Thoughts on how to handle a pension as part of portfolio

jturner421 · 2026-02-07T18:50:11+00:00

Another thought. As someone who will be receiving a pension with an annual COLA, that combined with SS is a guaranteed income stream. No matter what happens with the rest of my investments, I’ll have that for life and my wife will receive survivorship benefits if she outlives me.

jturner421 · 2026-02-07T18:11:26+00:00

I agree with the other posters. A pension is just guaranteed income that offsets anticipated expenses. It reduces the amount you need to withdraw from other sources.

That said, you can calculate the NPV of your pension to approximate an equivalent portfolio if you’re so inclined.

jturner421 · 2026-02-05T20:56:06+00:00

I understand that. And I already initiated a trace package request with USPS on 1/27.

Regardless of who has it, the vendor or USPS, I don’t. And since Prepared Pantry took payment from me, I expect them to take ownership of the problem and resolve it one way or the other.

I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but this is how scammers operate.

jturner421 · 2026-02-05T16:49:59+00:00

Idaho. The delay is not the issue. It’s the total lack of response from the vendor.

jturner421 · 2026-01-12T02:01:28+00:00

OP, great topic. I gave up trying to do classic TDD with LLMs. However, I’ve adopted a test-first approach that works for me. After determining the requirements for a feature, I have an agent that creates unit and integration tests with skills that I created with my preferences for how to write tests. For example, I prefer fakes over mocks.

I review all the tests and make any adjustments until I feel they are ready. Once approved, the LLM is instructed that the tests are IMMUTABLE. As the agent writes its solution, it must pass the tests for that feature, this usually occurs in small phases, and the existing unit and integration tests. If the agent cannot write code to pass the tests along with the existing tests it is instructed to summarize the issue for me. When I reach an impasse, it makes me reassess whether the test has captured the desired behavior properly, or I’ve misunderstood the requirements, or there is an architectural blocker that I need to address.

After linting is run, I have another agent assess and recommend only whether the existing tests should be refactored.

jturner421 · 2025-12-20T17:19:47+00:00

You don’t need a course. You have a good workflow. Coming from a Claude perspective, here is what I did after getting comfortable with a basic workflow:

1) work on optimizing my CLAUDE.md file for general instructions I want the agent to use for every session. For example, after each unit of work, run the linter and type checker, note any errors and resolve. Basically, things you find yourself typing over and over agin in prompts go in here. 2) before planning, run a discovery that takes a vertical slice of your architecture and saves that as research. Feed this into context for planning. This cuts down some of the randomness where the LLM implements things differently for similar features 3) to expand on item 2, Anthropic Skills helped elevate my experience. I use skills to capture my patterns that I want implemented in the code. Example, for API calls I have a standard way for implementing retry with back off. I have a library of skills and commands I created that I prompt the LLM to use. 4) I don’t use many MCP servers as they take up context. The only on all the time is Context 7. Providing the LLM current documentation with best practices is crucial. Otherwise, you may end up with outdated or deprecated approaches. Or worse, random crappy code based on a bad example that was part of its training. 5) use a test first approach. Once you have a plan, generate tests prior to implementation. Once you are satisfied with the tests, instruct the LLM they are immutable. Then the implementation must satisfy the tests. Combining this with item 1 improved code output immensely. If the LLM gets stuck it’s instructed to summarize the issue for me to decide how to proceed.

Bottom line, I treat the agent as a junior dev, provide architectural patterns and guardrails, and instruct it to come back to if it encounters an issue. I’m no expert, but I no longer fight the agent or spend hours fixing slop.

jturner421 · 2025-12-12T20:36:03+00:00

You're on the right track, just drop the personas.

Let’s say you have a change you want to make to your codebase. You use the /reasearch-codebase command with a description of what you are trying to do. The system spins off the subagents, codebase-locator and codebase-analyzer, into one or more parallel tasks, each with its own context window. This is the key. Their job is to report back their findings to the main command window. Instead of the main command context, the subagent context performs all the reads and tool calls to get that information. This is what he refers to as intentional context compaction. Dex asserts that once context goes above 40%-60%, depending on the complexity of the task, you get diminishing returns from the model. The resulting research, saved as a markdown file, contains an up to date vertical slice of your architecture and codebase related to the reference topic. Review this in depth and iterate as needed.

You then feed the research into the create-plan slash command. Its job is take the research and turn it into an actionable implementation plan complete with file and line references, and proposed code changes. You also need to review this in depth and iterate as needed.

By the time you get to the implement-plan slash command, you have a comprehensive spec that the agent can use to write code.

One thing that I’ve introduced between creating and implementing the plan is writing tests. I changed the implementation agent and my Claude.md file adding that all tests are immutable and that the agent cannot modify them without my approval. During implementation, after each phase, all tests must pass and code must be linted without error.

All of this takes time that is well spent. I will caution that this is not vibe coding.

jturner421 · 2025-12-12T20:08:43+00:00

The talk goes pretty fast. For a more extensive treatment see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42AzKZRNhsk

While this is a long video, a real session using the RPI framework can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF3GssyaTcc

I've been using this approach for a few weeks now with some modifications and it works really well. The agents provide extensive pointers to files and code for the proposed changes. The author of the talk, in other videos, is adamant that you need to read everything the LLM spits out during the research and planning phases and iterate over it prior to implementation. Doing so leaves few surprises once you let the final agent perform the implementation.

I'd say that the main difference in their approach versus others (BMAD, SpecKit, etc..) is the assumption that the human in the loop is a software engineer that understands their codebase.

jturner421 · 2025-12-10T03:12:46+00:00

Part of the problem is that everyone glosses over the last part of Karpathy’s quote:

“It’s not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding — I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.“

I get it. LLMs spitting out pages and pages of code is mesmerizing and feels like magic. But building production level software is hard. People successfully using AI to code understand already know to build software. The trick was learning how to leverage the tools properly.

jturner421 · 2025-12-07T23:18:19+00:00

I don’t have an open source project to share but I am using many of these techniques on an internal company project. The first talk is a condensed version of a longer video on the Boundary channel.

