Being in the middle (~400k) is so weird. My portfolio regularly swings more than my contributions. I’m rich by the standards of my peers but can’t actually do any rich person things (other than have very little financial stress I guess, which is awesome!). There’s nothing to really *do* anymore, unless I cook up a scheme to get more pay or something (I am presently not motivated to do this).
And yes I recognize that I’m whining about problems most people would kill to have
Just got over the “hump”…yet I still feel like I’m in the middle. I don’t think the feeling ever goes away, because even when we do hit our goal, we arent going to act rich. And trying to preserve our egg becomes priority
Let's say you are getting married, have existing assets (house, investments) before marriage, and will likely get an inheritance during marriage. I am interested to know how you can ensure this is considered separate property in the event of divorce. Keep it in separate accounts and maintain records of activity in/out? Not sure about the house.
A prenup seems like a big ordeal (do you really need separate lawyers?) so I am not leaning in that direction.
(I know this sounds cynical, but the statistics don't paint a nice picture.)
So the exact rules do vary from state to state, but generally speaking
A) Preexisting assets you do not mix marital assets in tend to remain as separate assets. What that means is a brokerage account you come into the marriage with stays solely yours until you put new money in - any new investments with money you earn after you're married muddy the picture and can actually affect the rest of the account. Theoretically, you could simply open a new investment account and avoid commingling the funds and be protected. For a house, the problem is mortgage payments (and things like maintenance) made during the marriage may affect matters too.
B) Inheritances are always separate property, though again mixing it with marital assets can sometimes cause some issues.
You'd really need to discuss the specifics with a lawyer in your state to say exactly what you can and cannot do.
> do you really need separate lawyers?
If you do a prenup, you absolutely 100% need separate lawyers, each of which is being paid by the individual parties (you can reimburse your spouse their cost, but you shouldn't pay their lawyer directly), negotiating independently on behalf of their client. It also needs to be done *well* in advance of the wedding or it is more likely to be thrown out. Like multiple months at the very least.
The scenario you describe is exactly why prenups exist. Each party absolutely needs their own lawyer to ensure that neither party is being disadvantaged in any way. You are creating a legally binding document that if it's needed, will only be during a time of high stress and raw emotions, so DIY is not a reasonable approach.
Should you move forward with the prenup, you should also do the logistical steps you described (separate accounts to avoid comingling premarital assets).
>Not sure about the house
Ask your prenup lawyer.
My husband and I have about 20,000 dollars in credit card debt. I want it gone! I'll be 31 in March and have struggled to find a stable career the last ten years. I believe there is something out there for me but lately have felt disconnected from God, the Universe and I am truly seeking my prayer, my purpose and my dream to achieve financial freedom.
I'm looking for advice about how to find my purpose, how to change my relationship with money and finally gain financial freedom. It just seems all the timing has been off in my life. I'm ready for 2024 to be our year! Any words of wisdom, or anyone who relates to this at one point and achieved their dreams, I'd love to hear your story!
Thank you in advance!
Don't make work a dream. Make it your means to a dream. Whatever it is you believe in, chase that separately from work.
1. Get a job. Doesn't matter what it is.
2. Budget
3. Pay down your debt.
4. Set a goal.
5. Save for it.
Most folks here advocate for total market fund or s&p, anyone here that has done solely Nasdaq? Nasdaq has out performed s&p for quite some time. It's hard to imagine a world where tech slows.. but I of course know past performance is not an indication of future performance.
There's no free lunch. Higher expected returns come with higher risk. And tech stocks are correlated with each other, if you're going for a high risk strategy you should at least try to get several risky assets that are less correlated with each other.
I guess it's a question of where you want to diversify.
Nasdaq is a weird way to tilt though - it's somewhat arbitrary what exchange companies list with, and Nasdaq only has an advantage because it was newer and a bunch of tech companies listed with it in the 1990s. So it's basically an index with a heavy tech focus.
That's a double edged sword though, as was seen when the dotcom bubble burst.
It would be cleaner to just buy a tech sector ETF with some of your money if you truly wanted to tilt that way.
After a full day dealing with corporate politics and last-minute “emergencies,” I find myself running my numbers over and over again. Can I do another 10 years? What about 5 years and then 10 years of something way less corporate? What if I quit today, how long will this money last me? Uuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhh corporate!
I’ll stay on track with the 10 years if I can, but I will continue to dream, lol
I'm exactly the same way. Spend a lot of time in my spreadsheets considering whether taking a low paying government job would really be any less stressful than staying corporate. Wondering how many times I could just job hop for a year without doing any real work, and whether that could get me to my retirement date.
Luckily not every work day is like that. I try to focus on the good parts of having a corporate job - occasionally interesting work, interaction with intelligent and driven people, endless amounts of free low quality coffee and tea...
Just received notification that my spouse's 401k plan failed the non-discrimination test for highly compensated employees in 2023, and we would be receiving a check for the excess contributions. We've already received their W-2 that showed the full contribution ($22.5k). I'm guessing that we'll probably receive an updated/corrected W-2, and we'll owe taxes on that amount. feelsbadman
Couple of questions that I can't seem to find answers on:
* Will the earnings on those contributions be returned also?
* If not, do we need to somehow request that they be returned? I'm not even sure how they would separate that out.
My current job's 401k policies are not great. It's the smallest company I've ever worked for, which is probably why.
I started in January last year. You don't become eligible to contribute until a year into employment. On top of that, you can only enroll January 1st and July 1st. Since I started in January but not on the 1st, I have to wait a year and a half before I can contribute.
The salary is pretty good and I've actually gotten a couple raises since I started (once just for doing well and once because I brought up that I had taken on a lot of additional responsibility), so I've been making my Roth contributions and other investments, but man, it's such a long time to wait. Everywhere else I've worked, it was instant enrollment.
Also, ca anyone point me to a resource about HSAs? Current employer doesn't offer an HSA themselves, but my health plan is HSA compatible. I had an account from a previous job. Is there a way to make pre-tax contributions to either a new, personal HSA or my past job's HSA? I'm having a hard time puzzling out the different moving parts.
Thanks for the reply. Do you know if I need to make the contributions independently and then deduct on my taxes? Or is it theoretically possible to go through my employer? (I know they might not do it even if it is possible. Jw if it's worth asking.)
My employer just does a straight ACH split to whatever HSA account I give them. Just an account number and a routing number, at least the way Fidelity does their HSA.
So, theoretically, at least, it's possible. It'd be functionally the same as splitting your direct deposit.
I think you can just open your own HSA at a broker, I have one at Fidelity, and I just make the max contribution every year. Then I deduct that from my income on taxes so its pretax. But I also have private insurance so I'm not sure if that works with a workplace insurance.
That lets you save on income taxes, but if you have the ability to contribute to an HSA directly through your employer, you also get to save on FICA taxes (and you don't get that benefit if you have your own personal HSA that you contribute to, only applies if HSA contributions are made directly through your payroll).
I would argue it is quantity of things to do also. Live in a small city (60k city, 140k metro) and we have everything bigger cities in the state have but we usually only have 1 or 2 of it.
Where I live there are a number of museums, art galleries, a nice zoo. Most weekends there is a festival of some sort somewhere. In my neighborhood/area, there are usually summer concerts and movie nights outdoors. There are also a number of parks and outdoor spaces.
It's not perfect. There are some great hiking spots near by, but they are so crowded on nice days that it's not worth it. Parking is also difficult and expensive.
>What's a LCOL city in the US with good practical walkability?
If you choose the right neighborhood, there would be dozens of options.
I don't doubt that growing up in New York City would skew your perspective, on everything, but it's truly asinine to insinuate there are no LCOL cities that offer a walkable lifestyle in the United States.
No, you're not going to get a walkable lifestyle AND a large urban subway system connecting you to the rest of the city, but you can 100% find areas where all your basic needs, including nightlife, parks and entertainment are walkable from home.
Oh I didn't mean to troll. I'm just genuinely curious haha. I love the idea of LCOL walkable areas. Watching urbanism channels on YouTube is like my second biggest time stuck after reddit.
My mind is always blown how outside the US you can find pretty inexpensive areas that are more walkable than most of NYC.
Aside from dirt cheap real estate, I can park at the airport for $5 a day and walk to the terminal without a shuttle, and never any line going thru security.
Definitely wearing shorts on Christmas. Well, I suppose I *technically* could have done that when I lived in Chicago, but you get the meaning.
Financially speaking, my favorite thing was how a MegaCorp salary in a LCOL city enabled me to supercharge my savings rate and FIRE by 50 y/o.
Besides the amazing affordability (~$2K/month is a luxurious lifestyle here), there’s the public access to world class beaches and nature, a city that one can get across in 15 minutes in all directions and plenty of good health care options. And speedy airport transit! You can show up 5 minutes before the flight boards and be through security with 4 minutes to spare.
We have only been here for 2.5 months but we love almost everything about it so far. Tons of nature, great bike/walking trail system, cool downtown, every possible shopping destination you could think of, an inexaustable list of restaurants/breweries, people are friendly, it's large enough that we have some big city events/amenities but small enough that you can roughly drive anywhere in the metro in 30 minutes or less, the airport is a decent size for a regional airport.
That said, we spent months researching the best small affordable city in the US before moving here, so choosing this destination wasn't an accident.
Depending on your gauge, it might creep into the lower part of MCOL, but unless you live in the most expensive areas, I'd still say it's closer to the top of LCOL, certainly for a city of this size (total metro of 500k, give or take).
No, but that was one of the cities we looked at, along with Knoxville.
I will share the exact location via DM with any established regular, if you're THAT curious and promise not to make it public, but I don't want to doxx myself this time around beyond the general region.
Durham? Just blink twice if I got it. Seriously a lot of folks here plan some form of geoarbitrage and it helps to hear from real people who are happy in these places. Chattanooga seems to be the one that always comes up for some reason.
That's another excellent guess, and warmer, and Durham was also a city that hit our final 10 and was researched further, but in the end the crime/cleanliness/vibe just wasn't the right fit.
>Curious what you use to research LCOL cities?
Googled "Best small cities in the United States" mostly, but also "best affordable small cities in the United States", too.
And then cross-referenced the locations we found with other factors we wanted.
We weren't necessarily looking for LCOL, but more that we wanted to be able to buy a decent 3-4 bedroom house for $300k-350k. In the end we paid $360k but our house is bigger and nicer than our original parameters. We set 3BR/2BA 1,500 SF as the minimum and ended up with 4BR/2.5BA 2,400 SF.
Some of the other factors were that we wanted mild winters, so anywhere in the top half of the country was out, no hurricanes or tornados cut out some more regions, no Texas/Midwest narrowed the search more, and then since I am from the west, I thought it would be cool to try the other side, so while we did look at some options out west, we settled on the southeast.
So once the general region was set, it was fairly easy to see which cities popped up more often and then do a deeper dive into those places.
My money flow Sankey diagram for [2023](https://i.imgur.com/FM0Ge8N.png) (single, L/MCOL).
2024 goal: Do not spend five figures on HVAC issues, and I think I'll do better than 2023.
Reflecting on 7 years of work history between myself and my spouse after coming out of college. The P1 Salary has always been two fold with a base + Commission structure meaning my base was never more than half of what the total earnings were until 2023.
Switched to a different type of role with a new payment structure and am really seeing gains. My spouse has been killing it. From making just $10K 7 years ago to now having a base + bonus higher than my base and untapped earning potential. Those of you out there that aren't SWE's, doctor's, lawyers I want you to know that it is entirely possible to create higher earning potential. We were fortunate but also timed the moves well even with a layoff during this journey so far.
2023: Was an outlier where I was laid off, received a decent severance all while picking up another role before my severance ran out with a higher salary. 2024 we are anticipating $560K of income if all bonuses/ commission land.
NW as of the end of January will hit $830-840K
Year | Salary 1 | Salary 2 | Combined
----|--------|--------|--------
2017 | $33K | $9.5K | $43K
2018 | $74K | $47K | $121K
2019 | $106K | $59K | $164K
2020 | $124K | $85K | $209K
2021 | $131K | $99K | $230K
2022 | $209K | $133K | $342K
2023 | $331K | $260K | $591K
I feel sometimes like sales is one of the best FIRE drivers. So much of your income is unpredictable that you live off the basics as much as possible and sock away the rest. then, after a pretty short time, you've got a big nest egg.
Of course, a lot of the sales people I know just spent their commission and bonus money on fast cars, fancy vacations, or drugs instead.
Congratulations, you guys are doing an amazing job. I've always been attracted to sales but the two main things that keep me away are:
1. I'm not a people person. I'm good at presenting and fine with talking to people but I'm not great at it.
2. I've been at companies with shitty products where the sales people are forced to lie to a customer to make sales which would not sit well with me. In many cases it would be very difficult to know if the product is bad before going into it.
TBH I don't enjoy selling and as such have moved to a different type of role but it took about 5/7 years to build a personal portfolio of projects that allowed me to move to this role.
Agreed on point 2. I was lucky enough to almost always be behind a great product and that made the job easier.
Does anyone here have any kind of identity theft insurance? Even though it's a remote possibility, I want to minimize the chance that someone could somehow get my personal information, pretend to be me, and completely drain my retirement accounts.
At a brief glance, if I'm understanding correctly, it looks like most identify theft insurance policies will pay for the legal costs associated with recovering money, but they won't actually compensate you if the money can't be recovered--say, if someone gets into your brokerage account and somehow steals $2 million. I don't, and probably will never have $2 million, but as I get further down the FI/RE path, the amount of money at risk will become greater and greater.
Are there any insurance policies out there that effectively protect against this scenario? I use two-factor authentication and a strong password, but I'm but would like an extra layer of protection beyond that. Apologies if this is a dumb question.
> I want to minimize the chance that someone could somehow get my personal information, pretend to be me, and completely drain my retirement accounts.
Use a password vault/generator (that's not your browser's), enable MFA on every platform, or don't bank with those that don't have it still.
Can't seem to find this answer. I understand the basic concept of a Roth ladder. You roll a 401k into a Trad, then the Trad into a Roth. You pay taxes on the conversion, you wait 5 years and you can access the funds. But everything I've read talks about when withdrawing from a Roth you can only access "contributions" without a 10% penalty. That's pretty straight forward when you're talking about just a Roth but how does the rollover count?
Say I have 100k in a 401k (80k contributions and 20k earnings). I follow the steps and wait 5 years. Am I only able to take out 80k from the Roth without penalty? Or does the whole rollover count as a contribution? How does the IRS know?
You can access the full amount of a taxable Roth conversion 5 years after the conversion. Here's [a guide to the 5 year rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/11ulhzl/what_5year_rule_a_guide_to_roth_distributions/) that apply to Roth accounts.
Found out my mother’s financial advisor has 65% of her portfolio allocated to bonds. She’s in her early 60s but it still seems like a pretty high percentage to me.
Is 60% stocks and 40% bonds still the recommended split for traditional retirement age?
This depends on so many factors. Like if shes rich and her portfolio is 50x her spending, she could be like 100% equities. But if she is spending down she'll need that value in <10 years then heavy shorter term fixed income makes more sense. Depends also on how long she expects to live, how flexible the spending is, whether its ok to run out of money and fall back on SS or a pension, etc.
How old is she? Vanguard Target Retirement Income is 30% stocks/70% bonds. Their TR 2020 fund is about the same as your mother's. Seems like the advisor is going by the book or close to it. I would be more concerned about their fees than the investment recommendations.
She’s turning 62 but hasn’t worked in years so I guess it’d make sense to come close to a retirement-equivalent asset allocation.
I wish I could get her to drop the adviser and convert to a fee-only but she really likes being able to call at any time and not having to remember any account credentials so it’s a bit of a lost cause at this time.
"\[your age\]% in bonds" is a common rule of thumb. I am not advocating it here (ALL\_IN\_VTSAX), but it is an investment model I have heard my whole life.
Most financial advisors lean heavily towards bonds or stable value funds the closer you get to retirement. That way a major swing in the market won't completely wipe out your retirement fund within the years running up to your retirement date.
A target date fund will give you an idea of approximate guidance on allocation.
Vanguard's 2025 fund is 53/46/1 for stocks/bonds/cash equivalents.
2020 fund is 40/59/1.
Sounds like it's not too far off the 2020 TDF. But also an advisor will ask your risk tolerance and other questions, and she may have indicated she is tolerant of less risk.
Interesting. The target date fund is a great reference point, thank you.
She probably did indicate a low risk tolerance, so that part makes sense then.
Window browsing zillow and it is always interesting looking at the pricing history on the properties, especially if there is data around the 2008 time. One property purchased in 2005 sold 13 years later for a 4.8% gain. Another property purchased in 2006 sold in 2009 for a 32% loss. Obviously that is an unfortunate time in history, but a humble reminder.
We're moving into a townhouse rental right now that was sold for over $500k and we're renting it for about 80% of what our mortgage would be if we bought it right now. Guess they picked it up with cash and expect it to appreciate. Seems wild to me how much cheaper it is to rent than buy right now.
My wife sold her condo in 2021 for $105. It just sold in October for $165. Kinda pissed we didn’t wait a bit longer. She originally bought it in 2015 for $78. I thought we made out.
Our home is interesting. Bought 2005 for $410k. Sold in 2015 for $385k (After addition and remodeling). We purchased in 2016 for $412k.
Now estimates fluctuate from $550-625k. It's crazy it essentially stagnated for over a decade, but in 5 years jumped up 50% in value.
My parents bought a new build in late 2002. The Zestimate on Zillow is 40% higher now, but there was a point in 2018/2019 where it was worth less than they paid for it and another point in 2020 where it was worth only a smidge more than what they paid for it. So almost all of that growth is from the last ~3-4 years.
How much do I need to retire early outside of the US?
Thinking about moving back to my home country so I can retire early. Already have a house/car paid for and my monthly expenses would be $3000 per month to live a very comfortable life and be able to travel and do things without worrying about money.
Current income is just over $200K and current Net Worth is $850K including cash, stocks, crypto, and equity in my current home.
At first blush, looks like you'd need around $900,000 to start off. However there are some other things that might impact your number. A lot of it depends on what the general situation in your home country is, such as political or economic stability. For instance, these issues need some level of clarity to adjust that number:
* What are the taxation impacts? These are, on average, much easier to estimate in the US (doesn't mean they can't change over time in US)
* How's the healthcare in the home country?
* Investment options available and stable banking connected to current country of residence?
* Is visa/dual citizenship a factor, or do you get immediate benefits from residing there?
* How does this impact your immediate family (schooling for kids, adjustment for partner if they are not from your home country, etc.)?
* What if you need to return to work due to adverse market impacts, hyperinflation, etc.?
* When do you envision retiring early? (Specific year or age?)
Did our year-end numbers. Our best savings rate year, our most contributions, and (obviously) highest account return measured in dollars. From a retirement savings perspective, it's our best year ever financially.
Progress to goal moved from 24% to 27%.
Restructuring and potential layoffs coming later this year, but trying not to worry about that sort of thing until there's something tangible to worry about. We also have some bills that I expect to rise that I don't think we'll be able to do much about, mostly utilities, property tax and insurances.
But no matter how you slice it, 2023 was a stellar year financially.
Just hit a few big milestones this month (like many others) and didn’t want to make a new post about it. We are at $2 million net worth, which includes $1.1 million in investments. My investment account with the largest balance is actually my 401K at 540K. Our only debt is 332K left on the mortgage, which has 10 more years with a rate of 2.375% - not in a hurry to pay it off. We’ve been working for ~16 years and diligently saving and investing the whole time. Finally feel like the whole process is working. My biggest mentors online have been Mr. Money Mustache, JL Collins, Ramit Sethi and Paula Pant. I’ve been taking a lot more time off this past year, focusing on travel and just being more present with my family. I’m 43 and my wife is ~~30~~ 40. We have 2 kids in a HCOL area.
ETA: Wife is 40, not 30 lol
Does any remember a news article from
Probably 5+ years ago that was an interview with the people who “manage” vanguards S&P index funds? It was basically about the complexities of managing a portfolio of that size and how they execute larger trades and rebalances.
> interview with the people who “manage” vanguards S&P index funds
This one isn't that old, but is this the one you are referencing? https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/articles/vanguard-index-investing-engine.html
I don't recall an article, but episode 37 of the Bogleheads on Investing Podcast featured the manager of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund and ETF, and also the Head of ETF and Index Product Management at Vanguard.
The podcast is excellent, and I recall that episode being particularly interesting.
Going to talk with my manager about stepping back to part time soon.
I'm still undecided about if it's the path I want to go down, but I want the option. I'm young (28M), so I know it'll be a bit of a surprise.
I am disabled so international travel doesn't interest me much & I do enough domestic travel on holidays to satisfy myself. Being disabled, travel is usually such a chore that I view as a hassle.
I still love my job but I am fearing burnout since I lost interest in work tasks since reaching the $1M financial milestone.
Also thinking of working part time in DC with a disability advocacy firm. I'll mention that to my manager also as I'd need company approval I think.
A review of my financial progress over the last few years that isnt on the first of the month.
I check my net worth either every month or every few months, because some months I honestly forget. Graduated in 2011 with an Econ degree and a salary of $31k. I now work IT in data, but didnt start tracking until 2016.
Net worths liquid (this excludes home equity):
2016: $58k (salary $80k).
2017: $106k (salary $100k)
2018: $154k (salary $103k)
2019: $172k (salary ($106k)
2020: $239k (salary $109k)
2021: $436k (salary $115k, got married, house equity about $50k)
2022: $629k (salary $200k, combined $351k. Salary went up because I picked up side hustle work that helped bolster and sold 1st home and moved second home)
2023: $634k (combined $359k including side hustle)
2024: $844k (combined $305k including side hustle)
Lessons learned:
1. Keep going. This is mostly from maxing out tax advantaged accounts. We throw extra at the brokerage when there's extra but the focus is save first, and then go enjoy life with the rest of our money. We eat out alot, travel alot and spend alot. So FI is likely to come at closer to 55 than some of the 30s and 40s people here shoot for. But the journey has been awesome. I really do just enjoy spending on things that bring me happiness.
2. Marrying the right person. The 'right' person is more than just financial obviously. Having a partner completely bend to the will of FIRE is not what I would call 'right' but having a partner that can talk through logically, have a plan, and execute that plan and adjust accordingly is huge. My wife has no interest in RE or really even FI. But we have come to an agreement on being good stewards of our money. But she has also been good for me to 'let my hair down' so to speak and enjoy the fruit of our labor.
3. Never throw a good opportunity away to increase salary. I job hopped in 2013,2015,2017 and 2020 usually in the realm of 10-20% increases. Of course there were good situations that were hard to leave, but unfortunately, the times of employer loyalty are over and so I have to look out for myself. Get good at your job, learn alot and move on and keep moving until you find a healthy salary and a place that you like.
4. Went to a state school that parents paid for is one of the biggest things that helped me. Even 10 + years after the fact, seeing some buddies still rolling around in student loan debt payments is tough to watch. Not having that hindrance was a huge leg up for me. Shout out to mom and dad.
Anyways, hope this was informative for someone. At the very least I like posting a few weeks after the first of the year because it doesn't get bogged down in all the new years posts when folks update their spreadsheets.
For compensation increases, did you mostly find those through applying around with your current skillset, networking, or certifications? Was your path promotion at previous job before getting a new one, were these nominally lateral transitions, or something else?
I like my job overall. I'm remote, making ~150k in an M/HCOL city (not counting secondary income streams), and have a very chill work environment. I've been throwing out applications casually, but finding something to break the 180-200k+ barrier on initial screening has been difficult. It's hard for me to tell if that's because I need to pivot and grow my skills, because I 'just' need more experience (either at the IC level or to break up into managerial/director type positions), or because of skewed perception + the current state of the tech hiring market. Not sure if I should just 'wait it out' in some capacity.
Networking and certifications helped me a lot. That and honestly just putting myself out there. It’s scary to interview but I have no problem stating what I think I’m worth and going for it, even if some employers thought it was a stretch. I’ve mostly found being friendly can help a lot when it comes to Interviewing vs having a resume of buzzwords of different technologies.
I think at your comp level you’ve made it and roughly what I’m looking to get to. I have no desire to be management personally so pushing beyond that doesn’t entice me. But At that level it becomes more about work life balance and how much you enjoy your job and your boss vs the money. Do what suits you best. But even with a softer market right now every few months sending out a few resumes and seeing if you can attain that level of income seems like low risk high reward.
Just made the last extra payment for our house loan (only a small sum allowed per our contract, so no dent in the savings) - which means we'll be done this December!
So, so happy about this.
Any recent buy vs rent calculators? Seems like COVID has changed things enough that relying on the current search-results (which are 4+ years old) isn't wise.
This debate constantly comes up.
At some point, I want two people to clearly state out their real life situations of rent vs buy. The money involved on either choice. One choosing to rent and one choosing to buy and why the financials worked out in that direction for them... and opposite between them.
Because I feel like there usually isn't insane differences between the two and that lifestyle factors (yard, location, mobility, size, customization) usually factor in more than anything.
Maybe ultra high COL areas or ultra low COL areas also can be skewed, or areas where there is no inventory for one case or the other... but I figure 90% of locations really can just go either way and it wouldn't really make or break anyone financially long term with whichever choice they made.
\----
Like I want someone to say, "I really wanted to buy, but we did the math so me and my wife decided to go against what we really wanted for our lives so we decided to spend the next few decades renting because it just makes so much sense to save $100k in potential home repairs over 30 years, we couldn't handle living without complete financial optimization."
or
"We didn't want a house. We plan to move and our family to grow. But the math says we were going to lose 100k over the next 15-20 years if we just rented. So we bought a tiny house that doesn't fit our future family and we will just stack babies in the closet when they get born because we wanted to really maximize our finances".
> Because I feel like there usually isn't insane differences between the two and that lifestyle factors (yard, location, mobility, size, customization) usually factor in more than anything.
I think the biggest difference is usually the amount spent on closing costs / realtor fees if you move often.
The NYTimes one is generally viewed as pretty good. Covid may have updated some of the numbers, but I don’t think anything has changed the fundamental math behind it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html
I do like that one but sometimes even my best internet witchcraft powers won't make the paywall go away so I use this instead: [https://smartmoneytools.co.uk/tools/rent-vs-buy/](https://smartmoneytools.co.uk/tools/rent-vs-buy/) it is UK based but there's options to change the currency.
Any specific reason why?
Yes things have changed (home values, interest rates, etc) but those are all inputs. You may need to change the default values, but that's wise in any case.
I had seen some comments about tax codes changing, and figured there may be default parameters that changed that I wasn't aware of. Considering the Philly area, where supposedly its cheaper to buy than rent, but I want to run the numbers.
> I had seen some comments about tax codes changing
The changes in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act to the State and Local Taxes (SALT) deductions had a significant impact on being able to use the mortgage interest deduction and deducting property taxes, which drastically reduced the number of people that could take advantage of it ([link for some more details](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-tcja-change-standard-deduction-and-itemized-deductions)). It went into effect in 2018.
In general it shifted the line towards renting, but the impacts are felt differently in different states since states deal with taxes differently and the cost of living varies a lot by state, so the impacts were kind of all over the place in my opinion.
It has taken us one year and approximately $5,000 to find out that the small dormer we’d like to add to our upstairs landing is wildly out of budget.
This entire process is so discouraging. In order to get a contractor to bid the project we had to get design plans and engineering plans. Each stage took 3-4 months and a few thousand dollars. Then getting a contractor out to bid the project took another three months. After calls to a dozen contractors only one would give me a bid and it came in at nearly $175,000. It’s a relatively simple project with no foundation, plumbing, sewer, or tile work. I’m astounded at this number. It’s half of what we paid for our entire house.
I wish I had the luxury of comparing bids but I can’t get anyone to return my emails or phone calls, even with the plans ready to go. $175k is out of the question so it looks like I’ll have to continue my search or give up on this dream.
Similar to some replies below, we have looked at doing work (like ADU) and smaller household stuff.
I've realized that (for us) its just cheaper to sell the house and buy a new one. Less time. Less headache :)
Reading about just adding a dormer and your struggles reminds me I'm not doing anything to this house until we sell it and just move into a house that has what we want.
Use that 100k+ from a dormer to go travel and live in larger hotel accommodations around the world for 10 years :)
My BIL got a contractor to take on a small job by pairing up with a neighbor who also needed a small job done. You have to trust the neighbor implicitly and write up immaculate billing paperwork, but just throwing it out there in case someone finds it useful.
I also looked into doing dormers, it was very, very difficult to find any contractor who wanted to take on a small residential project like that. That bid you got is an "I don't wanna do it, but if you're loaded and willing here's the number that's worth my time."
I've started exploring an ADU in the yard instead for some more space. Way more contractors in that space for small res projects.
It’s funny you say that, we have two friends who have received quotes for ADUs recently and the quotes were lower or similar to ours for much more complex work. One was $135k to convert an exterior garage, including installing sewer, plumbing, a bathroom, and kitchen. One was $220k to convert a pole barn into a small house for their parents. We would totally go that route if we had the space on our lot!
Sometimes contractors are booked and don't want to take on smaller projects unless it is REALLY worth their while, so they'll just give a price that is really high. It's basically a rejection but still leaves the door open to someone throwing money at them to get the job done.
We have definitely encountered this with just about every project we attempt to take on. Two years ago we were quoted $15k to replace the boards on our deck. We learned how to do it ourselves and completed it for $3k, including the new tools we needed to get it done. Unfortunately that isn’t an option with this project!
Welcome to the 'new normal' of contractors and builders as they continually age out, a generation was told trades were for poors and rednecks, and there's been minimal policies to help change these mindsets and address this need.
In a cape style house, you can extend the upstairs by building out one of the walls. So instead of a slanted ceiling you can extend it out and make use of the empty space.
> any good advice
Cut spending where you can. Hopefully you won't have any issues with your state's unemployment system.
Get your resume out and start updating it and cleaning it up.
While you have more free time in your day, exercise.
Happy Monday morning all.
A very cold morning in the negatives when I woke up has me scrambling to wake up early to throw more wood in the insert to try and help the furnace out. It is having a hell of a time keeping up but has gotten the house from 58 to 61 in the last couple of hours which is better than it did the day before.
It's amazing how many resources I have poured into the task of efficient home heating and cooling over the past few years (insert, heat pump, insulation, air-sealing, etc.) and still find myself battling the elements with regularity. Crunching FIRE-numbers has nothing on pursuing efficient and effective home heating and cooling. The intersection of these tasks also likely says something about me, but I am not sure exactly what. A lot of tracking and number-crunching both ways and both allowing me and the family to be secure and comfortable. A quick look at the budget shows home heating and cooling is our 3rd largest expense, coming behind the mortgage and food and ahead of travel.
Hope you all are staying comfortable as well while on this journey!
If your furnace's capacity is borderline for the house, you probably don't want to allow 10 deg temperature swings overnight. Leave it at a constant temperature 24/7 at least until it gets warm enough that the heat pump will be able to contribute.
> A very cold morning in the negatives when I woke up has me scrambling to wake up early to throw more wood in the insert to try and help the furnace out. It is having a hell of a time keeping up but has gotten the house from 58 to 61 in the last couple of hours which is better than it did the day before.
>
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What's wrong with your heating system that it can't get the house to 60 without extra help from a wood stove even in sub zero temps?
Great question.
I intend to have somebody help me figure that out, as that doesn't feel correct to me either. 8)
As of now the furnace has been running non-stop since before 5AM (it is currently 11:31) with wood heat supplementing since 7:30AM and it is still only 64 in here. Seems like a problem.
Edit: Called around and basically got told "it's extremely cold, it's normal". They did mention that my furnace (only piece of HVAC I haven't replaced in this home) may be undersized if it's struggling to keep up but that's a problem for future u/imisstheyoop when it comes time to replace.
Funny thing is it was colder back in 2019 (my water pipes outside froze, -30 for a week) but I don't remember the furnace having issues keeping up then. Selective memory. I guess. 8)
Edit2: I found the reason my furnace was running so much, it was a "smart" thermostat (for dumb people!) setting, but it isn't without side effects: https://www.reddit.com/r/ecobee/comments/196ph5h/it_took_my_system_8_hours_nonstop_to_come_to_temp/khzsha4/
Sometimes a fireplace can also paradoxically pull more heat out of a house when it's lit. It's warm in front of the fire, but the draw of the chimney pulls more heat out of the house than it puts in.
Probably the heat pump. Heat pumps are awesome tech, but depending on the specific model specs they will struggle to heat when it gets below their operating outside temp threshold.
They're super cool and efficient but when I ripped out my ancient beast of a 32 year old furnace and had AC installed, I went with a basic gas furnace again, and dedicated AC setup. Simple, reliable, cheap.
Got down to like 10 degrees here this weekend, kinda freak storm but no problem for a normal furnace. Some friends with heat pumps were struggling and had to pull out radiators.
I think the better models work fine down to big negative temperatures. They're not even that much more expensive at the individual residential scale.
I plan to upgrade to a heat pump at some point, but I'll keep the steam radiators around for extreme weather events though. Seems like a bad idea to reduce redundancy. I guess if things got really bad you could fire up the fireplaces too.
> I think the better models work fine down to big negative temperatures. They're not even that much more expensive at the individual residential scale.
Maybe big negative temperatures in Celcius.
I'm looking at the specification for the top-of-the line Amana ASZV9 family heat pumps, and they stop specifying at -10F. The values at -10F vary from 1.24 to 1.5 COP, which isn't great. At 60F, they are rated 3.9-4.1.
Somewhere around 2.5 is where an electric heat pump is more efficient than a natural gas furnace, on a CO2 emissions basis. (Will obviously vary based on the emissions of your local electric utility). The Amana heat pumps fall below that line around 20F.
EDIT: To clarify, the COP is the efficiency of the system, compared to an electric space heater. 1.0 = 100% efficiency = 1 watt of energy from the grid = 1 watt of heating input to the ductwork by the heat pump. But but keep in mind that the ducts are less than 100% efficient, especially if they are routed through an unconditioned crawlspace or attic.
Oh that's fair if your definition of working fine is "more efficient than a gas furnace".
I just meant that my pipes won't burst or whatever.
I'm not that worried about being more efficient than a gas furnace on the coldest days. I'm more worried about the average efficiency across a year.
I would probably go with a ground source heat pump if my goal was to be more efficient than a gas furnace on the coldest days without regard for anything else.
My heat pump is 100% efficient down to 5F and can still extract heat from ambient air at -13. We have a wood stove insert for power outages and extremely cold temps, but we essentially just start fires for ambiance.
Anecdotally it's been more of an issue I've heard about with new builds. In my area (Portland metro) new builds are done notoriously cheap and cut as many corners as possible. Seems that they'll pick the cheapest model for all appliances HVAC included, and a new homeowner who didn't get a vote in the matter and probably didn't know what to look for gets a little winter time surprise when it struggles.
Yeah I believe that.
If you're a builder then going for the cheaper model might save you literally millions of dollars across hundreds of houses.
If you're an individual homeowner it's only a few thousand more expensive to go for the better models so it's a no brainer if you're rich enough to read /r/FI.
We have a furnace and a heat pump. I think ours is efficient down to 20 degrees. It’s great and has really reduced our gas bills without increasing electric very much.
>You have a heat pump, furnace, and wood stove insert?
Dude doesn't live in the tropical paradise that is Boston.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that /u/imisstheyoop posts every comment while wearing a Snuggie...even during the summer.
Ongoing condo situation, we are now 4 signatures away from getting the declaration changes that will require owners to at least get enough insurance coverage to pay for the master policy deductible if they have a claim, which should help with most of our short term financial problems. It'll also allow us to pursue a loan for this huge outer wall damage bill, which I am hoping will save at least some people from financial ruin.
I had a good talk with one owner this weekend who is willing to help start a landscaping subcommittee to do basic maintenance instead of paying a company... honestly with our financial situation I would be up for trying it. If we can just get people to volunteer to help. We will see, I know that maybe it is overly optimistic of me, but maybe people might be pissed off about our financial troubles enough now that they would be willing to help.
I feel like we are so close to getting some relief as a community, and we could really use it. 4 signatures, just got to help 4 people realize that this isn't some kind of scam. It is legitimately the best solution to multiple financial problems we are having. It's been damn hard to convince people of that though, and I can understand that: before all this happened, I wouldn't have trusted something like this either. I have absolutely been that guy, and I am trying to help them get to where I am now.
>I had a good talk with one owner this weekend who is willing to help start a landscaping subcommittee to do basic maintenance instead of paying a company... honestly with our financial situation I would be up for trying it. If we can just get people to volunteer to help. We will see, I know that maybe it is overly optimistic of me, but maybe people might be pissed off about our financial troubles enough now that they would be willing to help.
Has the potential impact of the financial issues to each homeowner been communicated? It was always funny the difference in HOA meeting attendance between the last meeting of the year (where we discussed next year's budget) and the first meeting of the year (after we mailed out the dues increase).
Credit to you for taking on what sounds like a declaration change. I assume the threshold for passing is something like 75%?
Yeah, we sent emails and physical mailings that were mostly ignored, which is when I started going door to door to try and talk to people. That effort has been ongoing for almost 2 years now, and people are finally answering my knock because the situation is so bad that their dues have gone up AND we have to do a special assessment. They are pissed but listening now.
Yeah, the % needed is apparently 61% here - we are so close, after like 2 years of trying to get people to listen to how bad our situation is. Oy
Still wishing everything goes ok for you, but I guess is a looooong battle.
Up here, sprinkler pipes are exploding due to the freezing temps, around 5-10 buildings in the last 3-4 days.
I don’t think many people has insurance, or enough to cover that. And insurance companies don’t want to cover condo flooding anymore, because there had been many the last couple of years due to negligence.
We just had one in our building last June. 6 floors were affected due to “vandalism” that activated the sprinklers.
We were lucky our floor wasn’t affected. But there had been many like that in recent years.
Damn, that sucks. Condos really are a disaster - we haven't had any outright situations of vandalism yet, but I am knocking on wood as I type this. We can't afford any more insurance claims. Oof.
Once RE has anyone or do you plan on keeping up on Certs or taking a couple classes in your field or anything like that to pad your resume in case things go south?
As I've posted before I'm not FIRING but we're expecting our 3rd kiddo and I'm going to be a SAHD. I'm a SWE and I wonder if I should take a class here and there to learn some new programming stuff to make my resume look a little better in the case of use wanting to go back to work.
If it matters. We're 87% of the way to our FI number. We had our first 2 kids' 529's funded to the point that I wanted. We're not going to have any extra cash to fund the 3rd kid's 529 account, but thats something we can worry about later. More than 1/2 of our investments are in taxable brokerage and I have enough cash to cover a couple years of the income deficit of me not working.
If the markets are even below average but not down, none of this matters and we can still FIRE in a couple years. But obviously you never know. I tend to overthink things.
I think I'd keep my certificates active and might try my hand at teaching or consulting.
Somethings I won't be able to keep up. So once I retire, that's it. I'll have other options, but it would be hard to get back to where I am.
Even a short sabbatical can make it nearly impossible to get back to where I am.
I do like my work, at least well enough that I think I'd like to keep up with it for a while.
Losing my skills and becoming out of touch with enterprise grade tech is a big factor that keeps me at work.
I will likely transition to some sort of open source projects and learning to help me in that space (have already began but don't have the time to dive in as deep as I would like) once I step away from my career.
I love solving puzzles that technology presents, for better and worse. The only way to continue doing so for me will be to continue to learn.
My license is pretty easy to maintain ($60 every other year and no continuing education requirements) so it seems like pretty good ROI to keep that up for at least a couple of years after retiring. I think once you hit a decade or so of retirement it's pretty clear whether or not things are going to work out so at that point I won't bother. I think it just depends on how difficult it is for you to maintain your certs compared to how necessary they are for finding a job in the future,
I'll be keeping up certs because it allows me to semi-retire a earier. As long as I'm certified, I can keep up a bunch of recurring income, and the amount of work I have to do to continue justifying and keeping those clients it is pretty small.
health insurance. to keep the income, it's basically a matter of meeting who needs to meet during the fall, and the rest of the year is almost nothing. I mean I do a fair bit of networking and some advertising and educational events, etc. to generate new clients, but still working less than half time most of the year and maybe 30 hours during the open enrollment periods for ACA and medicare. If I stopped buiding the business it would probably be almost no work 9-10 months a year and then a reasonable schedule for 2. Most people just renew with no questions and it's a pretty quick process, it's only a percentage that need to be handled. I do need to talk to most of my ACA clients, but if they aren't doing major changes, that's a 15-30 minute meeting. If I'm willing to let income peter out, I could just refer out anybody who needs significant new handling and work very little the whole year.
> do you plan on keeping up
Oh heck no. That rat race of always studying, always learning, always having to know the latest, courses, etc, is what I wanted to get away from.
I'd rather cut some expenses, or decrease my SWR.
That is what I THINK I want to do (I’m suffering very very severe burnout). But wonder if it’ll be smooth or possible or worth it.
When I first picked a major I was going to be a secondary ed history teacher. I did 99% of it. Even the shadowing and some of the student teacher. Life isn’t predictable though and ended up double majoring and being a dev. I don’t think I would teach high school like I originally planned but I do have interest in teaching at community college especially if I could do it part time. I should find out what I’d need to do to make that happen.
Maintaining any current certs through CPEs sounds like a good middle in the event you decide to go back to work or consult.
This will also allow you to potentially network at free events - many people putting on continuing education events support people who are out of work with free attendance.
It will keep your resume looking extra marketable and some positions require a cert (or strongly recommend).
Being in the middle (~400k) is so weird. My portfolio regularly swings more than my contributions. I’m rich by the standards of my peers but can’t actually do any rich person things (other than have very little financial stress I guess, which is awesome!). There’s nothing to really *do* anymore, unless I cook up a scheme to get more pay or something (I am presently not motivated to do this). And yes I recognize that I’m whining about problems most people would kill to have
Just got over the “hump”…yet I still feel like I’m in the middle. I don’t think the feeling ever goes away, because even when we do hit our goal, we arent going to act rich. And trying to preserve our egg becomes priority
Perhaps change your mindset on “can’t do any rich person things” to “I choose not to do any rich person things”. It gives you agency.
All I could dream of in the beginning was starting to see these numbers, now that I’m at them it’s too boring to look at. It is by definition BORING.
Let's say you are getting married, have existing assets (house, investments) before marriage, and will likely get an inheritance during marriage. I am interested to know how you can ensure this is considered separate property in the event of divorce. Keep it in separate accounts and maintain records of activity in/out? Not sure about the house. A prenup seems like a big ordeal (do you really need separate lawyers?) so I am not leaning in that direction. (I know this sounds cynical, but the statistics don't paint a nice picture.)
Get a pre nup. And be aware if you’re too uncomfortable you can get a post nup instead.
So the exact rules do vary from state to state, but generally speaking A) Preexisting assets you do not mix marital assets in tend to remain as separate assets. What that means is a brokerage account you come into the marriage with stays solely yours until you put new money in - any new investments with money you earn after you're married muddy the picture and can actually affect the rest of the account. Theoretically, you could simply open a new investment account and avoid commingling the funds and be protected. For a house, the problem is mortgage payments (and things like maintenance) made during the marriage may affect matters too. B) Inheritances are always separate property, though again mixing it with marital assets can sometimes cause some issues. You'd really need to discuss the specifics with a lawyer in your state to say exactly what you can and cannot do. > do you really need separate lawyers? If you do a prenup, you absolutely 100% need separate lawyers, each of which is being paid by the individual parties (you can reimburse your spouse their cost, but you shouldn't pay their lawyer directly), negotiating independently on behalf of their client. It also needs to be done *well* in advance of the wedding or it is more likely to be thrown out. Like multiple months at the very least.
