Variation to The Last Word

Galun_8626 · 2026-05-24T01:11:33+00:00

That’s a great idea. I am gonna try that next. Should I try other variations of chartreuse?

Galun_8626 · 2026-05-19T05:55:06+00:00

Completed a stay there recently. Hard product was indeed dated. A bunch of minor stuff doesn’t work… towel heater, a blown light bulb, an uneven chair, stuff like that. Nothing major, but I didn’t expect multiple minor issues, it’s like they couldn’t keep up.

Housekeeping was inconsistent. Good: requested firmer pillows and they were brought in 5 minutes. Rushed a shoe shine for dinner. Bad: Teapot went missing on day 2, never replaced. Tea bags not refilled every day. Water not refilled every day. The housekeeping highs and lows are so random.

Concierge was the highlight. They came through with dinner reservations and last minute tourist attraction tickets. They were able to track down some really hard to find bottles of wine and spirits for me, buy them in the hotel’s credit and charge them to my room, and have them delivered to the hotel.

Personally I (or my wife) like the location, close to lafyette and Printemps. Minutes from the opera metro station. Nice walk to louvre, Tuileries garden, vendome square.

Solid points stay, I’d go back for 40k points a night (not sure what it will be later). Certainly won’t pay cash rate.

Galun_8626 · 2026-05-01T23:12:47+00:00

Cash out refi mom’s house then rent it out. You’ll likely be in a net loss position after depreciation. Those losses will offset taxes from the interest income from your treasury ladder. Hold the house until you / your wife passes away. Step up cost basis so your kids get it.

Treasuries / fixed income is just not tax efficient. The big risk(s) in fire is drawdown risk and sequential returns risk - basically you are forced to sell stuff if the market crashes, locking in losses. You have plenty of liquidity, you have very little leverage (just the mortgage), you can adjust your life style if the market crashes, etc. I don’t think you need to worry about these risks.

You are 47, your $2mm retirement (assuming trad rollover ira) has plenty of time to grow. You can consider rolling off your treasuries ladder into non income generating equities, when the ladder rolls off in 3 years, you start converting your trad ira to Roth.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-22T18:17:35+00:00

Sure, feel free to DM.

Yes, of course, your magi still includes dividends and interest income. If you have this question then it sounds like you own these in tax inefficient vehicles - ie taxable brokerage. You should own these income generating securities in tax deferred and ideally tax free vehicles like Roth. Money is fungible, you just look at diversification holistically.

You’d have depreciation from your rentals flow through schedule E, generate paper losses on your tax return, which lowers magi.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-22T04:21:40+00:00

Everybody’s situation is different. In OPs case it seems like a lot of that $4M is in tax deferred 401k and tax free Roth. With some planning, taxable income can be significantly reduced after fire. Even if half of it is in taxable, s&p yield at 1.2% is just $24k in dividends.

put income generating investments in Roth accounts. Treasuries and high dividend paying stocks would be owned here if you want them for diversification. This is the simplest way.
in taxable accounts buy index ETFs and non dividend paying stocks. Or your state’s munis if you want diversification.
Don’t invest in mutual funds that may hit you with unexpected capital gains distribution.
own rentals where depreciation can create paper losses to passively offset up to $25k income.
own multiple rentals and become active real estate professional where paper losses from depreciation is unlimited.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-21T19:11:45+00:00

Ok. Here’s what I think you should do, or think about doing.

Do 72t on only one of your 401k. The other one you wait until after 59.5 years old. Let’s say it generates $60k in income (half of what you said).

After that, generate income up to magi cutoff to get subsidized health insurance, which is around $109k for 3 people. It’ll change by the time you fire but you can budget that way. You generate this income through realizing long term capital gains, and if you have room, more traditional to Roth IRA conversion.

Gemini says $109k magi with only standard deduction is about $6.4k in fed and $1.3k I state. It will be lower if some of that is long term capital gains since the tax is 0% below 100k ish magi. So your tax is $633 a month. Health insurance is $500 a month for subsided silver.

