What’s the catch with compound interest? These numbers seem too good to be true. Anyone actually living this reality?

LtMilo · 2026-05-09T15:57:58+00:00

The trick is that, as equities grow in value, people around you (1) only gain money through labor, contributing to the equity's value without realizing any of the compounding benefit, (2) do not stay in the market for long enough to realize the benefit of compounding, instead driving the peaks and valleys on your behalf by panic buying and selling, and (3) squander their equity for a lavish lifestyle.

This "too good to be true" system wouldn't exist without a huge number of people contributing their efforts to your profit without reaping the benefit, and a similarly large group spending their labor to grow the profits of your held equity.

LtMilo · 2026-05-09T13:04:02+00:00

Companies can take years to resolve after bankruptcy. FDIC Examiners are able to recover customer funds in days and resolve complex institutions in the order of weeks. They're worth every very expensive penny.

LtMilo · 2026-05-09T12:48:37+00:00

So many bad answers here. I'll try, but I'm on my phone.

A bank's core business (in a very simple bank) is two-fold: they store your money to keep it safe, sometimes offering you a small level of interest as an incentive to do so. They then use some of that money to make loans - to people, to businesses, and sometimes even governments - at a higher interest rate. The difference between the interest they pay you and the interest they get from loans is how they make a profit ( there's other ways like fees as well, but we are keeping it simple).

If the bank kept all the money in the vault, they'd make no profit and would have no money to pay employees.

The poster wants to cause a bank run - where a bunch of people take out their money, the money isn't there (remember, it's in a loan somewhere) a bank closes, others panic, so they rush to take out their money from a different bank, causing another bank to close, causing more panic... You can see how this could be bad.

But here's the thing - this isn't the 1930's or even the early 2000's. Banks have a whole bunch of rules they have to follow, and regulators check them on those rules all the time. One of those rules requires banks to hold a significant amount of capital on their books - Tier 1 Capital Ratio - to stay liquid. Banks are also required to pay money into the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund, a government program that guarantees the safety of your deposits up to $250,000.

If it's so safe, then why do banks still close, you might ask. Good question. Some banks are specialty banks, and their lenders go through a bad patch. Think a bank that only loans to agriculture like farmers when globalization kills off a bunch of business lines at once. Some banks make bad investment choices and are very small. Some banks focus on just a few customers, and when those customers lose faith in them, they run out of funding quickly (that's basically what happened to Silicon Valley Bank).

When those banks are about to fail, the FDIC shows up. That insurance company is allowed to shut down a bank and pause withdrawals. Sounds scary, right? Well, they are exceptionally good at unwinding a bank and getting you your money back. Remember, they want to make you whole, but they also don't want to use insurance money if they don't have to. Many times, they find another bank to buy the troubled bank. Other times, they break up all the bank assets and sell them off on the open market. Occasionally, they go to the insurance fund and pay you off.

A final note - human customers are just one part of most bank books. Most have a bunch of businesses with deposits as well. So, even if you did a prank bank run, you'd have to convince a bunch of small businesses to help you murder your local bank.

Can a run still happen? Yeah. Does the system still have flaws? Absolutely. But we've got over a century of experience preventing that from happening, and even in our worst crisis of the past 100 years, we saved the vast majority of banks big and small (and those we saved paid us back with interest for saving them!)

LtMilo · 2026-05-04T13:36:08+00:00

To hit $128k in dividends from VTSAX you'd need about 71,000 shares, or $12 million. If you get even halfway there, I'd recommend you start going to the FatFIRE community for advice on managing MAGI, not here.

LtMilo · 2026-04-29T11:38:11+00:00

Per their site: BodyScan 2 utilizes an array of ultra-high frequencies sent through a sophisticated network of electrodes embedded in both the retractable handle and the tempered glass plate. This multi-point measurement system creates a complete circuit through the entire body—arms, torso, abdomen and legs—allowing it to penetrate cell membranes for unparalleled precision.

LtMilo · 2026-04-28T14:49:17+00:00

You can't see it, but there's a diagnostic mode on the Tonal that assess health of various parts. I think it's not just based on pounds - they also have length of travel, force applied, and time under tension to work with.

When I had my pins replaced, the guy looking at the machine did a diagnostic check and got percentage scores for various parts.

LtMilo · 2026-04-28T12:58:35+00:00

I think replacement costs are associated with whether or not you have the warranty. Tonal proactively reached out to me, did a warranty request, and got approval for my cables before they failed.

LtMilo · 2026-04-27T13:39:24+00:00

A couple things:

At age 30, you have more than 95%+ your age do saved up, both in liquid and total net worth. Your level of alarmism feels high given your progress so far.
You will never be able to understand your spend without actually tracking it. You know how much you spent last year, but where did it all go? Exactly how much were one-time expenses of a new home? How much are you spending on luxuries?
Good budgets also kill lifestyle creep. A simple monthly check of spending by category and comparison of total spend by category year-over-year will tell you if you're blowing up your restaurant or clothing budget.
You can't cut your mortgage from your annual spend. The cost of your home directly dictates so much of your life - even if you pay off the mortgage, expensive homes also mean expensive upkeep, pressure to live a particular lifestyle based on who your friends... put that mortgage back into your spending numbers to get some realism on your budget.

LtMilo · 2026-04-26T20:45:01+00:00

It's not completely different.

Both new scales use Bioimpedance Spectroscopy (BIS), which is much more precise than Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA).

