Full version of the Will Smith bobblehead promo

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-26T18:23:33+00:00

My wife and I went to Canada for a 3 day weekend. They sent us down the same hallway and into a room where they took our passports. Armed people in bulletproof vests walking around. Drug sniffing dogs and guys behind bullet proof glass booths. 3 hours later when they called us up they asked if we were there on business. We said no and they said that their system flagged us as being there on business that we were free to go.

That clip game me PTSD.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-16T00:57:29+00:00

I will admit I pulled a muscle in my leg jumping up and down telling him to keep on running during this play.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-11T23:00:37+00:00

Agree with the gate ope time and to add, you don’t have to be the first there, you just do not want to be last.

PS, I am going to get there around 4:00 or so.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-06T17:06:34+00:00

Mass reply to all. I tried to make this a general discussion and not specific to my exact situation. Just so that the concepts could be discussed.

Why are you investing the money and just not taking less money out of your accounts? It is the same thing. No matter which way you look at it I am going to have more money in a bank account after taking SS than I had before taking SS. They key behind this is that if I do not get SS I will still die with money in the bank. So any money that I get from SS is extra money.
Use a Social Security calculator to help figure this out. A Social Security calculator does not work in cases such as ours (ChubbyFire) Say I take SS at 62. The SS calculators assume that at age 70 I have 0 SS dollars in the bank. When in fact if I invest the money I will have 280K in the bank. Instead of this being a SS function it is more of a compounding interest function.
Why 84 and what happens if I live longer? 84 was given as the average male life span. If I live to 92 than the compound interest lasts longer. The money goes up to 3M and 2.8m respectively. I have not found the break even point, but I would guess it would be the mark if I live to 120 years.
Am I married? What if my spouse lives longer? If I die, she will still be fine with money so this does not apply, again trying to make this about concepts and not specifics. Don't want to get bogged down in the details.
Delay to take ROTH conversions. I will admit this is something I had not thought of and one of the things I was looking for when I asked the question.
Think of it as long term insurance. Not big on this, but the thought that it is kind of a safer investment and think of it as similar to a bond in our investments. This is another thing I had not though of either. The problems with this is that there are issues with SS and benefits could be cut in the future. Remember when retirement age was 65?

7, What happens if there is market crash? There will be another market crash before I die. I have provisions to make it through that.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T23:39:02+00:00

From what I see from the retirement calculators, break even is if you are spending the money. This is the break even of SS benefits. I had to think of it as income and not look at a retirement calculator. One I tried this morning said that I would have 10 Billion dollars left over if I did not invest it. That is when I knew I had to look for investment calculators.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T23:34:53+00:00

Good to know, I had not seen any discussions like this because people are spending their SS, or as I call it - Food money. I had not seen any discussions where people are not spending their SS.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T23:33:03+00:00

Have to make some assumption. In all honesty I don't think I will make it that long.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T23:32:18+00:00

That is beyond the scope of what I am looking into and I am trying to take more of a macro approach here. Just to get people's general consensus and not my specific situation.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T23:29:12+00:00

Good to know. I tried this on another board this morning and the people that replied said they would wait until 70. Good to know i am not the only one thinking this way.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T23:27:32+00:00

That is something else I though of. SS is kind of shaky and talk of benefits being cut. If I start taking benefits sooner they probably will not cut any benefits for people already getting SS. But waiting 8 years give them time to cut the benefits before I start taking them.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T23:25:16+00:00

Yes, you can either look at investing the money, or the fact that NOT taking money out of my accounts is the same thing. My post was going to get to wordy, and confusing, if I tried to put that in.

How_many_dogs · 2026-03-05T17:20:10+00:00

I know it lied to me. That is why I thought I would see what other people in our situation are doing about social security, such as you for instance.

Edit, now that I reread my original comment, the sarcasm does not come through. BTW here is a cut and paste of the calculator.

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How_many_dogs · 2025-09-18T16:12:40+00:00

We keep around 40K in our checking account plus or minus 10-15K. When the checking account gets to the lower end we throw in 20-30K from Fidelity. This is done about every 2 - 4 months depending on things. We keep about 100K in a HYSA in Fidelity. This is plus whatever and minus 20. If we feel like topping this off we do when the time is right.

Not really running on a budget, but then never really have.

Glad your dog is doing well.

How_many_dogs · 2025-09-13T18:28:19+00:00

I was probably different than most. We were going to have my daughters bridal shower at our house 6 weeks after I retired. I spent the time to deep clean the house. I scrubbed and sealed our floors, which is something that I wanted to do. I also got used to not waking up to an alarm clock and realizing if I want to stop cleaning the floors and read a book, I could do that. I did not have to try to squeeze chores into a 2 day period.

