Bogleheads.org

ROTC will be much less extra time. Yes, it requires commitment to do service at 1/2 the salary in the private sector but there's much more money during college years than most athletic scholarships.

Make a claim. Your rates will do nothing.

For the next 3 years, putting in over five grand builds surrender value a grand, then it drops every year. This is how UL policies work. I also will say HOLY COW on that premium for that death benefit. I had a UL policy my dad took on me. $100k benefit and $392 per year premium. A question: Does he NEED life insurance? If yes, then he could take the chance and possibly pass and leave the three hundred something thousand. If not, it all goes to zero. No death benefit, no cash value. UL policies act as if he's going into the insurance agent every year and getting a 1 year term policy. So that's why the premium goes up and surrender value goes down. He should get a 10 or 20 year term policy quote. No cash value but I bet it will be cheaper tha...

You're doing fine. I'll use my son and me as opposites. I started my first engineering job at 28, having gone back to school on my own dime. I put maybe 5 or 6% into the 401k for many, many years. Before finding Bogleheads, I never maxed it and never had a Roth. Today, at 66 years old, ignoring social security, I've got 56 times spending. So yes, you can get there easily, how you're going. Opposite world, my son was 24 when he graduated engineering school. With my recommendation (and because having money means you MUST spend it), he puts the max into his 401k and Roth. But he still lives with us, so his expenses are his 2 cars, car parts, gas, taxes and when student loans become unfrozen, student loans at about $25k. Since you're looking at...

So the answer to the OPs original question seems to be both yes and no. If we're talking about a brokered CD, there are things that can go wrong. I don't buy them so don't know anything about them. Just what I read in this thread. If you're talking traditional CDs, then yes. Not only are they CDs like those of olde, they are even better in many cases. I just bought 2 Ally 11 month no penalty CDs. Why? I have idle money that I'm keeping with retirement only months away. I don't know what I'll need for medicare or health insurance for DW and DS so expecting they all will look back on my income history, they're going to point to the nose and say "pay through that". So fine. I had put the limit into Redneck which is currently 4.55% an...

Stay the course. That's a total bond index fund. Going to short, medium, long, government, corporate bonds instead is saying that you know that something's going to outperform the market. You don't know that (if you did, you'd have a Trillion dollars). Stick with the haystack and forget about looking for a needle in it.

So I have to ask. Why do they assign a different drivers license number from what you have now? In my state, the number used to be social security number. Maybe a decade ago, they changed to some different number. I've renewed many, many times and besides that one change, it's never been changed.

My son did things like this for an attorney neighbor when he was out. Dogs instead of cats, so included letting them out to run around. At times, his kids were home and he sort of baby sat. More like just checked on them and then left. It was $20 to $25 a day. Later, he got a ticket and the lawyer represented him. And yes, got him off. He paid that by taking care of the house and dogs while the neighbor went on vacation.

3) If you send amounts under $10k to avoid reporting, simply go to your front door, turn around and put your wrists together behind your back. The FBI will be by shortly to arrest you for structuring.

3a) If they pose any issues paying back in USD, simply don't make the loan.

4) Of course do USD transfers both out and in. You're the one providing the money service. The borrower should bear all money exchange costs. So send $25k and let them figure out how to change that into whatever they want. When they repay, it MUST be in USD. Otherwise, it's not paid because what are you going to do with a pile of worthless currency?

99) You're ready for this to never be repaid, correct? If not, don't do it.

If it's abandoned and you'd like someone to burn it down to be able to cheaply remove ashes and minimal burned wooden beams, then sure. Leave it uninsured. Just understand that if the arsonist trips on his way out and is injured, they're going to sue you and win the property, making your entire investment in it become zero.

Third party verifier? Hahahaha. LexisNexis. Buncha clowns. Wouldn't verify me because I would not acknowledge my mortgaged house address in 1960. I was 3 years old.

Just on one topic, have the kids shown any interest at all in the business? You may find if you hold on to the business for that reason that they may have no interest at all. The biggest part of my dad's business was tax prep. I can't even do my own taxes and have tried as it's illogical to me (I'm an engineer). My sister also had no interest so it was eventually sold.

If you sell part or all, be very aware of what you sign for a non-compete. I've known people who ignore that portion, open a new business and get sued so fast they couldn't even get out of bed.

