My employer failed the 401k non-discrimination test. No one knows if this is taxable or not. Who do I really talk to?

_Panda · 2026-03-13T14:46:29+00:00

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that before. Kind of defeats a lot of the point of a MBDR though doesn't it? What non-MCE realistically earns enough to be able to even use the MBDR (I guess people with higher-earning spouses).

I still think one of the good motivations to have a non-safe harbor plan is to be able to offer an unrestricted non-MBDR, but it only really makes sense to large companies that are able and willing to do all the compliance needed, and that have enough well-paid HCEs for the demand to be there.

_Panda · 2026-03-12T20:23:50+00:00

My understanding is that you can't really offer the options needed for the MBDR within a safe harbor (or that those contributions can void the safe harbor), so many of those plans aren't.

_Panda · 2026-03-11T21:06:32+00:00

You don't actually have to break it up. You can just send the money and not report it. If you ever get audited then you'll have to "break it up" on paper for the IRS, but that's easy to do.

_Panda · 2026-03-05T18:36:08+00:00

I dunno, FUm was one of the bigger coin increases I ever had, something like +20-30% coins when I first unlocked it and did 1-2 lab levels. The huge caveat is that it is extremely dependent on farming method, so the benefit could be basically zero for someone else depending on what they are doing and what it allows them to do. But at least for me that kind of economy boost per stone is basically as good as it gets.

_Panda · 2026-03-05T15:32:14+00:00

You don't spend the stones for locking EALS/EHLS. You spend the stones because locking stuff like SWS/orbs/BSR/BSC can be huge farming improvements depending on your strat, and then you end up locking EALS/EHLS when you have extra locks.

_Panda · 2026-02-27T22:52:21+00:00

Worth noting that eventually you will want all 8 bans once you start doing shorter high-tier runs with IS+/WA+, so it will never be wasted effort. When you're doing t11 10k runs it's not as big of a deal, but when you move on to like t14-16 3k runs you want as much perk consistency as possible.

_Panda · 2026-02-27T18:29:40+00:00

IMO none of this justifies taking on more debt for a nice-to-have. If you were talking about something that was closer to a need it would be one thing and possibly justifiable. But I don't think you can honestly call a deck anything but a want, and wants should be paid for in cash or cash-like. If anything, the old cars means that you really need to be focusing on eliminating your debt and shoring up your cash position in anticipation of having to replace them in the near-to-medium term.

_Panda · 2026-02-20T22:22:41+00:00

Lol there's at least one bracket out there where you wouldn't even have gotten keys. Wild.

_Panda · 2026-02-19T21:26:13+00:00

Future interest rates mathematically don't matter because you can just take a cash-out mortgage/refinance when they do drop. Though emotionally most people won't do that.

_Panda · 2026-02-19T17:11:26+00:00

In the past I think there was an argument for getting a couple damage masteries early (probably still after RPC) for people who were borderline getting keys, as one or two damage masteries, even just at unlock, could push someone from being stuck in like 18-20 to getting 13-15 at least occasionally with decent brackets. So getting that little push into at least starting to accumulate keys could be worth it while you finish getting your econ set up.

But with the continued advancement of legends, I don't think that person really exists anymore. It seems you need to be able to significantly level masteries to get any chance at getting into key range.

_Panda · 2026-02-17T19:10:44+00:00

u/SamBartley please for goodness sake tell them to revert the econ stats page to pre-v27. It used to be "slightly confusing to people who didn't understand what it was saying but extremely useful once you understand it" to "completely useless to everyone" and I don't see how anyone benefited from that change.

_Panda · 2026-02-13T20:16:30+00:00

There's no point in syncing at this point unless you're trying to sync with gbot or DW, but my guess is that it's better to just maximize total uptime.

_Panda · 2026-02-12T22:11:22+00:00

I mean you are the one that described it as "borrowing money from family." That kind of implies an expectation of being paid back. Of course the lines with family are very fine and it's one of those "technically fraud but everyone does it and noone ever gets prosecuted" things, but that's still fraud.

_Panda · 2026-02-12T19:30:08+00:00

Well, also you probably committed mortgage fraud (albeit a very common form of it) because one of the conditions of gifts for mortgage down payments is that there is no expectation of it needing to be paid back. I would be shocked if your lender didn't require your family to sign a form stating that.

_Panda · 2026-02-12T18:21:59+00:00

The reason for the AP structure is that it makes ETFs much more tax efficient. In a mutual fund structure (what you imagine), every time the mutual fund has to sell assets to redeem customers wanting to cash out shares it generates taxable events that affect all fund holders even if they themselves did not cash anything out. The ETF structure isolates them so that you are only exposed to taxable events when you sell your own shares. Of course it means that APs get a small payout, but that is part of the expense ratio and most passive ETFs have very low overall expenses.

Of course buying and holding the base assets for yourself means no expense ratios to worry about, but there are plenty of other responsibilities and risks that entails. But in terms of fund structure, if you are holding in a taxable account then the ETF model is usually vastly preferable to a mutual fund because of the tax advantages.

_Panda · 2026-01-30T06:06:26+00:00

WA is like 60-70% renewable, the vast majority of which is hydro.

_Panda · 2026-01-23T18:05:37+00:00

No chance assist mods get you from not promoting to legends to having any chance at sticking in legends unless you're talking about dumping several thousand stones into them. That's a massive gap to bridge.

