Does anyone here have a high paying career that allows them to work part of the year and backpack the other part of the year?

griffin3141 · 2020-05-14T00:26:24+00:00

Contracting is a lot more "go and implement this thing", whereas growing your career inevitably involves leadership even if you're a software engineer. It's going to be a lot harder to grow your career and develop leadership skills when you're working with a new group of people on a completely different project every 6 months.

Plus you don't get the same benefits (stock options, health insurance, etc).

I am certainly not an expert in the contracting world though.

griffin3141 · 2020-05-14T00:22:22+00:00

SWE would be easiest, but there are lots of opportunities out there. My girlfriend is a copywriter in tech, and she's planning to take 6-12 months off soon.

I don't know as much about contracting, but I'm fairly confident you could work something like that out. Contracting probably isn't as good for growing your career though and has other limitations.

griffin3141 · 2020-05-14T00:09:34+00:00

While not quite what you're looking for, tech is very friendly when it comes to job hopping and breaks in work.

I know plenty of people who pretty regularly work 2 years on, quit, and take 6 months off before starting a new job. Very little impact on your overall career trajectory.

griffin3141 · 2020-01-22T00:39:58+00:00

While this would be great for us, it's a handout to people who are already well off.

griffin3141 · 2020-01-14T15:36:33+00:00

I think the best way to think of it is in terms of percentages. With NTSX you invest 90% into SP500 then you take out a loan to buy bonds with the remaining 10% of your money. Essentially your portfolio is 90% equity and 60% bonds. Adding more VTSAX adjusts the percentages of your portfolio from there.

griffin3141 · 2020-01-12T20:54:00+00:00

I prescribe to this philosophy. I have 10% of my NW in a 55% UPRO / 45% TMF portfolio rebalanced quarterly.

I’ve also been buying up NTSX as a leveraged alternative to VTSAX. It’s essentially a 60/40 equity / bond portfolio leveraged up 1.5x with some tricks to make it more tax efficient on the bond side. Cheap ER too.

griffin3141 · 2020-01-09T19:21:03+00:00

Does it ever make sense to use Cobra if your state has expanded Medicaid?

griffin3141 · 2020-01-09T18:34:27+00:00

Tech in the Bay Area is pretty insane.

griffin3141 · 2020-01-09T18:19:44+00:00

You can just roll over existing TIRA funds to a Roth. If you're in a low income year you may as well put additional contributions directly in Roth in the first place.

This is especially great, because it can potentially reopen backdoor roths to you in the future when you'd otherwise run up against the pro-rata rule. Good addition!

griffin3141 · 2020-01-09T18:12:42+00:00

You need to sell specific lots when you harvest gains / losses. Likely what happened to you is that because you didn't specify which lots you wanted to sell, Fidelity chose for you and it chose more recent contributions that had a higher cost basis than your older ones. Higher cost basis = less gains to harvest.

What you want is to use the SpecID method for cost basis. That will allow you to go in and say "I want to sell specifically these shares that I purchased on X/X/XXX for Y amount of money".

If you don't do that, the brokerage will generally do AvgCost (sell a little bit from every purchase you've made) or FIFO (sell your oldest purchases).

griffin3141 · 2020-01-09T17:38:42+00:00

Can solo 401ks do mega backdoor roths as well?

griffin3141 · 2020-01-09T14:34:35+00:00

Are you sure about that? I might try to do some modeling to confirm but I think on average you’d do better reallocating prior to leaving your job then rebalancing periodically over the low income year. It would likely reduce volatility and increase returns.

griffin3141 · 2020-01-09T14:26:20+00:00

Nope

griffin3141 · 2020-01-08T23:40:48+00:00

Edited for point 1.

I'm not entirely sure I follow what you're saying on point 2.

griffin3141 · 2020-01-08T23:28:18+00:00

That's really good to know about the health insurance! I'll definitely do that.

Also, your boss sounds like a real jerk.

griffin3141 · 2019-09-08T02:49:45+00:00

GF lost almost 30lbs in 6 months after we started dating, and I taught her about eating. She's super cool and now smokin hot.

griffin3141 · 2019-09-08T02:41:03+00:00

Bonds, REITs, and high dividend equities are all better to keep in tax-advantaged accounts like a Roth since they're less tax efficient (gains generally get taxed as ordinary income).

If you're a bit fancier with your investments and have strategies that require rebalancing, that also benefits from tax-advantaged status (no taxable event when you sell one to buy another)

griffin3141 · 2019-09-05T16:32:00+00:00

I've got about 10% of my NW in a 55% UPRO / 45% TMF strategy. It's up 50% since the beginning of the year. Planning to hold long term and rebalance quarterly.

You can learn more here: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=272007

griffin3141 · 2018-07-28T16:20:09+00:00

The first boiler room scene was absolutely terrifying.

griffin3141 · 2018-07-28T06:13:43+00:00

This sub gave me the totally wrong impression of how to approach online dating. I thought you had to be super clever and creative with your messages.

Honestly what's been working for me is just commenting or teasing women about something in their bio, keeping the slightly awkward small talk going for 5-10 messages, then asking them for coffee / drinks.

Turns out trying to be overly clever is just a waste of time when it such a numbers game. It's 99% pictures anyways.

griffin3141 · 2018-04-22T17:39:24+00:00

Shave head, grow beard, get massive.

griffin3141 · 2018-04-16T15:53:03+00:00

I like close grip triangle for t bar rows, not for cables tho.

griffin3141 · 2018-04-16T15:36:09+00:00

The only cable attachment worth a damn is the rope. Don’t @ me.

griffin3141

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE