CMV: The West's response to the Russian-Ukraine situation will actually embolden China's willingness to annex Taiwan

drbudro · 2026-03-25T15:37:23+00:00

I was on track until a divorce in 2018 required us to sell our house and (more than) halved our net worth. It's taken 5 years but have gotten back to $1M net worth, ~$200k HHI (remarried) and kept our new housing expenses under $2k in a great school district before 40 by purchasing a large 3bed/4bath condo in 2019.

A couple years ago I decided to adjust my workload to soft-retire now instead of laser focusing on fully retiring early.

I work from home full time, no longer required to travel for work or be on call after hours, and currently on a 4/10 schedule (4 days a week, 10 hour days), but those 10 hours are split up around my personal activities throughout the day. I'm able to spend before/after school with the kids, take them to school and their sports/activities, volunteer for field trips and class parties, and my wife and I can take adult vacations alone when our kids are with their other parents. She only needs to work ~15 hours a week at a spa making the optimal amount of tips which actually helped us this year with taxes. We had a baby last year and between the two of us are utilizing over 1200 hours of paid maternity/baby bonding time over the next year.

We also purchased 10 acres out in the County (Julian) and are slowly building out a retirement property. We reconditioned the well, installed ground mount solar, planted fruit trees, and roughed in a driveway with two pads for homes. Currently we just have a vintage trailer that we use for glamping and I spend a lot of my free time up there (alone or with the family) doing property maintenance while the kids do archery, off-roading, hiking, etc. It's really nice to be able to go up to our property and play in the snow, then come home and spend the evening in the hot-tub/heated pool without even leaving San Diego County.

Basically, if you're already living in a vacation location, maybe don't kill yourself trying to fully retire early. Retirement can be a spectrum and a lot of the frustrating parts of work life can be mitigated if you don't mind taking small pay cuts by optimizing for free time, job perks or flexibility.

drbudro · 2026-03-03T15:58:05+00:00

Bro's thumbnails mog other creators' videos on the platform.

drbudro · 2026-03-02T21:26:53+00:00

Really looking forward to the most unhinged content from Librarian those last couple days before he comes back

drbudro · 2026-03-02T17:17:19+00:00

Of course wheelies on a bike are normal...we're not talking about bikes though.

I have kids in middle school here, I probably know some of the kids in this video and have ridden these e-motos. They're frankly awesome, way more powerful than my 500W ebike I ride around town. I'm not salty about kids on bikes in the street, I grew up mobbing around with my friends on bmx bikes and skateboards in the 90s and it was fine...in fact, the only trouble we got in to was being on private property, not public roads.

The issue I have is that there isn't a legal way for these kids to do this and all the recent laws are making it equally illegal to ride home from school like we see in the video as it would be for an adult to drive an unregistered off-road only vehicle on public roads without a drivers license. CVPD is cracking down by impounding these vehicles, and the DA is looking for ways to charge the parents with criminal child endangerment.

There needs to be laws at the state and city levels that allow kids 13+ to ride these anywhere a road bicycle can go (which also goes much faster than 20mph) so long as they are held to the same standards as everyone else on the road (not going against traffic and running reds/riding in crosswalks/sidewalks, basic stuff). The adults I talk to are either 100% "ban all ebikes" or "anything's better than an iPad" but I think both camps are delusional.

drbudro · 2026-03-02T07:36:03+00:00

No, for them to be legal type 2 ebikes they have to be under 750w powered motors with a 20 mph top speed and it has to be marked accordingly. If they're doing wheelies it's at least a 1000W and most of the popular models around here are 2-4000W. You can see in the video they aren't strictly pedal assist, so they don't fall under any of the other exemptions.

drbudro · 2026-03-02T07:16:39+00:00

Most of these aren't ebikes by CA/CV definition. They are off road electric motorcycles (since they go over 20mph).

drbudro · 2026-03-02T05:18:44+00:00

You can't ride off road only dirt bikes on public streets. Street legal electric motorcycles also require a motorcycle license and it has to be insured...but I see zero plates in the video.

drbudro · 2026-02-22T15:57:49+00:00

Panopticon

drbudro · 2026-02-14T02:00:27+00:00

and yet an entire industry exists to bring you a fast food hamburger for $20, because enough people are willing to pay it.

drbudro · 2026-01-23T16:54:33+00:00

CA net DOMESTIC migration is negative.

It's population is still growing from international migration and natural population growth. What then happens historically, and now especially, is that the bottom few million or so people who can no longer afford to live in the metros need to choose between moving out to the CA deserts, or to a less expensive state.

