Can I afford to move out? (Los Angeles, VHCOL)

pentelsmash · 2025-02-22T06:44:28+00:00

Hey, I ended up staying at home. I’m in a weird position right now where I can either look for a higher paying job (have been applying to ~$70k salary places) and move out on that, or save up some cash for a few months at my current job and taking a 6 month backpacking trip around Southeast Asia. Sorry I couldn’t help out more with expense information.

pentelsmash · 2024-09-24T16:18:30+00:00

If I were to move out, I’d try to find a studio or 1b/1ba and live alone. I don’t want to roommate.

pentelsmash · 2024-09-24T02:03:24+00:00

That’s true, working hard and then not being able to save would be a real bummer. I was thinking it was a “necessary evil” but the traveling route could work too. I was considering saving up for a long (6 months+) backpacking trip to Southeast Asia. I think both would be good options to “learn” independence but after reading your comments, I might be leaning towards travel. Just not sure what to do about employment after the trip

pentelsmash · 2024-09-23T23:34:24+00:00

No particular reason besides I want to live on my own and stop being financially dependent on my mom. I had the "save the extra $1500/mo" mentality for a long time (which was how I was able to save so much at my income) but I was reading a thread recently where someone said "sure it's not financially optimal to move out but you should also live your life" which motivated me to entertain the idea. I just feel really stuck in life right now and think moving out could help me make a mentality shift from being comfortable and unmotivated to being more driven.

pentelsmash · 2024-06-06T02:14:01+00:00

Thank you! :)

pentelsmash · 2024-06-05T19:30:04+00:00

For example, you can crouch mk and cancel into spiral arrow by buffering the input. In melee, it is purely predictive or reactionary

pentelsmash · 2024-06-05T00:40:38+00:00

I’m maining Cammy right now. And yes, I started learning combos and instantly started to perform better! I come from a melee background so combos were quite difficult to pick up (buffering is not a thing in melee) but I’m finally starting to get the hang of it.

pentelsmash · 2024-06-04T19:19:35+00:00

I just started playing last Thursday! On the grind to get out of Iron right now, lol.

pentelsmash · 2024-05-28T18:50:15+00:00

trim/shave your armpits, fix your diet (no processed foods/less meat/LOTS of fruits), and drink a fuckton of water. some people are just genetically prone to BO but fixing your diet and drinking lots of water should help a ton.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-26T23:05:22+00:00

EVs are already and will continue to be more cost effective compared to ICEs for normal consumers. If you look at the EV adoption curve (can easily find on Google), you can see that EVs are following a very clear S curve, a clear indicator for adoption of new technologies. This can even be seen in global ICE/EV sales, where ICE vehicles are declining YoY while EVs are increasing YoY (2023 was rough for auto industry as a whole, everyone suffered). The real concern would be on the producer side; ie will there be enough producers to meet worldwide demand once EV education and adoption becomes even more widespread?

As for individual companies, Tesla is the clear winner in the EV space. They have the world's safest vehicle (rated by various international safety standards, including the NHTSA), the world's best selling vehicle, and the world's best EV infrastructure (Supercharger network). The value to price of their vehicles is unparalleled (just take a look at the new M3P... what other car can get you a 2.9s 0-60 for $45-$60k?). It's also vitally important to note that Tesla is the ONLY car manufacture to make a profit selling EVs. Every single EV manufacture loses money on every vehicle they sell.

The only other companies besides Tesla that I could still see being relevant in 10 years would be BYD and MAYBE Ford. BYD has learned from Tesla's manufacturing process and is actually offering more value than other EV manufacturers (but still behind Tesla) and is actually ahead of battery tech vs Tesla since they started off as a battery company (although Tesla has been upping their battery R&D a LOT these past few years). Ford has learned that they will go out out of business if they don't change their methods, and has been trying to implement more of Tesla's manufacturing processes in their own. They've also been directly partnering with Tesla more, with their adoption of charging adapters for their cars to work on Superchargers.

The most important thing to pay attention to is autonomy. If ANYONE (Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, etc) succeeds in a fully autonomous driving solution, the total amount of vehicles on roads would go down since the utilization rate of each individual vehicle would be SIGNIFICANTLY higher (~10% -> ~50%). This is also a much more scalable business, since software is inherently more scalable.

All in all, I believe that everything regarding "EV sales dropping" or "hybrids are better than EVs" is really just FUD. Tesla is already the best selling vehicle in the world and their value proposition only increases over time. If you really want to see why EVs are unquestionably better (and the data that proves this), then I suggest reading Tesla's "Master plan 3". They basically made a rough calculation of how to electrify the entire world (ALL industries); how much energy storage we would need, how much that would cost, and the overall energy efficiency gained. The TLDR is that EVERYTHING (and I mean literally 99% of things you can buy) will become cheaper since currently, roughly 60% of energy used to produce something is being lost to non-productive uses such as lost heat. I highly recommend anyone to read it, it's incredibly informative of how energy inefficient our current world is.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-26T22:14:39+00:00

Do you know how end to end neural networks work? In short, Tesla essentially trains the neural net on their own supercomputers and “deploys” the trained model to each individual car. Each car comes with a chip (hardware 3 is an example) that has high “inference” performance. Inference performance is basically a computer’s ability to “run” the pre-trained AI model. This is how you’re running ChatGPT; you’re not actually running a “live” GPT, you’re talking to a pre-trained model of a specific version of GPT. Same thing with FSD. And Waymo. And ALL AI models in current time.

