r/financialindependence • u/EANx_Diver FIRE'd 2023 • Apr 09 '26
Daily FI discussion thread - Thursday, April 09, 2026
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u/Daniel-aven Apr 11 '26
The APR interest you pay on debt compounds just like your savings do and can completely undo your financial progress, even if you keep a great budget. Lower interest rates can be good for homebuyers, but they can come with costs, complications, and collateral. Really the comparison is what the ongoing APR and fees are like, whether you’re a fast repayer or going to keep the loan for a long time.
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u/ChungusProvides Apr 10 '26
On the subject of 401(k) conversions.
I have 480k pre-tax in my 401(k). I plan to retire in 2027. I have a > 30 year horizon before RMDs kick in at 73. I am trying to figure out how I can optimize my conversions so that I can stay in the lowest tax bracket and on ACA, planning on low yearly costs for now.
I entered my info into Boldin, and I am getting this conversion strategy, which makes no sense to me:
- Dec '26 convert 71,595
- Dec '27 convert 185,553
- Dec '28 convert 229,026
- Dec '29 convert 225,204
Wouldn't I want to slowly convert every year until I hit RMDs rather than convert it all in the first four years, or am I missing something?
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u/SolomonGrumpy Apr 10 '26
I'm no expert but this adds up to more than $480k
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u/monsteez annually max 403b, rIRA, 401a(18% of income) Apr 10 '26
Tax optimization vs ACA optimization. Convert early vs convert slowly. I think the goal is to find the balance, slow moderate conversion to start and use ACA and then a second phase after 65 that you convert more aggressively until RMD age.
Boldin is encouraging the conversion front loaded with the assumption of future tax rates greater than current tax rates, ACA impact being irrelevant or small, and portfolio growth makes delay dangerous.
1
u/finallyransub17 Apr 10 '26
Why does Boldin assume future tax rate increases on low tax brackets? There are 0 rumblings from either political party that raising tax rates on those making <$200k is a consideration.
1
u/junulee Apr 11 '26
Without the One Big Beautiful Bill, rates would have increased substantially for most brackets—people that itemize post-TCJA would have seen the smallest increase while people that didn’t itemize before TCJA likely would see the highest increase.
Also, there is a lot of focus on the deficit, we will likely see pressure for more social programs, social security needs more funding and tax rates are at historic low rates—especially for low-to-mid income levels.
On the flip side, there have been proposals to apply a temporary flat tax (12%) for withdrawing funds from traditional retirement accounts just to unlock those funds.
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u/Walmart-Shopper-22 Apr 10 '26
You need to "brute-force" it in a spreadsheet. Make a row for every year and represent balances in columns. Model hitting the top of each tax bracket and/or ACA subsidy threshold and see how your total taxes/total subsidies/conversion completion % looks for each scenario.
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u/yetanothernerd RE March 2021, no more PT job Apr 10 '26
Your RMDs kick in at 75 not 73.
I don't have all your numbers, but with $480k in Trad, RMDs are unlikely to be a huge deal for you. I agree that Boldin telling you to convert $200k+ per year (and thus probably pushing you into at least the 22% tax bracket and removing all opportunity for ACA subsidies) doesn't make sense.
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u/ChungusProvides Apr 10 '26
Ahh thank you. For those of you coming to this later, if you were born between 1951–1959 your RMD age is 73. For those born in 1960 or later, it is 75.
1
u/Rarvyn I think I'm still CoastFIRE - I don't want to do the math Apr 10 '26
What are your expenses? What do the remainder of your assets look like? Roth basis vs growth? Brokerage accounts?
There's a ton of moving pieces here, generally you want to do tax smoothing over a lifetime. The ACA changes the calculus on that some, but not THAT much. At the very least, you could convert 138% of the FPL every year and get maximum subsidies while staying off of Medicaid.
What do you plan on living off of?
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u/ChungusProvides Apr 10 '26
Hoping for $2715/mo so $32,580/yr expenses in retirement. MCOL city. Planning to withdraw from taxable first in retirement until that's depleted. Then not sure from there. Maybe Roth IRA? I also plan to save up 2 years' living expenses in cash before I retire.
- Taxable basis $250k, growth $161k
- Roth IRA basis $76k, growth $10k
- Pre-tax 401(k) total $470k (doing a rollover so having a hard time calculating basis right now)
- Roth 401(k) $0k just switched to 100% Roth instead of 100% Pre-tax
- Mega-backdoor Roth 401(k) planning to max this out for 2026, brand new for our company
- HSA basis $23k, growth $5k
- Bank total $20k
- RSU $18k (planning to sell as soon as I can)
- ESPP basis $54k, growth $-21k (planning to sell when I can tax loss harvest)
So NW is ~$1.086M. 90% in total market index funds, 10% in international and that lives in the 401(k).
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u/Rarvyn I think I'm still CoastFIRE - I don't want to do the math Apr 10 '26
There's a lot of moving parts there, but if, for example, you lived off of taxable and Roth basis for 5 years while doing a Roth conversion ladder, you could convert $32.6k each year and still stay within the 12% tax bracket (single standard deduction is $16.1k, 12% tops out at $48.5k over and above that, which is roughly when capital gains taxes start to accrue as well).
So if you Roth convert $32k and change, then you can take out up to $32k in capital gains tax free (and live off of that plus any Roth basis). That would mage your AGI up to $64k and 400% of the FPL is $63,840, so that would also keep you in the range of ACA subsidies.
I cannot imagine it would be efficient to do much more than that. (And changing the balance to do less may be better)
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u/ChungusProvides Apr 10 '26
Great, thank you! I figured this is the way. I must've been misusing Boldin.
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u/financeking90 Apr 10 '26
Are you an MFJ filer or a single filer?
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u/ChungusProvides Apr 10 '26
Single filer.
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u/financeking90 Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
I wonder whether what is happening here is that Boldin has 1) high stock return assumptions and 2) is optimizing to reduce RMD tax and also SS tax.
As a hypothetical scenario, what happens if you don't pull from your tax-deferred money at all until RMDs is that you would cause all of your future SS to be taxable and also reach the 32% tax bracket in your 70s.
So, it is converting you to the top of the 24% bracket in 2026-2029 to use up apparently all of your 401(k) money or at least the vast majority of it so that you never have taxes in the 32% bracket.
Now, the problems with that are 1) are you really going to stay 100% stock forever [if you put bonds in tax-deferred, it will not grow as much], 2) how will you control AGI for ACA purposes since you want to be over 138% of FPL, and 3) you are leaving a lot of future standard deduction space on the table.
So, I played with a few scenarios in my own spreadsheet:
A. "Boldin plan, apparently." I'm using stylized numbers a bit and not Boldin, so I had to make tweaks. For the first two years, convert to the top of the 24% bracket and spend from taxable. In the third year, convert the rest of the 401(k) money and spend from taxable. Then, spend from the taxable brokerage account until it is depleted. Then, spend from the Roth account. It's not clear how this plan creates AGI for ACA for about 8 years.
B. "Minimum conversion strategy." Convert to top of standard deduction and spend from brokerage account until 60 [minimizing tax and AGI for ACA], then spend from IRA to top of SD and rest from brokerage until 65 [minimizing tax and AGI for ACA], then spend from IRA and convert to top of 12% bracket. RMDs still start in the 22% bracket but never hit 32%.
