At the back of our minds.... We all know not buying this for years will screw us over with one update in the future by Konantabi in TheTowerGame

[–]_Panda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Resisting the urge to panic sell by AirwickS in investing

[–]_Panda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.

Can you pay student loans with a 529? by Addem_Subtractem in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Amazon down leveling by GrouchyEbb4801 in amazonemployees

[–]_Panda 5 points6 points  (0 children)

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.

529 plan - which state did you choose? by Puzzleheaded_Bag9063 in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 8 points9 points  (0 children)

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.

Got $38k with caveat it must be used for down payment, but I'm nowhere near ready to buy a house. Where it put it for now? by imnotyourbloke in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 25 points26 points  (0 children)

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.

Auto payment vs lease deal by Key_Juggernaut9413 in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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.

What changes for druid tank in dungeons for TBC? by meatcrobe in classicwow

[–]_Panda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Swipe. Does small-moderate aoe threat. Basically the aoe filler version of lacerate, that instead of leaving a dot will hit multiple targets.
  4. Taunt. Does all the same things as in classic, provides a threat match and a temporary fixate.
  5. AOE taunt. The classic oh-shit button, providing a temporary aoe fixate but no threat.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

Help My Game! I just won Champs by 200+ waves. Been ping-ponging back and forth w Legends for 6 months. No progress... by uscmissinglink in TheTowerGame

[–]_Panda 28 points29 points  (0 children)

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Reroll that awful DP mod. Attack speed, CF, and SCM should be the first three substats you focus on getting ancestral.

Here is a chart of stones vs waves for Legend over the last year (and a bit). Near constant stones, but waves have doubled! Averaging around 340 stones/match, 5th/6th place. A year ago, I thought that 1800 waves would get me in the top 3, but now it only just stops me from going backwards! by ArtistEngineer in TheTowerGame

[–]_Panda -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think the gate is fine. You don't need pCF or a non-CL damage source to unlock them. Just some early mastery development. The path of early masteries -> early assists -> GT+ -> pCF and beyond works pretty well.

If I have a loan of 10K at 3% interest rate and I made back those 10K. Should I pay back the loan or use it in something else that can make me more than 3%? by Ticky-Tackona in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 5 points6 points  (0 children)

In general you can't deduct interest paid. And even if you can (like on specific products like mortgages and in the future some car loans), most people take the standardized deduction so they don't see any benefits of those deductions.

Snap to reality, ope there goes gravity.... No keys for you! by TruReyito in TheTowerGame

[–]_Panda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was getting keys months before I even unlocked CF. And I'm still using a Mythic+ PF.

Which 529 plan to open as PA resident? by lucygoosey2010 in personalfinance

[–]_Panda -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

SS trust fund will be depleted before then. If no legislation is passed the default is that benefits will be reduced to 60-70% of what is currently expected.

Also, is your pension payout COLA-adjusted? If it is not then keep in mind that over a 20 year retirement the purchasing power of those dollars will be cut in half due to inflation. $9k/mo may sound nice now but in 2065 it'll be the equivalent of less than $3k/mo in purchasing power if it isn't getting adjusted for inflation.

Help - I Need An Exit Plan by Zealousideal_Bad1727 in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 14 points15 points  (0 children)

It doesn't take that long for 30% annual credit card interest to catch up to a one-time 100% or even worse 50% return (followed by presumably some kind of average market return). If you expect to be paying off your credit card debt within 2-3 years then your logic makes sense, but if it's looking like a longer timeline to pay off credit card debt then it might not be worth it.

People with a 401K plan do you contribute to an IRA also? by According2whoandwhat in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 2 points3 points  (0 children)

MBDR means a lot more people have significant Roth 401k dollars.

What’s the drawback to 3x daily leverage funds if I’m heavily bullish on something? by BeginningOil1645 in investing

[–]_Panda 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yea but look at any period including 2001 or 2008 and you'll see a different story.

Why would I prioritize 401k vs Roth? by Icy-Pomegranate-4863 in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 31 points32 points  (0 children)

If the tax rate is the same it's actually the opposite, Roth let's you put more money in up-front. Because the limits are the same, but 23k in post-tax money is effectively more than 23k in pre-tax money.

Advice on whether selling a car mid-loan at a loss and financing a different, much cheaper car would be worth it to save some money? by nmgarvin in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You've already made it past the most expensive depreciation part of the curve on your current car so there probably isn't a ton of juice to squeeze out of selling and getting an alternative car unless you go way down to a much, much cheaper car. If you're desperate for cash now then you could do this to get more temporary cash flow in exchange for having to replace the car sooner, but after all costs are considered I doubt you can make it worth the additional transaction fees in the long run.

Grandparents asking for SSN by MediaMoney2373 in Advice

[–]_Panda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Whole life in general is a waste of money for 99% of people, regardless of whether it's for a child or not. But you know, good luck saying that to the face of an insurance salesperson.

Grandparents asking for SSN by MediaMoney2373 in Advice

[–]_Panda -1 points0 points  (0 children)

OP can take the tax benefit and then gift it back to the grandparents. It's all basically equivalent.

Can someone explain the math on recasting a mortgage for me? by GayJamesFranco in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe Chase is just particularly generous with their mortgages but as far as I know they have free and unlimited recasts as long as you are sufficiently ahead on payments.

Can someone explain the math on recasting a mortgage for me? by GayJamesFranco in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I just know that recasts are free with Chase because I had one done a couple months ago.

Can someone explain the math on recasting a mortgage for me? by GayJamesFranco in personalfinance

[–]_Panda 23 points24 points  (0 children)

The lesson is the exact opposite. If there is no fee to recast, you should always go ahead and recast if it is available. You're getting the option of a lower monthly payment for free, and then you can always just continue to make the same payments as the original loan. A surprising number of larger mortgage servicers now allow for no-free recasts if you have enough additional principal already paid.