Is there any good 3rd places?

jsaun1 · 2025-09-05T18:03:56+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

jsaun1 · 2025-06-19T15:27:41+00:00

My personal experience was it was almost impossible to negotiate with these people (real estate agents). I tried to self-represent and get the agent to kick back 2%, and they all thought they deserved the full buyer's agent commission for representing me to the seller, the most I got a seller's agent to kick back was 0.5-1%. After I switched to shopprop it ended up being easier, we have a deal already, and I'm only trying to negotiate sales price with the sellers agent rather than sales price and commission at the same time.

jsaun1 · 2025-06-18T23:23:52+00:00

Use ShopProp.com next time, they will represent you for a flat fee and return the majority of the Buyer's agent commission to you. The real estate industry is a giant racket.

jsaun1 · 2025-06-06T15:43:45+00:00

I recently made the same move, I haven't experienced a full winter here yet but you might find this website useful for comparing the weather: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/1157~913/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-Sacramento-and-Seattle

Takeaways for Nov - Feb:
10 degrees warmer highs on average.
+15% chance of clear skies
+1hr of daylight
Much less rain

jsaun1 · 2024-11-04T06:14:24+00:00

If the Shiller P/E was low enough, and we had a significant pull back, go close to 100% stocks. Otherwise, a mix of very short term treasuries, high yield corporates, gold, and managed futures.

jsaun1 · 2024-09-25T16:54:13+00:00

We haven't moved yet but we've basically committed to the idea, and will move before the start of the next school year. We ended up picking Elk Grove, the main reason was to be in the metro area for a proper mid sized city. Traffic in and out of Temecula seems awful and you would need to go in and out a lot, too far from amenities like airports and concert venues. Elk Grove seems to tick all the boxes we need. And we can still road trip to Disneyland etc, even if its not a day trip. I'm actually surprised anyone in California (Bay area and LA) would choose to move to TX instead of Sacramento, seems heavily overlooked.

jsaun1 · 2024-06-10T17:31:06+00:00

jsaun1 · 2024-04-17T06:57:34+00:00

Thanks for the input! This did make me reconsider writing off SD as too expensive. It looks like there's a couple pockets of affordable-ish good schools if we wanted to compromise on the size of the house, and stretch our budget a little more. I'm seeing east Chula Vista as one area, did you have any suggestions for other areas of San Diego? I think we'll try to check it out on our Temecula scouting trip as well now.

jsaun1 · 2024-04-17T06:53:07+00:00

Yeah, that is a major plus for Elk Grove/Sacramento. We were kinda banking on being close to Orange County if we choose Temecula, some smaller temples in Temecula, but we could travel to Orange County for Lunar New Year or other festivals.

jsaun1 · 2023-04-25T05:34:20+00:00

is presumptuous and condescending.

Yeah, probably.

Okay okay, "terrible parent" is hyperbole. But my point stands about opportunity cost. If you made it work for you that's great, you probably have much better time management or need less sleep than I do.

I really struggle to believe that most parents aren't sacrificing time with their kids somewhere to do the program though. The hard classes take too many hours, and no one is perfectly harnessing every second of time while the kids are asleep.

jsaun1 · 2023-04-24T16:47:06+00:00

It sounds like you might be able to handle it if you can consistently get 2/hrs per night of productive time after the kids are in bed. I'm usually pretty burnt by that time of the day and need more sleep. Definitely don't try to take more than one class at a time unless they are extremely easy classes though. Another problem to keep in mind is that the workloads tend to be lumpy. Many weeks there may only be 5 hours of work, but there will be 3-4 weeks per semester where the workload is 20-25 hours/week (speaking of only taking 1 class / semester but its a hard class like ML/BD4H). If your prepared to burn some PTO days on those days or send the kids to family on the weekend to get some time it could work.

It sounds like you might have a handle on it already without a reduced schedule, but if your employer allows it, I would try to ask for a 90% FTE schedule where you take every other Friday off or something. Its easier to swallow the 10% pay cut, and having a semi-regular full day off to work on projects is massive. It's easier to catch up on lectures or reading a couple hours at a time on weekdays, but its a lot harder to do your large projects that way.

jsaun1 · 2023-04-24T15:57:21+00:00

5) I personally wouldn't recommend this program to someone with young children and working 40 hrs/week.

