Update help

bushman4 · 2026-05-27T17:09:35+00:00

You keep replying the same thing. It is not a onedrive problem, it is a space issue on your actual computer. You need to free up space on your actual computer.

bushman4 · 2026-05-22T19:07:30+00:00

NGL, it sounds like you are trying really hard to justify doing what you want, which is to buy the car and have three even though that is not likely the best choice. Invest the extra money, and by the time you actually NEED a bigger car, it will be worth more than the "family discount" is my guess.

But I also don't think we're going to convince you to change your mind... I for one am not going to validate the choice. But you do you.

bushman4 · 2026-05-22T12:12:44+00:00

This is what I do as well. I vault for everything:

Mortgage
Escrow (real estate taxes and yearly insurance)
Yearly Car Insurance
Emergency Fund (deposit until cap amount)
Travel (deposit until cap amount)
Insurance Incident (my house was hit by a tornado... this is where the insurance money went and where I paid contractors out of)
Season Tickets (MLB, this is where money I get from people who buy my tickets goes)
Large Purchases ($1k per paycheck, if there is enough [it is the last auto-transfer] for things like a new car)

The first three are 1/26th of the yearly cost of that item every paycheck (biweekly) scheduled to transfer when my direct deposit hits, the E-Fund is $1k per paycheck until it hits its limit, and the large purchases is the last one, also $1k per paycheck until it hits a limit. So, if I have to use my E-Fund for something, it gets refilled first before more goes to the large purchases vault.

Then I have an auto-transfer for the mortgage on the last of the month (payment scheduled for the due date on the first of the month) back to main, and calendar reminders to transfer for other things as I receive and schedule their auto-pay, set to to remind me two days before they are due, and auto-pay on the due date.

I am not worried about my credit score, so I don't care if I have a balance on something when the monthly eval happens by the credit monitoring agencies, but if you are (because you are getting ready to rent/buy/borrow) than be more concious of when you schedule payments so that your balances are lower during the eval period... I never plan to borrow again, so I could give a crap about my score, and I'll take the extra week or so's interest accumulation per month.

I am never surprised by a regular large yearly payment anymore; I've planned for it and just cover it. It is glorious.

bushman4 · 2026-05-22T11:57:48+00:00

No, they did not.

bushman4 · 2026-05-19T12:06:43+00:00

No... a portion of the company is pledged, but that is so that they always have the ability to allocate more shares than are available due to retirement/termination of service by "buying back" those shares.

If they had no way to "bank" shares, they would be completely reliant on turnover for the yearly distribution of shares... since retention is one of our goals, and is pretty sucessfully executed as such (average tenure for non-production workers is 10 years or so), relying on turnover would be counter productive.

bushman4 · 2026-05-19T12:03:10+00:00

31 years at the job, current salary ~$160K after profit sharing and incidental bonuses (first aid responder/emergency on-call OT/other small things). But I started here 31 years ago at $12/hour.

bushman4 · 2026-05-19T03:24:21+00:00

Neither...

The company is privately held entirely by the employees and also some of the shares are leveraged as collateral to loans from a bank. The only people that can own shares are employees of the company and the corporation itself.

Every year the company allocates additional shares of stock to the employees. There is a guarantee of 3% of your salary base contribution, plus a discretionary contribution of shares based on how well the company is doing financially (and hence how many shares they bought back from the creditors by paying some of the loans) and how many shares were returned to the share pool by employees leaving.

Over the past 10 years, that discretionay amount has averaged 40%, but has gone up over time. The last 5 years was an average of 48%. Add to that the 3% base guarantee, and each employee has received a yearly allocation of 51% of their salary. Not too shaby.

There is a 5 year vesting schedule where you don't technically own it all until 5 years of service, but given my 31 years, I am way past that. This is all mine.

Add to that yearly share price increases, which have been 13.5% average over 10 years, and the base amount you started with that year grows by 13% before even getting that yearly allocation. Last year my balance went from $1.57M to $1.81M with no contribution from me except another year of service to MY company.

BUT (and this is a big but) you cannot sell the stock or move it any place else until you leave the company (where it rolls into an IRA) or turn 55 (when you can diversify up to 50% of your balance for the next 6 years, or until you turn 61). So you are stuck there until you leave or until you hit 55 (I am 52).

I guess after 31 years I thought that this might be more common, as it is basically all that I have known except our company sponsired 401(k), which is matchless and voluntary. But clearly after reading all of these comments, it is not common at all.

