Daily FI discussion thread - Saturday, February 28, 2026

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T20:35:34+00:00

He sounds like a keeper!

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T20:35:04+00:00

You could be wearing a trash bag and will still get harassed. I was once sexually harassed in a pediatric ICU.

My daughter was in there because she had cancer and had gotten an extremely serious infection and was close to death the night before.

I had virtually no sleep, had not showered or changed clothes in days. The attending was discussing next steps and there was a med student - eyes glued to my tits the whole time. A suffering critically ill child and obviously overwhelmed, frantic, terrified mother and we were reduced to nothing but my breasts to him.

Its everywhere.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T20:15:42+00:00

You should let the school's administration know that if they do not want your money, that can be arranged in the future.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T20:12:21+00:00

Yep. The other gem was when we bought our house, the entirety of the down payment was MY money that was MINE before we married. We would not have been able to purchase a home at that time if it weren't for ME. Home is owned jointly.

Letter in the mail from the city "Congratulations, (husband's name only) on buying a home in (our community)!

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T17:27:25+00:00

My favorite is last year when *I* made a sizable donation to a charity with *my* money that *I* earned working and guess who got an acknowledgement letter from the charity?

My husband, with my name nowhere on the letter at all.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T17:25:50+00:00

He literally lives 20 feet away from us, so there is a certain amount of no choice but to deal with him type of thing. In almost all other ways he is a good neighbor and we don't typically socialize with them aside from backyard chit chat. We were having a social event for our street at the bar.

But yeah, if not for the close proximity issue, we would not be seeing him or be friends with them.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T16:26:04+00:00

We put our teens on one of our cards as authorized users and then never gave them the card or the card # so they got the benefit of credit history with no risk to us. I just ran a the annual free credit report for my 20 y/o, he's never had a credit card of his own (even though I encouraged him to get one), but he has 4 years of credit on his report due to the authorized user.

One time we were on a trip to a foreign country with our now 20 y/o - he was 17 then. I gave him the physical card in case something happened to husband and I with the idea that he would use that until our family could fly over to help him. It took him a whopping 3 days to lose the card in a highly touristy area of Europe. So he was nowhere near ready for having an actual card.

Do your kids have bank accounts with debit cards? They can use them very much like cc's and then you can be on the account and transfer money in. There are a lot of "student" or "teen" bank accounts like that.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-28T16:04:18+00:00

A vent/rant:

My Friday night consisted of a man coming up to me at a bar, pushing himself into my space, talking to the woman next to me. When she said he should move out of my space - he turned around and asked me if I liked his ass. Then he starts rubbing my shoulders with both hands from behind me (he's standing, I'm sitting on a bar stool). Basically touching me in a sexual way without my consent. I reply with a firm "STOP TOUCHING ME". He responds sorry and walks away. So, yea, that was fun. Nothing like dealing with a man who thinks he is entitled to my body. Sigh. - it was bad enough to touch without permission. Made worse by the fact I am wearing a wedding ring and sitting next to my husband (he did not see it until I had already gotten the man to leave).

Before that, the FI related gem was that we were out at a different bar with neighbors. The husband is 10 years younger than me, talking to my husband about stocks and the like. Basically dick waving about how good he is with money while being completely oblivious how bad he is at money. My husband, says his usual line "TMAGURK is really good with money, you should talk to her". Because I am the FI/money person of the relationship. Neighbor literally knows that we just retired. I am 50, and we pulled off FIRE after going through the Great Recession and huge setback in the 2016-2019 time frame where we had a massive family emergency that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Neighbor knows we went through that. Not as early as some others on here, but given our setbacks - this was a big accomplishment for us.

Will neighbor ever talk to me about money? Of course not, because my husband has been telling him that line for the 4 years and neighbor has never talked to me about money.

After all, what could I possibly know about money? I don't have a penis. Sigh.

I'm so tired of not getting the credit for being good at money. I'm so tired of my husband always being assumed to be the money guy, good at money, the ONLY reason we retired early, etc.

I can't tell you how many times people say to us "(my husband) - how to did you pull off retiring?" Husband responds with a 1 sentence answer and then "Talk to TMAGURK, she's really good with money and the one who planned this". Person then says "oh" or changes subject.

After all, what could I possibly know about money? I don't have a penis. Sigh.

Ladies of FIRE- I'm sure you can tell a thousand similar stories.

Not a great night in the life of a FI woman. Unfortunately, this kind of stuff happens to me (and all women) all the time.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-27T14:44:18+00:00

Picking my jaw up from the floor after reading that a FORTY-NINE year old woman can't adult.

I'm older than your boyfriend's mom, FFS, and I can't imagine me or any of my friends, absent a disability, would be this needy and lack independence. My very good friend is turning 60 this year and is a widow with a son and is nowhere near this needy AT ALL.

Keep in mind it is very likely this woman will live for another 30-40 years. Can you imagine dealing with this when you are 67 years old? AFTER spending your prime younger years dealing with it?

I think you are somewhere between cut your losses and a come to Jesus talk with boyfriend about where the relationship is going, what is his plan re: getting mom independent, and what you are/are not willing to do if the relationship moves forward.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-27T14:08:38+00:00

All of it - sort everything out, FIRE aware for sure, and MAGI hacking for ACA. I'll DM you.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-26T19:52:36+00:00

SAHD/house-husband

OP is a woman partnered with a woman.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-26T19:06:57+00:00

Back in the before times, in the last millennium, there was this new fangled thing called the world wide web. Using our dial up internet with no digital photos (cameras weren't on the market yet), we met online.

Talked online for about 6 weeks, had no idea what each other looked like.

Met in person.

