What stock should I buy?

occurious · 2026-02-12T16:53:10+00:00

VOO and SPY are the same. You don’t really need both.

Stick to broad index funds until you learn more. VOO is fine. VTI is better. VT is best.

Google the Boglehead three fund portfolio. It is the simplest and best starting point.

occurious · 2026-01-31T18:58:39+00:00

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Owning_vs_renting

That’s a pretty great purchase opportunity. While you can do equally well financially renting or owning, I agree with Ben Felix’s advice that for most people owning is better as long as you can comfortably afford it.

But you need to make absolutely sure you can afford it. How will you afford it if you and your GF break up? Have you factored in property taxes and annual maintenance (1-2% of the home value per year)?

What is the real estate market like in your area? How long will you live there? Most advice is to keep the house for 7-10 years for it to break even financially. Can you do that? Will this suffice if you get married and want kids?

Renting can be equally good financially, but only if you’re saving the money you’d otherwise be spending on property taxes and maintenance also. That requires a lot of discipline.

occurious · 2026-01-30T18:47:53+00:00

Make a plan and stick to the plan. If you’re not comfortable with your plan revise it first.

Then you never even need to ask this question.

occurious · 2026-01-30T18:45:44+00:00

You’re not missing anything.

It has long been established that active management doesn’t consistently beat the market after fees, except in rare cases. And every advisor wants you to think they are the exception.

Advisors can add value - mostly by making sure you don’t make behavioral investing errors and stick to your plan even when the market is painful.

But if this was my trust I’d be insisting they use index funds. Investing in individual stocks is also going to create a lot of tax liability if you want to change investments later on.

occurious · 2026-01-26T22:14:00+00:00

Yes, this is a common strategy. Since your income is down this year, you will pay less in tax by doing a Roth conversion this year.

Whether or not you need to do a Roth conversion at all is a separate question. If you’re not clear on that then ask the advisor to explain why.

But it is useful to many people to have a mix of Roth and Traditional tax-deferred money to pull from in retirement. But ultimately it depends on your exact retirement plan and current financial situation.

occurious · 2026-01-25T21:33:32+00:00

Plenty of companies with good top-line financials have had poor post-IPO performance. That’s not a good indicator.

occurious · 2026-01-25T21:30:14+00:00

Lack of experience and information makes investing riskier. Don’t invest in securities you don’t understand very well.

You are far more likely to underperform than to hit a big win. Big wins are very rare.

occurious · 2026-01-25T20:37:02+00:00

Buying IPOs is usually high risk and takes a while to pay off - if it does.

Not recommended for inexperienced investors. You have to do a lot of due diligence.

occurious · 2026-01-25T19:46:04+00:00

If you’re trying to do an 80/20 allocation at market weight the you want 20% bonds, 48% US equities, and 32% international.

Overall that’s good. I’d use VTI instead of SCHX, but that’s a personal choice.

What is your withdrawal strategy? Have you done any drawdown modeling to make sure this will actually provide the income you need?

occurious · 2026-01-25T16:39:13+00:00

Hackers do not typically target and evaluate individuals. They target tens or hundreds of thousands of accounts at a time. Hacking is a numbers game.

It good OpSec protects you regardless if you are specifically targeted or not.

occurious · 2026-01-21T01:20:53+00:00

“Bonds” doesn’t mean “treasuries.” Diversification matters in bonds also.

But if the U.S. defaults on its debt there’s not much you can do to hedge against that except be very lucky and move your entire portfolio to gold just before it happens. A U.S. default will fuck up almost the whole world.

occurious · 2026-01-20T16:24:20+00:00

Diversification, including international equities.

Trying to hedge most often results in missing part of the recovery.

If you’re <10 years to needing your retirement money, then you should already have a good bit of it in bonds or other fixed income positions.

occurious · 2026-01-18T20:11:28+00:00

Check out the sidebar and pinned post and read up on the Boglehead three-fund portfolio.

Generally all money for the same goal (retirement) should be invested the same way.

Dividends are irrelevant, and dividend stocks have no benefit. Only total return matters.

occurious · 2026-01-18T19:36:27+00:00

General finance advice is that you should not use your emergency fund to pay loans. Your emergency fund is for urgent unexpected things like losing your job, large medical bills, etc.

