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Thanks for everyone's responses on this. Sounds like, as expected, the home warranty is pretty useless and I won't bother using it to re-key my doors. Having already purchased one of those new keypad locks, I am also now inspired to try to replace the deadbolt on the house myself - worse comes to wo...

Having recently purchased a house myself, I've given this a lot of thought. Between rising interest rates, raising the standard deduction, a hard cap on SALT, and the lower cap on mortgage deductibility (the last primarily for HCOL) I have to believe housing prices will be depressed in the foreseeab...

Recently purchased a home and was "gifted" a 1 year home warranty ("American Home Shield") by our real estate agent. Since the major appliances (kitchen, furnace) have all been recently replaced by the previous owner, the warranty does not seem very useful to me. The one benefit ...

So it sounds like most of you would take the guarantee of selling at today's property price and tax free capital gains vs chasing a potentially higher return by holding & renting the condo. Thanks for the feedback, that reaffirms our conclusion - it is tempting to keep the property given the rel...

Thanks for the responses thus far. To answer the question on mortgage terms, Grabiner is roughly correct, we are 4 years into the loan (refi once) and it is a 30 year fixed - will update my OP for this. Regarding future growth potential, given the steady climb over the last 5 years in local housing ...

Hello, My SO and I are expanding our family and are close to buying a SFH home. We are debating what to do with the condo we currently own/live in and I am interested in the Board's opinion on whether to rent or sell from purely financial standpoint - time/stress of being a landlord is understood an...

I suppose depends on your driving preferences, but I would consider the Outback the opposite of a "fun drive" - definitely safe & good on snow but the car rides like a boat and even the 3.6 is underpowered. We had considered the Outback for the praticality but ended up getting a Forest...

Advertising driven tech companies. There's only so many ad dollars to go around and the umpteenth iteration of a company centered on sharing photos/updates/content with others will slice the pie sufficiently to drag down all the others.

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I'm sad to say that the shoes I've owned and loved for the last few years are nearing the end of usable life. Unfortunately, they have discontinued this particular shoe and I don't think the company makes similar. I've searched high and low for a shoe of this style/feel and have come up empty...here...

I am was recently approved for individual disability insurance and have been reading through the policy before signing it. I was surprised that the policy assumes that I will continue my current group disability insurance that I receive through my employer (PreTax LTD for 66 2/3%) and the benefit fr...

When I first read about this today morning I thought it was an Onion article, it seems like a surprising and radical move. Having previous worked and lived in India, I have a fair amount of rupees in cash with me in the US right now which is likely in Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes - does anyone else livi...

Slightly off topic but something else that could help is changing the app you use for podcasts. I had a similar problem as you when I used the stock Apple Podcast app and realized that the audio on many podcasts is not properly equalized - I switched to a free app called Overcast that corrects for t...

Thanks for everyone's responses - lots of different opinions, similar to what I've heard in person when asking around. A few of you raised the point about not knowing where the surcharge goes and the potential for it to be pocketed by the owner - a bit of research yielded the legal guidelines around...

We live in the SF Bay Area where quite a few restaurants have started applying a mandatory 4% surcharge towards employee benefits when dining in. Barring exceptionally poor or excellent service, we then typically tip 18%-20% of the pre-tax bill as our tip - with these new surcharges, as a default we...

We switched to the Costco house brand Dishwasher Pacs for a few years ago based on a Consumer Reports ranking and have been satisfied. I picked up a new container about a month ago and noticed revamped packaging (old one was translucent tub with yellow lid, new one is white tub with blue lid) with t...

Thanks everyone for your responses, especially the White Coat Investor link - sounds like there's quite a few people completing such surveys! I am not a physician nor completing medical surveys (which sound to be higher $ than what I am offered) but I think the advice still holds for me - I have a p...

A few years ago I started receiving online surveys soliciting my professional opinion on a few targeted topics - I'm in a specialized field where megacorps are interested in selling me fairly expensive products and the surveys are from third-party firms that ask things like "what would I think ...

Sorry for the delayed response - I was tied up with filing tax returns and it took me a while to look into these matters. Turns out some of the [very] actively managed funds in my mom's portfolio doled out some substantial capital gain distributions (ahem...I'm looking at you Janus Funds), further r...

Sincere thanks to everyone for your excellent advice - revamping my mom's portfolio has seemed like a daunting task and it's helpful to hear your thoughts to make sure I approach this right. Based on the advice, I will: (1) consolidate the Janus accounts into TD Ameritrade (would love to move to Van...

I've been managing my mom's finances ever since my dad passed away a few years ago and would like to get the forums thoughts on an investment strategy. Unfortunately he was quite ill for the last few years of his life which meant (1) he did not touch his investments in the last few years, say since ...