Ford still recommends changing the oil in our Ford Maverick hybrid every 3,000 miles :oops: Considering nearly half our miles are electric only, I feel just fine stretching that interval to 10,000+. I'd place a heavy bet that we never replace the battery or the brake pads as long as we own this truck. Considering how long hybrids have been around now and how much data we have about reliability and maintenance, I'm kind of surprised that these myths still persist. Once in a while, I recommend you go where nobody's around. Like a parking lot for a 9-5 office park on a Sunday. Get a little loop, get some speed and stand on the brakes. Do this once a week. Why? From many videos I've watched about Teslas, when they come in for brakes, they need...

smitcat wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 3:13 pm
" I sold my Elise to not have an exotic looking sports car while my mom and Father in Law were helping with my son's college costs."
???

I didn't think it was right to have a toy car while accepting money towards my son's college expenses, so I sold it. It's not overly expensive (I paid $30k for mine) but looks way more expensive. I bought it from a friend and he was coming out of a supermarket to the Elise and someone saw him and was raving that this was a $275k car. Friend told him no, it was 1/10th that amount. The person was so convinced, he almost started a fight about his claim. Then my friend got in and drove away. It just looks exotic.

Sauceonside wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:34 pm
You had an e30 m3? That’s awesome. I would love to have one of those. They are gorgeous. I’d miss it too haha.

Yes, back when they depreciated. It did capture track records at Lime Rock and NHIS in SSA back in the mid 90's. And a season autocross championship with the local BMW CCA series, M class along with fastest run of the year. I sold it to comply with my car plan money and bought an Audi A4.

Us car guys want to know what the car is. Your mortgage rate is low. So low that you could actually make money by putting cash into the Ally 11 month no penalty CD at 4.75% right now. $60k. Hmmm. Not enough for a 993 turbo. Maybe a 997 turbo. I think 964 era turbos are more as they're the iconic one. Oh, maybe an Exige? Tell us please. F8 m3 competition. Executive package. Might be worth a tad less than 60k. That's practical enough to drive quite a bit. Let me dig through my drawer for my BMW CCA 25 year pin here. I've been a member since before the space in BMW space CCA existed. I used to drive my E30 M3 the 55 miles one way to work a day or 2 a week instead of the CRX-Si or pickup. While I get that it costs money, it brings you joy and ...

Us car guys want to know what the car is. Your mortgage rate is low. So low that you could actually make money by putting cash into the Ally 11 month no penalty CD at 4.75% right now. $60k. Hmmm. Not enough for a 993 turbo. Maybe a 997 turbo. I think 964 era turbos are more as they're the iconic one. Oh, maybe an Exige? Tell us please. And as much as Bogleheads is about responsible spending at the expense of all else, you can oversave. I sold my Elise to not have an exotic looking sports car while my mom and Father in Law were helping with my son's college costs. Looking now, when he graduated, I should have bought something as I'm about to retire in June and at that point, DW and I will have 67 times spending in liquid assets. And I haven'...

Something else to consider is whether the memory care place will even accept medicaid. Not all will. We've looked at assisted living facilities and the agreements they have in place are all over the map. Some will allow the patient to stay with regular income like social security or a pension after so many years of full private pay. Some will evict the patient once they cannot pay the full price out of pocket. What is the reason for gifting the house? To put it on others to pay for her care? Since she could greatly benefit from the assets received from a sold house (like DW's aunt did in my account above), why not do that and know for sure that she'll continue to be welcome where she is. Think about this.....someone else comes in and buys t...

Are Kias still a good buy? Looking at 2023 Tellurides but heard that insurance companies are not insuring certain Kia models and years. Plus the increased theft. Anyone purchase one recently who can share an anecdote? For any vehicle you'd want the VIN of a model exactly like what you want to buy and provide that to your insurance for a quote. Any vehicle might be surprising with respect to insurance cost. Good idea. I will give them a call today. They must still be selling well because the dealer I talk to barely budged on pricing. They will not go lower than MSRP and then an additional 4k is tacked on for taxes and fees. I have had the same car for nearly 13 years and really would like to avoid a lemon. Fees translated is additional deal...

We did it for 14 years when DW stayed home with the kids. Things to know about 1960. The average family income was $5600 a year. (in my state today, $139k) That puts you into the 26% federal tax bracket. If you were a big earner, earning over $400k a year, your federal bracket would have been 91%. This is a drop since the Eisenhower days of 93%. I was 3 in 1960 and both my parents worked in the family business. My grandfather still owned it. Dad did real estate (mostly commercial) and taxes and mom did insurance. We had a black and white little TV, no ac and 2 cars. A VW Beetle and I don't know what the other one was. Prices of various things have gone all over the map. Cars are near what they were in 1960 figuring inflation. College is pro...

