Bogleheads.org

Really not sure why Seattle weather has the reputation that it has. A couple of things; 1) The lack of sunlight in the winter can cause a very real seasonal depression in some people. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20364651 2) Being farther north the shortest day of the year is much shorter than cities that are farther south. On the shortest day of the year there is only 8:25 minutes between sunrise and sundown and because of the overcast there is often no twilight. In comparison on the shortest day of the year in San Diego there is 10 hours and likely some twilight. When I lived in Portland Oregon there were several weeks in the winter when I would drive to and from work in t...

Here is the Rick Steves money page about how to manage money on a trip to Europe. https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/money I would also highly suggest getting the Rick Steves Italy book and any city specific books for where you will be going. It would be good to have a second ATM card that you can use if you have a problem with your primary card. With most credit cards you can get a PIN before you go which will allow you to get a cash advance at an ATM. Usually this would be for a last resort since most credit cards charge a high cash advance fee and a high foreign transaction fee but it could be handy in if you are in a bind. Know what your ATM daily limit is and consider getting that increased. If you are there over a US three day wee...

There are lots of threads about selecting computer science programs that you can look up with lots of comments by people that know more about specific programs than I know. (I have an ancient CS degree.) That said with an undergraduate STEM degree once you get below the top 10 or maybe 20 ranked colleges it is really hard to justify paying a high price for a STEM degree since the programs are so similar and likely accredited by the same groups. Within the middle 80% of undergraduate CS program rankings things like cost or the personality "fit" are probably the most important factors to consider. I didn't cross check them so I might have missed one but the only one on your list that jumped out at me as being a top 10 or 20 CS colle...

I would like to hear about your successful strategies for getting the kids to care about the costs of college. Thank you wise Bogleheads! Late to the thread but two experiences to pass on; 1) During his freshman year one of my son's roommates was working at a Taco Bell and doing things like working until 2:00 AM during finials week and that greatly impacted his grades. 2) My son is doing great in his career now but he was never a great student and he really struggled with some of the upper level math classes that were required for his Computer Science degree. Without extra TLC and our financial support there was a very real risk that he would have given up and not graduated. If you take the "sink or swim" approach you need to und...

supersharpie wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 8:37 am most recently in 2014 at 3.25%.

You post did not say anything about your car ownerships plans.

It don't make a lot of sense to pay down your mortgage if you would then then to take out a 6% car loan in a couple of years.

The ring I bought for my wife has had the best ROI of anything I ever purchased: a wonderful wife, kids, happy home, happy marriage. All things VTI can't produce. Buy a beautiful ring, OP...and congratulations on your upcoming engagement. +1 There is not one right or wrong answer to as to how much to spend on rings and spending $4,000 on a ring is not like you are spending $40,000 like some people do. That is a lot though and if you are going to spend that much you then it is important that you get good value for your money since your local jewelry store has a huge markup and may be selling rings for $4,000 that that have a wholesale price of $1,000. There are a lot of threads on buying an engagement ring and getting the most value for the...

Leave the camera at the store and just enjoy the trip. I found that when I'm focused on taking pictures, carrying a camera and worrying about it getting wet, lost, or damaged I lose some of the experience of the trip. I soon learned to leave the camera behind and if I see something I absolutely must have a photo of my iphone is sufficient. Most of the time I will end a trip with no photos or just a handful I might take at the beginning or end of the trip. It's much a much more pleasureable experience. Interesting suggestion, one I have already considered and may adopt. I am not all that concerned about getting shots while in rapids, so the idea of just using iPhone for a few shots may be a good one. I would have to figure out how to rechar...

davidferrer31 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 4:19 pm I have to go in person to work 3 days a week and the round-trip commute is 60 miles.

50 weeks x 3 days a week x 60 miles=9,000 miles

At 30 mpg that would take 300 gallons.

At 40 mpg that would take 225 gallons a savings of 75 gallons. At $3,000 a gallon that would save you $225 a year on your commute. You might also have some additional savings on other non-commute driving that you do.

If you need to pay a lot more for the hybrid you will have a real hard time trying to make it pay off.

