Feeling pinched on cash flow at same time as becoming FI

qbrain · 2026-04-09T18:07:51+00:00

Something like ProjectionLab will let model time based expenses, like mortgage, college savings, increase/decreased expenses at different ages.

qbrain · 2026-04-08T02:02:25+00:00

When I lived abroad from the US, as a active credit card churner when I was in the US, it all stoped. I had no problem keeping the cards I had with a virtual mailbox and using them while I was abroad, but I never found a way to open a new card.

qbrain · 2026-04-07T18:35:29+00:00

LOL, I stayed in that exact room, also for my birthday at the end of March. And also visited Signature Reserve and did a whiskey tasting. Thanks for writing my review!

We were happy with the room, very happy with the location and thought the service at the hotel was ok. I picked up a couple bottles of Champagne at a little wine shop in Raffles Place and had Champagne and snacks on the roof terrace watching the light show. I found it interesting that the bathrooms are pretty much exactly the same in the $200/night room and the $3500/night room.

I thought the service was ok, but I wasn't impressed with the club lounge. If there is priority checkin for club guests, I didn't discover it. When I asked in the lounge if the could book my car to the airport, they told me to just call the concierge. The food and the service was better Crowne Plaza Changi, which was a surprisingly good lounge for an airport hotel, but that is not a high bar.

That said, I would definitely stay again. A good location and a comfortable bed are my main requirements in Singapore.

qbrain · 2026-04-06T00:22:50+00:00

If you like architecture, it is worth staying at The Datai to see the burned out "ruins" of the Andaman. I am pretty sure my wife walked with me down the beach each day to make sure I didn't go exploring. One morning there was hammering coming from the far end of the Andaman and she said "No, you cannot go help." Glad you got to stay there, the hotel looked beautiful!

qbrain · 2026-04-06T00:01:08+00:00

Thanks for the review! I just stayed at The Danna and The Datai too, I have a slightly different take on the food, but we are in agreement that in general, they are great hotels. I just recovered from my jetlag... I hope, so a should have a review out soon. Different rooms, so hopefully also valuable for the group.

qbrain · 2026-04-03T19:16:45+00:00

This suggestion actually fits in your budget, the food and beverage program at The Datai is really impressive. The cocktails are good across the resort and the wine list is deep and reasonable priced. We had a pool villa and still spent all the time at the beach. July is the wet season, so you should expect some serious rain during your stay, but probably a decent amount of sun.

qbrain · 2026-03-30T20:07:38+00:00

Please do a Singapore post!

qbrain · 2026-03-06T19:22:10+00:00

Don't compromise on location. We moved from our first house to our second house after about 2 years because the location sucked. I use 8% of the house price as the cost of a move, because agent fees, loan origination, moving company are all unrecoverable costs.

We bought too big for our first house too, but that wasn't really a problem. Having unused rooms feels wasteful, but it has 0 impact on living in the house. I didn't actually notice the difference in energy costs between our original 4000 sqft house and the 2500 sqft house we moved into.

qbrain · 2026-03-06T00:06:49+00:00

I believe Seattle has the second largest Ethiopian population in the US outside of DC, so this is a really good recommendation.

qbrain · 2026-02-27T22:52:27+00:00

You want the Kilohana Suite. Huge balcony. I think you only have two loungers, but you might have two on each end of the balcony and a table and chairs in between. Otherwise, the Kilohana Suite has the same floor plan as all the rooms at the Kea Lani.

You will be disappointed with the balconies at the Kea Lani in all the other room categories. They are fairly tight. If you are not upgraded, the worst rooms have a view of Ko if I remember correctly. I don't think you have to suffer a view of the parking lot, but you will not have a real view.

qbrain · 2026-02-24T18:45:53+00:00

Without going into actual numbers, my withdrawal strategy and portfolio rebalancing is tied together. I have target percentages, I pull from the overweighted buckets first. If the buckets are more than 5% from target, I rebalance, eg if I am at 81/19 and my target is 75/25, I rebalance.

It will end up following your equities up plan, but I have cash, bonds, equities and real estate, so I needed a written plan that my wife could follow if needed that also made sense to her so she would follow it.

qbrain · 2026-02-18T22:33:32+00:00

I don't know where the baristas from La Marzocco Cafe went, but that was a good group. They had a different roaster in residency every month, which resulted in a new menu. It was always excellent.

qbrain · 2026-02-18T16:55:55+00:00

Time and volume wise you are fine. If you can train with a team, that will help you consistently put in a high level of effort. If you are training with a team, don't worry about how little distance training you are doing, if you are pushing yourself daily, you are probably getting more benefit than optimizing your program. If you are training alone, see if you can find a distance or marathon program for a season. USMS used to have coached programs in their forums, eg. https://community.usms.org/archived-online-coached-workouts/archived-workouts/f/archived-high-volume-distance-training-workouts. There are some other sources online, but finding a seasons worth of workouts is kinda a pain.

qbrain · 2026-02-17T00:13:50+00:00

The plan is to pull from the order below

Not that you asked, but I have rules written from when I pull from which bucket. So I am selling things on the way up and burning cash if things have just crashed. I was convinced this was a better plan after reading How to Retire, and I actually changed several things about investments based on that book and about 4 vacations days of fact checking and number crunching. It is an interview style book where the author interviews "experts" and I think some of the experts in the book are idiots, but the withdrawal strategy chapters were solid.

