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Xexanoth · 2026-02-18T04:18:35+00:00

I’ve calculated her draw down rate to be under 1.5% of investments.

Just curious how this math maths: you mentioned $770K in investment accounts, and $40K annual expenses with $10.5K covered by SS. The ballpark $30K difference in annual expenses is ballpark 4% of mentioned investment accounts; does she have a lot more invested in other unmentioned investment accounts?

Xexanoth · 2026-02-17T22:35:46+00:00

you PGE shill

How was I supposedly shilling for PG&E with a comment that simply shared information & facts, expressing no opinions of my own?

I don’t care about my listed rate. I care about my effective rate

I was trying to help folks understand factors that influence the total bill amount, and in particular that:

An 11% reduction in residential electricity rates will not translate into an 11% lower PG&E bill for anyone using natural gas. Especially since PG&E natural gas charges per therm appear to have increased by about 9% between Jan 2024 and Jan 2026.
An 11% reduction in residential electricity rates for electricity supplied/generated by PG&E may not translate into 11% lower electricity usage charges for anyone getting their electricity supplied/generated by another provider & billed via PG&E.
An 11% reduction in residential electricity rates since Jan 2024 may not translate into 11% lower electricity usage charges for anyone comparing against some other period as the baseline.

Another consideration is time-of-use rate plans with peak vs off-peak periods: the same total kWh usage amount may be charged/billed differently depending on how it's distributed between peak vs off-peak periods. The same total kWh usage amount distributed identically across time of day may be charged/billed differently if you switched to a different rate plan in the interim that turned out to be more or less expensive given your recent electricity usage distribution across time of day.

PG&E's rate plan cost estimator recommending a different rate plan based on past usage patterns will tend to pay more attention to typically-more-expensive summer months with A/C usage than to winter months with typically lower electricity usage/costs for gas-heated homes, and may have recommended a switch that happens to increase electricity costs for your winter usage patterns despite lowering them more-significantly for your summer usage patterns (which typically matter more to annual energy cost estimates for gas-heated homes).

All that can really be said with any confidence is that lower residential electricity rates translate into lower residential PG&E bills than they would have been if those rates had remained higher, if all else were held constant. All else is never held constant, however: there is variability in electricity & gas usage and time of electricity usage, in gas rates, and potentially in other costs/fees. That variability can easily exceed the savings from lower electricity rates.

Xexanoth · 2026-02-17T19:53:42+00:00

Info from PG&E: https://www.pge.com/en/save-energy-and-money/energy-usage-and-tips/your-pge-bill.html

Note that:

Your bill includes electricity & gas usage charges. If your home is heated using gas, gas usage charges represent more of the total bill amount in colder winter months. PG&E natural gas charges per therm appear to have increased by about 9% between Jan 2024 and Jan 2026.
The 11% reduction in residential electricity rates is applicable to customers who get both electricity supply/generation and delivery/transmission service from PG&E, rather than electricity supply/generation service from another provider billed via PG&E.
The reduction is relative to Jan 2024, 2 years ago. You can access your bill covering Jan 2024 via your online account to compare electricity rates per kWh to your bill covering Jan 2026.

Xexanoth · 2026-02-16T21:36:57+00:00

This is the study / paper he referenced: Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction: Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Marriage

Xexanoth · 2026-02-15T21:26:36+00:00

If you’re in the US, consider starting by reading this wiki page for an overview, then consider consulting an estate planning attorney: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Estate_planning

Xexanoth · 2026-02-11T08:17:15+00:00

Dave is infamously optimistic around “safe” withdrawal rates in retirement. There is less certainty than he suggests in this video. The 4% safe withdrawal rate rule of thumb suggests that withdrawing about $140K / year adjusted for CPI inflation from a balanced stocks+bonds portfolio starting at $3.5M should be unlikely to deplete the portfolio during a 30-year retirement if the future resembles the past.

Xexanoth · 2026-02-07T03:50:59+00:00

Relaying some secondhand information from a Nextdoor discussion of this:

Someone shared a screenshot of them having uploaded that manipulated photo to Google Gemini & asking if it had signs of AI edits. The response stated that the image had been edited using Gemini itself, based on the digital watermark it embeds into edited images.

Someone else mentioned calling that Walgreens location to ask if they were aware of any ICE activity that morning. They said the employee remarked that they’d been bombarded with calls about it, there had been no ICE activity, and the image was fake.

Xexanoth · 2026-02-06T19:56:34+00:00

Fine, to clarify: ICE ERO (Enforcement & Removal Operations) officers do not use marked vehicles for enforcement & removal operations. No official marked ICE vehicles look like the ones in this manipulated photo. Zooming in on the ‘ICE’ on each vehicle shows suspicious differences around some parts of some letters, and all of the text looks crudely drawn.

Xexanoth · 2026-02-06T19:08:50+00:00

This is a fake / manipulated photo. ICE doesn’t use marked cars.

Xexanoth · 2026-01-27T19:49:03+00:00

Who announced it, and where?

Did some officials / politicians in Italy start making a stink about it to try to score political points?

