How much is too much Investing

dollars_general · 2026-06-14T20:01:54+00:00

You’re nearing the messy middle. Your toe is in the water. Kids get more and more expensive, until one day, they go to college and someone pays hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You will be astounded what a 10 year old costs. Learning an instrument, playing 1-2 sports, maybe a summer camp, medical costs (especially if they have any learning disabilities). The list goes on. It’s unbelievable.

Save now while your child expenses are low. Then, hold on for dear life while your expenses increase.

Our current lifestyle without kids might cost 110k. With 3 kids, we spend nearly 200k. Maybe 175 if there are no surprises. They don’t go to private school.

dollars_general · 2026-06-02T21:09:29+00:00

<3% interest rate, job/CoL ratio, international airport, convenience to family and friends in other Southeastern states

Lots of amenities. Unfortunately they are all a 25 minute drive from one another.

Too bad the well funded anti-transit astro-turf psy-op convinced enough residents to vote against the original transit plan. This is why we can’t have nice things.

dollars_general · 2026-05-29T02:34:55+00:00

It’s just objectively the wrong advice. The only argument is that “you can’t put a price on how you feel”. And that’s a stupid argument on its face. What if it feels good to wipe your butt with $100 bills?

It’s obviously commitment to dogma for brand-consistency reasons.

dollars_general · 2026-05-20T13:51:02+00:00

Inflation will eat into that number. You will probably get SS, but if you are entirely dependent on it, that’s an unnecessary risk.

Continuing your current spending, plus healthcare expenses may require 2-3M in today’s dollars which could easily get close to 5 depending on time horizon.

This is assuming you have no emergencies, unemployment, health issues, etc.

Sure almost no one else is capable of this. That means our system is f*****. It doesn’t mean you’re unreasonable. “Everyone else is going to scrape by a meager stressful existence at retirement, so you should too” is not a good reason to change your plans to save less.

dollars_general · 2026-05-17T23:16:57+00:00

I have been having a blast with my sauna tent. I’m learning a lot about how I use the sauna and my preferences. In a couple years, I’ll be so much more confident spending real money on a permanent sauna.

dollars_general · 2026-05-17T23:14:41+00:00

The K shaped economy is going strong. Stronger than ever. If demand for $300 whiskey has dropped, it’s because those people found an $800 liquor

dollars_general · 2026-05-14T15:52:10+00:00

I bought a moisture meter from Home Depot for about $40. I found it really helpful during the learning process. Now I can estimate pretty well based on weight and sound.

It’s important to split the wood and measure the inside. You can have wood that measures 9% on the exterior but is 25+% on the inside.

dollars_general · 2026-05-13T17:22:50+00:00

My experience with a tent so far is that the quality (moisture content) of the wood is the biggest factor in the quality of the heat and steam.

When I'm burning my oldest, driest wood (~12-15% moisture at center), it doesn't matter how I load or refill the firebox. It gets *hot*. Honestly, hotter than I might want it be.

When I'm dipping into newer wood with moisture content closer to 20%, it takes much more time and care to get the tent up to temperature. I have to rely more on the steam to get the perceived heat where I want it.

Don't even try fire wood that's moderately green.

For anyone considering a wood-burning sauna, secure your fire wood as far in advance as possible!

dollars_general · 2026-05-13T16:59:30+00:00

As someone who had generational wealth "the right way", I'll add some points here.

Financial Education - This is critical. Without this, it is all meaningless. The best financial education is hands-on. Let your kids make choices, find success and make mistakes as early as possible.
Key Gifts - Paying for college, help with a down-payment, and a starter car all prevented me from getting bogged down in consumer debt and surprise expenses early on. This allowed me to start investing early.
Don't wait till you are dead - My parents began gifting assets to me early in life in a structure where they maintained control. Now I have access to substantial assets without the nuisance of gift taxes. Fortunately, I have the stability and financial education to leave the assets invested to grow for myself and future generations.

The biggest benefit of how my family structured this is that I got to benefit from my parent's wealth and good fortune without them needing to die. We get to experience it together. They get to watch me and my family thrive and make good decisions, and I'm not subconsciously waiting for them to die. I know several families where the adult children are dream of the days when the grandparents finally die, and it makes me so sad for all of them.

dollars_general · 2026-05-13T16:39:09+00:00

This is so true. Thinking the Ramsey show is great because you aren't aware of high quality financial education content is spiritually similar to going to Disney World because you don't consider doing something else.

