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    Five Years Retired: Lessons Learned

    Points 1, 2, and 3 seem to come to, "everyone has a plan until suddenly punched in the face by health issues." Which is definitely true and I think it's rightfully the biggest unknown unknown that people have about both future expenses and future time in which to enjoy them. So there's a...
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    Are You Middle Class (Calculator)?

    Well ACTUALLY "men" means noodles so "ramen noodles" is redundant. Psh, get with the program people. Using words wrong! As for my class, I figure it must be dual magic-user / bard. That would explain I never seem to have enough experience points to go up a level.
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    Getting closer and wondering

    Got it, it is as I feared. Well, not actually feared, simply something I hadn't taken into account. People with LTCG income are not considered in need of subsidy, and that's fair enough. Thanks for the verification!
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    Getting closer and wondering

    Oh right I always forget that! Yes you are correct. But what about non 401k plain old taxable? Guess it doesn't apply to the OP who doesn't have much of that, but... well uh I do... is my reading accurate that ACA would also consider all of that income too?
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    Getting closer and wondering

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can pull up to about 80k LTCG per year without incurring any taxes, yes? I know it's not taxed like normal income, but is it considered normal income for the purposes of ACA? In fact it looks like it is...
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    Future of Economy and Inflation

    Funny, I always felt that about cars in general. But later when I got older I considered that maybe back in the day they already thought that about horses. Still it's fun to think about rush hour on horseback. Then the whole bridge gets held up because someone bit someone else's ankle, who...
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    California Water Restrictions

    Where I am (Bay Area), the water bill is about $75/month. Of that, it's about $57 service charge, and $18 consumption charge. So there's not much motivation to try to save water, because the bill is mostly not based on how much we use. Or at least it appears that way. We've considered...
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    Fossil Fuels

    I vaguely remember something where actual fossil-fossils are formed via a chemical exchange. Since it's a replacement, the original organic stuff really is gone, and so they really do get turned into inert stone that won't burn better than your average rock...
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    Fossil Fuels

    I'm not an expert so expert correction welcomed, but the popular conception is that coal seams date from the carboniferous period, which is when plants evolved hard stuff (lignin?) and it took a very long time for fungus and bacteria to figure out how to break it down. So it just added up and...
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    Survey: 64% of Americans Now Living Paycheck to Paycheck

    I have a story like many of the ones here, in college I had a part time job, and I think paychecks came out biweekly. I would go by the office to collect them, and the lady there would say "oh looks like you have 4 of them", because I would often forget. That pretty much carried over to adult...
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    The Cryptocurrency Thread 2

    Is it though? My understanding was that it's all about someone spending on one transaction, and then forking the chain before the spend so they can spend it again. That's a problem that's unique to a decentralized system, so it's mitigating a problem inherent to itself. All the usual methods...
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    Spacetime question

    I remember something how if you could break the rule about moving information faster than light, then you effectively have time travel, and all the paradoxes that come with it. I don't remember the exact mechanism, but it was one of those things where if you break one fundamental physical law...
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    beware of scams

    Email accounts are important because they are used to verify other accounts, like change password stuff. So I recommend 2 factor for email, ideally with a hardware token but phone style "google authenticate" or "authy" is also good. I only use SMS verification if there's no better option...
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    Time to Move Forward- Life Story

    If it helps, I went full in on equities (full market index) right before the 2008 crash. If I look at the investment returns graph now it's a tiny red blip at the foot of a mountain. Of course I was quite far from any thoughts of retirement at that time.
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    Too Frugal - Anybody Else Struggle Spending Too LITTLE?

    We're also at about 1/3rd of what firecalc says we could spend with 95% success rate. But, all my hobbies are much more expensive in time than money, so there just isn't much opportunity to trade money for happiness. All the stuff I want to do involves learning, and while of course classes can...
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    Passwords- how long to hack yours

    And they don't give any option to fall back on SMS? In that case I no longer have an excuse, I should look into it! I admit I just did a search and the top entries were about how vanguard supported it but it was no good because it would let you fall back on SMS. That said, I don't know if...
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    What does it mean to be a professional?

    If that's what the question was, I think you can just answer the ad, suggest a beach, and see how things go. If they go well perhaps you are a professional!
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    Passwords- how long to hack yours

    This has been the standard at all companies I worked at for the last 20ish years. You get a hardware key that you poke when prompted. The early ones made you copy numbers from a little screen, but the newer ones (yubikey etc.) you just touch a nub and it even bypasses the keyboard entirely. I...
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    Big Milestone - $3M

    Congrats! We are at 2.8 so not too far behind! They have been going up for 2019, 2020, 2021 at +260, +550, +410 which seems pretty ridiculous especially since it makes the salary income look tiny. I wasn't tracking so much before 2019, but it seems like some kind of threshold is crossed when...
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    The Cryptocurrency Thread

    Somewhat provoked by the recent threads, I've been watching these interviews and found them educational: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEMXAbCVnmY5oroBlDDIZMZWzCzrrOtTg I know it's discouraged to drive by with links, and they're long interviews, so my thoughts / summary: - This is...
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    Anybody else 100% stocks, no bonds?

    I'm at 99/1 for the taxed account, but 70/30 in the 401k. This actually strikes me as backwards. Since I can't get my mitts into the 401k for another 18 years anyway, it seems like 401k should be the aggressive one, and taxed should be the conservative one. But I can't really move much in the...
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    SS Could Be Insolvent in 8 Years

    "Will be insolvent" sounds pretty alarmist, it sounds a lot more reasonable if you say "will require adjustments." Everything requires adjustments because everything is changing. Of course some people may not like some of those adjustments but then the question is who, and how much, and what...
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    Class of 2022

    Surely it's good to go before accumulating too many taxable wages for the year, right? That way you qualify for ACA subsidies, and of course lower tax bracket too. I assume it would also be good to go before open enrollment, so you don't have to switch in the middle, but maybe switching is not...
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    Worst course ever taken in school or elsewhere!

    If you don't mind, what stood out about it? Just curious. I grew up doing multi-week trips in the mountains and thought it was normal so sometimes would think about things like that like "aw I could do it" which is surely the famous last words of every country kid going into one of those...
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    Worst course ever taken in school or elsewhere!

    Funny hearing about all the differential equation trauma... I never took any math classes beyond basic algebra in high school and now the thing that I most want to learn about is partial differential equations to do audio simulation. So I have a few used textbooks off of Amazon and a bunch of...
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