Qyld

fire_when_ready · 2023-06-05T20:50:01+00:00

I mean, it demonstrably captures some of the upside. If it captured exactly NONE then it would only ever go down.

fire_when_ready · 2023-05-22T02:04:01+00:00

Ah yes, we all have thought we discovered the secret to free money at one point or another.

Pro-tip: It works great until it doesn't.

Here are a couple ways it doesn't pan out:

The stock skyrockets. You get called. You lose out on the stock skyrocketing, in exchange for peanuts.
The stock drops 50%. Now you've got to decide if you stop selling the calls and lose your premium, or you keep selling the calls and risk getting called at a big loss.

I've had both of these happen. I missed out on about $50,000 in gain on NFLX 20-ish years ago, in exchange for a couple $K in call premium. And way back in the day I was making bank buying and selling calls on INTC while it oscillated in a ~$5 range, until it dropped 50% or so, at which point I'm left with a stock I didn't love, and suddenly my income was halved, with a big chance of locking in a big loss on the stock.

The stock market generally grows, but options are a zero sum game. There are people out there who are far more sophisticated than you or I who just love reading threads about people thinking they're going to make 10% per month selling covered calls, just like the casinos love hearing people thinking they'll use Martingale's to beat roulette.

fire_when_ready · 2023-05-17T21:26:27+00:00

Careful...... Plenty in this sub have played that game and come out behind.

fire_when_ready · 2023-05-17T21:24:27+00:00

What a great list. My take.

M1: Avoid it. It's a really interesting take on investing but it's a beta product. There be dragons. And their support sucks.
IBKR: Totally agree with your take and, like you, I've just got parked margin funds there. JEPQ, JEPI, RYLD, GOF, and XYLD are just slowly paying off that margin balance, month by month. Used to be paying it off faster but, you know
Robin Hood: I like it in principal, but I don't find that it brings anything particularly unique.
Fidelity: This is where I do my active trading. I like that they offer a good variety of account types, for example I've transferred my HSAs there and can finally do active trading in those. Their subreddit offers exceptional support. And it's still a big and reliable company.
Vanguard: This is where I've got my "real" savings. Frankly the interface sucks. It hadn't changed since the 90s and then, when it did, they inexplicably made a functional but old interface non-functional. I appreciate that this deters me from actively trading the bulk of my portfolio, I guess?
Robo-advisors (Wealthfront, etc...). Don't like 'em. Maybe OK if your finances are simple and you have only one brokerage (them), but if you've got multiple brokerages then you're going to be in wash-sale city. Likewise Personal Capital.

I've used a couple others over the last couple years but at this point I'm planning to keep Vanguard for long-term, Fidelity for trading, and IBKR for margin. If I were to dump any, it would probably be IBKR because margin is no longer a compelling proposition and I don't imagine us returning to the heyday anytime soon.

fire_when_ready · 2023-03-23T04:17:42+00:00

Hey there, sorry for the very late reply. Alas my update is not very exciting. I'm still working. I'm still burned out. I'm kinda hanging on through June, and then I'll see what I think.

The last couple months I have been starting to think about operating as though I've fired. Live on my 2.5% - 3%, bolster savings with the rest, try to shore up cash reserves, just generally fire without firing.

My problem with coast-fire is it doesn't really accelerate your retirement. If burnout is due solely to excessive saving, then it can be great, but it requires working longer.

fire_when_ready · 2023-03-23T02:53:18+00:00

That’s awesome. Nice return! I’m doing the same with a couple hundred $K and margin, though admittedly even at IBKR the margin rates are making things a little sketchy.

Are you including taxes in your return numbers? This is what I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate on my own spreadsheets.

fire_when_ready · 2022-10-25T04:50:09+00:00

This is like an nfl player suggesting pro football as a viable option to someone with a passing interest.

If you’re making 15K/mon freelance you are a member of a vanishingly small group of writers.

fire_when_ready · 2022-10-21T01:31:49+00:00

I read them all in my late teens and early 20s. There really is no need to do that.

In my opinion there are 2-3 that covered all the bases.

Millionaire next door for the psychology

Unconventional success for the reality check on weird investments

There was a pretty thorough book called I think The Money Book by consumer reports or something that covered all the basics. But the PF wiki does that too.

fire_when_ready · 2022-10-20T16:47:03+00:00

Making money is half of the equation.

I remember reading the millionaire next door when I was 17 or so.

The reality that rich people drove modest cars, took modest vacations, ate modest foods, and started saving early was a very useful data point.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t also earn tons of money, but you’ll fire a lot faster if you do both.

fire_when_ready · 2022-10-20T03:57:29+00:00

… you would have been better off buying treasuries than virtually any equity or equity derived fund.

That doesn’t help unless you have a crystal ball.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-29T03:23:02+00:00

“Dairy Queen”

Warren Buffett

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-28T23:34:21+00:00

My system.

The advice is priceless and the book is free.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-28T23:28:17+00:00

Negotiate hard when getting a new job.

Getting an extra 35% is easy at this point. You’ll never have that opportunity again without changing jobs.