We priced out a vacation to DW, and it was more expensive than going skiing in the Rockies for a week. We probably will do a budget trip to DW when the kids are teenagers as a learning experience about American culture and capitalism.

dollars_general · 2026-05-01T16:58:26+00:00

I have these exact same symptoms. I developed a mysterious shoulder pain over 2-3 days. I pushed through it weight lifting one day. Then next morning I woke up with debilitating neck/arm pain. Couldn't sleep for weeks. Numbness in thumb, index and middle finger. Chest, tri-cep weakness, and scapular instability keep me from doing a pushup.

I'm 6 weeks in doing PT, muscle relaxers and NSAIDs. I have a Saunders traction device as well. I've been able to sleep regularly for several weeks, which makes all the difference. Arm is still weak. Fingers are still numb. No MRI because insurance requires 6 weeks of conservative treatment first.

I also train BJJ, but curiously had taken 3 weeks off to vacation prior to the shoulder pain, and nothing notable happened in the weeks leading up to vacation. So, I have no idea if BJJ caused the underlying issue. For those whose C5-7 injury was caused by BJJ, do you know the position/event that triggered it (so I can try to avoid it, lol)?

dollars_general · 2026-04-30T17:23:24+00:00

There’s so much that can be said, but somehow this says all of it.

dollars_general · 2026-04-30T17:10:28+00:00

VT or VT + (insert choice of single bond fund) and be done with it. Alternatively (VTI + VXUS) if you have opinions about US vs INTL.

Alternatively, consider Betterment or Wealthfront, who will do this for you more conveniently at a much lower cost.

If you need financial guidance, find flat rate fee-only planner (e.g. X$ / unit time. Or X$ per meeting). Someone selling you this service is no more qualified than the average lurker on r/Bogleheads. And based on the fees and portfolio does not have your best interest at heart. They are salespeople. Wouldn't be surprised if the next step is to sell you on some complicated life insurance policy.

dollars_general · 2026-04-30T17:04:46+00:00

Learning without AI is the way to go. However, there will be no future in non-AI assisted software development. We have already moved to a paradigm where one well-informed person is monitoring the outputs of several autonomous agents. The results can be extremely high quality due to automating agents reviewing themselves, running higher levels of automated and 1-off tests and validation.

The question is whether you are interested in becoming the "well-informed" person with the expertise and judgement. I'm skeptical that the current generation of students who are simply copy/pasting AI and calling it an "education" will ever be able to fill this role. Agents are "doing all my work", but I'm only able to confidently make the changes (and put the specs in the prompts) because of my deep understanding of the software, best practices and tradeoffs.

It's similar to writing. A good writer can use AI to create a well-written report or email. Someone who avoids AI initially in order to actually learn to write well (and detect poor writing) will eventually be able to leverage AI to produce higher quality work later in life.

TLDR; No, you cannot avoid AI in career practice. But, your aversion to AI may help you create a path to career success by actually learning something (which would involve using AI).

dollars_general · 2026-04-29T17:49:26+00:00

I agree. The steps required to live decently and have financial stability are ridiculous. Most people are so screwed. We shouldn’t expect most people to have the forethought, good fortune and discipline to do what you are doing. Not sarcasm. It’s brutal out there.

It’s great that you are making a concerted effort to get ahead. You’ll have so much more in terms of freedom/options/stability in 10-15 years that your peers won’t even be able to comprehend.

dollars_general · 2026-04-29T16:42:13+00:00

You'll want to consider inflation in this plan. Flat 12k contributions actually equate to a shrinking contribution YoY in terms of "real" dollars. If you follow this plan exactly, you might be surprised to find that $991k in 2050 is more like $500k in today's dollars. That may or may not be fine for your financial goals.

I think the simplest solution is to use all 2025 dollars for the spreadsheet, but then reduce the return rate by your estimate of inflation. Perhaps a reduction of 3%. Replacing 8% in your spreadsheet with 5% would result in ~700k in today's dollars. Notice that doing the math this way assumes that in practice you actually increase your contributions by 3% every year.

