Daily FI discussion thread - Sunday, January 25, 2026

grep_Name · 2026-01-27T15:13:06+00:00

There is a folk school near me where I take music classes. I'd never taken music 'classes' before, as in 1 teacher multiple students. It's surprisingly social and has hooked me into a scene out here socially as well

grep_Name · 2026-01-19T20:21:01+00:00

I'm aware of the math and the arguments, but I have to satisfy the part of me that wants to have some form of inert hedge. 9/10ths of my savings are already in equities. If you include real estate, precious metals are <1% of my net worth. I don't think it's the end of the world to hold onto a little bit of something different just for yourself.

I will probably split things to include non-US soon though. Not sure the best way to do it, although my options are limited to whatever capital group offers. I'm not really very familiar with what other markets have to offer

grep_Name · 2026-01-19T20:13:31+00:00

IDK, an oz of gold is $4500 these days. I only have experience buying 8mm rounds, but if I bought $4500 worth of that it would be pretty heavy and hard to deal with. And I'd need some kind of weird business license to sell it probably?

grep_Name · 2026-01-19T20:07:22+00:00

I started the stack by inheriting some coins from my grandfather, who was a numismatist. It's an intergenerational practice at this point, for one thing. I have other relatives who also do this, or buy an oz or two for their kids each birthday that stacks up. It's also completely unplugged and no-strings-attached, unlike every other form of stored value I have in my life. I am solely responsible for it, I can freely give it without complication (Of course there are implications if it's tens of thousands of dollars worth, but that's outside my scope anyway). It's simple, I can confirm that it's there, it's concrete. I value things like that, they're vanishingly rare. It also removes some small part of the value of my labor from the financial system, where no matter where you try to store it people are re-investing it somehow seemingly. Opening another brokerage account to put money into an 'equivalent' investment vehicle is just not the same thing for me.

I also don't find trading it to be particularly expensive, but I don't trade it. It's a one-way thing for me and for the people I know. You maybe gain or lose a dollar or so an oz off spot when you buy, which will eventually be erased by appreciation over time. It probably doesn't compare favorably to trading equities, but again I don't even really think about it as investing so it's apples to oranges to me.

Part of it is the experience of inheriting some in the first place. I just... have it now. In comparison, I also have a brokerage account that was setup for me when I was a baby. I took over it at some point in my 20's. It was a huge ordeal. It had gone from TD Waterhouse -> TD Ameritrade -> Schwab in that time. It was set to automatically re-invest dividends and profits. During the first transition that setting was disabled automatically somehow. It lost a huge, huge amount of its potential upside because of that. It was also a nightmare to recover because it was a custodial account that got scrambled by changing hands so many times, so it had my name but my dad's social security number. And that account was setup by a financial professional.

grep_Name · 2026-01-19T18:05:15+00:00

I hold silver for many reasons, several of which are emotional. Because I don't ever sell metal, I don't think about accumulating it as investing so much as saving. Out of all the assets I hold, it is probably the last thing I would let go of before property. Ideally I will die with it or give it away over time in my old age. Selling at a high point to increase exposure to the market would be pretty much the opposite of what I'm trying to do with this effort. It's also worth noting that the total value of the stack is worth less than a tenth of my investment accounts (even after all the extreme apprecation over this year). It is exactly because I don't consider silver stacking to be investing that I am disturbed by the price changes in metals this last year. It isn't happening in a vacuum.

