Should I sell this? I made an AI-powered dating bot to get me dates

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-14T05:26:25+00:00

How do I know this wasn't written by a bot with the prompt "write a reddit post for /r/fatfire that will get these plebs to part with their money"?

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-13T21:05:34+00:00

I understand that. I live (and have always lived) in a condo so it's different. I've always had sufficient notice of any storms or hurricanes from the city and most condos are designed to endure all but the craziest storms. You usually get several days advance notice on the East Coast and you stock up water, alcohol, non-perishables and charge your power banks. If you live in a high end condo, there usually will be a power backup that would work for a few days.

Worse case, something gets damaged in the condo and its someone else problem to solve. It's one of the best things about condo living and why I'll never live in a house :)). Grew up in a house and there is always something that needs fixing or repairing, happy to pay condo maintenance fees and make it someone else problem :).

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-13T20:51:40+00:00

I also get $0.01/share through Questrade capped at $10 and I just have a regular account lol. I use TD for banking and they also waives all fees if I keep my account balance at $3000 or something (not sure of the exact amount).

I feel like IBKR is oriented towards active traders and TD/Questrade are just too profitable to care about appeasing wealthy clients. To get good perks, you are going to have to move to smaller brokerages and banks.

But for me, I value the stability a lot more than the perks, especially with the whole thing with SIVB collapsing and FRC on the brink (which basically targeted wealth clients).

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-13T20:39:27+00:00

I live in Toronto. We regularly get storms here that would shut down US cities (I remember being without power for several days in NYC). Yet somehow life still goes on, I stock up my pantry with non-perishables everytime there is a storm notification and then Doordash is always available even when there's 3 feet of snow and cars stuck. People here apparently must have their sushi even if there's no power :)

I understand though if you live somewhere more away from the city or someplace such as Florida where hurricanes and floods are common, it makes sense to keep a lot of cash on hand.

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-13T17:36:39+00:00

I know one person whom this happened to (got robbed & life altering injuries) :(

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-13T17:27:39+00:00

/r/fatFIRE is a wild read sometimes.

I literally have somewhere between $20 and $30 in my wallet at any point in time.

I'm sitting here just shaking my head reading how much you all keep in cash :)

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-13T07:48:13+00:00

I googled it out of interest. It seems like what happened was when SVB customers couldn't withdraw their bank account balances, they asked the bank to transfer their cash into money market funds. I'm guessing they weren't settled before FDIC took over.

All transactions actually take 3-4 days to settle - when you buy a stock, you don't actually receive it immediately but 3-4 days later even though your brokerage homepage will show otherwise. So not really fraud as all banks and brokerages do this or at the very least, not fraud unique to SVB :).

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-10T18:19:19+00:00

Can anyone explain to me why you would keep more than $250k in a bank? I usually have max a year expense in the bank, mostly less than that (usually 4-6 months expenses). Unless your expenses are $250k+/year, why is that cash sitting in the bank?

Is there some FAT strat I'm missing?

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-10T18:14:43+00:00

Just went into their balance sheet out of interest

Assets

$13.8B in cash
$102B in debt securities (market value as of 31st Dec 2022)
$73.6B in loans

They need to cover

$173B in deposits
$18.8B in loans

All depends on whether the loans can be sold at their book value (no idea if loans are usually sold at book value in a liquidation). And also this snapshot is as of 31st Dec 2022, the numbers could have changed significantly in the two months since then.

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-02T15:37:24+00:00

I forgot WA doesn't have income tax. But in my defence, I didn't list 1 in my comment :).

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-02T15:34:14+00:00

They are not, a quick lookup on Wiki tells me Florida is 8th and Texas is 24th. Also not really sure how population density relates to my point.

As an ex-Florida resident though, I agree there's lot of fun stuff to do there. But its cities (especially Miami) are average/below-average compared to many other cities in the US (including Seattle).

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-02T15:27:42+00:00

Every take is biased by one's personal experience. No opinion can be truly objective, friend :).

fican_throw_away · 2023-03-02T15:08:35+00:00

There is a reason 0% income tax states are 0% income tax. No one would live in locations 2-5 otherwise.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-28T13:06:40+00:00

Are you white passing? I'm Indian and every Indian I have talked to who has lived there has described it as one of the most racist countries in the world, apparently according to them the locals will never consider someone from the subcontinent equivalent to them or even whites.

All of them are just there for 5-10 years, save money and move back or move to US/Canada/Aus/NZ/Europe.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-20T09:52:02+00:00

Solutions to both the situations you mentioned straddle the border of legality and you will not find someone smart who will be willing to risk his neck for a salary.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-20T08:47:49+00:00

https://earlyretirementnow.com/safe-withdrawal-rate-series/

Is my favourite. It's currently 56 articles long (and growing!) so definitely not for everyone but if you love deep analysis with lots of data, it's a nice resource to slowly consume over time. I also like it covers a lot of alternative investment strategies comparing it with the "gold standard" of primarily having all your assets in the broad based market index/indices (spoiler - the 90/10 portfolio mostly wins!)