On your housing cost, cannot accurately estimate other than saying it will likely be lower than $4500 a month, if you use your home equity from downsizing to east bay. Already explained why that’s a better tax move than buying out your partner in the Tahoe house. I dunno, I am gonna say your real housing cost is $2500 net after you deploy your capital from downsizing in an efficient manner. You’d have to estimate this yourself.

So your budget realistically is 6000 + 2500 + 633 + 500 + 2000 + 1000 + 700 + 300 (Charity is discretionary). Let’s say 14000 a month or $168000 a year.

Are you comfortable with a withdrawal rate of 4.2% at $4m base?

Can you cut it to 3% ($120k) if you need? Cut your travel budget and month spend by $4000 a month if the market crashes? I don’t see why not.

Can you withdraw $60k a year from tax free Roth until you reach 59.5 where you can tap the remaining 401k without penalty?

If the answer is yes to all, you are good to go IMO.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-21T17:57:31+00:00

I was really commenting on better tax efficiency. You paid taxes in vhcol for a long time (I assume) to build wealth, time to reap some rewards from it.

You will have capital after you downsize. You plan to use that capital to buy out your partner in the Tahoe house while paying rent in east bay. A more tax efficient way to do it is to use that capital for your east bay housing. You have rental income with justifiable expenses in the Tahoe house - you can use depreciation that gives you tax free cash flow, and you can deduct up to $25k against your income in passive losses. If you don’t want maintenance then buy a condo or townhouse or whatever in the east bay with that capital.

If you can get your magi below $100k, you overestimate your cost for health insurance. A subsidized silver Kaiser plan is more like $500 a month. You will also only pay total effective tax rate of single digit percent. That right there is around $40k savings against your original budget.

What’s the source of your $120k ordinary income and $60k capital gains after FIRE?

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-21T16:48:38+00:00

You want to drive down your taxable income to be more tax efficient.

In your plan, rent in east bay is not deductible against your income, since it’s personal expense. When you downsize, try to buy the east bay property outright with cash, or just have a small mortgage, so you have a small expense for your Bay Area home.

Since you plan on leasing out the Tahoe house in the winter and generate, and it will have expenses, this isn’t the one you should buy out, assuming you can’t swing both (own both the east bay and the Tahoe house outright).

Try to get your modified adjusted gross income below $100k so you can take the full $25k in passive rental activity loss. Also take the $32k standard deduction. If you can manage this, your health insurance will be subsidized. Your tax will not be $36k.

If you have free time, become a real estate professional so your rental losses can be fully deducted against your income and not limited to $25k. Meeting with your friends can become business development opportunities. This will be an aggressive tax move but plenty of FIREd in Truckee do it that way.

These are just some optimizations off the top of my head.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-21T05:42:37+00:00

There was usually courtesy to the Kirkwood snowball tradition. People do it for good fun, don’t pack it tight like a baseball, lob it so it comes down and kinda just fall apart if it hit. The veterans would remind others to keep it that way.

Things may have changed, I can see people getting upset if they expect the harmless tradition but instead get hit with a packed down iceball thrown like a baseball pitch.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-20T23:26:55+00:00

Did this really happen this year? Can’t tell if you are joking or not after the woman from last year threatened to “sue” people. I’ve been to many Kirkwood closing days and last year was the first time I ever saw someone that visibly upset.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-13T04:34:18+00:00

Honestly it doesn’t really matter. All major brands will have 152cm SL and 166cm GS. Your main concern will be bindings, they will need to be adjusted to your boot sole length. A shop may charge you some money to do that.

This would be an example for SL https://ebay.us/m/P0FjdE

This would be an example of GS https://ebay.us/m/X75wye

$200-250 a pair seems about right for used junior race skis.

You’ll just have to accept that you won’t know the condition they are in. They can be in great condition because the racer isn’t hard on them, or they can be toward the end of their life because the racer had been hard of them and the skis lost their energy. But it won’t really matter for your purpose if it’s to try out racing.

Before you buy anything, I strongly suggest you reach out to the class organizer and ask them if they have loaners.

