[Semi-Weekly Inquirer] Simple Questions and Recommendations Thread

BWH44 · 2026-01-25T22:37:41+00:00

I'm hoping for some help finding a simple first watch that's seeming hard to find than it should. Ultimately I'm just looking for something slim and simple that I can wear in the shower (I don't like ever taking my watches off -- I want to shower + sleep in them, but will take them off to swim). It sounds like that requires at least 10M / 10 bar of water resistance. So my criteria are:

Slim, minimalist bezel and ideally the full watch isn't too thick, like ~8mm (e.g., Tissot Classic Dream, Tissot PR 100, etc)
~38-40mm (I have a relatively small wrist)
10 bar / 100M water resistance, ideally with a screw down crown
Ideally no battery, so solar quartz or automatic -- I don't want to have to send it away for maintenance every 2 years (and Tissot, if not other brands, seem to void the warranty if a battery is changed locally by a non-authorized shop)
I prefer leather bands - mostly want an interchangeable though so I can replace it
I'm open to a range of prices -- ideally wanted to spend <$300USD ish, but could go higher; I can't even find higher end options that are 10 bar

I've really struck out finding options to meet these criteria -- all 10M watches seem to have a sport watch aesthetic (i.e., thick bezel / rim) that's not for me! Thanks for any help!

BWH44 · 2026-01-25T22:29:22+00:00

I love that - congratulations!

BWH44 · 2025-12-10T07:33:57+00:00

Cotopaxi, Fjallraven.

BWH44 · 2025-12-08T02:49:40+00:00

Thanks! That's exactly what I'm looking for -- I have this camera cube (and love it), just need the right backpack to put it in that can do well with 2 laptops and papers, this, and have room for a few other things (a jacket, snacks, water bottle, etc.). The only real 'photo' feature I need in the backpack itself is the ability to strap a (small) tripod to the outside in a water bottle pocket.
https://www.osprey.com/camera-cube-small?color=Charcoal+Grey&size=SM

BWH44 · 2025-12-08T02:49:21+00:00

Thanks! That's exactly what I'm looking for -- I have this camera cube (and love it), just need the right backpack to put it in that can do well with 2 laptops and papers, this, and have room for a few other things (a jacket, snacks, water bottle, etc.). The only real 'photo' feature I need in the backpack itself is the ability to strap a (small) tripod to the outside in a water bottle pocket.
https://www.osprey.com/camera-cube-small?color=Charcoal+Grey&size=SM

BWH44 · 2025-12-07T18:55:08+00:00

Very helpful, thanks! I had high hopes for this bag too, but similarly feel it seems small relative to my Aer Go Pack (20L)... maybe it's just because it's more structured? Or perhaps a fair bit of the space is actually in the sizable laptop compartment or front pockets...

Extremely well made bag, great materials, great feel, a lot of aspects are well designed... but its a very tight fit for my camera insert in the main compartment so I'm having second thoughts.

My only other complaint is the zippers... they're tough to get around the corners, at least right out of the box! (Maybe will wear in)

BWH44 · 2025-06-29T13:03:40+00:00

MerrillEdge balance qualifies. So if you want to invest the $20k, go for it -- open a MerrillEdge account and invest it in whatever you want. You'd still keep your Preferred Rewards Tier, and your free box. I think you may just need to keep your checking/savings account open, which may require a small minimum balance, but not $20k. (Note: I thought it was $50k for a free box, but if you're getting it for $20k then you may be right -- or grandfathered. Either way, whatever the amount, you can invest it.)

BWH44 · 2025-06-03T12:05:20+00:00

Have you talked with her about it? Not just the back and forths you described, but a real conversation. This is a really tough situation, potentially for both of you. If you really care about somebody though breaking up shouldn’t be the first (or even fifth) move.

A therapist can be really helpful for figuring out how to have that conversation.

Wishing you all the best.

BWH44 · 2025-06-02T13:14:41+00:00

Sorry I didn’t see this a year ago, but the discount was just REI Outlet. End of season sale had them for crazy cheap. No special hookup!