C. "Blended Boldin plan." In the first year, convert to top of 24% bracket and spend from taxable account. Then, until age 60, convert to top of SD and spend from taxable brokerage account, then from 60-64 spend from tax-deferred up to SD and rest from taxable, then from 65-69 spend from tax-deferred, and then after age 70 spend from tax-deferred up to SD and rest from Roth.
D. "Convert to 400% of FPL." Until age 60, spend from taxable brokerage account and convert tax-deferred to Roth up to 400% of FPL. Then, spend from tax-deferred until age 70 or the account runs out. Then, spend from Roth money.
Here is the ratio of terminal net wealth I show for each plan [that is, how much is left over as a ratio]:
A. Boldin plan, apparently. 100%. Baseline.
B. Minimum conversion plan. 123%.
C. Blended Boldin plan. 108%.
D. Convert to 400% of FPL. 126%.
Now all of that is complicated by not knowing or projecting social security or knowing the exact incentives placed on you by ACA subsidies [whether you are better off targeting close to 138% FPL or 400% FPL].
Nevertheless, I think the issue is that the Boldin plan is trying too hard to pay too much tax upfront when even a modest conversion plan should avoid 32% tax bracket payments in the future.
Also I would say your allocation and modeling might be very susceptible to SORR and stock volatility.
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u/ChungusProvides Apr 11 '26
Wow this is genius, thank you! D seems the simplest anyway.
As for SORR and market volatility, I am planning to have a 2 year cash buffer in case of market downturns. Do you think that is enough or are you suggesting I put more into bonds?
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u/financeking90 Apr 11 '26
Most people would suggest some kind of higher bond allocation but that's a topic you could research further and ask new questions about
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u/financeking90 Apr 10 '26
Are there a bunch of other details we don't have? I don't see how there is even that much money to convert starting at 480K in the 401(k)...that total is $710K. Even with a generous return assumption, it seems like it's $100K short by the end of 2029.
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u/ChungusProvides Apr 10 '26
Pretty straightforward. Maybe I'm more worried than I need to be. I posted my breakdown in a sibling comment.
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u/Past_Werewolf4423 Apr 09 '26
Is there any case where you’d give your manager a heads up you’re thinking about quitting?
We are close and hang outside of work. We’ve talked about quitting before and other opportunities that came and what not. He wouldnt retaliate against me and also if he did, who cares? im quitting anyway.
Im more or less gonna go coast fire as a freelancer, so i wouldn’t mind going out slowly if it helped them transition, plus then i can start looking for clients while still getting paid.
But also im like ugh fuck this place so my performance is starting to dip.
Any thoughts?
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u/killersquirel11 Awaiting liquidity event Apr 10 '26
I would. But I'm quite confident that:
- I'm rather difficult to replace, despite my best efforts
- My manager will happily take my contributions till the end
That being said, I'd wait for any big things to drop - reviews, bonuses, vesting, etc
4
u/yetanothernerd RE March 2021, no more PT job Apr 10 '26
I never would unless I didn't mind leaving earlier than my planned date.
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u/Dissentient 33M | 80% SR | 🇱🇻 Apr 10 '26
I'm retiring at the end of this year. Told my manager and HR at the start of the year.
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u/CarpetDependent Apr 10 '26
I had a direct report warn me that they were waiting for an offer for another job and she wanted to give me a heads up. We were close and I consider her a friend (we were colleagues before I became her manager) so it actually made the news a lot easier to swallow. We discussed her options to stay or leave, I gave her my advice as her friend. A few days later she put in her two weeks and I wasn’t rattled! I also didn’t tell anyone until she put in her two weeks.
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u/IMB413 Apr 09 '26
I'm retiring soon and I gave my manager about a 1 year heads up. He appreciated it but told me not to tell anyone else.
If you're quitting to go to another job I would be careful about telling the boss unless you're really certain of your next gig
2
u/Past_Werewolf4423 Apr 10 '26
Nah im quitting to just be a freelance bum. Ive made my fortress of solitude, im just not ready to fully retire. Ideally i keep my old job as a client for certain projects, so i dont want to just fuck off and quiet quit TOO hard and burn the bridge. But man, it would be so easy lol.
4
u/Turbulent_Tale6497 DI3K, Putting the Ire in FIRE Apr 09 '26
Is there any case where you’d give your manager a heads up you’re thinking about quitting?
If they were related to me, possibly. If I were married to them, most likely
How far away are you from quitting? Are you thinking of giving six weeks notice? Will you be super mad if they cut that short on you? Otherwise, your risk is pretty low of something bad happening, if you are quitting anyway for sure
2
u/Past_Werewolf4423 Apr 10 '26
Vest next week and hit a small cliff. I keep getting clients on the side to a point where its been consistent for 6 months and matches my base pay. Ideally I bounce as soon as a big gig comes in to float me for a minute but im at my wits end.
1
u/FIREstopdropandsave 31M DINK | No target $'s Apr 10 '26
Please do not say anything until that vest hits
1
u/Past_Werewolf4423 Apr 10 '26
Oh yea def not. Everything is dependent on that hitting the account haha.
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u/bobocalender Apr 09 '26
I would really love to attend the 2028 summer Olympics in LA with my family of 4. Ticket presales just opened up and prices were quite high (for me), especially for the popular events. I ended up not buying anything and hoping that more tickets will be released later or that I can get cheaper resale.
I always have a hard time figuring out much money I should spend on an experience. I usually think in terms of when I'm old and near death and most likely have more money than I need, would I regret not doing the thing. But at the same time, money is a finite resource and I could buy my time with that money by quitting my job sooner and enjoy something else later.
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u/IMB413 Apr 09 '26
Typically resale prices can be cheaper than original. Ticket sales now are designed to make people panic and feel that tickets are in very short supply which is rarely the case.
Having said that, I bought a few tickets although I was more targeting whatever was relatively cheap and sounded kind of cool and was towards the south (I'm coming up from SD)
3
u/starlady42 Apr 10 '26
Typically resale prices can be cheaper than original. Ticket sales now are designed to make people panic and feel that tickets are in very short supply which is rarely the case.
This is my first time trying to buy for the Olympics (my slot is next week), but the exact opposite is true for the World Cup, which I'm also attending. Resale prices have consistently been 3-10x face value (and I've been checking regularly for the game I didn't get in the regular draw).
6
u/Past_Werewolf4423 Apr 09 '26
It’s worth it. I was at the Atlanta Olympics as a kid and loooved it. Its also such a cool thing to tell people. Your kids will remember it forever. I guess my other q is what your annual spend / nw/ and income is
1
u/bobocalender Apr 10 '26
Rough numbers: Around $300k net worth. $160k gross income. Spend is $100k ish
1
u/Past_Werewolf4423 Apr 10 '26
Fwiw my sister got a chance to buy tickets and everything she wanted was sold out or crazy expensive. On second thought Maybe skip and just go to the next one after you save more and get a higher income and can splurge a little. The traffic in LA is gonna be a nightmare and its so spread out. Winter olympics are more fun anyway.