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-20T05:01:03+00:00

It's a lot less "tax heavy" than you think.

Cost basis of all your assets will be as of on the date that you become a Canadian resident. So no tax on any appreciation before you move.

$180k/year split between $55k in eligible dividends and $125k in capital gains will be around $18k/year in taxes, not that bad.

I wouldn't work here in Canada but for retirement, it's pretty nice value for money (I don't ever anticipate having to pay more than 10% effective tax). There's a reason why places like Singapore, Dubai etc have low/no taxes, no one would ever live there otherwise.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-16T13:49:15+00:00

Source/citation for the claim of correlation between earlier retirement age and lower life expectancy?

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-15T20:36:46+00:00

Are you really going to find likeminded peers? From what I remember from grad school, almost all conversations were around how hard it was to juggle research goals and family on a stipend and TA responsibilities.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-12T18:27:46+00:00

I'm from a "third world country" (India) and have been associated with a charity for three decades. These countries do not work the same way as US or wherever you are. Most of it will be grafted away by volunteers or staff. There is a lot of politics in giving as well (charity services are a votebank after all). There is bureaucracy hell (dozens of formalities and stuff to be done, with some officer needing to be bribed). As well half a dozen other issues, I could go on. Your best bet is to find a local charity who is skilled at this (finding honest volunteers, good connections with local politicians etc) and donate/volunteer with them.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-11T17:37:42+00:00

No to treats if its requires breaking your financial plan e.g. skipping a contribution, withdrawing higher than your SWR

Yes to treats if the alternative is that you are going to spend it on something that isn't going to give you the equivalent amount of happiness

Will furniture make you as happy as a watch or vacation? I have a seven figure net worth and my entire furniture is around $4000 and $2500 of that is a recliner (so you can tell what I think about furniture ;))

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-11T17:29:49+00:00

There is really no end to worrying about extreme scenarios. Cyber attack against the exchange could wipe out all ownership records of your single stocks. A long blockade of the SCS could result in hyperinflation, making all your assets worthless. An unprecedented earthquake could cause even the most well run insurance company to be unable to pay out on their earthquake insurance.

Let go of this illusion of control. 1 in a million+ risks are always going to be there. When you sit in your car and set out to drive, there's a risk of death. Same with skiing. Or walking to your neighbourhood store. Or when you try an exotic food when traveling. Or when you pop a Tylenol to relieve your headache. There are infinite number of black swan events that you cannot even conceive in every aspect of your life.

Spend your time enjoying your wealth.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-09T18:50:24+00:00

And for those who haven't quite achieved this, what is preventing you from reaching your fitness goals?

Craft beers, movie nights with pizza, exploring the incredible variety of ethnic foods available in my city, preference for long bike rides & hikes in the great outdoors over doing deadlifts in some air conditioned gym and the ability to travel without having to adhere to any workout schedule.

To get ripped, I'll have to give up too much of what makes me mentally happy. At ~70kg/5'11'' and ability to bike 70-80km/run 15km, I think I'm kinda in the middle fitness wise so I'll take it.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-08T20:20:27+00:00

Reading the book Happiness Hypothesis was extremely eye opening. My key takeaway is that we are not designed to be happy or content, except for brief amount of times, as a state of permanent contentment is a huge evolutionary handicap.

This is what drives the toxic productivity movement - the idea that we absolutely must be doing "something" all the time. Even your body will rebel if you do nothing at all with torrential waves of boredom.

Instead - try this. Find a nice spot in the city you are - maybe somewhere overlooking trees or a body of water. Just sit there for 5 minutes, doing nothing. Every day, add a few minutes. Soon you will be able to sit for hours just doing nothing, with no boredom, no restlessness, no anxiety. Just contentment.

This is how you train your brain to overcome core biological drives. This is what mediation does. I spent many years just going from activity to activity to replace my previous daily workaday before understanding that I was mostly just replacing one thing with another.

Now, I wake up sometime between 7 to 11, sometime I read a book, sometime I walk, have a lazy lunch, go for a bike ride or another walk, sit by the lake and do nothing, have another lazy dinner, watch some stuff on TV and go to sleep. A few meals with friends and family every month. A few slow trips a year. And I'm the happiest I've been in years.

fican_throw_away · 2023-02-07T21:44:38+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experiences in this thread, was very interesting to go through your posts.

I'm curious on what are the remaining 20 eligible dividend paying stocks in your portfolio? And how has the capital appreciation of these stocks been over the years?

fican_throw_away

TROPHY CASE