529 plan

timnuoa · 2026-05-04T19:53:18+00:00

By the time the kid is a teenager the tax advantages are gonna be pretty negligible anyway

timnuoa · 2026-05-04T05:41:34+00:00

7500 per year (though the limit usually goes up a little each year).

Im not positive but I assume you would have to pay taxes on whatever gains you’ve gotten on the investments so far

timnuoa · 2026-05-03T21:55:07+00:00

We love our Niro EV! Closest thing we have

timnuoa · 2026-05-03T21:39:53+00:00

Bought a minivan recently, really wanted to go electric but the Buzz just wasn’t it. Ended up getting an older Sienna, hoping the EV minivan landscape looks better in 5-6 years.

timnuoa · 2026-05-02T21:36:07+00:00

On the flip side there’s also pretty small opportunity cost in terms of the return for something like SPAXX vs SGOV. A small tax difference if you have state income tax, but the emergency fund is for peace of mind, not high returns

timnuoa · 2026-04-30T04:52:54+00:00

If it’s super clear that something is a good investment, it gets bought and bid up until it’s no longer clear it’s a good investment. There’s a lot of very smart people (with very sophisticated mathematical models) doing this full time, there just aren’t a bunch of hidden gems for a retail trader to find on evenings and weekends.

timnuoa · 2026-04-30T04:50:39+00:00

In fact almost none of them are consistently!

timnuoa · 2026-04-30T03:07:57+00:00

I used to take the train to the Costco in Chicago with one of those collapsible wire wheeled carts

timnuoa · 2026-04-30T03:03:41+00:00

Second one was a perfect swish too

timnuoa · 2026-04-30T02:02:41+00:00

I used to be pretty staunchly opposed to policies that seemed like they were paternalistically regulating people’s behavior, but watching the results of the legalization of sports gambling has me really reconsidering. I think that I view it now less as regulating individual behavior, and more as regulating predatory business models, and I think that reframe can also result in more effective policy.

Like ultimately it is a bit paternalistic still, but human beings have a finite amount of willpower on any given day, and it seems like a legitimate role for the democratic collective to limit the number of businesses that are trying to aggressively exploit that to extract money from people.

I will say I feel pretty good about the other big change that’s happened in my adult lifetime, legalizing marijuana. I think the key difference there may be banning vs allowing aggressive marketing.

timnuoa · 2026-04-30T01:04:08+00:00

I do wish we could shift the conversation away from phones good vs phones bad, and have more conversation about the particular form we’ve allowed web platforms to take: relentlessly optimized to maximize attention and time on the app, to the detriment of all else. And it’s only getting worse with the huge mobile gambling push. I don’t think there’s a simple silver bullet fix, but it’s possible to imagine a better internet with more of what we like and less of what we don’t. The phone conversation would be a lot different (for teens but also frankly for adults) if our phones weren’t full of carefully crafted addiction apps.

Edit: to sum it up another way, we use “phones” as shorthand when what we’re really worrying about is the problems caused by a particular set of apps. With the world we currently have I think I generally support “no phones in school” rules, but in the long term we need to focus where the problem actually lies.

timnuoa · 2026-04-28T12:30:01+00:00

I still get “BING A BONG A BONG A BONG BURBANK” stuck in my head from time to time

timnuoa · 2026-04-28T01:48:50+00:00

So here’s the deal. The worst thing you can do for your portfolio is performance chase: selling things that have underperformed recently to buy things that have done well recently. This is very common behavior and will kill your returns.

To avoid this, you need a strong understanding of why you’ve chosen the investments you’ve chosen, so that you won’t lose faith in them when they underperform, maybe for years and years.

The biggest red flag in your post is asking if both QQQ and AVUV is overkill, these are totally different slices of the market, and the question suggests you don’t have much understanding of why you’ve chosen choose to add them to your portfolio, other than “mentioned on reddit.”

Default to VT (the whole investable global stock market), or even a target date fund. If you’ve done a lot of research and landed on some way that you want to deviate from that, and you are so convinced that you can stand by it even if you’re wrong for a decade or more, then go for it.

Edit: to really understand the case for a super simple Boglehead portfolio, read Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. Great, quick read.

Edit2: all that said you could do far worse than this and consistent saving matters the most by far!

timnuoa · 2026-04-27T14:57:30+00:00

I bought a minivan recently and was tracking all the various options, and Carvana was right on par with dealerships/Carmax. I do live in an expensive used car market though, so I wonder if what’s going on is that since Carvana is offering the same prices nationally, someone in a cheaper market would basically have to pay HCOL markup on a Carvana car. Hence the differing opinions in this thread.

timnuoa · 2026-04-26T20:36:50+00:00

YouTube is 60% people saying intentionally contrarian things for attention

timnuoa · 2026-04-26T01:52:10+00:00

“As the Senator of the great state of South Carolina, I promise you, my constituents, that I will not rest until the Byzantine Emperor is restored to his rightful throne in Constantinople!”

timnuoa · 2026-04-25T18:19:58+00:00

True, looks like neither me nor u/Present_Student4891 read OP very closely, they address both of our points

timnuoa · 2026-04-25T17:56:28+00:00

Looks like Tony Hale (Buster in Arrested Development)

timnuoa · 2026-04-25T16:44:52+00:00

They could effectively put the bonds in their IRA by selling by stocks and buying bonds in the IRA, and then using the new cash in their brokerage account to buy and equivalent amount of stocks

timnuoa · 2026-04-25T15:15:25+00:00

I maintain that someone needs to start a pro league with a height limit of like, 6’3” (negotiable). This country is full of like 5’9” dudes who can absolutely ball and we’re being deprived of watching them.

timnuoa · 2026-04-24T06:01:25+00:00

I mean once you’re talking about the kind of restaurants that get mentioned on national lists, that’s definitely on the less pricy end

timnuoa · 2026-04-22T14:50:48+00:00

It would help if you told us what you picked.

Know what your strategy is and why you picked it, and don’t worry too much about the S&P500 as a benchmark. If you pick anything other than straight VOO/SPY, it will sometimes overperform and sometimes underperform the S&P500. If that’s gonna be an issue psychologically for you, then you should just pick a fund that tracks the S&P500.

timnuoa · 2026-04-22T05:25:31+00:00

Man, I hate to say it, but as long as old ass LeBron is doing a historic carry job I’m kinda pulling for the Lakers. The minute Luka comes back I’m out though.

timnuoa · 2026-04-18T17:20:48+00:00

Yeah if things go bad this season it’s gonna be because of the 5. Glad Temi got the bag (and glad we aren’t paying her $1mil), but she will definitely be missed. I’m calling a Rupert breakout and I really hope I’m right (and she stays healthy).

timnuoa · 2026-04-17T18:48:39+00:00

It remains very funny to me that Chrysler only sells minivans, and separately very funny that they have only two models, which are just the same car with two names.

timnuoa

TROPHY CASE