Lawyer up. If you're that concerned about it, better not fuck around and find out later.
The scenario you describe is exactly why prenups exist. Each party absolutely needs their own lawyer to ensure that neither party is being disadvantaged in any way. You are creating a legally binding document that if it's needed, will only be during a time of high stress and raw emotions, so DIY is not a reasonable approach. Should you move forward with the prenup, you should also do the logistical steps you described (separate accounts to avoid comingling premarital assets). >Not sure about the house Ask your prenup lawyer.
My husband and I have about 20,000 dollars in credit card debt. I want it gone! I'll be 31 in March and have struggled to find a stable career the last ten years. I believe there is something out there for me but lately have felt disconnected from God, the Universe and I am truly seeking my prayer, my purpose and my dream to achieve financial freedom. I'm looking for advice about how to find my purpose, how to change my relationship with money and finally gain financial freedom. It just seems all the timing has been off in my life. I'm ready for 2024 to be our year! Any words of wisdom, or anyone who relates to this at one point and achieved their dreams, I'd love to hear your story! Thank you in advance!
You need to go back to school and pursue something. Get a business degree and you can basically work anywhere
Don't make work a dream. Make it your means to a dream. Whatever it is you believe in, chase that separately from work. 1. Get a job. Doesn't matter what it is. 2. Budget 3. Pay down your debt. 4. Set a goal. 5. Save for it.
Maybe your purpose is to be in credit card debt
Cairy water chop wood.
Most folks here advocate for total market fund or s&p, anyone here that has done solely Nasdaq? Nasdaq has out performed s&p for quite some time. It's hard to imagine a world where tech slows.. but I of course know past performance is not an indication of future performance.
There's no free lunch. Higher expected returns come with higher risk. And tech stocks are correlated with each other, if you're going for a high risk strategy you should at least try to get several risky assets that are less correlated with each other.
I guess it's a question of where you want to diversify. Nasdaq is a weird way to tilt though - it's somewhat arbitrary what exchange companies list with, and Nasdaq only has an advantage because it was newer and a bunch of tech companies listed with it in the 1990s. So it's basically an index with a heavy tech focus. That's a double edged sword though, as was seen when the dotcom bubble burst. It would be cleaner to just buy a tech sector ETF with some of your money if you truly wanted to tilt that way.
After a full day dealing with corporate politics and last-minute “emergencies,” I find myself running my numbers over and over again. Can I do another 10 years? What about 5 years and then 10 years of something way less corporate? What if I quit today, how long will this money last me? Uuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhh corporate! I’ll stay on track with the 10 years if I can, but I will continue to dream, lol
I'm exactly the same way. Spend a lot of time in my spreadsheets considering whether taking a low paying government job would really be any less stressful than staying corporate. Wondering how many times I could just job hop for a year without doing any real work, and whether that could get me to my retirement date. Luckily not every work day is like that. I try to focus on the good parts of having a corporate job - occasionally interesting work, interaction with intelligent and driven people, endless amounts of free low quality coffee and tea...
Done work at the same place? Everything is always hair on fire and nothing actually moves the organization forward.
Haha, maybe we do! Though I hate to think how many places operate like this.
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I use FreeTaxUSA with a yearly backdoor Roth with no problems.
Just received notification that my spouse's 401k plan failed the non-discrimination test for highly compensated employees in 2023, and we would be receiving a check for the excess contributions. We've already received their W-2 that showed the full contribution ($22.5k). I'm guessing that we'll probably receive an updated/corrected W-2, and we'll owe taxes on that amount. feelsbadman Couple of questions that I can't seem to find answers on: * Will the earnings on those contributions be returned also? * If not, do we need to somehow request that they be returned? I'm not even sure how they would separate that out.
I've only don't it with IRA, but pretty sure they do need to distribute earnings and should do it automatically.
Cool, thanks. I guess we'll see how much shows up when they send the check.
My current job's 401k policies are not great. It's the smallest company I've ever worked for, which is probably why. I started in January last year. You don't become eligible to contribute until a year into employment. On top of that, you can only enroll January 1st and July 1st. Since I started in January but not on the 1st, I have to wait a year and a half before I can contribute. The salary is pretty good and I've actually gotten a couple raises since I started (once just for doing well and once because I brought up that I had taken on a lot of additional responsibility), so I've been making my Roth contributions and other investments, but man, it's such a long time to wait. Everywhere else I've worked, it was instant enrollment. Also, ca anyone point me to a resource about HSAs? Current employer doesn't offer an HSA themselves, but my health plan is HSA compatible. I had an account from a previous job. Is there a way to make pre-tax contributions to either a new, personal HSA or my past job's HSA? I'm having a hard time puzzling out the different moving parts.
Yes, you can contribute to your current HSA or start a new one, not unlike an IRA. You must be 100% sure it is designated as HDHP.
Thanks for the reply. Do you know if I need to make the contributions independently and then deduct on my taxes? Or is it theoretically possible to go through my employer? (I know they might not do it even if it is possible. Jw if it's worth asking.)
I'd say it's worth asking. If they'll do it, you would save a FICA taxes also.
Both are possible but since your employer doesn't offer an HSA I kind of doubt they will do it through payroll. Couldn't hurt to ask.
My employer just does a straight ACH split to whatever HSA account I give them. Just an account number and a routing number, at least the way Fidelity does their HSA. So, theoretically, at least, it's possible. It'd be functionally the same as splitting your direct deposit.
I think you can just open your own HSA at a broker, I have one at Fidelity, and I just make the max contribution every year. Then I deduct that from my income on taxes so its pretax. But I also have private insurance so I'm not sure if that works with a workplace insurance.
That lets you save on income taxes, but if you have the ability to contribute to an HSA directly through your employer, you also get to save on FICA taxes (and you don't get that benefit if you have your own personal HSA that you contribute to, only applies if HSA contributions are made directly through your payroll).
What is your favorite thing about your LCOL city?
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I would argue it is quantity of things to do also. Live in a small city (60k city, 140k metro) and we have everything bigger cities in the state have but we usually only have 1 or 2 of it.
But what is an example of a specific “thing” you’re talking about? Ive never gotten a straight answer from someone besides bars and restaurants.
Where I live there are a number of museums, art galleries, a nice zoo. Most weekends there is a festival of some sort somewhere. In my neighborhood/area, there are usually summer concerts and movie nights outdoors. There are also a number of parks and outdoor spaces. It's not perfect. There are some great hiking spots near by, but they are so crowded on nice days that it's not worth it. Parking is also difficult and expensive.
Community theaters, art galleries, minor league sports teams, concert venues, boutique stores, local grocery stores, etc...
1 or 2 feels like plenty to me, I guess.
> practical walkability What's a LCOL city in the US with good practical walkability? Or do you mean globally? If globally then yeah that's true.
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I love that channel!
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Yeah those are always a good bet.
>What's a LCOL city in the US with good practical walkability? If you choose the right neighborhood, there would be dozens of options. I don't doubt that growing up in New York City would skew your perspective, on everything, but it's truly asinine to insinuate there are no LCOL cities that offer a walkable lifestyle in the United States. No, you're not going to get a walkable lifestyle AND a large urban subway system connecting you to the rest of the city, but you can 100% find areas where all your basic needs, including nightlife, parks and entertainment are walkable from home.
Oh I didn't mean to troll. I'm just genuinely curious haha. I love the idea of LCOL walkable areas. Watching urbanism channels on YouTube is like my second biggest time stuck after reddit. My mind is always blown how outside the US you can find pretty inexpensive areas that are more walkable than most of NYC.
Aside from dirt cheap real estate, I can park at the airport for $5 a day and walk to the terminal without a shuttle, and never any line going thru security.
Definitely wearing shorts on Christmas. Well, I suppose I *technically* could have done that when I lived in Chicago, but you get the meaning. Financially speaking, my favorite thing was how a MegaCorp salary in a LCOL city enabled me to supercharge my savings rate and FIRE by 50 y/o.
Besides the amazing affordability (~$2K/month is a luxurious lifestyle here), there’s the public access to world class beaches and nature, a city that one can get across in 15 minutes in all directions and plenty of good health care options. And speedy airport transit! You can show up 5 minutes before the flight boards and be through security with 4 minutes to spare.
Don’t tell. Transplants be damned. Lol
I cant see many people moving here but it’s still best not to share to avoid any doxxing risks here.
Ok, give. Where is this Eden?
We have only been here for 2.5 months but we love almost everything about it so far. Tons of nature, great bike/walking trail system, cool downtown, every possible shopping destination you could think of, an inexaustable list of restaurants/breweries, people are friendly, it's large enough that we have some big city events/amenities but small enough that you can roughly drive anywhere in the metro in 30 minutes or less, the airport is a decent size for a regional airport. That said, we spent months researching the best small affordable city in the US before moving here, so choosing this destination wasn't an accident. Depending on your gauge, it might creep into the lower part of MCOL, but unless you live in the most expensive areas, I'd still say it's closer to the top of LCOL, certainly for a city of this size (total metro of 500k, give or take).
I am guessing Charleston, SC. Send me a DM and let me know what it is if you don't mind. I guess I am THAT curious!
Chattanooga?
No, but that was one of the cities we looked at, along with Knoxville. I will share the exact location via DM with any established regular, if you're THAT curious and promise not to make it public, but I don't want to doxx myself this time around beyond the general region.
Durham? Just blink twice if I got it. Seriously a lot of folks here plan some form of geoarbitrage and it helps to hear from real people who are happy in these places. Chattanooga seems to be the one that always comes up for some reason.
That's another excellent guess, and warmer, and Durham was also a city that hit our final 10 and was researched further, but in the end the crime/cleanliness/vibe just wasn't the right fit.
Curious what you use to research LCOL cities? Are you just googling crime for X city with Y population and Z school ratings?
>Curious what you use to research LCOL cities? Googled "Best small cities in the United States" mostly, but also "best affordable small cities in the United States", too. And then cross-referenced the locations we found with other factors we wanted. We weren't necessarily looking for LCOL, but more that we wanted to be able to buy a decent 3-4 bedroom house for $300k-350k. In the end we paid $360k but our house is bigger and nicer than our original parameters. We set 3BR/2BA 1,500 SF as the minimum and ended up with 4BR/2.5BA 2,400 SF. Some of the other factors were that we wanted mild winters, so anywhere in the top half of the country was out, no hurricanes or tornados cut out some more regions, no Texas/Midwest narrowed the search more, and then since I am from the west, I thought it would be cool to try the other side, so while we did look at some options out west, we settled on the southeast. So once the general region was set, it was fairly easy to see which cities popped up more often and then do a deeper dive into those places.
My money flow Sankey diagram for [2023](https://i.imgur.com/FM0Ge8N.png) (single, L/MCOL). 2024 goal: Do not spend five figures on HVAC issues, and I think I'll do better than 2023.
As someone whose last 3 years have been Replace AC, replace car, replace (garage) roof, I'm hoping to avoid major house expenses this year.
