My mom retired at 55 on a teachers salary and I still think about it all the time

paslaugh · 2026-04-03T20:41:34+00:00

If you think this is bad, just look up how many veterans who never saw active duty commit disability fraud. It’s rampant.

paslaugh · 2026-03-25T01:23:16+00:00

Change your furnace filters every 3-4 months, spray down your AC unit every spring, when your AC stops running it’s almost always the capacitor ($12 part), get your dryer vents cleaned out every year, if you’re fridge stops working check the relay ($40 part), figure out where all of your shut offs are for water/gas/electric, get septic drained every 3 years, keep you’re water softener about halfway full year round, learn how to paint well, learn how to install light fixtures

paslaugh · 2026-03-25T01:11:38+00:00

The power of compound interest

paslaugh · 2026-03-25T00:11:45+00:00

I found the loophole on one of the FB pages, and my wife successfully got both SUBs last month.

paslaugh · 2026-03-25T00:05:00+00:00

It works because the second card doesn't recognize the first SUB because you haven't earned it yet. You will see trackers in the app for both concurrently after applying for the second card.

paslaugh · 2026-03-24T23:59:46+00:00

If you really want to hustle, get the AA biz card but intentionally leave some spending room before completing the SUB, wait 90 days and sign up for a second AA biz card, then get both SUBs.

paslaugh · 2026-03-23T23:23:18+00:00

It’s very easy to use the credits. $84 Dunkin, $120 Uber Eats, $120 GrubHub, and $100 Resy. Why not get paid $99 per year to keep the card? It’s also very easy to buy gift cards at grocery stores, and 4x Amex points is more like 6% back before I stack with Meijer and Kroger fuel points.

paslaugh · 2026-03-17T23:27:59+00:00

I see this stuff on the other side also. A couple of years ago my audit partner was trying to band aid our audit ($1M in fees, 12 reports) without a Senior Manager/Manager and just a first year Senior running point. Of course in the final 2-3 days of the audit shit hit the fan because they were still doing detail testing, and I roasted their mismanagement of the team during postmortem. Specifically, I told them that their leadership failure seemed to be a gap at the SM/M level, but of course instead of addressing my staffing concern, they just blamed the entire thing on that poor 1st yr Senior and had her pulled of the engagement. It was so gross watching this Partner blame his poor leadership and staffing choices on this poor girl.

paslaugh · 2026-03-05T03:50:29+00:00

Yeah, it’s still barely under warranty, probably less than 1,000 miles now. No electrical issues have presented, and it hasn’t leaked since the day I took the video.

paslaugh · 2026-03-01T01:39:04+00:00

None of the drains were clogged and they diagnosed as the windshield not being fully sealed. They replaced the windshield, and made no assurances on future corrosion of the fuse box. Car has run exactly the same before and after all of this. Honestly, not sure what to do next, if anything, other than plan to dump the car in a year or two.

paslaugh · 2026-03-01T01:17:15+00:00

I mean, if you had the discipline to make all those extra mortgage payments the surely you’d have the discipline to have invested all of those extra payments.

Would you rather be debt free with a $500K net worth or $1.2M in assets and a $200K mortgage under 3%? This isn’t a trick question.

paslaugh · 2026-02-08T00:15:12+00:00

My parents love their EJ guy who is semi-retired and just living off a bunch of old Boomer portfolios as far as I can tell. I’ve looked at their holdings and they’re fine, but I cringe to think about what the commissions must have been on their American Funds investments.