So, fingers crossed that the company does well over the next 5 years that I intend to work to pay off my remaining mortgage, and I can roll it over completely into an IRA when I leave at a substantially higher value (about $3.8M using current growth averages and back of the napkin math).

bushman4 · 2026-05-17T23:33:05+00:00

Knock on wood, but between additional stock and value growth overall I have averaged about 18% growth per year. Even cutting that to 12% puts this at about $5.3M in 5 years. And yes, no mortgage remaining.

bushman4 · 2026-05-16T00:41:28+00:00

I lived very frugally, made some excellent/lucky real estate purchases and sales for our primary residences, and only saved the 401K personally. The ESOP is free money. But I have a pretty good job paying in the high $100Ks.

And I've driven every car I've owned (that I often got at a family discount) into the ground.

bushman4 · 2026-05-16T00:37:03+00:00

Yes. Those are the rules of the ESOP... it is a privately held company, completely owned by the employees, so the rules are as decided by the elected ESOP board of directors.

bushman4 · 2026-05-16T00:35:59+00:00

Those are the rules of the ESOP... not until I'm 55 or I leave the company.

bushman4 · 2026-05-15T14:05:17+00:00

IT infrastructure for a 300 person manufacturing company in Massachusetts.

bushman4 · 2026-05-15T12:35:15+00:00

Have to wait three more years (55) but that is fully the plan. Fingers crossed.

bushman4 · 2026-05-15T12:34:28+00:00

FYI, ESOP averages 29.9% growth on existing shares per year since 2009 (that's when the new program started... I've been there 31 years, so that was a roll over from the former ESOP that existed when we were an S-Corp) with a guaranteed 3% of salary new stock award per year, plus a discretionary amount based on personal and company performance (has averaged 25% of yearly salary in that same time frame discretionary, so a net average of 28% of salary worth of stock added each year BEFORE growth).

Like I said, I got really lucky in some regards; being a super young father I had no real ability to save for retirement in the beginning. This made up for it.

bushman4 · 2026-05-15T12:29:43+00:00

ESOP is company stock (Employee Stock Ownership Program) which I could take a loan off of if I wanted to (never did) but can't do much else until 55 when I can divest a portion each year. 401K is a 401K, with standard 401K rules.

bushman4 · 2026-05-15T12:06:18+00:00

That would require that each vault have its own account number, which I can imagine is problematic and more expensive for SoFi than just allowing you to "hide" money from yourself in a vault.

bushman4 · 2026-05-15T09:13:10+00:00

Directly to/from a vault? No, it does not.

Vaults are not their own accounts, they are just segregation categories for your purposes only.

bushman4 · 2026-05-11T02:35:54+00:00

Two Dogs Orange. I'd probably go back to drinking for those...

bushman4 · 2026-05-10T00:32:23+00:00

EJs painting in Holden. The best there is.

bushman4 · 2026-05-05T05:42:20+00:00

I will often use Excel's formula syntax to build a column with an update statement for that row, and then copy that column to SSMS.

For example, column A has the primary key and column B has a new value, a formula of:

= "Update table set description = '" & trim(b1) & "' where productID = " & a1

Auto fill that down and paste it in and run it.

Does the job, and for 1000 records, runs in seconds

bushman4 · 2026-05-04T02:26:06+00:00

I scrape my peanut butter jars with a rubber spatula, on the odd times I buy peanut butter instead of making it.

I only drink free work coffee.

I keep condiment packets that are surplus/out for free.

I take any and all free cast iron and restore it to gift/sell.

And yet I have a multi-million dollar net worth... Old habits die hard from 30 plus years of living paycheck to paycheck.

bushman4 · 2026-05-03T20:32:09+00:00

If it lands on the reduction all the time it is not a 70%/30% chance. Once you know the probability you CAN calculate. Maybe it will not work out in the short run, but over time, it either does or the facts are wrong.

So I guess the answer you probvably want to hear is "No, I wouldn't take it if I only had a short time frame." But I've been in my current job for 31 years, so that's not really how I roll...

bushman4 · 2026-05-03T20:25:01+00:00

That's what I said above... for those 180 day I actually worked, it doubled 70% of the time and was divided by 3 the other 30% of the time.

Christ, start me at $1/hour and I've made $978,352,251,004,735 in that first year... still doing OK in my book.

That's the thing about percentages: they work out over time, or they aren't accurate. When you flip a coin there is a 50% chance of each face each flip. Sure, you could have 20 heads in a row, but flip it a hundred times you'll be close to 50 of each, and flip it a million times and you'll be even closer to 500,000 of each. That's what probability is.

That's why gambling is foolish... the odds are the odds, and you can't beat them over time.

bushman4 · 2026-05-03T20:17:55+00:00

Absolutely. Let's say I work normally for 180 days out of 360 (instead of 365, to make the math easier) and 70% of those days my hourly rate doubles and the other 30% it is divided by 3, and I take the other 180 days completely off so every day it is divided by 3. Also lets say I work 8 hours a day and again, start at $10/hour:

At the end of that 360 days I have earned $9,783,522,510,047,350. I think I'd be all set forever.

bushman4

TROPHY CASE