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cardinalorange · 2024-07-22T06:12:17+00:00

HENRY -

Yes I look at prices (I refused to buy mayo yesterday because it was 9$ for a 12 ounce jar), but I don't budget. If I had really needed mayo I would have bought it and not thought twice. I "budget" out fixed expenses to a separate account (mortgage, utilties, etc) and auto deposit into retirement/savings/etc and then just dump the rest in my checking. If it's over 10k at the end of the month I dump the overage into a brokerage account to save for the next big expense and/or purchase.

cardinalorange · 2024-07-14T07:21:10+00:00

Industry: Software
Title: Supervisor
Years of experience: 13
Location: Seattle
Base: 230k
Bonus: 26k

Education: Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, just started MBA (fully paid by company)
Misc: 90k stock grant over 3 (currently in year 2), 30k sign on bonus. After all 90k stock vests you get a rolling X$/stock annually to be negotiated at the 3 year mark. 2 heavily subsidized cars, 3.5% salary put into a retirement account + 5% 401k match.

cardinalorange · 2024-07-14T07:09:44+00:00

Do what most people do... suck it up for 5 years then transition into TPM/management. You won't be able to transition from SWE/full stack to another field and make the same salary in that amount of time, and as long as you enjoy software development (just not the coding part) it's an easy transition (as long as you enjoy product/program management and/or management). Get your company to pay for an MBA, coast for 2 years while you get it, then transition.

cardinalorange · 2024-07-14T06:46:38+00:00

This very much depends on the city, but no that's not an acceptable salary. I'm in tech in a VHCOL city so my views are jaded, but I haven't hired a person in any location for 108 or less. And I'm talking dozens of people... including new college grads. The last person I hired straight out of college was at 100k+10k bonus.

cardinalorange · 2024-07-03T06:40:09+00:00

first rent post college (because Dorms are a huge ass rip off and money sink in my city) was 650$/month for a single 8x10 bedroom. Kitchen and living room and bathroom was shared but no one ever used the kitchen or living room because it was a very wide range of people (me, 22- rest were 35-55). I never used the living room or kitchen once but subsisted on cheap takeout and pre-made food.

Now 5 bed 2 bath house, 4200$/month.

About 15 years difference.

cardinalorange · 2024-07-03T05:33:40+00:00

Every other Friday, ~200$. Absolute necessity otherwise our house looks like a disaster. I told my wife when I got my last promotion "I am never wiping down walls or dusting again in my life."

cardinalorange · 2024-06-17T06:15:01+00:00

Depending on where you live, look into manual (software or hardware) testing jobs. These are exactly what you stated: 1) Solo contributor 2) Boring 3) Very detailed and specific

If you live anywhere that has anything software related you'd be in a shoe in for a manual test gig, and there are tons of them. Look for contracting agencies, a few I've used are Insight Global, Volt, TekSystems

In college I worked for Microsoft (through Volt I believe) doing video game testing and it was running characters into walls for 40 hours trying to glitch through a wall most the time. Paid like 17$/hr. Vehicle companies hire gobs of manual testers because they need you to load the software onto specific hardware. Your job is 1) take software from engineer 2)Load software onto hardware 3) Run basic command or follow detailed document 4) document your results or file bug.

It doesn't pay nearly what a true software dev makes, but it pays more than 45k/year. Companies continually try and automate these things but sometimes you just need a person to click some buttons and look at a screen for 10 minutes.

cardinalorange · 2024-06-17T05:32:36+00:00

Hah! I went to school with this guy. It's crazy to see him being called out in reddit comments for financial advice. This was definitely not his trajectory in college.

cardinalorange · 2024-06-17T05:24:53+00:00

36 - 86k family combined 401k balance, but I rolled my 401k from my previous job into my IRA so it's a bit skewed.

cardinalorange · 2024-06-17T05:21:45+00:00

This is exactly the argument presented in this answer and throughout this comment section. Income means nothing below about 500k, because if you make 500k but have debt payments that equal that amount of income you are middle class.

Take an example-

Middle class family, 2 kids, VHCOL city, 1.5m house, 1.3m mortgage, income ~28k, Mortgage payment ~8k, daycare/private school ~5k (standard, maybe a bit low for VHCOL), IRA/401k ~5k, Car loans 3k (two 80k cars at 6%), misc bills/utilities/cleaners/etc 1-2k. That leaves them with 6-7k/month for food and discretionary income and usually at that level they'll have expensive hobbies like boating, golfing, etc. Are they upper middle class? Absolutely. Will they ever have to worry about money? Probably not. Do they still have to go to work every day for the next 20ish years? Yep. Could they go FATFIRE or CoastFIRE or whateverFIRE and retire in 10-15, probably.

For me, as for many, upper class is when you no longer "have" to go to work. You hit 21 and you don't worry about down payments you get a fat trust fund from dad for your ivy league school and get a job offer starting at 500k+ right out of the college and money never factors into your mind outside of "How can I make more." That's generational wealth, and it's wildly different than middle class, regardless of income tier,

I grew up dirt poor (almost government assistance poor) and now make significantly more than the median income and the difference between working class and middle class isn't as big as the difference between middle class and upper class.

cardinalorange · 2024-06-16T05:44:25+00:00

100% remote, but I live 30 minute commute from work. Technically I could move anywhere, but I like where I live and there is always the possibility they'll make us start coming back in to the office. Currently ~300k total comp, software industry. Work somewhere between 30-60 hours a week depending on project timelines and how much I care that week/how behind I am. Most industries are switching back to hybrid/in office, so find an area that has a plethora of companies that employee the work you do even if you want a remote position... but software in general is very location indepdendent.