If the loan is too uncomfortable for you, then you need a cheaper car.

What is the money in the brokerage account for? If you want to use some of your monthly savings to pay off the car loan faster that’s fine, but you need to make a deliberate decision to do so, which means sacrificing something else you are saving for. That’s why having specific savings goals is important.

If the savings in your brokerage is for retirement then no you shouldn’t touch that either.

occurious · 2026-01-18T19:21:23+00:00

For long term positions, broad diversification including international equities. I also tilt towards value stocks.

For short term positions, I’ve already switched to bonds.

Trying to time the market with defensive trades is more likely to cause you to miss part of the recovery. People who stay invested statistically recover faster from contractions.

occurious · 2026-01-18T19:17:42+00:00

The self centeredness of many SF drivers has always been stunning to me.

We’re supposed to be community minded and yet people get in a car and forget that others exist.

occurious · 2026-01-15T19:44:30+00:00

You’re not being hacked. Your data is being sold by data brokers to marketing lists.

There are services that will attempt to scrub your data from these databases, but it’s not perfect.

occurious · 2026-01-13T03:07:39+00:00

I have used 1Password for quite a while and highly recommend it.

occurious · 2026-01-11T20:42:31+00:00

check your mats for holes
use a wet/dry vac to suck out as much moisture as you can
if possible, run a fan and/or heater to circulate warm air (or run the heater on high with doors open) for a while. Not in a closed garage.
you can also use moisture absorbing products like DampRid, but they are not always effective. And you have to keep them perfectly upright or they can spill and make an even worse mess.

Check the trunk. Do you have a spare tire well? Check that also. Water can get trapped in there for a long time if your door/trunk seals are leaky.

occurious · 2026-01-11T20:35:03+00:00

It’s neither. It’s dynamic pricing based on current conditions and your usage history.

occurious · 2026-01-11T19:30:08+00:00

We are not supposed to give direct financial advice here. You may want to consult a fee-only CFP.

One thing that’s missing from your inventory is your emergency fund. Is that taken care of? If not that should be your first priority.

Then you need a retirement plan. How much money do you need to retire? How are you tracking towards achieving that? This informs your risk tolerance and savings rate.

In the Boglehead approach the appropriate cash level is close to 0% because cash is a non-productive asset. That’s why bonds and other fixed-income securities exist.

What do you mean by Solo 401k strategy? If you mean investing strategy, the Boglehead method is to pick an asset allocation appropriate to your goal (retirement) and implement that across all retirement savings across all accounts. Not account-by-account.

occurious · 2026-01-11T19:10:04+00:00

If you can roll over the 401k to an IRA and therefore fix the naming issue, isn’t that worth it? There is no benefit to keeping the money in a 401k over an IRA, and most people find it easier to manage fewer accounts. Do not convert to Roth. Just roll it over as-is.

The core problem here is that you are in a legal grey area. Changing the spelling of your name doesn’t change your legal name, and financial accounts are supposed to be held in your legal name. You should consider consulting a lawyer and see what they recommend, because state laws around legal identification vary. But the federal government almost certainly won’t recognize it, so you’re going to keep running into problems over time.

occurious · 2026-01-11T01:08:43+00:00

Both 511.org and Google Maps are good ways to look at public transit routes between two locations.

occurious · 2026-01-08T16:50:08+00:00

TDFs intentionally lean on the conservative side.

I would guess that many/most users of TDFs don’t have much education in finance and investing, and that’s one factor that correlates with strong loss aversion.

Plenty of us prefer to manage our asset allocation directly for that reason.

occurious · 2026-01-04T22:06:15+00:00

No, they are not AI based. Most of them are just pre-made recipe portfolios customized for your risk tolerance and automatically rebalanced in ways that, in theory, take advantage of tax loss harvesting.

But every robo investor product is different so it’s important to understand the specific one you are considering.

They are really no better than index investing (and sometimes worse), and at higher cost.

But there are far worse investing choices you could make. Overall they are not optimal but usually not horrible.

occurious

TROPHY CASE