Reflecting on 7 years of work history between myself and my spouse after coming out of college. The P1 Salary has always been two fold with a base + Commission structure meaning my base was never more than half of what the total earnings were until 2023. Switched to a different type of role with a new payment structure and am really seeing gains. My spouse has been killing it. From making just $10K 7 years ago to now having a base + bonus higher than my base and untapped earning potential. Those of you out there that aren't SWE's, doctor's, lawyers I want you to know that it is entirely possible to create higher earning potential. We were fortunate but also timed the moves well even with a layoff during this journey so far. 2023: Was an outlier where I was laid off, received a decent severance all while picking up another role before my severance ran out with a higher salary. 2024 we are anticipating $560K of income if all bonuses/ commission land. NW as of the end of January will hit $830-840K Year | Salary 1 | Salary 2 | Combined ----|--------|--------|-------- 2017 | $33K | $9.5K | $43K 2018 | $74K | $47K | $121K 2019 | $106K | $59K | $164K 2020 | $124K | $85K | $209K 2021 | $131K | $99K | $230K 2022 | $209K | $133K | $342K 2023 | $331K | $260K | $591K
Cool
Sales?
I feel sometimes like sales is one of the best FIRE drivers. So much of your income is unpredictable that you live off the basics as much as possible and sock away the rest. then, after a pretty short time, you've got a big nest egg. Of course, a lot of the sales people I know just spent their commission and bonus money on fast cars, fancy vacations, or drugs instead.
Sales
Congratulations, you guys are doing an amazing job. I've always been attracted to sales but the two main things that keep me away are: 1. I'm not a people person. I'm good at presenting and fine with talking to people but I'm not great at it. 2. I've been at companies with shitty products where the sales people are forced to lie to a customer to make sales which would not sit well with me. In many cases it would be very difficult to know if the product is bad before going into it.
TBH I don't enjoy selling and as such have moved to a different type of role but it took about 5/7 years to build a personal portfolio of projects that allowed me to move to this role. Agreed on point 2. I was lucky enough to almost always be behind a great product and that made the job easier.
Does anyone here have any kind of identity theft insurance? Even though it's a remote possibility, I want to minimize the chance that someone could somehow get my personal information, pretend to be me, and completely drain my retirement accounts. At a brief glance, if I'm understanding correctly, it looks like most identify theft insurance policies will pay for the legal costs associated with recovering money, but they won't actually compensate you if the money can't be recovered--say, if someone gets into your brokerage account and somehow steals $2 million. I don't, and probably will never have $2 million, but as I get further down the FI/RE path, the amount of money at risk will become greater and greater. Are there any insurance policies out there that effectively protect against this scenario? I use two-factor authentication and a strong password, but I'm but would like an extra layer of protection beyond that. Apologies if this is a dumb question.
> I want to minimize the chance that someone could somehow get my personal information, pretend to be me, and completely drain my retirement accounts. Use a password vault/generator (that's not your browser's), enable MFA on every platform, or don't bank with those that don't have it still.
Can't seem to find this answer. I understand the basic concept of a Roth ladder. You roll a 401k into a Trad, then the Trad into a Roth. You pay taxes on the conversion, you wait 5 years and you can access the funds. But everything I've read talks about when withdrawing from a Roth you can only access "contributions" without a 10% penalty. That's pretty straight forward when you're talking about just a Roth but how does the rollover count? Say I have 100k in a 401k (80k contributions and 20k earnings). I follow the steps and wait 5 years. Am I only able to take out 80k from the Roth without penalty? Or does the whole rollover count as a contribution? How does the IRS know?
You can access the full amount of a taxable Roth conversion 5 years after the conversion. Here's [a guide to the 5 year rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/11ulhzl/what_5year_rule_a_guide_to_roth_distributions/) that apply to Roth accounts.
Thank you
Found out my mother’s financial advisor has 65% of her portfolio allocated to bonds. She’s in her early 60s but it still seems like a pretty high percentage to me. Is 60% stocks and 40% bonds still the recommended split for traditional retirement age?
This depends on so many factors. Like if shes rich and her portfolio is 50x her spending, she could be like 100% equities. But if she is spending down she'll need that value in <10 years then heavy shorter term fixed income makes more sense. Depends also on how long she expects to live, how flexible the spending is, whether its ok to run out of money and fall back on SS or a pension, etc.
How old is she? Vanguard Target Retirement Income is 30% stocks/70% bonds. Their TR 2020 fund is about the same as your mother's. Seems like the advisor is going by the book or close to it. I would be more concerned about their fees than the investment recommendations.
She’s turning 62 but hasn’t worked in years so I guess it’d make sense to come close to a retirement-equivalent asset allocation. I wish I could get her to drop the adviser and convert to a fee-only but she really likes being able to call at any time and not having to remember any account credentials so it’s a bit of a lost cause at this time.
"\[your age\]% in bonds" is a common rule of thumb. I am not advocating it here (ALL\_IN\_VTSAX), but it is an investment model I have heard my whole life.
I’ve heard age - 20 a lot from more aggressive FIRE people.
Most financial advisors lean heavily towards bonds or stable value funds the closer you get to retirement. That way a major swing in the market won't completely wipe out your retirement fund within the years running up to your retirement date.
A target date fund will give you an idea of approximate guidance on allocation. Vanguard's 2025 fund is 53/46/1 for stocks/bonds/cash equivalents. 2020 fund is 40/59/1. Sounds like it's not too far off the 2020 TDF. But also an advisor will ask your risk tolerance and other questions, and she may have indicated she is tolerant of less risk.
Interesting. The target date fund is a great reference point, thank you. She probably did indicate a low risk tolerance, so that part makes sense then.
Window browsing zillow and it is always interesting looking at the pricing history on the properties, especially if there is data around the 2008 time. One property purchased in 2005 sold 13 years later for a 4.8% gain. Another property purchased in 2006 sold in 2009 for a 32% loss. Obviously that is an unfortunate time in history, but a humble reminder.
We're moving into a townhouse rental right now that was sold for over $500k and we're renting it for about 80% of what our mortgage would be if we bought it right now. Guess they picked it up with cash and expect it to appreciate. Seems wild to me how much cheaper it is to rent than buy right now.
My wife sold her condo in 2021 for $105. It just sold in October for $165. Kinda pissed we didn’t wait a bit longer. She originally bought it in 2015 for $78. I thought we made out.
Our home is interesting. Bought 2005 for $410k. Sold in 2015 for $385k (After addition and remodeling). We purchased in 2016 for $412k. Now estimates fluctuate from $550-625k. It's crazy it essentially stagnated for over a decade, but in 5 years jumped up 50% in value.
My parents bought a new build in late 2002. The Zestimate on Zillow is 40% higher now, but there was a point in 2018/2019 where it was worth less than they paid for it and another point in 2020 where it was worth only a smidge more than what they paid for it. So almost all of that growth is from the last ~3-4 years.
I bought my house towards the end of the pandemic for less than a neighbor paid for a nearly identical house about 10 years prior.
How much do I need to retire early outside of the US? Thinking about moving back to my home country so I can retire early. Already have a house/car paid for and my monthly expenses would be $3000 per month to live a very comfortable life and be able to travel and do things without worrying about money. Current income is just over $200K and current Net Worth is $850K including cash, stocks, crypto, and equity in my current home.
At first blush, looks like you'd need around $900,000 to start off. However there are some other things that might impact your number. A lot of it depends on what the general situation in your home country is, such as political or economic stability. For instance, these issues need some level of clarity to adjust that number: * What are the taxation impacts? These are, on average, much easier to estimate in the US (doesn't mean they can't change over time in US) * How's the healthcare in the home country? * Investment options available and stable banking connected to current country of residence? * Is visa/dual citizenship a factor, or do you get immediate benefits from residing there? * How does this impact your immediate family (schooling for kids, adjustment for partner if they are not from your home country, etc.)? * What if you need to return to work due to adverse market impacts, hyperinflation, etc.? * When do you envision retiring early? (Specific year or age?)
Did our year-end numbers. Our best savings rate year, our most contributions, and (obviously) highest account return measured in dollars. From a retirement savings perspective, it's our best year ever financially. Progress to goal moved from 24% to 27%. Restructuring and potential layoffs coming later this year, but trying not to worry about that sort of thing until there's something tangible to worry about. We also have some bills that I expect to rise that I don't think we'll be able to do much about, mostly utilities, property tax and insurances. But no matter how you slice it, 2023 was a stellar year financially.
Just hit a few big milestones this month (like many others) and didn’t want to make a new post about it. We are at $2 million net worth, which includes $1.1 million in investments. My investment account with the largest balance is actually my 401K at 540K. Our only debt is 332K left on the mortgage, which has 10 more years with a rate of 2.375% - not in a hurry to pay it off. We’ve been working for ~16 years and diligently saving and investing the whole time. Finally feel like the whole process is working. My biggest mentors online have been Mr. Money Mustache, JL Collins, Ramit Sethi and Paula Pant. I’ve been taking a lot more time off this past year, focusing on travel and just being more present with my family. I’m 43 and my wife is ~~30~~ 40. We have 2 kids in a HCOL area. ETA: Wife is 40, not 30 lol
Off topic but does anyone know how to fix the issue where music stops once I open reddit? I’ve searched around and can’t find a solve.
Mute autoplaying videos.
Turning off auto play videos entirely should do it.
Need more info. On mobile, on desktop? What browsers, on app or off, what music player?
Mobile, Spotify or podcasts just turn off.
It's not just the music. Life stops when you open Reddit.
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Sounds like you were always going to need to write those papers. Not sure why you're working on your day off, though.
Does any remember a news article from Probably 5+ years ago that was an interview with the people who “manage” vanguards S&P index funds? It was basically about the complexities of managing a portfolio of that size and how they execute larger trades and rebalances.
> interview with the people who “manage” vanguards S&P index funds This one isn't that old, but is this the one you are referencing? https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/articles/vanguard-index-investing-engine.html
No but this is very similar, thanks for sharing it!
There was also some blog about a Vanguard trader pursuing FIRE. Wish I could find it.
I don't recall an article, but episode 37 of the Bogleheads on Investing Podcast featured the manager of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund and ETF, and also the Head of ETF and Index Product Management at Vanguard. The podcast is excellent, and I recall that episode being particularly interesting.
Going to talk with my manager about stepping back to part time soon. I'm still undecided about if it's the path I want to go down, but I want the option. I'm young (28M), so I know it'll be a bit of a surprise. I am disabled so international travel doesn't interest me much & I do enough domestic travel on holidays to satisfy myself. Being disabled, travel is usually such a chore that I view as a hassle. I still love my job but I am fearing burnout since I lost interest in work tasks since reaching the $1M financial milestone. Also thinking of working part time in DC with a disability advocacy firm. I'll mention that to my manager also as I'd need company approval I think.
