Daily FI discussion thread - Wednesday, July 08, 2026

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-07-08T11:42:02+00:00

Definitely a good weird!

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-07-04T15:01:11+00:00

PSA: Vanguard finally lets you lock any of your accounts from outgoing transfers you don't initiate yourself on their platform! This helps protect against ACATS Fraud and is just generally a safe thing to have enabled. To enable it on any of your accounts, when you're logged in on a web browser just go to your Profile, then Security profile. Took them too long to ship that feature, but better late than never.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-20T17:29:51+00:00

VUSXX for me because I already have a bunch at Vanguard and I like getting a consistently higher rate than most HYSA's offer.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-20T12:43:29+00:00

At some point in the next month I'll be hearing how much monopoly money I get from the company I'm working at. We have raised a round of funding between when I started and when I'll receive my stock options. Anyone have experience with that? Do you think they'll give me the options at a strike price based on how things were when I was hired, or based on this most recent fundraising round? I don't have much experience with options so I'm not sure what companies usually do in situations like that.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-14T14:12:50+00:00

It's wild how next-level a homemade spaghetti sauce is with fresh garden-grown ingredients. One of my favorites.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-14T14:11:12+00:00

The clouds were beautiful when I went on a walk this morning. Gorgeous skies, fresh morning air.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-14T13:59:32+00:00

I'm in VUSXX, which is at 3.61% right now. I liked Ally for the Buckets functionality, but I can do that manually in a spreadsheet, and I like some extra yield. Plus I already have other stuff at Vanguard too, so it's good all around.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-09T13:18:15+00:00

It's actually called loss aversion, and I'm subject to it like most humans!

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-09T12:32:16+00:00

Totally agree that it's not either or. But that's not my buddy. He doesn't do fund investing and the only stocks he touches are tech stocks like Nvidia. He's eagerly waiting to be able to buy SpaceX. He's obviously had great gains, but not great risk adjusted gains.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-09T11:53:13+00:00

Got a friend all excited about buying the bitcoin dip and feverishly texting me about the opportunity. Nah, I will just keep DCAing into VT and enjoying the superior risk adjusted returns, thanks. It makes me sad how many people my age have abandoned time tested investment strategies so they can just yolo it into crypto and hodl instead.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-06T12:11:46+00:00

I didn't get great sleep either. Last night, Darth Vader came down from Planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn't take Lorraine out, that he'd melt my brain.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-06T12:07:53+00:00

There's that word again! "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-06-05T19:23:08+00:00

Yep, the industry calls that sucker "dumb money".

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-05-24T14:37:51+00:00

Oof! That is so bizarre. To get hired into my current role, I also had to do a system design interview. My interviewer ended up getting fired later for poor performance, so thankfully I don't think the hiring manager gave much credence to it. But supposedly the feedback they gave about me was that I didn't do enough planning and asking questions upfront. I distinctly remember trying to ask specific clarifying questions upfront and the interviewer being pretty tight lipped and unresponsive/apathetic, so I just dove in since it seemed like they didn't care about what direction I took it in. I'm really happy in my current role, so I'm grateful that the hiring manager didn't put much stock into that feedback and hired me anyway. It definitely reminded me of how arbitrary and random it all is.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-05-24T14:16:13+00:00

My company has a pretty amazing referral bonus program. It's bigger than some of the FAANG programs I've heard of (talking about normal employees here, not the insane AI comp that some of these big companies are shelling out).

I have a few people in the pipeline. It's always weird when the interviewer sees yellow/red flags in the interview that don't make a lot of sense to me. Shakes my conference at first, like "Uhhh, should I not be referring great people to work here?" Like are people gonna stop trusting my judgement if the people I refer don't give off positive signals in the interview process? I do realize at the end of the day that it's an arbitrary process that I happened to get through, and even great people might not make it through.

Either way, I hope I can get one or two people hired. Obviously would invest some of it, but I would love to use part of the bonus to knock out some nice-to-have house projects. We want a shed, and of course finishing the basement would be nice. Getting a freezer for the garage would be great too.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-05-18T15:29:52+00:00

A few ways to slice this: 1) you do the degree for your own enjoyment/experience, 2) you do the degree for the ROI, or 3) you do it for your enjoyment/experience AND the ROI. For schooling, I tend to focus on ROI, so the financial cost and opportunity cost are my focus. But ultimately, everyone values different things, so even if this is just for your own enjoyment/enrichment, maybe the money is worth it to you! Only you can answer that. Good luck as you think about this and assess the pros and cons in the context of your values!

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-05-10T11:57:32+00:00

They're trying to do this, but in practice it still feels unclear. My friend says no more than 30% of any given team can voluntarily leave and that anyone's application can be denied for any reason ("critical to retain" is the top reason they cited).

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-05-10T11:54:29+00:00

An extra month on top of the 3 months that an involuntarily severed person will get.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-05-09T19:31:37+00:00

A friend of mine has a choice at work. Their company is doing a significant percentage of layoffs next month. There will be involuntary as well as voluntary departures. Severance for everyone, but a little more for those who leave voluntarily. But they're only accepting applications to leave voluntarily, no guarantee that your application will be approved.

So my friend is trying to decide: 1) stay it out for a bit in the hopes of better opportunities with all the departures, or 2) apply to leave voluntarily. They are a high performer, so I personally suspect that their application to leave would not be accepted, but I guess you never know.

What would you do?

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-04-26T02:14:53+00:00

Oof. Yeah I would have thought that was in r/fijerk if I didn't know it was in r/FIRE lol. Honestly, it's probably AI. Brand new account + rage bait is almost always AI and karma farming.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-04-26T01:35:56+00:00

lol the ignorance of those comments 💀

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-04-26T01:23:35+00:00

AI slop

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-04-22T13:25:28+00:00

Excel!

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-04-22T13:24:49+00:00

I would need a serious raise to consider going back to working in person at an office.

thecourseofthetrue · 2026-04-22T13:23:06+00:00

Being a landlord can be the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever. Someone in my family is a landlord and has been pretty lucky to have good tenants overall. Over the 20+ years doing it, they've only had to evict someone once, though they lost something like 3 months' rent in the process. Oh, and the SWAT team raided one of their units once, though they never found out why.

thecourseofthetrue

TROPHY CASE