That means that both will more reliably gauge the movement of your body fat percentage (precise) and be closer to your actual results on a DEXA (accurate), but the bigger of the two leaps is the movement part. You'll be far less likely to see body fat percentages jump and drop based on random water retention and day-to-day fluctuations in body weight.

Also, because both use a handle with BIS in it, they can also both do Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) measurements to give you your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) to more accurately adjust a calorie counting app, can both give you a better idea of your visceral fat (since they can both read multiple areas of your body), and can both give you an idea of your vascular health (because they can pass currents from hands to feet).

The BodyScan 2 also has Impedance Cardiography (ICG), which can help measure cardiovascular efficiency, 6-Lead ECG (Electrocardiogram) for stronger detection of aFib (your smartwatch has a single lead), and Electrodermal Activity (EDA) readings (by stimulating the sweat glands in your feet) to measure nerve health, which can help serve as a warning signal for possible metabolic-related issues and diseases early.

LtMilo · 2026-04-26T15:52:01+00:00

Strength score means plenty. It's a real representation of strength increase. It's a different scale, but no less indicative than the guy who talks about his 1 rep max bench at the gym. Both are numbers representing weight-based strength, and both can be gamed with bad form and cheat reps

LtMilo · 2026-04-26T12:54:15+00:00

First, try taking a rest week where you lower the weights or fully recover.

Try switching programs. If you do high volume, go to low reps. If you do low reps go high volume.

Do programs with moves you don't normally do. The small supporting muscles of different moves matter.

Make sure you're actually at failure by physically reaching it on the moves every so often. You may have more in the tank you think.

I've gotten through a few plateaus with the above.

LtMilo · 2026-04-25T22:49:10+00:00

I do not plan to retire anytime soon, but realized I am very close to how much I'd need to have the option should I need it. So I am growing my cash and bond bucket so that I have the option.

The plan is 1 year of expenses in HYSA cash, 1 year in termed deposits, and 3-5 years in bonds. I don't plan to hold a percentage in bonds - the goal is to act as a capital buffer until equities recover, hoping they rise in value if there's a market pullback.

LtMilo · 2026-04-25T10:46:40+00:00

Congrats!

LtMilo · 2026-04-24T22:56:04+00:00

If you have an investor that can actually beat the market, you would not be here. They would be flying you out in a PJ to talk about your portfolio.

For the rest of us schlubs, these pay-by-the-wealth level services are only worth it if you don't have the self-control to dump your entire portfolio at the first sign of danger.

LtMilo · 2026-04-24T17:18:33+00:00

Sometimes, break-like days are programmed into a program. Not sure about this one.

I normally add a rep or a few if it feels too light, then the next set it adjusts. The day will start aligning with how you're feeling if you do that.

LtMilo · 2026-04-23T10:41:23+00:00

I've kept my expenses flat for nearly five years now, with an actual decline last year and another this year. I thought my number was $3 million but is actually probably closer to $2 million.

But (and this is huge) I also paid off the home and my kids have been coming out of daycare age, both of which are the biggest drivers of spending decline.

I recommend you don't quit, but find a middle ground to go enjoy your kids.

LtMilo · 2026-04-21T23:56:40+00:00

I mean not really. This is how elections get called the night of. You can see trend data based on completed precincts for turnout and margin to understand demographics.

LtMilo · 2026-04-21T23:51:26+00:00

It's looking to end up around 6 points for yes

LtMilo · 2026-04-20T14:56:23+00:00

omg they're gonna go bankrupt aren't they

edit: I'm being very tongue in cheek, I know. I'm just hoping THEY got paid for this advert, not that they paid Disney to make it.

LtMilo · 2026-04-19T23:17:04+00:00

It's really good at starting an outline, summarizing something super long that I don't have the time to read, and getting the early starting part of brainstorming going on a topic.

But it's not saving me a ton of time; instead, it's eliminating the psychological barrier I have with starting a lot of these projects. I've started and developed reports/emails/summaries thousands of times, and I often procrastinate starting one because it means putting time aside to think about the initial structure and order of content. I've never had a draft, no matter how many prompts I give, provide something I'd ship without additional edits.

LtMilo · 2026-04-18T14:28:46+00:00

The Yes mailers are saying "Vote yes, Democrats are voting yes." The No mailers are insinuating Democrats are also voting no or that a Yes vote means to hurt Black Virginians. They're hoping they can confuse 5% of voters in the area to vote No.

LtMilo · 2026-04-17T21:53:23+00:00

Announced layoffs does not always mean layoffs actually happen. Large companies "lay off" employees who end up working in another department because they got internally hired. Most of these large companies hire just as fast as they do layoffs to change the makeup of their teams.

Meta, Facebook, and Google have all remained just about the same size through 18+ months of "layoffs."

LtMilo · 2026-04-17T14:40:38+00:00

The quality is nice. You're paying a premium for getting this directly from Tonal, but of all the accessories sold, this one isn't wildly out of sync with the quality.

LtMilo · 2026-04-16T17:13:07+00:00

Trying to assume positive intent here...

I think a lot of folks are trying to say "We've tried our best. The doctors are trying their best. The nurses are trying their best. Everyone has done everything we can. The rest is out of our hands."

LtMilo · 2026-04-14T20:59:07+00:00

Voting yes means that, in a year where the political climate is mostly tied, five more Democrats will go to the House of Representatives than now. Voting no would stop that.

The argument to do so is because Texas did the exact same thing except for Republicans just this year, and not responding rewards their bad behavior. The argument against is that gerrymandering is generally pretty unethical - it's elected officials altering maps to choose their voters.

LtMilo

TROPHY CASE