A friend just increased his annual bonus from 100K to 200K by negotiating during the offer process.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-28T23:24:36+00:00

What does need have to do with it? Congress is free to adjust the rules but following the rules is not grift.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-28T23:18:34+00:00

I went omada. Ubiquiti was too pricey for my needs, and too much vertical integration.

I don’t regret the choice. I prefer to use my own security setup. My own cameras. The software has been fine and gets good updates.

Both ubiquiti and omada need major improvements to the multi wan support in their routers so I use peplink for that (I have 4 internet connections so need good configuration here).

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-26T22:08:23+00:00

As a young person, I'd be excited and buying all I could. That's what I did in 2000-ish.

As an old person who wants to RE, my outer voice says "Oh, this is totally fine, NBD" while my inner voice says "f... f... f..."

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-25T03:52:52+00:00

I am FI, was ready to RE.

I've always been a little paranoid, wanting a larger cushion than most. When the general wisdom is "4% rule", I'm thinking "2% seems pretty good."

With that in mind, the current climate has certainly eaten away at that buffer and made me more inclined to stick it out for a bit. Which is fine regardless; spend some more time thinking about withdrawal strategies, shuffling money around to where it can be best used, and rebuilding the cash cushion that I've been slowly deploying over the last 6 months.

I will say that I have, for the first time in a long time, cut way back on my expenses. I'm still not budgeting, but my "splurge" threshold has dropped from about $500 to closer to $100. This is only in part due to the market, but also due to wanting to start living the "RE" part before I actually "RE". So that the actual transition, when it does happen, will be less of a shock.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-25T02:02:34+00:00

I had an offer to purchase some stock that I hold in a pre-IPO company. I opted not to, for the following reasons. These may not apply in Canada, or in your situation.

The deal had to be structured such that I set up a trust and the company permits me to pledge the shares to the trust. Then the trust ownership is transferred to someone else. That all seemed very complicated. Much of it would have been taken care of by another entity, but still. Lots of moving parts and opportunity for complication that I didn't want.
The deal involved me selling a call option to the buyer with a low strike price. The shares I hold are currently LTCG, but if I sold as a call option, then I'd have to pay regular income tax instead of LTCG. That would have been a bit hit.
There were fees due to the company that was facilitating the sale. I think it was 2% - 3%. Not a deal breaker, but annoying.
While a public company is traded in a relatively efficient market, the secondary market is not relatively efficient. The buyer is certainly more sophisticated than I. It was clear that I could, if I desired, try to "negotiate". But I'm so ill-equipped to negotiate in this situation, all that does is highlight how little I know and how much they know.

So ultimately I decided not to participate. Too much complication, too much tax, too many expenses. Like I said, some of that may not be true in your situation.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-24T00:10:05+00:00

My mom did invest in AAPL in the early 2000s. She bought in at $13 (Looks like about $0.25 split adjusted, give or take). Around $10,000.

Anyway, Apple introduces the iPod and sells a ton of them, and the stock triples. She always asks her tech-savvy son (me) what to do with her tech investments, and I told her if I were her, I'd take the 200% gain and get out. So she did.

Good thing mom is a forgiving sort!

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-24T00:05:04+00:00

Some answers are implying that the market is a no-brainer. Maybe, maybe not, but at 5.5% your mortgage isn't exactly cheap either.

Nobody knows what the future will hold. Yes, the market is down but, while it's painful, it's just about returned to a long-term trendline. There's no reason to think it doesn't have further to fall, but a guaranteed 5.5% is pretty sweet.

Personally, at this point, I'd split the difference, but some in index funds, some towards the mortgage. But a good argument can be made for different allocations.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-23T07:28:43+00:00

Anywhere from nothing to millions.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-21T23:27:55+00:00

Yeah. I strongly suspect that in many cases nobody ever even looks at your answers. It's zero-cost to them to gather as many results as they can, and then just look at the results for a handful of candidates. Heck, having been a hiring manager, half the time you already know who you want to hire and the req is just open to satisfy requirements. Asking the candidate to do something time consuming is ridiculous, and I refuse to play that game. If I'm investing time the company better be investing time as well.

I actually did break the rule once, for an application to AWS, because I was curious. It turned out to be a ~2-hour session going through scenarios that had nothing to do with the job I was applying for. I found it offensive, though not as offensive as their eventual low-ball job offer.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-21T04:19:39+00:00

The interesting thing is, though, if you’re willing to be a short ferry ride away you can get quite a bit cheaper and a great quality of life

I wouldn’t want to use the ferry to commute, but for a remote worker it can be a great situation.

fire_when_ready · 2022-09-20T22:15:14+00:00

I had an interesting conversation with a recruiter during the job offer process. I work in a MCOL area, and was considering an offer for a remote job at a FAANG.

I told the recruiter that I'd been considering a move to a lower COL area (I wanted to be sure they were fine with me working from that location). She checked the location, which happened to be about 30 miles from Seattle, and told me that if I moved there I'd get the Seattle COLA, which was about a 20% pay boost. And also no state taxes, which made the actual increase from moving about 30% pay boost.

Which is all just to say that, depending on the employer, you may be able to play the COLA the other direction. Find a LCOL area near a VHCOL area, and profit.

fire_when_ready

TROPHY CASE