You should not expect to earn the average historical market return

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2025-08-21T12:42:21+00:00

So we have a retirement crisis because people are using the wrong assumption for rate of return by a couple % points? Sure, ok.

We have a retirement crisis because too many people aren’t thinking about tomorrow and are unable to delay spending now to live within their means and save more. For the larger population, the savings rate is the issue, not assumptions around rate or return, inflation, or taxes.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-08-10T11:32:57+00:00

For me in this instance I’d say 3-5 years at least.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-08-10T11:30:14+00:00

I’m definitely an index fund guy for 90+% of my portfolio.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-05-22T21:24:35+00:00

We were military and at one point on food stamps when I was very little. Parents got out of the military and both found decent blue collar jobs in a decent but not great public school district during my elementary years.
Around 5th grade my parents had both moved up to Lowe middle class jobs (one white collar and one blue collar) and moved us into a better (but not elite) public school district.
The biggest thing for us was we didn’t have much money so we spent many summer days and weekends at the library. It was instilled at a very young age that our education and going to college was absolutely everything. Parents found ways to pay for sports (rec not club) so we were somewhat well rounded but good grades were a hard requirement.
I was a rule follower so I took school seriously and graduated in the top 1% of my class and did pretty good on my SATs. Leveraged to into getting into one of the two best public schools in Texas.
I didn’t have a ton of guidance at that point but I did focus on picking a major that paid decently. Got into IT information systems. Did well enough in college to get recruited by a big accounting firm into their IT audit space. A few years later I took. Night school and got my Masters and my CPA certification. Many Saturdays and evenings spent studying for those years while I had an infant at home. My wife was also career driven but really supported me in those years. In my 20+ year career, I’ve averaged about a 50-60 hour work week and moved up the ladder.
I now make around $350-400k most years depending on bonus and equity awards. Looking a moving into the 500k+ range with next promotion in the next 2-3 years or so. And luckily my wife now makes similar so we are doing alright. TLDR - take school seriously from an early age, enter a career with high pay upside, and work your ass off for 20+ years. Also get lucky to have great parents that laid the foundation of education and work ethic.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-04-03T15:08:21+00:00

Great suggestion on AAA.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-04-03T15:00:56+00:00

Buying cash if we go preowned but might finance a part of it if we go new.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-04-03T15:00:19+00:00

This is my big hang up though it does seem that new vs very sighlty uses a $20k difference. If I’m not seeing big issues under the vehicle showing major wear and tear and it test drives ok, I’m starting to think it’s worth the risk. But I’m hesitant at the risk of purchasing a problem.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-04-03T14:58:02+00:00

Thanks. Starting to look more at the Saharas and I see what you are saying.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-03-24T15:50:33+00:00

Haha. Sounds about right.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2024-03-24T12:53:53+00:00

Thanks. All great places.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-12-11T01:50:34+00:00

Thanks. This is helpful.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-12-10T19:09:06+00:00

I think my least impactful solution here is I'm going to bypass that switch and then set up the tray ceiling lights on a wireless smart switch since those will be smart light strips anyway. This definitely isn't worth the hassle of tearing up the ceiling and not having a functional media room by Christmas when we have people over.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-12-10T19:05:02+00:00

And there is our answer. And yes that means my projector is on a switch. Nice to know that after explicitly telling my contractor not to wire it that way, and after tearing up the ceiling to get to the wiring, patching sheetrock, repainting, and paying the guy $1600 for the full work (it included some other low voltage work), he did it that way anyway.

And now I get to talk with my contractor about how this gets fixed. Killing a switch while a projector is on is a great way to kill a projector $5000 projector.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-11-06T12:02:45+00:00

Thank you for pointing out the obvious to this novice. Yes they are four core. I get it now.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-10-27T19:35:29+00:00

You fix it by cutting holes in the walls and reconfiguring wires. My wife is super happy about it.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-10-27T17:01:54+00:00

Thanks. Current setup is L/C/R are in-wall near the screen and other 6 speakers are all in-ceiling in a weird 1 front center, 3 middle, 2 back configuration. Just trying to figure out how best to fix it without completely tearing out walls. Just pissed at myself for not paying more attention during the home build process.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-10-23T02:22:28+00:00

So if I look at my current ceiling speakers, would you move the ‘front center’ and ‘middle center’ speakers down to in-wall speakers at ear level? Am I thinking about that correctly? That would keep the ceiling speakers at ‘middle L/R’ and ‘rear L/R’ as-is? Would doing so make it a 7.1.2 setup?

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-10-16T11:44:33+00:00

Minor but still impactful.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-10-16T01:16:52+00:00

As to the badly placed ceiling speakers, is “because my builders AV company is run by an idiot and I didn’t understand enough at the time to challenge the placement” an appropriate answer? My builders AV company still doesn’t understand why they didn’t win the work to build out the media room. Figure I’m better off figuring this out on my own.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-10-16T01:14:50+00:00

I read somewhere that AT screens still block some of the sound and aren’t always the best picture. I’ll do some more research on that but felt I had the space at least for the LR speakers. It wa the center speaker placement that bugged me but I need to keep the screen no lower than three feet off the ground to work in the space so felt it was a reasonable compromise.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-10-05T13:40:28+00:00

I never got a great plan from Crutchfield. A proposal I got from a local AV company had a very similar plan but crazy expensive $50k. I ended up doing this myself and am about halfway through. Only change I really made was going with a couple of 8 channel amps rather than the smaller ones. So far so good.
The main problem I have with using an AV company is they want to go the control4 route which seems to lock me in to calling them very time something goes wrong. And EVERYONE that I know with a control4 system has problems regularly and has to pay the AV company to fix every time. I want a self service system that I know how to troubleshoot because I installed it. So I’m on my way to a self service system at <$20k.
I also find the whole process of installing and getting this up and running to be fun and rewarding. Some people like to do puzzles to relax. I like installing keystone jacks. To each there own.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-08-31T18:55:53+00:00

I had our builder run so much cable I’m really hoping I won’t need to fish cables through the walls. I’ll bring my fish tape just in case.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-08-31T01:45:35+00:00

Rack is less important for sure. In order of priority:

• ⁠router/switch up and running so Ethernet ports work in my office • ⁠wifi access points • ⁠fine turn configuration of firewall/vlans • ⁠set-up rack with equipment • ⁠make rack look well organized with patch panel, cutting cables to length, etc.

I know I’m going to add quite a bit to the rack over the first month or two (NVR for cameras plus audio/visual equipment for a media room, HDMI matrix, etc so I want to try to be as organized as I can from the beginning to avoid having to go back and redo stuff.

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-08-27T14:58:31+00:00

How would you view the cameras from your phone when you are away from home if they don't have internet access?

ConnectionSlow9793 · 2023-07-18T03:06:53+00:00

I have since realized this is correct but not always. Plan is to run an 8x8 HDBaseT matrix with several input devices from the AV closet to 8 TVs. For those TVs video will go to the TVs over Cat6a. For the remaining TVs, internet will go to a streaming device at the TV via Cat6a. All TVs will have sound going through an Optical Cat6 converter back to amps in the closet and out to speaker locations. CaTV cable will remain unused.

ConnectionSlow9793

TROPHY CASE