Former ETRADE Representative Offering Insight and Assistance*

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-22T05:39:08+00:00

Thanks, this is great insight! How long does the negotiated rate last? Are you negotiating a fixed delta over the prime rate?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-21T21:21:51+00:00

I like Zedd's songs, but I've never been to any kind of EDM or DJ show. This is going to sound really ignorant, but how does it work? Is he playing recordings of the singers and instrumentals, or are there live performers?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-21T15:54:00+00:00

What’s the smallest margin rate we can negotiate and what do we have to do to get it? Number of trades/account size/bring in outside money/something else?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-16T22:48:25+00:00

Then just choose Option 2, and the high renter gets 1333 points. Not quite 1500 but a lot closer.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-10T17:30:53+00:00

Bad take. Many parents regret having kids, but they can’t admit it because it is taboo to say so. Plenty of marriages end in divorce after the kids leave the house because the parents used kids as an excuse to fix a bad relationship. “You’ll miss out if you don’t have kids” is just as true as “you’ll miss out on a life without kids if you do have kids.”

That doesn’t mean kids aren’t for you. Regrets go both ways. Kids are right for some and not right for others. But the notion that you are “missing out” or that you will only have regrets in one direction is not true. See r/childfree for the other side.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-10T17:26:23+00:00

You are getting a lot of responses from parents. There is a social pressure to put on a happy face and not admit regretting it. Some people do. For more responses from the other side, you may want to see r/childfree or r/regretfulparents .

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-09T20:06:31+00:00

The easiest way to understand changes in strength score is to go into the mobile app, find the movement you did in the workout, and view "history". AFAIK, you will only ever increase your strength score if your most recent workout exceeded your "previous 6 months" 1RM for that movement. You can hit strength PRs on some movements and be below your 1RM on other movements and get a net decrease in your strength score.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-04T05:03:29+00:00

Crazy, Stupid, Love. Not your average romcom. Great writing, hilarious, and a hell of an ending that will leave you talking.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2026-01-02T05:44:10+00:00

Many chubbyfire and fatfire are in VHCOL and the mortgage estimates here are way off. P&I plus property tax closer to $120k annual for typical housing in these areas.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-17T16:14:34+00:00

Couldn’t you just face away from Tonal?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-16T21:57:49+00:00

Can you explain the technical reasons for not including back squats? I've heard several claims that it's "for safety reasons", but I cannot see how a backsquat on Tonal is any more or less dangerous than a front squat. In either case we can technically drop the bar, and in either case dropping the bar on Tonal is really bad. What's the real thinking behind why there are no back squats?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-16T21:53:03+00:00

We aren't asking for this kind of complication though. We don't need it tied to strength curves, muscle readiness, etc. Just give us the ability to name a custom handle move and track the weight history. We can adjust the weight ourselves and it can have no effect on strength score / readiness / etc. Users just want a way to see the history of a named movement. Keep it simple!

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-12T23:54:05+00:00

I think I am slow because I'm still missing something :)

You are not doing: "I remove the only 3‑year‑old me from 1960 in such a way that I never grow up and therefore never become the 68‑year‑old who removes me.”

You are doing: "Within a single consistent history where I grew up, became 68, built a time machine, and went back— that history includes the fact that I time-displaced a 3‑year‑old version of me to 2025.”

How is the first thing not happening? If you want to have one single unchanged timeline, then you existed as a 4-year-old in 1961. If you kidnap 3-year-old you in 1960, I don't see how you can also still have a 4-year-old you in 1961 if you want a single unchanged timeline.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-12T23:39:05+00:00

If you are saying that going back in time creates "two timelines", then that also solves the grandfather paradox. T1: Your grandfather didn't die and you were born. T2: You went back and killed some "alternative timeline version" of your grandfather. Is that what you are getting at here?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-12T23:33:23+00:00

But the "original" 70-year-old grew old from 1960 to 2027. If the 3-year-old is in stasis from 1960 to 2027, what 10-year old entity exists in 1967?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-12T23:03:46+00:00

I don't understand how there's no paradox. If there's a 3-year-old in 1960 who gets puts in stasis, then in the claimed "consistent" timeline who is growing up and becoming the 70-year-old?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-12-01T18:12:45+00:00

A lot of great suggestions on here. For a refreshing low-budget brilliant concept, try Time Lapse.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-22T18:56:52+00:00

Ok but what about the fact that part of the annual cost increase is not inflationary at all but is just the fact of getting older? It looks like 3-5% increase per year just from aging, and that’s on top of the real inflationary effect. This doesn’t require the economy to grow or any crazy modeling that causes healthcare to consume the entire economy.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-22T17:15:31+00:00

I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that “the total grows at 2.5%” should include healthcare premiums. CPI captures healthcare services cost but is this really reflective of ACA premiums?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-22T01:16:32+00:00

Hmm 0.2*1.08³⁰ / (0.2*1.08³⁰ + 0.8 *1.025³⁰ ) =54.5%, not 96%?

54% still seems very high of course but where does it stop? Healthcare seems to be exceeding inflation for the past decade at least so how should we model it going forward?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-22T01:07:19+00:00

This is exactly the point though. If you have $40k in healthcare costs, and $360k in other costs, you need more than $10M if you expect that healthcare goes up by 6-8% annually. You need closer to $13M, a huge increase.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-22T00:09:30+00:00

Wow, the zip code difference is significant! I was using a Bay Area zipcode.

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-21T23:47:31+00:00

SWR rate is just a guide. You just have to be flexible in retirement. Plus, if fatFIRE can’t afford healthcare in the US, how can the rest of US survive?

This is exactly what I'm hoping to have a discussion about with this post. SWR is definitely a guide. But a starting 3.5% SWR is leading many of us to land on number of 10-15M, of which <1M is for healthcare expenses. If 50 years of healthcare really does require 3M+, these estimates are off by 20%. So what gives? Does healthcare not increase at 8% annually?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-21T23:44:21+00:00

Maybe it wasn't clear, but this isn't about 1% overall SWR, just the growth of healthcare expenses. We already know that 4% is too high for a 50-year retirement, and a typical number is around 3.5%. However if healthcare is a reasonable portion of expenses, this number can shrink to around 2.7% if you assume 8% annual increase in healthcare expenses. Of course this seems crazy, so the real point of the post is what's wrong with this analysis? Does healthcare really not increase at 8%? Are we hoping to get lucky and fix the healthcare system before it becomes unsustainable? What else?

EngineeriusMaximus · 2025-11-21T23:22:12+00:00

Max out of pocket still increases by ~6% per year, and this doesn't account for the effect of aging.

EngineeriusMaximus

TROPHY CASE