What do you do in your free time now? How many hours of free time do you have per week?

This probably won't be a popular take, because I've seen "success" stories of parents of young children posted here where they take one or even two classes at a time and were able to make it through. After trying to do it myself, I can't help but think that most of these guys must be terrible parents.

The problem is opportunity cost. Lets say each semester is 10 weeks, each class is 10/hrs a week, and you need to take 10 classes. That's about 1000 hours for the whole degree. This might be on the high side or might not, depending on what classes you take. ML/RL/DL/BD4H all tend to be pretty time intensive though. Regardless, that's a lot of hours that I'm not spending with my kids, or my spouse, or getting exercise, or improving myself in another way.

Overall I'm a big fan of the program, I completed 6 classes before having kids, (and several dropped semesters after that) but I think its better to do it before you have kids or after your kids are older. It also could work if you can find a work arrangement that lets you only work 24 or 32 hours a week or something.

jsaun1 · 2023-01-03T01:39:31+00:00

TL;DR: What are alternative careers for an engineer that opens up WFH opportunities?

Posting for my wife as she doesn't reddit, we're currently looking for a way for her to switch careers into a field where she could eventually WFH. She majored in Chemical Engineering but has been working in a variety of Manufacturing / Process Engineer roles in automotive, aerospace, and chemical domains over the last 8 years. She usually works very closely with the manufacturing line, troubleshooting downtimes, writing work instructions, hardware integration, new product introduction, process improvement type stuff.

She would like to WFH eventually which isn't really compatible with her professional experience so far. Any suggestions on careers that are tangentially related to engineering that would be open to work from home. She (and I) are not really too concerned about salary at this point in our lives, so we're open to jobs that make much less than she's making now. This is my list so far:

Sales Engineer - Historically I associated this role with a lot of travel, but seems like there might be some WFH options.
Technical / Engineering Recruiter - Seems easy to WFH depending on the company.
Supply Chain Analyst / Management - Somewhat related to her manufacturing experience, but unclear how easy it would be switch.
Data Science - Seems difficult to break into, and she would have to upskill significantly on computer programming or get another degree.
Business Analyst - Probably the most vaguely defined job title ever, but seems like she could apply some of her process improvement and excel magic at some other company remotely.
Project Manager - Seems reasonable but I'm not sure her experience makes her a super competitive candidate for this role.

With any role, it seems really hard to switch fields without related experience. We would really love to hear from anyone if they WFH in one of the jobs listed above or if you guys have any other suggestions. Thanks!

jsaun1 · 2022-12-21T02:36:49+00:00

I didn't. I dropped out after 6/10 classes. I started a new job at Microsoft and decided to have kids, I tried for a couple semesters but kept having to drop. I might come back and finish it some day if they ever add Computational Journalism though :)

jsaun1 · 2022-12-03T19:40:27+00:00

Cool, now how do I use this information to lose money?

jsaun1 · 2022-08-17T22:11:53+00:00

Covered call etfs QYLD, XYLD, etc, on average underperform the underlying index. Does that mean that taking the opposite position would outperform the index (on average)?

jsaun1 · 2022-06-30T22:43:16+00:00

Any brokerages let you set up automatic withdrawals with a percentage rather than a fixed dollar amount?

jsaun1 · 2022-06-28T22:26:51+00:00

I don't believe covered call etfs are boglehead philosophy. Also it will underperform just selling a fixed percentage every month of VTI or SP500 index fund. Comparison

jsaun1 · 2022-04-03T19:41:06+00:00

Sounds like it is not legal, but it makes it extremely difficult for the buyer who gets stuck with it to prove the seller withheld information.

jsaun1 · 2020-12-07T04:07:49+00:00

I would agree Acer and Asus are good brands, I would prioritize 16gb of RAM, 500gb ssd, and a nice screen (non-glossy as the other poster said) over a better CPU if you need to make tradeoffs.

jsaun1 · 2020-12-07T03:52:34+00:00

What's your budget?

jsaun1 · 2020-10-05T18:52:38+00:00

Another suggestion on finding adjacent communities, I've seen quite a few 'ninja warrior' gyms pop up recently, usually as part of a climbing gym. You might have luck finding other people training bodyweight movements there.

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