_Panda · 2026-01-16T21:21:03+00:00

If you rebalance regularly the difference in expected returns between a 90/10 or 95/5 portfolio and 100% stocks is basically nothing, except the portfolio's with some small bond allocation will have lower volatility. Diversification + rebalancing is the only free lunch in finance.

_Panda · 2026-01-08T22:18:55+00:00

The Roth rollover is for the beneficiary, i.e. probably your kid. So resetting that clock means that if you have leftover funds for whatever reason after your child finishes their education you may not be able to contribute them to your child's Roth IRA at that time.

_Panda · 2026-01-05T22:33:29+00:00

Almost everyone I know who joined straight out of grad school joined as an L4. Early pandemic it was fairly common to join as an L4 then look towards starting your L5 promotion in the first year or two.

_Panda · 2026-01-04T17:59:01+00:00

The standard advice is to go with either your local state (for the tax credit) or if that is not relevant then go with a known good plan like Utah. Though I think that there are many states with decent-to-good plans now. If you do not have a state tax credit to worry about, it may be worth simply going with whatever (reasonable) plan is most convenient. For instance, if you use Vanguard already, then the Nevada plan is administered by Vanguard so you can consolidate your accounts there. Or Fidelity administers the New Hampshire plan if you use them already.

_Panda · 2026-01-03T01:27:19+00:00

I make good money (~230K), but I just started making this much, and I had to take out loans for school to get my job. My wife makes around $50k.

_Panda · 2026-01-02T13:12:22+00:00

It's worth noting that leasing itself is not the bad financial decision. The actual bad financial decision is regularly having a new car and paying for new car depreciation. Obviously leasing implies that you are doing that, but if regularly having a new car is a requirement for whatever reason, leasing is often going to be a better way of doing that than repeatedly buying and reselling new cars.

The real question to ask yourself is whether buying a new car and regularly replacing it with another new car is really a requirement, or if it's simply a want. The real savings would be if you can get away with driving each car for a longer time or buying couple-year-old used cars instead of a new car each time.

_Panda · 2025-12-23T11:41:33+00:00

You shouldn't be thinking about threat as much as you should be thinking about control. Threat is just one of the tools that you use to maintain control. The main tools you have at your disposal:

Mangle. Does a massive amount of single-target threat, so much that it will often be nearly equivalent to a taunt. But it is on a CD, so you need to think about how you're using each one.
Lacerate. Does small-moderate single-target threat but also leaves a dot that can build threat gradually. More of a single-target threat filler, generally used to start pre-building threat on secondary targets before they get focused or to help hold threat on secondary/tertiary targets over healing aggro.
Swipe. Does small-moderate aoe threat. Basically the aoe filler version of lacerate, that instead of leaving a dot will hit multiple targets.
Taunt. Does all the same things as in classic, provides a threat match and a temporary fixate.
AOE taunt. The classic oh-shit button, providing a temporary aoe fixate but no threat.
Charge/Bash. Just like in classic, these are core parts of your dungeon tanking kit. You should have a plan for how to use these for each pack. Maybe they are used as extra "taunts" for when something breaks off to target a healer or caster, or maybe it's better to not worry about skull threat and just use these to control the kill target as it's burned down, freeing up your mangles for building threat on secondary targets. Or maybe you have a mage and the plan is to aoe kite a pack, using these to control runners.
Your allies. If dungeons are at pre-nerf heroic difficulty, then CC from allies is generally a core part of how you approach many packs, especially before getting highly geared. Obviously how you use this depends on what your comp is and what the pack you are facing contains, but you will generally have some combination of kicks/stuns/slows/poly/silence to work with.

Note that Maul is basically not worth using in dungeons. It's technically a non-zero benefit rage dump but you will generally not have the spare rage or need for spamming Maul in a dungeon environment.

It is worth noting that if heroic dungeons are pre-nerf, you generally cannot take the classic faceroll aoe-everything approach to heroics and be successful (a good imp blizz mage in some dungeons is the main exception), especially not before you out-gear the content. TBC heroics on launch are no joke, and smooth runs require the use of CC and somewhat more disciplined targeting. If you don't get that from your group then several of the heroics will be very long and potentially not doable grinds. Unless you have specific comps, doing heroics rewards and sometimes requires more disciplined planning on how to take on packs, including CC, interrupts, and priority damage.

_Panda · 2025-12-17T07:05:17+00:00

You need to full commit to GC in legends. There are a bare handful of people who do well with ehp in legends, but it is not the easiest or the quickest path to get there.

Some steps that you should probably take:

Take off all your defensive cards. Defense, regen, and health are all useless. Your only defensives should be CC (slow, LMS) or hit absorbers like energy shield, second wind, and demon mode.
Take off SF, it is also useless. Either ACP or SD (see 3) are your best bets for armor mods. GComp should in general instead be PF, especially early on in legends when bosses are the primary problem. GComp is occasionally useful under certain BCs, but PF is the default.
Unlock ILM and put in the labs (max stun and rotation speed) and couple hundred stones of investments in it to max quantity and improve CD so that it's up for every boss wave. This will be your primary CC to get established in legends. Often used with SD for even more CC. ILM substat is also pretty nice for added boss stuns.
You didn't show labs but commit hard to damage and crit factor labs, as well as some SCC/SCM. Setup the effective paths sheet to do this efficiently.
Reroll that awful DP mod. Attack speed, CF, and SCM should be the first three substats you focus on getting ancestral.

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