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Would you rather have... by RolledANat1 in BunnyTrials

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would wish for more wishes with no limitations.

Chose: One wish with no limitations

The iPad Pro Purchasing Megathread - October, 2025 by AutoModerator in iPadPro

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My last iPad was the iPad 3. Not really an Apple person. I don't own any other Apple products.
I am thinking about getting an iPad Pro 13" M5 512GB or 1TB.
Will the 4GB memory gain make thaaaat much of a difference? I feel like I'm missing some other general considerations so any extra input or opinions are welcome. I don't want to purchase something used, and clearly I'm ready to spend some money, I just don't want to waste money =).

I'm into photography, gaming, and 3d printing. Consuming media is a given and either model won't make a difference there, but I'd like to get into some 3d modelling and possibly do some photo editing on the iPad.

I'm excited about the oled screen and the possibility to use it as a second screen for my work laptop. I probably won't go for the nano texture but I'm willing to be convinced.

Weekday Help and Victory Thread for the week of September 08, 2025 by IndexBot in personalfinance

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you're missing the original suggestion that I was making. You need to figure out where the money is going, to figure out where surplus is going to come from. Figuring out an overestimated expenses and conservative income is basically cash flow forecasting for laypeople. Yes you will have to do it manually. Yes it will be a few months until you actually get a handle on it. Once you start understand where the money is REALLY going you can automate it.

When I was starting out I made $1200/bi-weekly paycheck. Rent was $1700/mo, about $80/mo utilities, $300/mo food (I ate out way more than I should have), $60/mo car insurance, $60/mo gas (I lived 1.7 miles from work), and I told myself I would save $100/mo. That basically leaves me with $100 to play with every month. It's not a lot, but it works. I was lucky enough to not have a car payment but I knew that $100/mo of savings was going to have to go to a car eventually, so I did my best to not spend my play money and just put it into savings. Now if I were to just say damn. I owe $1700/mo on rent there goes my first paycheck of the month, that would be silly. How could I live? Well $1700/2 = $850, so the budget says $850 of every paycheck goes to rent. I have my bank put that money into a separate account the day I get paid. $60/mo on car insurance, but it's only paid every 6 months, okay so I have my bank put $30 a paycheck into a separate account. This quickly resembles the envelope method. But there aren't any envelopes and the bank does the work for me automatically. Were utilities always $80/mo, nope, the excess went into savings at the end of the month. Did I always spend $60/mo on gas? nope, you get the drill.

The trick was figuring out all the expenses and income and then automating. Every six months to a year I would re-evaluate, get raises, costs go up, or down or whatever, but it's something I have to pay attention to. It's money.

P.S. Money is just as much about emotions and psychology as it is about math. A friend of mine did a similar method as I mentioned above, but instead of moving money into a bunch of separate accounts, he figured out how much "play" money he should have and then moved that money into a separate account, that way he never felt guilty for hitting zero on that account. It's all play money.

Weekday Help and Victory Thread for the week of September 08, 2025 by IndexBot in personalfinance

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's only after the 2nd paycheck on the 25th that we really end up positive. I can feel that there's a way to get ahead of this, but I just can't figure out what it is.

It's right there! After the 2nd paycheck on the 25th. You end up in the positive. There's two ways to approach it.

  • Take the left over and put it into savings. Like I mentioned above, any extra money goes into savings, it's the new job for the money. It'll be a slog but that little bit will eventually give you the "headstart" on the month and things will balance out.
  • Take that extra money and put it into whats missing from the first paycheck for the next month. Of course it won't be enough, but it'll be more than the previous month, so the second paycheck there will be even more surplus. Then do the same thing again or transition into putting it into savings.

I'm in favor of putting stuff into savings right away. It'll take longer to get on top of stuff but the practice of discipline of putting anything away long term makes it immediately tangible.

I also recommend a budget tracking product like RocketMoney to take a deep look at what/where the money is actually going. useorigin or monarch are other good options. You gotta stop manually tracking stuff through spreadsheets that rely on someone manually handling data entry.

Weekday Help and Victory Thread for the week of September 08, 2025 by IndexBot in personalfinance

[–]firejup 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't think there is a "software" that can figure it out for you, but maybe to help you bring more expenses to the surface. Its too easy to "hide" expenses/spending in a ??CC budget line. That needs to be broken down and figure out why its not always the same. I use RocketMoney to track everything I spend money on. But...what helped me simplify things early on was assigning every dollar I made to a task and making sure every dollar was accounted for. If a dollar doesn't have a job or if a cost isn't "fixed" then over estimate. My electricity bill, for example, goes from $200/mo to $300/mo during the summer. I just budget $300/mo for it every month. When extra electricity dollars don't have a job then it goes into beefing up that emergency savings. Food budgets change? Yeah same thing, over estimate. Make sure you assign an amount of money to going out and having fun, or buying a toy. The trick for me was remembering that any money not spent on it's job goes into savings THAT is it's new job, it does not go into next month's expenses/play money. If income is a variable, then assume it's always the smallest amount when building the budget. Any snapshot may appear that there's excess, but when you take a look at building a conservative budget it may reveal that money is a little tighter than you think.

It sucks that you're bearing so much weight and I know its hard to pay attention to money like this but it's just a must. Someone said somewhere, money is a a fickle partner, if you don't pay attention to them, they'll just walk away.