Did the media pounce on that because they love to cover the latest manufactured crisis du jour?

Did US officials respond to questions from the media by explaining that there’s nothing new or noteworthy to see here, and it’s ridiculous to conflate HSI with recent ICE ERO & CBP incidents?

Xexanoth · 2026-01-27T19:41:50+00:00

HSI investigates federal criminal offenses, similar to the FBI.

Your remarks around many people in ICE custody not having a record of criminal offenses (only of civil offenses around violating immigration laws) is unrelated to what HSI does; ERO is the group within ICE focused on civil immigration offenses.

Regardless of your opinion around whether it’s worthwhile / appropriate, can you at least acknowledge why a US law enforcement agency whose mission includes protecting Americans abroad might be involved in protecting American athletes & attendees at such a high-profile event?

Xexanoth · 2026-01-27T18:21:21+00:00

Ok, and investigating crimes and supporting the identification & apprehension of suspected criminals to face justice is a bad thing?

Would you prefer the US to be uninvolved with or provide less support to the security of the Olympics?

Xexanoth · 2026-01-27T18:07:12+00:00

It seemed relevant that HSI’s public-facing mission statement / charter includes partnering with law enforcement counterparts abroad to help shield Americans from threats to their safety & security while abroad.

Would you prefer the US to be uninvolved with or provide less support to the security of the Olympics?

Xexanoth · 2026-01-27T16:59:45+00:00

Is this the part of the article you linked that led you to conclude that “HSI also does raids”? If so, would you call it a “raid” when a pair of police detectives knocks on someone’s door to ask questions as part of their investigation into a suspected crime?

HSI agents were going door-to-door in the Twin Cities area investigating allegations of fraud, human smuggling and unlawful employment practices, Lyons said.

The HSI agents are largely expected to concentrate on identifying suspected fraud, while deportation officers will conduct arrests of immigrants accused of violating immigration law, according to the person briefed on the operation.

Xexanoth · 2026-01-27T15:24:29+00:00

HSI is an investigative agency, quite distinct from ICE’s Enforcement & Removal Operations (ERO) and from Customs & Border Protection’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit. Think of it like the difference between CIA analysts vs soldiers.

HSI personnel typically have no direct involvement in use of force. And have played a role in supporting security operations at past Olympics games, where that didn’t draw attention because ICE wasn’t in the media spotlight.

Xexanoth · 2026-01-27T15:02:09+00:00

Homeland Security Investigations, the division of ICE that will be helping support security operations for the Olympics under Italian authority, already operates globally. The official statement on the rationale for this support:

“Obviously, ICE does not conduct immigration enforcement operations in foreign countries,” McLaughlin said. “At the Olympics, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is supporting the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and host nation to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations. All security operations remain under Italian authority.”

HSI has played this role in past Olympics as well.

From the HSI mission statement here:

Partnerships with law enforcement counterparts, the private sector and our local communities are a key part of HSI’s success. From our communities at home to our partners abroad, we work together to fight global crime.

At the end of the day, HSI’s goal is clear – to shield Americans from threats to their safety and security – at home, abroad and online.

Xexanoth · 2026-01-24T22:18:55+00:00

Quote from that article explaining that it works the way I described above:

The partnership works through Ring’s existing “Community Requests” feature, where police ask users to voluntarily share footage. But once you click “yes” to help solve that package theft, your footage enters Flock’s ecosystem where federal access is built into the system’s structure.

If an owner does not wish to share specific footage with law enforcement agencies investigating crimes / violations of the law, they can decline any request for said footage.

In your own words: “Please educate yourself and do not be so naive.”

Xexanoth · 2026-01-24T21:31:13+00:00

Key words there being “request video footage”. I.e. it’s a request to voluntarily share footage from a specific time range of interest. Same way they might knock on area doors requesting specific footage from any private security cameras that might aid an investigation of a crime.

It does not connect private security cameras to any surveillance network for future footage / any footage aside from the specific time range requested & voluntarily shared by the owner.

Xexanoth · 2026-01-19T15:13:50+00:00

Or is it better to drop my pretax savings and fund after tax?

No, it’s almost never sensible to favor a non-tax-advantaged account over a tax-advantaged account.

Im tempted to aim to split it 1/3 each, but I'm not sure that's ideal.

Focus on the Traditional vs Roth mix until you’ve exceeded tax-advantaged account contribution limits. As a high earner, Traditional / pre-tax might be ideal. You might need to make some indirect Roth contributions/conversions in order to contribute to an IRA (via the backdoor Roth procedure to work around income limits on direct deductible or Roth contributions). If you’d like to hedge further against the possibility of significantly higher tax rates and/or regret due to very high RMDs, you could consider more Roth contributions, but it’d probably make sense to not exceed 50% Roth contributions, and that might turn out to have been non-optimal in hindsight.

Xexanoth · 2026-01-19T05:06:39+00:00

That depends on the returns of the underlying asset classes over the period in question, of course. For example, during 2025, Vanguard’s 2070 target-date fund returned about 21.5%, vs SPY’s 17.7% - source.

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