mind sharing at all, though we are still very much formulating our opinions on the topic. The biggest reason we got interested in this sort of thing is because in almost all cases, we as consumers do not have the right to opt out of having our every action tracked. And that seems so wrong. Sure, there are some insincere options you can check in some websites to increase your privacy, but they're still tracking you. The amount of reach these companies and apps take is pretty incredible. There are too many cases of user disabling tracking and yet the company "accidentally&q...

But do you mind sharing why you care so much about some company knowing what websites you visit or restaurants you eat at? That's a really good question, and I don't mind sharing at all, though we are still very much formulating our opinions on the topic. The biggest reason we got interested in this sort of thing is because in almost all cases, we as consumers do not have the right to opt out of having our every action tracked. And that seems so wrong. Sure, there are some insincere options you can check in some websites to increase your privacy, but they're still tracking you. The amount of reach these companies and apps take is pretty incredible. The more we read about data collection and privacy rights and just how much tracking there i...

The paranoia in this thread is unbelievable to me. What are the odds of someone correctly guessing the first 12 digits of your credit card number, when given the last 4 digits AND taking the time and effort to do it? You might think tha tthe answer is 1 in 10^12 but it turns out that's not right. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/credit-card-numbers-random-read-understand/ Some of the digits indicate the issuer, one indicates the customer account number, and one is a check digit. I think that whacks the probability of guessing a valid number given the last four as somewhere between 1 in 10^5 and 1 in 10^8. Not large enough for me to put the shredder next to the door. It would have to go in the corner where I lean my shotgun. You could just mov...

Well, while some of you might find dropping a receipt in a shredder laughable, I find it laughable that some people won't do the easier thing just because what... they're afraid of being perceived as paranoid? LOL. Bottom line is, decide what your risk tolerance level is, decide how much of an inconvenience something feels like to you, and make your decision about how to proceed.

Glockenspiel wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 8:59 am The paranoia in this thread is unbelievable to me. What are the odds of someone correctly guessing the first 12 digits of your credit card number, when given the last 4 digits AND taking the time and effort to do it?

As close to zero as you can possibly imagine.

Throw your receipts in the garbage, or don't even get a receipt.

Paranoia is unbelievable right up until the point something undesirable happens to you. So why even make it a thing, why not take the other viewpoint and just shred the stuff? It's seriously faster and easier than finding a garbage can to put it in.

I can't see how shredding shopping receipts is time consuming? Do you not have a modern shredder? I just drop mine in the shredder feeder and walk away, takes probably less time than putting them in the trash because i don't even have to open a trash can lid to do it. It's not time consuming in the grand scheme of things, but I don't have a shredder in every room of the house. I don't know what you have, but a flimsy receipt won't trigger mine automatically. It's not that it takes even a minute, but it's completely pointless (to me). The only things I might shred would have SSN or detailed financial data. Beyond that, the internet is literally awash in all of our personal data anyway. Nobody outside of TV crime shows digs through household...

Strongly considered it, but limited time and too many inconveniences last I checked (i.e. Google pay, authenticator, no true maps alternative). We are using the Aurora store where we can get any google play store app. As I understand it, the Aurora store sandboxes google. I'm not sure how well the things you mention might work on GrapheneOS though, even if you can install them. Our whole point in this is to evict google from our lives as much as possible, so we're specifically looking for non-google alternatives. We just downloaded an open source map that we're going to try out soon. We are finding that the yubi authenticator works great on it (for those instances where a hardware key isn't supported). And google pay, yeah, we just gave up...

I can't see how shredding shopping receipts is time consuming? Do you not have a modern shredder? I just drop mine in the shredder feeder and walk away, takes probably less time than putting them in the trash because i don't even have to open a trash can lid to do it.

If you imagine how you would feel right after you resign, what would it be? If it's a massive amount of relief, then resigning may be the right thing to do. But if you think you'd feel regret, i'd probably give it a little more time. Sometimes imagining how we might feel after an action gives us good clues as to how to proceed. Good luck to you! I think I’d feel relief, but also guilty like I didn’t try hard enough. Truthfully, I probably should have looked for a part-time job. I actually did look for them, but there are very few part-time jobs in this field. Most other part-time jobs pay so little after taxes that they are hardly worth the effort. Huh, that's interesting. Guilt can be hard to deal with. Have you thought of asking your cur...