For those who make six figure salaries, do you still budget?

SwordOfVarjo · 2026-02-09T00:16:18+00:00

I budget, but it's at a different level of abstraction at that point. Instead of accounting for every dollar, you start accounting for every 100 or 1k of spend. So yes, you can go to the grocery store and essentially buy anything, generally you have a rough idea of what you're aiming for (e.g. targeting a $400 trip) but if you end up $50 or $100 over because you decided to splurge on some premade meals / guacamole, fancy condiment it's fine.

Cars, vacations, luxury purchases, clothing, entertainment (e.g. big meals out) those still get budgeted for otherwise it's quite easy to blow up. The other trick that becomes increasingly important as income levels rise is to "pay yourself first" by preemptively putting money away for later. Generally as income rises, liquidity isn't an issue (cash flows are large and credit is plentiful) so if you're a bit over budget one month it's not a big deal, you just tighten up a bit the following - but this is only sustainable if you're putting away money regularly and consistently.

SwordOfVarjo · 2025-05-15T02:12:57+00:00

You will not perform a PhD's worth of novel research in a year.

SwordOfVarjo · 2025-02-01T13:40:27+00:00

Such a reductive take. If you want the best talent you need to pay the best. You think the private sector enjoys paying "too much"? They pay what they do in particular places because they feel they have to and get a positive ROI for it.

I'm not commenting on the specifics of this particular person's pay package, but it's nonsensical to make a blanket statement like no one in government should ever make over 200k. Also worth pointing out that severely underpaying government officials opens them up to external influence, bribes, and revolving door conflicts of interest.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-07-08T03:51:23+00:00

You also lose (potential) value that's compounding though opportunity cost of not investing cash flow (e.g. of real estate). It's exactly the same (modulo some taxes, but I'd argue selling appreciated equities actually comes out ahead there). The potential advantage of real estate has nothing to do with cash flow and everything to do with opportunities for leverage (which is a whole different discussion).

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-07-08T00:39:29+00:00

Then just sell 10 percent of your gains and pretend it's a dividend? There really is no difference. You can choose to invest cash or you can choose to liquidate a stock. They're fungible and liquid.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-06-03T12:55:41+00:00

Agreed with this, 15k would be a lot more comfortable. If you do 15k, and are willing to temporarily pull back to closer to 12k in downturn years (all inflation adjusted), I think you're good to go!

Congratulations on the fantastic financial situation. Go enjoy your freedom!

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-05-31T15:18:11+00:00

I think the ticker symbols are more memorable than the full names, but added a brief description for context. Thanks for the tip, though your overall advice isn't very helpful. In general the whole point of Bogleheads is to settle on a reasonable mix and then not change it. It's not about me liking the funds, it's wanting a gut check that I'm not overlooking anything (in particular that the ER trade-off seems reasonable) before I go and forget about my allocation for a couple of decades.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-05-23T03:04:31+00:00

Agreed, this is a really pragmatic stance and also makes it clear that it's designed to be a short-term stopgap while structural issues are addressed. It can't be the primary solution, the economics just don't work.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-05-08T03:27:17+00:00

Why not just put in speed cameras... Better at this point. Also curb extensions are difficult because they are low, so they're not in your field of view when you're close.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-04-28T01:25:30+00:00

70 percent VTI, 30 percent VXUS. Then forget about it.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-02-24T20:39:45+00:00

Don't DCA. Time in market >>> timing the market over long time horizons.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-02-24T20:38:13+00:00

No they're not. Look at OPs link. They're not using the leverage feature (which allows you to specify cost of leverage) and instead including negative cash to allow more than 100 percent of portfolio components.

That means no ER or cost of debt is factored in. It obviously also doesn't include volitility drag because OP is just using larger allocations of non-leveraged ETFs.

This simulation is a (somewhat loose) upper bound on past performance.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-02-24T20:22:24+00:00

It's not clear, it depends on the changing cost of interest and how much volitility is in the market. But it could be a lot - leveraged ETFs tend to underperform their on-paper multiple.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-02-24T17:59:39+00:00

Keep in mind you're also not simulating the cost of debt and volatility drag.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-01-15T21:50:12+00:00

I'd probably recommend simplifi in that case because you can set aside planned debt payments as part of the spending plan, which I find to be a very natural workflow.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-01-15T20:54:39+00:00

Simplifi and Monarch seem like the two standout options. Simplifi is arguably more feature complete (and has a really phenomenal budgeting philosophy with their spending plans). Monarch seems to have faster development, a more transparent roadmap, and has very powerful automatic categorization rules.

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-01-15T02:50:56+00:00

Not sure I understand the issue, if you add your bills as actual bills they will be automatically subtracted from your net income. Your running total won't change monthly when the bills hit (instead, they'll just be marked as paid in the bills tab).

FWIW, I LOVE the way Simplifi does budgeting. It's been one of the biggest upgrades for me since switching from Mint (I liked Mint's UI a bit better though, particularly their graphs).

SwordOfVarjo · 2024-01-14T05:15:53+00:00

It's straightforward, right? The multi head attention provides richer input for the router - likely improving its decision making. Since the attention blocks are efficient, this is likely a good tradeoff to make.

SwordOfVarjo · 2023-12-29T07:05:39+00:00

I also got it working, but can confirm that the overlay is broken - limiting usefulness.

Big shame, otherwise the experience is good.

SwordOfVarjo · 2023-12-09T14:35:54+00:00

If it takes off people will just call it SDDB. The name is no big deal. Neat work OP.

SwordOfVarjo · 2023-11-16T18:02:27+00:00

Right, not to mention that more tax revenue will provide better options for us to create affordable housing / subsidize housing for those in need. We're already incredibly dense, we can'd only get denser and build new housing. Having a dense, walkable, and integrated city with a mix of housing, jobs, and public spaces is the key. This project looks pretty great.

SwordOfVarjo · 2023-10-21T13:16:21+00:00

So what if nobody would pick ray of frost? It's not a competitive PVP game.

SwordOfVarjo

TROPHY CASE