You might have them change head gaskets while they’re in there too. Subaru uses very low quality head gaskets and they all need to be replaced every 100k or so. Don’t use OEM head gaskets, mine failed a second time after 16k miles and neither the dealership that did the work or Subaru of America would do anything about it. Head gaskets can be checked without removing the heads and replacing them. Subaru did change to MLS (multi layer steel) on NA cars to match the turbo cars. I don't know when, but it's pretty well said that by 2010, sure. If your head gaskets were done and the clowns used the OEM gaskets matched to the original NA engine gaskets, then they should be picked up with a bucket loader and dumped into a mud hole. "Real&quo...

Selling the house would likely be better. She avoids tax on the gain, making money available to pay for memory care as it should be used. Gifting to the kids could well be subject to clawback in the future in which case the kids, who sell the house and pay tax on gain back to the buying price from more than 60 years ago will be paying tax through the nose. If something like medicaid claws back the money, it could be 100% of the fair market value leaving the kids giving that money back and eating the tax. So doing that could cost the kids a lot of money. I see the numbers now. $450k - $15k is $435k gain. Each kid gets a tax bill for tax on $145k. Then if she goes on medicaid, they get a clawback for $145k each. DW's aunt went into assisted l...

These days, there are great options that are starting to pay real money. Ally has an 11 month, no penalty CD paying 4.75%. I opened one and may open yet another. Redneck Bank's money market pays 4.55%. So beating your mortgage rate is now easy. I'm a huge "pay off your mortgage, it's just debt" guy but with these higher interest rates available, if I had your mortgage, I wouldn't pay an extra cent.

Yes for changing the timing belt. Should have been done by 2019. If the belt goes, your next move is to decide which junkyard you'll have tow the vehicle away. The water pump and tensioners can be checked and at this low mileage, they aren't due. I am a car guy and have had a dozen Subarus. I also have owned a car where the timing belt snapped. Fortunately, it was a non-interference engine so replacing the timing belt fixed it without issue. Not the case with a Subaru. If the belt goes, so do all the valves. I currently only have 3 Subarus but all have FB engines which have timing chains. My son's got an STi, all of which have timing belts.

Have you asked the Toyota dealer if they can match Carvana? They very well might.

Also, you do know that Carvana is a millimeter from bankruptcy, don't you? What if they come and take the truck and you go to cash their check and it's no good? They lost $800,000,000 the 4th quarter of last year. They have no way out. It's only a matter of time before their checks are all bad.

Lexus has been selling the RX hybrids since 2004. They are extremely smooth and reliable. Hybrids barely account for 10% of the US market (as of Feb 2023). So nobody is forcing you to do anything. Hybrids are the best of both worlds and the worst. You can be ICE or electric during this transition to more charging stations for road trips. If you don't need to take long road trips in this car, you can skip the ICE and go EV. EV is infinitely simpler. Hybrid is least simple as you have two drive trains to manage and maintain. If you want cutting edge, get a Hydrogen car. Sales are inching up. The incoming Toyota CEO, Sato has changed course with Toyota. They had started to head towards EVs with their Bx4wxyz, which is co-branded with the Suba...

Speak to your insurance agent. Should someone be damaged either through injury or property damage, you're the first one the lawyers are going after.

C is advantage which is like an HMO or PPO and can be very local or not. It's zip code based.

Why not consider G or N (traditional Medicare/medigap) where it is accepted everywhere?

Are you receiving other re-imbursements? I am on a car plan that matches our company's sales person car plan. So many dollars a month (taxable), gas for miles driven (sort of hokey but if it makes it not matter if you drive a Prius or a Hemi Ram truck), and they also pay insurance (tax grossed up) and oil changes (taxable). I've been on many different car plans including one where we received a big monthly and 1/2 the IRS mileage. That one also required everyone own a car 5 model years old or newer with 4 side opening doors (no sliding doors) and a 104 inch wheel base and they were very yes/no on all of this and we had to send our registration in annually. Car doesn't meet? No car plan money from the first warning. The second warning was te...

My younger son filed even with nothing but bank interest for several years. As a result, when the government was giving away money, he got some. Those who didn't file got nothing.