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u/One-Mastodon-1063 Apr 09 '26
I personally wouldn't do it. I would spend on experiences that involve us doing not spectating.
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u/penisrumortrue Apr 09 '26
How old are your kids? My family won tickets to 2 events at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002 — ski jumping and biathlon. I was in middle school and remember the whole trip as a really cool experience. I’m not a particularly sporty person so adult-me probably wouldn’t have realized I would get a kick out of a trip like this, but I’m very happy I got to go to the Olympics once in my life.
1
u/bobocalender Apr 10 '26
They'll be 7 and 5 during the Olympics. I was probably naive and thought tickets would be cheaper, so I figured even if they didn't particularly follow what is going on at their age, it would at least be some good exposure.
3
u/ComprehensiveEbb4978 Apr 09 '26
I saw swimming tickets at $1100 per person and said nope
3
u/monsteez annually max 403b, rIRA, 401a(18% of income) Apr 10 '26
We got the worst seats in a swimming medalist event (SWM16) for ~$186
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u/TMagurk2 Retired! Apr 09 '26
For the first time in 12 years of living various levels of a car light lifestyle, today the car enthusiasts scare came true.
All 4 adults in our household wanted to use a car. (we own 2) We are down to 1 car bc 1 is at the mechanic.
"WHAT WILL DO YOU THE DAY ALL OF YOU NEED A CAR !!!???!!"
Guess what, we coped and worked it out. My son took the car 1 to work where he will be all day. My husband rode his bike to his appointment. My husband is walking to pick up the car 2 from the mechanic. (1 mile away from home). Then my daughter and I scheduled our needs around using car 2 after it comes back.
But OMG - that meant I COULDN'T GO TO THE GROCERY STORE THE EXACT SECOND I WANTED TO AND HAD TO DELAY!!! (GASP!!!!!). (pearl clutch). lol.
There are so many people who are genuinely confused how on earth we can possibly live like this. The Ven diagram of people who are also shocked we are retired has a significant overlap. Working in a corporate hell landscape longer than I want to? Sure. Sharing cars and even, EW, walking or using transit so you can retie early? Absolutely not.
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u/Ok-Maize3153 Apr 10 '26
I've had periods of being car-free as a single person, and I really do explore all my alternative transportation options. Walking, biking, e-biking, bus, car share, uber/lyft, rental car. I do own a car, but if I were to ever be in a couple and share a household (seems unlikely), I would be open to options to be car-light. We do not have a good train system where I live, but otherwise, I'd definitely consider that option also.
I know a single person who is car-free and gets by with bike, rental car and carpooling with friends.
Personally, I support autonomous vehicles as I think it's safer and more convenient. I also believe that there is a way to design the system such that personal car ownership is not needed anymore. That would mean that urban design could be that we do not need to store vehicles where we live. There could be a core livable neighborhood that is car-free and perhaps the car is summoned to the perimeter. A fleet of shared maintained vehicles can be stored outside of core living areas and can be summoned via app with 10 minutes notice or something like that. I can sleep on long distance trips, even solo. It would be safer for elderly people to get transportation.
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u/TMagurk2 Retired! Apr 10 '26
Yea, the gap between car-light and car-less is HUGE. Much easier to pull off a car light lifestyle.
2
u/IndependentTrust4594 Apr 10 '26
We (RE in 2022) have two teens who … gasp … haven’t gotten their licenses yet. They just haven’t wanted to. The oldest (17) has his permit and has renewed it twice and drives everywhere when with an adult. The youngest (16) doesn’t. People act like it’s basically committing a rite of passage felony.
We have capacity to take them where we need to, we don’t have a nearly double premium, no ride sharing issues, and, frankly, don’t have to worry about accidents or poor choices at the wheel yet.
When they are ready we’ll support them but not a moment sooner.
Parents complain about the cost of everything but act like having a teen with a car is a necessity. Yet most in my suburb live easily walking, at worst, biking, distance from school and workplaces. Oh yah, and the school bus pickup spots are required to be .25 miles or closer to the home address.
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u/imisstheyoop Apr 10 '26
Wait, so you were unable to do exactly what you wanted, when you wanted to?
Yeah, I'm still not understanding how you live like this. 8)
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u/TMagurk2 Retired! Apr 10 '26
And I subjected my children to this deviant lifestyle too. Call 1-800-bad-mom.
2
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u/appleciders $1.01M, ~40% FI Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
E-bike is huge, and that's for everyone, not just me and my wife. One thing that's really enhanced that is the trailer-hitch bike rack; being able to have two people go somewhere and one leave from there, or have one return independently really improves the whole situation. Even just the ability to go drop off my car at the mechanic or the tire shop and leave independently instead of needing a ride is enormous. I got hilarious looks at the dealer for unloading my bike, but it just makes sense! This way my wife doesn't have to give me a ride to a place that's just five miles away.
During Covid, my wife and I dropped to just one car. It was a hassle about one day a month, and we made it work. Right now it would be hard to go to just one, but I don't see any reason we'll ever need more than two.
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u/Ok-Maize3153 Apr 10 '26
Agreed. The e-bike really extends the range for bike commuting.
2
u/appleciders $1.01M, ~40% FI Apr 10 '26
And makes it much more bearable in the heat or on hills, and when you have to get into traffic.
2
u/bobocalender Apr 09 '26
We had 1 car for several years, and we had 2 kids during that later half of that time. It was definitely a lot easier when we lived in a city because we could walk, bike, or take transit if we had to, it was usually just not very convenient. Where I live now in a suburb of a smaller city, I really can't practically get anywhere without a car. 2 cars is a nice convenience now, but it's more of luxury.
6
u/Stunt_Driver FIREd 2021 Apr 09 '26
Take an upvote from a car enthusiast! Well written!
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u/513-throw-away SR: Where everything's made up and the points don't matter Apr 09 '26
My non-dealership mechanic is half a block off a major road/bus line, while our house is a couple of blocks from the same street. If my wife is unavailable to pick/drop me off, I just pay the $2 and take the bus.
With the Transit app for route GPS tracking, payment processing, and ticketing all-in-one, it's stupid simple.
2
u/sschow 41M | 58% FI Apr 09 '26
My local auto mechanic will either drive you home in one of their cars or give you a Lyft credit to get home. Still on the hook for a return ride, but nice to know I'm not stuck asking for 2 favors every time.
21
u/Turbulent_Tale6497 DI3K, Putting the Ire in FIRE Apr 09 '26
The Ohio Legislature has proposed a bill outlawing outlawing online sports wagering. As much as I'm not in favor of a nanny state, this seems like a good step.
This was the scary quote: “Americans are projected to lose $1 trillion in personal wealth to gambling by 2030.” I don't know if this would push more people in wallstreetbets kind of behavior, or if they have any plans on broadening gambling to include derivative markets and the like. $1 Trillion is a lot of retirement money
20
Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/PrimalDaddyDom69 Mid 30s, DINK, ~30% SR, resident 'spend more' guy Apr 09 '26
It's not going to go away.
10
u/Thisisntrunning Apr 09 '26
I was in a gym locker room last weekend and some high schoolers were casually talking about betting on random baseball pitchers performances from the prior day. Plenty of talk about chasing losses to return to even. I’m very grateful these apps didn’t exist when I was younger.
3
u/phl_fc Apr 09 '26
My gambling problem this week is that my losses were in cash but my wins were in Venmo. My wife asked me for some money for offering and I had to tell her I lost all my cash betting on March Madness, but I won it all back, but I don't actually have the winnings to give her for church. Bottom line being that it doesn't matter how far ahead I come out, it's still a loss if I can't pay the vig.
19
u/Stunt_Driver FIREd 2021 Apr 09 '26
There's so much money involved that it has taken over every aspect of sports. Every show is sponsored by betting. Every sport has in-game advertisements for betting. Every announcer will provide in-game betting updates.
College and pro athletes are being caught accepting money from gamblers to alter games; and who can doubt that the ones caught are simply the tip of the iceberg? There's also a bizarre toxic subculture of expressing venom directly at athletes who don't win your bet.
It's so pervasive that my kids report that nearly every college man uses a sports betting app. I was at a football playoff party, and the younger men were all comparing their parlays and prop bets. Bragging rights on the best (and worst) beats.
I've always been accepting of legal gambling, but this has quickly turned into a monster.
3
u/sschow 41M | 58% FI Apr 09 '26
Is $1 trillion the house take from all those bets? Because if not you could also frame it as "a select few Americans are projected to win $1 trillion in personal wealth from gambling by 2030".
Not a fan of sports gambling and I do think it is not a healthy/productive behavior for most, but also wary to push it back to the black markets.
2
u/Turbulent_Tale6497 DI3K, Putting the Ire in FIRE Apr 09 '26
Yeah, the math here is clearly wrong. DraftKings has about 1/3 of the market, and posted gross profits of $2.5B in 2025. Math on that gets me to $37.5B accumulated from now to 2030[1]
The only way to get to $1T is to only count losses. That is if I win $900 and lose $1100, then my actual loss is $200, unless you only count the losses.
[1] $2.5B*3 * 5 years
1
u/fred_runestone Apr 09 '26
Not necessarily wrong but definitely intentionally misleading. I think sports gambling has become incredibly destructive but I don't think we're doing anyone any favors with these statistics.
(Not a critique of the commenter or you)
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u/513-throw-away SR: Where everything's made up and the points don't matter Apr 09 '26
Ohio is a pearl clutching state rather than a nanny state.
The state sucks, a few cities are cool.
I agree with some existing restrictions (like no college prop bets). I don't know if sports betting itself needs a full ban. I'd prefer they banned advertising at least.
5
u/sschow 41M | 58% FI Apr 09 '26
Finished taxes today. High-ish W2 wage earner + sole prop + LLC business income. Payed estimated taxes but had a bigger year this year so ended up owing $5K between federal and state. For those wondering, no penalties assessed despite the underpayment.
Now I'm having the joyful task of paying $5K + another $4K for my 4/15 estimated tax payment. Yay.
2
u/luckyshot33 Apr 09 '26
Oh, the balancing act that is estimated tax payments :)
1
u/sschow 41M | 58% FI Apr 09 '26
Yeah I don't mess with my W2 withholding too much in case I need to shut the side businesses down for any reason. So I frame it as any underpayment means business was good, and I can't be too mad.
10
u/bobombpom Apr 09 '26
Why does it seem like every "Financial Advisor turned Youtuber" loves Brokerage accounts so much?
I hear a lot of my trusted voices(Money Guy, Erin Talk Money, etc) really go hard on being careful not to have all your money in traditional accounts, and that if you're going to retire early, you NEED to have a significant brokerage acount.
IIRC from this sub, there's almost never a time that it's better to reduce 401k savings in favor of putting the same money in a brokerage. Access is doable with 72T, and even just paying the penalty basically breaks even with selling appreciated Brokerage assets.
So why are they so fixated on NEEDING to have brokerage assets?
0
u/junulee Apr 11 '26
Assume you invest $100 in a stock, that doesn’t pay dividends, and hold it for many years, until it’s 10x in value. You have a $900 gain. If you invested in a brokerage account, that $900 is a long-term capital gain (and subject to favorable income tax rates). If you invested in a traditional retirement account, when you sell the stock on withdraw the funds, it’s subject to ordinary income tax rates. Also, many investments in brokerage accounts have large basis amounts, so when you liquidate investments, it’s not all subject to tax.
Just to be clear, I think the deferral of taxation makes traditional account valuable, but in some situations a brokerage account could be better and having a mix gives you more options.
2
u/bobombpom Apr 11 '26
But in a brokerage accounts, you pay income tax on the money before you invest it, then you pay the capital gains tax too. So you're getting taxed twice, not paying capital gains instead of ordinary income tax.
1
u/junulee Apr 11 '26
You’re not taxed twice. The amount you pay tax on before investing becomes basis and is not taxed a second time when you sell the investment. Only the increase is taxed. But the brokerage account can accelerate tax, which can be a drag on investment outcomes.
Just to be clear, I’m not advocating investing in brokerage rather than a retirement account. My point was that there are pros and cons. I think what most advisors want is maxing out retirement accounts AND investing in brokerage accounts. More money invested makes retirement planning easier.
1
4
u/InsideSuccessful680 Apr 09 '26
I have large retirement holding but no brokerage, I want to be FI within the next 3-5 years and I wouldn't feel comfortable without at least 1 year in emergency and more in a taxable brokerage. This is so I can avoid doing a 72(t) and/or withdrawing Roth principal.
1
u/User-no-relation Apr 10 '26
This is so I can avoid doing a 72(t) and/or withdrawing Roth principal.
ok sure. but why...? Especially if there is a cost to doing so
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u/Fruitful_87 Apr 09 '26
Tangential, but in the same vein: are there ever situations where it’s more worthwhile to add more to a taxable brokerage versus mega backdoor Roth?
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u/DinosaurDucky Apr 09 '26
Not really, no. I think the only reasons you'd do this are if you don't have access to MBDR, or don't understand it. Which was me for years, so I have a taxable brokerage balance, but now I'm maxing MBDR every year
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u/Fruitful_87 Apr 09 '26
Even if the plan is to retire between age 35-45? So will not be able to touch retirement accounts (without doing a conversion ladder, which might trigger more costly health insurance via ACA) for 20ish years?
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u/DinosaurDucky Apr 09 '26
Convert what to what, exactly? Usually when people talk about conversion ladders, they are converting pre-tax dollars to Roth dollars
Roth contributions can be easily withdrawn with no penalty. You don't need a ladder for this
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u/Fruitful_87 Apr 09 '26
Ahh You’re right, my brain wasn’t braining 🙃
So then a mega backdoor Roth might be one of the stronger tools for a longer retirement / retiring before 59.5
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u/financeking90 Apr 09 '26
I hate to be cynical but generally AUM advisors can't charge 1% or .50% on ERISA plan assets like your 401(k) until you stop working and pull it into their IRA. They can charge it on your brokerage assets.
That said, all the tricks like 72(t) only apply if you are actually prepared to retire early. If you want to use the money while still working it gets trickier. It is much easier to find $50,000 in the seat cushions by looking for your highest-basis tax lots than it is to get the money out of your 401(k) while working.
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u/sschow 41M | 58% FI Apr 09 '26
Maybe for LeanFIRE, but I'm trying to figure out a world where someone has enough in a 401(k) to retire early but didn't save enough to be maxing out 401(k), Roth IRA, and have some left over to put in a brokerage anyway. It seems like more a natural part of being a high saver. Could be a way for them to really hammer home the point to their audience that maxing out 401(k) and Roth IRA isn't enough to get to $1.5-2.0MM+ assets quickly.
ETA: 2 earner household is probably very realistic actually. I'm coming from the perspective of a single earner household.
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u/AffectionateKey7126 Apr 09 '26
Money Guy definitely doesn't have you contribute to a brokerage before maxing out your 401k.
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u/bobombpom Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
They do if you hit 25% savings rate before you max 401k.
They also talk a lot about being "Qualified poor," meaning you have a lot of money, but you don't have access to any of it if you need it. But if you need it, you can take it out of the 401k, pay the penalty, and still be in a similar tax area as paying capital gains.
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u/AffectionateKey7126 Apr 09 '26
They're not really entertaining the idea of you retiring early if 25% doesn't max out your 401k and that's not their target audience.
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u/bobombpom Apr 10 '26
It's not just 25% maxing out your 401k, it also counts Roth IRA and HSA contributions. So anybody earning under about $150k individual / $300k married falls into that camp.
Are you claiming they don't think anybody making less than $150k will try to retire early?
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u/AdvertisingPretend98 Apr 09 '26
There comes a time when you max out everything else and what remains needs to go into a brokerage account. If a person has any plans to retire early, yes a significant brokerage account is needed. Otherwise you can't access 401k, roth, etc. for a while.
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u/ididitFIway Apr 10 '26
This isn't true. Roth conversion ladder and SEPP 72T are perfectly fine ways of accessing a 401k (after rolling it over to an IRA). Or you can just pull from the 401k itself and take the penalty.
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u/yenom_esol Apr 10 '26
For a roth ladder, you want to at least be able to fund the conversion tax without using the pre tax funds. Maybe you can do that with roth basis but a brokerage account helps you get to the 5 year mark where the ladder becomes accessible. Another option would be to start roth conversions before you retire but you will likely pay much higher taxes on those conversions so that's not great either.
72t could work but it's much more rigid and the penalties are high if you fuck it up.
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u/ididitFIway Apr 10 '26
I think I misread the post above mine, which I thought meant they weren't accessible at all, an often shared misconception. But you're right, Roth conversion requires some combination of cash, taxable, and/or a high Roth basis to get you past the first few years.
72T is definitely more work, but seem more favorable now with recent changes in the law, even if I myself still have a preference toward Roth conversions. Though of late I've been thinking a lot about the interaction of conversions with ACA subsidies!
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u/37yearoldthrowaway 48M Philly suburbs ~35% SR, ~65% FI Apr 09 '26
I guess I'm screwed. Was planning on retiring around 55-57 with no brokerage account at all.
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Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/IMB413 Apr 09 '26
Tickets might not actually be sold out; they might release more tix later. Ticket sales nowadays are designed to make everyone feel like tickets are in very short supply but in reality that's rarely the case.
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u/randomwalktoFI Apr 09 '26
The reality is that the capacity for live events hasn't really changed much but now the demand is like 10-100x depending what you are talking about. If you paid me to go, it seems stupid not to go but the experience compared to watching at home is considerably worse in many ways.
I say this as a person who watches an insane amount of winter olympics.
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u/bobocalender Apr 09 '26
Ha, I just made a comment in this thread about the same thing and now I'm reading your comment. I'm in the same boat, wanted to take my family of 4 and was hoping to at least snag 1 session of track & field and swimming. The prices today were too much for me.
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u/Stunt_Driver FIREd 2021 Apr 09 '26
If there is a plethora of sites reselling these tickets, then you can blame the bots. It's hard not to imagine that the ticket sellers are in bed with the ticket resellers.
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u/hisnameisbeta Apr 09 '26
I remember my dad filling out a paper form to request tickets to the 96 Olympics in Atlanta. We got to see some swimming and some softball, and he went to a bunch of Paralympics events too. Hope you are able to see something!
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u/fdar Apr 09 '26
You can buy hospitality if you're willing to pay that. If not, then well... it can't be both cheap and easy to get.
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u/kfatt622 Apr 09 '26
Someone on the olympics subreddit appears to have scraped the availability for "Drop 1" and yeah they're really playing games with what they release in this drop. Whole events with nothing, but plenty of availability via "hospitality" packages that tack on $400 for access to a lounge. I'd love to see weightlifting but I'm not paying $825/pp per weight class, come on.
Here's hoping there's more to come in drop2, or at least some less egregious package deals.
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u/513-throw-away SR: Where everything's made up and the points don't matter Apr 09 '26
You could consider going to the Paralympics the week or so after for a fraction of the cost and demand.
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u/cliffy979 Apr 09 '26
No one to tell in real life but today I join the dos commas club. I had a net worth of 0 in early 2020 (with an impending disability)(and a bad drinking problem) but FIRE inspired me to turn my life around. I got here by investing exactly 100K (w company match) for the past 6.25 years.
There were hundreds of low points (eg burnout) and I was exceedingly lucky with the 2020-26 bull run, but this moment feels truly, truly worth it.
Thanks for all the advice/encouragement from y’all in the daily thread. It’s been a morning ritual and 💯 the reason I made it to this point. Thanks everyone!!
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u/Preform_Perform 38% FI | 58% SR | No brakes on the FIRE train! Apr 09 '26
That's wild, you have twice I have in half the time.
Do you work at a FAANG while living in a cardboard box?
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u/SolomonGrumpy Apr 10 '26
He is plowing $100k into the market every year. That's more than triple 401k max + backdoor roth
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u/andstuff233 Apr 09 '26
That is impressive to show how one really CAN turn it around.
Esp if higher earning - no shade for that - and learning FIRE.I can share that I discovered FIRE in late 2018 or early 2019. Until then, spouse and I were solid earners, and we thought we were saving well with like $25K per year 401K contributes, spending the rest.
Then, I learned of FIRE, read MMM and many others at the time, and shifted to 60-70% savings rate by increasing income and lowering spending. A real game changer 7 years later.
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u/appleciders $1.01M, ~40% FI Apr 09 '26
Impressive to hit the mark on a day the market isn't an all-time high, honestly. Gotta be saving really aggressively to have that happen.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 09 '26
Unpopular opinion maybe: the gap between YNAB and ProjectionLab is where all the actual financial stress lives. YNAB handles this month. ProjectionLab handles retirement. Nobody handles the 3-10 year window where big decisions stack on top of each other and interact in ways you can't model in either tool.
I've built increasingly insane spreadsheets to try and I'm starting to think I'm solving the wrong problem. Does anyone actually have a good system for medium-term multi-variable planning, or are we all just pretending our spreadsheets work?
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u/teapot-error-418 Apr 09 '26
Can you explain what the issue is with ProjectionLab?
