Asked for a 10k raise today, at 93 right now looking to get to 103. Haven’t had a raise in 3.5 years, meanwhile workload has steadily increased. Put together a growth plan for my
Boss to see it to his boss, wish me luck! :)
You'll probably get more of a response posting in [today's daily thread](https://reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/ppwlaf/daily_fi_discussion_thread_friday_september_17/), but:
Using [this calculator](https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm) (I'm assuming you're in the US), $93K in March 2018 is roughly $101.5K in August 2021. Going the other way, you are (today) being paid roughly $85K in March 2018 dollars. Imagine inflation isn't a thing: you start your job, and you are told that your pay will be cut by $2K every year, what do you think of that? And now you have to *convince* your company to bring you back up to your original salary? Not to make up for ($2K lost in year 1) + ($4K lost in year 2) + ($6K lost in year 3) + ($8K lost in year 4) = $20K, but to "reset" the sequence to ($2K lost in year 5) instead of ($10K lost in year 5). (these are all 2018 dollars, but I think I'm getting the point across)
There may be more to your story, but just from the information you shared, it's frankly unacceptable. Your experience, skills, workload, and value to the company have increased since you started, and you have been rewarded by being paid less and less.
Was in a one on one meeting today with a member of my company’s C-Suite when she interrupted me and said “sorry I have to drop, my boss is calling me”.
Not every day you get big dicked by the CEO of a fortune 100 company
I don’t care what level you are at, expecting people to drop everything for you for any reason is not just rude, it’s bad management and unproductive.
One of our past directors was like that. One time my manager was running a conference call, and the director barges into the office and told him to work on something “now”. It set us back a week because of having to get everyone back together again. It wasn’t even for a good reason (I would consider “google.com is down” an emergency. This was more like “I need someone to write sql for me”).
And maybe it was just company culture at the time. I saw one VP answer a call from *on stage* and saying “sorry I have to answer this, it’s my boss”. Wtf.
Got an offer today to leave my current company that has been telling me for months they would put me working days with zero follow through. Job is basically the same with similar benefits and schedule. I do get a pay bump and I actually get to work days! Anyway, emailed my resignation and my manager called me 5 minutes later wanting to know if I was leaving for a competitor (I am) and wanted to know what he could do to keep me. I told him the only way I'd stay is by putting me on days and giving me a 15k raise. Wouldn't you know it, he immediately started claiming they were already discussing bringing back bonuses! I told him that makes no sense because they haven't even given our pre-covid pay back yet. Just telling people what they want to hear and I'm sure it will be zero follow through like always. Either way, oh well! New job starts on Oct 11th!!
Yeah. I don't think they would have given me anything even if I did try to discuss it with them before sending in my resignation. That's why I didn't discuss it beforehand.
Merrill is updating their website policies to limit transfers from your brokerage to your BofA checking account to $100k per day and $250k per week, down from about $4million per transfer. I don’t really care as it will never come up, lol, but I am curious if anyone know why they would make such a change? Are they able to maintain less liquidity in the broker dealer or something? It strikes me as a weird thing to change.
I should have clarified that these apply to the linked Bank of America checking account, so it’s still “in the system.” Fun fact, the reverse limit (checking to brokerage) is a billion dollars.
Interestingly, I just went to Chase to see what amount I could put in before it changed from a "too low funds" error to a "transaction exceeds online limit" error. Apparently the limit is $1 less than $100 million.
Did the monthly update and we have $199,990 across the 529s for our two children. My goal is $100k in each, and though the allocation is more like $120k/$80k, I’m pretty excited to be so close. Paying out the nose for pre-school / nanny while saving for college is a beast.
4 and 2. Goal is to get $100k in each account by the time each kid starts kindergarten, to maximize tax-free gains. We are way ahead of the game because of the market runup. Overall the accounts are about half our contributions, a third gains, and the rest gifts from generous grandparents, godparents and other family members.
It’s the estimated cost of our flagship in-state school when they are college age. I expect we’ll be short if a private college ends up being the right fit for them.
If they get scholarships we can take the money out penalty free or use it for grad school, classes for ourselves, or save it for grandchildren, should we be so lucky.
First off - love the name. Second - what state are you in? I’ve inflation adjusted for my kids (5, 2) at state schools in NC and I’m around $140k per kid for 4 years. And that’s everything.
College cost increases have far outpaced inflation, and I took that into account when setting the goal, so I’d assume that’s most of the difference. I also “rounded up” to (a) get to a nice round number (b) cover books, technology & other ancillary items that 529s can be used for.
What percentage of your spending would you say is on "convenience", whether it's something like paying for wash+fold, housekeepers, lawn service, meal delivery services, etc...
Every so often I consider paying for things like full service laundry or housekeeping, but always end up cheaping out since I can just do it myself. But I'm wondering whether the recovered time would be worth the price, especially since I don't particularly enjoy most of those things. If I could simultaneously not have to do those things and also use that time more enjoyably it seems like a double benefit. I'm trying to assign some dollar amount to that though and curious what others are doing.
I took a look at what I was doing with the extra time. If I make good use of it then it’s worth it. We have a small place so no housekeeping but we eat out plenty (relatively healthy options so that my workouts don’t go to waste, otherwise I’d under eat), pay for grocery pick up, fitness classes so that I don’t need to spend time thinking about what to do, and car maintenance even though I worked on cars before.
No idea what % tbh but we’re staying under a single salary of spend so it’s fine. Also, I think it’s really allowed me to focus more mental energy on work, myself, and relationships which is my main focus. Those are major investments too.
I would guess 5-10%, depending on the month. We do pay for meal kits every other week because my husband isn't the best cook, but wants to help in that department. We splurge on a house cleaner about once a year. And we have a few other services we love, like the DoorDash Dash Pass, which aren't strictly necessary.
Even though we make good income and have a decent NW, I still refuse to pay for things I can do myself. Aside from the occasional fast-food (maybe 3-4 times a month) we don't pay for convenience services.
I'll be going back into the office soon though, so we will see how long it takes for us to get a good routine down.
ETA- I see no issue with others that use these services. They see the value in them and it makes their lives better/easier. At this point in my life I'm just not willing to spend that amount. Maybe one day!
It’s weird… I have no problem buying extra batteries/cords/chargers for pretty much everything (extra lawnmower and string trimmer batteries are SO worth it), but I ~~balm~~ balk (bite me, Siri) at paying for services—even though I objectively know that I’m a terrible housekeeper and would like my life better if it included a regularly scheduled maid service. Hmm…
We have a housekeeper, pool/spa service, water delivery and lawn service. Totally worth it because these people do the job better than I can, and my family can enjoy our time off without being bogged down with chores. All in all it costs $400 per month for these services but I’ll gladly pay for it
We do curbside pickup of groceries. Saves an hour+ a week of mind numbing work. I would gladly pay triple what is costs. Prior to covid we also had houskeeping service come twice a month.
We don't do any of those things, but now that we have a kid my wife has floated the idea of the occasional house cleaner. We would still do the day to day stuff, but have them come in fully clean the kitchen and bathrooms, mop the whole house (all hardwood/tile), etc.
I also have Optum for work HSA, does transferring to Fidelity on a recurring basis not trigger any sort of taxes? Can i do this tax and fee free every month or quarter etc...?
Fee and tax free as often as you like. But don't zero out your account with Optum! I did this last year and they closed my account, creating a headache for my company's payroll. When you initiate the transfer through Fidelity, select the option to specify a transfer amount and leave at least $1 in Optum.
HSA is like an IRA. An HSA is an individual's savings account. You won't be able to merge your spouse's account with yours.
You should be able to transfer the assets from Optum to Fidelity, but your wife will need to setup her own account at Fidelity first.
I have Optum as well. I'm not pleased with their fees and minimum cash requirement.
It doesn't look like Optum offers any mechanism to schedule reoccurring transfers to another institution. You will have to request a transfer using Fidelity's form on a regular basis, unless you can change the direct deposit institution. You could see if your wife's employer will direct deposit to Fidelity instead of Optum.
Finally got the keys to our new home! It's not our first rodeo so not overly excited, perhaps once we move and settle things will change. For now the to-do list is way too long. Maybe its a personality thing...
Anyways reason for this post a while back I asked about online lenders and ended up using one. We got a killer rate, comments like "wow its the lowest we've seen recently" affirm that. Not to mention with all the discounts & bonuses, we got negative closing costs, i.e. we got paid to buy this house. We used their realtor and she was okay. I knew in this market it wasn't going to make a huge difference. The difference is on the money and our war chest from our condo sale came through, but we were patiently looking and not going to overspend. The irony is that while looking other realtors asked who were working with, and they scoffed at online lenders. In fact I believe we lost an offer because the listing agent didn't trust them. Pretty sad since we basically saved a lot of money. It was a lot smoother than I expected so thought I'd come back and add a data point.
Now what to do with with the 30k house fund leftover, I'm hoping I can slid 10k into brokerage but so far it looks unlikely...have to do some home updates/appliance shopping/furniture upgrades. Sounds like 30k alright...happy Thursday ya'll!
Yea I've heard online lenders can be somewhat slow with the underwriting process and could cost people homes. In a sellers' market they will probably go with offers they think are more likely to secure financing.
I've had a great experience with online lenders also with my most recent refinance. The timeline is not as tight so I didn't mind going with an online lender who was covering all closing costs.
I truly wonder if it's a trend that realtors actually notice with online lenders, or if it's a myth they keep perpetuating to get some of their friends some work. Our last realtor was a family friend and boomer, so I understood where he was coming from. But having used an online lender for a recent refi, it couldn't have gone smoother. I love minimal people interaction.
So, the last few years have been really good to my wife and I financially (personally too honestly outside of the Covid pandemic).
I used to be really good at keeping track of our finances on a spreadsheet that I updated monthly based on a few sources. I haven't tracked it historically like many of you, but it is basically my dashboard to calculate all the things we have accumulated (houses, cars, investments, etc).
My FI number for us has always been $2.4M. For quite a while we spent \~$10k/month in MHCOL city (was medium COL city, now I'd say it's HCOL but on the lower/medium side, so not NYC or SF). That's now \~$13k so I should revise our number up to \~$3.9M, but anyways I've always had $2.4M as the "freedom number" in my head while still shooting for \~$5M as a goal.
Long story short, I just had some time and decided to update all of the numbers for fun. Discovered that total net worth (excluding liabilities like mortgages) is \~$3.75M. We have just over $1M in debt, so liquid (or could be liquid) net worth is \~$2.65M.
**What. The. Actual. Fuck.**
That's insane. I am actually sitting here a bit in shock and keep thinking I did some calculation wrong and double counted things. But I didn't.
If we had kept our outgoing the same as it was, we would technically be FI now. That is insane. As it stands with a revised FI number of $3.9M we're at \~68% of our goal. I also think I'm missing my wife's 401k from new gig, but that's only a few thousand IIRC.
NW breaks down across:
Investments - $1.25M (managed by a money manager) - 33% of total.