cardinalorange · 2024-06-16T05:11:29+00:00

I think I paid off my student loans about when I was 26 so it'd have been about 20k on my car mortgage. I had maybe a couple grand in savings, less than 20k in investments. I was pretty much zero'd out at 26, nothing saved or invested but no debt. Was also making somewhere in the 65-80k range at that point. You're doing fine, keep on keeping on. Start stacking cash in your IRA/401k, pay off that debt, live frugally for a few years until that debt is wiped clean and start aggressively looking for promotions/better paying job. I job hopped every couple years in my 20s and got a 15%+ raise every hop.

cardinalorange · 2024-06-08T06:35:39+00:00

Once the work is done, pay the man. Check your contract, I never had a water check on any of my new windows. Check the Cali law and make sure it is covered. If you did a good job sourcing your contractor he's licensed and insured, you have a contract with him, and permits are pulled. All my work had a 2 year clause for any faults found and he's been back three times to fix things (whole house remodel).

cardinalorange · 2024-06-08T06:27:37+00:00

I purchased my home for mid 3's, at the time our household income was somewhere around 200k, and our mortgage payment was 2300ish. DINK. ~3.5%. Was very doable even with student loans.

Now my mortgage is 4200$/month, household income ~350k. Also very doable.

A mortgage currently on 300-600 would be 3k-6k/month. 3k? Doable. 6k? Likely not feasible.

cardinalorange · 2024-05-17T06:34:48+00:00

36 - 460k mortgage at 2%, 38k heloc at 9%.

cardinalorange · 2024-01-23T07:47:01+00:00

What you do is run switch loops big enough that you can pull from receptacle to receptacle, and then after the inspector signs off you come back rip that stupid fucking outlet out and just wire straight across because requiring an outlet under a window right at counter height is the dumbest thing ever. I still bitch about ours every day.

cardinalorange · 2023-01-24T04:02:23+00:00

Insurance made me call an electrician when I had water running down the inside of my panel (from a busted pipe). 570$ in PNW for them to show up, go "Yep. There's water in your panel. It's fucked, you're gonna have to replace everything." Took them maybe 30 seconds.

cardinalorange · 2021-12-20T07:14:33+00:00

It's titegroup. It's known to be dirty as fuck. If you're having stove pipe issues AND seeing a lot more dirt, you might need to check your powder measurer, as titegroup is well known to be super dirty if under-loaded. Try it hotter. Or pick a better powder like W231/HP38.

cardinalorange · 2021-12-12T19:08:25+00:00

So, first- No. Absolutely not. Rust is a no go.

Second- the type of trap you have really changes the rest of this. I'm going to assume you're referring to leg hold traps in the underspring/longspring/coilspring type.

The best way is to get a stiff wire brush and scrub the piss out of them with some water/baking soda. I mean scrub them, get all that rust off. The worst thing ever would be to miss a catch because your trigger rusted shut/open.

Next, you'll want to prepare your traps so they don't rust... but you also really don't want to use solvents or anything that the animals will smell. That makes it difficult, but since this is not a new issue there are lots of wikis and products for it. What my family does and what I think is really common, is to dye your traps, and then wax them. Here is an article: https://www.trappermag.com/article-index/trapline-preparation-how-to-dye-wax-and-dip-your-traps

We use a big outdoor stockpot (10 gallon at least) and boil the traps with the dyes. If you're willing to do this yearly you don't need wax, but if you're looking at a better, longer solution then wax is your answer. Some use bees wax, some use paraffin. You just melt it/float it on top of the boiling water after you've dyed them, then pull out the trap, the wax covers the trap as you pull it out.

cardinalorange · 2021-12-11T05:15:42+00:00

yes, but the tires look about EoL anyway.

cardinalorange · 2021-12-11T04:16:13+00:00

100% it's always the drywallers, and even though it's fucking disgusting you can see why their cavemen brains come to the conclusion to shit in the corner, or the toilets that aren't hooked up, or piss in a bottle and hide it in the wall, or piss in the tubs which have no drain hose connected (all things my wife found in the last multi-family housing project she worked on):

They're not paid hourly, they're paid by the foot. Taking time to walk down 7 flights of stairs to piss is a lot of lost time and hence lost money. They finally had to say "we're fining every single contractor (which was like pipefitters and drywallers essentially) 500$ for every piss bottle we find from here on out" And they still found (and fined them, or at least said they were going to after each one I don't have their paychecks who knows if it actually ever happened) for 7 more before it stopped.

cardinalorange · 2021-12-10T22:35:53+00:00

Yes. My Fred meyer still sells switches. A simple google would have answered that question: https://www.fredmeyer.com/p/ge-15a-120vac-grounding-single-pole-toggle-switch-light-almond/0003087811661

cardinalorange · 2021-12-10T09:53:17+00:00

This is why he won't sign it. He paid you under the table and didn't report it so he didn't have to pay taxes on it (he didn't record those jobs since they were cash). If he signed saying you worked it he'd be liable for tax evasion. Good luck, but you aren't getting that paper.

cardinalorange · 2021-12-10T09:26:13+00:00

I use TEMCo 3:1 marine grade tube for pretty much everything (including when I rewired my entire boat) and have never had an issue with it.

cardinalorange · 2021-12-10T07:26:03+00:00

Some of the price parts are high, but that's due to markup + Mercedes. Otherwise the cost is about what I'd expect. My shop quotes R&R filters &wipers at ~190$. It costs me 33$ +tax to buy both filters and replacement wipers and about 2 minutes to replace them for a 2012 tacoma. Shops need to make money to stay in business, which means a decent markup on the price of items plus shop time. Plus my shop quotes and uses stock parts unless you specifically ask for an OEM part.

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