For low value items, eBay is fine. They have become infamous for always siding with buyers. A friend local to me sold a guitar that he called a "partscaster". It was built from various 1960's Fender guitar parts. As a player, it was fine. He made it very clear in his ad that the guitar was a partscaster and not a complete, original, as-built in the 60's guitar. The buyer complained to eBay that it was not as advertised because it was not an original as-built guitar. eBay appeared to not even bother to read the original ad, gave the buyer his money back and told him he didn't have to return the guitar. Fortunately for my friend, this was sold locally. It showed up on craigslist and my friend made contact as a random buyer and arran...

Chances are pretty good that the glut of hybrids is left over from dealer gouging on pricing from the chip shortage and parts shortage of the last couple of years. This is still a problem, mostly for Japanese cars who rely on Renesas (Japanese chip maker) who last year had a fab fire, then had 2 fabs flooded by a tsunami. So why are there lots of hybrids? Or what I notice near me, Hyundai and KIA EVs in abundance? Because all have the added dealer markeup where they expect to sell for over MSRP for many thousands of dollars and people have rejected this practice. With people walking away from $50k priced $35k cars, their lots are full. From a cost perspective, do the math. Being in California, you have both high electric prices and high gas...

I see the guy buying section 8 housing as quitting one job and creating another full time job for himself that he had to put a boatload of money into just to get the job. I think I'd rather leave one job and go work for Trader Joes to possibly increase social security quarters and probably take home more money with zero risk. I'll be retiring in June and DW has talked about 14 hours a week at Trader Joes which qualifies for group health insurance and she's between 10 and 35 years for SS earnings.

Reliability wise, only Fiat is worse. As many mechanics have said, BMW took their failed and thrown out parts to build this thing. It is fun to drive, however. As fun and more reliable, Toyota GR86, Mazda Miata, Mazda 3, Toyota GR Corolla, VW GTi.

Personally, I could care less about a small car in this land of SUVs. I drove a Lotus Elise for quite a while and remember one time on the highway looking up at an SUV next to me that I didn't recognize. I let him pull ahead to read the tail. It was a Ford Focus.

While the wife inherited the money, a married couple may not accept the idea of "his" money and "her" money. I've seen this said many times here and when DW inherited money from her aunt, I put to her that she could do what she wanted with the money. She insisted that all money coming in is "our" money and it was nearly immediately comingled in our joint Ally account. In like manner, for the 14 years DW stayed home with the kids and I brought in all of the money that supported us, I never considered it to be "my" money.

Buy a Subaru Outback and get the same ratings as a Model Y. (technically better) for half the price.
Outback
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/su ... wagon/2023

Model Y
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/te ... r-suv/2023

Heck....trade your Mazda and it becomes a cheap upgrade.

I think there are a number of options and a number of things that would need checking up on. Former Police officer driver: My first thought is whether this police officer is properly insured to drive others for pay. I actually checked into this for one of my sons who wanted to do Uber type stuff. Commercial insurance is required and there are a couple ways to get it according to my insurance agent. The cheapest way tripled the insurance cost which threw that out the window for us as the increase was $4000 a year and when including taxes that would need to be paid along with payroll tax, my son wouldn't make a dime if he drove 40 hours a week. Here's the downside. If the officer is not insured and gets into an accident hurting you, his car i...

Move to Massachusetts. All health insurance here MUST cover all infertility treatment including IVF. We did several rounds unsuccessfully and it cost us zero. Unfortunately, adoption isn't covered by anything, but that worked.

Long term rate is not the way to go now. Rates keep rising and it would make no sense to lock in at 5% and find in 5 years that banks everywhere pay 10%. Redneck just raised their money market rate to 4.55%. I'm sure we'll see Ally raise their 3.6% rate soon and everyone will leap frog up. And if you're thinking I'm just out of my mind citing 10%, I can remember in the late 80's having 6 month CDs at 10% as I was in grad school at the time and they required $10k, which I had available.

I would just be honest and tell the sales person that we are only there because of the free vacation and that we won't be buying any timeshares regardless of what they say in the presentation, so they shouldn't waste any time on us. If they keep on pressing, I'd be firm in saying "no, absolutely not, my mind is set, no matter what you say or do" while staying polite. DW and I used to go to an island once a year and we'd always go to at least one timeshare give-away presentation. The first thing to know is that when they say that the presentation will be 90 minutes, that's a lie. Expect it to be several hours. Next, when the sales person tells you after you make it quite clear after the 2 hours that you have no intention of buying...