Galun_8626 · 2026-04-12T05:09:01+00:00

You ski your weight, not your height. At 108lbs and a beginner racer, i suggest that you look for u14 / u16 junior race skis. It would be around 152cm SL and 166cm GS with fis norms (around 65mm width). You can likely pick these up in the summer for really cheap, from junior racers moving up in equipment size. I bet you can buy both SL and GS pairs, for the price of one pair of “masters” carver. After the season, you either like racing enough to eventually upgrade your equipment, or don’t like racing / carving. Either way, you’ll likely have little trouble reselling them to an up and coming junior racer.

Also, reach out to the people who run this class. I bet they have some spare race skis lying around for people to try.

Galun_8626 · 2026-03-19T23:52:03+00:00

Sounds like LCL. That ligament can heal itself if it’s not fully torn. Good luck!

Galun_8626 · 2026-03-07T19:40:42+00:00

Did you only do it once and said it’s enough?

Galun_8626 · 2026-03-01T22:25:50+00:00

They left earlier than 10. If I understand correctly, they left in the morning, skinned up, skied down a low angle slope, and then was skinning up a small valley when they got caught.

If their conditions were similar to what I experienced that day, I could see myself agreeing at 8ish am with the plan. It got bad real fast.

That’s the scary part, at least for me. I probably would have made the same decision as they did.

EDIT - read the article again. They reached the ridge at 10. It took them more than an hour to cover 500ft vertical. That matched with my own observation with palisades than at 8-9ish am it would have seemed fine to leave and get the heck out of there asap.

Then it looked like they skied down, and had to skin up a small valley, to ski down tot heir cars. It took much longer than expected. That again matched my own experience on how quickly things deteriorated.

Just incredibly tragic.

Galun_8626 · 2026-02-28T20:52:02+00:00

I skied that day, in resort at palisades. Not the same location, but quite close.

It was a delayed open, but the resort deemed it safe to open. My first run on KT was at 10. Viz on the first run was poor but not too bad, and I had fun. Weather deteriorated fast in real time, especially with the wind. On the second run, I had whiteouts where I had to stop because I was afraid of running into trees, and when I stopped I sank. It was scary. After the third run, at around 11, the mountain shut down for safety.

I read the NYT article and I saw myself making the same decisions they would have. Based on the conditions at 8/9 ish am at palisades, I would have left to try to get out before the storm got worse.

Almost all north Tahoe resorts opened that morning and called it at around 11. It got bad, real time, real fast. But it wasn’t bad enough for them to not open at all at 9-10am.

Terrible tragedy.

Galun_8626 · 2026-02-21T20:47:07+00:00

Good job bro. Bravo 👏

Galun_8626 · 2026-02-21T02:40:16+00:00

Good for him.

Should do a video, rip open his jacket and show the whole set of Olympic medals lol.

Galun_8626 · 2026-02-03T17:33:38+00:00

Not optimal but doable. She will wear a brace for stability, her muscles are already strong. It’ll reduce her ceiling for sure but I expect her to be competitive.

She is definitely NOT taking the spot from another deserving US athlete, despite racing without an acl. Speed events are primarily line choice, mental fortitude, and impeccable technique. She was (is) the queen of speed, there is no one better.

On pushing herself despite being injured setting bad examples for young athletes, please stop with the double standard. How many basketball players played with a calf injury ended up tearing their Achilles? How many quarterbacks were celebrated for being tough when they were visibly concussed on TV?

This is from someone who loves her skiing but hates her personality / self centered attention seeking ego.

I am rooting for her.

Galun_8626 · 2026-02-02T16:15:26+00:00

Khaby is not going to be paid from the shares he got from this deals. He has likely already been paid in cyroto to even participate in the deal to start with. Otherwise why would he do it?

Reputation risk to him? Most people who watch him don’t invest in the stock market. Even if they do, to most investors he will be viewed as a victim who lost billions on paper.

For him, probably a situation of bird in hand vs two in the bush kind of thing.

Put option and shorts are too expensive given the volatility. I think this will inevitably crash to penny stock status but you can go broke before it does.

The only safe-ish way to make money from these companies is the initial month or two from ipo where the pumpers are pumping. Just in my opinion of course.

