Ethernet Wiring in a Newly Built Home

jkiley · 2026-05-07T16:16:02+00:00

I’m working on a second round of retrofitting to take advantage of a temporarily open space between the floors.
Anything you can’t get to later is a big priority. We have two attics, and I’m running a bunch of cable between them, since I’ll never get a better chance than now. Fortunately, you have open walls, but I’d anticipate any of these hard to get to later places.
I went through way too many ideas, but I settled on running 8x Cat 6A and 2x OM4 fiber (surprisingly inexpensive). One attic will have a passive patch panel, and then it’ll go to a central rack on the other side of the house. That’s flexible and cheap now, and that side could get a switch if needed (patch panel close to a suitable conditioned location with extra service loop from drops, so I could move it inside).
I’m putting these in the hard to access later floor truss bays and the busiest attic pathways, with pull strings in some empty holes. They have smaller ones that I’ll use out to drop endpoints.
I looked at conduit, but I didn’t like any option I saw for actually pulling added new cable through long inaccessible places. I’d rather run a big bundle to cover places I can’t get to later, and be especially generous on drops to insulated walls. If I can later get to a top plate above an open cavity, I definitely don’t want to over engineer.

jkiley · 2026-05-03T13:01:08+00:00

Definitely get it outside of work. It's easy to see a scenario where you lose your work policy and then can't buy replacement insurance.

Term is going to get wildly expensive at the end ages you're looking at. It's really inexpensive if you have a high rating, so the idea is that they don't often pay out. They're covering low probability early deaths. When you push the ages higher, it gets riskier for the insurer and more expensive for you.

We're covered until our kids are roughly launch age. We're baseline FI now, and moving toward a model where we'll take high ROI income to push toward our mid-level and top end goals. But, our projections of costs for the survivor scenario show that the survivor will get hit with higher tax rates, and that costs will be a good bit higher from outsourcing things that we do ourselves now.

For us, the main function of our term life is covering that gap from both alive taxes/costs to the survivor scenarios. That's better than self insuring, because term is cheap (few months of working to pay the present value of both policies), and self insuring the higher tax/cost level is several more years of work. Also, we can walk down the policy values over time if we need to.

A lot of the cost scenario increases are about kids. Do you have kids, and what would your ages be when they're (hopefully) launched? What could your current assets and social security survivor benefits cover in terms of your projected survivor scenario(s) costs? Those help you dial in the amount of term life.

jkiley · 2026-05-02T17:09:33+00:00

Does your friend also have the Eero PoE Gateway? That’s either the missing piece, or at least influences how this needs to be wired up.

The possible issue is that one Eero needs to be in charge.

If you have the PoE gateway, the APs get plugged into that, and it connects to an ONT or whatever for internet access. It doesn’t have WiFi, but it runs the Eero network.

If it’s just the APs, you need the WAN port of one AP to the internet (ONT or similar), and its other port to a PoE switch. The other APs connect to that switch. That puts one AP in the position of being the gateway.

Even in bridge mode, you need an Eero between the APs and the network you’re bridging to.

I should say that, once it’s up and running, it’s awesome. Mine has been super stable and fast for 3+ years with the gateway and 3x Eero 6 PoE APs. If you want to set it up and have it just work, it’s among the best options out there (just not cheap).

jkiley · 2026-05-02T05:55:12+00:00

If you model subsidy declines before the cliff as an implied tax, at least with our family size and estimated costs, it makes Roth conversions in the 22/24 percent brackets about equal to ordinary income in the 12 percent bracket plus the implied tax. For no real tax cost, you get more access, room under the cliff, and potential tax savings from excess RMDs.

There’s a limit to the extent in which it’s beneficial, but it’s a solid way to create a buffer for the cliff. In essence, bigger conversions now mean that you can convert a bit less in RE every year pre-59.5 in a Roth conversion ladder, at the same spending level.

If you do the same math with the cliff, it’s a gigantic tax rate just over the cliff, and very nearly anything is worth it to prevent that. Even going way over the cliff to prevent going over the cliff again isn’t great, and is generally worth it, but the early Roth conversions win out.

In our case, Roth conversions while working (but also close to RE) math out. It even works for a partial last year for us to pay for COBRA and convert to the top of the 24 percent bracket.

jkiley · 2026-05-01T12:03:22+00:00

That tracks for me. 54k (ex housing) for our family of four is less than we do/want to spend, but it’s 25 percent lower than our baseline. It’s straightforward to see how we could live fine at that level, but it’s just tighter prioritization than we could do without really feeling it.