I won't be there but I look forward to watching the video. A little bit different topics but from my personal experience two important things I have learned are. 1) "The importance of luck in investing and how to limit the impact of bad luck." I invest with a pretty simple three fund portfolio or target date funds but I had the very good luck of retiring in mid 2015. This meant that for the first six year of my retirement I had very good overall investing returns which has made a huge difference to my finances. I just as easily could have retired going into a bear market. The 20th century is sometimes called "The American Century" because of the way that the US prospered as it progressed from an mostly agricultural less ...

Tired of doing the whole Dad car thing of diagnosis, repairs with my limits and taking to repair shops, ect. At my age, I'm over all that. You might want to let this one go too and point her to the Consumer Reports web site(she can pay $10 for a months access) and the top safety picks website the prior post mentioned and let her pick it out. Since it will be leased the actual model she picks does not matter a lot since she will likely be turning it in at the end of the lease. With the new car shortage she may be greatly limited by which SUVs are actually available. Ideally she would pick which car has the best lease terms even if it is not the SUV that would be best to one to buy. I know little about it but in prior threads people have men...

If i have forgotten to give a specific detail please do mention it. Welcome to the forums. How to invest your money really depends on what it will most likely be used for. For example money that will likely be used to buy a house when you are 30 would be invested differently than money that will likely be used for retirement. You will likely also have multiple goals so your will need to balance those goals when figuring out your asset allocation. Some people do their planning as if they have multiple portfolio, like for a home purchase, to buy a car, retirement, etc. You might have multiple accounts for each goal or you may need to keep track of this manually in a spreadsheet and then invest all the money in one combined account. Some brok...

One thing that you should do while you are laid off is take trips to other parts of the country to see if there are other parts of the country that you could get excited about moving to and then look for a job there. If you have only lived in expensive areas you get used to the high prices and get a big numb to them. Easier said than done with a spouse or partner who is working in same location now. Don't get hung up on the distinction between spouse and partner - it isn't what it used to be. Being married or not still makes a huge difference with things like Social Security or inheriting an IRA, and sometimes income taxes but that is real variable. The partners ability to relocate is also highly variable and with some fields like medicine...

2 children ..... Is there anything I'm missing? I would assume that you would live there in the summer when the kids are out of school. That might work OK when they are real young but even by the time they are in grade school they will have their own friends and activities that you would be taking them away from and they might not like it there since there may not be many other kids to play with. By the time they are in middle school this could be even more of a problem. You will also be pretty commited to use that as your vacations destination and not take many vacations in other places. If this is in a different state you may also need to file a partial year tax return in that state for your income while living in that state so be sure t...

I have a Ford Maverick on order which also take long time to get.

I don't know how it works in those states but it sounds like what people do is try to is to register it in both names then eventually take one name the title off the car.

I would look at registering in both names in PA since that is where it will end up eventually.

That would be much more complicated if a car loan is involved.

Thanks for everyone's input. In addition to premium tax credits, I found information on cost sharing which reduces OOP expenses. Those benefits are available only through Silver plans. I have not compared those benefits (if any, to us) to the reduced cost of Bronze plans. https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/explaining-health-care-reform-questions-about-health-insurance-subsidies/ Keep in mind that the cost sharing is only available to people with pretty low income so it may be very difficult to keep your income low enough to get that. If you will not get a subsidy in 2023 because it is a partial year then be sure to also price what the plans cost be sure to also get quotes on buying the healthcare outside the exchange, like Healt...

It was build a long time ago but the subdivision I am in was build in different phases and apparently what had happened was that the first phase will build during boom times and the houses are bigger and have things like more brick. By the time the second phase was built the housing market had changed so that needed to built slightly smaller house with some cost cutting to get them priced so they would sell. It does not seem to be uncommon for different phases to be a bit different. If there are issues with common areas like a pool, clubhouse, park, etc. those could be a future worry when the HOA is transferred. I believe there is insurance that can protect the board members and the HOA assets from these types of risks. A potential issue is...

Laid off, not working anywhere but looking and hoping to work soon. That makes not buying a house right now an easy "no". Wait until you find your next job and have been working in it for six months then look at buying a house. Being laid off is hard even though you are fine financially so thinking if buying a house could be a reaction to the sadness or boredom. You should be careful about making big decisions like buying a house now. If you worked in some high paying tech job with large RSUs then there is a very real possibility that you won't be able to find any job that pays anywhere near that in the future so you need to be prepared for that possibility. I was not in the Bay Area at the time but I saw this in the Dot Com bust...