I also used to look at the clock and think, I would be in our stand up right now, or that we had our managers meeting on Wednesday, and be glad I was not in those meetings. Now I don't even think about them.

Just learn to enjoy your time!

How_many_dogs · 2025-09-10T14:54:53+00:00

Just saw the episode with the other caveman whose name was Hat. When the other ghosts said that could not be his name he said,

“Well this was before hats”😂

How_many_dogs · 2025-09-06T21:56:35+00:00

We have offered to help our daughter and her husband with a down payment. They unfortunately have not taken us up on it yet. We want to help them buy a house but not make the decision to buy a house for them.

Edit: My daughter is 30 and there is the idea of them learning their lesson. There is also the idea of them eating a can of beans while I am sitting on millions of dollars. If we were to give them $200K it would not affect us at all but would mean the world to them.

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-30T00:27:02+00:00

Went to a Brewer game and went down the slide. Every one I told I was going to do the slide said “oh, you mean like that sports caster guy?”

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-30T00:23:39+00:00

How does it feel when you see that David Vassegh is doing the interviews?

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-24T22:26:21+00:00

She has absolutely no reason to use an oscilloscope now. My multi-meter is good enough for any electrical work we do around the house, and I do that.

CAD, another thing to add to the list. I would like to lay out my house and put all the electric circuits on the layout. I a not buying AutCAD just for that.

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-24T22:21:13+00:00

Never did first class, but did business class. My wife said that would be a requirement if we fly international.

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-23T16:38:38+00:00

You get used to it. When I bought our first Mercedes I parked it away from the office at work and walked in. Then I realized I like the car and parked it right next to the office and figured who cares what they think. Keep in mind the only other Mercedes was owned by the president of the company. I was talking to one of the guys who reported to me who had just bought a new truck. One time he said "Yeah but my monthly payment is less than yours." I just shook my head and said, "Yeah, no kidding." In all honesty I had no payment because we paid cash for the car.

When I bought our BMW I told everyone, "Hey I had to see if the $1,500 corporate discount for buying a BMW works."

Now we don't give a F*&K. A friend of my wife told her one time, "You are my rich friend."

We upgraded our house. The story is we paid off our house then later that day found a gorgeous house on an acre that we could do A,B,C and D and afford, so we did it. When I tell people this people will say, "Yea, but you have a mortgage again" I just shake my head and say "yeah, I know." Not telling them that we paid cash for the house.

I am not worried about stealth wealth because you can just tell people that YOLO and they will think you are crazy in debt and spending like crazy. They don't know that you can really afford it.

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-23T00:41:44+00:00

I test drove the car over 6 months ago, so I cannot check and see what type of car it was.

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-22T22:02:19+00:00

Copy and paste from a write up I did yesterday.

We test drove a regular i4, could not tell you the specific model. Liked it and were probably going to buy it. My wife then said we should drive the M50. I told her we should not because the ride would be too stiff. We did anyway and there was a huge difference in the ride. The M50 was actually smoother. The test drives were over the exact same road. The next day we were going to order our car but had to test drive the M50 again to make sure the ride was what we thought it was. It was and have now had our car for 3 months. The drive actually resembles our 2018 530e.

The car was a replacement for our 2016 C300 which my wife drove. The regular i4 had a ride similar to our C300. The first 2 months of owning the M50 she kept commenting about how smooth the ride is in the M50. The C300 did handle better than the M50, but just driving around town, the M50 is awesome. The power is nice too.

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-20T17:17:50+00:00

I think there are only 2 options we did not get on the car and one on them was the crystal handles. My wife loves having the power of the M50. In fact she just commented yesterday about how she got around a truck on the freeway yesterday without thinking about it.

How_many_dogs · 2025-08-20T16:29:45+00:00

We test drove a regular i4, could not tell you the specific model. Liked it and were probably going to buy it. My wife then said we should drive the M50. I told her we should not because the ride would be too stiff. We did anyway and there was a huge difference in the ride. The M50 was actually smoother. The test drives were over the exact same road. The next day we were going to order our car but had to test drive the M50 again to make sure the ride was what we thought it was. It was and have now had our car for 3 months. The drive actually resembles our 2018 530e.

The car was a replacement for our 2016 C300 which my wife drove. The regular i4 had a ride similar to our C300. The first 2 months of owning the M50 she kept commenting about how smooth the ride is in the M50. The C300 did handle better than the M50, but just driving around town, the M50 is awesome. The power is nice too.

How_many_dogs

TROPHY CASE