That’s very funny.

Assuming legally married or sufficient confidence to not have a break-up be a risk factor here. Gotta say that part.

To me, 4.5% and 5% (taxed) is not sufficiently different to be worth the mind space. If the world was perfect, you should do the CD thing. In real life, there could be a glitch or a mistake of timing that causes an issue with payment of a loan or an auto draft or something, you have to think about it and make sure it’s still paying and your CD is re-upping at a high enough interest rate etc. Not worth it in the slightest to me.

You have control by default. If you hire a financial advisor to manage your funds, you’re giving them control but you can tell them not to sell ever and they will do what you say.

I usually wait until Feb to be sure I got all my forms but I wouldn’t think now is that early.

Pretty sure it should be “valuation”

Personally I had way too many quality issues at that price range. An earbud would be randomly quieter than the other, the battery of an earbud would die, the Bluetooth would suck, or they would be unusable for phone calls. I bought refurbished $100-something headphones for $70 and haven’t needed to buy any more since.

There’s a famous example of the poverty trap that uses boots that fall apart every season vs quality boots that last, and I think there is a quality level that is so bad it’s more expensive in the long run. So I do buy shoes that cost money. But I’m not buying fashion shoes or luxury brand shoes which I think is what you’re saying too.

Say you have $7000 day 1. Option 1 is to invest it all immediately. Option 2 is to invest only a portion and just keep the rest in cash until you invest later.

In the long run, the invested side always does better than the cash side, interest rates on a savings account by definition never match the long run gains in the stock market. You get a premium for your money in the stock market because it can go negative in the short term.

There is a reason to do Option 2, if you’re saving for a house or a car or something you probably don’t want to risk the market going down right before you want to make that purchase. Or if you are very sensitive to losses and you would he anxious or devastated if you put the money in and saw the value drop.

But for retirement funds, you want to maximize long term gains so it makes the most sense to put it in Day 1.

This comment did not go where I thought it was going but very interesting. You’re clearly making the right call for your personal finances.

I assumed you were going to say something about like expensive composting equipment or aluminum straws.

That ‘immigration is bad’ would actually be the vastly more common incorrect belief.

Corporations bought 15% of homes sold in that quarter, they don’t own 15% of the homes. The total owned is much less, I think it’s 2% combined. But regardless, that does not impact HOUSING, it impacts home buying. Separate issue.

If 100 people need somewhere to live, and there are 98 houses, 2 people will not have housing. Now imagine a corporation buys 10 houses and rents them out to 10 of the people. Still exactly 2 people without housing. I care more about helping the people who do not have places to live.

I don’t care if companies own houses, they rent out those houses so the amount of housing is still increasing.

Same for “those outside the country” unless you mean like billionaires buying housing units and not living in them and not renting them out, but that is not a big enough part of the market to matter.

Homelessness is a housing affordability issue. Build more housing, fix ya zoning, make unemployment and Medicaid easier to get.

There’s a population with long term homelessness due to mental health issues and we should be trying to help them too, but to the extent the issue is increasing it’s due to marginal situations like someone losing their job or having a medical emergency.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

What a puff piece. Cherry pick the highest inflation numbers, discount the equally-relevant wage side of the equation, end with a single person’s story instead of numbers.

Wages have been growing faster than inflation for a year and a half. They’re not caught up to all the inflation we have seen since the pandemic (yet) but they’re on the way. Completely ignoring that is bad reporting.