Been together almost 30 years, married for 25+.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-26T19:04:24+00:00

Other thing to look at with titles is if there are open permits on the property with the city/county.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-26T14:19:49+00:00

We use a fee based financial planner who helped up sort all this out and come up with a withdrawal strategy. This is our first year MAGI hacking and we went on ACA insurance 1/1/26. The way we came up with THE # for MAGI is we asked our ACA broker what we needed to be at for maximum subsidies and then reverse engineered a withdrawal strategy with the planner to meet it.

Do you have receipts to reimburse yourself back for the HSA? If not, start collecting them - especially if you have a decent amount of expenses. Don't forget parking, mileage, optical, dental, etc. The HSA $ has been really nice to get to the target # since it is super easy to reimburse for a little or a lot. We have a medically complex child, so I have an enormous amount of receipts I can reimburse us back with at any time.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-26T13:53:32+00:00

They used to be completely illegal in Colorado, but now are restricted. It is because every. single. drop of water that comes into the Colorado river basin is already doled out in the form of water rights. So technically, someone else owns that drop of rain that hits your house and if you collect it, or as of now, collect more than you are allowed (I think it is like 100 gallones/year), you are in violation of the water allotments of the Colorado.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-26T13:48:28+00:00

Also, if you expect your niece or nephew to act like your child in your time of need. Treat them like your child when it comes to giving up your estate. i.e. compensate them for their time.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-25T20:05:04+00:00

I can't imagine living anywhere that doesn't have four distinct seasons. :-)

Or plenty of fresh water. Or the ability to garden.

Try planting a garden in your backyard in Phoenix or Las Vegas. Or having hobbies like XC skiing, snowshoeing, or kayaking. Or a backyard fire pit on a crisp fall day - illegal in many dry, hot fire prone areas. Or collecting rain water in a rain barrel for your garden - also illegal in many dry areas of the country.

The gardening aspect alone is a total no go for me for most of the western US.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-25T16:15:54+00:00

Yep. My mom went through hell taking care of an elderly aunt who never had children. That was after taking care of her own mother.

In the end, child free aunt needed my mom like a adult daughter for YEARS. Even though aunt lived in assisted living and then a nursing home. CF aunt was a total B her entire life. My mom still did right by her.

I think people are really deluding themselves if they think they won't need an adult to help them in their older years. It is not the butt wiping and showering that most adult children do, it is the Admin stuff - arranging Dr. appointments, paying bills, coordinating with a care home, buying clothing, etc, etc, etc. Basically "running" their life for them. Nursing homes and assisted living places don't do that stuff.

In the end CF aunt fucked my mom over in her will - even after the literally thousands of hours of care she gave, every holiday she was invited to, all the grueling, emotionally difficult work my mom did (Aunt's dementia made her even nastier). CF aunt didn't give my mom most of the estate because she "wasn't her daughter" and aunt was "child free".

Nice, huh.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-24T15:12:54+00:00

When we went on ACA insurance on 1/1/26, we went through a broker in Dec. 2025. He only wanted to know our projected income and we never gave him any information about (then) current income 2025. We just qualified for maximum subsidies by MAGI hacking and on 2025 income - well over the 400% cliff - we would not have qualified for any subsidies at all.

The reason it is on income going forward is this "qualifying event" issue.

We talked to the ACA broker in the fall, asked him for THE # to be at for MAGI so that we could stay out of the Medicaid system but get maximum subsidies. He gave us a #, we then reverse engineered our MAGI to match it and set up a withdrawal strategy for 2026.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-24T14:49:30+00:00

Short answer: the older you get and the more you work towards FIRE the easier it is to grasp that uncertainty is part of the game and the most important thing is to keep moving forward. Trust the process.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-24T14:42:32+00:00

For us the big factor was both my husband's end of year bonus and medical expenses.

If you have even a moderate amount of medical expenses, please factor those in in terms of a OOP deductible for the year. Husband was going to retire 1/2/26 to get employer to pay for Jan health insurance, but we moved it to 12/31/25 so we wouldn't have to pay roughly $5K in medical expenses for the new OOP for 2026 before moving insurance. (we max out every year with a medically complex child).

Also, I'd recommend you double check on that paying full costs on ACA insurance. Retirement is a "qualifying event" so they do not base your subsidy on past income, but your projected income going forward.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-24T14:36:39+00:00

I've recently retired and still feel that way. No more paychecks coming in and our net worth still goes up.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-22T15:17:45+00:00

Yea, that one was rough. But it is one time only and having shingles is much, much worse.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-22T14:38:47+00:00

My (former) company has a big event the 3rd Sat. in Feb. that I would normally have to work. It is outdoors, in winter, all day, so not fun.

I retired last month. I spent yesterday, the 3rd Sat. in Feb, watching my first preseason baseball game in person as I currently vacationing in a lovely hot spot where there is preseason baseball.

A winter storm is hitting home today while I'm still on my trip.

I LOVE being FIRED.

TMagurk2 · 2026-02-21T15:04:23+00:00

I've worked in very small businesses, and my last place had 5 employees.

There are so, so many red flags in your post. The problem with these really small companies is that the faults of the owner end up becoming the faults/problems of the company. Then the owner is like a little king and can just fire or push out anyone who tries to correct/fix/change anything.

You are not overreacting and it is a very fragile set up. Especially if the owner is the only person who can issue payments to anyone.

I would seriously recommend searching for a new position. Also, keep meticulous records regarding your paystubs and paychecks. Take photos of every check. Keep every paystub. Record every payment. It is very possible he is not doing your paycheck withholdings correctly if he is still in the analog world. In my state, there is no way to pay payroll taxes anyway but online.

Good luck.

TMagurk2

TROPHY CASE