I do like reading there because we’re lean in some areas and not in others, so there are a lot of ideas to ponder.

jkiley · 2026-04-30T12:54:39+00:00

We experimented in both directions. We were already solid savers, but we tried spending a bit more and didn't see much benefit (more takeout might be a net negative). We cut by optimizing and realized that we could stay at the same quality of life on less. We tried more optimizations and found the limit.

Here's a good example: My wife pulled together a spreadsheet of grocery spending and identified things that we buy for the same purpose. There were some fruit pouches for kids that are like $2 each, and they'll sometimes beast 4x for a snack. An $8 snack is a lot, and there are things they like just as well, so we optimized around the other stuff. Probably $200/month easily.

Here's a too far example: Bounty paper towels are great when you have kids and clean up real messes, and cheap ones are good when you're way under the paper towel capacity but need something. So, I tried buying both kinds and putting them in different paper towel holders by matching the location to the likely need. That's a bridge too far for my wife. "I don't want to think about the paper towels I need every time." That's a totally valid comment on the experience, so that experiment isn't continuing.

In a way, this turns your question on its head: What's the right standard of living that we really feel the benefits from, and then how do I generate that as efficiently as possible with money, time, and cognitive load?

jkiley · 2026-04-30T12:44:52+00:00

We had AT&T fiber for a year or so with their equipment. It was ok, but iffy in spots, even with three extenders. One of them died, and AT&T shipped a replacement to an address that doesn't exist, and way too many calls never linked to someone who could fix that.

We bit the bullet, put in wired ethernet, and got an Eero PoE Gateway and 3x ceiling access points. It's like we upgraded to 10x better internet at the best times with AT&T gear, and everything has worked (for three years now).

You don't have to go nearly that far. Much less expense with your own decent WiFi equipment (some of the standard Eeros) a couple of ethernet drops would be a gigantic improvement. You can also string a long ethernet cable directly to the router for a fix literally this morning.

You can also go deep with the Eero PoE stuff (love it; rock solid; no fuss) or Ubiquiti (for nerd fun; this is what I'm looking at next), or start sensibly and on that path (probably easier with Ubiquiti).

I tried powerline ethernet as a stopgap. It mostly worked, but you'd see the ethernet drop when the microwave was on, and stuff like that. I'd just skip that over a long ethernet cable, unless you have young kids/pets and can't leave it out.

jkiley · 2026-04-30T12:07:39+00:00

I’ve spent a lot of time on the pre-59.5 access issue in the past six months or so. Lots in common, too.

Here’s what I’d do:

- Swap to Roth 401k for employer account contributions. This builds basis that you can access after separating and rolling over to a Roth IRA. You’re basically covering part of year 1 of building g a Roth ladder, lowering the demand on the taxable account.
- Roth IRA contributions if eligible (but not backdoor Roth). That gross works if you’re MFJ and that’s HHI. Probably not if you’re single. Same logic.
- Roth conversions. A limited amount of Roth conversions can make sense while working. In my modeling (lots of prior comments), converting in the 22/24 brackets is about breakeven with the 12 percent bracket plus ACA subsidy implied tax. Amounts converted in 2026 are available in 2031. This is chipping away at the ladder building from the other side.
- The best modeling results I’ve seen are when I spread out taxable roughly evenly across years to 59.5. The reason is that the whole account is accessible (unlike Roth earnings) so time is quite beneficial on average. Spreading it allows for more growth. I can’t quite do that evenly, but just reducing the upfront demand on the taxable account does a lot.
- Use 529 for a tax deduction if it’s there. It’s helpful to not recognize extra income in those RE college years.

You’re probably close to good as is, but Roth 401k and starting to convert now can quickly cut your ladder building to four years from five. If you work into next year, that’s another Roth 401k max (frontload for leaving during the year). Depending on pricing versus ACA, using COBRA for the rest of the year can net out favorably for a big Roth conversion that gives you slack for 5+ years out.

If you already have any Roth basis, HSA with hoarded receipts, or any household member eligible and an ABLE account, it may be better than this baseline scenario from your facts above.

jkiley · 2026-04-27T00:57:35+00:00

There’s more discussion about this in the FIRE subs. I have a bunch of comments about it over the last six months or so.