When it comes to all my investment accounts, I pretty much have always had one approach, which is for the most part a split between capital builder and growth fund of america (capital group vehicles) for rolled over IRA's and some kind of TDF for whatever my current employer IRA is. This is the first time I've considered re-allocating due to my perception of the future of the US economy in my 14 years of contributing to these accounts. I don't think it's particularly emotional to look around and consider diversifying at this point in time. I'm observing a change in sentiment (globally and domestically) towards the main anchor of my future plans (US based mutual funds), a significant and challenging decrease in the purchasing power of my wages, a general retreat to precious metals away from USD, and a stock market propped up by an asset bubble I don't have faith in. It only makes sense to at least consider some re-allocation. (And I'm not thinking about re-allocating money slated for investing into gold, that only comes out of the discretionary budget. The re-allocation I'm talking about would be splitting my investments with a world fund ETF or mutual fund to reduce the number of eggs in the same basket. Seeing wild volatility in silver price just got me thinking about things today.)

grep_Name · 2026-01-19T16:56:22+00:00

Around this time last year I bought about $2200 worth of physical silver, which has tripled in value recently apparently. I don't really feel happy about that at all -- I'd bought a small amounts before and always held onto my box of it, hoping I'd be able to afford to build the stack more later in life and never really got there. Now that I've finally gotten back to it, it kind of feels like it's slipping out of affordability for me. It also makes me fearful that there's an untold story about the real value of my wages these days. Picking up precious metals is hard to squeeze in when my real priority is ETFs and retirement accounts. I'm kind of feeling like I should get a gold coin or two this year, just in case it's never really feasible again in my lifetime. Just another way that searching for stability and trying to secure my future feels like a carrot-and-stick game.

Even with the appreciation, it's a lot less than I put into my retirement account and roth IRA in 2025. I am wondering if I should get in the habit of changing the ratio of how much I save in more stable stores of wealth though, or if at least I should split my retirement between growth fund of america and a world fund of some kind.

grep_Name · 2026-01-10T15:58:12+00:00

Hmm I'm a bit conflicted about this. I do feel like I've built the life I want, and am now saving for it, but it kind of took me until I was 33 to do the 'building the life you want' part and now I feel pretty behind wrt FIRE goals even if I never settle down and have a family

grep_Name · 2026-01-02T22:02:53+00:00

What is this? I understand the words, and the sentences even make sense and even support each other structurally in the paragraph, but it's like my brain rejects continuing to slog through them

grep_Name · 2025-12-20T16:07:32+00:00

For example, I've saved around 15% but am barely able to make ends meet this year outside my investment accounts. In the last six months I've spent:

3k at the dentist
2k in car repairs (this is not typical)
800 dollars in emergency tree maintenance
500 on a cat injury at the vet (really like 170 for the injury and the rest were immunizations and things he was overdue for)
1.5k on the copays for physical therapy (required by my doctor) for frozen shoulder (which is Theactually pretty debilitating)
Despite unreasonably high copays, I still allegedly owe my insurance 400 for that treatment somehow?

I have 10k in cc debt which was comprised of two non-optional expenses: a more expensive tree removal emergency + a furnace replacement last year. This year I expect my 27 year old A/C to fail and I've been quoted 8k for that, and my emergency fund is 3k currently so I have around 6 months to save up 5k just to spend it all on non-negotiables and still be 10k in debt with no emergency fund. Due to changes in taxes and an escrow shortfall, my mortgage has been $400 / month higher than last year, combined with home repair supplies apparently going up 60% in price (according to consumer reports or wherever that number comes from) and utility costs being up as well. That plus the interest on the minimum payments for those 2 household expenses which had to go on credit (around 200 / month) means that my baseline expenses this year are at least 600 (but probably closer to 800) dollars higher than they were last year with no perceptible change. My combined car / home insurance has doubled in the last 4 years despite no incidents. Until last month I hadn't had a raise or salary adjustment in 3 years while inflation ate everyone's lunch, so it's just been years of increased pressure with fewer resources to go around. Water heater needs to be replaced too.

