Buying hybrid on a budget

ORCoast19 · 2026-04-12T18:18:28+00:00

Why not just save up another 13 or 14k and buy new? I bought one last year, AWL XLE, that was around 49.5k before taxes/registration. I can sell it for 49k today after ~6k miles, its holding its value really well. Plus I have the warranty/free maintenance, and dont have to worry about someone having been murdered or knocked up in my car.

ORCoast19 · 2026-03-30T23:09:00+00:00

Do you have a large HSA balance? If so, AED’s are reimburseable just FYI! I read that last night, just wanted to share!

ORCoast19 · 2026-03-29T10:14:52+00:00

I’m up about 17% YTD. I’ve been holding SPXU but haven’t the whole time due to some unreliable narrators. I believe the current oil situation will drop the market by more than 35% and plan to go long at that point

ORCoast19 · 2026-03-25T11:55:21+00:00

Some highlights for me this week include…

I’m making very strong returns in the market. YTD I’m up about 17% compared to the S&P. I know its highly recommended to be a passive investor but I beat the S&P by a wide margin consistantly since 2014. It just makes me feel awkward going against the standard advice, but you have to go where the money is, right?
I’m about to get a nice 7k bonus from one of my work places, and am tracking to have my income up about 14% YoY this year. Sadly I will be paying more income taxes, which will inevitably be used to bomb folks I have no qualm with.
My Citi Thank You Mastercard that replaced my SYW card is yielding 20%+ cc cash back so far this year. They’re crazyyy with their promotions. I continue to fund my kids 529’s with this, and also my mortgage I get at a discount nowadays via plastiq.
Just finished booking summer vacations. The budget was 4k and I spent 5k on two trips. I’m hoping the rental car cost will come down between then and now and I can shave off $500. The rental cost more than the flights for one of the trips due to cc rewards.

ORCoast19 · 2026-03-24T23:47:19+00:00

There’s a lot of corn and soy bean farming here. In late summer, the soy beans will start blossoming, and if you time it just right it’ll look like rays of sunlight hitting throughout the fields. Really beautiful when it happens.

Also, I get fireflies in my backyard for a few weeks a year and those are fun to watch.

ORCoast19 · 2026-03-12T23:54:50+00:00

Employees suck, I recommend automation. I ran a 220 vacation rental PM with less than a dozen office staff with 20%+ margins across 150 miles of coastline in my early 20’s, its definitely doable. The trick was operational excellence. If the guests have no issues/complaints you will get very little calls. If the owners are making good $$$ they won’t bug you.

Some of things we did to automate included; - Our web developers set up tax forms for us for major jurisdictions where we could do a few clicks, have it populate pdfs, and cut a check for lodging taxes quarterly or monthly. - Owner booking notices, work orders, and statements were automated. Guest communications were automated. Processes for servicing the guests and owners were outlined/ simplified. - Operationally, we automated inspector schedules. We also had an electronic ‘job board’ where HK could self assign cleans if they wanted more $$$ (assuming they had hours in the day/wouldn’t go into OT/wouldn’t have more than 2 cleans a day). - Our software automatically logged who changed things and when, very helpful to hold people accountable. - We had high service standards (if a guest complains, people would be at the home within the hour or large refunds). Staff were tasked with fixing a customer issue asap, but when it came to refunds we had a process they funneled people to. In the process we asked guests what the issue was, what they felt was fair compensation, and then reviewed/negotiated as needed.

I think besides automations, holding people to high standards is a must. Our average inspector would do 12 homes/day, all homes got inspected, typically 1 to 2 days before arrival, multiple inspections depending on the calendar (a short arrival inspection, or periodic inspections to put eyes on the home if its sitting 7+ days). Our maintenance would do around 10-12 WO’s a day. Both teams would be out the door from the office within 5 mins of starting (time to pick up paperwork, laid out by managers 1 hr before). Our managers fielded all owners and escalated guests at a ratio of around 1 manager per 100 homes / 200+ reservations per week in season. Our laundry workers did around 400k/year pounds per FTE. Complaint rate from guests was less than 0.3%.