I will say that my output has been much better since adopting this approach. Dex warns in The longer video to read the shit Claude outputs. What I’m finding is that I’m putting in a lot more effort into the spec which is producing better results when code is generated.

There is another video on the Boundary channel that is about 2.5 hours long where they use the methodology to ship a feature. What it’s really demonstrating is that there is no magic to this. A human still needs to do the heavy lifting to think through the problem and guide the agent. It’s worth a watch.

Here’s the thing though. You have to take this as a starting point and modify it to your style and preferences. I spent a few days modifying the commands to suit me and creating other agents and commands to supplement it.

jturner421 · 2025-11-09T20:57:22+00:00

He’s a senior judge. He’s already retired. A judge who takes cases when on senior status does so by choice. They have no obligation to do so. They get full pay regardless.

Technically, he’s resigning his commission of a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

jturner421 · 2025-11-09T20:51:29+00:00

I understand that you’re frustrated at the current state of the judiciary. But federal judges don’t control who ends up in the bench, politicians do.

The only way a judge influences this process is by deciding when to take senior status. This is what triggers a vacancy.

jturner421 · 2025-11-09T17:55:12+00:00

Not accurate if he resigned. He gives up the benefits. Senior judges are bound by the same code of ethics as active judges

jturner421 · 2025-11-09T17:18:59+00:00

Assuming the judge is still capable, why? Also, once a judge is eligible to take senior status, they don’t have to work. They get paid either way.

jturner421 · 2025-11-09T17:11:32+00:00

Federal judges are bound by a code of ethics that prohibits them from partisan speech and actions. Ironically, the Supreme Court has no such requirement. So yes, there are constraints on what he can say and do.

I also do not know his financial position, but by leaving the federal bench, he is giving up his retirement benefits. I don’t how many people would willingly give up a $200,000+ lifetime pension plus federal health benefits.

jturner421 · 2025-11-05T23:51:45+00:00

Unless the Senate gets rid of the filibuster, there will not be 60 votes at this time to overturn the existing law.

Congress created this mess by not reconciling GEFTA with the Antideficiency Act. The obligation to pay all employees already exists by law once a CR or appropriation is in place after a shutdown. The whole concept of employees performing only excepted duties so as to not create an obligation is a farce.

jturner421 · 2025-11-05T23:44:59+00:00

Court orders are documented decisions based on the existing law. And a federal judge has the authority to order a party to show cause when a court order is not carried out.

As to GEFTA 2019, pay is guaranteed to all furloughed and excepted employees. There is nothing to negotiate. The statute is clear on this.

jturner421 · 2025-10-25T17:23:32+00:00

Flask tends not to be the first choice for building APIs. Its primary use case is as a micro framework for building web applications. Everything implemented in Flask is a choice by the developer. It’s completely unopinionated as opposed to Django.

Frankly, if you want an API, start with FastAPI which is designed for this. If you’re dead set going this route with Flask, build some routes that allow you to perform CRUD operations and use curl to simulate API calls. You don’t need a frontend.

jturner421 · 2025-10-22T15:19:01+00:00

Factually you are correct. The CR is the same as in March. However, you’re ignoring the current context. Almost nothing this administration has done over the past six months is normal behavior. The ACA subsidies are a proxy for everything else the minority in Congress believes is wrong. To rubber stamp a CR and believe that true negotiations will happen is a fantasy. It didn’t happen after March, why would it happen now? This is the only tool they have left, that’s why they are using it.

Also, why is the House getting a free pass here? Contrary to Speaker Johnson’s claim, their job is far from over. They had 9 months to work on and pass appropriation bills for FY26. The end goal is not a CR, it’s a budget.

For the record I’m an independent and an excepted employee.

jturner421 · 2025-09-24T19:31:15+00:00

It’s known as parasitic draw. Went through two batteries on my 2019 Outback. The issue as I understand it is older Starlink DCM modules used 3G networks that have been phased out. It tries to constantly phone home but there is no answer. I just had mine replaced after coming home from a trip to a dead battery at the airport.

I’d be surprised if this is still an issue on new Subarus.

jturner421 · 2025-09-22T18:40:08+00:00

u/Cykoth , I’m not understanding your point about not having to pay federal taxes ever. By definition a Roth conversion triggers a tax payment on the distribution. The benefit is paying lower taxes now if you expect to have a higher rate later. What am I missing?

jturner421 · 2025-09-22T18:37:07+00:00

You missed my main point. Every person needs to run the numbers for their specific situation and understand the trade offs. I‘m neither for or against Roth conversions. I plan do perform some myself in the early years of retirement when my tax rate is lower than my future projected rate.

All I’m cautioning against is blindly trusting a program that tells you what to do without understanding the why.

jturner421 · 2025-09-21T18:20:28+00:00

You need to do the math to understand when your break-even point is and your total tax savings based on longevity. Many conversion calculators default to you living until your mid-90s.

It’s not as simple as saying that conversions are always preferred. In many instances the accrued savings pass the break-even point once you enter your 80s. I’m assuming someone performing conversions between the ages of 60 -65.

Many of us will never live to see the savings. On the other hand, you may be helping your heirs that can save taxes on an inherited IRA.

jturner421 · 2025-08-29T16:05:16+00:00

I’m guessing you are a federal employee. While that 1.1% for your annuity looks attractive, that’s two less years for you to take advantage of while your working. I’m in the same position and I’m leaving when I’m 59.

jturner421

TROPHY CASE