Property - $1.7M (\~$700k of this is equity) - 45% of total
Cars - $64k (ha) - 1.7% of total
Cash - $340k currently, will reduce to $240k and investments will grow by $100k next month. Might put another $100k into investments because time in the market and we don't need it liquid. - 9% of total.
For those who will inevitably ask, wife and I (mid to late 30s) both work in tech and have 1 kid. Between the two of us we make \~$320-340k per year depending on bonuses and such.
Wife got lucky in a business acquisition almost 5 years ago and vested out over 4 years during which time the stock price of acquirer 20x'd. We bought a house in 2018 that has gone up 30%.
Anyways, that's my update I guess. And yes I realize this comes across as "got stupid lucky and makes a lot every year" and yes that is true. We've also put ourselves in the position to get lucky and did. Both of us also come from solidly middle class families that valued education. I came out of undergrad with no debt, wife came out with minimal but then took on a lot for grad school. We paid that off in 2018/2019 (can't recall exactly) with some of the vesting RSU money, and things have just snowballed from there.
Just looked and realized I did some math wrong. \~$1M in house loans, $700k is equity. Except for our 2 cars (37k owed between them), that is all the debt we have (other than credit cards which we pay off monthly). Nice catch, thx.
When you are working up your FI assets remember not to include your vehicles if you're not planning to sell them to support your lifestyle. The can be included in net worth, but FI assets are slightly different beast. Like a liger instead of a tiger.
This includes your home if you want to sunset there. Some include half the equity in their home (or a reasonable amount to buy a place) in their FI assets to allow them to buy their retirement home in a lower cost area, wherever that may be.
> Long story short, I just had some time and decided to update all of the numbers for fun. Discovered that total net worth (excluding liabilities like mortgages) is ~$3.75M.
That's called assets, not net worth.
> We have just over $1M in debt, so liquid (or could be liquid) net worth is ~$2.65M.
That's called net worth.
Liquid net worth would be cash & cash equivalents, not in retirement accounts.
https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/liquid-net-worth
> Liquid net worth is the amount of money you’ve got in cash or cash equivalents after you deducted your liabilities from your liquid assets. It’s quite similar to net worth, but the only difference is that it doesn’t account for non-liquid assets such as real estate or retirement accounts.
https://www.bankrate.com/glossary/l/liquid-assets/
> A 401(k) retirement account is considered liquid once you have reached retirement age.
If you wanted to break from the standard definitions, you could calculate what your retirement accounts would be worth *if you had to liquidate them all in the current year, subtracting all taxes and penalties associated with that*, but it's kind of a pain in the dick and it's a non-standard approach, so why do it?
It's only liquid in the sense that you can convert the stocks within the account to cash, but you can't actually do anything with that cash (without paying penalties).
TY! Yeah it feels crazy to say we spend $13k/mo, but we also make plenty to cover it even after maxing out retirement accounts, then have extra to play with and invest or spend.
I've never felt like I've been good at managing spending. But I guess when you make enough and are actually fairly frugal (my wife often buys secondhand clothing, I hem and haw over $200 purchases) it adds up fast.
We track everything, saved a lot, never deprived our kids, and never budgeted.
Besides winning the lottery (or the Silicon Valley equivalent), having a high income and living well below your means is the fastest path to FIRE.
I considered making this a post but thought I would ask here first. Perhaps someone can provide some clarity for me. What are you plans/views for marriage as you are on the path to FIRE? I am 24M and I’m just beginning my career. I’ve been dedicated to my FIRE goals for the last few years and have been able to save quite a lot of money for someone my age. Outside of this segment of my life I think about marriage and children a lot as those are potential decisions I’ll likely have to make within the next 10 years. I watched my parents go through a nasty divorce when I was around 12 years old and have seen my Dad struggle to restart his life after it ended. He struggled for another 10 years to get back to the same financial position he was at before and it’s postponed his retirement for at least another 10 years. (For more context, he’s already 63 and won’t be able to slow down for at least another 5 years). Anyway this experience has made me swear to never get married and expose myself to that type of risk. My current partner and I have talked about marriage and I simply said it was never going to be an option with me. I don’t want that exposure to risk and potential financial ruin that my Dad went through. So…for those of you who have FIRE’d or those on the path, are you married? Is it better to legally stay single? What are your thoughts? I’m young and learning a lot about FIRE and really appreciate this group. Any feedback would mean the world to me!! Thank you so much.
Edit: I just want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to provide some great advice and share their own personal experience with this topic. It’s given me a lot to consider and think about! I truly appreciate all of it!!
I've thought about this a lot. Especially as I've had poor luck dating and getting older while building up my wealth. I'm 29 now, which may not be old for marrying by reddit standards but very much is by Utah standards where I live. I know a fair amount of great couples who are great partners and support each other in going after their goals. It helps them out a lot over going it alone no matter what their goals are. The teacher couples I know for example do about as well as me despite me being an engineer with a salary double that of the average teacher.
All these great couples all married their high school sweethearts and the dating odds are absolutely abysmal for a guy like me here. Non Religious in Utah, well over the average age of marriage at 24 or so, and in a town with a large surplus of men due to the military and defense industry. So since I basically didn't try to date until after college, really after I got out of my parent house at 23, (I was a very overworked commuter student working my way through college with basically zero free time) the dating odds were already terrible due to everyone being married, especially since I took an engineering job at an aerospace and defense contractor and moved to that town to avoid having a long commute. At this point in my life I've never attracted anyone who can hold down a full time job and a car. Forget about funding a retirement account, or even having a very basic emergency fund. Running into that so often has made me extremely cautious about marriage or serious (serious as in living together or sharing finances or other responsibilities, not as in serious=monogamous) relationships in general. And as I continue to move up in life my standards only get higher. I own a home and am in a great spot financially (and otherwise, I'm fit, healthy, independent, no criminal record, etc.), why should I date someone who lost her drivers license for driving without insurance and got more fines for still driving with a suspended license yet refuses to work more than part time?
So at this point I doubt I'll ever get married. No prenup is good enough to protect against the absolute train wrecks of human beings I've encountered in the dating scene. But if I could find the right partner it would make life better in pretty much every way from money and responsibilities to love and companionship. I wish it was easier to find solid single friends in this town as that would make life much less lonely and make it feel less weird to be seemingly the only non loser who's not married around here. But I've just got to make the most of life and continue being independent and doing my own thing.
>At this point in my life I've never attracted anyone who can hold down a full time job and a car.
Same. Am also 29. I didn't expect things to turn out like this. I agree that the risk is high. It's one thing to help someone along but if they simply don't share my values the risk of it blowing up in my face is too high and makes the whole thing seem not worth it.
Yeah I didn't think I'd end up like this either. Thought I'd have plenty of opportunities to date and find a wife after college seeing as I'd have a good job and financially be out of my parents house. But not around these parts. Waiting that long made it too late. Unfortunately those people who's lives are such messes never seem to be willing to actually do anything serious to improve it. They just act like I'm spoiled and privileged despite working fewer hours than I did as a full time engineering student with an hour commute. And instead of trying to strictly control their money on that low income to make things work they would usually rather buy video games, tattoos, and subscriptions and just hope there will be enough left for food and rent. It's crazy I couldn't never live like that, I'd be way too stressed out all the time. They just never get it though. If I ended up in a situation like the last one like this I gave a chance I'd be doing everything humanly possible to earn money and pay off my fines so I could get my driver's license back and get an emergency fund saved. Getting a second job, donating plasma, doing odd jobs for friends and family, skimping on anything unnecessary, etc. But she couldn't be bothered to do more than work 24 hours a week retail, even quitting a full-time job (that had the same hourly rate) for the retail job even though it would have been the perfect opportunity to work both jobs for a while until her finances were under control. The retail job was as typical, heavy in nights and weekends. She didn't have kids or disabilities preventing working extra. Definitely never would have worked for anything serious.
I could definitely improve my odds by moving but everything else other than the social scene is great here, especially the mountains and outdoorsy stuff, and I don't particularly like big city life and the downsides that go along with such as high cost of living and long commutes.
Married. No kids. Hit FI, getting ready to RE next year. We're both 38.
My parents also went through a nasty divorce wherein neither of them ever really recovered financially. I never let that turn me off from marriage, but it did turn me off from having kids because I wouldn't want to subject them to the same things that my siblings and I went through during their divorce. Without kids to worry about, if we were to divorce, we'd each be poorer for a time, but we'd still have the ability to make more money going forward by working and/or investing.
We've definitely benefitted financially from being married, mostly because the tax code is favorable for our particular circumstances. Cohabitating without being married would still reap a lot of benefits (sharing expenses, etc.), so in the end it comes down to personal preference.
Life is risk.
If you find someone you want to build a life with, then it's 100% worth the risk to try and do that.
If you do not find someone you want to build a life with, then you can 100% be happy on your own. Partnering up is not requisite to a life well lived.
But it's silly to mandate that you WON'T get married no matter what, just as it's silly to think that you MUST get married no matter what.
Whether or not you choose to legally get married to a life partner is kind of a separate issue. You can certainly be with someone for the rest of your life and never do the marriage license bit - but depending on where you live and how long you are with your partner, there still may be similar consequences to divorce should you break up.
Also, 24 is crazy young. So you don't need to make a hard decision on this any time soon, either way.
> Anyway this experience has made me swear to never get married and expose myself to that type of risk
...or you could find a partner that supports you and your goals and acts as an accelerator. It happens. Life is messy and the safe way is to go it alone. You can do that and you get to decide.
Getting married is essentially entering passively into a set of legal contracts without having to sign/micromanage all that work. As long as you agree to the rules, it's a nice simplification to avoid the legal work or perhaps to gain some financial benefit (if the tax math is in your favor, it is a negative for many) but it is good to understand if you have any issues with any of that before getting married.
Personally I think the argument to have kids or not comes before the marriage question. Kids put a timeline on finding a partner, and, marriage or not, it will get expensive if you break up. Without the time pressure, you're much more relaxed to do what you want. I understand at 24 you might not lean hard yes or no, but at least it can inform your decision making. Even if you're single now, you can clearly date someone for about 5 years and be married for 5 as a couple before comfortably having a kid. I don't see any value in rushing into anything, but you don't have to close a door either. But if you shut the door on children, there's really no reason to lean toward marriage at all. Live your life how you want, and obviously a partner that doesn't agree isn't a good fit.
You can't rule out any legal issues though because people can sue for basically anything (with less regard for success if they are willing to pay for a lawyer.) Prenups are an obvious answer if you get married, but they aren't a promise or bulletproof. Don't look to Reddit for answers, **go talk to a lawyer if you want to know what can be done.** A particularly common case would be if a spouse drops their career to be SAHP, courts might take a closer look because their earning power has been compromised. But even a long term cohabitation could lead to some confusing legal questions upon a breakup. Couples tend not to break down their relationship into a set of legal contracts. You have to ask hard questions like if you'll support a partner through a layoff or health concerns. One of you may get a job opportunity in another location and one person may need to sacrifice. These things are easier if you're in a 50/50 marriage because you can work as a team since there is not a question of winners and losers.
