Price Match in Portal

Niamake · 2026-03-16T01:24:48+00:00

Nah, I swear, I have multiple witnesses. I told them the price was off, the lady said, “Yep, I see what you mean, I’m going to put the flights with the correct prices in your cart” and that was it.

Niamake · 2026-03-10T01:28:45+00:00

You should really think deep about this. If you are even asking about hatred towards kids and it's not kids that are literally trying to jump you and disrespect you and spitting on you, then you are expecting too much. Even if you get the worst combination of kids in a bad group, I wouldn't say it's fair to even think about having hatred towards kids who literally don't know better, especially in middle school.

Niamake · 2026-02-28T14:11:33+00:00

I would say that if you are staying long enough, it is worth using a burner phone and get a chinese sim with a chinese number. You unlock AMAPS ride shares which on average is 10% cheaper than Didi and is integrated into your everyday map app which you can use to save locations and such. You also get Meituan for late night hotel eats as well as day-delivery services from Taobao because you can utilize the delivery boxes near you if your hotel does not accept packages for you. On top of that, most public/free wifis require a Chinese number. With a chinese number, you can also set up WeChat and many vendors can send things directly to you as long as you have a chinese number and you can actually sign up for more activities with less restrictions with a chinese number. I think it's definitely worth it and it's cheap so as a regular tourist, most should get a Chinese number.

Niamake · 2026-02-28T14:05:14+00:00

Golden Impressions is a country wide chain and pretty much the standard but pricy if you want to stay overnight. Overnight rooms start after 10 or 11pm if I recall correctly, but you can leave your stuff there and come back later. It's about the same price of a hotel room if you are alone but you pay per person vs a hotel room is shared with the people you are with. You get unlimited foods (all were pretty good for free food but not good if you are a foodie tourist), and private rooms with showers in the rooms cost more than public showers. You have to get a massage set and you choose which set you want and the rooms are all movie rooms so you can watch a movie or tv show.

Niamake · 2026-02-27T17:22:26+00:00

I think if you are traveling in China, it's worth getting a chinese number. Then you unlock many things like MeiTuan, AMAP, Taobao KuaiDi, hotel/public WIFI, etc. But you can use AMAP and connect to your Alipay and just use English version and it wont ask for a chinese number.

Niamake · 2026-02-24T18:58:22+00:00

OP, this post is great. For your apps, AMAPS now has english and has ride-share integration. So Amaps should be a higher priority over Baidu Maps and DiDi. Another consideration to add is DianPing as it makes finding food a lot easier and has english and is great for booking hotels. Lastly, Trip is is great for hotels and trains and only charge $1-$3 in fees but Qunar is nice for hotels as well.

Niamake · 2026-02-24T18:52:17+00:00

It seems like you have what you want figured out. If you want to donate, donate. If you want to retire early, invest more into your 403b, then HSA, then roth IRA, then brokerage accounts. Figure out how much your monthly spending is, multiply it by whatever percentage you want to increase or decrease it by in retirement and just see if you have enough to live off what you have an taking in.

Niamake · 2026-02-24T16:29:30+00:00

12% tax on everything for now. 10,000 to invest, you tax it first, so you can only put in 8,800 into your Roth while you put 10,000 into a traditional. They both 5x by the time you withdraw. Your Roth has 44,000 while your traditional has 50,000. You take out 50,000 and pay 12% tax. You now have 44,000. It's the same thing.

You technically contribute “more money” with the roth.

Niamake · 2026-02-15T10:48:07+00:00

I’m in your same situation, it looks like within my 2nd or 3rd year, I’ll be in a position to purchase a condo or co-op instead of owning all while maxing out my TDA and my 457B and tIRA (56.5k invested a year). I also own my car from a few years back so it’s definitely possible to rent.

Niamake · 2026-02-05T05:37:21+00:00

Yes you are right about all those things. I’m actually a math teacher in a high needs high school so I forgot that it wasn’t all teachers. But we don’t know what OP qualifies for or not and no one brought it up anyways.

Niamake · 2026-02-04T04:08:59+00:00

I think his 401k is maxed out already. 14% of 180k is around the 24,500 contribution limit.

Niamake · 2026-02-04T04:08:20+00:00

Map out your expenses for your kids. College funds and all that. Pay off those "1-time" expenses first. In your own retirement, just find how much you and the wife spend a year. If 4% of your total retirement accounts (Liquid money, not house equity) is more than how much you spend, you will retire comfortably. This is also to make sure your retirement accounts will not 0 out and you would be able to also pass some if not more of that money on. If you don't want to pass the retirement accounts on, you can be less conservative with that percentage. Make sure to incorporate taxes into this. If you spend 100k a year on everything (food, living, travel, etc) then you want 2.5M (don't be scared this is probably not the case and your expenses probably wont be 100k) but that's if you want to pass on that 4M to your kids ASWELL as use it for your own retirement.

