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Depends on the car. My Hyundai Ioniq hybrid issues a beeping sound when backing up, regardless of whether the engine is engaged. When it's running on electric in forward motion, it makes a soft high-pitched noise but I'm not sure if that's just the electric motor or if it's amplified in some way. I don't find any aspect of it unpleasant.

CoastLawyer2030 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:52 am I'm curious how other 30-somethings currently, and those who have been there before, have come to the conclusion to step off the savings gas and start spending some money.

We had kids.

More seriously, I also think the fact that my spouse's father is starting to face some age and health-related limitations has encouraged at least me to value having more experiences (travel and the like) while we are younger and still working, and certainly we want to set a good, balanced example to our children.

We came home from a trip once and the ice maker had leaked and ruined several boards in the kitchen. Now if we are gone for a few days I shut off the water and hot water heaters plus open a spigot downstairs to drain what is in the pipes. I'm. about to go on a three week trip, and I'm reading this thread. I have no problem turning the main water off - almost everyone seems to recommend that. However, I have a question - do I really need to turn to water tank heater off? If I were to drain the tank by turning on a spigot in the house, what would happen if I didn't turn it off? I'm just uncertain how to do this, and whether it's necessary? Our water comes from an on-property well. Thanks! To drain a water heater, rather than turning on a spi...

Background: my wife and I have done many rounds of IVF. Your overall thinking seems sound. Given the relatively short time period in question, I don't know that I would bucket any of your surrogacy-related savings in investments rather than just pile it all into a high-yield savings account. The downside risk seems more than the upside. Our childcare expenses while saving for surrogacy 2 should be fairly low, as grandparents are willing to help babysit. I don't know how active the grandparents are, but I wouldn't count on this long-term -- it's a lot of energy and time! Our child's grandmother took care of them full time Monday-Friday for about the first six months after our parental leave ended, and I think she was happy when we ultimately...

You should be able to upgrade to Mojave from this page on Apple's Support site: How to get old versions of macOS.

You could theoretically remain at Mojave until you encountered some other future software or browser incompatibility. However, be advised that Mojave is scheduled to stop receiving security updates from Apple after November 30, 2021.

Many people advocate for paying off your mortgage before retirement in order to reduce your expenses and therefore lower your "sequence of returns risk" -- that is, the risk that a market downturn occurs just when you are about to or have recently retired, requiring you to draw a higher percentage from your portfolio.

How important this is depends on your risk tolerance and how big a factor your mortgage is in your annual expenses.

Defining "battery life" a bit differently....do batteries wear out and need to be replaced? How many hours of use before they will not hold a charge? Yes. The general figure for the common Li batteries is about 300-400 full discharge cycles. Assuming the abuse they take in lawn equipment (heat, fast charging), I'd probably count on more like 200. I have an Ego mower, and the 4Ah battery died after five years. I suspect it’s because I let it sit discharged over the winter, but I don’t know for sure. A replacement cost me about $200. Even if I have to keep paying that amount every five years, I would never go back to a gas mower, with their noise, pollution, and maintenance. You should always let the battery cool down after use the...

I don't think landlords would be thrilled to have someone reside in the apartment who isn't on the lease. If you want to pay for the apartment, it's probably easier to just give DD the money.

I didn't have a credit card until I was 22. I'm in my late 30s now, own a home, etc. I'm not saying I would wait that long if I had to do it over, but it's not actually very hard to build a credit history. This seems like overthinking it.

Far and away the biggest driver of wedding costs is the number of people attending and how/what you are feeding them.

There are two components to a bond's return: the face value and the market value. The face value is the amount paid by the issuer to the bond holder at maturity. The market value is what secondary purchasers are willing to pay to buy the bond on the open market. People would rather hold bonds that pay higher interest than lower interest, and so as interest rates have declined generally it has meant that the face value of new bonds has gone down, but the market value of older bonds has gone up. If you have held a "total bond" style fund over the last few years, you have experienced a bull market in the form of capital gains in your fund shares even though those shares are now paying lower dividends every month. The flip side of thi...

My 70 year old mother-in-law, who is otherwise a very conservative investor, asked me about Bitcoin the other day. I figure that means we're near the top of this cycle's crypto bubble.

I advised her against it.

nisiprius wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 4:03 pmNormal physical biggish banks can also do overseas wire transfers. My small local bank can't. I don't think I can do any kind of wire transfer from my Capital One 360 "online bank account."

