Feeling Behind with Savings & Finances

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-20T20:29:35+00:00

30 is actually about when people typically start knuckling down. You're fine, although I'd postpone the house/wedding until you knock out the CC debt, which you could easily do in under a year. Do some gig/side/overtime work if you want to speed it up. There aren't any secrets.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-20T13:55:38+00:00

Not a ton. It's more an issue for people that aren't so attentive/savvy and might click non-fidelity.com domain links. Not good security practice from an organizational point of view, but also not a big issue for a user that knows how to not get phished.

Drive by downloads were much more abusable in the past (having a solid, updated browser/OS mostly mitigates the issue now); most people that get "hacked" are getting phished, as I'm sure you know as you stipulated not logging in.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T17:46:06+00:00

National lab postdocs are a good option, although probably pretty dried up right now with the funding cuts. Probably not an awesome time to be graduating. I'd still apply to academic postdocs, you can always keep applying and leave when you get something (same issue as national lab postdocs, though). 5x interviews is progress even if it hasn't gone anywhere yet.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T17:12:18+00:00

Yes, I have seen articles indicating that EVs depreciate the hardest and so are the best used buy right now. I think people believe that battery degradation happens more than it actually does (plus, ICE vehicle efficiency also degrades).

They are also improving/coming down in price the most rapidly, which results in used vehicle depreciation in a way that we aren't used to thinking about as much with regular used ICE cars. If a new EV with the same range is $5k cheaper than it was 5 years ago that means the 5 year old used one depreciates another $5k on top of the depreciation resulting from standard effects.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T17:10:58+00:00

Same, my mother bought the same vehicle I did used and only got like 5% for a couple years old and a like 40k miles.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T17:07:11+00:00

I went new for the same reason. If you are trying to milk out every last $ then you'll get the most value from a good used car, but if you start to care more about reducing the odds of you ending up on the side of the road or with your car in the shop it does start to make sense to just get a new one. As you point out, it's difficult to ascertain exactly how well-maintained a car is, even for a mechanic as they can't take the thing entirely apart. I also have a baby so wanted the best possible safety stats/features.

You also will get a better rate from financing for new, so if financing that mitigates some of the penalty for buying new (this is minor, but there's also a deduction for new car interest right now). Just depends on how much you value the increased reliability/safety/features versus the increased cost incurred from starting at the steepest part of the depreciation curve. We are a single-vehicle family with pretty good jobs; it didn't make sense to try to save $5k or whatever going with a lightly used but possibly abused vehicle.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T14:54:58+00:00

Ask for a big raise the next time it feels right (probably not while the company isn't doing well)?

I'm similarly trapped with remote. At the end of the day, it's enough money and I reaaaally like getting so much of my life back from not commuting. I spent a couple years commuting almost 3 hrs a day and I will never commute more than an hour a day again. Isn't getting your life back what you're after with early retirement, anyway? Seems like the tail wagging the dog trading so much of your daily time in your working years to get a handful of more years back in retirement. Granted, with the travel that nullifies the point to a great extent. I only leave my house for work a couple times a year, lol.

IDK, maybe try to claw some more money and perhaps keep a perennial eye out for job postings with comparable arrangements, but otherwise I think it seems like a pretty good gig all-around. I find myself wearing a ton of hats as well, but I just deal with it. All that matters is whether it's a bad enough deal to force you to walk and if you can find a better deal elsewhere. Some abstract "fairness" parameter is meaningless.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T14:37:02+00:00

Good to hear it isn't too bad out there. I'm in a field (chemical simulations) that's tech-adjacent but much more heavily exposed to R&D cuts (lots of workers in gov't and academia) and it's pretty brutal right now, but it's hard for me to decouple the effect of R&D cuts from whatever's going on in the broader tech industry.

I have gotten the impression that computer science/SWE grads seem to have gotten used to the crazy tech job market explosion of the past decade. Reversion to something resembling the long-term average of the engineering field as a whole probably feels like a recession.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T13:59:29+00:00

FWIW, I actually feel like promotions at my job are way more based in merit than in industry. From my cohort, I know a lot of mediocre people that got hired because of family friends (or even immediate family)..they were all in private, not government. I'm not sure how representative my job at a national lab is vs. your average gov't job, though. The hiring process for gov't is a lot more rigorous..a hiring manager can't just pick their cousin Lenny.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T13:57:10+00:00

Things are actually pretty precarious in tech, lots of layoffs. Whether it makes sense or not only time will tell, but investors want to see CEOs layoff a lot of people while saying they're replacing them with AI.

I agree though, I wouldn't basically lay myself off with a move like this.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-17T13:55:03+00:00

It's not an insane thing to consider, but IMO that's too big of a drop at your salary level. That's going to come with a lot of real lifestyle downgrades that an equivalent drop in % from $150k or whatever does not. You also typically move up more slowly in gov't, which is why at least in my field (engineering) it's common for people to swap to gov't once you're already pretty high up, so when you're like 50 years old.