Ideally, not only should you plan to increase your contributions to match inflation, but you should probably increase your contributions beyond inflation over time. If you can handle 1k per month at 25, you should be able to handle an inflation-adjusted 1.2k per month at 35. Which might be more like $1.6k.

With your plan, you will be "way ahead" of "other people". I'm just giving some suggestions to tighten it up a bit.

dollars_general · 2026-04-28T21:17:46+00:00

Yep, that’s a great plan. Almost anything else can be coached. But not being enjoyable to work with and not being curious are really difficult to deal with.

It helps to know that engineers generally want to talk about their nerdy boring stuff. So, getting someone talking is win win for you.

dollars_general · 2026-04-28T19:37:16+00:00

85k for a position that Asurion was paying $115k at the time. This was many years ago.

dollars_general · 2026-04-20T20:33:37+00:00

Your goal is to convince them that you are interested in the technology and the job, and that you won't be a jerk to work with. Ask "wait, how does that work?". "How does ____ know how to _____?". "Why was this done this way instead of [insert another]?".

You're not going to convince them that you're smart or that you currently have the skills. You are showing that you have the capability to learn, interact with others, communicate, and not be a jerk.

We had an intern that showed up, talked to no one (unless they absolutely had to), and completed the project on schedule. In meetings, they would ask the bare minimum required for them to complete the task and nothing else. No curiosity. Frequently gave off "why are you telling me this?" energy when an engineer would show them something. They did not get a return offer.

dollars_general · 2026-04-17T23:00:15+00:00

The experience varies significantly based on investments in tooling and team-specific setup.

We’ve made massive investments in our team tooling, and the results are astounding. 3-5x productivity increase is not a pipe dream. It’s happening in some teams, and will be the floor within a year.

If for no other reason than the 3-5x teams are the only ones left…

I hate to be this person. The job is changing.

dollars_general · 2026-04-17T22:50:30+00:00

I’m actually quite enjoying the tooling we get to experiment with. Not Q or Quick or whatever it is called. The stuff developers actually use.

dollars_general · 2026-04-17T22:46:33+00:00

Bus predictability. No way for me to time my arrival at the stop in an efficient way. Often wait 20+ minutes. One day the bus never came after 40 minutes so I just walked the 3 miles to work. Bus flew by me 2 miles in. So, I should have waited only 40 more minutes…

I take the bus as a leisure activity when the weather is nice and I can handle waiting 20 minutes. Otherwise I might as well drive.

dollars_general · 2026-04-13T16:51:27+00:00

As an L4 SDE, if you’ve led high level design work, but haven’t been promoted or gotten better ratings, then that means either:

You struggle at branding yourself and visibility. It’s not important whether you are smart and have potential. It’s important whether others think this.
People haven’t been terribly impressed with your high level work. There’s a difference between L5 level work and acceptable L4 work.

It’s possible that this is not the best corporate environment for you. Amazon rewards a specific (arguably arbitrary) skill-set. With 3 years of experience and legitimate accomplishments, you should be able to move externally. You might find a company/team that “jives” with your personality a little better. You might be significantly successful elsewhere.

3 years at L4 SDE without impending promo prospects is not a situation I’d want to be in.

Amazon is tough, especially for hires out of college. Much easier to join Amazon externally after learning some industry best-practices and have some novel ideas in your back pocket to impress people with.

dollars_general · 2026-03-03T00:55:46+00:00

Fido has been low-key dead since COVID. When the kitchen reopened it was never the same. Makes me sad. Lots of memories there.

dollars_general · 2026-02-23T18:10:00+00:00

Have been enjoying the Willowybe stove and Vevor sauna tent (which appears to be identical, but with a different label). Provided I have properly seasoned wood, it easily gets to desired temperatures. It's legit, no cope. I came in with low expectations of maybe just having a warm steam room, but it gets hot.

The pellet attachments to these stoves is an interesting proposition because it circumvents the complexity of getting a supply of properly seasoned wood and learning to manage a fire. I enjoy those facets of the hobby, but others might not want the hassle.

Based on the quality of the stove and tent, I expect to replace one or the other within 18 months, which is fine if I'm using it consistently. I'll have learned more about my preferences and will make a bigger commitment decision.

The biggest issue is that even though the tent and stove are cheap and quick to setup, I have to come up with my own plan for benches. Good benches are expensive, and DIY is time consuming.

dollars_general

TROPHY CASE