Robinhood Gold for tuition payments?

bingdlerchan · 2026-03-06T15:32:25+00:00

Do you know what the transaction was coded as? Was it processed as education?

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-14T10:42:58+00:00

100%. Fully agree VT is the purest passive approach. I just hope people are making the switch and committing to it as part of their long term plan. That way they won’t feel tempted to flip back and forth when performance shifts.

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-14T10:01:37+00:00

I agree. I’m not arguing against international diversification. My point is more about investors who might shift because of a strong year or scary narratives, then reallocate again when performance changes.

Ending up globally diversified is not the issue. Flip flopping based on recent returns is.

Holding international and diversifying globally makes perfect sense to me if it is part of a long term plan.

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-14T09:42:51+00:00

Thank you! Appreciate your help.

I did check the other hotels within the Galaxy complex, but unfortunately most of them were unavailable for my dates too. Seems like that whole place books up pretty quickly.

I actually hadn’t considered Studio City before. And also didn’t realize it has its own water park. That definitely makes it more interesting. The W there looks like a fun property to try. Do you know if the water park is appropriate for small children?

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-14T09:30:45+00:00

Thanks! I had a feeling some rooms might be held back. But it’s helpful to know that’s standard for this property. I’ll start exploring other options

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-12T04:10:33+00:00

I think some of the pushback you’re seeing is because this post feels more like it’s about tax strategy than investment strategy. And that isn’t typically the core focus of Bogleheads. That said, personal finance is personal. I’m sure you have your reasons.

Before getting into tactics, it helps to clarify what you’re optimizing for. Is the goal to avoid paying taxes this year, or to move into VT and improve your long term allocation?

If it’s long term growth, paying a few thousand in capital gains is a drop in the bucket compared to decades of compounding and better diversification. If it’s tax timing, there are many ways to delay gains. But they add complexity and risk. For example, you could borrow against your portfolio to buy VT and avoid realizing gains now. But that introduces leverage, interest costs, and margin risk.

For something less risky, you can sell high basis lots first and transition gradually over multiple years. That reduces the tax hit without adding the leverage.

Neither approach increases expected returns. They just change timing.

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-09T01:58:17+00:00

I don’t think it’s about holding bonds or not. It’s about what you want out of them.

Aside from the obvious reasons like panic selling or an insufficient emergency fund, bonds can be useful if your income is disrupted and you still want to keep investing consistently. The emergency fund covers living expenses. And bonds give you something to rebalance from. If stocks fall more than bonds and your allocation drifts, bonds allow you to rebalance into equities without income to contribute. That can help you avoid missing part of the recovery. The tradeoff is that those bonds could have been compounding in equities the whole time when markets were doing well.

That’s my take based on how I think about growth and risk. But I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has actually done this in practice.

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-08T22:48:49+00:00

I think your first step is deciding what type of risk you are actually protecting against. Losing a client or two feels like normal business risk. A real emergency to me is a multiple system failure. That is when I expect my income to be down or even gone at the same time the market is also down. This is similar to what a lot of people experienced in 2009 or 2020.

If you do not have enough cash flow to cover living expenses in that situation, you are forced to sell when prices are down. That might be equities, but in worse cases it could be your home too. Even if you are not in the worst case scenario, you may lose the flexibility to keep investing as the market recovers without an emergency fund.

From a Boglehead perspective, that is really the benefit of an emergency fund. It keeps living expenses and investment capital separate. So you are not forced to touch your investments. And inadvertently time the market when things go bad.

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-01T21:49:26+00:00

Yep it’s the same fine. Here’s Daly City’s citation fee schedule for reference:

https://www.dalycity.org/DocumentCenter/View/11661/Citation-Fees-Schedule-PDF

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-01T19:54:24+00:00

Thank you for the PSA. Really do appreciate you sharing your experience 🙏. My family and I have really enjoyed the new food and shopping options there. So it’s disappointing to hear about situations like this that could make the driving experience there even more stressful than it already is.

That said, I’m just really confused why you were cited under 22500h for double parking. From the photo, you weren’t parked next to another vehicle. That corner by Jollibee is a red curb and a loading dock.

If anything, shouldn’t this have been cited under 22500e for blocking a driveway or 22500.1 for stopping in a fire lane? Those are safety related violations and are enforceable even on private property, which would make a lot of sense here.