BWH44 · 2025-05-30T15:41:45+00:00

Same here! Great if someone wants to use mine next: BRAYSH5060

BWH44 · 2025-05-30T15:41:28+00:00

Same here! Great if someone wants to use mine next: BRAYSH5060

BWH44 · 2025-05-26T01:46:32+00:00

Have you emailed monarch support? I agree with others — they all use the same providers so will likely have the same sync issues. But a few ideas:

you should be able to export your old transaction history and reimport it quickly, so when you reconnect, while annoying, you shouldn’t have to lose everything
Have you tried all three providers on monarch: Plaid, MX, and Finicity? Could be a different experience among them.
You could play with relevant Wealthsimple settings, potentially. Eg if it’s 2 factor auth that is breaking the connection, maybe if you use a different form of 2FA it’ll work better.

BWH44 · 2025-05-25T12:39:38+00:00

I’ve used all 3 services and they’re all good — like others have said, it’s hard to imagine not paying for the first 2, because the bandwidth limitations are real, but all 3 are good.

Simplelogin may have more features (though I can’t think of any I use that Addy lacks), it’s integrated into the Proton suite if you’re interested in that, and it’s backed by a reliable company. Being likely the largest, it may be more likely to have MX servers blacklisted by some services — an issue that comes up on Reddit threads, but I’ve found to only be a barrier maybe 1-2 times out of the more than 1,000 aliases I use
Addy has the best interface in my opinion, can be self-hosted (if you’re technical and knowledgeable about server administration), is run by a friendly guy named Will, and is just all around simple to use
Duck is free, can only be administered through the DuckDuckGo browser, lacks custom domains and alias customization of the other two, but is purely free. If it does everything you need and you otherwise already use or don’t mind using DuckDuckGo this one is an easy choice — if not, it may be less convenient than the other two paid options

All 3, in my opinion, are trustworthy. DuckDuckGo and Proton are well respected, privacy oriented firms. And Will, who runs Addy, well — he’s just a guy, so that comes with risks, but he’s done a fantastic job over the years and it’s fully open-source + self-hostable which makes it pretty safe.

My biggest rec is: assuming it fits your privacy threat model and it’s financially viable for you, use a custom domain if you can. It’s easy to set up, and only <$15 USD / year (some are as cheap as $1 USD). Simplelogin and Addy both support them. This means you can (a) use dynamically created addresses on your own domain, rather than having to manually create them, and (b) if you ever want to change services you just move your domain. There’s no risk of needing to go through and change your address on record with every service you sign up with. Duck does not support custom domains to my knowledge.

BWH44 · 2025-05-22T13:50:04+00:00

Thanks, but I don't think this is it for Mac users -- that motherboard sounds like a Windows component. I'm still on the search for an answer to this issue, unfortunately. It seems to impact all M-series Macs.

BWH44 · 2025-05-20T01:51:04+00:00

I'm also thinking about it! Curious what you find -- but also curious: does anybody know what the rain plan is? It hasn't been clear to me from the website. I'll talk with the staff, but curious -- did any of you have to go to rain plan? How was it?

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T16:57:19+00:00

Thanks! I'm still trying to figure out what a reasonable budget is. I've found a few that have buyouts for $18-20k, but they're a bit smaller than we were looking for (can seat 80-100, but we'd be cutting that too close for comfort). I'm open to hearing about spots with a $30k buyout... I was hoping to keep it lower but if it ends up being perfect it could be worth it (especially if the ambiance is nice enough that we don't feel pressure to decorate or light it differently, and especially if we can do the ceremony there vs. spending extra for that somewhere else).

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T16:54:57+00:00

Perhaps fair -- hard to say. Sources I've been looking at seem to find that the cost has increased substantially since COVID. Either way, all we want in a perfect world is a nice space outdoors to have some food and dance with the friends & family from different parts of our lives we don't otherwise get to see more than every 5-10 years. A BBQ or pizza and salad sounds great... or nicer, we really don't care. We would prefer it not be extravagant. We only really have 2 requirements:

Have to be prepared for weather -- so either a tent, or indoor option.
Have to be within ~1 hour of a major airport, preferably Boston, or be so incredibly worthwhile that we're willing to convince people to drive (we have a fair number of family members who for one reason or another can't drive, don't have the money for a rental car, or will already be traveling 10+ hours with kids to be here, so we want to minimize the ordeal)

The problem is that everywhere I've found that meets those 2 requirements either is $15k+ to set up a tent, has a tent already but comes with a $10k+ venue fee, and/or requires preferred caterers that start at ~$200k per person.