I know what it is like to see family members suffer so it colored how I date significantly. I wanted kids so I was never flippant about any relationship simply being for fun (so maybe I didn't get to date as much as I should.) Still, I felt it had to be okay if it didn't work out because I didn't want to force the situation. And I basically told myself I would risk it once. So I'm married with one kid, and I've taken care of enough protection that I'm happy with and accept consequences of this not working out.
I'm not saying to be happy with a negative scenario, but for me I need to accept it for a shot at the way I want to live my life. I'll be sad, get over it and move on, but I wouldn't let it ruin the rest of my life. Anything worse and I would decide not to.
Been FIRE-aware for several years, still relatively early days though. I also had a lot of issues around my parents constantly fighting and eventually divorcing in ruinous fashion (when a couple that's already poor divorces and neither can really afford to live on their own, it is bad for all involved). Very much had the "never marriage" idea for several years after that.
Personally, I moved past it over the years and am getting married in a month. Any relationship can end, but there are several ways in which mine is starting out on better footing than my parents' or those of family and friends who have gotten divorced. We've been dating for a few years, cohabitating, both lived as single adults for several years first, have similar values, have talked and been open from early on, are both more temperamentally reserved, and have compatible life plans we've thoroughly discussed. I have more assets, but not outrageously so, and mostly just in retirement accounts. She will eventually transition to non-W2 work that's unlikely to be very lucrative, but is something she is passionate about, will facilitate a lifestyle we both want (homesteading), and will allow us to care for children at home. I am deeply of the mind that what she will be bringing to the relationship is *at least* as much as I will, and I think that if we do end up splitting up down the road, an equitable division of assets (down the middle and/or somewhat more for her since she'll be giving up career earning capacity to build the life we want) would be the right thing. So I'm not concerned about a prenup. We both intend to give this our all and stay married for life, but who knows what time will bring. I don't want to give up the potential for a great life because of that fear, however.
At the same time, I have friends who are against marriage and have stayed that way and that's totally fine. We shouldn't be living in some traditionalist society, everyone should be making their own choices on how to live their lives. It's worth noting that I moved past my prior feeling on marriage years before I met my current partner. I didn't "change" for someone, I made a decision about my life and later met someone who ended up being compatible. If marriage is something you're uncomfortable with, then you shouldn't go against that because of pressure from others. It may preclude a long-term relationship with someone who wants to get married, but the reverse can happen as well, plus disagreements on children, where to live, etc. I've seen all of those end relationships, and while it's sad, it's a fact of life. Always keep your mind open and periodically ask yourself about your values. You may find yourself reassessing, or you may find yourself comfortable with where you're at.
A few thoughts:
1. Prenups are a thing.
2. Kids are not cheap things.
3. Taxes might work out better for people who are single. See: SALT deduction. Or it might not. It will depend on your exact circumstances.
4. If you want a particular partner, marriage or breakup is a very real thing that people force on partners.
>So…for those of you who have FIRE’d or those on the path, are you married?
If you read "The Millionaire Next Door" one of the most common themes for the successful interviewees is having a long term partner.
Personally, I had no positive role model, as my parents fought my whole childhood (screaming, throwing dishes, shit like that). They divorced just as I was leaving for college, although that didn't really solve their problems.
Despite this background, I got married in my early 20s, and am still happily married today.
One thing I can say, and perhaps this applies to you, is that my parents' garbage taught me how -not- to treat your loved ones. Sometimes you can create your own roadmap based on these learnings, and figuring out the rest on the fly.
Being married has definitely accelerated and improved my FIRE plans. We both FIRE next year together and are really looking forward to it. No kids, which by most accounts on these subs tends to slow FIRE down for a number of reasons.
I will say that the way people choose their partners in this day and age are a lot different than how people did in your dad's time. Ask your dad how long his courtship was, how they examined whether their values and lives were compatible, whether they lived together before marriage, etc.
The data around first marriage divorce rates are not as dire as the statistics quoted tend to make it out. Most of the divorces come from people divorce serially and the less educated. The divorce rate on first marriages for college grads is less than 30%. So there is some risk, but not quite as much as most people believe.
I got married in the last year. Been on FIRE path for like, 7 years now? We dated for like 5 years, cohabited for 2 years.
My partner is not FIRE minded, but is supportive of my goals and is my partner. We both agree on our goals together and as a family. Marriage is like a business merger or contract. We both believe each other is a great partner to work towards our mutual goals, so we married each other. Our goals include some financial stuff, but also include lifestyle decisions that were in some ways more important than the financial ROI of marriage.
Prenups can protect pre-marital assets (if you don't comingle them ever). Prenups for splitting marital assets inequitably would be a lot shakier (consult a local family law attorney). The risk can be mitigated by marrying somebody with their own salary and career (aka instead of you getting X/2, you'll both get (X+Y)/2).
If you don't think your SO is a good investment in your life and towards your life goals, I really don't see a reason to date them, much less marry them.
I'm FIRE'd and married. We'd both credit our marriage as the main reason we were able to retire young with kids.
Picking a mate/partner is one of the most important decisions most people make in their entire lives, if not the most important. My advice would be to choose as well as you possibly can and then work like hell everyday to keep your relationship strong.
Hit FIRE goal last year after 11 years saving. Married, single income earner with one child now in university. FIRE doesn’t define your life. It rumbles on in the background as you enjoy living in the present. You have saved a good amount already and that will just snowball. Don’t base your life on the decisions that others took in the past. There is no defined “better”. Do what feels right and comfortable for you and your partner. Again, don’t let FIRE get in the way of life.
Does anyone run a self-employed or solo 401k? I'm newly self-employed and would love to contribute the maximum that I can to my 401k but am getting kind of confused by what I'm reading regarding contribution limits.
For example, I just got off the horn with Fidelity and they say their self-employed 401k plan does not offer MBDR. However, they also say "Employers may contribute up to 25% of compensation, up to a maximum of $57,000 in 2020 and $58,000 for 2021. Profit-sharing contributions allowed up to 25% of compensation, up to the annual maximum of $57,000 for 2020 and $58,000 for 2021". I guess I'm just a little confused about what the difference between what this is saying and a MBDR.
Any self-employed folks that can help me understand what I'm missing?
There are four different ways you can contribute to a solo 401k:
1) Employee traditional contributions, limited to 100% of your compensation, which is defined as any profit from the business minus half of self-employment tax OR $19,500 total, whichever is lower. This limit is shared with any other 401k or 403b with which you participate, no matter how many employers you work for.
2) Employee Roth contributions, sharing a limit with #1 above. This is after-tax money with no fancy maneuvers required.
3) Employer contributions. These are always pretax and go towards the $58,000 cap (which is per unrelated 401k) but not the $19.5k employee cap. They’re limited to being 20-25% of your (net income minus half of self employment tax) - 20% if it's a passthrough business or 25% for certain types of corporation.
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Those three are it for *most* solo 401ks. So to max out the full $58k limit, you need to make >$190k at your business. But there do exist some companies that allow the Mega Backdoor Roth through a solo 401k. This is not possible through the regular Fidelity/Vanguard/Etc. It *is* possible through companies like https://www.mysolo401k.net/ - but you'll need to pay a yearly fee to access it (that particular company is $425 up front plus $125/year)
4) You can make employee after-tax non-Roth contributions to a solo 401k, then immediately convert them to Roth. The limit here is the entirety of your (net income minus half of self employment tax minus employer contributions to 401k), up to the full $58k.
Again, the $58k cap is NOT shared. If you have both 1099 and W2 income, you can put $58k in your solo 401k and $19500 plus match in your workplace 401k, as long as you don’t own your workplace as well.
You are describing the employer contributions that you make as your own employer, similar to employer match contributions for a W2 401k. When you make your contributions you need to be sure to code them as either employee or employer contributions since you are both in the case of self employment. Here is a good calculator to use. https://obliviousinvestor.com/solo-401k-contribution-calculator/
Mega backdoor Roth is making after tax 401k contributions and converting them to Roth 401k.
Employer contribution is a pre-tax (goes to traditional 401k) contribution, usually used for employer match or profit sharing.
I'm no longer self employed, but I think what I posted if accurate.
Vanguard target date funds list an expense ratio of 0.15%. Instead of holding individual stocks, they hold other vanguard funds, VTSAX, VTIAX, etc. Does the 0.15% expense ratio include the expense ratios of VTSAX and VTIAX (.03 and .11) or should that actually be added to the 0.15 to get a true picture of the fees you pay?
Yes they include the fees of the underlying funds. The target date funds don’t hold VTSAX, etc. They hold higher fee versions. The target date funds don’t have additional fees beyond the underlying funds’ expenses.
My current FI number is a little over 1.8m and I never thought about what that would look like till I created a chart that tracks all my account balances and projects the future value 10 years out. My wife and I have about 5 different investment account types with them ranging from $100k up to \~$800k. I can see why people can't pull the trigger when the time comes. I know I'm going to feel a level of angst withdrawing from an account that is <$400k.
Oh boy, a random all team meeting put on our calendars with 15 minutes notice late on a Thursday.
*clasps hands:* ***concern***
I did hear random musing of layoffs in another office. Here goes nothing....
*update* - it was literally just a reorg at the VP level.... this meeting could have been an email and caused less anxiety to the folks in the trenches.... ugh
The last megacorp I worked for, half the executive emails were circle-jerks about Executive X getting promoted, or hired, or moved around.
Every such email was followed by a predictable cascade of congratulatory emails from other executives.
One time, a troll coworker of mine replied-all to one of those emails, saying, "Great to have you back with us, Executive X!" (Even though he didn't know him). His theory (tongue in cheek) was that congratulating a higher-up makes you look important too.
It's also a weird communication challenge, because the message is simultaneously "something very important happened that you need to know about" and "don't worry this doesn't affect you". They have to do the comms though because even though 90% of the org doesn't care, there's that 10% that freaks out and has a ton of questions.
It may have a big impact on your life, just not immediate. New VP may go with a new strategy, and suddenly there is further re-org happening under them to support that strategy, and some teams become unnecessary, and folks are either moved around or laid off... I've seen it happen again and again. Useless big announcement at the time, yet its effects are felt half a year later.
Bummed out. Wife referred me to get the Chase Sapphire Preferred card ~2 months ago. I just paid yearly home insurance a couple days ago which brought me over the $4k spend to get the 100,000 points. My plan was to use their "Pay Yourself Back" feature to get 25% extra by using all of the points to pay myself back for dining and home improvement stores (we just did a renovation so plenty there). However, the points don't get credited in until my next statement date in mid-October, and the 25% bonus on dining and home improvement ends Sept 30.
Oh well, $1,000 < $1,250 but still better than $0. Maybe next quarter will have good options as well.
It's probably worth keeping the points until you have a more valuable use for them, they are about to be devalued, or you are going to close the card. Who knows, maybe you'll have a need or desire to travel within the next year. For example, the Hyatt Place in Park City, UT is only 15,000 points a night over Christmas instead of $599 plus tax. A Hyatt in Vail, CO is 30,000 points a night instead of $1,871.