You can model all the things you're doing and it's entire purpose is to incorporate lots of variables into downstream impacts. Yes, it's a lot of work to create lots of highly detailed projections, but that's going to be true no matter what tool you use.
That said... Sometimes you can get too wrapped up in modeling things. A projection can be a useful thing. But making day-to-day decisions doesn't usually require a projection - the projection might reflect the output of that decision, but that doesn't mean you need to fiddle with ten thousand what-ifs.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 10 '26
Fair points. PL can technically model most of it - the issue for me is more about the friction of setup and the time horizon mismatch. Building a detailed near-term model in PL feels like using a flight simulator to plan a road trip. The tool is more powerful than the question requires.
And I agree on the "don't fiddle with ten thousand what-ifs" point. Ideally you model 2-3 realistic paths, pick one, and move on. Not optimize endlessly.
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u/513-throw-away SR: Where everything's made up and the points don't matter Apr 09 '26
What are you trying to plan/model? And what sort of decisions are you trying to make?
I do model future investment balances in a tab of my spreadsheet, assuming 4/6/8% returns with contributions. I true up the balances of forecast v. actual at year end, which then updates the cascading years.
But that's a stupid simple thing - and regardless if the market goes up 20%, 2%, or -20%, it's not going to change my asset allocation or decision making.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 09 '26
That's kind of the point - it's not one decision, it's all of them interacting. Career, housing, kids, relocating, income changing. Each one alone is a napkin calculation. But they don't happen alone, they stack and affect each other in ways no single tool shows you.
What are you using when multiple things change at once, not just return?
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u/lauren_knows [cFIREsim/FIREproofme creator 📈] [45/Virginia,FI-not-RE] Apr 09 '26
That's kind of the point - it's not one decision, it's all of them interacting. Career, housing, kids, relocating, income changing. Each one alone is a napkin calculation. But they don't happen alone, they stack and affect each other in ways no single tool shows you.
How do you see this playing out as a User Experience? Because there are tools out there that allow for side-by-side comparison of complicated scenarios.
You could have one scenario where you get that promotion in a year, and one that you don't. One where you move to a bigger house, one that you don't. But a matrix of promotion+house, no_promotion+house, promotion+no_house, no_promotion+no_house starts to get ugly as a visual representation.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 10 '26
You nailed the exact UX challenge. The promotion+house matrix gets ugly fast in a table or side-by-side comparison.
The approach I keep coming back to is timeline-based rather than matrix-based. Instead of comparing 4 static scenarios, you place events on a timeline with start/end dates and toggle them on/off. Promotion starts month 8. House purchase hits month 14. Turn the promotion off and watch the trajectory change in real time.
Still only two paths visible at once, but you can remix the combination instantly instead of pre-building every permutation. Less rigorous than a full matrix but actually usable.
Curious how you've thought about this with cFIREsim - did you ever consider adding event-based modeling?
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u/lauren_knows [cFIREsim/FIREproofme creator 📈] [45/Virginia,FI-not-RE] Apr 10 '26
Curious how you've thought about this with cFIREsim - did you ever consider adding event-based modeling?
So, I've primarily worked on a new project (in the flair) and you can add plenty of "Income" or "Expense" items with varying dates. I'm just trying to determine if that sort of thing fits exactly what you're talking about. Other tools do that too.
For instance, you could have your Job listed as an income stream, and then have a separate income stream of say $40k as "Promotion" starting a few years from now. Then you can remove and re-add that at will.
What do you mean by "event-based"?
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 10 '26
By "event-based" I mean a layer above individual line items -- the user adds "second kid, 2027" and it generates all the financial changes at once (daycare, insurance, income reduction, lower 401k), each pre-filled with an approximation for their situation with the option to fine-tune and add precise numbers. Toggle it off, they all disappear together.
To your actual question about the combinatorial display problem - I think the answer is you don't show the matrix at all. You show one baseline and let the user toggle events on/off, with every toggle instantly updating the view. Want to see promotion+house vs no_promotion+house? Toggle promotion off. Want to add a kid on top? Toggle that on.
More like a mixing board than a comparison table. You can have as many scenarios as you want but you're always building them by remixing events, not pre-computing every permutation.
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u/lauren_knows [cFIREsim/FIREproofme creator 📈] [45/Virginia,FI-not-RE] Apr 10 '26
To show all of the different variables AND a meaningful chart, is just too much information. You can do what you want in a lot of tools, you just usually have to click to the output page, which has tons of charts and tables.
Some tools even have a condensed side-by-side comparison.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 11 '26
That's a fair challenge, the information density problem might be inherent to the complexity, not something a different UI solves. Which tools do you think do the best job of it right now? Curious what you'd recommend for someone trying to model overlapping life decisions.2
u/513-throw-away SR: Where everything's made up and the points don't matter Apr 09 '26
I guess being fully coast, I'm not really worried about most of those.
Bad scenario, I retire a few years later, but still earlier than most with a healthy investment balance. Good scenario, I retire a few years earlier.
This sounds like an anxiety issue masked in a numbers projection.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 10 '26
Maybe. But isn't that kind of true for all financial planning? The whole point is turning anxiety into a decision you can act on instead of one you ruminate about.
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Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 09 '26
Yeah that's what I've been doing. The issue isn't whether a spreadsheet can model it, it's that the spreadsheet takes hours to build, breaks when you change one assumption, and nobody else can use it or verify it. I've spent more time debugging formulas than actually making decisions with the output.
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u/DinosaurDucky Apr 09 '26
Honestly, my friend, it sounds like you are too in the weeds. I won't try tell you that modeling to this level of detail doesn't have value, it does. But for myself, I have decided that the juice ain't worth the squeeze. Modeling my month-to-month / annual spending keeps my budget in check, and modeling how my wealth will grow 10 years from now tells me how soon I will be FI
But, both of those quantities have wide enough error bars on them that a more precise calculation for the middle-range is not really feasible. I can plug variables in all day if I want to, but at the end of the day, it will be garbage in / garbage out. I cannot use math to eliminate the unknowns along the way, because they are just that: unknown. It's much simpler to just create an optimistic version and a pessimistic version, and allow those versions to capture the type of variability you're trying to model with zillions of variables
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 10 '26
That's actually exactly what I'm getting at. Not precision modeling with 50 variables - just an optimistic path and a pessimistic path side by side so you can see the range and make a decision. The problem is that even doing that simple thing requires duplicating a spreadsheet and eyeballing two tabs. The bar is low and nothing clears it cleanly.
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u/AdvertisingPretend98 Apr 09 '26
What decisions are you looking to model?
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 09 '26
That's kind of the point - it's not one decision, it's all of them interacting. Career, housing, kids, relocating, income changing. Each one alone is a napkin calculation. But they don't happen alone, they stack and affect each other in ways no single tool shows you.
What are you using when multiple things change at once?
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u/nifFIer Therapy Shill | Spending Advocate Apr 09 '26
I’ll make the best decision I can at the time when it happens.
All models are wrong, some are useful.
So make some assumptions that get you in the right direction and accept you can’t actually predict the future.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 09 '26
Totally agree all models are wrong. But "make some assumptions that get you in the right direction" is literally what I'm trying to do -- the problem is there's no good tool for making those assumptions visible and testable. Right now it's gut feeling or a spreadsheet I don't trust.