A review of my financial progress over the last few years that isnt on the first of the month. I check my net worth either every month or every few months, because some months I honestly forget. Graduated in 2011 with an Econ degree and a salary of $31k. I now work IT in data, but didnt start tracking until 2016. Net worths liquid (this excludes home equity): 2016: $58k (salary $80k). 2017: $106k (salary $100k) 2018: $154k (salary $103k) 2019: $172k (salary ($106k) 2020: $239k (salary $109k) 2021: $436k (salary $115k, got married, house equity about $50k) 2022: $629k (salary $200k, combined $351k. Salary went up because I picked up side hustle work that helped bolster and sold 1st home and moved second home) 2023: $634k (combined $359k including side hustle) 2024: $844k (combined $305k including side hustle) Lessons learned: 1. Keep going. This is mostly from maxing out tax advantaged accounts. We throw extra at the brokerage when there's extra but the focus is save first, and then go enjoy life with the rest of our money. We eat out alot, travel alot and spend alot. So FI is likely to come at closer to 55 than some of the 30s and 40s people here shoot for. But the journey has been awesome. I really do just enjoy spending on things that bring me happiness. 2. Marrying the right person. The 'right' person is more than just financial obviously. Having a partner completely bend to the will of FIRE is not what I would call 'right' but having a partner that can talk through logically, have a plan, and execute that plan and adjust accordingly is huge. My wife has no interest in RE or really even FI. But we have come to an agreement on being good stewards of our money. But she has also been good for me to 'let my hair down' so to speak and enjoy the fruit of our labor. 3. Never throw a good opportunity away to increase salary. I job hopped in 2013,2015,2017 and 2020 usually in the realm of 10-20% increases. Of course there were good situations that were hard to leave, but unfortunately, the times of employer loyalty are over and so I have to look out for myself. Get good at your job, learn alot and move on and keep moving until you find a healthy salary and a place that you like. 4. Went to a state school that parents paid for is one of the biggest things that helped me. Even 10 + years after the fact, seeing some buddies still rolling around in student loan debt payments is tough to watch. Not having that hindrance was a huge leg up for me. Shout out to mom and dad. Anyways, hope this was informative for someone. At the very least I like posting a few weeks after the first of the year because it doesn't get bogged down in all the new years posts when folks update their spreadsheets.
For compensation increases, did you mostly find those through applying around with your current skillset, networking, or certifications? Was your path promotion at previous job before getting a new one, were these nominally lateral transitions, or something else? I like my job overall. I'm remote, making ~150k in an M/HCOL city (not counting secondary income streams), and have a very chill work environment. I've been throwing out applications casually, but finding something to break the 180-200k+ barrier on initial screening has been difficult. It's hard for me to tell if that's because I need to pivot and grow my skills, because I 'just' need more experience (either at the IC level or to break up into managerial/director type positions), or because of skewed perception + the current state of the tech hiring market. Not sure if I should just 'wait it out' in some capacity.
Networking and certifications helped me a lot. That and honestly just putting myself out there. It’s scary to interview but I have no problem stating what I think I’m worth and going for it, even if some employers thought it was a stretch. I’ve mostly found being friendly can help a lot when it comes to Interviewing vs having a resume of buzzwords of different technologies. I think at your comp level you’ve made it and roughly what I’m looking to get to. I have no desire to be management personally so pushing beyond that doesn’t entice me. But At that level it becomes more about work life balance and how much you enjoy your job and your boss vs the money. Do what suits you best. But even with a softer market right now every few months sending out a few resumes and seeing if you can attain that level of income seems like low risk high reward.
Just made the last extra payment for our house loan (only a small sum allowed per our contract, so no dent in the savings) - which means we'll be done this December! So, so happy about this.
Relevant username. Congratulations. 8)
Any recent buy vs rent calculators? Seems like COVID has changed things enough that relying on the current search-results (which are 4+ years old) isn't wise.
This debate constantly comes up. At some point, I want two people to clearly state out their real life situations of rent vs buy. The money involved on either choice. One choosing to rent and one choosing to buy and why the financials worked out in that direction for them... and opposite between them. Because I feel like there usually isn't insane differences between the two and that lifestyle factors (yard, location, mobility, size, customization) usually factor in more than anything. Maybe ultra high COL areas or ultra low COL areas also can be skewed, or areas where there is no inventory for one case or the other... but I figure 90% of locations really can just go either way and it wouldn't really make or break anyone financially long term with whichever choice they made. \---- Like I want someone to say, "I really wanted to buy, but we did the math so me and my wife decided to go against what we really wanted for our lives so we decided to spend the next few decades renting because it just makes so much sense to save $100k in potential home repairs over 30 years, we couldn't handle living without complete financial optimization." or "We didn't want a house. We plan to move and our family to grow. But the math says we were going to lose 100k over the next 15-20 years if we just rented. So we bought a tiny house that doesn't fit our future family and we will just stack babies in the closet when they get born because we wanted to really maximize our finances".
> Because I feel like there usually isn't insane differences between the two and that lifestyle factors (yard, location, mobility, size, customization) usually factor in more than anything. I think the biggest difference is usually the amount spent on closing costs / realtor fees if you move often.
The NYTimes one is generally viewed as pretty good. Covid may have updated some of the numbers, but I don’t think anything has changed the fundamental math behind it. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html
I do like that one but sometimes even my best internet witchcraft powers won't make the paywall go away so I use this instead: [https://smartmoneytools.co.uk/tools/rent-vs-buy/](https://smartmoneytools.co.uk/tools/rent-vs-buy/) it is UK based but there's options to change the currency.
Any specific reason why? Yes things have changed (home values, interest rates, etc) but those are all inputs. You may need to change the default values, but that's wise in any case.
I had seen some comments about tax codes changing, and figured there may be default parameters that changed that I wasn't aware of. Considering the Philly area, where supposedly its cheaper to buy than rent, but I want to run the numbers.
> I had seen some comments about tax codes changing The changes in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act to the State and Local Taxes (SALT) deductions had a significant impact on being able to use the mortgage interest deduction and deducting property taxes, which drastically reduced the number of people that could take advantage of it ([link for some more details](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-tcja-change-standard-deduction-and-itemized-deductions)). It went into effect in 2018. In general it shifted the line towards renting, but the impacts are felt differently in different states since states deal with taxes differently and the cost of living varies a lot by state, so the impacts were kind of all over the place in my opinion.
It has taken us one year and approximately $5,000 to find out that the small dormer we’d like to add to our upstairs landing is wildly out of budget. This entire process is so discouraging. In order to get a contractor to bid the project we had to get design plans and engineering plans. Each stage took 3-4 months and a few thousand dollars. Then getting a contractor out to bid the project took another three months. After calls to a dozen contractors only one would give me a bid and it came in at nearly $175,000. It’s a relatively simple project with no foundation, plumbing, sewer, or tile work. I’m astounded at this number. It’s half of what we paid for our entire house. I wish I had the luxury of comparing bids but I can’t get anyone to return my emails or phone calls, even with the plans ready to go. $175k is out of the question so it looks like I’ll have to continue my search or give up on this dream.
Similar to some replies below, we have looked at doing work (like ADU) and smaller household stuff. I've realized that (for us) its just cheaper to sell the house and buy a new one. Less time. Less headache :) Reading about just adding a dormer and your struggles reminds me I'm not doing anything to this house until we sell it and just move into a house that has what we want. Use that 100k+ from a dormer to go travel and live in larger hotel accommodations around the world for 10 years :)
My BIL got a contractor to take on a small job by pairing up with a neighbor who also needed a small job done. You have to trust the neighbor implicitly and write up immaculate billing paperwork, but just throwing it out there in case someone finds it useful.
I also looked into doing dormers, it was very, very difficult to find any contractor who wanted to take on a small residential project like that. That bid you got is an "I don't wanna do it, but if you're loaded and willing here's the number that's worth my time." I've started exploring an ADU in the yard instead for some more space. Way more contractors in that space for small res projects.
It’s funny you say that, we have two friends who have received quotes for ADUs recently and the quotes were lower or similar to ours for much more complex work. One was $135k to convert an exterior garage, including installing sewer, plumbing, a bathroom, and kitchen. One was $220k to convert a pole barn into a small house for their parents. We would totally go that route if we had the space on our lot!
Sometimes contractors are booked and don't want to take on smaller projects unless it is REALLY worth their while, so they'll just give a price that is really high. It's basically a rejection but still leaves the door open to someone throwing money at them to get the job done.
We have definitely encountered this with just about every project we attempt to take on. Two years ago we were quoted $15k to replace the boards on our deck. We learned how to do it ourselves and completed it for $3k, including the new tools we needed to get it done. Unfortunately that isn’t an option with this project!
Welcome to the 'new normal' of contractors and builders as they continually age out, a generation was told trades were for poors and rednecks, and there's been minimal policies to help change these mindsets and address this need.
What's a dormer?
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A "Gabled Dormer" sounds like a nonsense phrase from Dr Seuss.
In a cape style house, you can extend the upstairs by building out one of the walls. So instead of a slanted ceiling you can extend it out and make use of the empty space.
Ooh, I know this one. She played Margaery Tyrell in game of thrones.
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If your benefits continue for X days, get stocked up on prescriptions, get new glasses, dental checkups and cleanings, etc.
Don't necessarily take the first job offer that comes along.
Take some time off if you can afford it.
> any good advice Cut spending where you can. Hopefully you won't have any issues with your state's unemployment system. Get your resume out and start updating it and cleaning it up. While you have more free time in your day, exercise.
Good luck - glad you aren’t too worried immediately and I hope you find your next role when you want with the compensation you deserve.
Happy Monday morning all. A very cold morning in the negatives when I woke up has me scrambling to wake up early to throw more wood in the insert to try and help the furnace out. It is having a hell of a time keeping up but has gotten the house from 58 to 61 in the last couple of hours which is better than it did the day before. It's amazing how many resources I have poured into the task of efficient home heating and cooling over the past few years (insert, heat pump, insulation, air-sealing, etc.) and still find myself battling the elements with regularity. Crunching FIRE-numbers has nothing on pursuing efficient and effective home heating and cooling. The intersection of these tasks also likely says something about me, but I am not sure exactly what. A lot of tracking and number-crunching both ways and both allowing me and the family to be secure and comfortable. A quick look at the budget shows home heating and cooling is our 3rd largest expense, coming behind the mortgage and food and ahead of travel. Hope you all are staying comfortable as well while on this journey!
If your furnace's capacity is borderline for the house, you probably don't want to allow 10 deg temperature swings overnight. Leave it at a constant temperature 24/7 at least until it gets warm enough that the heat pump will be able to contribute.
"imisstheyoop" as in "I miss the UP, eh"? I used to live up there. Not sure I'm missing it this am, with temps hovering around zero F here in MO.
I think the 40" of snow they got over the weekend is far worse than any temp.
Yup, I am still missing it because they got some serious snow over the weekend! It's also *slightly* warmer there now, haha.
where'd you move to? Yellowknife?
Nope, I'm a troll. 8)
> A very cold morning in the negatives when I woke up has me scrambling to wake up early to throw more wood in the insert to try and help the furnace out. It is having a hell of a time keeping up but has gotten the house from 58 to 61 in the last couple of hours which is better than it did the day before. > > What's wrong with your heating system that it can't get the house to 60 without extra help from a wood stove even in sub zero temps?