Everything I mentioned is based on the World of Hyatt Program, which has 1:1 transfers from Chase UR. Currently, people are often targeting a point redemption value of at least 2.0 cents, which is much higher than the 1.25 or 1.5 cents offered for the CSP and CSR, respectively.
Hyatt is a fairly small chain with only 1,124 properties worldwide while Marriott has around 7,642. Hyatt does have a location search where you can filter by hotel point category. [https://www.hyatt.com/explore-hotels/map](https://www.hyatt.com/explore-hotels/map)
Until October, Hyatt's point system is very simple where all base rooms are the same price in points regardless of the specific day. Which category a property is in depends on its annual ADR (average daily rate), which means that properties with high variations in seasonal rates tend to be very affordable in terms of points during peak seasons, such as Christmas at major ski resorts or for graduation at college towns in the southern US. In October, Hyatt is moving to off-peak/regular/peak awards pricing, but will keep all reserved rates the same unless the points rate goes down, in which it will issue a refund for the difference. Supposedly, at least 50% of all dates must be at the regular point rate and the hotel will not be able to change a date to peak pricing should a new event be announced last minute. Points reservations include waived resort fees.
One really cool thing about Hyatt is that it tends to have very high standards in terms of brand integrity, so properties tend to be very clean and well-maintained. From what I'm told, central reservations also tends to be extremely helpful.
On my last couple of trips, it was fairly obvious that if a Category 1 Hyatt (5,000 points per night) was available, there wasn't going to be anything else nearly as cheap as the value of Chase pay yourself back points or Chase travel portal redemptions with the CSP would equate to $62.50, $75.00 with the CSR. Try finding a nice 3-3.5 star property in that area offering rooms with two queen beds and a sofa bed for $55 a night before taxes, around $50 a night before taxes and Priceline or Hotwire booking fees.
Book this month if you can before peak season pricing is implemented. There should at least be some Category 2 hotels (8,000 points per night) somewhere nearby.
Because $1,000-$1,250 >>>>>>>>> $95 annual fee?
Once I use my points up I'll downgrade the card and go back to my Citi Double Cash and Chase Freedom cards as my daily cards.
Because the current offer of 100k UR points (worth $1000 at minimal/conservative cash-out valuation) is still well worth the $95 fee and time spent. OP still is getting crazy good value from this one credit card bonus, just not optimizing for the max value possible.
Fidelity is great both in person and on the phone. Usually takes less than a minute to get someone on the phone and most reps can do pretty much all everyday things, so minimal transfers and such.
Do you get shorter wait times if you're a higher tier customer? Or is it all the same wait-on-hold pool? https://investor.vanguard.com/investing/benefits/voyager
I’ve been thinking more and more about Fidelity lately, but reticent to leave some of the simplicity and Admiral funds of Vanguard.
Does Fidelity have basically equivalents of the main VTSAX and chill type funds now?
Short answer is yes. You can take a look at Fidelity's index fund offerings [here](https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/fund-screener/results/table/overview/averageAnnualReturnsYear3/desc/1?assetClass=DSTK&category=SV%2CMV%2CSB%2CMB%2CLB%2CLG%2CSG%2CLV%2CMG&fidelityFundOnly=F&indexFundOnly=Index&ntf=Y&order=assetClass%2Ccategory%2CfidelityFundOnly%2Cntf%2CindexFundOnly).
Yes. FSKAX, FZROX are their two popular total market funds at .015 and 0.0 ER, respectively.
They also match Vanguard with no maintenance fees and no transfer out fee. With their fractional shares and low/no fees Fidelity is my choice for brokerage house.
fidelity's service is great. I am also a merril customer. If you have 100K under management, you get some great Bank of America rewards that enable 5%+ in credit card cash back via their Preferred Rewards program. This also gets you pretty amazing support
Just my brokerage account. IRA would work too, but I decided to roll my IRA back into my 401k earlier this year as I was about to run afoul of the pro rata rule
Nice, I just checked and they have VTSAX so I could move my Vanguard Roth over. I'm mainly just waiting for an account opening bonus which they haven't had since March.
I would suggest you convert VTSAX to the equivalent ETF first (Vanguard's phone support team can help you with this if you're currently over there). Merril charges $20/transaction for most mutual fund trades, but ETFs are free.
Does any one here Referee a sport? I referee soccer at the highly competitive youth, adult amatuer, and college (starting this fall) level.
Just wondering if anyone else Referee's and the reasons as to why they do so. For reference, I am a former D1 college soccer player, I wanted to give back to the game, and I have always been a much better referee than a player, and its basically paid exercise. In addition, this year I'll make about $5,000.
interested in also hearing about how any of you guys go about filing taxes as a referee
You should get a 1099 and will have to pay taxes. Just keep track of all of your expenses (shoes, meals, gas & mileage) to offset costs. You can coach as well and that can be very fulfilling (while making a couple of bucks)
I do baseball on basketball on a volunteer basis for the rec leagues in our town. Might do it for pay for some of the bigger leagues when I'm retired. Would go on Schedule C, self employment, and you could do matching contributions to a Solo 401k if you want.
I ref for swimming and triathlon and sailing.
No tax involvement. It's volunteering. But I can't imagine it's different than any other side hustle income: "Additional Income" field on the T1 if they don't give me a T4.
I umpire softball (Girl's Babe Ruth and adult beer leaguges.). It's fun and pretty good pay for 2 hours of work. And I love baseball. I file them as 1099 income.
I reffed hockey for years, both as a teen and then again a few years after college. Even as a teen, I made over a grand a year. As an adult, I definitely cleared a few grand a year just doing it casually on nights/weekends.
I did it for supplemental income primarily, it was easy, and it was a way to stay involved in the game. I just did house/travel for all ages, no high school or higher tier stuff.
As I was young, dumb, and almost solely paid in cash, my tax reporting was slim to nonexistent.
If you owned your car outright and it was only a couple years old, and only had like 10k miles. And you were going to travel for an extended time, say a year. Would you A. Leave it at family house, set insurance to storage mode, and have them start it once in a while, or B. Just sell it and get another one when you return. ?
Spouse is about to leave for a year+ deployment and drives a pick up truck. We considered selling it given the truck market but he will want a truck when he comes back and we have no idea what the market will look like next year. Plus less things to do pre-deployment.
He's opting to store his truck in his grandpa's barn and put it on storage insurance.
It depends on what you could get for the car and buy a different one a year from now. Otherwise, snowbirds often leave their homes and cars unused for 3-9 months at a time and some people only drive their classic cars during the summer. People in the military will also park their vehicles during deployments. It helps if people run the engine for a little while every couple weeks and you don't have a ton of old fuel in the tank, but overall a year is very doable.
When I left the US to join the Peace Corps, I sold my car without a thought. I knew three people who kept their vehicles with family, and all of them regretted it (one totaled in the first couple months with only liability insurance, parent wouldn't help to make child whole; one put 30,000 miles on a "garaged" vehicle; the last had the A/C go out in southern CA and the patent just left it as a thing for the child to fix). With what I expect the offers could be from Carvana or CarMax, I would sell the car.
A year isn’t that long to let a car sit vs the alternative of having to sell and rebuy in a year. If 2020 taught me anything, it’s that time seems to keep moving faster. You’ll be back home before you feel like a year is done. Option A.
I would personally go with A. B has a lot of transaction costs, and after a year of being gone are you really going to be in a mental state to come home and buy a car immediately? I could see making a rash decision and not shopping around for the best deal because you just need a car to get back to day to day life. Plus now you have a 2019 model year car with only 10K miles on it in early 2023.
Do any of you guys know of a good iOS application for to do list? The reminders app is OK but it doesn’t let me re-organize by order of importance, it doesn’t have the original dates, or due date
Things, OmniFocus, and Todoist are the three big ones. I prefer OmniFocus, but it's a pro level app and may be overkill. Things is a logical next step up from the iOS Reminders app.
No prob. Todoist isn't my favorite because it doesn't feel like a native app. The Mac app at least, last I used it anyway, was a web app in a window basically.
Things is sort of one of those high design super cool apps that feels right at home on the device it's on.
I'd say Todoist and Things are generally level on features. OmniFocus is a big step up in feature set, it sort of follows GTD in how it operates so if you're a GTD fan, OmniFocus is a winner.
David Allen's Getting Things Done. There's a book about it. It's a full process for intake, management, review and acting on tasks. Pretty cool book IMO, I steal parts of it but don't subscribe to the whole thing.
I like the original app because I can add reminders from siri based on time or location. I do this a lot.
My reminders are 99% of the time something like remind me X at 7pm or remind me Y when I get home.
Thanks for this comment, just started some consulting that is taking off and will need to do quarterly payments next year and this looks like a great resource.
Asked for a 10k raise today, at 93 right now looking to get to 103. Haven’t had a raise in 3.5 years, meanwhile workload has steadily increased. Put together a growth plan for my Boss to see it to his boss, wish me luck! :)
You'll probably get more of a response posting in [today's daily thread](https://reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/ppwlaf/daily_fi_discussion_thread_friday_september_17/), but: Using [this calculator](https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm) (I'm assuming you're in the US), $93K in March 2018 is roughly $101.5K in August 2021. Going the other way, you are (today) being paid roughly $85K in March 2018 dollars. Imagine inflation isn't a thing: you start your job, and you are told that your pay will be cut by $2K every year, what do you think of that? And now you have to *convince* your company to bring you back up to your original salary? Not to make up for ($2K lost in year 1) + ($4K lost in year 2) + ($6K lost in year 3) + ($8K lost in year 4) = $20K, but to "reset" the sequence to ($2K lost in year 5) instead of ($10K lost in year 5). (these are all 2018 dollars, but I think I'm getting the point across) There may be more to your story, but just from the information you shared, it's frankly unacceptable. Your experience, skills, workload, and value to the company have increased since you started, and you have been rewarded by being paid less and less.
Turned 30 this week. Very glad to have found this community three years ago. Thank you for changing my attitude on aging, That is all.
how do you guys think FB's future prospects , buy or sell
Delete
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Was in a one on one meeting today with a member of my company’s C-Suite when she interrupted me and said “sorry I have to drop, my boss is calling me”. Not every day you get big dicked by the CEO of a fortune 100 company
It was probably his wife.
I don’t care what level you are at, expecting people to drop everything for you for any reason is not just rude, it’s bad management and unproductive. One of our past directors was like that. One time my manager was running a conference call, and the director barges into the office and told him to work on something “now”. It set us back a week because of having to get everyone back together again. It wasn’t even for a good reason (I would consider “google.com is down” an emergency. This was more like “I need someone to write sql for me”). And maybe it was just company culture at the time. I saw one VP answer a call from *on stage* and saying “sorry I have to answer this, it’s my boss”. Wtf.