What are your plans for healthcare until you can get on Medicare?

You may need to watch your income carefully to get an affordable care act subsidy.

spectrelg wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 5:26 pm 7. Pay off funds come from: $50k Savings Mutual funds, $50k Roth IRA (depletes both), $300k from traditional IRA (capital gains tax?).

Withdrawals from a traditional IRA are taxed as ordinary income and withdrawing $300K in one year would put you in a very high tax bracket.

If you have not had car insurance recently then the cost of car insurance may be very high since the insurance company has not information on your claims history. Be sure to get insurance quotes before you buy a car. The cost can vary by more than you might expect for car models that seem similar. You can get monthly online access to Consumers Reports for $10 a month or see it at your local library for free. I found it very useful the last time I was car shopping. They usually have lists of the best used cars in various price ranges. However, I only have enough cash to buy under 15k. With that budget it would be best to try to find a car for less than maybe $13,000 to allow you some slack in case the car needs a repair. You would need to r...

marielake wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:14 am Tried posting pictures, but they will not post.

There is a wiki on posting images that might help.

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Posting ... eads_forum

I rarely post images but recently tried the Postimage web site that wiki mentions and it was easy to use and worked well for me.

If you have no plans to rebuild in the event of total loss, and there is substantially more value in the lot (land) than in the home structure, would it make sense to underinsure the dwelling coverage to reduce premiums? Especially given the relatively low likelihood of a total loss? Thoughts? Thanks. If you have a $200K house on a million dollar lot that should already be taken into account when the insurance policy is written and you would normally not be paying the same as if you had a million dollar house on a $200K lot. You may also find that the cost to fully insure is not that much more. The reason is that having something like a fire that totally destroys a house is relatively rare but having a fire that causes $100K in damage is a...

- Anything else I should think about? How to handle a lot of your questions will depend on your state laws so even if you get well meaning suggestions here your state laws might be different so they might not be correct for you especially since you plan to move to a different state soon. I would likely look for a lawyer who is in the state you will be moving to. It is likely best to focus how to hire a good financial advisor and lawyer that will not take advantage of you. I don't know a lot about that but there are some wikis related to this. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Investment_adviser https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Financial_planner https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Estate_planning Be sure to understand that the majority of Financia...

I am reading blogs from this site and also from internet. There is a getting started wiki if you have not see it yet. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started There is also a suggested format for asking portfolio question that includes a lot more information about your situation since there is a lot that we don't know about you which could impact how you should invest. It is mainly a guideline so you not need to follow it exactly but if you create another post more in that format you may get better responses. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6212 A) What should I change from my above distribution so that I can get 3 to 4% on retirement income at the time of retirement. ( I assume anticipated expense will be around 80...

It is easy to get overly focused on the details of camera gear but the important thing is to actually get out and take pictures. No camera is perfect but even a mediocre camera today is amazing compared to the cameras people had 30 years ago and they still managed to take some pretty good pictures with what they had back then. By the way, using AAs is mostly a bug, not a feature. You'll run through those batteries quickly if you take a lot of pictures. A good rechargeable battery setup is nicer and works out to less money over time. The Eneloop brand of AA rechargeable batteries should work very well for electronics. We use them for most things and they are head and shoulders better than older style rechargeable batteries. We have had them ...

Can retire now with a guaranteed lifetime pension $66,500, with cola after 62 years of age ..... Will collect SS at 62 - $2400 monthly ..... She will collect SS at 62 - $1900 monthly The pension is about 5,540 a month so combined you will have $9,840 in inflation adjusted income a month and much of it is tax exempt. You really only need to bridge the gap until you are 62 so both you and your wife are fine to retire now. A couple of things to consider though. 1) Check this web site to see when it suggests that you should start Social Security. https://opensocialsecurity.com/ 2) An additional consideration about when to start Social Security is that it can be taxed in a way that will put you in a higher than expected effective tax bracket so...

Texanbybirth wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 3:07 pm As the parent of a prone-to-wonder 4 yo, my takeaway from this thread - aside from a few chuckles - is the write your phone number in Sharpie on child's forearm idea. Brilliant!