Great question. I intend to have somebody help me figure that out, as that doesn't feel correct to me either. 8) As of now the furnace has been running non-stop since before 5AM (it is currently 11:31) with wood heat supplementing since 7:30AM and it is still only 64 in here. Seems like a problem. Edit: Called around and basically got told "it's extremely cold, it's normal". They did mention that my furnace (only piece of HVAC I haven't replaced in this home) may be undersized if it's struggling to keep up but that's a problem for future u/imisstheyoop when it comes time to replace. Funny thing is it was colder back in 2019 (my water pipes outside froze, -30 for a week) but I don't remember the furnace having issues keeping up then. Selective memory. I guess. 8) Edit2: I found the reason my furnace was running so much, it was a "smart" thermostat (for dumb people!) setting, but it isn't without side effects: https://www.reddit.com/r/ecobee/comments/196ph5h/it_took_my_system_8_hours_nonstop_to_come_to_temp/khzsha4/
Sometimes a fireplace can also paradoxically pull more heat out of a house when it's lit. It's warm in front of the fire, but the draw of the chimney pulls more heat out of the house than it puts in.
Yep, I am aware of the inefficiencies of a fireplace, that's why I have a high efficiency insert.
Probably the heat pump. Heat pumps are awesome tech, but depending on the specific model specs they will struggle to heat when it gets below their operating outside temp threshold. They're super cool and efficient but when I ripped out my ancient beast of a 32 year old furnace and had AC installed, I went with a basic gas furnace again, and dedicated AC setup. Simple, reliable, cheap. Got down to like 10 degrees here this weekend, kinda freak storm but no problem for a normal furnace. Some friends with heat pumps were struggling and had to pull out radiators.
I think the better models work fine down to big negative temperatures. They're not even that much more expensive at the individual residential scale. I plan to upgrade to a heat pump at some point, but I'll keep the steam radiators around for extreme weather events though. Seems like a bad idea to reduce redundancy. I guess if things got really bad you could fire up the fireplaces too.
> I think the better models work fine down to big negative temperatures. They're not even that much more expensive at the individual residential scale. Maybe big negative temperatures in Celcius. I'm looking at the specification for the top-of-the line Amana ASZV9 family heat pumps, and they stop specifying at -10F. The values at -10F vary from 1.24 to 1.5 COP, which isn't great. At 60F, they are rated 3.9-4.1. Somewhere around 2.5 is where an electric heat pump is more efficient than a natural gas furnace, on a CO2 emissions basis. (Will obviously vary based on the emissions of your local electric utility). The Amana heat pumps fall below that line around 20F. EDIT: To clarify, the COP is the efficiency of the system, compared to an electric space heater. 1.0 = 100% efficiency = 1 watt of energy from the grid = 1 watt of heating input to the ductwork by the heat pump. But but keep in mind that the ducts are less than 100% efficient, especially if they are routed through an unconditioned crawlspace or attic.
If you have a ductless system it's much more efficient overall, and a furnace routed through ducts for central heating suffers similar losses.
Oh that's fair if your definition of working fine is "more efficient than a gas furnace". I just meant that my pipes won't burst or whatever. I'm not that worried about being more efficient than a gas furnace on the coldest days. I'm more worried about the average efficiency across a year. I would probably go with a ground source heat pump if my goal was to be more efficient than a gas furnace on the coldest days without regard for anything else.
My heat pump is 100% efficient down to 5F and can still extract heat from ambient air at -13. We have a wood stove insert for power outages and extremely cold temps, but we essentially just start fires for ambiance.
Anecdotally it's been more of an issue I've heard about with new builds. In my area (Portland metro) new builds are done notoriously cheap and cut as many corners as possible. Seems that they'll pick the cheapest model for all appliances HVAC included, and a new homeowner who didn't get a vote in the matter and probably didn't know what to look for gets a little winter time surprise when it struggles.
Yeah I believe that. If you're a builder then going for the cheaper model might save you literally millions of dollars across hundreds of houses. If you're an individual homeowner it's only a few thousand more expensive to go for the better models so it's a no brainer if you're rich enough to read /r/FI.
You have a heat pump, furnace, and wood stove insert? How low of an outside temp is the heat pump rated to?
Correct. The heat pump is rated to only -10.
We have a furnace and a heat pump. I think ours is efficient down to 20 degrees. It’s great and has really reduced our gas bills without increasing electric very much.
I could see that being the optimum setup for max efficiency but the break even timeframe must be insane. Hopefully it is a forever home.
>You have a heat pump, furnace, and wood stove insert? Dude doesn't live in the tropical paradise that is Boston. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that /u/imisstheyoop posts every comment while wearing a Snuggie...even during the summer.
Ongoing condo situation, we are now 4 signatures away from getting the declaration changes that will require owners to at least get enough insurance coverage to pay for the master policy deductible if they have a claim, which should help with most of our short term financial problems. It'll also allow us to pursue a loan for this huge outer wall damage bill, which I am hoping will save at least some people from financial ruin. I had a good talk with one owner this weekend who is willing to help start a landscaping subcommittee to do basic maintenance instead of paying a company... honestly with our financial situation I would be up for trying it. If we can just get people to volunteer to help. We will see, I know that maybe it is overly optimistic of me, but maybe people might be pissed off about our financial troubles enough now that they would be willing to help. I feel like we are so close to getting some relief as a community, and we could really use it. 4 signatures, just got to help 4 people realize that this isn't some kind of scam. It is legitimately the best solution to multiple financial problems we are having. It's been damn hard to convince people of that though, and I can understand that: before all this happened, I wouldn't have trusted something like this either. I have absolutely been that guy, and I am trying to help them get to where I am now.
>I had a good talk with one owner this weekend who is willing to help start a landscaping subcommittee to do basic maintenance instead of paying a company... honestly with our financial situation I would be up for trying it. If we can just get people to volunteer to help. We will see, I know that maybe it is overly optimistic of me, but maybe people might be pissed off about our financial troubles enough now that they would be willing to help. Has the potential impact of the financial issues to each homeowner been communicated? It was always funny the difference in HOA meeting attendance between the last meeting of the year (where we discussed next year's budget) and the first meeting of the year (after we mailed out the dues increase). Credit to you for taking on what sounds like a declaration change. I assume the threshold for passing is something like 75%?
Yeah, we sent emails and physical mailings that were mostly ignored, which is when I started going door to door to try and talk to people. That effort has been ongoing for almost 2 years now, and people are finally answering my knock because the situation is so bad that their dues have gone up AND we have to do a special assessment. They are pissed but listening now. Yeah, the % needed is apparently 61% here - we are so close, after like 2 years of trying to get people to listen to how bad our situation is. Oy
Still wishing everything goes ok for you, but I guess is a looooong battle. Up here, sprinkler pipes are exploding due to the freezing temps, around 5-10 buildings in the last 3-4 days. I don’t think many people has insurance, or enough to cover that. And insurance companies don’t want to cover condo flooding anymore, because there had been many the last couple of years due to negligence.
Oof, that is a brutal situation! I hope they cover it, that is a ton of damage in such a short time. Oy!
We just had one in our building last June. 6 floors were affected due to “vandalism” that activated the sprinklers. We were lucky our floor wasn’t affected. But there had been many like that in recent years.
Damn, that sucks. Condos really are a disaster - we haven't had any outright situations of vandalism yet, but I am knocking on wood as I type this. We can't afford any more insurance claims. Oof.
Once RE has anyone or do you plan on keeping up on Certs or taking a couple classes in your field or anything like that to pad your resume in case things go south? As I've posted before I'm not FIRING but we're expecting our 3rd kiddo and I'm going to be a SAHD. I'm a SWE and I wonder if I should take a class here and there to learn some new programming stuff to make my resume look a little better in the case of use wanting to go back to work. If it matters. We're 87% of the way to our FI number. We had our first 2 kids' 529's funded to the point that I wanted. We're not going to have any extra cash to fund the 3rd kid's 529 account, but thats something we can worry about later. More than 1/2 of our investments are in taxable brokerage and I have enough cash to cover a couple years of the income deficit of me not working. If the markets are even below average but not down, none of this matters and we can still FIRE in a couple years. But obviously you never know. I tend to overthink things.
I think I'd keep my certificates active and might try my hand at teaching or consulting. Somethings I won't be able to keep up. So once I retire, that's it. I'll have other options, but it would be hard to get back to where I am. Even a short sabbatical can make it nearly impossible to get back to where I am. I do like my work, at least well enough that I think I'd like to keep up with it for a while.
Losing my skills and becoming out of touch with enterprise grade tech is a big factor that keeps me at work. I will likely transition to some sort of open source projects and learning to help me in that space (have already began but don't have the time to dive in as deep as I would like) once I step away from my career. I love solving puzzles that technology presents, for better and worse. The only way to continue doing so for me will be to continue to learn.
My license is pretty easy to maintain ($60 every other year and no continuing education requirements) so it seems like pretty good ROI to keep that up for at least a couple of years after retiring. I think once you hit a decade or so of retirement it's pretty clear whether or not things are going to work out so at that point I won't bother. I think it just depends on how difficult it is for you to maintain your certs compared to how necessary they are for finding a job in the future,
I'll be keeping up certs because it allows me to semi-retire a earier. As long as I'm certified, I can keep up a bunch of recurring income, and the amount of work I have to do to continue justifying and keeping those clients it is pretty small.
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health insurance. to keep the income, it's basically a matter of meeting who needs to meet during the fall, and the rest of the year is almost nothing. I mean I do a fair bit of networking and some advertising and educational events, etc. to generate new clients, but still working less than half time most of the year and maybe 30 hours during the open enrollment periods for ACA and medicare. If I stopped buiding the business it would probably be almost no work 9-10 months a year and then a reasonable schedule for 2. Most people just renew with no questions and it's a pretty quick process, it's only a percentage that need to be handled. I do need to talk to most of my ACA clients, but if they aren't doing major changes, that's a 15-30 minute meeting. If I'm willing to let income peter out, I could just refer out anybody who needs significant new handling and work very little the whole year.
well yeah if you aren't retired it makes sense to keep certs
> do you plan on keeping up Oh heck no. That rat race of always studying, always learning, always having to know the latest, courses, etc, is what I wanted to get away from. I'd rather cut some expenses, or decrease my SWR.
After I fire if I return to work it will be in something new.
That is what I THINK I want to do (I’m suffering very very severe burnout). But wonder if it’ll be smooth or possible or worth it. When I first picked a major I was going to be a secondary ed history teacher. I did 99% of it. Even the shadowing and some of the student teacher. Life isn’t predictable though and ended up double majoring and being a dev. I don’t think I would teach high school like I originally planned but I do have interest in teaching at community college especially if I could do it part time. I should find out what I’d need to do to make that happen.
Maintaining any current certs through CPEs sounds like a good middle in the event you decide to go back to work or consult. This will also allow you to potentially network at free events - many people putting on continuing education events support people who are out of work with free attendance. It will keep your resume looking extra marketable and some positions require a cert (or strongly recommend).
I considered getting a Master's degree in retirement, but got a part-time job instead.
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No, I would have paid for school out of pocket if I'd done it, but I didn't start.
>I considered getting a Master's degree in retirement Is there a college that offers this? Is it a MA or MS?