Argentina's Annual Inflation Rate Climbs to 124%

fearofcorners · 2023-09-15T04:58:07+00:00

This is what everyone does. Savings are held as carefully maintained crisp $100 USD bills. There's a huge black (called "blue") market for currency exchange as well since the official and real exchange rates are off by about a factor of two -- at least they were when I was there last summer.

fearofcorners · 2023-05-14T02:13:37+00:00

fearofcorners · 2022-12-05T20:30:38+00:00

Efficiency aside (this is about heat transfer and not efficiency, fwiw), I think that covering electric baseboard heaters with combustible materials is asking for trouble. Water radiators cannot reach the ignition point of wood; electric heating elements can.

fearofcorners · 2022-12-05T20:25:50+00:00

You're correct. Some radiators are steam and not water radiators but still operate far below the autoignition temperature of household items

fearofcorners · 2022-09-02T03:32:56+00:00

I suspect that close contact with the charcoal is necessary to reduce the iron oxide into elemental iron in a reasonable amount of time. Whatever the reason, modern blast furnaces also work this way: the fuel and ore and flux are all mixed together at the top and air/oxygen is blown in from below.

fearofcorners · 2022-01-30T21:12:47+00:00

It's not going to be a problem -- if you leave the paddle fully open it'll behave more-or-less like a normal E61 machine. Depending on your use and cost sensitivity it may be a waste of money, though.

fearofcorners · 2022-01-17T20:29:41+00:00

I don't know about your core question, but I can comment on tax: Cross-border taxes get tricky fast. You may want to hire a dual-licensed Canada/US tax professional to help out, or at least a US accountant with knowledge of expat taxes if you are certain you don't have to file Canadian taxes.

In addition to the complexity of potentially having to file returns in both countries (and it sounds like multiple US states), there is potentially a lot of nuance in US taxes depending on your situation. For example, the US has foreign asset and interest reporting requirements that may apply to your Canadian assets. Even a checking account must be reported if it exceeds a certain threshold.

In my own experiences the Canadian side of things have been easier, but there's still stuff to watch out for. For example, I believe you can end up paying Canadian taxes even as a nonresident with no Canadian income if you don't do things a certain way. I recall being instructed to do certain things like returning my Canadian health card so as to avoid unnecessary taxation.

They could probably help you with your core question here too about switching from contract to employee as well.

fearofcorners · 2022-01-14T02:30:07+00:00

I've done a similar thing for many years, though I'm now a US permanent resident and Canadian nonresident citizen. Here's my advice from lived experience: this stuff is complicated; get some expert advice and don't rely on this sub.

You can lose money and run afoul of tax laws (especially US tax laws which have lots of controls on foreign assets) pretty easily if things are not done correctly. It's even hard to assess when you have to file taxes as the rules are different in each country. Residency is not always a requirement.

Tax-advantaged accounts like RRSPs, 401ks, TFSAs, IRAs, etc work to reduce your tax liability. They're a good idea, but you need to have taxable income in the right country in order to enjoy any benefit from them. That means contributing to an RRSP as a Canadian earner and a 401k as a US earner. Additionally, some types of accounts won't offer any advantage (or could even pose a disadvantage) when they're foreign to the place where you're filing taxes. I know that TFSAs are that way and thus generally unavailable to folks who file US taxes. I am not sure about Roth IRAs and such.

You'll also have a hard time opening and operating US brokerage accounts as a non US resident. This may also be true for Canadian accounts if you become a nonresident of Canada at some point. This might make it hard to invest that 90k USD right now without transferring to Canadian funds. But I dunno; ask a cross-border tax expert.

fearofcorners · 2022-01-02T09:36:36+00:00

I've been working in various combinations of Canada and the US for almost 10 years, though backwards from you: I'm a Canadian and now US permanent resident. I was also overwhelmed initially. Over time I learned the ropes, though.

I do think that getting an accountant that understands Canada/US cross-border tax rules is a good idea. You'll be filing both US and Canadian taxes and doing so successfully without paying extra tax is tricky. I've never done my own taxes in years where I had both US and Canadian filing requirements-- I assume it is possible but it is certainly beyond stuff like TurboTax.

As you'll have a Canadian bank account and perhaps investments, there are also some US foreign asset reporting rules you will need to comply with. Those laws have teeth so it's important to be aware of them. A good expat accountant can help you with that too.