Don't forget to set your cell phone to not automatically block calls, or send to voice mail, numbers that are not in your contact list.

knightrider wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 11:05 am

TN_Boy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 10:27 am * if you want to do things like take pictures of birds in flight, that ups the ante on what equipment is required.

I don't need birds in flight pictures. Just birds perched, ships in the distance, mountains in the distance etc.. I put some offer on The Nikon L100 with 15X zoom on ebay. Lots for sale in the $30-40 price range... So I think will start there..

That sounds like a good idea especially since if it does not work out you can then resell it on eBay and likely get most of your money back.

Sauceonside wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:39 pm Should I sell my sports car to pay off my mortgage?
....
My mortgage is at 3.25%.

I like to turn questions like these around and ask, "I have a paid off house, should I get a 3.25% home equity loan to buy a sports car?"

It is really just about the same question but fewer people would suggest doing that especially when it sounds like you do not have a burning passion to own a sports car right now.

It came as 4GB RAM with 128GB SSD How much free space do you have on your SSD? Do you have any other hard drives attached to it? I replaced the 4GB RAM with another I had and it was better, back to how it started out. So, to experiment I put in 16GB RAM which I had (two matching 8GB) and did a recovery reinstall. I am not a hardware guru but are you sure that the memory you swapped in was the right type of memory? I don't recall what all the detail are but there are all sorts of different speeds, caches, etc. and while it might work it might not work well. I would put probably put the original memory back in it while you are figuring this out. 4. Is there anything I can do to fix the delay in opening pages and so forth? When you have your ...

One thing that has been not been mentioned is if she gifts it to her kids then they would have to sell and that can cause strife between the kids since they may disagree on what needs to be done to get the house ready to sell, and the details of setting a price and accepting an offer. It is much easier for her to just have a real estate agent sell it for her. When figuring out the capital gains also keep in mind that if she is in a memory care unit she might have high medical deductions on her taxes that could offset some of the capital gains on her taxes. .....and will be going to a memory care nursing home later this year or next..... ....We were initially going to gift her house to her 3 kids... I would really question if she is legally ...

After I made my post I realized that your user name is "RamblinDoc". If that means that you are a well paid physician then that is important. By the tone of your post I had assumed that money was a bit tight because of the age of your car and the work you were doing on it yourself to keep it running. Your financial situation makes a huge difference in deciding what to do with the car and what sort of car to get your kid when they start driving. If you have ample means then having anyone in your family drive a car that does not have a good set of the new advanced safety feature would not make a lot of sense. That does not mean that you need to buy an expensive car with all the latest safety features but any a newer mid-range Honda ...

Keep in mind that if you sell it you could put the money in the bank and earn around 4.5% so keeping it is costing you a couple of hundred dollars a year in lost interest. You will also need to pay for things like car insurance for liability and if you have an umbrella policy it will be higher because of the number of cars. There will also be car registration and inspection costs. Even though you are not driving it a lot over the next 2-3 year it will likely also develop more new problems that will need to be fixed too You can crunch the numbers but with the lost interest I would not be surprised if it would cost you $500 to $700 a year or even more to keep the car. 2007 Nissan Murano It is already 16 or 17 years old and by the time your ki...

There is no way to know unless you give them a call and ask. I would be very surprised if they will since they would figure that you are getting ready to sell the car and pay off the full amount anyway. If you do somehow get them to agree to a discount then you will get a 1099 tax form reporting the forgiven amount as taxable income so plan on paying taxes on that. People that are way behind in their credit card payments will sometimes get a lender to accept 50 cents on on the dollar only to be surprised when they get taxed on the difference. I currently have a 3.8 % 36 Mo loan and looking to pay it off in full, or half debating sticking it in a 4.5% or higher vehicle for a year. Your lender can also sell CDs at around 4.5% so there is ther...

We're exploring whether using a HELOC for living expenses could reduce taxes and increase ACA subsidies sufficiently to offset the cost of borrowing. I did that a few years ago but interest rates were lower then so it worked better. At that time the subsidy cliff existed so it was critical to have the HELOC to avoid going over the income limit and lose the entire subsidy. Being able to juggle the money and HELOC to get a larger subsidy was a much smaller benefit of having the HELOC. At that time the amount of the subsidy was based on healthcare premoim being 9.8% of my income(now 8.5% ?). There are special rules and a lower percentage for people with low incomes but that does not sound likely for you. For example if I used my HELOC to keep...