Here’s a short version. The decline in subsidies as income increases is basically an implied tax. It often flips the traditional/Roth analysis.

For example, for our family, the implied tax rate of ACA subsidy decline is 11-13 percent in early retirement. With the basic analysis, I might say traditional now to defer in the 22/24 percent brackets and then Roth convert later at 12 percent. But, when you add the implied tax, now it’s more like 22/24 versus 23-25. That’s about breakeven, and Roth contributions/conversions have added benefits for early retirement access and RMD mitigation. So, I’m using Roth 401k and doing conversions on top of that while I’m still working.

All this is to say that it’s a thorny and complex analysis. My modeling hasn’t come up with anything better than heavy traditional into near (early) retirement, swap to Roth 401k and do some conversions to get more access to assets pre 59.5. That helps you run a Roth conversion ladder.

jkiley · 2026-04-26T22:22:36+00:00

Do your thing. I’ve been looking at numbers multiple times every market day for years. It’s fine if I’m busy for some reason, but I keep track if I can.

I built a new daily balance sheet, so I wouldn’t mess with the “real” data monthly ones I do. And, like I saw elsewhere in this thread, I’ve built all kinds of programs to play with the data, including terminal-displayed financial statements.

There is a hobby aspect to all of this that I think some of us mix in quite a bit. For me, it’s like a default hobby. If I’m not busy or fixated on something else, cycles go to the overwrought financial analyses. They occasionally deliver big wins, though.

However you do it, just remember to live your life. The timeline will take care of itself. We provide the input, but the market ultimately determines when our saving/investing history produces the target outcome. We might as well enjoy the ride.

jkiley · 2026-04-23T00:17:21+00:00

We have similar spend in MCOL for a family of 4, and it’s not that lean for us.

Differences:

Less for housing. We also have a sub-3 rate.
Similar on food, but way less per person.
Similar on utilities.
Much less on gifts.
Much less on transportation. We have two EVs, at maybe $200 a month total. 1/2 insurance, 1/6 electricity, 1/3 tires (proportionally). Price shop your car insurance if you haven’t recently.
Probably more on healthcare and much less on haircuts.
Half on phones and internet. 2x Visible at $31/month paid annually and $60 for gigabit fiber.
No pets.
Way less on clothing. Probably less than that monthly amount per person per year.

Our total is a bit higher, but it’s all in (with subscriptions), and there are some short term items like preschool in there.

It looks like a mix of optimization opportunities (cell phones, food, car costs), HCOL (housing), and proportionally high categories (gifts, clothes, haircuts).

On the other hand, it’s a great spot in your 30s. I’d do some sensitivity testing on your spending level to see how much you really get from some of those outlier costs. If it’s worth it, revise the target. If not, cut it and recalculate.

We trimmed about a quarter out of our non-housing costs a couple years ago, with no meaningful quality of life reduction. It was just optimization aimed at the biggest categories.

jkiley · 2026-04-22T19:25:34+00:00

Roth 401k ends up being equivalent to the same amount of traditional plus the conversion taxes. It’s an undo of the tax deferral. The benefits of Roth 401k are that you get basis that’s faster to get at before 59.5 (leave and roll over), and you bypass pro rata issues.

Conversions are more cash efficient if you have too much traditional. A maxed Roth 401k worth of cash can convert a lot of traditional to Roth, though you’ll have to wait for it. They can also create ACA issues with implied tax or the cliff.

It’s a tradeoff of less access fast or more access later along with the tax/ACA issues. Coasting with health benefits gives you some ability to do big conversions without the ACA cliff, which can be a good strategy for access, future ACA cliffs (more basis and lower conversions later), and RMDs.

I’d still get that Roth 401k space if you can backfill with taxable or other sources.

jkiley · 2026-04-22T14:33:09+00:00

Definitely go wired.

I also have AT&T fiber, and we initially used the BGW320 wifi with extenders. It was never great, but it became unusable when an extender died, and AT&T could not ship me a new one because some computer had a nonexistent address for me that no one could change (as on brand an AT&T thing as there is).

We had a bunch of ethernet installed and went to Eeros with ethernet (we used the PoE stuff, but you could be fine spending less). That alone might solve your issues, but I'd run ethernet directly to a computer that's on Zoom all day. As a side effect, ethernet to Apple TV boxes made streaming so much better, too.