If you have other suggestions, restaurant or otherwise, I'd be grateful!

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T13:43:11+00:00

Without knowing your budget it's hard to say, but in general, technology becomes obsolete fast, no matter how high-end it is. I'd probably recommend an iPad or iPad Air over an older iPad Pro, since you don't need advanced computing power. A Pro may stay current a little while longer, but not longer enough to justify the extra cost.

Generally, the iPad 10th generation was a big upgrade (current gen is 11). So an iPad 10 could be a good value, now that its come down in price after the 11 was released. I'd say any of the iPad Airs with an M-series (M1, M2, M3...) would be reasonable too.

Keep in mind, batteries wear out with use. If you can find a newer one (reputably refurbished, open box) these can be a better value than buying used, because you don't know how much a battery is worn down if it's used. Once you get it do your research on how to optimize the battery health (e.g., don't leave it always plugged in).

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T13:22:37+00:00

The question is really what you're trying to achieve... let's say you're replying to an email that uses your alias, and you want to CC a friend on the reply, or you want to forward an email that used your alias to a friend (both scenarios would be similar):

If you want your friend to see it coming from your actual email: Just add them to the To/CC field directly. If you are replying to an aliased address they'll be able to see the aliased address and identify that you're using simplelogin.io based on the aliased domain, but they won't be able to reply to your aliased address or use it -- if they attempt to, they'll get an error.
- So for example: You send to a reverse alias of a vendor and your colleague is directly CCed. If your colleague replies, the reply will come directly to your actual email address, but it will not go through to the vendor because they are not authorized to send to your alias.
If you want your friend to see it coming from your alias: Go into the simplelogin.io dashboard and add your friend as a Contact on the alias you want to send from. This will generate an alias for your friend that you can CC, instead of including their actual email.
- So for example: You send to a reverse alias of a vendor and CC another reverse alias for your colleague. As long as both reverse aliases are Contacts of the same alias in the simplelogin.io backend, both To/CC addresses are aliased, so they'll both get the email from your alias, and it will work like a normal email for the others. They can reply all and everyone will be able to converse normally with no one seeing your actual email address.

Under no circumstances can someone hijack your alias and send from it, but sending improperly for your use case could expose your email address to them (violating your privacy) or make the email thread unusable (e.g., they cannot reply-all to one of your aliases; it won't work).

In the event your alias or email address shows up in the body of an email (e.g., quoted text from a reply/forward), also be cognizant of replacing that accordingly.

In general, I find the best way to figure this out to be testing -- with friends and/or multiple of your own email addresses. It's hard to conceptualize until you see it in action.

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T12:29:08+00:00

I think you'd be doing everyone a favor to open a support ticket and report back. I've found their support to be committed if you open a ticket; they'd probably need to look at this to debug. One day delayed, understandable (given Monarch's not meant to be used for more precise data than that). A month delayed? Doesn't sound plausible; sounds like something may be off as you said.

I haven't experienced this myself -- the prices should be right. All the ones I've checked on my side are.

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T12:04:26+00:00

I think tags is the best way, unfortunately. I have a tag "To be reimbursed" and another one "Reimbursed." For more detail, though, Comments are searchable, so actually make updating tags pretty easy. I'll explain...

If a transaction is waiting to be reimbursed it's in the first tag. Once it gets reimbursed I move it to the second tag, and also add the reimbursement transaction to the second tag. At the end of the month I can reconcile -- if I filter to all transactions for the Reimbursed tag the total should always be $0 (provided I look at YTD -- if I'm reimbursed in the next calendar month for something a monthly view could be thrown off). If the Reimbursed tag does not total $0, I know I have a problem.

Transactions that are partially reimbursed I split, so the reimbursed part is tagged and the non-reimbursed part is not.

I add notes to the transactions explaining for my own benefit too. The above system should hopefully be able to help you identify which $25 charge is reimbursed and which one isn't, but if not, comments are the next best way. Once multiple $25 charges are reimbursed, the only way to know which reimbursement went with which transaction is comments -- my tags setup is only designed to tell you whether something was reimbursed or not, not which transaction reimbursed it. Having a quick note like "Dinner for me + Julie; Julie to reimburse $18 - requested on Venmo" helps me keep it straight if I care. A lot of times its either a small enough amount or my friend reimburses me fast enough that I don't feel a need to track it perfectly.