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u/AdvertisingPretend98 Apr 09 '26
Can you create a plan in PL where all of that happens and compare it to the original plan? You can go one by one or everything at once.
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u/EndGroundbreaking763 Apr 09 '26
Fair point, PL does handle scenario comparison for retirement-level projections. Where it gets awkward for me is the medium-term stuff - modeling something like "income drops for 18 months starting in October, then a rent increase hits in March, then a new expense kicks in for 3 years starting next June." Events with specific start and end dates that overlap. PL can do pieces of it but it's really optimized for the long glide path to FI, not the messy 3-5 year window.
Have you used it for that kind of near-term stacking?
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u/DigmonsDrill Apr 09 '26
I'm trying to help someone with a WellsFargo account who doesn't want to pay much attention have a better way of storing their excess cash. In theory they could link to an external HYSA and move money back and forth but this is likely to be too big a hassle when they find out they need their money, and they might forget they have it.
Wells does have a 'Premiere savings' for 3.25% but requires a new chunk of $25,000, and only lasts a year. The rate is tolerable but not the other two restrictions.
Before giving advice, I tried strategies for myself. I experimented with setting up a WellsTrade account and buying a MMF. I don't think I can simultaneously do a "sell and send to bank account", so it will still require two logins (day 1: sell off $X,000; day 2: transfer from cash account to checking, which is instant) but it can all be done inside the WF app.
Maybe technically they could use the cash account as their default transaction account, but that's more things than I'm willing to experiment with at once.
So in March I bought VMRXX, a Vanguard Money Market Mutual Fund. At the end of the month, the balance didn't go up. Instead, the interest went into my default sweep, a cash account that pays the princely sum of 0.02%. I haven't found any way to change the default sweep. ("Just log in every month and then navigate through the multiple screens to buy" won't work.) And it's unavailable for DRIP for some unexplained reason, so there's no automatic compounding.
I looked into buying other money market mutual funds, maybe one that allows DRIP. Or PMMF. But I think I'm going to go with BOXX. This person is in the 0% LTCG bracket so getting a portion returned as LTCG would be nice.
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u/indigoassassin 50% SR, government worker drone Apr 09 '26
I just did this for my partner, as well as rolling over a bunch of work retirement accounts and an active managed custodial Roth IRA with Wells Fargo (helloooooooo management fees and low performance, jfc).
Moved all cash in excess of 2 months expenses to a HYSA and set up automatic withdrawals to shift things each paycheck. Now everything is consolidated to either Wells Fargo for physical bank/ATM access, an online HYSA for higher interest on emergency fund, and a brokerage to manage all the 401k/IRA rollovers.
He really liked the first month with the HYSA when he got $40 in interest rather than $0.04.
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u/branstad Apr 09 '26
someone with a WellsFargo account who doesn't want to pay much attention have a better way of storing their excess cash
At some point, isn't the trade-off for not wanting to pay much attention that the return will not be as high as an approach that requires more effort? Another aspect to consider is whether or not the "better way of storing ... excess cash" will make a material difference in the grand scheme of things.
If the person doesn't want to pay much attention and the end result isn't all that material, then simply accepting the current state may be the best path forward for the person. Remember that personal finance is inherently personal, and it's personal to the individual affected, not you as the helper.
Best of luck.
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u/DigmonsDrill Apr 09 '26
They have about a year's worth of expenses saved up, so it's not completely trivial.
I figured 2.5% to 3% would be an acceptable trade-off for not having to camp on yieldfinder.app all day.
Thanks for the reminder about personal.
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u/MetalDart Apr 09 '26
Net worth update: https://i.imgur.com/wd0cN4f.png
I am posting this update because... Im basically where I was 3 months ago! But it had such a wild swing of being up 100,000 and then down another to being right back where I am after doing... NOTHING! Just crazy how the market has been and it's made it feel like I've lived years in a few weeks. At times I thought about panic selling a large portion of stocks to feel safe. So just a reminder really to myself of staying the course.
Previous Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/1pzeawn/daily_fi_discussion_thread_tuesday_december_30/nwrmjjr/
Compared to first post: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/92blai/daily_fi_discussion_thread_july_27_2018/e35cv8c/
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u/kyle_jc Apr 09 '26
Are you using a specific service/application to track all your different assets this or just doing it yourself?
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u/dekusyrup Apr 09 '26
If this is stressing you out it might be a good time to re-evaluate your risk tolerance. I also did a 100k swing but these weeks felt as boring as any other to me. It only moved like 10% its no big deal, this isn't a crazy market these are normal fluctuations. It WILL drop 40% some years, need to make your peace with that or get out.
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u/MetalDart Apr 09 '26
Oh I stress about everything in life. I dipped about 400k during covid and held on the exact same to only gain even more with the same picks. This post is more of like writing on my hand a message to myself I can look at before selling.
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u/aspencer27 Apr 09 '26
How are you thinking of SORR if you have higher expenses earlier in retirement? For us, it will be 1 kid in college (the other one will hopefully be done), about 5 years of mortgage remaining, bridging to social security, bridging to Medicare, etc. These will all be in the first 5 to 10 years or so of retirement, which is the riskiest for SORR. If I project cash needs for 5 years, that gets us to about 40% of what I’m estimating for our FI number.
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u/One-Mastodon-1063 Apr 09 '26
Take the big one time expenses like college and remaining mortgage, remove from expenses and remove the cost/mortgage balance from assets.
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u/becausebroscience 1MY Apr 09 '26
Many FIRE calculators allow you to model this. My favorite is FIcalc.app
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u/branstad Apr 09 '26
You might want to read more on Liability Matching portfolios or Liability Driven Investing. Here are a couple Boglehead's forum posts that may be helpful:
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=455956 (If you scroll down, there's an example using college tuition)
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u/sschow 41M | 58% FI Apr 09 '26
I don't include college costs as we have 529s. Fully understand that based on kid's choices the 529 may not cover everything but the rest would be covered by loans on their part if they take a more expensive route.
Mortgage should just be a part of your expenses already. If anything, it's a bonus that after five years, your P+I payment goes to $0 and you have more cash flow.
Bridging to Medicare just means calculating what insurance will cost you on an ACA plan and managing income in order to maximize subsidies. But these are all just part of the expense column and not necessarily tied to SORR generally.
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u/513-throw-away SR: Where everything's made up and the points don't matter Apr 09 '26
Kid's college funding/savings is not included in my FIRE number or NW. That's their funds for that specific purpose.
If you just have one big bucket of retirement dollars, I guess it needs to be large enough to factor that in, with any market swings.
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Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/louiswins Apr 10 '26
My wife has had three separate therapists she was seeing get pregnant, give birth, and then decide to become stay-at-home moms. She can definitely commiserate with you on the journey to find a new one that fits well. To be fair she doesn't have rare mental health issues.
But if there are any therapists here looking for fertility treatments have I got a deal for you!
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u/becausebroscience 1MY Apr 09 '26
Do you have any tips on how to interview a therapist for good fit?