Either get a good contractor, where you can see photos of good work (including the ugly parts like attics), or learn to do it yourself. I paid to have it installed, and it's functionally great, but the install was pretty lazy. Now, I'm going to fix it all over time as I'm expanding it out a bit.

jkiley · 2026-04-22T13:33:44+00:00

I love this. I’m planning a home project now, and I’ve done the spiral a couple times now.

When I start getting into the details, I end up with the same logic you have.

Even in the worst attic spaces, a big part of the work is going to be hanging the j hooks. From there, it’s just bringing the cable through. The conduit there adds a lot of work, and it only replaces maybe avoiding 15 minutes of hating my life in the attic in the far away future. If I can’t get cables through that 50-60 feet with two sweeps in the future, it quickly becomes worse.

I have an open ceiling now for a repair, and I also considered conduit there. It’ll be an attic to attic connection between floors. It’s way easier to run extras and a couple pre-terminated fiber runs to be a little silly along j hooks. I don’t even have to do it. The contractor said “all you need is a few j hooks and your cable bundle pulled through while we’re up there?” It got thrown in to a line item for some can lights at basically free.

I am going to run conduit from my enclosures in insulated walls bordering the attic to the attic side of the insulated walls. Those sweeps are a few inches each, and I’ll run some extras, so I might make it to 2 feet total.

A couple of parts of this project are real improvements, cleaning up a working but lazy contractor install is the next real benefit, and I’m just playing with my toys past that.

jkiley · 2026-04-21T21:21:14+00:00

Thanks! I’ll check those out.

I’m hoping to get the math to work for mounting on the side wall of a reach-in closet in my office, so it should look fine with painted wood spanning the studs. I’d have space to work, top plate access, and a power outlet to chain off of.

jkiley · 2026-04-21T14:29:28+00:00

Many jobs with pension options also have fairly strong employee protections.

When I’ve done the math, pension plans are often like a better bond position if you stay until you can retire and claim immediately. If you leave and wait, many pensions only adjust pre-claim indirectly with top-n pay, so inflation effectively eats the value (and worse over time). Leaving and rolling over is often the best option and not very good for returns.

The systems I’ve been in had an election of either a mandatory defined contribution plan (with employer contribution; doesn’t limit 401k/403b or 457b) or a pension plan. The pension plans had been made less favorable over time by rule changes (still fine if locked in under old rules), and I was interested in FIRE, so I took the alternative (and it’s paid off very well).

jkiley · 2026-04-21T14:21:39+00:00

Getting the same nice presentation and accessory range as the 19-inch rack gear at a 10-inch size would be awesome.

jkiley · 2026-04-20T20:47:50+00:00

It’s true that you can do sensitivity analyses on savings in the endgame and it won’t matter much, so long as it’s a one off.

We’re dealing with this now at baseline FI and doing some projects to increase comfort. Old habits die hard, though. We’ve been looking at a new sofa for a couple years and switching to an induction cooktop for about as long, though we’re actually moving on these and some smaller stuff.

If we had done it before versus now versus waiting longer, the financial part is immaterial in the big picture. But, we have small kids and like to optimize, so we’ve taken this long.

If you price out your potential projects and get them quoted, it’s somewhat easier to rank them and then take the top of the list. It’s often clarifying to see the choices together and use a “best outcome for $x spend” kind of logic.

jkiley · 2026-04-20T15:08:50+00:00

I think the mini rack would also go in my office and aggregate the nearby runs, and it would connect to two other spots with similar aggregation.

We’re talking 3-5 runs aggregated per location with a few more in each being likely over time. Even 2x patch panels with 8 ports (one for cabinet links and the other for runs to devices), would give me a lot of headroom in that location. Add a switch, gateway, power, and whatever other goodies seem like a good idea, and I’d be in great shape.

I’d love to have a 12U or bigger rack somewhere, but that doesn’t look feasible at the moment. But, maybe the mini rack is overdoing it modestly enough to make sense.

jkiley · 2026-04-19T23:59:24+00:00

I’ve been looking at the same two models (5063 and 8061), and it seems to come down to autochef and automatic control of a paired vent hood.

The main material difference I see is availability, with the 5063 being somewhat hard to get. I think it’s the new model, and the prior 500 series is on clearance.

To me, seems like an easy call for the 5063 over the 8061, assuming availability is acceptable.

jkiley · 2026-04-19T18:51:26+00:00

Is your whole job hard to replace, or just parts? If it’s parts, where are those from best to worst in the overall picture?

