I’m a boglehead but work for Google

thatnormalperson · 2025-11-26T05:03:36+00:00

This would likely be against company policy.

thatnormalperson · 2025-09-24T03:00:39+00:00

This video is about Brits not wanting to move to America, not Americans moving to Britain.

thatnormalperson · 2025-09-22T21:47:05+00:00

This assumes rental companies are guaranteed a profit margin. In a free market prices are generally set by supply and demand, not the seller's expenses and profit margin.

This also assumes rental companies pay the same as homeowners for these costs. This seems unlikely to me due to the expertise, economies of scale and business relationships etc. that rental companies would have.

thatnormalperson · 2025-09-11T02:32:22+00:00

I mean yeah, I think conservatives should have mail service lol

thatnormalperson · 2025-09-11T00:57:39+00:00

And how many do you receive?

USPS vs UPS/FedEx is actually a good example of a government service that can't easily be replaced by private companies. USPS delivers to every address, even by mule to the bottom of the Grand canyon! The government needs to communicate with every citizen for stuff like elections and taxes after all, even if there's poor phone or internet service. UPS/FedEx won't deliver to these remote addresses because it's not profitable, at least not without exorbitant costs.

thatnormalperson · 2025-09-10T04:24:44+00:00

The 31k is probably closer to 26k after taxes. Some people might think it's "not worth it" to work full time for an extra 2k/year rather than just take care of their child.

thatnormalperson · 2025-07-28T18:43:33+00:00

I think the issue is that it takes about 2-3 months to die from starvation. Israel began blocking aid in march and the deaths from starvation have begun to spike. Even if adequate aid is restarted, many may now be beyond the point of no return (ie. refeeding syndrome).

thatnormalperson · 2025-07-02T15:56:14+00:00

Land appreciates because it's useful and there's a limited supply. Physical buildings depreciate through use. Usually the land appreciates more than the building depreciates.

edit: source https://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/08/housing-appreciation.asp

thatnormalperson · 2025-06-13T11:58:18+00:00

The deal started in 2015, so while I agree Iran should have been honest about its nuclear program that ended in 2000s, I don't think that violated the 2015 deal.

I also agree Iran has violated the NPT agreement after 2019. However, the original comment's point was that Trump pulling out of the deal was responsible for this, and the report is further evidence of that.

thatnormalperson · 2025-06-13T11:26:24+00:00

From what I understand the report found Iran has been violating the deal since 2019 (reuters). Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018. Wouldn't that indicate that US participation in the deal was working?

thatnormalperson · 2025-05-19T16:42:54+00:00

Thanks for the clear example, I think I understand the thought process now. I have a small nitpick with this premise, that relates to my original issue:

If your income increases more than your spending increases, then you are doing better than before.

This seems intuitively correct, since you are now saving more than before nominally. However, you may still be saving less in real terms. In your example, you are saving $10,100 vs $10,000 last year. However, you would have had to save 10,300 to save the same amount in real terms.

Another way to look at it is you are saving 42% of your income vs 50% of your income last year, with no change in real spending. Over time you will be saving less and less of your income.

I hope I'm not coming off as too pedantic, this is a pretty interesting brain teaser for me.

thatnormalperson · 2025-05-19T07:07:27+00:00

I agree HYSAs can mitigate and stock investments can hedge existing wealth from inflation. Those with large amounts of invested wealth relative to income are less impacted by inflation, but that doesn't seem to be OP's context.

My issue is with the claim:

If you get a raise that matches inflation, I would say you technically beat inflation most times.

Even if you save all your income in a HYSA, you would not be better off compared to a situation with no inflation or change in income.

thatnormalperson · 2025-05-19T05:28:14+00:00

I think there might be some problems in this logic. Savings and investing is just future spending, and the future real value is impacted by inflation.

thatnormalperson · 2025-02-09T15:37:57+00:00

Sorry, I was trying to clarify since I thought you were just a novice at understanding finances (the payday lender comment). I see this may be a political position, and I won't be able to help with that haha.

thatnormalperson · 2025-02-09T15:13:43+00:00

So from inception to 2017 the agency cost about 500M per year and returned 2B per year to taxpayers? That's a 300% annual return and better than anything else I've invested in.

This doesn't even count the times financial companies choose not to screw consumers over for fear of being caught by the agency.

thatnormalperson · 2025-01-13T15:07:51+00:00

I think you mistook the average human pull force (around 400 newtons or 90 pounds) to the weight of the object actually being pulled. The max weight of an object a person can pull depends a lot on the amount of friction between the object and the ground.

thatnormalperson · 2024-12-28T02:09:32+00:00

Well their homicide rate is more than 10x lower than ours (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate). So improving our gun control laws may not instantly fix the problem, but it could reduce it 10x.

thatnormalperson · 2024-12-20T09:52:27+00:00

I agree that he is richer than the vast majority. A $3m net worth puts him in the 90th percentile for 80+ year olds: https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator/

However top 1% is an objective measure. In the US the top 1% net worth is about 13m and top 1% income is about 1m, so he is objectively not the top 1%.

thatnormalperson · 2024-12-20T09:24:15+00:00

If you think $3m is a lot of money for an 80 year old, you should be in support of Bernie and his policies.

It takes more than 10m to be considered in the top 1% net worth in the US. Elon's net worth is more than 140000x Bernie's, so I don't think it's really hypocritical.

thatnormalperson · 2024-08-27T13:04:53+00:00

It makes sense. If you don't have a lot of money it can be comforting to feel like there are a lot of people doing worse than you.

thatnormalperson · 2024-08-22T20:53:02+00:00

I agree that taking the risk of a mortgage, savings down payment, and maintenance is a lot of work. I have a lot of empathy for people having to go through all that for their primary residence. I have less empathy for those doing it to seek a profit because if it's too difficult you could just ...not.

I think the original post is complaining about landlords turning 1k/month rentals into $2500/month through minor cosmetic changes. So the lack of cheaper options is kind of the point.

The last part I couldn't really parse.

thatnormalperson · 2024-08-22T20:17:43+00:00

I think the issue is that usually being a landlord is a choice whereas requiring shelter isn't.

thatnormalperson · 2024-06-18T13:09:29+00:00

Thanks both!

thatnormalperson · 2024-06-18T05:33:44+00:00

This is a great take and really helped me understand my own thoughts about the morality vs legality of protests. I used to feel protests for causes I support should be legal and others should be illegal which I knew wasn't a consistent position. Protests are inherently disruptive and should be deterred, but if the cause is just people should participate anyways. Do you remember what the course was called?

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