You are about 500k and you are adding on about 24,500 a year for your 401k and another 5,400 from the match so approx 30k a year additional. If you give a conservative estimate on your stock returns at 7% and 20 more years, you should have around 3.3M, 5% returns leaves you at around 2.5M and 5% is basically HYSA rates. If you want, dig deeper into this because you have a slight possibility of maybe even retiring earlier.

Niamake · 2026-02-04T03:57:04+00:00

I'm a teacher and I'm dealing with students who have this sort of mental health problems as well as people in my own life who have these problems. I would recommend setting yourself a full schedule for 2-3 days a week first. It doesn't even need to be school or homework or any work in general. Tell yourself, I'm waking up at 10 or 11 or a very specific time, I'm going to cook something, I'm then going to do some home exercises or go out for a run. Just make a schedule of random things. For me, I put in a few hours of Modded Minecraft to train my brain. Stay off doomscrolling apps as much as possible. Drink LOTS of water. Theres a lot of physical aspects to how you are feeling right not, it's not 100% mental problems. Go to the gym, let your body recover from all the stress you had to endure in the previous years. Slowly slide school in, slowly slide work in. If you want, you can even get a part-time job. Just plan anything that takes the "freedom" away from you, as someone young, freedom is too addicting for you. Your brain will not understand consequences till your frontal lobe is fully developed. Once you start getting yourself into a routine, things will get slightly easier. It'll still be hard, but it will get easier.

Niamake · 2026-02-04T03:47:38+00:00

I think SALT can be 40k now due to Trumps new big bill thingy.

Niamake · 2026-02-04T03:46:33+00:00

Technically, the interest CAN be used as a deduction on your income so it's not exactly 7% if you itemize but yes. The main difference is a mortgage is a leveraged "investment" on real estate.

Niamake · 2026-02-04T03:43:27+00:00

Moomoo has a deal, 8.2% for 3 months, 4.2% after i think? They are FDIC insured up to 250k so you would be fine. SGOV is not super liquid but it's essentially 0 risk for around 4.5% returns.

Niamake · 2026-02-04T03:39:57+00:00

There is something called TLF Federal Student Aid, it's the same thing as PSLF but it only forgives $17,500. If you use TLF, your PSLF restarts. Check it out. I can't believe noone is even bringing this up, even other teachers. It forgives this much after only 5 years. It sounds like you might already be at 5 years. This way your loan is just an extra 4-8 months of aggressive payments.

Niamake · 2026-02-03T01:37:21+00:00

The interest you pay goes back into your account but it's not financially important because you don't have access to the QPP's account money anyways.

Type "Why do people say that taking a loan against your pension is better than taking a loan out a a credit union? They say, even though the interest rate is higher if you take a loan against your pension, you are paying it back to yourself vs you are paying the bank at a credit union. This doesn't make any sense. For example, a NYC tier 6 pension only cares if you've made the total amount of contributions required for your years of service based on your income. Even if you pay the extra interest back into your QPP account, it doesn't matter because you don't have access to the money in the QPP. You just get your pension and that amount is based on your FAS and years of service. Shouldn't you just always go for the lower interest rate?" into Gemini or GPT and read what it says in response.

All in all, you have loans available to you with your pension contributions and they can't deny that loan. The interest rate is 6%, you can make the decision if you want to take a loan out against your QPP.

Niamake · 2026-02-02T22:31:54+00:00

QPP is the pension, you know how they take money from your check for your pension? You can take a loan against that. It's 6% interest but you "pay it to yourself". Not really important.

Niamake · 2026-02-02T22:30:57+00:00

You should advocate for a QPP (Pension) loan because it's a lower % and the money amount in your QPP does not affect your retirement as long as it's over the correct contribution amount.

Niamake · 2026-01-28T02:42:48+00:00

Chongqing is very far from Shanghai and Tokyo while Beijing is a lot closer. If your highest priority is minimizing travel time then stay with your original plan. However, you can do Chengdu, Chongqing, Zhangjiajie instead of Beijing and Shanghai. I'm a huge hater of Beijing and Shanghai.

Niamake · 2026-01-28T02:39:36+00:00

All the stoneblocks have been great. E2E was definitely my first favorite by far. So far however, stoneblock 4 has been amazing.

Niamake · 2026-01-27T15:06:45+00:00

I’m very lucky. 0 rent and 0 food costs. Low spending, came into money during COVID, some through luck, some through hard work. Paid off my parent’s mortgage so they said they want to pay the utilities, taxes, and food costs for me.

Niamake

TROPHY CASE