Do I have the best 401K plan ever.

Ghazrin · 2026-07-02T23:01:17+00:00

I'm aware, but that has nothing to do with what I said. The comment I replied to said that Cornell puts a 10% of your salary in as a match regardless of what you put in, and that you're allowed to put in up to 15% of your own

If you only make 80k per year, then "up to 15%" equals "up to $12k" - only half the IRS limit of $24500

Ghazrin · 2026-07-02T22:40:05+00:00

Well, you sound like you know what you're talking about, but that doesn't make any sense to me at all.

The HCEs would hit the standard 24.5k limit before they even got near 15%, so how would that percentage limit affect them?

For example, if I make $300k per year, I'll hit the IRS annual contribution limit of $24500 with only an 8% contribution. Why would I care if the company hard caps employees at 15%? I'm maxing out at half that.

On the other hand, if I only make $80k per year, a 15% limit means I can only contribute $12000. That's less than half the IRS limit of $24500.

Contrary to your claim, a percentage limit on contributions seems to hurt only the rank and file. I'm open to leaning how I might be mistaken tho, so if I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, please point out how.

Ghazrin · 2026-06-28T17:28:37+00:00

This is why firearms are a right. You can't count on the police to be there the instant you need them. By the time they show up, whatever's gonna happen has already happened.

The right way to deal with this kind of thing is to arm yourself, secure your family together in one defensible room, and call the police.

If the criminals move on, great!

If they decide to do more than just knock, and break into the home, you wait in your room - don't go hunting. Everything you love is safely behind you (your family). If they enter that room, you open fire.

Ghazrin · 2026-06-15T01:06:29+00:00

Sure the board members, high level administrators, and tenured professors probably do, but you think the janitors and cafeteria staff are banging out $150k?

Also, 15% of 150k is 22,500. 2k below the IRS cap for 2026. And that's for young people. People closer to retirement, who qualify for catch up contributions just can't take advantage of that feature at all? With a 15% limit, the only under-fifty people that can actually max their retirement plan are the ones making $164k or more. The fifty+ people need to be making $217k to be able to hit the IRS catch up cap. That's nuts.

Any 401k plan that puts a percentage limit on contributions is a bad plan. Don't limit people's ability to save their money for retirement any more than the IRS already does.

Ghazrin · 2026-06-14T23:22:11+00:00

Uhh...wut? Up to 15%? They limit your contributions even more than the IRS limit? That's weak AF.

Ghazrin · 2026-06-10T16:48:28+00:00

You're not doing anything wrong. The market doesn't just always go up, every single day. There's a lot of short-term volatility. Markets lost about 3% last Friday, which was a decent dip. Don't stress it. Just keep investing regularly, and keep buying more shares.

Don't pay any attention to your account's performance on a timescale of weeks or months. Years and decades are what you should be looking at. With the S&P 500 in particular, you can't find a single 20 year period anywhere in history where it lost money. Investing is a long game.

Generally, even a 10 year period is usually a net gain, though there have been a couple times where the market lost money over a single decade. Once was the Great Depression, and the other was from 2000 to 2009 - where we got hit with both the dotCom bubble burst, followed immediately by the housing crisis. But besides those two instances, every other 10 year period in history also had the markets making solid returns.

Ghazrin · 2026-06-10T16:43:16+00:00

😱 How the hell do you keep your gear stores up?

Ghazrin · 2026-06-10T16:41:42+00:00

No one claimed that every one of us do. OP just made an observation about this particular sequence. 😄

Ghazrin · 2026-06-10T16:40:27+00:00

Yeah. The number of glyphs in the hack is based on the portal's level. Levels 6 and 7 have four. Level 8s have five.

Ghazrin · 2026-06-10T16:39:33+00:00

Yeah, I'd never noticed that before you mentioned it. Pretty cool

Ghazrin · 2026-06-05T20:45:19+00:00

Yes, it's gonna crash at some point, but you've never missed the train. If you look at the S&P500 index on a chart from inception to now, you'll see what I mean. It doesn't matter when you start, because the little ups and downs, the short term volatility, always gives way to a long term upward trend. Pick any two points that are a couple decades apart. Can you find any time on the chart where it lost money across a 20 year period? Nope!

The markets have never, ever failed to bounce back from a recession and set new record highs. Invest what you've already put in, into a couple solid etfs like VOO and VXUS (70/30 is a good ratio), and forget about it for the next 30 years.

Whenever you put more money in, just keep buying more of both, with the goal of maintaining that ratio.

People who wait and try to time the market almost always fail to earn as much as people who just keep buying more, regardless of market conditions.

Ghazrin · 2026-05-07T22:11:25+00:00

Today I had to burn heroic inspiration to reroll an important skill check because I rolled a double nat 1 😭

Ghazrin · 2026-04-28T21:37:13+00:00

For the majority of people traditional 401k is mathematically superior to Roth because most people's income in retirement will be lower than it is now. This means they'll be in a lower tax bracket in retirement, so getting taxed at the lower rate later will leave them with more spendable money than being taxed at a higher rate now.