Just FYI for the thread, Capital One 360 currently will do wire transfers to a title company ($500,000 limit) or to a linked external account (no limit). In the case of the latter, they say that the linked account must be "on file for a minimum of 30 calendar days before sending the online wire transfer."

The mutual fund version of Vanguard's Total International (VTIAX) closed up only 0.88% compared to the counterpart ETF VXUS, which closed up 1.08%, so at least part of it may be that the ETFs were trading at a premium to net asset value, for whatever reason.

The value of an appraisal for the lender is mainly for edge cases where they perceive the borrower to be of a certain risk of default (<20% down payment, lower credit score, etc.), or if the property itself is being drastically misrepresented.

There was an article earlier this year discussing how the pandemic has caused more lenders to waive appraisal requirements. They've always done so for perceived low-risk transactions, but they have gotten even more flexible under the circumstances: https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/coro ... ppraisals/

I purchased a home earlier this year and the lender waived the appraisal.

JoeRetire wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 7:39 am When I was 26, I thought I knew all the details of my future.
I'm 66 now. I now know how wrong I was.

When I was 34, I thought I was going to be single forever. Now I'm 37, married, with a kid on the way. Life is weird.

Double-check account settings like cost basis and dividend/capital gain reinvestment after the conversion.

arcticpineapplecorp. wrote: ↑Wed Apr 29, 2020 7:03 pm yeah, i heard a podcast a few weeks ago (can't remember which, maybe econtalk with Russ Roberts interviewing Tyler Cowen?) and they talked about the genie out of the bottle, but from their perspective it was the employers that wouldn't like it and the employees would be fighting for it (like, why continue commuting an hour to work when I can work from home)??

I absolutely hate working from home and I don't think I'm the only one. I don't know what the net result will be, but I don't think a dramatic shift toward WFH is going to be simple for companies to navigate from a recruiting standpoint for a lot of mid to late-career white collar jobs.

All any of us indexers can do is play the hand that Mr. Market gives us. International stocks might outperform U.S. stocks over the next 10 years (some analysts expect them to). Or maybe they wont. But it's not a reason to second guess your entirely reasonable allocation.

I use a password manager, and only change passwords if I've been prompted to or I suspect a breach.

However, I don't think that frequently changing passwords decreases security, if you are using a password manager. The whole point of a password manager is to be able to use unique, strong passwords that you don't have to remember. I could generate a new strong, random password for all of my accounts every day if I wanted to without the risk of writing them down or defaulting to something easy to remember. It's obviously more problematic in a corporate setting where you often can't easily use a password manager.

It would definitely be helpful to get the full picture of available funds in your plan.

In addition to possibly overvaluing the difference in expense ratio between "good" funds like VTSAX and other non-fee funds that may be perfectly acceptable, you also may be overestimating the number of times that you would need to rebalance. Using a rebalancing band method, many people find that their portfolio does not drift substantially from their target AA for years.

It's all down to personal preference either way. Fidelity has more robust cash management services than Vanguard, if that is important to you.

Some people are nervous about putting all of their eggs in one basket because they worry that some glitch (e.g. a technical malfunction, a problem with identify verification, etc.) will make it temporarily difficult to access their money.

Some people like the idea of being exposed to the practices of more than one company, so they can feel like they are making a more informed decision about whether their broker(s) are offering competitive services.

Those are the only compelling reasons I can think of to prefer to keep assets at more than one company.

Thanks for the initial replies. My post is less about which method to use and more about whether Vanguard and Fidelity offer equally effective automatic tracking of such regardless of the method. In other words, does one excel over the other at the record keeping and user friendliness? Everyone will have their own anecdotes. I use both Fidelity and Vanguard. The one negative experience I've had, which was at Vanguard, was a case of them screwing up the cost basis by seeming to average out the basis when I converted a few distinct lots to Admiral class last year, instead of accounting for the basis of each lot separately. When I called Vanguard about it, I had to escalate the issue once before it was resolved. The first rep I spoke to tried...

I'm a fundraiser for a nonprofit organization with about 15 years of experience, earning mid-$100K.

JohnF wrote: ↑Wed Dec 18, 2019 10:56 am I can’t find it anyplace online. Where is Capital One showing the current rate for their Money Market fund?

If you currently have a MM account at Capital One, you can see the current rate from your account page online. There's a button -- I think somewhere near the top of the page -- that launches a pop-up window with your account info.