Also, how would a super zoom camera compare to a regular DSLR with a super telephoto lens? For example this combo: https://www.ebay.com/itm/225496691677 https://www.ebay.com/itm/404212294673 That lens is a joke since it would be impossible to use without a tripod and it is full manual and has no electronic connection to your camera including no autofocus. I looked and you can get it new on Amazon and it has a long explanation about how you would need to set your camera up try to use it and it would just be frustrating to try to use it. The camera body dates back to 2005 so while 8 megapixels might be usable the cameras of that generation had a lot of problems with noise and generally not as good image quality. Getting an older DSLR and a l...

Planning to save 200k (100k each) in next 10 years for college using 529 and taxable. If college costs more than this, kids will take loans. We can help them to pay down if our retirement is on track. I am assuming that would be adjusted for inflation. There is no one right answer to how much a parent should pay for college but the idea of having your kids take on student loans when you are retiring in your early 50s might be something to rethink. Instead of putting a dollar value on it an alternate goal to consider might be to be able to pay for tuition, fees, books, and room and board at your state's flagship university. I live a relatively less expensive state and you could not pay for all those at the state flagship university for four...

One model features 15X and the other 26X zoom. Both seem available for $30-50 on ebay. Is 26X zoom just a gimmick? Am I better off in the 10-15X zoom range for this price point? Not a gimmick but the 15x or 26X might not mean what you think it means. I just looked at the Nikon L100 in the ebay link and it is listed as being 15x. I googled the specifications and its focal length is 28 to 420 mm. https://www.dpreview.com/products/nikon/compacts/nikon_cpl100/specifications When you divide the 420/28=15 which is where the 15x comes from so that is true. The maximum zoom is 15 times the minimum. The part that can be confusing if you do not understand it is that the 28mm is a wide angle. They way the human eye see things is about the same as a 5...

A couple of things that might not have been mentioned. 1) Changing schools when a kid is in middle or high school can be real hard on them. I needed to do a cross country job relocation when I had a kid in middle school and it took him a couple of years to really adjust and make new friends. Unless there is a situation where your 15 year old could benefit from getting a fresh start then I would be real cautious about having them change schools. 2) If you do major remodeling you will either need to move out or live in a construction zone for a year or maybe even the better part of two years. There are still lots of delays because of material shortages and labor shortages. Your current house would likely not be an ideal retirement home unless...

Second the images are a bit grainy. I am not sure how you would do it on a cell phone but there should be a way to see what ISO(basically film speed) the picture was taken at. If the cell phone camera was not getting a lot of light then it may have used a very high ISO. An 8 power pair of binoculars is about like a 500mm lens on a conventional camera and you would need to use a high ISO to have a shutter speed which is fast enough to be sharp since camera movement or even vibration would be a big problem at 500mm. If the picture was taken with a high ISO(maybe more than 400???) that could be causing noise which could look like grain. Also see if the cell phone was using digital zoom which is basically cropping the image, that can also caus...

fsrph wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 1:29 pm ....plan on keeping it at least 5 more years.

One way of looking at the question is "If not now then when?"

Unless your plans change or you wreck the car you will likely be changing it sooner or later while you own the car. You might as well change it now when it is a convenient time for you.

In addition to trashing the engine having the timing belt fail could be dangerous if you are driving fast or in a bad location when it fails.

theplayer11 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 9:29 am Thoughts?

If you have a car loan then don't forget that a new car loan will likely be at a higher rate. It would be good to also get a quote on your car insurance to make sure that will be the same.

The biggest risk is that you are not able to sell and buy the trucks at the prices you expect so be very sure that is correct.

To me the biggest change is that you would be getting a longer warranty. To price what that is worth you can look to see what buying an extended warranty would cost.

If you can really do the deal for $1,000 then it looks like an easy choice for me. The car markets are really crazy right now but it does sound "too good to be true" so you need to be extra careful.