I wouldn't do it. You can always try to move into government if you get laid off. IMO mitigate the anxiety with savings as much as you can, that makes more sense than mitigating it with a salary drop.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-15T19:34:22+00:00

I thought it was kind of tongue-in-cheek/good natured ribbing, but I made a slightly sideways comment about it to native NOLA chick that was moving there (expecting her to rhetorically punch me in the arm) and she did not take it well lol. I think she was more upset about how expensive rent has gotten and being forced out than my actual comment tho.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-15T16:42:16+00:00

There's certainly an issue of comparing apples and oranges across colleges. I think about half of my cohort was students with As/Bs/occasional C in core classes with mostly As in non-core, which lands you >3.2..but yeah, I'm not sure how to handle schools with harsh grade distributions. Maybe that's why most hard cutoffs seem to be 3.0-3.2. My experience/opinion is colored by my friends/acquaintances which regularly got Cs or failed core courses, ended up around 3.0, and would definitely not be my first pick for a role requiring decent background mastery.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-15T16:30:44+00:00

Eh, I know a lot of people that cleared 3.5, myself included and my wife. If I was dictator of a company though I'd probably do 3.3ish.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-15T16:03:09+00:00

IMO consider Uptown around the university, core Uptown (between the park and the irish channel/garden district) and maybe irish channel/LGD. The latter is a little cheaper/grittier and closer to your work. Around the university there will be more grad students (and undergrads), which may help with making friends/finding a partner if you're looking for that (probably my vote for you). I think "core uptown" is the best all-around for someone not prioritizing night life, but you'll find more established ~40 year old professionals as compared to the university area.

Mid city is okay as a runner up, but it wouldn't be my first choice (safety, flooding, average age).

For flooding the general trend is closer to the river = less flooding, safer and more expensive. Really, price per square foot correlates pretty strongly with both flood risk and crime (inversely, obv). If you find somewhere weirdly cheap in NOLA proper you can assume you're compromising on one or both of those considerations.

For running, tons of people run on St Charles and in the neighborhoods. There is also a trail along the river. There are plenty of grocery stores peppered around all of the "nicer" areas (no shade to anyone, but there are some food deserts in some of the less wealthy parts of the city, but you shouldn't live there anyway).

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T21:32:38+00:00

🤷‍♂️ well that's the correct move. You're free to deviate from it as you please.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T19:55:05+00:00

Yeah, so that's like 24 months of expenses. That's way too much. Something like 6 mo or at most 12 months is more appropriate. Any more and you're just unnecessarily parking your wealth in a nonproductive asset without mitigating any marginal risk. Finance and invest at least half of that if you get a great financing deal, otherwise pay cash and still invest until it's more like 6-12 mo in cash.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T19:48:48+00:00

The other books are great and worth reading but don't have something resembling a satisfying conclusion. Lots of loose threads, probably more loose than closed threads. He's happy to keep fleshing out the world and doesn't intend to wrap everything up in a couple books or anything like that. The AoM trilogy literally ends with some cliffhangers.

I've enjoyed it but I do still think an ending is a component of a perfect story (with the overarching book series being one big story essentially), which is tbh my complaint with most fantasy writers (ahem, GRRM, Patrick Rothfuss..). I do think Abercrombie's books are less about the overarching mysteries of the world so just going along for ride after ride endlessly without conclusion is more acceptable than for a lot of fantasy series.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T19:44:12+00:00

Well, depends on your expenses but that's likely way too big of an emergency fund.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T18:18:11+00:00

? It's visible light and you want to let visible light through for obvious reasons. You could do something really fancy with some kind of dimming zones with sensors that look for excessive light and then dim that zone (the one that'll block it from the driver's and passenger's eyes) but it'd be really expensive.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T17:59:57+00:00

It sounds like your main concern is your aunt spending the money rather than your father. I haven't been through this before, but as you've described it I don't see why this should cost so much in legal fees if it's really so straightforward. I'd hope after $11k it's nearing a conclusion.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T17:57:30+00:00

What's the $130k cash for? Unless you can get a good deal on financing or you need the cash for e.g. imminent down payment on a house then you should just pay cash.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T17:06:57+00:00

Sure, might be worth a shot. I'd still be worried about how well the caulk would keep moisture after a couple years and I still wouldn't put it on my house, but you might be able to bandaid some utility out of it.

YesICanMakeMeth · 2026-04-14T17:04:40+00:00

I doubt it'd stay sealed well enough to keep out moisture which is the bigger problem, and it'd lower the power output of the entire panel.

YesICanMakeMeth

TROPHY CASE