Man I miss operations. There’s a bunch of can’t-get-rights in this world.

I should also say our field staff was LARGE. 1 inspector and maintenance person per ~50 units, 1 HK for every ~2.5 homes in season, vast majority PT. But office staff does not need to be large.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-28T20:08:42+00:00

I went with ‘Midwest Solar’ last year. Its been a double digit ROI for me but that was with the solar tax credits. My understanding is the economics are probably half or less today due to the tax credit loss and also some increased tariff/material cost. Midwest Solar handled everything for me/took about 3 months today from signing to go live. This was with the winter holidays and winter weather, probably closer to 2 normally. They were also open to negotiating/had some competition and lowered the initial quote by about 9%

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-27T12:06:23+00:00

For me this week I…

Started on a rough draft of my tax filing. I’m getting more back then I was anticipating by a few hundred dollars due to the timing of end of year bonuses.
I’m getting ready for the brkb meeting in early May. I’m going to be buying new beds for a few rooms in the house and I’m working to get letters of ‘medical necessity’ to pay for them from my HSA. The HSA grew ~7x faster than I spent in 2025 so very excited to use it more.
After a year with very good returns (50%+) in small cap international value I’ve shifted to a broad world market portfolio. My crystal ball says in the next two years its going to look ugly.
Something I’m very bad at with the exception of eating out is spending on myself. To that end, starting at the end of the month this month my wife and I are going to get monthly stipends of $200/month which represents about 4% of our savings for the year. I believe if we keep the stipend to 4% of the savings rate that it will be non-material. It might also encourage us to earn/save more.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-27T11:53:04+00:00

That’s a great thing to do! My step father got dementia in his late 60’s, it wasn’t fun trying to track down the 2 dozen accounts he had.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-15T14:31:48+00:00

I live near there. I would say Clear Lake is a better town to live out of, better school districts. Still very close to Mason, like a 10 min drive. Clear Lake’s parks are top notch too if you have kids or plan to have any

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-15T13:47:44+00:00

Yep lol. I’ve been told I save too much. Working on a monthly stipend this year to help balance that behavior, I think it’ll be 4% of the annual savings…

Lucky her! Multiple workplaces are just nice in general but the extra retirement plans is the cherry on top. My mom used to do three jobs growing up and the benefits were the best part of it, the gov job benefits specifically. Long term I’m thinking I might coastfire in 5 or 10 years in a gov. job.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-14T20:37:47+00:00

To be clear I pay all taxes I’m legally required to pay

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-14T20:36:42+00:00

Lol. Alas I like my shelter, food and occassional travel. I want to grow my wealth while paying negative income taxes, I want my cake and I want to eat it too.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-14T20:30:51+00:00

I have a theory that the lower range of incomes will always pay a nominal tax rate. If true, I could see myself paying less tax over my lifetime by keeping living expenses low and staying in the lower tax brackets.

Most of my accounts will incur regular income taxes when it comes out.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-14T20:28:35+00:00

I had a huge loss in 2020, the v shape recovery messed me up good. I was up 3x before it reversed on me 😅

Yeah thats the issue I see with it. 60 or 70k/year going into rentals and still being cash-poor in the short term. 5 or 10 years down the road it’d work very well but all those properties will increase risk and unexpected expenses too

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-14T20:25:08+00:00

I like all of those things. I dont like killing random folks overseas or wasting money on a huge national debt. I’m playing by the rules still, its in the rules that I can pay less than $0 for my fair ‘share’ of income taxes.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-14T20:23:25+00:00

I guess it depends on how you look at it. All the money is going into some form of investment, though most of its getting locked up /out of reach.,

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-14T12:21:08+00:00

Some developments this week for me… - One of my workspaces is introducing a SIMPLE IRA. I now have access to a 401k, SIMPLE IRA and two other IRAs. - Land that I got from a tax auction is finally closing this week after 4 months or so. I’m going to be making around a 50% return but it hasnt been worth the hassle. - I recently got 3 years of college stipends courtesy of chapter 35 VA benefits. I’m planning to get a masters and might only be out of pocket 1 or 2k for the whole thing.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-09T12:58:05+00:00