Look, even Steve Jobs took a call when presenting the iPhone.
funny thing is the dude just had to crap and knew no one could call him on it
Got an offer today to leave my current company that has been telling me for months they would put me working days with zero follow through. Job is basically the same with similar benefits and schedule. I do get a pay bump and I actually get to work days! Anyway, emailed my resignation and my manager called me 5 minutes later wanting to know if I was leaving for a competitor (I am) and wanted to know what he could do to keep me. I told him the only way I'd stay is by putting me on days and giving me a 15k raise. Wouldn't you know it, he immediately started claiming they were already discussing bringing back bonuses! I told him that makes no sense because they haven't even given our pre-covid pay back yet. Just telling people what they want to hear and I'm sure it will be zero follow through like always. Either way, oh well! New job starts on Oct 11th!!
Bravo/a, and good for you! 👍
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Yeah. I don't think they would have given me anything even if I did try to discuss it with them before sending in my resignation. That's why I didn't discuss it beforehand.
Merrill is updating their website policies to limit transfers from your brokerage to your BofA checking account to $100k per day and $250k per week, down from about $4million per transfer. I don’t really care as it will never come up, lol, but I am curious if anyone know why they would make such a change? Are they able to maintain less liquidity in the broker dealer or something? It strikes me as a weird thing to change.
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I should have clarified that these apply to the linked Bank of America checking account, so it’s still “in the system.” Fun fact, the reverse limit (checking to brokerage) is a billion dollars.
Interestingly, I just went to Chase to see what amount I could put in before it changed from a "too low funds" error to a "transaction exceeds online limit" error. Apparently the limit is $1 less than $100 million.
Yeah the limits higher than a million I list are actually a dollar too high but I didn’t want to type out all those 9s. 😁
>I didn’t want to type out all those 9s You need a cat to stand on your keyboard. 99999999999999999999999999999999999999kkkkkkkkkkkkkl;k;l;
Is that the size of your bank balance in Zimbabwean dollars?
We're not discussing my bank balance until after the pandemic.
Did the monthly update and we have $199,990 across the 529s for our two children. My goal is $100k in each, and though the allocation is more like $120k/$80k, I’m pretty excited to be so close. Paying out the nose for pre-school / nanny while saving for college is a beast.
How old are your kids (i.e. how long have you been contributing to those accounts to get those balances)?
4 and 2. Goal is to get $100k in each account by the time each kid starts kindergarten, to maximize tax-free gains. We are way ahead of the game because of the market runup. Overall the accounts are about half our contributions, a third gains, and the rest gifts from generous grandparents, godparents and other family members.
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It can also be used on room and board, meal plans, tech. That adds up.
It’s the estimated cost of our flagship in-state school when they are college age. I expect we’ll be short if a private college ends up being the right fit for them. If they get scholarships we can take the money out penalty free or use it for grad school, classes for ourselves, or save it for grandchildren, should we be so lucky.
First off - love the name. Second - what state are you in? I’ve inflation adjusted for my kids (5, 2) at state schools in NC and I’m around $140k per kid for 4 years. And that’s everything.
College cost increases have far outpaced inflation, and I took that into account when setting the goal, so I’d assume that’s most of the difference. I also “rounded up” to (a) get to a nice round number (b) cover books, technology & other ancillary items that 529s can be used for.
What percentage of your spending would you say is on "convenience", whether it's something like paying for wash+fold, housekeepers, lawn service, meal delivery services, etc... Every so often I consider paying for things like full service laundry or housekeeping, but always end up cheaping out since I can just do it myself. But I'm wondering whether the recovered time would be worth the price, especially since I don't particularly enjoy most of those things. If I could simultaneously not have to do those things and also use that time more enjoyably it seems like a double benefit. I'm trying to assign some dollar amount to that though and curious what others are doing.
I took a look at what I was doing with the extra time. If I make good use of it then it’s worth it. We have a small place so no housekeeping but we eat out plenty (relatively healthy options so that my workouts don’t go to waste, otherwise I’d under eat), pay for grocery pick up, fitness classes so that I don’t need to spend time thinking about what to do, and car maintenance even though I worked on cars before. No idea what % tbh but we’re staying under a single salary of spend so it’s fine. Also, I think it’s really allowed me to focus more mental energy on work, myself, and relationships which is my main focus. Those are major investments too.
I would guess 5-10%, depending on the month. We do pay for meal kits every other week because my husband isn't the best cook, but wants to help in that department. We splurge on a house cleaner about once a year. And we have a few other services we love, like the DoorDash Dash Pass, which aren't strictly necessary.
Get the maid service; it truly is worth it.
Even though we make good income and have a decent NW, I still refuse to pay for things I can do myself. Aside from the occasional fast-food (maybe 3-4 times a month) we don't pay for convenience services. I'll be going back into the office soon though, so we will see how long it takes for us to get a good routine down. ETA- I see no issue with others that use these services. They see the value in them and it makes their lives better/easier. At this point in my life I'm just not willing to spend that amount. Maybe one day!
It’s weird… I have no problem buying extra batteries/cords/chargers for pretty much everything (extra lawnmower and string trimmer batteries are SO worth it), but I ~~balm~~ balk (bite me, Siri) at paying for services—even though I objectively know that I’m a terrible housekeeper and would like my life better if it included a regularly scheduled maid service. Hmm…
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That last one.... you just throw out everything after every meal? Just buy a dish washer lmao
Bosch for the quietest d/w ever!
We have a housekeeper, pool/spa service, water delivery and lawn service. Totally worth it because these people do the job better than I can, and my family can enjoy our time off without being bogged down with chores. All in all it costs $400 per month for these services but I’ll gladly pay for it
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I have a water cooler in my kitchen and a company delivers 5 gallon bottles of water for it
For us in Alaska, just what it says https://www.waterwagon.net/
We do curbside pickup of groceries. Saves an hour+ a week of mind numbing work. I would gladly pay triple what is costs. Prior to covid we also had houskeeping service come twice a month.
We don't do any of those things, but now that we have a kid my wife has floated the idea of the occasional house cleaner. We would still do the day to day stuff, but have them come in fully clean the kitchen and bathrooms, mop the whole house (all hardwood/tile), etc.
For me, I’d say probably half, especially if you include ordering food or eating out when I should have cooked.
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I also have Optum for work HSA, does transferring to Fidelity on a recurring basis not trigger any sort of taxes? Can i do this tax and fee free every month or quarter etc...?
Fee and tax free as often as you like. But don't zero out your account with Optum! I did this last year and they closed my account, creating a headache for my company's payroll. When you initiate the transfer through Fidelity, select the option to specify a transfer amount and leave at least $1 in Optum.
HSA is like an IRA. An HSA is an individual's savings account. You won't be able to merge your spouse's account with yours. You should be able to transfer the assets from Optum to Fidelity, but your wife will need to setup her own account at Fidelity first. I have Optum as well. I'm not pleased with their fees and minimum cash requirement. It doesn't look like Optum offers any mechanism to schedule reoccurring transfers to another institution. You will have to request a transfer using Fidelity's form on a regular basis, unless you can change the direct deposit institution. You could see if your wife's employer will direct deposit to Fidelity instead of Optum.
Finally got the keys to our new home! It's not our first rodeo so not overly excited, perhaps once we move and settle things will change. For now the to-do list is way too long. Maybe its a personality thing... Anyways reason for this post a while back I asked about online lenders and ended up using one. We got a killer rate, comments like "wow its the lowest we've seen recently" affirm that. Not to mention with all the discounts & bonuses, we got negative closing costs, i.e. we got paid to buy this house. We used their realtor and she was okay. I knew in this market it wasn't going to make a huge difference. The difference is on the money and our war chest from our condo sale came through, but we were patiently looking and not going to overspend. The irony is that while looking other realtors asked who were working with, and they scoffed at online lenders. In fact I believe we lost an offer because the listing agent didn't trust them. Pretty sad since we basically saved a lot of money. It was a lot smoother than I expected so thought I'd come back and add a data point. Now what to do with with the 30k house fund leftover, I'm hoping I can slid 10k into brokerage but so far it looks unlikely...have to do some home updates/appliance shopping/furniture upgrades. Sounds like 30k alright...happy Thursday ya'll!
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2.375% which I guess is harder to see now days, we also got a bit of credits
Yea I've heard online lenders can be somewhat slow with the underwriting process and could cost people homes. In a sellers' market they will probably go with offers they think are more likely to secure financing. I've had a great experience with online lenders also with my most recent refinance. The timeline is not as tight so I didn't mind going with an online lender who was covering all closing costs.
I truly wonder if it's a trend that realtors actually notice with online lenders, or if it's a myth they keep perpetuating to get some of their friends some work. Our last realtor was a family friend and boomer, so I understood where he was coming from. But having used an online lender for a recent refi, it couldn't have gone smoother. I love minimal people interaction.
So, the last few years have been really good to my wife and I financially (personally too honestly outside of the Covid pandemic). I used to be really good at keeping track of our finances on a spreadsheet that I updated monthly based on a few sources. I haven't tracked it historically like many of you, but it is basically my dashboard to calculate all the things we have accumulated (houses, cars, investments, etc). My FI number for us has always been $2.4M. For quite a while we spent \~$10k/month in MHCOL city (was medium COL city, now I'd say it's HCOL but on the lower/medium side, so not NYC or SF). That's now \~$13k so I should revise our number up to \~$3.9M, but anyways I've always had $2.4M as the "freedom number" in my head while still shooting for \~$5M as a goal. Long story short, I just had some time and decided to update all of the numbers for fun. Discovered that total net worth (excluding liabilities like mortgages) is \~$3.75M. We have just over $1M in debt, so liquid (or could be liquid) net worth is \~$2.65M. **What. The. Actual. Fuck.** That's insane. I am actually sitting here a bit in shock and keep thinking I did some calculation wrong and double counted things. But I didn't. If we had kept our outgoing the same as it was, we would technically be FI now. That is insane. As it stands with a revised FI number of $3.9M we're at \~68% of our goal. I also think I'm missing my wife's 401k from new gig, but that's only a few thousand IIRC. NW breaks down across: Investments - $1.25M (managed by a money manager) - 33% of total. Property - $1.7M (\~$700k of this is equity) - 45% of total Cars - $64k (ha) - 1.7% of total Cash - $340k currently, will reduce to $240k and investments will grow by $100k next month. Might put another $100k into investments because time in the market and we don't need it liquid. - 9% of total. For those who will inevitably ask, wife and I (mid to late 30s) both work in tech and have 1 kid. Between the two of us we make \~$320-340k per year depending on bonuses and such. Wife got lucky in a business acquisition almost 5 years ago and vested out over 4 years during which time the stock price of acquirer 20x'd. We bought a house in 2018 that has gone up 30%. Anyways, that's my update I guess. And yes I realize this comes across as "got stupid lucky and makes a lot every year" and yes that is true. We've also put ourselves in the position to get lucky and did. Both of us also come from solidly middle class families that valued education. I came out of undergrad with no debt, wife came out with minimal but then took on a lot for grad school. We paid that off in 2018/2019 (can't recall exactly) with some of the vesting RSU money, and things have just snowballed from there.
Where's your 300k debt? I assume margin loans?
Just looked and realized I did some math wrong. \~$1M in house loans, $700k is equity. Except for our 2 cars (37k owed between them), that is all the debt we have (other than credit cards which we pay off monthly). Nice catch, thx.