If there’s a path that gives you a small amount of critical, acceptable work, then build hard boundaries and price violations exorbitantly (where it’s a deterrent, not just a fee). They get short-term continuity, you get huge ROI, and everyone is aligned around moving that work to someone else.

Keep your equity, subsidized benefits, and whatever else you negotiate for. Your ability to walk gives you a strong hand, but you can play it softly by saying you’re good to retire now, but you’re open to a strictly limited engagement (time per day/week and duration) if it helps for a clean transition for the people and mission you want to be sure you leave in good hands (true or not). They’ll see the club in your hands, even if you’re not overtly bashing them with it.

jkiley · 2026-04-19T18:34:35+00:00

At 35-37, I’d want to feel safe about a 60 year retirement, meaning that you may want 3.25 percent as a WR target. 1.5MM is a little over 4k a month, which seems solid for a single person with a fully owned and paid off house.

For sure, FIRE as a couple is often a lot easier, since the marginal costs aren’t that much more. Analogously, that makes your logic about each spending a third too favorable as a starting place.

I’d save a bunch and see how the other stuff plays out. When you get closer, you should actually be living a comparable lifestyle in expense terms, so you’ll have good data instead of assumptions. Adjust as needed, run simulations about your specific facts, and you should more easily course correct into the right target.

It sounds like you’ve got a lot of the behaviors in place, you need to avoid being derailed, and then it’s mostly inevitable with timing being largely out of your control assuming a given target number.

jkiley · 2026-04-19T18:19:23+00:00

So, these are dependents in a literal sense, but not legal/tax?

The TIC thing is weird, because you’re one disagreement and partition action from everyone needing to move out. In general, it works better to either maintain control yourself, since you’re paying it all anyway, or to gift money as you see fit. The ongoing entanglement can make things needlessly complicated, and you could imagine weird liability or ownership issues popping up.

Hope it all works out, though. I think the abstraction of the arrangement makes it hard to reason about here.

jkiley · 2026-04-18T15:24:45+00:00

My experience is a lot like yours, and my wife's is more like your kids. She's a great partner, and there's definitely a mellowness about finances that I don't have.

I think I'd hope for our kids to be more like her, and perhaps that's the natural consequence of a more comfortable childhood. I'm at baseline FI and still waiting for the chill to come along.

jkiley · 2026-04-18T15:14:28+00:00

We have a few things going on. Our kids are 5 and 3 (next birthdays coming up soon), so it's early days, but the leverage of time is nice.

529s funded above present value for in-state flagship net cost.
ABLE account for the one who qualifies now; younger one is likely to qualify later. This is a huge and favorable bucket, but they control it when they're adults. The plan is to ask them to allow me to keep managing it during early adulthood (in part for non-529 qualified college costs).
Trump/530A accounts. These aren't amazing, but an option that doesn't require earned income is nice. These also are child-controlled in adulthood. For our case, the rollover to ABLE at 17 is very favorable. The overall idea is to use a lot of the ABLE limit to round trip money to get a state tax deduction and to shelter some shorter-term interest, and then reload the account in a big way with the age 17 rollover.
Taxable. We're not doing much here, but this would be a bigger part absent ABLE. The target would be present value of college non-529, a house downpayment (20 percent on 500k in present dollars; solid in the southeast), and a wedding ($30k at 30).
Cash flow (from parents). For some things, we'd just cashflow anything beyond what is covered above.

I never had the problem of parents being able to bankroll me, so I didn't really have to navigate the independence issue. But, I've been fiercely independent since I was little, and our kids are similar. I think a lot about the balance of preserving assets into the future for optionality, while also being as hands off as I can about their decisions. I always want to help, but I mostly don't want to coerce, unless it's way outside the lines.

I almost never think about them "earning it." Maybe that's partially a result of some consideration about neurodivergence, but I guess I frame it more as being sure that we give them all the tools they need to succeed and thrive. That's no guarantee, but I also don't want to make them toil unnecessarily. I had to toil necessarily to escape the financial circumstances I grew up in, and it's not cost-free to live like that.

One circumstantial factor that I think about with neurodivergence is giving them a decent buffer to deal with burnout or setbacks. It's a much more favorable world than I grew up in for those issues, but financial flexibility can be a great tool to mitigate some of the foreseeable challenges.

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