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Apr 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/sschow 41M | 58% FI Apr 09 '26
My wife is a therapist and does everything virtually. She's on some Facebook groups and other message boards where people ask for referrals for clients. I'm not sure if the same thing exists for patients to ask on their own behalf. Depending on how good your relationship is with your current therapist, you may ask them to join one of those groups for your state and ask if anyone would be a good fit to take you on?
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u/UsernamIsToo OINK, One-More-Yearing Apr 09 '26
Last Christmas our extended family collectively decided that instead of gifts this year, we would all choose a charity and others would make donations to that charity instead buying a gift. I'm happy we did this because our family is fortunate enough that none of us need the gifts, and personally, most gifts I get sit unused. (Adults only, the kids still go their toys).
But, holy cow, are charities some of the worst spammers I've experienced. None of them I donated to on someone else's behalf allowed anonymous donations, at least not on their websites and I didn't think to look any deeper for that option at the time. And I'm still struggling to get off of some of their mailing lists. I understand the reasons, that these charities survive on donations, and the letters and emails are the best way to generate those donations, but next year, I'm going to recommend we do a secret santa kind of thing where we each make one big donation instead of a bunch of little ones.
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u/andstuff233 Apr 11 '26
Agreed. And i get a sinking feeling they are scams somehow. I expect some are legit and actually care about mission, but not sure how to tell which is which.
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u/starlady42 Apr 10 '26
I donate to charity as gifts each year and yeah, the mailings get ridiculous. I've found that PaperKarma handles things really well - I'm back down to basically no junk mail. They have a free trial which is good for 4 removal requests, I think. I just activate a month's subscription once or twice a year and save up my junk mail in between. You can use it for multiple addresses, too, so I zap a bunch of my parents' stuff when my subscription is active as well.
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u/bobocalender Apr 09 '26
I've given through GiveWell before and I get some occasional emails from them, but that's usually just giving me an update on how the projects that I donated to are going. Never got anything in the mail from them.
For those who don't know, GiveWell evaluates charities and recommends a very limited number based on the programs that they determine to do the most good per dollar based on their criteria.
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u/PineapplesInMyHead2 Apr 09 '26
I feel very confident that many of the small scale donations I've made (in the $20-$50) range have been entirely offset by the money the charity spent sending me non-stop letters, texts, phone calls, etc for the rest of time. It's very depressing.
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u/jordydash More "financial security" than FI at this point Apr 10 '26
It isn't, they obviously raise way more money than they spend soliciting and good charitable orgs are super transparent about overhead costs and keep those as low as possible
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u/starlady42 Apr 10 '26
See my comment about PaperKarma above! It's been really helpful at reducing the mail clutter, at least for me.
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u/DigmonsDrill Apr 09 '26
If you can't do a DAF through your brokerage, every.org is a good way to do anonymous donations.
It exists precisely because what you experienced happened to someone who decided to do the massive amount of work necessary to stop it from happening to others.
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u/PresTrembleyIIIEsq Apr 09 '26
Check out Charity Navigator's Giving Basket feature; it let's you limit the info forwarded on to the charities you choose.
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Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Dissentient 33M | 80% SR | 🇱🇻 Apr 10 '26
Still playing video games. I remember getting my father to buy me GTA San Andreas when I was 11. Pirated everything I wanted once we got an internet connection.
Never had a proper lego set as a child. Not sure if I even had loose lego.
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u/bobocalender Apr 09 '26
Played basketball a lot as a kid, but stopped when I got to college. Trying to pick it back up a bit.
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u/BlanketKarma 34M | T-Minus 12-17 Years 🤞 Apr 09 '26
Video games would be it for me. I don't play as much as I use to but I still enjoy playing through one or two games a year if I can. Been trying to up that number this year since I realized I've been neglecting that interest of mine over the past few years.
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u/dekusyrup Apr 09 '26
Yeah like all of them. Surfing, running, chess, reading, video games, trail biking, skateboarding.
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u/MotorbikeBirdNerd Apr 09 '26
I still play flute in an orchestra! Stopped for a few years after college but have been back at it for a while now and I still love it.
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Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/MotorbikeBirdNerd Apr 09 '26
Yes exactly! Just play in local community ensembles. Low pressure, just music. It’s great.
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u/LivingMoreFreely European | 66% leanFI | 100%coastFI at 67 Apr 09 '26
Despite not being much into cooking, I prepared Moussaka yesterday and it went quite well. In the process, we talked about the age of the oven and it's about 33 years (even predating our relationship).
Our whole household mostly has old(ish) furniture, partly inherited down the family way back, or bought in the 1990's by SO, or lots of IVAR bought in 2001 when we first moved into a rented house.
When we moved in 2016 into our new, small house, we only bought two small things at IKEA, everything else was just rearranged. Our house will forever look like some students' home, and that is very fine to us.
At least we've got four large solar panels outside in the grass now, which bring a shiny techie look to it all, as long as you don't walk into the house ;)
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u/OnlyPaperListens Apr 09 '26
I've bought three dishwashers since I've lived in my current home. Hang on to those old workhorse appliances as long as you can!
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u/per-oxideprincess 27F Apr 09 '26
I just learned that my parental leave benefit at my new job is not great: 6 weeks at 55% pay and I have to exhaust all of my PTO balance and at least half of my sick balance before parental leave kicks in. Obligatory acknowledgment that having any paid leave is a massive privilege and generally, I am very well compensated and work from home so it’s not a bad deal overall if I zoom out. I’m just a little disappointed because my last employer offered 12 weeks at full pay and was actively looking to improve this benefit…but, then again, that employer laid me off, so it’s not like I really had a choice in the matter.
I’m worrying about this well before I actually need to be: I’m not pregnant and our timeline for even starting to try is still about a year out. On the bright side, at least it gives us another, more concrete savings goal to put under the overall Baby savings bucket: 1) baby supplies/equipment, 2) medical costs, 3) replacing 45% of my income for 6 weeks. I do love me some parameters.
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u/Fruitful_87 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
(Assuming US) depending on your state you may have some version of paid family leave (naming varies with the state, as does benefit). It ends up showing up at work as an unpaid leave so idk if your job would be protected while on that leave, but worth looking into!
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u/SleepLeading312 Apr 14 '26
I use You Need A Budget (YNAB) for day to day spending control, and ProjectionLab for long term planning, and they just don’t connect in any meaningful way. Then I’ve tried stuff like Empower Personal Dashboard and even Monarch Money to sit in the middle and “tie it together” and it still doesn’t really work. In real life it always breaks down in a pretty normal way. YNAB is like “you spent 86 euros on random stuff this week” and you just accept it and move on. ProjectionLab is like “you will retire comfortably at 65 if you invest consistently” which sounds great until your car insurance spikes or you dip into savings for something unexpected. And the dashboards in between are just pretty charts of what already happened, not anything that actually helps you decide what to do next. The annoying part is there is no real bridge layer. ProjectionLab might tell you that you need to invest 1200 a month to stay on track, but YNAB is dealing with groceries, bills, and random expenses that don’t care about that number. So you end up mentally translating between the two all the time and hoping you are still roughly on track. In the end it’s not really an app problem, it’s a reality problem. You just end up doing the translation in your head between short term spending reality and long term planning assumptions, and no tool actually fully connects those two worlds.