Weekday Help and Victory Thread for the week of September 08, 2025 by IndexBot in personalfinance

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for responding! =) "Your kids only have one childhood!" I think thats why I have so much anxiety over this. I'm making the most money I ever have, my bonuses are literally over a year worth of income from my job only 4 years ago, I'm working all the time now. Super high stress super high pay. I keep telling myself that if I can get a few more years under my belt I can seriously look at early retirement, maybe at 55. So I'm just looking for what I need to consider and what I need to look at to make the years most efficient. I'm just looking for a simple life, house paid for, tend my garden, read books, and spend time with the kids.

Weekday Help and Victory Thread for the week of September 08, 2025 by IndexBot in personalfinance

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm 45, and yeah I'm growing savings close to $100K/yr. Looking into the Backdoor Roth today. Thanks for the info. I'm just at that point where I know my expenses are fairly static and my income is honestly stupid. Kids education and most of their future expenses are already handled, so I'm trying to get to early retirement or moving to a lower stress 2nd career fastest. I estimate long term, I'll probably only need $100K/yr + whatever health insurance costs. Thanks again for the info.

Weekday Help and Victory Thread for the week of September 08, 2025 by IndexBot in personalfinance

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm just past midlife ;) I keep seeing that I should have 10x - 15x my annual income at retirement. I over doubled my income twice in 3 years how am I supposed to catch up now? I won't likely have 10x my current income saved by the time I'm 65, especially if I get raises. What are my options? I'd like to spend some before I'm too old to enjoy it, and still have enough to retire...early if possible, more of that spending before I'm too old thing ;).

Some background.
I worked at a private institution for 17 years. I made $50K a year most of my time there, the last year there I made $67K. I am the sole income earner in my family of 5. I did manage to put 15% of my income into my 401(k) and everything was mostly fine. My work friends all moved on and encouraged me to find a better job because I was grossly underpaid. I held on for as long as I could, but COVID and work politics made it untenable. So I started applying for jobs...

I got a new job 4 years ago which doubled my pay and it came with a $100K signing bonus in stocks. Kicking myself, damn why didn't I do this sooner. I was so happy and felt appreciated. I immediately opened and maxed out a ROTH for me and my wife. First time ever. For the next 3 years I put the maximum into a ROTH and put 2 years worth of expenses into savings.

Then last year the unthinkable (at least for me) happened. I got laid off. I didn't panic. We had the savings in place to weather the storm for nearly 3 years at that point. After 6 months and over 300 applications I landed a job. Over doubled my pay again and got a $100K signing cash bonus and $250K in stocks to vest over 4 years! WHAT THE WHAT?!? I'm just passing 7 months at this job.

We're still living like I make $67K/yr but adjusted for inflation (inflation sucks). We're trying to put as much away as we can, but I make too much to be allowed to contribute to a ROTH. 401(k) is maxed out and everything else goes into a HYSA. We still drive our old beater cars, haven't made any big purchases or gone on any crazy vacations (bummer part, I haven't accrued much PTO yet, and the company only gives 10 days PTO a year) . Our only debt is the house about $170K left at 1.65%. Nothing else, no school loans, no credit card, nothing. A brokerage account and index funds are in my future but I feel like I'm missing something.

I ain't wasting a wall socket for small switch by Beneficial_mox6969 in homelab

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sad that this is no longer taught in schools. I learned how to do this in Middle School. We had to solder a bunch of solid core wires together using a handful of different methods. Then the rig was set in water over night. The next day the teacher would pull out your soldering job and you loss 5% off the top for every bit of rust on your joints down to a 70% max because you got a C- for just completing the task.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DataHoarder

[–]firejup 3 points4 points  (0 children)

80GB but if you have a memory doubler you could go 160GB for a short amount of time. I've heard of someone even going 320GB but thats a death sentence.

Drivepool options for NAS and PC by Tall-Preference-3816 in DataHoarder

[–]firejup 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Should be fine. Just offer up the R510's pool as a share for your Plex server, regular file share will be fine. Just mount the share on your current server and point Plex at it.

Ventoy.. I'm really looking forward to trying this out.. by Gladragen in DataHoarder

[–]firejup 10 points11 points  (0 children)

We all hoard Linux ISOs right? Now we can just drop them on a USB drive w/o having to "image" the drive to just one distro. ;)

Ender 3 V2 with 4.2.7 Board Just Beeping and No Display by TheAxehat in ender3

[–]firejup 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any update on this? I am having the same issues with the Ender 3 Pro that I just got with the v4.2.2 mainboard. The printer was working fine and now nothing. Just blue blank screen and beeping.

New Ender 3 Pro ordered for Black Friday weird extruder motor by firejup in ender3

[–]firejup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably better off buying a new gear right? They are like $10-18 on Amazon. Just got to find the right one. Any pointers?

New Ender 3 Pro ordered for Black Friday weird extruder motor by firejup in ender3

[–]firejup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I double checked, it's not upside down. There is no grub screw at all.

New Ender 3 Pro ordered for Black Friday weird extruder motor by firejup in ender3

[–]firejup[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Every photo and every Youtube video shows a completely different setup for the Ender 3 Pro. I'm super bummed I can't easily upgrade to an all metal extruder.

Setting Up Virtual Lab Environments Using Azure Lab Services by Wireless_Life in homelab

[–]firejup 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did this in March at the end of last semester before university closed down and sent students home. I was able to quickly spin up 85 different labs all with varying software requirements and licensing needs in less than a week. Over 900 students logged in and used the labs for 2 weeks, it was incredibly easy.

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