As others have said, FSPSX does not include emerging markets.

The better comparison to VTIAX at Fidelity is FTIHX (Fidelity Total International Index).

They appear to track slightly different indexes (the unmodified and float-adjusted versions of the Barclays US Aggregate Bond Index), so by that criterion I think you're probably safe.

On the other hand, with current yields so low, I don't think there's necessarily a downside to just leaving the sold funds in cash for the requisite amount of time before re-buying.

I haven't seen this mentioned here, but just noticed the other day that on 10/17/2019, Fidelity announced a new international bond index fund (FBIIX). It tracks the "Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate ex-USD Float Adjusted RIC Diversified Index (USD Hedged)." I take it this is essentially equivalent to Vanguard's Total International Bond Index Fund (VTIBX)?

Press release

Fund page

Those are gross expenses. What are the net expense ratios? Sometimes different plans have different reimbursements/waivers that bring those down somewhat.

The listed expenses here for the target date funds are high relatively to many, but they aren't insane compared to the options that many people have in their employer-sponsored plans.

I got married last spring. It was a relatively large wedding (~125 people), and cost more than I wanted it to, but in the end it was worth it. The biggest cost drivers are the number of people and the food and alcohol you are serving. Full stop. Everything else is a relatively minor component. We had our reception at a hotel which probably inflated costs somewhat but it also simplified things in the sense that the the food, alcohol, and room rental were all the same vendor, and most of our out-of-town guests were able to stay in the hotel so we didn't have to worry about transportation logistics. Nth-ing the idea of a day-of wedding coordinator, which meant that all we as bride and groom had to worry about during the ceremony and reception ...

I used to get them with about the same frequency when I lived in a basement despite being a very clean person. I never found a way to really be rid of them. They are vicious predators of other, more troublesome insects like roaches, so they are actually somewhat helpful (or maybe an indicator of another problem). I still killed them when I could, though.

The Credit Card Act of 2009 included a requirement that credit card issuers take steps to verify consumers’ ability to pay, including asking for income. If you have already been issued the card, they won't revoke the card or lower your limit just because you don't answer the question. However, not answering might make you ineligible for a credit limit increase.

Fundamentally, the risk you identified that you are trying to mitigate (being priced out of the residential real estate market in your current city) is not an investment problem. It's an income problem. I don't see how portfolio allocation addresses the problem -- housing prices could skyrocket in your area at a rate faster than REIT returns. You say you could purchase an apartment now but you don't want to for other reasons, so I don't know that there is much else you can do about it. But being a long-term renter is not so bad either.

I don't think they are a new trend, at least among my peers. But as someone who has gotten married in the last few years, one thing I learned is that there is no pleasing everyone. So as the ones getting hitched, they might as well do it how they want.

We didn't do this, but a lot of people who go the destination wedding route do it in part because it lowers the RSVP rate, and of course the biggest driver of wedding costs is the number of people you have to feed. If they both come from huge extended families who expect every cousin to be invited, as was the case with us, then they have my sympathies. Try not to take it personally.

Edit: On preview, I see this has been covered.

There's a large sub set of universities that have a pledge that all their students have to know how to swim well enough so as to not drown! I remember having to take a swim test at freshman orientation and those who failed had to take swim classes. I think you had to just tread water for a few minutes and make it from one end of the pool to the other. Skill and grace were not required. Here is a guess. In the days of military conscription a significant percentage of recruits did not know how to swim. This was a problem not only for the Navy and Marines but also Army and Air Force. Thus a requirement that kids learn to swim pre induction either in High School graduation or university. Could it have stemmed from that? The urban myth was alwa...

The traditional recommendation is to save it in something that has no or minimal risk of losing nominal value -- so high yield savings account, money market fund, CDs, etc. But that's typically geared toward someone for whom a downpayment is a known, upcoming requirement. For your situation: "I am hoping to be in a position to buy a home (get married/have kids etc.) - though if I remain single throughout my life I don't think i'd buy" and use the savings as investments for retirement and traveling, etc." You could consider investing everything according to your overall allocation. If you decided to sell funds from your taxable account(s) to pay for a downpayment, you would rebalance in your tax-advantaged accounts. If your ti...

You could open a taxable brokerage account and invest in total stock market. You could buy CDs. You need to think about your risk tolerance for this money and your overall portfolio.

You may be referring to the Institutional variant of Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund (VITNX), which showed up on Vanguard's recent preliminary capital gains estimate report.