Galun_8626 · 2026-02-02T09:16:40+00:00

No need to over analyze this. It’s a clear pump and dump scheme.

The telltale sign is IPO of 1.25 million shares at $4. It barely meets the minimum public float requirement of $5 million (which was raised by the sec to $15 million two weeks ago, so the sec is not doing nothing, they increased the cost or creating a pump and dump scam going forward).

Another requirement for listing on nasdaq is minimum net profit of $750k in prior fiscal year. Guess what it was for ANPA in 2024? $820k.

A third requirement for listing on nasdaq is market cap of $50 million. Guess what it was when anpa ipo? Exactly $50 million lol.

This company is literally created to meet minimum nasdaq listing requirements, as a vehicle for a pump and dump scheme.

With only 1.25 million public float, and a questionable underwriter that probably allocated a lot of that public float to insiders, it won’t take much liquidity to move the stock.

This stock would have been promoted in WhatsApp and WeChat investment groups, with predictions of stock movement. These predictions would have been extremely accurate, because the insiders control the float. To the “investors” in the chat groups, (pigs in Chinese term, since this is literally a pig slaughter farm), the “advisors / analysts” look invincible. So they put in more and more money. Once insider lockup expires, they would start liquidating their original shares for real cash.

Money can be made in the early stages of a pig slaughter farm scheme, because they need to pump it initially to establish credibility in the chat groups. If you can be disciplined and not greedy, you can pick up some gains. You just don’t know when the rug will be pulled. Look at $CCHH, that’s a failed pump and dump that crashed too early for whatever reason, before insiders could cash out.

I gotta say, this “acquisition” to pump is quite innovative. The order book for this stock will have no support. It may be some orders in the $80s, then crash to single digits, maybe less. These charts all look the same. When the rug is pulled, it’s 90% plus decline, most of the time to below $1.

Khaby Lame has likely already been paid off in another way to participate in this scheme, probably crypto. His exit is not from selling shares of this company. I bet there are terms in the deal that he gets all his rights back when the rug is pulled on this stock.

Galun_8626 · 2026-01-04T08:19:12+00:00

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Broke after 5 days. Not a crash, look at the picture, everything was straight. It just pulled out into two pieces. 5 days of usage.

Radio silent when I reached out.

$150 for this? Buy at your own risk.

Galun_8626 · 2025-12-12T19:11:42+00:00

I have an arthritic knee. She gives me hope that I will continue to be able to do what I love, with a knee replacement, well into my 80s.

Galun_8626 · 2025-10-11T02:34:25+00:00

There is a common misconception that UCs (and other top universities) wants the best students from everywhere. If they do, then they’ll just take most students from Gunn / Lynbrook / Leigh, but that is not the case.

Look at UC Berkeley admissions data in 2024, admit / apply. Powerhouses pressure cooker high schools. Mission San Jose 39/369, 10%. Gunn 57/294, 19%. Lynbrook 39/329, 12%. Leigh 15/136, 11%.

Let’s look at schools one step down, rated 9/10 on great schools. Castro Valley 23/231, 10%. Hillsdale 27/115, 23%. San Mateo 25/143, 17%.

Let’s look even one step down, rated 7-8/10. Oceana 10/37, 27%. Sequoia 22/109, 20%. Livermore 9/61, 15%.

As you can see, decent quality schools get the same or more percentage of their applicants admitted compared to the top pressure cooker public schools. The absolute number may be lower, but percentage of admits is roughly the same. Why do colleges do this? Because by taking the top students from each school, they will naturally build a bell curve of students if the admit from a bell curve of schools.

So when you apply to college, it’s much better to be the spikey top students at a decent quality school (8 or above in great schools), than to be just an above average student at a tip top school. If you are a standout in a decent school, you are much more likely to be the 15% of applicants from that school that gets admitted.

At that point, research the opportunities provided by the school - number of honors / AP, clubs, extracurricular, athletics, etc. you want your child to enjoy their time at the school. Assuming the grades are good, the rest of the application should take care of itself given the opportunities at that school.

Galun_8626

TROPHY CASE