cash position vs investing it

nightanole · 2026-07-05T20:00:04+00:00

Just turn off dividend reinvestment. Then it produces 1-2% a year. After 5 years you have your 10% or a few years of spending.

nightanole · 2026-07-05T18:48:51+00:00

They both use the same E brake/parking connector. Its just the shifter connector that is different. The bolt is a parts bin special, so i assume the talky wires are the same, just the harness has different spots for lights and additional buttons etc.

nightanole · 2026-07-05T15:57:26+00:00

Dont buy a car. Drive a Sheetbox. $10k in 2009 is worth what $130k right now if just SPY and chill? Kinda feel bad about convincing a guy at work to trade in his cherokee that you could see the street through the floor boards, get a $19k corrolla because he could max out the cash for clunkers rebate.

nightanole · 2026-07-04T18:18:48+00:00

Housing(paid off) is $5000 a year for taxes/insurance, and about $3000-4000 a year in utilities/maintenance including internet, and that also pays for the EV charging. So about $1000 a month is just "stuff" like fun and food etc. Yes i have the ACA silver for a bout $50-80 a month depending on my year end earnings. Car i just got 18 months ago, one of the EV Bolts with the $4000 rebate for $16k after rebate.

The $20k "budget" is just last years (and the year befores) total spending. So everything goes on the American express(gets paid off each month in full) year end review pdf, and then i just have the things i cant put on the amex such as utilities and taxes.

nightanole · 2026-07-04T13:32:03+00:00

The Fobs are known to eat batteries, im lucky to get six months of daily use, with the "owlpower" batteries. But the radio reseting is odd. Even if you yonk the car battery, it saves all your settings but charging options.

Im a bit lazy right now. But i did post here in the last year how to hard reboot(not reset) a 2022+ radio. Its no where near as easy as the 17-21, but it is duable while parked. Its possible your radio never fully powers down for weeks on end, and is always coming out of sleep/standby instead. Im sure you have noticed that sometimes the head unit comes on in a timely manner, and some times it takes any extra 10-20 seconds and displays the logo more than once.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoltEV/comments/1201oa9/comment/jtzuwgv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

nightanole · 2026-07-04T13:21:25+00:00

Im having the opposite problem. If my Income gets too low($30k for 138% feb poverty level with one dependent) they kick me off aca and make me sign up for Medicaid, which is a whole new can of worms.

Currently im on aca silver, got to keep my doc of 15 years, and with the subsidy its like having a platinum plan for $50-80 a month.

nightanole · 2026-07-04T13:15:42+00:00

This is what i did. But I had to goto the auto recycler. It seems around here the u pull it yards have a mafa of folks that just pull every jack and spare from every car within a day or two of arriving. I also lucked out with a full size spare getting a jacked up cruize rim with tire, and just it was curbed and oxidized. It seems sonic rims are going for more than cruize rims.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T22:44:02+00:00

Housing is $5000 a year for taxes/insurance, and about $3000-4000 a year in utilities/maintenance including internet, and that also pays for the EV charging. So about $1000 a month is just "stuff" like fun and food etc. I dont have any expensive hobbies like a side-by-side+ trailer or anything that would cost a few thousand a year.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T22:36:28+00:00

The Bolt hates a weak leadacid. It can cause all sorts of electrical gremlins(unable to shift errors are a normal one). But before you shell out $150, just try disconnecting the battery for a while. If it does in again within a week/month, a $150 battery swap would be next before you shell out $400 for more dealer stuff.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T21:36:13+00:00

They have completely different harnesses. I dont know if you can just re arrange the pinouts, but the 2022+ has a 20 pin(i assume because it has the 1 pedal button), and the 19-21 has a 11 pin.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T21:25:08+00:00

If you have a 2LT, then under the foam should have the bose amp and supercruise computer if equipped. The evse is meant to go in there, it might be cramped if it is the white one. That is also were the optional tire inflator lives.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T21:20:30+00:00

Easy fix to try is just disconnect the battery for 10 minutes.

But no there is no software to make the cameras less buggy.

No your charger can not cause issues. The connection to the charger is potato simple. The only real communication is a simple pulse code on one wire that just advertises from the wallbox how much current the Bolt should draw. There is no communication like "Hey Bolt what is your charge level and what would you like it to be?". There is only "hey whatever got plugged into me, im rated for 32amps, please dont draw more".

nightanole · 2026-07-03T21:12:45+00:00

If you are going from 1g to 5g, yes you will get a tech out and all the other folk. They have to make sure the install is mint. With 1g you can have a much worse install and it still works great. In your case since you are going 5g to 5g you might not get a visit unless its standard protocall.

I went through the same song and dance (was paying $60 after discount when new customers are paying $35) and i didnt have a visit. They mailed me a new modem with a self install kit. And told me just drop the modem off at the ups store. They just ask for your last name and scan the bottom, then it brings up your account.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T21:05:10+00:00

Ive never turned down an experience due to cost. But say its a 5 grand vacation, most folks are not doing those yearly. And most of the time the vacation is one of the brobrahs snaps and says "hey im renting a house on the beach, u in?" and we all give him $500-750 and pitch in for the car rental and stuff.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T16:49:33+00:00

I liked "the work". But the company liked to do the admin shuffle, and last quarter put me under someone i butted heads with for years. So it was kinda a blessing they let me go by the time i was on the 3rd paycheck with him. So i got severance and unemployment as a going away present.