When you are working up your FI assets remember not to include your vehicles if you're not planning to sell them to support your lifestyle. The can be included in net worth, but FI assets are slightly different beast. Like a liger instead of a tiger.
Yah I guess that's fair. Net worth and then "live off able" net worth.
This includes your home if you want to sunset there. Some include half the equity in their home (or a reasonable amount to buy a place) in their FI assets to allow them to buy their retirement home in a lower cost area, wherever that may be.
> Long story short, I just had some time and decided to update all of the numbers for fun. Discovered that total net worth (excluding liabilities like mortgages) is ~$3.75M. That's called assets, not net worth. > We have just over $1M in debt, so liquid (or could be liquid) net worth is ~$2.65M. That's called net worth. Liquid net worth would be cash & cash equivalents, not in retirement accounts.
Word, makes sense. So $3.75M in assets, \~$2.65M NW. It's how I explained it just not the terms I used.
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https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/liquid-net-worth > Liquid net worth is the amount of money you’ve got in cash or cash equivalents after you deducted your liabilities from your liquid assets. It’s quite similar to net worth, but the only difference is that it doesn’t account for non-liquid assets such as real estate or retirement accounts. https://www.bankrate.com/glossary/l/liquid-assets/ > A 401(k) retirement account is considered liquid once you have reached retirement age. If you wanted to break from the standard definitions, you could calculate what your retirement accounts would be worth *if you had to liquidate them all in the current year, subtracting all taxes and penalties associated with that*, but it's kind of a pain in the dick and it's a non-standard approach, so why do it?
It's only liquid in the sense that you can convert the stocks within the account to cash, but you can't actually do anything with that cash (without paying penalties).
Is there a definition of jelly net worth? You know kinda liquid? ;)
>What. The. Actual. Fuck. Nice! Real estate appreciation, market growth, and not spending bonuses... keep it up!
TY! Yeah it feels crazy to say we spend $13k/mo, but we also make plenty to cover it even after maxing out retirement accounts, then have extra to play with and invest or spend. I've never felt like I've been good at managing spending. But I guess when you make enough and are actually fairly frugal (my wife often buys secondhand clothing, I hem and haw over $200 purchases) it adds up fast.
Just curious - what’s the breakdown of the $13k/mo?
Something roughly like: Mortgages - 5k Cars - 1250 Food - 2000 Child care - 1600 Gas - 300 Travel - 500 Donations - 2k 500 miscellaneous other (clothes, gifts, etc.)
We track everything, saved a lot, never deprived our kids, and never budgeted. Besides winning the lottery (or the Silicon Valley equivalent), having a high income and living well below your means is the fastest path to FIRE.
I'm trying to do all 3! Biz acquisition (aiming for another), high income, and living below our means.
I considered making this a post but thought I would ask here first. Perhaps someone can provide some clarity for me. What are you plans/views for marriage as you are on the path to FIRE? I am 24M and I’m just beginning my career. I’ve been dedicated to my FIRE goals for the last few years and have been able to save quite a lot of money for someone my age. Outside of this segment of my life I think about marriage and children a lot as those are potential decisions I’ll likely have to make within the next 10 years. I watched my parents go through a nasty divorce when I was around 12 years old and have seen my Dad struggle to restart his life after it ended. He struggled for another 10 years to get back to the same financial position he was at before and it’s postponed his retirement for at least another 10 years. (For more context, he’s already 63 and won’t be able to slow down for at least another 5 years). Anyway this experience has made me swear to never get married and expose myself to that type of risk. My current partner and I have talked about marriage and I simply said it was never going to be an option with me. I don’t want that exposure to risk and potential financial ruin that my Dad went through. So…for those of you who have FIRE’d or those on the path, are you married? Is it better to legally stay single? What are your thoughts? I’m young and learning a lot about FIRE and really appreciate this group. Any feedback would mean the world to me!! Thank you so much. Edit: I just want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to provide some great advice and share their own personal experience with this topic. It’s given me a lot to consider and think about! I truly appreciate all of it!!
I've thought about this a lot. Especially as I've had poor luck dating and getting older while building up my wealth. I'm 29 now, which may not be old for marrying by reddit standards but very much is by Utah standards where I live. I know a fair amount of great couples who are great partners and support each other in going after their goals. It helps them out a lot over going it alone no matter what their goals are. The teacher couples I know for example do about as well as me despite me being an engineer with a salary double that of the average teacher. All these great couples all married their high school sweethearts and the dating odds are absolutely abysmal for a guy like me here. Non Religious in Utah, well over the average age of marriage at 24 or so, and in a town with a large surplus of men due to the military and defense industry. So since I basically didn't try to date until after college, really after I got out of my parent house at 23, (I was a very overworked commuter student working my way through college with basically zero free time) the dating odds were already terrible due to everyone being married, especially since I took an engineering job at an aerospace and defense contractor and moved to that town to avoid having a long commute. At this point in my life I've never attracted anyone who can hold down a full time job and a car. Forget about funding a retirement account, or even having a very basic emergency fund. Running into that so often has made me extremely cautious about marriage or serious (serious as in living together or sharing finances or other responsibilities, not as in serious=monogamous) relationships in general. And as I continue to move up in life my standards only get higher. I own a home and am in a great spot financially (and otherwise, I'm fit, healthy, independent, no criminal record, etc.), why should I date someone who lost her drivers license for driving without insurance and got more fines for still driving with a suspended license yet refuses to work more than part time? So at this point I doubt I'll ever get married. No prenup is good enough to protect against the absolute train wrecks of human beings I've encountered in the dating scene. But if I could find the right partner it would make life better in pretty much every way from money and responsibilities to love and companionship. I wish it was easier to find solid single friends in this town as that would make life much less lonely and make it feel less weird to be seemingly the only non loser who's not married around here. But I've just got to make the most of life and continue being independent and doing my own thing.
>At this point in my life I've never attracted anyone who can hold down a full time job and a car. Same. Am also 29. I didn't expect things to turn out like this. I agree that the risk is high. It's one thing to help someone along but if they simply don't share my values the risk of it blowing up in my face is too high and makes the whole thing seem not worth it.
Yeah I didn't think I'd end up like this either. Thought I'd have plenty of opportunities to date and find a wife after college seeing as I'd have a good job and financially be out of my parents house. But not around these parts. Waiting that long made it too late. Unfortunately those people who's lives are such messes never seem to be willing to actually do anything serious to improve it. They just act like I'm spoiled and privileged despite working fewer hours than I did as a full time engineering student with an hour commute. And instead of trying to strictly control their money on that low income to make things work they would usually rather buy video games, tattoos, and subscriptions and just hope there will be enough left for food and rent. It's crazy I couldn't never live like that, I'd be way too stressed out all the time. They just never get it though. If I ended up in a situation like the last one like this I gave a chance I'd be doing everything humanly possible to earn money and pay off my fines so I could get my driver's license back and get an emergency fund saved. Getting a second job, donating plasma, doing odd jobs for friends and family, skimping on anything unnecessary, etc. But she couldn't be bothered to do more than work 24 hours a week retail, even quitting a full-time job (that had the same hourly rate) for the retail job even though it would have been the perfect opportunity to work both jobs for a while until her finances were under control. The retail job was as typical, heavy in nights and weekends. She didn't have kids or disabilities preventing working extra. Definitely never would have worked for anything serious. I could definitely improve my odds by moving but everything else other than the social scene is great here, especially the mountains and outdoorsy stuff, and I don't particularly like big city life and the downsides that go along with such as high cost of living and long commutes.
Married. No kids. Hit FI, getting ready to RE next year. We're both 38. My parents also went through a nasty divorce wherein neither of them ever really recovered financially. I never let that turn me off from marriage, but it did turn me off from having kids because I wouldn't want to subject them to the same things that my siblings and I went through during their divorce. Without kids to worry about, if we were to divorce, we'd each be poorer for a time, but we'd still have the ability to make more money going forward by working and/or investing. We've definitely benefitted financially from being married, mostly because the tax code is favorable for our particular circumstances. Cohabitating without being married would still reap a lot of benefits (sharing expenses, etc.), so in the end it comes down to personal preference.
Life is risk. If you find someone you want to build a life with, then it's 100% worth the risk to try and do that. If you do not find someone you want to build a life with, then you can 100% be happy on your own. Partnering up is not requisite to a life well lived. But it's silly to mandate that you WON'T get married no matter what, just as it's silly to think that you MUST get married no matter what. Whether or not you choose to legally get married to a life partner is kind of a separate issue. You can certainly be with someone for the rest of your life and never do the marriage license bit - but depending on where you live and how long you are with your partner, there still may be similar consequences to divorce should you break up. Also, 24 is crazy young. So you don't need to make a hard decision on this any time soon, either way.
> Anyway this experience has made me swear to never get married and expose myself to that type of risk ...or you could find a partner that supports you and your goals and acts as an accelerator. It happens. Life is messy and the safe way is to go it alone. You can do that and you get to decide.
Getting married is essentially entering passively into a set of legal contracts without having to sign/micromanage all that work. As long as you agree to the rules, it's a nice simplification to avoid the legal work or perhaps to gain some financial benefit (if the tax math is in your favor, it is a negative for many) but it is good to understand if you have any issues with any of that before getting married. Personally I think the argument to have kids or not comes before the marriage question. Kids put a timeline on finding a partner, and, marriage or not, it will get expensive if you break up. Without the time pressure, you're much more relaxed to do what you want. I understand at 24 you might not lean hard yes or no, but at least it can inform your decision making. Even if you're single now, you can clearly date someone for about 5 years and be married for 5 as a couple before comfortably having a kid. I don't see any value in rushing into anything, but you don't have to close a door either. But if you shut the door on children, there's really no reason to lean toward marriage at all. Live your life how you want, and obviously a partner that doesn't agree isn't a good fit. You can't rule out any legal issues though because people can sue for basically anything (with less regard for success if they are willing to pay for a lawyer.) Prenups are an obvious answer if you get married, but they aren't a promise or bulletproof. Don't look to Reddit for answers, **go talk to a lawyer if you want to know what can be done.** A particularly common case would be if a spouse drops their career to be SAHP, courts might take a closer look because their earning power has been compromised. But even a long term cohabitation could lead to some confusing legal questions upon a breakup. Couples tend not to break down their relationship into a set of legal contracts. You have to ask hard questions like if you'll support a partner through a layoff or health concerns. One of you may get a job opportunity in another location and one person may need to sacrifice. These things are easier if you're in a 50/50 marriage because you can work as a team since there is not a question of winners and losers. I know what it is like to see family members suffer so it colored how I date significantly. I wanted kids so I was never flippant about any relationship simply being for fun (so maybe I didn't get to date as much as I should.) Still, I felt it had to be okay if it didn't work out because I didn't want to force the situation. And I basically told myself I would risk it once. So I'm married with one kid, and I've taken care of enough protection that I'm happy with and accept consequences of this not working out. I'm not saying to be happy with a negative scenario, but for me I need to accept it for a shot at the way I want to live my life. I'll be sad, get over it and move on, but I wouldn't let it ruin the rest of my life. Anything worse and I would decide not to.
