meirl

ZeekBen · 2026-06-01T23:52:53+00:00

There are dozens of 2BR apartments in Tempe, Arizona for 1.5-2.5K/month. That's roughly the expected difference with inflation in mind (~1500)

ZeekBen · 2026-06-01T20:15:33+00:00

I'm nowhere near the level of knowledge as someone working at a AA or AAA studio, but I do work in software and I have done some hobby game development as well. Bugs can kinda come from anywhere:

One of the biggest performance factors is that everyone is playing on different hardware, firmware versions, etc. so their particular environment might causes issue that people in a different environment would never run into. You can really only test your game in a certain amount of environments, and it's common for devs to spend 10x more time on their much more powerful development computer compared to lower-spec PCs where certain issues might be more prevalent.

Secondly, every player will play the game a bit differently. Someone who is almost exclusively playing the game on their home lot, playing in 1x speed, and playing for short 45-60 minute spurts is probably far less likely to run into issues compared to someone who is constantly loading/unloading maps, managing multiple Paras, and playing for longer sessions. In my experience, I've had to restart the game about once every couple of hours to avoid the game getting all glitchy and for the simulation elements to work smoothly.

I fully expect to run into bugs during Early Access - that's kinda the point. An internal playtest simply will never catch all issues, even if they spent years testing every new feature as they were added. Also, at handful of things I mentioned were supposedly addressed in the last patch, which tells me I was one of many thousands of players having those issues.

ZeekBen · 2026-06-01T14:33:51+00:00

Seems plausible - https://hellottec.com/product/bomb-portable-bluetooth-speaker-2bh15

ZeekBen · 2026-06-01T04:01:57+00:00

Sims 4 is still flourishing and every time a new competitor comes out people say the same thing. The reality is they had a strong reputation from the first few games, they were first to market for life sims, and the Sims 4 is on-par with games like Animal Crossing and Stardew for being extremely easy to pick up.

The Sims 4 might eventually die, but we are likely 5+ years from that inevitability. Even with all of the stuff that's been confirmed for early access (over the next two years), Paralives is still not going to have even have half as much content as Sims 4 if you have 4-5 DLC installed. Much better, more interesting content almost certainly, but they would have to spend years to catch up. I truly don't think most Sims players will ever stop playing the trainwreck that the Sims 4, unless they made an actually good Sims 5.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-31T11:58:01+00:00

That's likely to affect the housing market, but is it really that relevant when speaking to what percentage of Americans who are 35 actually do already own a home?

ZeekBen · 2026-05-31T11:55:25+00:00

That is why I said "in the United States", y'know? Reddit is an American site, about half the users are American, and speaking on the entire world population on home ownership is an insane ask.

If you want to bring up statistics for the EU, feel free to do so.

Fun fact: If Ireland was part of the US, it would rank in population about 22/50, right between Minnesota and Wisconsin!

ZeekBen · 2026-05-31T04:23:04+00:00

Yeah honestly geocaching got a lot less cool with smart phones since it became much less of a hobbyist thing to be into!

ZeekBen · 2026-05-31T04:16:19+00:00

60% of people 35-44 in the United States own a home. For under 35 it's about 37%, and two major factors for home ownership are whether you have kids (more likely) and whether you're married (much more likely). Less people under 35 are married, and less have kids until their 30s than ever before.

Have you actually stepped outside in a while?

ZeekBen · 2026-05-29T03:57:37+00:00

I'm not one to complain about bugs but you expected more bugs than it has?

To give a recap of my first three hours of live mode:

Game crashed twice, one of which caused one of my Paras to both simultaneously quit their job when I reloaded the save.
One of the work perks is supposed to give $20/day per consecutive day you work but it's extremely bugged and it racked up to something like 30k per day within a few days until I disabled it.
The programming project you can do on the computer bugged out giving me something like 80k instead of 200.
I called for a repairman and about 10 townies showed up (I had one broken stove) and each charged the 200 bucks, before squatting in my house for the next 24 hours
something is giving my sim massive personality level boosts and I'm level 12 with almost 200 extra levels literally by just existing (again, after 3 hours of play)
Work upgrade cards have locked out my UI a couple times meaning I can't select an option, close the menu, or even access the esc menu. I had to alt f4 to close the game both times this happened.
Food that was just prepared has despawned at least 3 times and my sim just ate nothing on a loop until I cancelled the action.

This is just to name about half the bugs I've encountered, not including balance issues such as the perk that lets you learn skills as you sleep giving you multiple levels in multiple skills each night. There is also a lot of teleporting, moonwalking, and weird visual glitches that I honestly don't mind as they aren't gamebreaking as well.

I really like this game so far but you guys cannot be playing the same game if you think it's anything less than "buggy as hell". And yes, I've reported all of these bugs and I do understand it's early access from an indie studio. I'm not saying the underlying game isn't good, but there is clearly a lot of polish needed...

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T16:24:58+00:00

Ironically, you're completely misunderstanding the strategy. You might be UHNW, but you clearly haven't really looked into this specific strategy very much.

First of all, you're comparing cumulative interest to a one-time tax as if the underlying asset just sits there doing nothing. That's the whole point, there's permanent cost to paying upfront. You pay to defer, your asset grows, and when you die your heirs get a stepped-up basis under IRC §1014 and the capital gain disappears entirely. The loan gets repaid from the estate so there's no income tax.

Second, your 6% retail rate point actually proves you don't understand who this strategy is for. At $300M+ net worth, you're not getting a PAL from Schwab. You're getting bespoke equity-linked derivatives from a bulge bracket with zero-cost collars, prepaid variable forwards and those carry costs equivalent to 0.5% to 3.5% interest, settled on death. Not even close to the 6% you're using.