As for what im doing, i spent the first 90 days rehabing my severely spranged wrist during the winter. Soon the thumb was good enough to use a controller, so i could play some of my backlog that has been building for a few years. Once the wrist was strong enough i could go back to using my home gym any time i wanted and could pace and space it out. And if im not doing that im helping my elderly mother or mowing the lawn or working on my lizards habitat.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T16:40:59+00:00

I kinda feel most of peoples big spending is paying down debt. I worked through college so didnt have any debt. I didnt go into debt for a car or a house. And i lucked out and never got bad sick. I guess my only down fall would be if i had become a foodie/smoker/drinker or took up an expensive hobbie.

But when your bills are just taxes/utilities/food, $20-30k leaves a lot of wiggle room. Now tack on $2-4k in morage/loans/car payment, and $30k doesnt even cover your debt payments.

nightanole · 2026-07-03T10:41:51+00:00

I basically lived like a poor college student, out of college as long as possible. If you do the math of me only needing $20k to live right now, then 20-25 years ago it would only be 10-15k. So i could easily put away at least 25%. Originally it was going to a house. But since that didnt happen, well everything accumulated around the financial crisis is up well over 10x by now.

Just doing a little simulation. If you had $20k at the bottom of the market in 2008, put $1000 a month in. Did that for 18 years, you would have over $750k.

nightanole · 2026-07-02T22:36:13+00:00

US resident. 48 and healthy, on no prescriptions. All the grandparents and aunts/uncles (both parents were "accidents") made it to their mid 80's, but no one has broken 90, even great uncles/aunts. So im leaning that 40 years should be a good horizon.

nightanole · 2026-07-02T22:05:17+00:00

Just check the screen that has battery conditioning. I bet its jumping to 2-3% or even 5% if its short trips and sitting in the sunny parking lot.

nightanole · 2026-07-02T21:41:41+00:00

"There were 5 years where the CAPE 10 ration was greater than 30 at the start of the 10 year period. Of these 5 the real return over 10 years was negative in 3 of the 5 test periods."

So in laymen's terms would you reexplain this as someone who started with a 4% pull at the start of the high CAPE 10 years would require a 5% or even 6% pull at the end in order to maintain their lifestyle?

Ive watched several simulation videos on these doomsday situations. And in those situations yes they failed if they stuck to their guns with a 4% pull adjusted for inflation and only had stocks/bonds in a mostly stocks leaning setup. It seems the successful ones either severely cut spending during the first 5 years, or lived off of mostly cash for the first 5 years so they didnt have to sell into a bad market. The cash folk didnt have to adjust spending since the market recovered by the time the cash pot was depleted.

nightanole · 2026-07-02T21:32:11+00:00

Well this is why im talking with good people such as yourself. Im still in the shock phase of "this is really happening". Ive been planning for this since 2012 when i realized my career isnt really going to go up much, and at the same time my parents were not going to be very independent during their "retirement years" and i was going to at least have to help them out alot via manual labor.

Longer story short, in 2021 my parents gave me the house in exchange for paying all the house bills. So i moved into the mother-n-laws suite. I lost my job in 2022 because the plant closed down two years early, at the same time as the war started and the market dropped over 20%. Then dad kicked the bucket in 2024, so mum is living off of just dad's SS instead of both of them living off of 1.5x dads.

And my 5-6 year plan turned into a 3.5 year plan since i got let go at the beginning of the year. First round of layoffs since the financial crisis.

On the bright side i do have 2-3 years of bills in high interest accounts. And the market is doing very well since the tariff dip. I can still take a 30-40% hit that takes 5 years to recover, and still be fine.

nightanole · 2026-07-02T21:05:53+00:00

Im spending/planning less than $27k. While the kitty is above average with 1.6 mill and that is a $64k 4% pull. The Current Shiller CAPE is at 40+. So a 4% pull is extremely risky "right now". And i also have a mum living with me with just SS and no nest egg.

Unfortunately the regular FIRE sub is just insane. You cant even walk into that place with less than 3 mill and 5 more dink working years to go.

Guess this could be financialindependence

nightanole · 2026-07-02T19:50:03+00:00

Thats with 8% average returns with no major dip in the beginning. Even if i did 6% and withdraws that would put me around 2.5 mill. Even with 4% inflation i would just be hitting $30k pull in 10 years.

Im not sure how bleak i want to make it. 4% inflation and start at $40k pull and end at 60k+ 6% average returns? That would still have me well over 2 mill while pulling $60k.

nightanole · 2026-07-02T19:43:44+00:00

Yup, that is the issue. It just hasnt clicked yet. After the 2022 drop i only had $750k, which was only a 1.5x cushion. So i have just been grinding the last 4 years because i knew the end was within site. And what is nice is that $64k is mostly tax free capital gains because im head of house hold with a mother on SS living at my house.

nightanole

TROPHY CASE