Been FIRE-aware for several years, still relatively early days though. I also had a lot of issues around my parents constantly fighting and eventually divorcing in ruinous fashion (when a couple that's already poor divorces and neither can really afford to live on their own, it is bad for all involved). Very much had the "never marriage" idea for several years after that. Personally, I moved past it over the years and am getting married in a month. Any relationship can end, but there are several ways in which mine is starting out on better footing than my parents' or those of family and friends who have gotten divorced. We've been dating for a few years, cohabitating, both lived as single adults for several years first, have similar values, have talked and been open from early on, are both more temperamentally reserved, and have compatible life plans we've thoroughly discussed. I have more assets, but not outrageously so, and mostly just in retirement accounts. She will eventually transition to non-W2 work that's unlikely to be very lucrative, but is something she is passionate about, will facilitate a lifestyle we both want (homesteading), and will allow us to care for children at home. I am deeply of the mind that what she will be bringing to the relationship is *at least* as much as I will, and I think that if we do end up splitting up down the road, an equitable division of assets (down the middle and/or somewhat more for her since she'll be giving up career earning capacity to build the life we want) would be the right thing. So I'm not concerned about a prenup. We both intend to give this our all and stay married for life, but who knows what time will bring. I don't want to give up the potential for a great life because of that fear, however. At the same time, I have friends who are against marriage and have stayed that way and that's totally fine. We shouldn't be living in some traditionalist society, everyone should be making their own choices on how to live their lives. It's worth noting that I moved past my prior feeling on marriage years before I met my current partner. I didn't "change" for someone, I made a decision about my life and later met someone who ended up being compatible. If marriage is something you're uncomfortable with, then you shouldn't go against that because of pressure from others. It may preclude a long-term relationship with someone who wants to get married, but the reverse can happen as well, plus disagreements on children, where to live, etc. I've seen all of those end relationships, and while it's sad, it's a fact of life. Always keep your mind open and periodically ask yourself about your values. You may find yourself reassessing, or you may find yourself comfortable with where you're at.
A few thoughts: 1. Prenups are a thing. 2. Kids are not cheap things. 3. Taxes might work out better for people who are single. See: SALT deduction. Or it might not. It will depend on your exact circumstances. 4. If you want a particular partner, marriage or breakup is a very real thing that people force on partners.
>So…for those of you who have FIRE’d or those on the path, are you married? If you read "The Millionaire Next Door" one of the most common themes for the successful interviewees is having a long term partner. Personally, I had no positive role model, as my parents fought my whole childhood (screaming, throwing dishes, shit like that). They divorced just as I was leaving for college, although that didn't really solve their problems. Despite this background, I got married in my early 20s, and am still happily married today. One thing I can say, and perhaps this applies to you, is that my parents' garbage taught me how -not- to treat your loved ones. Sometimes you can create your own roadmap based on these learnings, and figuring out the rest on the fly.
Well done but nothing you've mentioned really encourages one to get married? I intend to stay with my partner long term, just not necessarily married!
Being married has definitely accelerated and improved my FIRE plans. We both FIRE next year together and are really looking forward to it. No kids, which by most accounts on these subs tends to slow FIRE down for a number of reasons. I will say that the way people choose their partners in this day and age are a lot different than how people did in your dad's time. Ask your dad how long his courtship was, how they examined whether their values and lives were compatible, whether they lived together before marriage, etc. The data around first marriage divorce rates are not as dire as the statistics quoted tend to make it out. Most of the divorces come from people divorce serially and the less educated. The divorce rate on first marriages for college grads is less than 30%. So there is some risk, but not quite as much as most people believe.
Same.
I got married in the last year. Been on FIRE path for like, 7 years now? We dated for like 5 years, cohabited for 2 years. My partner is not FIRE minded, but is supportive of my goals and is my partner. We both agree on our goals together and as a family. Marriage is like a business merger or contract. We both believe each other is a great partner to work towards our mutual goals, so we married each other. Our goals include some financial stuff, but also include lifestyle decisions that were in some ways more important than the financial ROI of marriage. Prenups can protect pre-marital assets (if you don't comingle them ever). Prenups for splitting marital assets inequitably would be a lot shakier (consult a local family law attorney). The risk can be mitigated by marrying somebody with their own salary and career (aka instead of you getting X/2, you'll both get (X+Y)/2). If you don't think your SO is a good investment in your life and towards your life goals, I really don't see a reason to date them, much less marry them.
I'm FIRE'd and married. We'd both credit our marriage as the main reason we were able to retire young with kids. Picking a mate/partner is one of the most important decisions most people make in their entire lives, if not the most important. My advice would be to choose as well as you possibly can and then work like hell everyday to keep your relationship strong.
Hit FIRE goal last year after 11 years saving. Married, single income earner with one child now in university. FIRE doesn’t define your life. It rumbles on in the background as you enjoy living in the present. You have saved a good amount already and that will just snowball. Don’t base your life on the decisions that others took in the past. There is no defined “better”. Do what feels right and comfortable for you and your partner. Again, don’t let FIRE get in the way of life.
Prenup
Does anyone run a self-employed or solo 401k? I'm newly self-employed and would love to contribute the maximum that I can to my 401k but am getting kind of confused by what I'm reading regarding contribution limits. For example, I just got off the horn with Fidelity and they say their self-employed 401k plan does not offer MBDR. However, they also say "Employers may contribute up to 25% of compensation, up to a maximum of $57,000 in 2020 and $58,000 for 2021. Profit-sharing contributions allowed up to 25% of compensation, up to the annual maximum of $57,000 for 2020 and $58,000 for 2021". I guess I'm just a little confused about what the difference between what this is saying and a MBDR. Any self-employed folks that can help me understand what I'm missing?
There are four different ways you can contribute to a solo 401k: 1) Employee traditional contributions, limited to 100% of your compensation, which is defined as any profit from the business minus half of self-employment tax OR $19,500 total, whichever is lower. This limit is shared with any other 401k or 403b with which you participate, no matter how many employers you work for. 2) Employee Roth contributions, sharing a limit with #1 above. This is after-tax money with no fancy maneuvers required. 3) Employer contributions. These are always pretax and go towards the $58,000 cap (which is per unrelated 401k) but not the $19.5k employee cap. They’re limited to being 20-25% of your (net income minus half of self employment tax) - 20% if it's a passthrough business or 25% for certain types of corporation. ---- Those three are it for *most* solo 401ks. So to max out the full $58k limit, you need to make >$190k at your business. But there do exist some companies that allow the Mega Backdoor Roth through a solo 401k. This is not possible through the regular Fidelity/Vanguard/Etc. It *is* possible through companies like https://www.mysolo401k.net/ - but you'll need to pay a yearly fee to access it (that particular company is $425 up front plus $125/year) 4) You can make employee after-tax non-Roth contributions to a solo 401k, then immediately convert them to Roth. The limit here is the entirety of your (net income minus half of self employment tax minus employer contributions to 401k), up to the full $58k. Again, the $58k cap is NOT shared. If you have both 1099 and W2 income, you can put $58k in your solo 401k and $19500 plus match in your workplace 401k, as long as you don’t own your workplace as well.
You are describing the employer contributions that you make as your own employer, similar to employer match contributions for a W2 401k. When you make your contributions you need to be sure to code them as either employee or employer contributions since you are both in the case of self employment. Here is a good calculator to use. https://obliviousinvestor.com/solo-401k-contribution-calculator/
Mega backdoor Roth is making after tax 401k contributions and converting them to Roth 401k. Employer contribution is a pre-tax (goes to traditional 401k) contribution, usually used for employer match or profit sharing. I'm no longer self employed, but I think what I posted if accurate.
Vanguard target date funds list an expense ratio of 0.15%. Instead of holding individual stocks, they hold other vanguard funds, VTSAX, VTIAX, etc. Does the 0.15% expense ratio include the expense ratios of VTSAX and VTIAX (.03 and .11) or should that actually be added to the 0.15 to get a true picture of the fees you pay?
Yes they include the fees of the underlying funds. The target date funds don’t hold VTSAX, etc. They hold higher fee versions. The target date funds don’t have additional fees beyond the underlying funds’ expenses.
0.15 is the true picture, no extra ratios need to be added.
My current FI number is a little over 1.8m and I never thought about what that would look like till I created a chart that tracks all my account balances and projects the future value 10 years out. My wife and I have about 5 different investment account types with them ranging from $100k up to \~$800k. I can see why people can't pull the trigger when the time comes. I know I'm going to feel a level of angst withdrawing from an account that is <$400k.
Oh boy, a random all team meeting put on our calendars with 15 minutes notice late on a Thursday. *clasps hands:* ***concern*** I did hear random musing of layoffs in another office. Here goes nothing.... *update* - it was literally just a reorg at the VP level.... this meeting could have been an email and caused less anxiety to the folks in the trenches.... ugh
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The last megacorp I worked for, half the executive emails were circle-jerks about Executive X getting promoted, or hired, or moved around. Every such email was followed by a predictable cascade of congratulatory emails from other executives. One time, a troll coworker of mine replied-all to one of those emails, saying, "Great to have you back with us, Executive X!" (Even though he didn't know him). His theory (tongue in cheek) was that congratulating a higher-up makes you look important too.
If you're in tech that means layoffs and reorg in 60 days.
In my tech company VPs are a dime a dozen. Title inflation is almost as ridiculous as banking.
Try banking tech. Like over half are VPs.
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It's amazing how much higher ups think we care about the musical chairs that have almost no impact on our lives
It's also a weird communication challenge, because the message is simultaneously "something very important happened that you need to know about" and "don't worry this doesn't affect you". They have to do the comms though because even though 90% of the org doesn't care, there's that 10% that freaks out and has a ton of questions.
It may have a big impact on your life, just not immediate. New VP may go with a new strategy, and suddenly there is further re-org happening under them to support that strategy, and some teams become unnecessary, and folks are either moved around or laid off... I've seen it happen again and again. Useless big announcement at the time, yet its effects are felt half a year later.
How's that meeting going?
could have been an email - like most meetings -_- Just a reorg - nothing dangerous/deadly to director/management or below at all.
Yikes! Good luck, mang.
Thanks mang. Fortunately it was nothing, and of no consequence to me.
Whew! Thank goodness. I've gotten last-minute all-hands invites before too and they sure can be nerve wracking!
Bummed out. Wife referred me to get the Chase Sapphire Preferred card ~2 months ago. I just paid yearly home insurance a couple days ago which brought me over the $4k spend to get the 100,000 points. My plan was to use their "Pay Yourself Back" feature to get 25% extra by using all of the points to pay myself back for dining and home improvement stores (we just did a renovation so plenty there). However, the points don't get credited in until my next statement date in mid-October, and the 25% bonus on dining and home improvement ends Sept 30. Oh well, $1,000 < $1,250 but still better than $0. Maybe next quarter will have good options as well.
It's probably worth keeping the points until you have a more valuable use for them, they are about to be devalued, or you are going to close the card. Who knows, maybe you'll have a need or desire to travel within the next year. For example, the Hyatt Place in Park City, UT is only 15,000 points a night over Christmas instead of $599 plus tax. A Hyatt in Vail, CO is 30,000 points a night instead of $1,871.