For doing things like going out to get the mail a mobility scooter might be a better option and Medicare may pay for it. These would be like the scooters that some grocery stores have for people to ride around the store in. I just looked and they make some that you can ride on lawns but I would be cautions about them tipping over on hills. You already have a riding lawnmower that you could use for yardwork and they are designed for pulling small trailers. You might need a ramp but you could potentially take a mobility scooter into the house for storage and charging if that makes sense in your situation, like if you have a mudroom right inside the door. If you need to keep a scooter or golf cart in the carport then it would likely be best to...

The hype of AI doing away with software development jobs sort of reminds me about the hype about all the software development being outsourced to low cost countries like India that was popular maybe 10+ years ago, Offshoring jobs does happen and it is sometimes even successful but there are also LOTS of failures. Companies also often found out that offshoring required a lot more upfront work to define a project before you could start it. About 10 years ago my son switched majors to Computer Science when the offshoring of IT jobs was getting a lot of press and when I look into it even the most estimations were that a couple of percent of IT jobs were being offshored each year but the demand for IT people was growing at several times that rat...

I am not at all familiar with that part of the country but a few general tips; 1) Try to stay away from campgrounds at a lake where there will likely be a lot people with motor boats. They are likely looking for a different experience and are often more party oriented. 2) If possible try to get a campsite in a tent only area so you are away from RVs. 3) Get a good pad to put your sleeping bag on since that will make a huge difference. 4) Have shoes or sandals that you can easily slip on to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. 5) Cooking in a campground requires some extra preparation and work. When camping I will sometimes just have a menu like; 1) Breakfast, hot instant cereal and hot water for hot chocolate, tea, or a coffee pre...

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. Retired corporate software developer here. At least in the corporate IT environment for the last 30 years there has been a huge trend for companies to use software packages for things like their inventory and order system because it would so expensive to develop software in house and there was a risk that you could spend a lot of time and money on a project only to have it turn out poorly. If AI makes dev...

thewestsnow wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:33 pm Please let me know the flaws in my plan.

One thing was not clear was what your housing plans are now that you have sold your house. If you might need the money in a few years to buy a different property that would need to be build into your plans since money that will be needed soon should be invested less aggressively.

Your costs of $60K a year might be low if that does not include income taxes. If you will be paying rent in a high cost of living area that will also make it harder to stay within your $60K budget.

Sorry to hear about the health issues but even if you did not have those you should also crunch your numbers three ways, as a couple and as if one of you survives the other.

....senior son is accepted to Pitt and Purdue for CS ..... I just googled it and Pit is 44% male and 56% female. (33% more) Purdue is almost the opposite and 42% female and 58% male. (38% more) The effective opposite sex dating pool is even more skewed when couples pair up the remaining pool becomes even more out of balance. For example if 10% of both men and women are in an opposite relationship then for Purdue the remaining available students who are not in a relationship would be 32% female and 48% male, so there would be 50% more available men than women. I would not suggest that the gender ratio should be a high criteria in selecting a college but it would be good for him to not underestimate it especially if he is not very socially o...

You may get better responses if you edit your post to add the mutual fund names and not just have the ticker symbol since most people will not know those. You can edit your post using the icon with the pencil on it. Betterment Target date ~$2000 (I opened this in 2015. Tried to switch to vanguard but it was too complicated with certified letters etc so I have just left it) If this is an IRA or Roth you can just contact Fidelity or Vanguard and let them handle the transfer it into one of your other account with them. There will be some paperwork but it should be straight forward. The last couple years have seen minimal savings into retirement due to a baby and aggressively paying off student loans (these are paid off now). Our goal is to sav...

youngsters wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:15 pm What's happening?

It is just speculating but outside the US long fixed rate mortgages are not as common or non-existent. This means that raising interest rates not only impact potential buyers but also that current owners may be forced to sell when their monthly mortgage payments increase.

You also need to be cautious about considering "European real estate" since there will be differences for each country and even regions within a country.

ExtraLegRoom wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:43 am If I'm being completely honest, it's a huge yawn (that is also very practical & financial reasonable)

Most likely with whatever car you get after you have owned it you will mostly get used to it and barely notice it 95% of the time.

Right now you are used to driving a $3K car and you are pretty used to it so you barely notice it unless it starts making a new noise or it breaks down.

It will be somewhat the same six months after you buy a $90K car. When you are doing something like driving to the grocery store you will barely notice the car.

Psychologists call this "hedonic adaptation", google this.