Presumably, you would be investing in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares fund (VTSAX) which is not on the list.

It's certainly "okay" for you to not have any bonds in your portfolio right now. That said, an 8% allocation is not going to affect your total return very much at all. And part of the value of a rule like age minus 20 in bonds that you've settled on (assuming you stick with it) is that you will gradually increase your bond allocation without having to worry about deciding if when "the bond market improves, or something" is the right time to invest in bonds.

Building on onourway's response: electronic bank transfer (ACH) will normally result in the funds being available for use in your checking account in 2-3 business days. Wire transfers are processed within hours, but your bank will usually charge a fee ($20-40) to receive one.

I have the Canon G9X, which I bought early last year to take on vacations. It's been great for me. It has a 1" sensor and 3x optical zoom that takes good photos in a variety of lighting conditions. I will never own the latest and greatest phone (currently rocking a two-year-old iPhone SE with a camera that I would describe as "meh"), so it was worth it for me at this point in time to have a standalone camera. At some point in the future, it probably won't be. Spec-wise, there are pretty much two reasons to want a compact point-and-shoot camera over a phone camera: sensor size (around 1") and high-range optical zoom (up to about 40x). You sort of have to pick between the two, though. I went for sensor size. Most of the ma...

The portability factor in #3 is the biggest reason why I prefer ETFs over mutual funds in taxable accounts. Vanguard's mutual funds are an exception because they can be converted to ETFs without tax consequences if I ever wanted to move my assets elsewhere.

Fidelity.

Of course, many people (like me) have accounts at both Fidelity and Vanguard.

Since you say you may be opening taxable accounts in the near future, one potential advantage of Vanguard over Fidelity is that Vanguard index mutual funds have been less likely to distribute capital gains than the equivalent Fidelity funds, making them more tax efficient (one discussion of that here). If you prefer using mutual funds rather than ETFs, you could consider opening a Vanguard account for your new (taxable) funds and keeping your IRAs at Fidelity.

I doubt it... She probably wants the fairytale wedding and ring... Every girl's dream. I got married earlier this year. When I proposed to my wife, I gave her a modest semi-eternity band diamond ring that cost about $1,800. It was, technically, in the store's "wedding band" section. Why did I buy this ring? Because we went to a store together and she picked it out for herself about 2-3 months before I formally popped the question. I probably would never have gone with this ring if I had tried to guess what she wanted. Did it ruin the surprise? Not really. The surprise is in the moment and the circumstances that you seal the deal. It's a good idea to be on the same page about the other stuff -- do you see marriage in your future, ...

If you are generally satisfied with the experience of the iPhone 4S and mostly worried about support for the OS and apps, you should also consider the iPhone SE, which is cheaper than either the 7 or 8 and fully supports the latest iOS. It's also smaller than either the 7 or 8 (closer to the size of your 4S), which you might also appreciate.

Note that Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference is taking place on June 4-8, so it may be worth waiting a few weeks to see if any updated iPhone models are announced there (an updated SE being the most likely).

Me&my wife are trying to increase our savings ratio and we realized that we do pay a lot for our son's (7years old) activities...Disclaimer - my son is worse than average kid in every sport so we do not have any sport career or scholarship in mind. Sounds like me as a kid, though I was strictly a baseball and soccer nut, and I had free chess instruction through a club at school. Since we're not even talking about "modified'/junior high school-level sports yet, consider that as he gets older and the level of competition increases (along with his homework), it's entirely likely that his interest in and ability to play sports 7 days a week will decrease. Also consider what you might have to pay for summer/after-school care instead, i...

In addition to suitability rules, I believe there may be anti-money laundering or anti-terrorist financing regulations that require brokers to report suspicious account activity. To know what suspicious activity looks like in your account, they need some information about your situation beyond identifying you as an individual.

I have been told privately by at least 50% of close relatives that they can't afford the cost and won't go. I am guessing another 25% or more also won't go due to distance and cost. Family should really be present IMHO. A wedding date was announced but formal invitations have not been sent - though the venue was chosen. Many in the family really want to see them get married and be part of their special day, and have asked if I can talk with them about an alternative arrangement. Something close to family and not so expensive to attend. I want to take the right approach to this and am looking for advice on if I should be direct with them -- or what to say. Is someone in this circle offering to help (i.e. host and/or pay for) this alternativ...

The term itself is relative. For me, I would use it to simply mean that I could retire without any reduction in my standard living.