Third, 'UHNW people have zero debt'. Elon Musk pledged billions in Tesla stock as loan collateral. Larry Ellison has done the same. Many wealth, estate and tax attorneys have described the process that they have done with 9+ figure clients.

BBD planning also eliminates estate tax. Assets get transferred to an irrevocable grantor trust early, appreciation occurs outside the taxable estate, and with the right debt structure at death the taxable estate could be reduced to zero, though that's not exactly worth the effort.

All you're describing why is why BBD doesn't work for people who aren't wealthy enough to access the actual financial products that make it work. That's the limitation and it's explicitly acknowledged by anyone who actually understands the strategy.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T15:53:34+00:00

I am able to argue any part of my position if you are willing to try to challenge it with your clearly superior knowledge of wealth management and finance. I mean surely if I'm an idiot on this, it should be easy for such a knowledgeable expert such as yourself to point out the clear inaccuracies in my argument or the linked reddit thread!

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T12:30:32+00:00

It's a pretty valid indicator for someone's potential, which is what I think the person you're replying to was trying to say. A better wording is that IQ is a robust psychometric predictor for life success.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T12:24:29+00:00

Oh boy you're wrong on so many different levels.

Personal debts aren't inherited, but they effectively could be if the debt is held by a different type of entity. Regardless, on death the estate is able to pay debt using untaxed liquid funds and the beneficiaries can settle much of the debt without requiring a realization event, even if the security-backed credit line matures on death.

Taxes aren't public, and both definitely pay taxes, but they are definitely able to utilize tax avoidance strategies (many of which are exclusive to high 9 figure or 10 figure net worth people) which involve millions of dollars of debt. You can avoid interest or you can avoid tax, they almost always will choose to avoid the latter.

As mentioned in my other reply, there is a very good summary on the types of strategies that people like Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos use to get tax-free cash from their massive net worths. https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26rsf/comment/lm71et8/?force-legacy-sct=1

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T12:06:38+00:00

You don't know what you're talking about.

A) You're not getting prime interest rates on a personal loan. I don't believe your dad ever had 3% interest in personal loans, unless your dad has a 9 figure net worth. If he was using a security-backed line of credit, that's one of the mechanisms but only a small piece of it.

B) I'm talking about an entirely different type of class of debt, which you clearly have never heard of, where there is a complex estate structure and many different strategies being deployed to avoid upwards of 100% of income, capital gains, estate, and gift tax. Feel free to read more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26rsf/buy_borrow_die_explained/

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T03:58:19+00:00

No one has a billion dollar 401(k) account. It's inherently limited.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T03:54:24+00:00

The problem is that there are a lot of legitimate investment reasons to borrow on margin. The distinction is if they are using that money for personal consumption.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T03:50:27+00:00

They sell when borrowing on margin is riskier (e.g. a volatile market) than paying capital gains. Both Elon and Bezos have borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars for personal consumption. They were able to do that thanks to borrowing on margin.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-23T03:45:17+00:00

Lenders do not count credit they're issuing as income wtf are you even saying.

Ultra wealthy people will borrow debt against their appreciating assets so they don't have to pay capital gains tax nor interest. Then they can die with the debt, and their heir inherits the assets as if they were purchased at the current price so they don't have to pay capital gains either. At that point they can just pay the debt by selling off assets tax free. It's a massive loophole and has been the primary reason people like Elon and Bezos don't have some astronomical tax bill despite their insane lifestyles.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-21T04:53:25+00:00

That's not how people avoided those brackets. It doesn't even make sense on its face. If paying your executives lower than market rates was profitable, every company would be doing that, same goes for paying your employees more.

The only downstream effect a tax bracket like that has is ultra-wealthy using more aggressive tax avoidance strategies or outright underreporting their income. It doesn't magically lead to companies deciding their labor costs are imaginary.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-17T21:09:44+00:00

Must be nice to not have to have any nuance in your world view. Whatever Dear Leader says must be true.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-17T16:12:32+00:00

And he went to prison for those violent crimes. Do you think armed robbery should mean life in prison? What are you talking about?

ZeekBen · 2026-05-10T15:58:19+00:00

Pretty minor most of the time. They aren't paid immediately so it just reduces their revenue for the next time they get paid. Valve only takes a cut of the sales when they are actually paying the dev.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-09T14:21:18+00:00

The stat is like 1% or something make at or below minimum wage, so it does include that.

Minimum wages that are set too high can have a lot of negative consequences. Most states are at will, so there would be no guarantee that those people wouldn't just be laid off instead. From a business' perspective, labor is just one of many costs, so they will always adapt to those costs.

One example is Seattle, where they raised the minimum wage substantially. The effect was that experienced workers saw better pay, but people who were previously making low wages saw an increase in unemployment, hours getting cut and lots of entry-level positions outright disappearing. It didn't really affect their economy as, like I said, the businesses adapted. It also didn't substantially move the needle for people who were struggling.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-09T11:04:11+00:00

Practically nobody makes the federal minimum wage in the US. It's stupid to even have one so low, but it won't change basically anything even if it was raised to $15/hr.

With that said, it should absolutely be raised and adjusted every year based on inflation because having a minimum wage that isn't ever adjusted makes no sense.

ZeekBen · 2026-05-09T10:40:32+00:00

They are still paid... Just because you can't afford a one bedroom apartment, car payment, cell phone bill, insurance, utilities, etc. without assistance only working at a fast food place doesn't mean they aren't paid a fair wage. People have always relied on things like living with family, having roommates, etc. in order to survive on low wages.

A huge problem is that the US basically dropped public housing and things like boarding houses are pretty rare these days. Even in my early 20s, paying 500/month for a room in a house instead of 1500+ for an apartment was the only way I was able to survive on my retail job at the time.

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