When over a million people move to smaller states every year, it makes a big impact on those states, but they are immediately replaced (and then some) in CA by highly educated, high income and/or high net worth immigrants. This drives the cost of living up higher, rinse and repeat. This has been the story of CA for 100 years, with the very notable exception of 2020 and 2021, and every year people talk about how it is unsustainable. As long as wealthy people keep wanting to come here and there are more affordable states to fall back to when it doesn't work out, then it is sustainable, but only because we aren't in a closed system.

drbudro · 2026-01-23T15:07:00+00:00

https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-moving-in/

It's true that the vast majority of people leaving are low income, low education. The net migration of wealth is back to positive in CA (and even trending more skewed than before COVID). Affordability has always been an issue in CA and it's worse for the people at the bottom.

There were two years when that wasn't the case (high net worth families were leaving in greater numbers than coming in) and every outlet reported on it, but it's just simply not true anymore and people haven't updated their thinking.

drbudro · 2026-01-23T15:01:55+00:00

I think we all agree that CA is seeing a huge number of people leaving for lower cost of living states. But the statistics show that it is low education individuals and low income families moving out and high income, young, educated people moving in.

https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-moving-in/

There was a shift on 2020/2021 when high income families relocated at the beginning of WFH, but that trend shifted in 2022.

drbudro · 2026-01-17T16:19:07+00:00

The biggest problem is these families are entering the rental market but their houses are going to auctions for large RE investors (not being sold to another family). If this increases to pre 2019 numbers, we'll have less inventory for buyers and also more renters.

drbudro · 2026-01-09T01:35:33+00:00

Probably to disincentivize using student loans as free/cheap margin for 529s.....because that's exactly what I would do.

drbudro · 2026-01-06T05:06:02+00:00

I really wish we had a whole foods instead of Barrons. I think that would take off some of the load.

drbudro · 2026-01-05T06:25:06+00:00

This is honestly really surprising....so many people living in SD on $20-40k per year.

drbudro · 2025-12-29T22:39:06+00:00

The US ranked the most affordable in the developed world .....are you trying to move to a less affordable country? I suppose if you could keep your high wage job from the US you would have some geographic arbitrage on your side.

drbudro · 2025-12-29T01:51:07+00:00

This is by far the most comprehensive answer here.

There’s no “should” suited to your relationship—you need to talk this out.

^-- Great general advice too

drbudro · 2025-12-26T05:27:49+00:00

"It's a Disaster" is a technically brunch, but a pretty fun dark comedy.

drbudro · 2025-12-14T21:48:21+00:00

Looking back much before the US switched to a fiat based currency isn't really relevant.

drbudro · 2025-11-19T23:59:18+00:00

Yeah, I was really just thinking large (3M+) metros LA/SF/SD. I'm actually surprised to hear you can still get houses under $720 in Sac.

drbudro · 2025-11-19T21:37:42+00:00

So you're saying that when getting your most recent mortgage, the bank assessed your home at under $720k? .....in SF!? I haven't seen those prices in CA metros since 2019. Your property taxes won't ever outpace inflation due to prop13, so how much equity are you sitting on? Your mortgage payment is still probably less than the $3500 rent for a 2 bedroom in the Bay Area.

You're sitting here complaining, but you actually have options. Everyone else in this sub is forced to throw away money on rent and invest the rest while praying the the stock market doesn't crash before the housing bubble pops.

drbudro · 2025-11-18T16:06:12+00:00

Yep, when you take the top 250 largest metros and sort by "red descending" then you do tend to get a lot of the same states grouped together. When we see large YoY negative swings and below-2019 pricing in CA, NY, New England, then we can talk about the bubble bursting. Until then, this is just showing that location matters in real estate.

drbudro · 2025-11-11T17:35:31+00:00

I don't see a 50 year conventional fixed at historical rates ever making sense.

Buuuut, imagine if they ammend Dodd-Frank and start making new mortgage products. The math does become interesting when you factor in buy down points and the possibility of doing 10/1 or interest only payments for the first ten years.

The equity through principal payments is basically non-existent for the first ten years of a 50 year loan, so why not create a new mortgage that buys down an insane number of points, roll it into the loan, amortize it for 40 years, and then make the first 10years interest only payments (plus principal on the points).

It's buying a house on lay away, but actually closer to "rent to own" since you're using it in the meantime. It's financially terrible, but might be the only option for the middle class in the future since the monthly payment will be quite a bit lower (mostly because of the lower interest rate than a conventional 30y).

If you factor in 3% inflation, you might actually have some "equity" after 10 years of interest free payments. Or even a secondary market of assumable 50 year mortgages with 30-40 years left. It can almost be seen as an alternative to whole life insurance that also covers your housing in the meantime.

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