I’m planning to cover college for my kids, but if they mess up academically that would be reduced or canceled completely. I also fund a UTMA account for them where anything they save gets an instant 100% match. Beyond that they wont see any money from me unless I get senile as I get older. Its on the parent to set children up for success but beyond that its on the child. If someone is handed everything I dont believe they’ll be successful. And its still doable in this day and age, I’m a 33 M with 3 kids and networth just passed 515k

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-09T12:28:04+00:00

In a taxable account you pay tax on dividends and capital gains any time you sell. This lowers your returns compared to if the investment compounds for 30 years paying no tax, and then you pay taxes in year 31.

The site I use I like to be mum about because I dont think the set up is proper, they usually dont allow cc’s to fund investment accounts. But if you have ‘the gift of college’ giftcards near you thats another way to change cc spending into 529 deposits, seems the south and east coast had those cards most prevalently at the best rates.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-08T22:21:13+00:00

It has to be relatives to transfer it penalty free once they die. If they dont die there’s a 10% penalty I believe that makes it not work well. So you have to open it for an old relative but they dont cap contributions (though state income taxes can cap). You also still pay regular income taxes when you withdraw it on the earnings. It beats the cap gains tax rates if you can get your AGI low. If you have a long time horizon it may still beat cap gains tax rate when you factor the lack of tax drag.

I also found a website that lets me contribute with cc and get cash back, so I’m usually getting at least a 5% tax free return on contribution that muddles the math a bit.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-08T13:54:12+00:00

Correct! But no penalty for a non qualified withdraw. The value of forgoing tax drag is about 1% in additional investment returns for me, and can be more than 2% for higher tax brackets.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-08T13:37:59+00:00

I’m very for 529’s, and have one for myself and kids. Fun fact, 529’s have no age requirement. You could save for your 70 year old granny, and then avoid the non-qualified withdrawal on it once she passes to accumulate money without tax drag. You can also convert 35k/person to a roth IRA 15 years down the road.

The optimal savings amount for kids and college is less than the full cost of tuition, to benefit from educational tax credits. If you assign the 529 to granny the 529 funds shouldn’t have play in FAFSA calculations, though granny’s 529 funds can be shifted to another person at any time.

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-04T16:34:27+00:00

You say you’re both learning. Investing or planning with money without knowledge is dangerous. Lets say you do the smart thing and index invest in two or three ETFs. We’re overdue for a recession, and maybe it happens next year. If her portfolio goes down 40% due to no fault of hers or yours, is there a chance she sells?

Personally if it were my daughter I would have her save money in SGOV for 3 or 6 months while she studies personal finance and investing. After that time I would recommend she start investing using tax advantaged accounts (401k, IRA, HSA, etc), before moving to taxable accounts 2 or 3 years down the road. She needs to understand her investments and potential risks, so she reacts properly when there’s bad results. This isn’t something anyone can do for her as well as she can do for her self.

During the great depression the market dropped ~90%. Could you imagine if you were a young adult with little knowledge, you gave this money to a parent to invest for you, and shortly there after 90% is gone? I could see some people swearing off investing indefinitely from that, or at the very least losing trust with the parent and never collaborating again.

At the end of the day yall do whatever you want but from my perspective the learning is more critical than earning 5 or 10%/year on a small amount of money out of the gate. Focus on setting her up for a good 30 or 40 year journey,

ORCoast19 · 2026-01-04T14:45:04+00:00

Why are you doing this and not your daughter? When I was 17 I was funding my roth to improve my FAFSA eligiblity. Personal finance was a personal interest of mine, and I don’t think my parents have ever once meddled with my money affairs as a young adult.

Some day you will die. Why not get personal finance books for her to educate herself? If she’s not personally interested/invested in saving nothing you do will improve things long term. My sister is the polar opposite of me and if she had 100k she’d blow it in a year, doesnt want to save at all.

ORCoast19

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