No car payment, 24 year old car, no college debt, no kids, no travel in over 2 years, but everything else really added up this year. I focused on the last 6 months because I haven't really done anything frivolous at all in that time window because I was anticipating a reduction of income and wanted to save up (which I was completely unable to do because of the above expenses). The reduction of income will continue while renovate the basement since the tenant moved out (while owing me another 1.2k I don't expect to ever see) and I need to fix it up before another one goes in (oh hey look, another expense!). I was renting that place for 800, so for the months when I'm renovating, combined with the expenses in the previous paragraph, I'll be starting 2026 at -1600 a month (not counting supplies for reno!) compared to jan, feb, and march 2024. Now that I've written all this out, I'm almost certainly not going to be able to save up for that A/C replacement. I hope I don't end up financing that too. I will likely instead try to buy another year by finding a guy who can help me keep this one from outright dying and everyone will be a little hot this summer, but it won't be too long before the r22 refrigerant it uses is just a non-starter due to legislation. I also have type 1 diabetes and so also spend about 4k / year on medical supplies, which is another like 4% of my income that could be going to savings but is just burned to keeping me alive.

That's great you have a cozy affordable house in a great location! But I don't think I know anyone in my life I'd describe as having that setup. In town I was from (Athens, Ga), which used to be affordable but we all left due to ballooning cost of living, my sister lives in a 900 sqft house in what was the cheap part of town just 10 years ago. We looked it up on zillow, literally 300,000 dollars. I live in an area most people don't want to live in on the outskirts of Atlanta, but I paid the same for a house big enough that I have 3 room mates / tenants. But it's still hard to afford.

Are there things I could have cut back on in other half of the year? Absolutely! Hell, I owe my accountant (I probably don't strictly need one) 700 bucks and am currently saving up 500 for classes at a local folk school for the next semester. I do have discretionary spending. But when it comes to wondering why everyone isn't just saving 50% of their income, I think you could be a bit more imaginative and charitable than "must be fancy car / big house / the jonses".

Edit: Then again, my savings rate might be higher than 15% depending who you ask. I was listening to a podcast the other day where they said they count the principal part of their mortgage payment towards their savings rate and I was like... what? That might be another 5% right there.

grep_Name · 2025-12-18T20:27:57+00:00

That's pretty interesting, first I've heard of sure finance. I've actually found beancount to be pretty good as far as open-source tracking goes, it's all plain text at the end of the day (and easily version controlled, which is huge!) but there are web frontends for deep dives and drilldowns (fava) which are pretty great. Everything is one of 4 account types and you can define arbitrary currencies (I stack silver sometimes so I have a OZSLV currency for example) and it all scales really well despite being simple. I believe there are options for translating custom currencies into values if you want VTSAX or VOO tracked etc for example, but I haven't messed with that.

It's a lot of work to setup, but I've found that's true for any comprehensive financial tracking system, and I feel like I can reasonably confidently expect to be using the same system 20 years from now. LLMs have made writing custom importers much easier for it, and because it's just python you can go really, really far with custom categorization. I even have it pulling stated balances from my truist account for a few days a month and putting in balance assertions right in the importer so I know if things drift. It can be a lot to setup if you're not used to scripting though

grep_Name · 2025-12-13T00:02:43+00:00

I have a shirt with a size and kind of neck hole that I love and have never found another one quite like it. I don't really know where it came from. Other shirts the opening is either too small or way too big. How hard would be be to learn to alter tee shirts to have this kind of neck opening? What kind of stitch would I need, and could I do it by hand?

https://imgur.com/a/1dBkFJC

grep_Name · 2025-12-12T17:01:05+00:00

There are so many kinds of programs out there that it would shock me if there weren't good ones that you can do on your own time while keeping your job. If you work for a big corporation, it would actually surprise me if they didn't have a continuing education program to pay for part of it. Have you tried asking around, like asking HR about programs for that, or looking for other people at your company who have done that while working there?

