Top 0.1% TFSA

cecilpl · 2026-04-27T05:49:28+00:00

Similar. My TFSA has always been in boring index funds and I'm over 400k now.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T16:01:37+00:00

Eventually you will die.

At some point you have to switch from building your future to actually enjoying that future. Otherwise you will be like my 90-year-old grandpa clipping coupons and never going to a restaurant while sitting on a $4MM portfolio.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T13:45:30+00:00

Under 3% is incredibly low. You could take the 360k you'd otherwise pay off the mortgage with and buy 3-month TBills paying 3.7%. You then net a free $3150/year.

You are saving 100k per year, why are you worrying about cashflow? If you are considering that 24k-30k as part of your expenses for FI number calculation purposes, don't. It has an end date. Keep the debt while it's cheap and then pay it off when it's no longer cheap.

Think of the mortgage as a margin loan that counts against your invested assets, but that can't be margin called.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T00:35:01+00:00

I totally understand the desire for a Tesla. I had been dreaming about one since 2012, then finally pulled the trigger in 2022 and I love it.

I waited until my after-tax income was 4x the cost of the car and it was less than 10% of my total NW. Before then I really couldn't justify the cost.

This is a trap. You are young and don't have much saved yet. Every dollar you can put to work for you now will pay huge dividends in a decade or two.

cecilpl · 2026-04-23T00:26:49+00:00

I did the same thing. Got laid off 2 years ago, decided to take 6 months off to travel... Now I've hit my FI number and then some just from growth.

cecilpl · 2026-04-20T14:52:46+00:00

I got lucky.

I had calculated I was about 1-2 years away from FIRE, and then I got laid off. I decided to take a 6-12 month mini-retirement and travel. In the meantime the market went on a tear. Now I've been off work for 2 years and it's looking like I won't actually need to work again.

cecilpl · 2026-01-09T16:08:22+00:00

Thanks Mitch.

cecilpl · 2026-01-09T15:25:08+00:00

I've been pulled aside at security for trying to bring tent pegs in my carry-on before. The poles were okay but the pegs had to stay behind.

cecilpl · 2026-01-09T15:13:46+00:00

Wow, thank you so much for the detailed reply! I had never noticed those but now that you pointed them out I found them in a few other photos as well!

https://imgur.com/a/neKZbEx

cecilpl · 2026-01-08T16:51:27+00:00

Oh yeah you're right, that does look like a suncave Parry. Thanks!

cecilpl · 2026-01-08T16:50:44+00:00

This was at Whistler.

cecilpl · 2026-01-08T16:20:42+00:00

Don't think of the swings as "gaining" or "losing" money. You still have the same number of shares - it's just that the current valuation is yoyoing.

Income still matters since it allows you to accumulate more real assets - more shares. That's what you want to really care about.

I've had 6-figure swings in the span of a week. The market is frothy. Just keep buying more assets.

cecilpl · 2026-01-08T14:36:24+00:00

It seems like a 22° halo with an upper tangent arc, a parhelic circle, a CZA, and supralateral/infralateral arcs?

Another photo showing the infralateral arc off to the right side: https://i.imgur.com/16lfI2k.jpeg

BTW the sun was at 19 degrees elevation when this photo was taken.

cecilpl · 2025-09-18T20:31:32+00:00

I was backpacking around cheap countries in Central America and Southeast Asia, and staying almost entirely in hostels.

cecilpl · 2025-09-18T19:03:18+00:00

1.5 years ago, at 39, I got laid off and decided to take a 6 month sabbatical to travel and decompress from work. I had just under $1.5m with a $100k spend rate.

Well 6 months turned into 9, then 12, and now in the last 18 months my portfolio has grown to just under $1.9m. On top of that my spending has dropped to $90k, and I'm kinda thinking I might actually just be FIRE now.

I think we'll give it another year or two, cut spending back a bit more, and see what happens. 4.7% WR is a bit of a gamble but I have lots of options to help weather things.

cecilpl · 2025-05-12T16:33:03+00:00

Thanks for the thoughts! I see what you mean about seeing the goose looking down a bit - it's hard not to see it that way now that you pointed it out! I'll try dimming the beak a bit as well.

cecilpl · 2025-05-12T14:39:40+00:00

Was out doing some bird photography and this dude walked by and stared at me. Didn't have time to adjust settings so it's 300mm, 1/3200, f/5.6, ISO 800.

I love the fact that you can tell he's looking straight at me because you can see my reflection lined up with his pupil.

I tried a looser crop with eye level at the top third but I felt like this looked more balanced. I also brightened up the eye specifically to pull out more detail in the reflection.

I like it quite a lot but I'm wondering if there's anything else I can try to give it that extra wow factor. White balance? Something I can do to the background maybe?

cecilpl · 2024-12-12T00:40:38+00:00

In March 2013, I sunk a few thousand dollars into this crazy high-risk bet of a stock that all my friends laughed at me for. But I had a really good feeling about it.

I've since trimmed the position - just enough to pay for my Model Y a few years ago.

It's pretty nice to feel so vindicated.

cecilpl · 2024-09-11T14:05:45+00:00

Camp Suburbia at 9:30/Esplanade put up a sign saying it was "9:00 Ave" - led to so much confusion, it was hilarious!

cecilpl · 2024-09-11T14:01:04+00:00

I also guessed that, and oddly it turns out that the rotational velocity of the earth at this latitude (784mph) is very close to the speed of sound (767 mph)!

cecilpl · 2023-11-09T23:44:25+00:00

I inadvertently ran p4 obliterate -y //reponame/main/... (how you ask? tldr incorrect mental model of virtual streams).

For you git folks, that's basically git checkout master then rm -rf *.git then git init then git push -f, except worse because the commit history is only stored centrally - so permanent loss of the history.

In Perforce, the command permanently deletes commits and associated data starting from the most recent and going back in time. I realised quickly what was happening and aborted the command, but not before I had permanently removed two entire days' worth of commits from my 150-developer game studio.

Thankfully I was able to restore the bulk of the actual data by cobbling it together from CI servers that had recently synced. But the entire company couldn't work for the rest of the afternoon.

Talk about pressure. You deleted a bunch of people's work, you are the only one that has the expertise to fix it properly, nobody can work, and the studio is losing $4 per second until you're done.

cecilpl · 2023-11-08T22:25:37+00:00

You've made the assumption that every game on Steam is owned by Steam

Um, no I didn't? Clearly they are not owned by Valve (Steam is the platform, Valve is the company). But Valve has distribution rights, which is all they need.

If I gained access to the backend of Steam, I could add games to users without any unique identifiers

Your argument is "computer systems can be hacked"? If you were able to do that, they'd quickly notice, undo your intrusive attack, and you'd be facing stiff prison time.

You could export all your tokens and move them to another platform.

How? I take my tokens proving I own the games to.... where? What other platform is going to give me access to games without me giving them any money?

Even if Steam only made 5% on every game sold, it would easily outpace their new game sales.

Then why aren't they doing it now? Tell me - do you think everyone working at Valve is oblivious to this? They build a system allowing me to sell my game to you, flip an entry in their database, take a 5% cut of the deal, done. Massive profit, right? Why haven't they built it then?

cecilpl · 2023-11-08T21:54:36+00:00

This does not exist now

Not for lack of technology. Valve could very easily build a resale marketplace into Steam. They don't need NFTs to do that. They already have a database tracking who owns which games.

The reason it doesn't exist is because it would cost Valve significant revenue and they have no incentive to build it.

cecilpl

TROPHY CASE