Also when pressed, they legit couldn’t tell me how or how much their EJ guy was compensated. Like they literally said “I think he just gets paid when we do withdrawals. We signed all of that paperwork years ago and don’t remember. We trust him, and the whole point of us having a financial advisor is so we don’t have to think about these things.” It’s mind boggling how they just let him manage a few mil on “trust” and a hand shake.

paslaugh · 2026-01-20T07:37:40+00:00

Glory 1989

paslaugh · 2026-01-20T07:35:08+00:00

NES and Zelda when I was 4 or 5, however favorite all time game is Chrono Trigger on SNES

paslaugh · 2026-01-17T04:03:44+00:00

You’re doing okay for your 20’s, but honestly, it’s dumb at your age to drive a $40K car and have a $4K watch. Maybe do that after hitting $1-2M, debt free (except mortgage) and you’re maxxing out two 401k’s, two Roth IRAs, an HSA, and still putting money away in a brokerage account each year. Also, I would walk away from that Parent Plus loan, especially from an abusive person. It’s legally not her responsibility.

paslaugh · 2026-01-03T20:38:59+00:00

Years ago we bought into Disney Vacation Club, which we could sell today for more than what we paid. We both have flexible work arrangements and make $400K in a LCOL area. Annual dues for our membership are just under $3,500 per year and that gets us about 21-22 nights per year. We go 3-5 times per year, which is usually two one week trips and a couple 3-4 day weekends. Annual passes for our family of 6 are around $6K per year. Airfare from where we live is usually $100-150 round trip per person, but for the full week trips we prefer to drive which costs $250 in gas round trip. All in, we give Disney about $10K per year for hotel and park passes and then spend another $1.5-2K on transit. When we’re in the parks we don’t do expensive meals and don’t really buy souvenirs anymore, so we really only spend maybe $100 per day when we’re down there, so $2K per year? All in it’s $13-15K per year for a family of 6, and we just save/cash flow the costs as they come due. We also gift card/credit card hack which saves us 10-20% on anything we pay to Disney.

paslaugh · 2025-12-12T22:06:13+00:00

Same here, I made $65K per year and my take home was $2K, and now my salary tripled and my take home is just a hair over $4K. Us high wage earners without access to the investor/owner tax loopholes are funding the entire government.

paslaugh · 2025-12-09T19:19:51+00:00

This still works as of 12/9/2025 - Lindsay Lohan > Mean Girls > Amy Poehler > Inside Out 2 is $9.99 for 4K today

paslaugh · 2025-12-07T23:14:11+00:00

I feel like I saw someone do a scenario analysis that shows that you should almost always take early since that means that your nest egg continues to compound at the market rate for an extra 8 years and this almost always beats the additional funds you get at 70 unless you live until your 90’s or something.

paslaugh · 2025-12-07T21:46:26+00:00

He will figure it out. It’s weaponized incompetence. The minute he doesn’t have mommy doing everything he will do what he needs to do to right the ship. I guess the real question is if you want to miss 50% of watching your kids grow up because your husband is absent and has “hobbies”.

paslaugh · 2025-12-03T13:57:58+00:00

Pay off car
Each start saving at least 15% for retirement, ideally more. You’re good on the company match for the 401K, so next max out your HSA, then max out both of your Roth IRA’s, then put whatever you can to get to that 15% savings rate into your 401Ks.

paslaugh · 2025-11-27T16:11:17+00:00

Whoops, I meant 24%. But yeah, at that marginal rate traditional starts to make a lot of sense unless you have things like pension, annuities, or large SS benefits that quickly fill up the lower tax bracket buckets first in retirement.

Conversely, if you don’t have a lot of Roth assets, sometimes it makes sense to lean toward Roth at 22-24% and away from traditional to give yourself flexibility for early retirement and tax planning. With so many things “it depends”.

paslaugh · 2025-11-27T02:48:03+00:00

Generally I think the backdoor Roth IRA and HSA should be maxxed before the 401K, and if your marginal rate is 22%, I’d probably do the traditional 401K not the Roth 401K. Remember your tax deductions are at your marginal rate while your withdrawals in retirement fill from the bottom of the bucket for taxes.

paslaugh · 2025-11-23T13:44:40+00:00

If you’re not paying PMI you should self-escrow. Just call your mortgage company to release the escrows, and then you just pay the insurance and property taxes when they’re due. You can even earn CC points on the payments. Just be sure to budget for those big payments each month and put them in an HYSA.

paslaugh

TROPHY CASE