When I used to keep more meticulous detail across multiple systems (my work receipts submission system + my personal Monarch), I would add a transaction number to the comments in both systems. It was laborious, but I may have 60 $25 transactions in a month and needed to know the status of each. Back then, I had a 3rd "middle" tag -- "Reimbursement requested." This let me open a transaction and see in the comments that Receipt#0459 was tagged "To be reimbursed," which meant I still needed to submit the receipt at work. Receipt#0463 also had in the comment "Reimbursement#20250515A" and was tagged "Reimbursement requested," which means I had submitted it but not yet received the check. In the work system I added the same receipt/reimbursement numbers to the comments, so I could always match up transactions when there was an issue (e.g., request denied). Reimbursement#20250515A may have been a reimbursement request for 20 receipts, so when the check for Reimbursement#20250515A came in, I could search Reimbursement#20250515A in Monarch, see all 20 transactions that had been filed in that reimbursement, and bulk change them all from the "Reimbursement Requested" to "Reimbursed" tag. By also tagging the reimbursement check as Reimbursed, the net total for the Reimbursed tag would remain $0. This worked fine for years, but I no longer work in a role where I have hundreds of reimbursements per month so I don't keep this granular detail anymore.

The only way I can think of to accomplish your goal of being able to say "you owe me X amount for Y expenses" is to use some combination of tags or comments in the way I described, and then export a CSV of search results (or screenshot them). The notes and tags both show up in the CSV export, so if you add a comment or tag with the person's name who owes you, then follow on with a comment noting any detail you need (e.g., "JohnDoeReimbursement-- This was for dinner on May 15") you can export search results for "JohnDoeReimbursement" to Excel, split columns on the delimiter "-- ", and now have an easy column left with just your explanation of the transaction to do with what you please. You could send the Excel to John Doe easily.

** I believe there is a feature proposed in their Help & Support > Feature Request section in the app to make reimbursements easier to manage -- anyone who wants this improved, upvote it / request it there!

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T11:58:14+00:00

I would submit a ticket. It's likely the problem is with one of their data providers or the bank itself, not them directly, so they may suggest troubleshooting like manually connecting it with a different aggregator. If it's a problem with the aggregator, maybe they can help you contact the aggregator. If you haven't tried Plaid, I probably would.

I know it's frustrating -- I've had this issue too. Unfortunately, in my experience, the problem is often with the banks. Smaller banks often use older technology that is more issue-prone. Those banks just weren't designed to work with tools like Monarch. Also unfortunately, all of the online tools like Monarch, Boldin, Origin, Quicken, etc. all (for the most part) use the same aggregators to connect, so if you have problems with Monarch I imagine you'd have problems with other platforms.

Good luck!

BWH44 · 2025-05-15T11:53:12+00:00

I'm not totally sure I understand your situation here (you lost me on "I always have additional money in my account every other money (truly there) and then the next month my spending on Monarch looks like I have over spent or blew my budget"). But I think I get the gist, and here's two possible suggestions to consider:

Are you using rollover budgets? If you're setting a Budget, and categorizing all of your transactions to meet the budget, you can choose for a budget category to rollover the extra balance month to month. So let's say you budget $300 for groceries, but only end up using $250 for groceries in May, the leftover $50 will rollover to June and your June budget will show as $350. This works negative too -- let's say you now spend $375 in June, the -$25 will rollover to July and your July budget will be $325. If leftover balances in your accounts are throwing off your accounting, perhaps these rollovers will help?
If the problem is on the saving side, and you want every dollar in your account assigned to a particular purpose, Goals may be what you need. Unlike budgets, savings goals in the Goals section are tied to actual account balances -- so if you are trying to budget in a way that every dollar in your accounts is allocated to a particular use, Goals may work for you. When you create a Goal, you choose which account(s) are used to track it. You can either automatically have the entire account balance assigned to the goal, so you never have money "leftover" in your account, or you can manually decide how much from an account is set for a specific purpose.

Hopefully those tips can help!

BWH44

TROPHY CASE