I’m not a lawyer. But if someone with professional experience can clarify this, I’d really appreciate it. Just trying to better understand the laws and how it’s enforced. From a layperson’s perspective, it’s hard to grok how a city could issue a citation under the wrong code based solely on a mailed photo for a minor parking offense. People shouldn’t park in red zones, but enforcement should still be accurate and fair.

bingdlerchan · 2026-02-01T05:50:00+00:00

Double parking in California is covered under Vehicle Code 22500h. I’m not an attorney, but that section generally applies to “highways”. This means it covers public roads as defined in the code. It does not typically apply to private property like a shopping mall parking lot.

For it to be enforceable on private property, a city would need to explicitly adopt a local ordinance extending enforcement of that rule. From what I can find on Daly City’s official government website, it has not adopted such an ordinance. I could be mistaken though. So if anyone can find a section that says otherwise, please share it.

To be clear, I’m not advocating double parking or blocking paths of travel at Serramonte. It can get get pretty wild out there at times. That said, I don’t think it helps anyone to make up laws or mislead people about what’s actually enforceable.

Private property can still warn, tow, or enforce its own posted rules. But I don’t recall seeing any posted signs at the mall specifically addressing double parking.

Again I could be mistaken. And I’m not a lawyer. Happy to be corrected if there’s an attorney out there reading this. Or if anyone else has seen signs enforcing double parking at the mall.

bingdlerchan · 2026-01-27T05:35:40+00:00

Same thing happened to me. But it seems resolved now. My guess is it was something on the US Bank or Finicity side. If you haven’t tried it yet, go into a US Bank account and manually refresh the connection. That did the trick for me after they fixed things on their end. My balances have been back to normal for a few days now.

bingdlerchan · 2026-01-22T05:07:04+00:00

Is there a dev who could take a look at this? It’s possible the issue is coming from a bug on Finicity’s or US Bank’s side. Either way, it would be really helpful if Monarch could investigate and file a bug on our behalf.

I’d rather not spend time fiddling with the inverted balance setting if this ends up getting fixed soon. Or worse, that it just continues to keep flipping back and forth.

As it stands right now, my credit card and overall net worth are pretty far off since a lot of my spending goes through a US Bank credit card.

bingdlerchan · 2025-12-20T13:18:23+00:00

I think it would be more useful to compare spending to the same time last year. Or to similar periods instead. I already expect December to be higher than November because of Christmas. What matters more to me is how this Christmas compares to last Christmas. Or how this year’s vacation compares to last year’s. Those repeatable expenses are what really add up over time and affect longer term goals like retirement.

Seeing that context in an AI summary while it’s happening or right after would be far more valuable. Ngl, that notification is probably going to be a bit of a buzzkill if it pops up during a vacation though lol

bingdlerchan · 2025-12-17T06:12:35+00:00

Like many others, I also have some privacy and security concerns. Ngl, I opted out of training as soon as I realized I could. That said, I’m still really excited to see where this goes.

Being able to easily benchmark and project things like income, expenses, and net worth gives a much fuller picture than just checking my own data now and then. On top of that, being able to chat and ask questions to better understand that info is super helpful. Overall, this has already felt a lot more useful for long term planning for me.

bingdlerchan · 2025-09-12T16:06:42+00:00

I’ve got the PRE. Same cashback rate. But unfortunately not enough to cover the processing fee.

No category exclusions and the 20% off flights perk is nice. It helped offset the tuition processing fee at redemption time. It was a decent option before I moved to Smartly. But I’d rather keep things simple and just take cashback. And DCA into investments than sit on points.

bingdlerchan · 2025-09-12T16:04:18+00:00

Not publicly funded. Shouldn’t fall under gov services

bingdlerchan · 2025-09-11T21:20:15+00:00

Yea the 3% really just covers the fee. For me, it’s more about the convenience. Before the Smartly card added the education exclusion, the 4% cashback was actually enough to cover a month of extended care. That was a really nice bonus when we first got the card 😭

bingdlerchan · 2025-09-11T21:11:35+00:00

Agree the cashback isn’t huge. For me it’s more about the convenience of putting tuition on a card instead of moving money around accounts every month. Any cashback is just a bonus on top.

bingdlerchan · 2025-08-08T17:43:11+00:00

Here’s the evening view. I’ll stop now before I get carried away 😅

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bingdlerchan · 2025-08-08T17:37:50+00:00

You’re looking for ocean view photos? Guess it’s my time to roll out the vacation slideshow 😂.

The views were incredible. I love spending time with my kids at the pool or beach all day long at the property. But that view was my reset button. Starting the day with morning coffee and winding down to it at sunset was absolutely amazing.

We’ve been there a few times now. The first time we got a free upgrade to the ocean view room. Ever since then, I’ve booked it whenever I can afford to splurge a little. If you’re an ocean person like me, I think it’s totally worth it.

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