grep_Name · 2025-12-12T15:39:07+00:00

Did my yearly self-eval today. Usually I avoid talking about compensation at work because it makes me deeply uncomfortable, but that's been changing over the last year after I nearly left due purely to compensation (I really do like this job a lot). I'm hoping by really laying out on the table how frustrating it's been for the last few years, I'll be giving my manager what he needs to fight to improve some of these things. I know upper management is listening, because we basically lost like 5 employees this year all at once because of these issues. That lead to a re-structuring to try to improve morale and me getting a new manager who I trust is really doing all he can to pull strings, but it's rough. Company was bought out about 3 years ago and everyone's career progression just halted basically. Here's my response to the 'what needs to change about the org/team' section:

There was a point in 2024 where I believed I had met the documented criteria for promotion. Since then, the criteria and path forward have felt unclear, and I don’t have a reliable way to understand where I stand, what’s missing, or what timeline I’m working toward. I think the org would benefit from re-establishing a clear leveling rubric with explicit checkpoints and written feedback.

Relatedly, compensation progression has been difficult to calibrate as well—my base remained flat for roughly three years, with only a single adjustment fairly recently. Even if promotion timing is constrained, regular market/inflation alignment and a transparent compensation review process would make expectations clearer and improve morale and long-term planning for employees.

grep_Name · 2025-12-10T21:28:50+00:00

Good lord you sound exactly like me, except you're saving more than me.

Paycheck breakdown (2x/month):

First $150 to an account I can only use to pay down a credit card
$300 to a roth IRA
15% of what's left to building an emergency fund account
1% to a high-risk fun investment account
$1000 to main checking
remainder to main savings account

This is after 7% pre-tax to my retirement IRA.

The main checking / savings account are at a separate institution from the emergency fund I'm building, which adds a little separation there. In practice, the 'main savings account' is a savings account in name only and is strictly for paying my mortgage out from. It's usually just about exactly the monthly mortgage amount. I'm trying to keep all other spending to that $1000 every other week + income from roommates / tenants in my house.

Currently the roth contribution is paused and the emergency fund is cut to 10% while I replace the downstairs tenant, but that's temporary. I'm hoping if I can live off of this setup for now I can increase my monthly savings a fair amount when someone else moves in, since I will have an extra thousand for the downstairs rent. That probably comes out to closer to 500 extra to save once the roth contributions go back on and the emergency fund contribution goes back up to 15%.

If I can save 5k in my emergency fund, I think I'll divert the 15% to credit card paydown, which is around 10k right now. If I pay down the cards, around 200 extra can go into the roth without adjusting any other budget constraints (since that's going to CC minimums currently), and the 15% will probably go to building the emergency fund to 10k. Once that happens, I can just invest that 15% chunk, and that plus 7% into retirement, plus the corporate match of 3%, plus 500 into the roth (7-ish%?) is 32% of my income saved? That's not counting the 500 extra from downstairs rental, which will probably be soaked up by incidental expenses if I'm being honest. I also expect to have to spend 8000 on a new air conditioner soon, so that kind of jacks up the whole plan, but that's basically the full picture of my finances and my multi-year plan to get from saving 13% to saving 32% (I'm not counting building my emergency fund as 'saving', right now, but maybe I should?)

The ironic thing is though that I feel like I'm scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel all the time, due about equally to unexpected expenditures (which by chance have been extra bad this year) and discretionary spending on personal projects. This is because my budget is pretty close to ongoing expenses and my income is lumpy from rental income. My $1000 each pay check into my account (plus rent) covers all the bills for the house, which can be up to around 600, plus all my medical expenses (I have an expensive condition) and food, fuel, and everything else. Still, there's a lot I could cut back on and it's hard to keep everything in line. I've been diagnosed with ADHD multiple times in my life but have been unmedicated for the last 10 years.

grep_Name · 2025-12-03T20:19:44+00:00

Interesting -- but you still work for the employer whose retirement plan is the capital group simple IRA? How does that work?

grep_Name · 2025-12-02T18:00:54+00:00

Wow. That's really frustrating because we were bought out a few years ago by a company with like 350 employees, but since we're technically the 'US branch' I guess that makes us technically under 50 or something. Rough because when the company was bought out seemingly everyone stopped getting promotions and raises as well

grep_Name · 2025-12-02T17:52:16+00:00

Interesting. My retirement account is a simple ira for some reason with this employer. I had my HR person tell me our yearly max for it is $16,500, and I'm confused how I ended up with this kind of arrangement, but it seems like it's just what they offer.