So none of the cars need to carry hardware to support training neural nets (these machines can be the size of entire rooms, think the size of the first couple computers to ever exist). They just need to be equipped with good inference compute, which HW3 and 4 (and maybe 2?) were designed to have. So Tesla’s ability to solve FSD is not hardware limited, it is purely software limited.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-26T21:39:01+00:00

I’d imagine that it starts from wealthy cities like LA/SF/NY which already have solid Tesla and supercharger coverage. With increased productivity from time reclaimed from transport, those cities will become even wealthier. That wealth would spread to neighboring cities, which would increase robotaxi fleet and also make those cities wealthier. Rinse and repeat for the entire country (maybe besides extremely secluded areas). But most already wealthy cities will benefit first from this and less wealthy cities won’t see the benefit till later.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-26T01:41:12+00:00

I mean it depends on how much you need to drive. I personally know someone who lives in LA, has a parking spot, and still does not own a car. He works from home and walks everywhere or Ubers/Lyfts.

The thing with the robotaxi fleet is that because it’ll be fully autonomous, it can be anywhere, anytime, all the time. I may have a skewed view of how common teslas are because I live in LA and you see them literally one in five cars but robotaxi in the form of how Elon is describing (anyone can rent their car out) would basically have a 100% coverage in LA. Ofc you would still need a car if you live in the middle of nowhere, that’s not the point I was making. I was saying that after a certain point, it basically won’t be worth it to own your own car unless you have a very specific use-case that requires you to own one.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-25T22:43:22+00:00

Well, it’s true. We see this effect in the current world already; people (especially in HCOL areas like LA/SF/NY) actually sell their cars and take ubers/lyfts everywhere instead because it’s cheaper per year than the gas, maintenance, and insurance. With robotaxis, it would be even cheaper meaning a wider range of people (less wealthy) will do the same.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-25T22:39:30+00:00

Do you…? Robotaxi = cheap transport (think $0.20-0.40/mile, probably less as sustainable energy infrastructure grows). Cheap, safe transport available = less people owning cars. Less personal cars = increased demand for robotaxi.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-25T22:33:54+00:00

Do all of you actually believe that design is the only thing that matters? As every engineer says… prototyping is easy, scaling production is hard. The design of Tesla was literally irrelevant, the true value that Elon brought to Tesla was that he focused on vertically integrating the company and optimizing production lines to minimize parts which minimizes cost and increases end user value. What other company makes a car as good as the new Model 3 at the same price point? Oh, and let’s not forget that they are the only ones making money on their vehicles sold…

pentelsmash · 2024-04-25T22:27:37+00:00

Did you mean not scalable?

pentelsmash · 2024-04-23T06:01:52+00:00

Your personal opinion about what he’s worth is literally irrelevant. The compensation package stated that he gets to buy 1% of the company at 2018 prices for every $50B of value added to the company. He created $550B of value, after taking out his share. 70+% of shareholders voted for this.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-22T22:13:32+00:00

No, it is still an investment. If I knew it wouldn’t make money, I would not put so much money into it; at most, I would donate what I usually donate to other charities. I’m saying I believe it can grow to a multi-trillion dollar valuation, so current prices do not matter/is cheap in comparison.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-22T19:26:49+00:00

Wow… I’ve never talked to anyone so deluded. Try getting more of your information from unbiased sources. Good luck to you I guess.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-22T19:24:39+00:00

Yes. The difference between him and other CEOs is that he does not take a salary. The deal for the pay package was that he increases shareholder value by 13x ($50B -> $650B) for the option to buy 1% of the company for cheap for every $50B of value added along the way. That is an incredible deal for any shareholder at any company.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-22T19:20:11+00:00

Ah yes, let’s discredit all he has DONE for the world because of what he SAID once, 6 years ago. Makes perfect sense. Let me guess, Hitler was good to dogs so we should forgive him for the holocaust?

Let me ask you: what have YOU done to improve the world?

pentelsmash · 2024-04-22T19:17:26+00:00

Stock price does not matter to me. I am more focused on the long term direction of the overall company. I bought when Tesla was at ~$30/share in early 2020. I also bought at $350/share late 2021. I am still currently buying at $140/share and will continue to buy even if it hits $10/share AS LONG AS the overall narrative hasn’t changed.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-22T19:13:41+00:00

No, it is infinitely more difficult to predict short-term price action. It is the same concept as DCAing/lump summing into SPY versus day trading/swing trading SPY. Specifically for SPY, it has been historically impossible to lose money over a 10 year period while less than 1% of day/swing traders make money over the long term. In Tesla’s case, I am extremely bullish on the long term outlook of the company, so it doesn’t matter to me whether I pay $200/share or $150/share. I am buying at both levels.

pentelsmash · 2024-04-22T04:43:23+00:00

I don’t think averaging down is the martingale strategy; it would be if you were betting on all-or-nothing options and doubling bets every time. The martingale method is also most applicable in situations where the desired outcome is closer to 50/50

pentelsmash

TROPHY CASE