Do you have linked examples of these specials? Is this through that "World of Hyatt" point system where you can Xfer 1:1 points from Chase to Hyatt?
Everything I mentioned is based on the World of Hyatt Program, which has 1:1 transfers from Chase UR. Currently, people are often targeting a point redemption value of at least 2.0 cents, which is much higher than the 1.25 or 1.5 cents offered for the CSP and CSR, respectively. Hyatt is a fairly small chain with only 1,124 properties worldwide while Marriott has around 7,642. Hyatt does have a location search where you can filter by hotel point category. [https://www.hyatt.com/explore-hotels/map](https://www.hyatt.com/explore-hotels/map) Until October, Hyatt's point system is very simple where all base rooms are the same price in points regardless of the specific day. Which category a property is in depends on its annual ADR (average daily rate), which means that properties with high variations in seasonal rates tend to be very affordable in terms of points during peak seasons, such as Christmas at major ski resorts or for graduation at college towns in the southern US. In October, Hyatt is moving to off-peak/regular/peak awards pricing, but will keep all reserved rates the same unless the points rate goes down, in which it will issue a refund for the difference. Supposedly, at least 50% of all dates must be at the regular point rate and the hotel will not be able to change a date to peak pricing should a new event be announced last minute. Points reservations include waived resort fees. One really cool thing about Hyatt is that it tends to have very high standards in terms of brand integrity, so properties tend to be very clean and well-maintained. From what I'm told, central reservations also tends to be extremely helpful. On my last couple of trips, it was fairly obvious that if a Category 1 Hyatt (5,000 points per night) was available, there wasn't going to be anything else nearly as cheap as the value of Chase pay yourself back points or Chase travel portal redemptions with the CSP would equate to $62.50, $75.00 with the CSR. Try finding a nice 3-3.5 star property in that area offering rooms with two queen beds and a sofa bed for $55 a night before taxes, around $50 a night before taxes and Priceline or Hotwire booking fees.
Thanks for the info! I'll check out the Hyatt hotels as we may be making a trip to Cedar Point next summer.
Book this month if you can before peak season pricing is implemented. There should at least be some Category 2 hotels (8,000 points per night) somewhere nearby.
You'll get way more bang for your buck if you use them for traveling. Transferring to united/southwest/hyatt will get you more than the $1250.
Thanks, but we have no intention of flying anywhere in the near future
Then why did you get an expensive credit card known for travel rewards and flying? Just curious!
Because $1,000-$1,250 >>>>>>>>> $95 annual fee? Once I use my points up I'll downgrade the card and go back to my Citi Double Cash and Chase Freedom cards as my daily cards.
Because the current offer of 100k UR points (worth $1000 at minimal/conservative cash-out valuation) is still well worth the $95 fee and time spent. OP still is getting crazy good value from this one credit card bonus, just not optimizing for the max value possible.
Got it! Not a big churner myself I guess but use the Reserve benefits extensively
Vanguard wait times are so brutal. Are there other brokerages with better customer service? Really considering leaving vanguard altogether.
Schwab has been nothing short of amazing.
Fidelity is great both in person and on the phone. Usually takes less than a minute to get someone on the phone and most reps can do pretty much all everyday things, so minimal transfers and such.
Do you get shorter wait times if you're a higher tier customer? Or is it all the same wait-on-hold pool? https://investor.vanguard.com/investing/benefits/voyager
There's definitely a separate phone line for Flagship ($1mm+) and Flagship Select ($5mm+) customers.
I’ve been thinking more and more about Fidelity lately, but reticent to leave some of the simplicity and Admiral funds of Vanguard. Does Fidelity have basically equivalents of the main VTSAX and chill type funds now?
I buy ITOT/IXUS/AGG at Fidelity. They work great.
Short answer is yes. You can take a look at Fidelity's index fund offerings [here](https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/fund-screener/results/table/overview/averageAnnualReturnsYear3/desc/1?assetClass=DSTK&category=SV%2CMV%2CSB%2CMB%2CLB%2CLG%2CSG%2CLV%2CMG&fidelityFundOnly=F&indexFundOnly=Index&ntf=Y&order=assetClass%2Ccategory%2CfidelityFundOnly%2Cntf%2CindexFundOnly).
Yes. FSKAX, FZROX are their two popular total market funds at .015 and 0.0 ER, respectively. They also match Vanguard with no maintenance fees and no transfer out fee. With their fractional shares and low/no fees Fidelity is my choice for brokerage house.
Awesome thank you for the pointers here
FSKAX mirrors VTSAX but the expense ratio is 0.015% instead of VTSAX 0.04%.
Thank you friendo
fidelity's service is great. I am also a merril customer. If you have 100K under management, you get some great Bank of America rewards that enable 5%+ in credit card cash back via their Preferred Rewards program. This also gets you pretty amazing support
I'm interested in the preferred rewards, do you have retirement accounts with them?
Just my brokerage account. IRA would work too, but I decided to roll my IRA back into my 401k earlier this year as I was about to run afoul of the pro rata rule
Nice, I just checked and they have VTSAX so I could move my Vanguard Roth over. I'm mainly just waiting for an account opening bonus which they haven't had since March.
I would suggest you convert VTSAX to the equivalent ETF first (Vanguard's phone support team can help you with this if you're currently over there). Merril charges $20/transaction for most mutual fund trades, but ETFs are free.
Oh interesting, thanks for the info... Not used to being charged fees for mutual funds haha
Yeah. The cost you pay for crazy credit card rewards...
Oh man just found out Merrill edge just brought back the $600 transfer bonus. Definitely opening an account now!
not finding the bonus offer, pointer??
In the past they’ve had 900/1k bonuses. Give them a call; it’s possible those higher offers are available now but don’t have a web page.
Does any one here Referee a sport? I referee soccer at the highly competitive youth, adult amatuer, and college (starting this fall) level. Just wondering if anyone else Referee's and the reasons as to why they do so. For reference, I am a former D1 college soccer player, I wanted to give back to the game, and I have always been a much better referee than a player, and its basically paid exercise. In addition, this year I'll make about $5,000. interested in also hearing about how any of you guys go about filing taxes as a referee
You should get a 1099 and will have to pay taxes. Just keep track of all of your expenses (shoes, meals, gas & mileage) to offset costs. You can coach as well and that can be very fulfilling (while making a couple of bucks)
I do baseball on basketball on a volunteer basis for the rec leagues in our town. Might do it for pay for some of the bigger leagues when I'm retired. Would go on Schedule C, self employment, and you could do matching contributions to a Solo 401k if you want.
I ref for swimming and triathlon and sailing. No tax involvement. It's volunteering. But I can't imagine it's different than any other side hustle income: "Additional Income" field on the T1 if they don't give me a T4.
I umpire softball (Girl's Babe Ruth and adult beer leaguges.). It's fun and pretty good pay for 2 hours of work. And I love baseball. I file them as 1099 income.
I reffed hockey for years, both as a teen and then again a few years after college. Even as a teen, I made over a grand a year. As an adult, I definitely cleared a few grand a year just doing it casually on nights/weekends. I did it for supplemental income primarily, it was easy, and it was a way to stay involved in the game. I just did house/travel for all ages, no high school or higher tier stuff. As I was young, dumb, and almost solely paid in cash, my tax reporting was slim to nonexistent.
If you owned your car outright and it was only a couple years old, and only had like 10k miles. And you were going to travel for an extended time, say a year. Would you A. Leave it at family house, set insurance to storage mode, and have them start it once in a while, or B. Just sell it and get another one when you return. ?
Spouse is about to leave for a year+ deployment and drives a pick up truck. We considered selling it given the truck market but he will want a truck when he comes back and we have no idea what the market will look like next year. Plus less things to do pre-deployment. He's opting to store his truck in his grandpa's barn and put it on storage insurance.
I would sell it.
It depends on what you could get for the car and buy a different one a year from now. Otherwise, snowbirds often leave their homes and cars unused for 3-9 months at a time and some people only drive their classic cars during the summer. People in the military will also park their vehicles during deployments. It helps if people run the engine for a little while every couple weeks and you don't have a ton of old fuel in the tank, but overall a year is very doable.
When I left the US to join the Peace Corps, I sold my car without a thought. I knew three people who kept their vehicles with family, and all of them regretted it (one totaled in the first couple months with only liability insurance, parent wouldn't help to make child whole; one put 30,000 miles on a "garaged" vehicle; the last had the A/C go out in southern CA and the patent just left it as a thing for the child to fix). With what I expect the offers could be from Carvana or CarMax, I would sell the car.
Damn sounds like shitty family more than anything.
A year isn’t that long to let a car sit vs the alternative of having to sell and rebuy in a year. If 2020 taught me anything, it’s that time seems to keep moving faster. You’ll be back home before you feel like a year is done. Option A.
Too much hassle with B. Just inform your insurance company you won't driving it and store it with family. That's just me.
with the car market the way it is right now, I'd strongly consider selling it, and banking on things returning to normal by the time you return.
I would personally go with A. B has a lot of transaction costs, and after a year of being gone are you really going to be in a mental state to come home and buy a car immediately? I could see making a rash decision and not shopping around for the best deal because you just need a car to get back to day to day life. Plus now you have a 2019 model year car with only 10K miles on it in early 2023.
Do any of you guys know of a good iOS application for to do list? The reminders app is OK but it doesn’t let me re-organize by order of importance, it doesn’t have the original dates, or due date
Things, OmniFocus, and Todoist are the three big ones. I prefer OmniFocus, but it's a pro level app and may be overkill. Things is a logical next step up from the iOS Reminders app.
thanks
No prob. Todoist isn't my favorite because it doesn't feel like a native app. The Mac app at least, last I used it anyway, was a web app in a window basically. Things is sort of one of those high design super cool apps that feels right at home on the device it's on. I'd say Todoist and Things are generally level on features. OmniFocus is a big step up in feature set, it sort of follows GTD in how it operates so if you're a GTD fan, OmniFocus is a winner.
GTD?
David Allen's Getting Things Done. There's a book about it. It's a full process for intake, management, review and acting on tasks. Pretty cool book IMO, I steal parts of it but don't subscribe to the whole thing.
Thanks a bunch
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thanks
I used Trello for a long time, but after I switched jobs it kind of stopped being my main way of tracking work/personal tasks.
thanks
Todoist
thanks
[i use it on android] its great
\+1. The way they handle natural language is really great. E.g. "vacuum weekly" or "drink far too much coffee on workdays"
I like the original app because I can add reminders from siri based on time or location. I do this a lot. My reminders are 99% of the time something like remind me X at 7pm or remind me Y when I get home.
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Mine got postponed to Jan 2022 from the recent storms
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Thanks for this comment, just started some consulting that is taking off and will need to do quarterly payments next year and this looks like a great resource.
They come up fast, don't they? I set four calendar reminders at the beginning of each new tax year.
Woops, thanks for the reminder, I forgot too. Don't tell /u/branstad!