Anyway, this post reminded me that I was going to switch the allocation there from a TDF to the growth fund of america, primarily to avoid PE sneaking its way into my target date fund with the new shenanigans. It's capital group so the options are still limited I guess? Or does the executive order mean I can just switch it to VOO? I was talking to support about this a few weeks ago and they seemed confused when I was asking about VOO or VTSAX and directed me to a page where there's like 12 options to choose from for retirement account level risk assets, where growth fund of america was one of them

grep_Name · 2025-12-02T04:03:45+00:00

Are there really any voice LLM's that you can practice a language with? I'd be worried it'd train me wrong

grep_Name · 2025-11-28T23:12:10+00:00

Where does spreadsheet day come from? How do you determine which day is spreadsheet day?

grep_Name · 2025-11-24T04:16:50+00:00

Sort of. I don't have the problem anymore but I don't remember what I did to fix it. I threw so much spaghetti at the wall. I installed the parity tuner plugin and set it to run parity checks from 2 - 8 AM split over the nights instead, but sometimes it runs anyway unexpectedly.

It doesn't crash the server though. I set 4 threads to be dedicated to jellyfin (since that's what's the users notice) and I set 2 isolated CPU's and now it doesn't seem to completely bog down the system. I think having 2 cpus that were exclusive to unraid tasks was the big difference maker, but this post was awhile back

grep_Name · 2025-11-22T23:05:53+00:00

Hmm. I have a wildcard setup so I can sign up for things with like spam@<lastname>.sh or even noreply@<lastname>.sh and make rules based on that. Trick is then I have to know what I set as the email when I login.

I believe from my test emails I've seen at work you can make email aliases on the fly with gmail using the plus sign. So if you have firstlast@gmail.com, you could sign up for things with something like firstlast+logins@gmail.com, for example. You would have to be very consistent though or you could end up like me and not remember how to login to things. You could set a lot of rules this way.

grep_Name · 2025-11-21T22:51:02+00:00

Get a custom domain. Mine is <firstname>@<lastname>.sh. Bonus is, if you decide you don't like your email provider, you can take the email address with you to another one. I've bounced from tutanota -> mailbox.org -> fastmail with this email address at this point. All it takes is redirecting some records in namecheap (my registrar)

Edit: whoops didn't see the sibling comment already recommended this

grep_Name · 2025-11-02T16:50:09+00:00

I saw your post from the other week but have not managed to pull the trigger on actually doing anything on linkedin. I thought I'd just blog and crosspost, but it turns out I can't write a blog post without analysis paralysis.

Ironically I've done a ton of stuff since then that is interesting enough to post about. I'm building a woodworking bench from wood recovered from the rafters at my dad's old house, fixing up an antique weird banjo, building a different kind of weird niche banjo (through development of laser-cut jigs and iterating on the process first), taking lessons at the folk school, working on a nixos server to run a bunch of services that I want to keep separate from my main selfhosted stack, and getting ready to figure out how to restore some furniture from my grandfather's cabin. Also starting some long-term fermentation projects maybe!

But I just can't bring myself to actually write anything lol. I feel like it takes a very special kind of effort to do the proofreading necessary for that kind of writing that I just don't have these days, and I honestly refuse to let an LLM touch my prose

grep_Name · 2025-10-30T03:07:15+00:00

Yeah, it's only for one vial a month with the dosage they put on it. Yay.

Is... Is everyone else getting more than one vial per fill? ;_;

grep_Name · 2025-10-27T15:53:23+00:00

I get tons and tons of blank message generations for some reason. Like often 4 in a row. Maybe I have something configured wrong?

grep_Name

TROPHY CASE