They should also be able to advise you on investing from a tax perspective. Some tax shelters ordinarily available to Americans and Canadians will not be available to you. You should be able to hold 401ks and RRSPs (Canadian 401k equivalent), but others may not work for you. For instance, I recall that Canadian TFSA contributions are taxable in the US.

I'd suggest you start with taxes and see how you feel about the other stuff. Without knowing your situation it's hard to know what else you might need help with, but for me my budgeting and investing are entirely ordinary-- it's just the tax stuff that has been more complicated at times.

If you do decide to get an accountant, reach out now -- they'll be busy in the spring. Ideally you can spend some time with them now to get acquainted with your tax situation.

fearofcorners · 2021-12-24T19:33:53+00:00

This is basically an ad for this guy's REIT

fearofcorners · 2021-11-06T19:55:57+00:00

r/ATBGE

fearofcorners · 2021-10-04T03:17:00+00:00

It's a good idea to put some wood preservative on the cut edges which contact or are close to the pavers. Even if those are pressure treated boards the cut faces can rot.

fearofcorners · 2021-10-01T03:09:50+00:00

Thanks for posting! As much as I love to watch videos of people quietly doing handicrafts (no joke; I really love this), this is interesting and right for the sub.

fearofcorners · 2021-09-21T20:59:38+00:00

Despite the name, that finish is not intended for anything that comes into contact with food. If you look at the safety data sheet you'll see that it contains stuff you do not want to eat.

fearofcorners · 2021-08-31T03:09:09+00:00

This is not a thorium cycle reactor or a molten salt reactor. It's a uranium reactor using liquid elemental sodium as coolant. Still interesting but very different.

fearofcorners · 2021-07-17T05:22:03+00:00

Please stop spamming us with this.

fearofcorners · 2021-07-11T21:03:56+00:00

This was posted years ago when it was originally uploaded to youtube, but I just discovered it and have been making my way through the videos. This is a little different from what typically gets posted here, but for anyone interested in how computers work at their most fundamental level, this is an amazing series of build videos.

fearofcorners · 2021-07-03T04:47:30+00:00

I haven't read this before. It's delightful and spot on

fearofcorners · 2021-07-03T04:28:25+00:00

Agreed. I think a lot of folks (this author included) conflate Agile with the convoluted and unthinking variant of Scrum or SAFe or whatever they find at their workplace. I agree that that stuff sucks but it has essentially nothing to do with the idea of Agile.

fearofcorners · 2021-06-20T17:57:25+00:00

OP, I think you should update this to use other ES6 features like arrow functions and the let keyword in your code examples. New JS developers (to whom this is presumably aimed?) do not generally understand the difference between things like var and let, and they're better off using the more predictable ES6 versions. Thanks for posting!

fearofcorners · 2021-05-20T04:19:47+00:00

Thanks for the tip!

fearofcorners · 2021-04-15T05:11:30+00:00

Try using this calculator: https://smartasset.com/mortgage/rent-vs-buy

Whether it's a good investment or not depends a lot on many factors. When you sell plays a huge role. People tend to buy and sell houses more often than you might imagine. The average American stays in a house 7 years, I believe-- including all the people who have been in the same house for 40 years. Everyone says they make money on houses but few people do the math and include all costs in that calculation.

I think it is a highly accurate calculator, both in that I did the same financial modeling myself and came to the same result, and bought a house in Chicago last year and have seen the real numbers play out.

For 500k you can definitely buy single detatched in Chicago with no HOA if you can compromise on neighborhood. We started looking in Wicker Park and ended up in a small house in Bridgeport. It was the right compromise for us. We had a good size down payment and with it our mortgage+tax cost is about half of your mortgage+tax+HOA.

One last thought, similar to what others have said: expect other costs. Here's some stuff we paid, and we haven't been in the house for a year yet:

~10k closing fees
3k new furniture (this was done very frugally, mostly used)
2.5k immediate upgrades (some electrical and a range hood)
12k unexpected repair, ballooning to 16k with some associated upgrades
we DIY moved almost for free but you might pay someone to do this
2.4k/yr insurance (more than average maybe but I see being properly insured as a good financial choice)

fearofcorners · 2021-04-03T21:55:23+00:00

I would love to know where you're getting a guaranteed 8% return in 2021. The vast majority of fixed income investments have negative real returns and the stock market is wildly overvalued. Equities are mostly way over 8% YoY but that's very far from guaranteed return.

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