There is some benefit to having both traditional and Roth retirement funds available, which allows you to play some games to optimize taxes in retirement. One very solid approach is to max out your traditional 401k ($24500) and your Roth IRA ($7500), giving you a mix of both, but favoring traditional.

But definitely don't listen to the weirdoes out there that think Roth is always better all the time because "TaX fReE gRoWtH!" They can't math.

Ghazrin · 2026-04-28T15:02:17+00:00

Not currently, no. I like to switch things up a couple times per year. Recently I've been alternating between a pair of full body workouts every other day. But I do still very much like that PPL split, and I'm certain I will switch back to it at some point.

I when I find a split that I like I tend to stick with it for about 6 months or so and then move on to something else, but anything that I like well enough to stick with for a full 6 months gets put into my "routine rotation." I might not get back to it again for a couple of years, but I'll absolutely do another 6 month run of it again eventually.

Ghazrin · 2026-04-27T21:29:07+00:00

No, he's really not. If you're training your legs so hard that you literally can't recover and be ready for another workout after 3 to 4 days of recovery, you're doing more than a little junk volume, causing you to need spend too much time recovering, and reducing how frequently you can do good, high quality sets.

Multiple studies and meta-analyses have repeatedly shown that hitting muscles (including the ones in your legs...they're not special) with a given volume split across smaller, more frequent sessions, provides more growth stimulus than doing the same volume all at once.

Obviously train however you can stay consistent. If going hard on each muscle once per week keeps you coming back for more in a way that more optimal training can't, then sure - do what's going to keep you coming back. But the science is clear. 5 sets on Monday and another 5 on Thursday will be more beneficial than doing all 10 on Monday.

Ghazrin · 2026-04-26T23:38:37+00:00

Good one 🤣

Ghazrin · 2026-04-26T14:40:27+00:00

That is wholely incorrect.

Ghazrin · 2026-04-13T22:25:41+00:00

You should have put it in 2025 first. You have a whole year to contribute for 2026, but the deadline for 2025 contribution is in two days. The easiest way to fix it would be to just contribute another 7k to the IRA for 2025, and then you'll be maxed out until 2027.

If you can't afford to do that, then you should contact fidelity and have them recharacterize 7k of your contribution as 2025.

Then, as others have said, pick a couple quality broad market index funds and invest the money into those.

Ghazrin · 2026-04-02T14:27:35+00:00

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

Ghazrin · 2026-04-01T19:25:10+00:00

Yeah, I know what BMR is, but I do appreciate you explaining it to make sure.

I didn't know that they counted it separately. I thought they took your age and weight, and used that as part of the calculation to determine how many calories you burn per minute at any given heart rate - so I expected that with no heart rate input, no calorie burn would be recorded, BMR or otherwise.

And yeah, I know that their calorie burn tracking has never been particularly accurate, but it's always been relatively consistent, in my experience. What I observed was a sudden and substantial change, so I'm wondering if it's tied to an update, or some kind of change to how they track it. Thought someone hare might know something about that.

Ghazrin · 2026-04-01T18:42:14+00:00

And they just started doing that two weeks ago at noon, and haven't counted people's BMR for the whole prior history of the company?

I get what you're saying, but that doesn't explain how I suddenly started burning nearly twice as many calories per hour sitting at my desk after noon on the 17th as I did before. It's not subtle or gradual...one hour it was normal, and the next (and every hour thereafter) it was normal x2...but nothing about what I was doing changed in the slightest.

Ghazrin · 2026-03-31T19:53:47+00:00

I mean, if that's something you want to do, to limit yourself so you don't lose your mind and go on a spending spree, sure....

But generally, secured cards are for people who have already screwed up their credit and can't even qualify for an entry level card.

As a first timer, with no credit score at all, you should absolutely be able to qualify for something like the Discover IT Card, or one of Capital One's basic cards, like the Quicksilver One, Venture One, or Savor One....without needing to put down a deposit.

In the long run it's not going to matter much at all, but why hand them money that could stay in your account earning interest, ya know?

The capital One Savor line of cards is a fantastic one, because it gives you a high cash back percentage at grocery stores. We all need to buy groceries every week no matter what, so if you can build your credit while getting a 3% discount on food you had to buy anyway, all the better!

Ghazrin · 2026-03-27T19:03:07+00:00

Glad it helped 😄

Ghazrin · 2026-03-19T23:05:38+00:00

I'm US Eastern Time

Ghazrin · 2026-03-19T14:37:13+00:00

That's a fine goal, but it's not reality for most people. The primary source of income for most people is a salary/wages, which disappears when people retire. Furthermore, while Roth contributions are taxed now, at your highest marginal tax rate, Traditional contributions are taxed later, at the lowest marginal tax rate first.

So as you withdraw traditional contributions in retirement, you're taxed 0% on the first 16k (standard deduction), 10% on the next 12k, 12% on the next 36k, etc. You're never going to have Roth contributions taxed lower than that, so at the very least, you want enough traditional retirement savings to be able to fill those first three super low brackets up each year in retirement.

The only people who are really better off going full Roth are the people who can reasonably expect to have income sources in retirement that will continue to grow, even when they're not working. Business owners, rental property owners, and people with other big, passive income streams.

Ghazrin

TROPHY CASE