I did way too much research before buying my last grill. My quest was to understand steel that rusts out in a couple years and non-magnetic stainless that can easily last 10 years. First, the cost over time is the same. A real stainless grill will cost 7 to 10 times what the same one in steel costs. Don't get conned by grills at sears that are magnetic stainless. They will rust. A real stainless one will be well over $1000. Here's the downside. A lot of the parts are still steel and can rust and will need to be replaced over time. With a $2000 grill, you'll buy $100 worth of parts after 3 years because the grill cost you a boat ton of money. In the end, we bought a cheap steel grill. It lasted a few years then got thrown onto my steel scrap...

Blue456 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:16 am

SevenBridgesRoad wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:29 pm Actionable how?

Sell all your indexed mutual funds, pay taxes and hire LVW Advisors in Rochester, N.Y.

vs

Stay the course?

If your goal is to pay more taxes and pay most of your gains (and then fees when markets drop) to con men wearing clown suits, then this is excellent advice. Have a cigar while you're at it and light it with a rolled up $100 bill.

Sounds like a lazy employer. I can transfer my shares immediately. My employer sends a general email to the company email list with instructions for those who have transferred shares and then sold them.

I've used an excel spread sheet for ages. It's grown to have everything I need from AA and totals through RMD calculations, tax brackets, Long term cap gain tax rates with brackets, retirement spending, times spending that I've got, fees and average portfolio cost percentage and more.

If you sell, will they pay to create a new plot with the town/county? They can take full responsibility for all costs including survey, legal, fees, deed change etc. I've done this and my part was signing a paper and I was done and just got a check for the property.

If you lease, how long would the lease be? On the good side, no plot changes are needed. Sure, if you go to sell, the buyer might not want that tower but perhaps they'd look at the lease money as a good thing.

Will leasing change the value of the property with the town/county in such a way that you now have a much higher property tax bill?

For me personally, the maximum SWR is 4% at 65, maybe 3% at 55. At your age, probably 2%. LOL are you making rules as you type on my thread :) ? [/quote] These are realistic numbers. 4% is for a 30 year retirement. Do you and your wife plan to be dead for sure at 68? If so, 4% is fine. You have no guaranty that you will get dollar 1 as severance. Your focus should be unemployment benefits. Do 40 hours of work a week. Document, document, document. Act like a billable hours worker like a lawyer or private engineer. Say that today, you spend 3 hours doing such and such on priority #1 project. Write it in a notebook. Short description of the work you were doing and if it was assigned by someone above you, write that down. Continue all of this....

Aligning wheel means adjusting and working on several wear components on your vehicle. It may not be a scam. Get a list of what they recommend fixing and go get a second opinion. And have them show you while it's on the lift. Torn CV boot, loose ball joint, bad wheel bearing, etc, are easy to demonstrate on the lift and the mechanic can show you the difference between the good and bad sides so you'll be comfortable he's being honest. This is the key. If every time you go in, the shop aligns and tells you that you need $500 to $1000 in repairs, and you don't do any of it, that probably means simply that you actually need this work. Find out what work is needed. Ball joints at 100k miles? Yep. Normal. Tie rod ends? Sure. And both of these ma...

If you can DIY some of the updates, it can be worth it. Paint walls a neutral color (like off white). Big jobs like your description of the kitchen left to the next owner makes the house more affordable for them to buy and then they can do it the way THEY want it done. You might do tile floors, new white cabinets with glass windows, a double sink and granite counter tops. A buyer might come in and think that they really wanted a house like yours but with bold colored cabinets, black corian counter tops and a floating synthetic floor.

Go ahead and paint. Or just sell as is. From your description, you could easily spend $100k on complete updates, put it on the market and recover $50k of that, meaning you wasted time and money.

I'll first say thanks for this program. I used it to determine how DW and I will take SS. I'll next note that the SS payment for DW was way off. She'll be receiving her first payment in May of this year and the tool told us she would receive $1622 a month and her actual SS payment will be $1400 a month. It's sort of a "don't care" for us as we're going to be at something like 67 times spending in our savings, but I expected the number to more closely match reality.

Snow removal. Depends, of course on where you live. If you're in northern Wisconsin, this will be a major concern. Alabama? Not so much.

Pest control. Treatment inside and out and test devices to find termites before they get to the house. From a DIY perspective, look around the foundation for mud towers coming from the ground to the wood.

Painting the house. While that's being done, most painters will have a carpenter in their hire or that they contract out. They'll be better able to tell you if there's rot damage or if window frames are rotted and need to be replaced.