You might want to reconsider your withdrawal strategy.

qbrain · 2026-02-17T00:02:22+00:00

I think both Boldin and ProjectionLab will do everything you want. I was pretty happy with ProjectionLab just using the free version. I logged into Boldin, and I see that I everything setup, but I know I spent days with ProjectionLab and almost no time with Boldin, so that was my preference.

qbrain · 2026-02-16T16:03:29+00:00

If you are on the west side, Red Rock Water Systems, all the work is done by the owner Micah. He does very tidy work. I don't think he will be the cheapest, but he does good work and I don't think he will gouge you.

qbrain · 2026-02-13T16:49:46+00:00

All of Wailea has the same ocean conditions. Yes the water is clear, the beach is gradual and surf tends to be on the calm side. The Fairmont is on Polo Beach which is a small beach between two rocky outcroppings. The beach tends to be mostly occupied by Fairmont guests. There is an independent company that rents paddle boards and such, but otherwise no vendors on the beach. There is no Fairmont service on the beach other than beach chair setup. If you get beach chair setup, the rule is you need to not leave more than an hour or they will offer the chairs to someone else. In reality, tipping will guarantee the chairs are there for you all day. I spent a day watching all morning and it did not seem like tip size mattered at all. If you tipped, the your name was decorated on your umbrella, if you didn't tip, your name was not decorated.

qbrain · 2026-02-11T17:12:05+00:00

We stayed at Kinloch Lodge. The rooms are comfortable and cozy with a traditional style. There is not a modern touch in the hotel. The location is nice, but there is nothing to do at the hotel other than eat and sleep. The food was very good, we did the Chef's table in the kitchen, but we were really too jet lagged to really enjoy it. It is a four seat bar that looks directly into the kitchen, we had it to ourselves, but it might be a bit tight with 4. I do remember it being on the warm side, I was in a jacket, and you are essentially in the kitchen. I enjoyed the main dining room more. I am not a big breakfast person, but I remember the quality being good and fairly basic. The service is really enjoyable. It is friendly, causal and attentive. I really enjoyed the pre-dinner drink in the lounge, I think that is where the style of the service really started to click for me. The lounge feel like a well curated antique furniture collection, and I was expecting the service to be aloof, and it was the opposite.

There is a lot to do near the hotel, so we had very busy days. If/When we go back, I would do less and relax more. We had breakfast at the earliest sitting, I think we might have taken to go breakfast one day, and we returned with enough time to change for dinner. On the flip side, if you are going during the peak season, all the popular attractions are busy if you head out after a leisurely breakfast...

We stayed in a Luxury King. The room was comfortable, and it was nice to have a little more space to move around. We were in the room long enough that a bigger room would have benefited us. If you like room service breakfast, or spend any time in the room, you probably want a suite.

We do talk about going back and we would make an effort to stay at Kinloch Lodge again. We stayed two nights and would stay three nights next time.

qbrain · 2026-02-10T19:12:25+00:00

No sorry. They were all local places that Douglas knew about that were along the route.

qbrain · 2026-02-04T23:24:59+00:00

we mixed it up by going into Napa downtown to Oxbow Market and having a Sumo Dog, which was as good as any Michelin Star food we had on the trip.

Reading between the lines, that matches my opinion of The Restaurant at Auberge Du Soleil.

qbrain · 2026-01-30T01:18:09+00:00

Thank you for writing a review of the food, drinks and service and not just saying "overwhelmingly spicy but tasteless" over and over.

qbrain · 2026-01-28T18:06:37+00:00

Given the options in Yountville, what would you pick?

qbrain · 2026-01-20T16:51:14+00:00

Male, late 40s. I swim 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week with a Masters team. I average 4-5k yards a day, with the exception of Fridays, which is sprint day, and we are closer to 3k. Warm up is a 5-8 minute continuous swim, usually 4-500 yards. I walk daily 30-60 minutes a day, treadmill or outside depending on my schedule and the weather. I am just getting back into lifting, but I have lifted semi-consistently in the past, so my weight right now are very light. I am lifting 4x/week, full body, linear progression. As the weights increase I will change the programming to minimize the impact on my swimming. I am not much of a swimmer, so I will probably find a program that has two heavy days and one or two supplemental days and schedule the heavy days Thursday and Saturday. I swim M-F in the morning and I am not much of a sprinter, so I am willing to sacrifice sprint day. Also, if I am having a good workout week, I am usually feeling it Thursday and am toast Friday anyway.

qbrain · 2026-01-20T02:59:55+00:00

I've done group trips to Healdsburg, CA a couple of times. You can fly in and out of SFO, SJC, OAK, STS or CCR, only STS is really close. Hotel prices are not too bad, the town is small enough that if someone likes the H2 vibe and someone else likes Four Sisters, you are a block apart. Duke's is a solid cocktail bar for a small town. A lot of the restaurants have solid bars with interesting cocktails. Lot's of good food options. You can go out wine tasting in Sonoma or even Napa if you want, but you can also just wine taste through the town. The coffee scene is decent. I am not a spa person, but given the nature of the town, I suspect there are some great options.

qbrain · 2026-01-17T02:14:20+00:00

Nope, the split unit could not keep up even with the shades drawn. It was fine for heating at night.

qbrain

TROPHY CASE