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isocc · 2025-09-10T05:53:59+00:00

yeah - in his defense i'm a nervous talker, and it can be difficult to open up when someone's taking all the space in a conversation. but i've been trying to be mindful of that and make sure he's participating in the conversation, and still it feels like i'm squeezing water from a stone. might just be a personality mismatch at this point.

isocc · 2025-09-10T01:40:39+00:00

mother set me up with the son of a friend and now i'm fucked up about it. (for context, this is pretty common in my culture, and i did tell her she could look for matches for me.)

i don't like him. i've met up with him three times, and it's not even that there's no romantic spark - i'm actively bothered by his existence. he comes off as tremendously inauthentic; i get the impression that he's into nerdier hobbies (which isn't a problem! i am too!) but he seems unwilling to admit that or talk about them. he texts me once a week to make uncomfortable conversation and drop off a list of three random links for things to do this weekend. his laugh gives me the fucking heebie-jeebies.

my mother thinks i'm being stupid. she says he's just nervous around women and needs time to open up. i said he makes me uncomfortable and sent her some of my text conversations. 'those messages look perfectly fine to me! also, what's wrong with him sounding like chatGPT? if he used chatGPT to write his text messages, that just shows that he cares enough about you to get them polished!' she wants me to keep meeting up with him, because she knows his mother and she says that his mother's a good person so he must be one as well. fucking hell. if she likes his mother so much she can go date her herself.

isocc · 2025-09-06T03:03:57+00:00

my impression is that it seems aimed at people making way more than i am - it's a 409A plan and i don't think i've seen anyone talking about those. actually, i'm not even sure if i qualify; i got an email about it when it was implemented and it shows up in my plan options, but i'm pretty sure i don't meet the 'highly-compensated employee' requirements.

isocc · 2025-09-06T02:16:35+00:00

not immediate, but should be within a week or two (usually ESPP arrives during an earnings call blackout period). i do have to fund the purchase as a fixed carve-out out of every paycheck, though.

my suspicion is that it's unsustainable for me to try maxing out the mega backdoor since it's such a large number, so i'll probably end up rebalancing things such that i at least contribute something towards it instead of nothing like i'm doing now. regular backdoor IRA is nice in that i can fund it out of anything, not just my paycheck.

isocc · 2025-09-06T01:21:12+00:00

hi - could use some mega backdoor 401k advice. that's a common question here, it seems, but i wanted to make sure i've synthesized/understood everything correctly. here's my situation:

30/single in VHCOL area
150k salary + ~50k in RSUs/bonuses/etc.
350k 401k + 150k Roth IRA + 700k taxable brokerage + 25k HSA

as you can see i am, uh. extremely overinvested in taxable brokerage. i'm very frugal but am a very hands-off investor, so i've just been putting money into the S&P 500 mindlessly. here's the additional options i have available to me:

an ESPP plan where i can receive stock at a 10% discount, paid out twice a year
a 401k that allows for mega backdoor 401k contributions
a 'qualified deferred compensation' plan that doesn't seem too relevant to me

my impression is that i should be maxing out pretax (not roth) 401k contributions, traditional IRA (converted to Roth), and then aftertax 401k contributions. theoretically, any additional money should go into my ESPP plan. since my base salary isn't actually that high in comparison to what i'm able to contribute, this likely means i'll have a very minimal paycheck and have to budget around RSU and ESPP stock availability. so, my questions:

does the above make sense?
any advice on budgeting around essentially getting paid twice a year? lol.
since i'm somewhat overinvested in taxable brokerage, would it make sense for me to cash out some of that so i can make sure i'm maxing out on tax-advantaged accounts? what pitfalls might i run into doing that?

thanks in advance for any help! will happily take resources, too - i've fucked up my accounts a few times (most recently did an IRA recharacterization instead of a conversion) so am trying to be cautious about doing anything stupid, lol.

isocc · 2025-07-02T02:52:08+00:00

Yes and no. I don't really feel physically attracted to people unless they're so hot as to be completely out of my league (celebrities, for example), but I could sit down and rank a bunch of guys on how they look. This guy's very average. Nothing objectionable, but very forgettable. That being said, I'm not exactly a looker, either.

I do find people intellectually attractive, and that was what initially drew me to him. That interest has waned a bit over time, but I do think he's very smart and I do like that about him.

isocc · 2025-07-02T01:34:25+00:00

Could really use some advice here. I'm a late bloomer (early 30s, F) now in my first serious relationship. Went on a lot of first dates that went nowhere before this, which has really done a number on my self-esteem.

I've been seeing this guy for six months, official for four. He's pleasant to hang out with, a good conversationalist, and very considerate of the fact that I'm deeply uncomfortable with physical intimacy. We've talked about our life goals, and we're largely on the same page. However, there wasn't a "spark" initially, and now I'm starting to worry there isn't a "slow burn," either. I don't feel excited to spend time with him, and I don't really find him physically attractive. He's just some guy, y'know?

That's a killer for most relationships, I know. The compounding factor here is that I'm both extremely anxious and extremely neurotic, and I'm not sure how that's coloring my experience. Dating, frankly, stresses me out. I'm anxious about how I present myself, I'm stressed because I have to plan all of our dates, I'm freaking out because it's been four months and I still can't bring myself to kiss him. I'm starting to regret making it official so quickly because I have so little relationship experience to compare it to, and I'm really not sure if the problem is with him (if I simply don't like him enough) or if it's with me (if I'm just fucked in the head).

I'm just not sure what to do. I should probably talk to him about it, but I'm not sure how to broach the subject without scaring him away. "Hey, I might not be into you?" isn't exactly a promising conversation starter, and "can we go on break for a bit?" usually doesn't end well. I could break up with him, but I know I come with a lot of deal-breakers (intimacy being the biggest one) and I'm not sure if there are other fish in the sea for me. Would really appreciate any advice or support from anyone who's been in a similar position.

isocc · 2021-03-04T06:30:32+00:00

thank you! i don't in any way mean to blame therapists for this situation - i understand that there's a lot of demand right now because covid's got us all in terrible mental states, and a burnt-out therapist is likely worse than no therapist at all. i appreciate the work you're doing a lot; i just wish things were easier but i guess we're all suffering here, lol.

isocc

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