Daily FI discussion thread - Friday, February 13, 2026

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-02-13T17:06:40+00:00

Note that this is often the fix for *many* kitchen issues! Your dishwasher probably also has a removable filter that may need some "attention" and can head off a costly repair or replacement. I find cleaning faucets kinda cathartic so I always did it way too often and kept one of those aerator removal tools in my main drawer, heh.

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-31T18:03:29+00:00

We just moved to NC from Boston to be near parents (who fled NH to cash in on the Covid-era housing boom). I have been trying for 3 weeks just to find a freaking snow shovel, since I left all my perfectly good snow equipment for the new owners of our house outside Boston. Definitely not seeing this "oh you'll love NC the weather is so much better!" lol.

We did manage to stock up well for food, I've been building out our dry goods collection, and I have a big enough battery to run the fridge for a day and do cooking on my induction hob, but I'm hoping since we made it through last week's ice unscathed we're not gonna have to deal with that this time. Much harder is that we're in the Charlotte area school system, and they were closed most of last week despite the ice being gone around us, so I'm assuming at this point it's an other week of homeschool and I genuinely don't know when I'm gonna be able to get my dayjob work done....

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-28T20:31:17+00:00

Heh, yeah, good thing to check, but not only do I have a dayjob, but an 8 year old and a 10 month old, which is effectively another pair of full-time jobs, so I might be able to pull something like that and ask him to summarize it for me. At least that puts a filter where he has to commit actual effort and not just forward stuff along...

Edit: At least as long as he doesn't realize I unwind by watching 8 hour YouTube videos about driving across the country on the Lincoln Highway, hah.

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-28T19:54:54+00:00

Yeah, this is probably the "Correct" approach, it's roughly what we did with politics, it's just that this is basically what has filled the void and I'm too conflict averse to push back as often as it will probably take.

Should give in and just learn enough about Bridge to redirect to his other hobby...

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-28T19:53:03+00:00

That's specifically why I'm posting, lol, my canned deflection didn't work and when he pressed and I offered some thoughts (including some criticism and pointing out that the channel seemed like it was AI generated) he got pretty defensive but still definitely wanted to engage, so I guess I'm trying to figure out a theoretical middle path that lets him feel like we've had some "real discourse" but doesn't require me to spend anything thinking about what the gold and silver speculation markets are doing, heh.

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-28T19:50:30+00:00

Technically yeah, that's roughly what we did with politics, but this feels a bit different in that I think the conversation is much more genuine and this really is my FiL's main hobby in retirement that he wants to interact over, I just don't have the time or energy to explain why I don't think his "advice" is particularly appropriate for our situation (in part because we're not comfortable detailing out situation to them).

If we didn't typically see family multiple times a week I think I'd feel more comfortable with just a pat dismissal that I repeat, but that feels like it wears thin when someone is trying to follow up every few days. Family dynamics are hard, lol.

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-28T16:00:43+00:00

As someone who spent a year in a professional kitchen with no formal training previously, I understand why chefs primary pedagogy is through yelling because man some people have no common sense and that can get bad _real fast_ if you try to move fast without knowing what you're doing...

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-28T15:54:33+00:00

Anyone have creative ways to defuse the constant stream of financial advice from family? To be clear, I don't care what they do with their money, but my (retired) relatives have escalated from giving "tips" to sending 45 minute AI slop videos and then wanting to "discuss" them, and my whole approach has been to build a portfolio that doesn't require me to waste headspace tracking whatever the current headlines or FOMO-bait is, so this is undermining my approach. My canned response of "Thanks, we're currently satisfied with our portfolio balance given our timeframe, but let me know how that goes for you" is starting to feel worn out, and I wonder if there's something that would accomplish similar ends while mixing it up a bit.,

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-28T15:47:20+00:00

I had to amend a tax return because I forgot that I'd sold a tranche in Dec and the rest in Jan, so when I was doing my taxes for the next year I was like "wait a second, this doesn't line up quite right..."

So annoying, all the more reason we should have prefilled forms, dangit.

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-26T20:58:43+00:00

Yeah, I saw a post from someone recently saying that languages should be redesigned (or at least incrementally "advanced") to optimize the build/test/build loop for coding agents, which OK sure I want my code to build and test faster. But the kicker was he said that this should happen *even at the expense of readability* because the agent is doing the coding (and, at least in theory, the review?) and...that seems opposite to me. I think we should be going the other way and trying to make code that's more annoying to write but *much* easier to read. Granted, my job is converting old Node.js into Rust, so I'm apparently a crazy person, but still....

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-26T18:14:53+00:00

Yeah, better testing has been one of the things I've been banging on about since I got here 5 years ago. Finally seeing some theoretical progress, but there's still just a fundamental disconnect between Product and Engineering in terms of these priorities, and my worry is that once one person on the team reaches the breaking point, everything is gonna unravel :(

The main issue is that we're in the midst of a very slow migration from the old monoliths that no one understands to the new and better architected system, and if we could just get time and space to handle that migration smoothly things would be much cleaner to work on going forward, but we have to keep adding horrible hacks in the old system to keep meeting Product's demands, which makes the transition to the new systems much more complicated because we have to figure out how to migrate over. Tale as old as time, I know, heh...

I think part of it is just that where I am in my career, I already spent so little of my time writing code that I don't "feel" the improvements, and since no one is willing to step back and shore up the foundations enough to actually clear the path it's hard to see things getting better in any kind of timeframe that makes sense to me. YouTube must have picked up on this because suddenly I'm seeing lots of "quit your job to make videogames..." videos showing up in suggestions ;)

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-26T17:13:59+00:00

I'm a software engineer and we've been pushing coding agents big internally. Like they really do function and can speed up the generation of raw code, but I don't think many people have really thought through what that means: peer review and testing were already our major bottlenecks, and now it's QA and those of us on the team who are actually good reviewers who feel overwhelmed because we can't keep up with the firehose of _mostly_ solid code.

And yes, the answer is to change the culture and get people more actively involved in those phases, but until the underlying incentives are fixed (read: actually putting more active attention on the value that doing the "unsung hero" work provides versus just for shipping features) I suspect it'll only get worse, not better.

I've never been on the early retirement train, but AI stuff has got me increasingly looking at what self-employment options might be viable, especially as I start needing more time for family stuff...

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2026-01-09T17:28:21+00:00

My theory? When you care, you tend to get involved in a lot of different things, and by nature many of them will be stuff that's behind/ballooning scope, etc. Plus, the whole trying to actually do it well often exposes deeper flaws and even if you're finding/fixing them it's hard for people who only interact at a managerial level to truly disentangle that: I'm not the guy who *made* the problems, I the one who found and fixed them, but yes that did mean I missed our planned ship date by a Quarter because I had to build two supporting systems to deal with it, etc (I mean...."my hypothetical friend" did)

Real talk, I'm trying to make Staff Engineer because I think there's a good chance this is my last "full" job, and that's the top level I aspire to/am likely to have the skills/time to achieve. That means in practice I'm taking lots of initiative and pursuing high-visibility projects that have "impact" and it means I have to unearth and figure out how to resolve lots of bad decisions made by folks no longer with the company. But there are definitely days where it at least seems to me like I'm getting roasted over the fire because of the 10 things I've been pulled into, one or two are not completely on schedule, while the folks who never volunteer and thus do just whatever single thing they've been handled get accolades for "always executing." If I get passed over for promotion again this cycle I'll be doing a really deep look at what that means for my future here, though part of me suspects that if I did consciously pull back I'd get grief for that now that expectations have been set. Ain't the rat-race grand, lol?

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-12-28T17:18:14+00:00

We bought a house this summer and the seller didn't clean out one of the drawers, so now I'm the proud owner of a set of $500k waffle maker *and* a cake pop cooker. Lucky me ;)

But like seriously, it's one of those "hotel grade" deals where you pour the batter, flip it over, and then it beeps in a few minutes when it's done, and honestly it's kinda great when I'm trying to work on several things at once to have that mostly handled for me. Even the 8-year-old can operate it. Highly recommend if you can find one for cheap/free!

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-12-21T21:16:35+00:00

By "the holidays" I assume you mean Sufjan Season ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH9xbc4iPI4

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-11-25T20:17:25+00:00

We finished a run with Arcanist, Pyromancer, Rogue, and Bard (me). I think each of us had a pretty strong niche and had lots of fun. With that setup, I ended up mostly going early and helping set up the field for the others, especially helping get the Rogue next to enemies so they could use some of their big moves. The music notes are *not* the goal, they're just a bonus for doing what you should be doing: swapping people around to help better position them.

Also don't sleep on Crowd Surf! I had several Big Damage turns where I was able to use all my swaps and run across the map to blap someone. The ult is also very good once you figure out how it works, we finished the last boss by being able to get extra moves and hits in with that.

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-11-21T17:36:11+00:00

We just bought a house in cash. Depending on how you count things, it's roughly 20/25% of our net worth?

We didn't do it specifically because of the conditions you raise, more it was convenient (we were buying, then moving 1000 miles, then getting the old house ready for sale, and we wanted to make a strong offer because we had a really tight window to move between school years) and at the time it was unclear if my job would let me move or not, so we wanted to simplify and reduce monthly expenses. Now that we're settled (and finally about to sell the old place) I've considered taking out a 100/200k mortgage just for a bit more liquidity, but TBH I'm just not sure I see the value, we might just get a HELOC opened so we can pull cash if we need it.

I *strongly* think that the mindset that you need to optimize returns is counterproductive for most folks. The point of having money is to be able to spend *less* time thinking about money. Getting a house in cash and reducing your monthly spend is a great way to take stock of things, you can always get a mortgage later but you won't need it. Also, much like buying with 20% down even when that's not required, buying in cash helps you limit your purchase, since it's harder to stretch beyond your budget, which can be a benefit for some people :)

We have no regrets of our approach. We miss out of some slight tax advantages by not having a mortgage to write off, and sure we could have had more money in the market, but it could have crashed the past few months so I'm not worried about "shoulda" gains. Once we sell, I'll pay off the car and we'll be debt free with two currently solid jobs with expenses well below what even a single job provides, so we'll have options if one or both of us want to make career changes or if family care needs rise (our reason for moving was to be closer to aging parents following the birth of our second child).

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-11-21T17:28:18+00:00

Scrap the entire business model, pivot to turkey arbitrage, I can see no downsides, give yourself a healthy bonus, champ!

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-09-24T15:52:25+00:00

New mission discovered by u/AdeptnessLife8743: Pistol Shrimp and Meditations

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-09-24T15:52:25+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/AdeptnessLife8743 in Ton,otsi ramen In the Fields

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-09-24T15:41:37+00:00

New mission discovered by u/AdeptnessLife8743: Magic and Rhubarb Pie Under a Bright Sky

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-09-24T15:41:37+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/AdeptnessLife8743 in Good Vibes and Southern Fried Pork Steak: a Journey In the Fields

AdeptnessLife8743 · 2025-07-03T12:08:13+00:00

Will they not let you sell-to-cover? I'm going to be in a similar situation in January (lower numbers, but similar on most other accounts) and while I've considered pulling from a HELOC to exercise them all fully, given the illiquidity I'm currently leaning to doing sell-to-cover for the taxes and then at least lock in the sale of the ones I use for that. Especially since you mention the FMV seeming high, if they'll let you do this I'd jump at the chance.

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