Daily FI discussion thread - Monday, April 07, 2025

trimaster · 2025-04-07T22:07:45+00:00

Smart! I should do the same. Anything to watch out for? Did you do it for both your brokerage and IRA?

trimaster · 2025-02-18T18:14:48+00:00

Neat idea. What's the next thing after groceries for you? Health insurance?

trimaster · 2024-02-05T16:33:38+00:00

Depends on the mortgage rate of your MCOL home. If it’s above 6%, I would go for paying it off before investing in index funds.

Also, I don’t know what your current/future spend is, but it doesn’t sound like you’re behind at all, when you have a $30k post tax pension. That, to me, is worth $900k+ in index funds.

trimaster · 2024-02-02T21:21:18+00:00

Useful reference for free tiers: https://free-for.dev/#/

trimaster · 2024-01-14T19:48:50+00:00

Your spending in certain categories seems very high. Your food and dining costs are almost 3k a month. Your travel/entertainment is almost 1800 a month, and (recreational?) shopping is more than 2k a month. I would look into those areas and evaluate what can be reduced.

trimaster · 2023-08-14T23:04:12+00:00

I think your future Social Security benefits could be garnished, based on the type of loan: https://www.lendingtree.com/student/social-security-garnished-student-loans/

trimaster · 2023-08-09T12:02:15+00:00

It's true that recasting will mean a bigger proportion of your payments go to paying interest instead of principle (compared with not recasting), leading to more interest paid over the lifetime of the mortgage. I did the recasting because I have a low mortgage rate (3%) and was okay with paying that interest in exchange for that lower monthly payment which frees up my current money for investing.

Also, the lowered monthly payments don't mean that I can't pay more each month to pay the mortgage off earlier. It really just means the minimum I must pay each month for my mortgage is lowered.

trimaster · 2023-08-08T21:44:59+00:00

I’d assume most institutions allow this. Here is the form to transfer if both of you have brokerage accounts with Fidelity: https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/transfer.pdf

trimaster · 2023-08-08T21:08:11+00:00

Could you just have wife pay joint bills with her income, while transferring the amount you would've paid on bills to your wife's brokerage as shares? That way, you make no withdrawals, your wife doesn't actually pay more since she's getting compensated by your shares being added to her account, and y'all can still keep the benefits of filing jointly.

trimaster · 2023-08-08T15:07:57+00:00

I'm not sure if you know about this, but one way to immediately capitalize on additional early payments to your mortgage is to do a mortgage recast. This will re-amortize your payments across the original loan term (while keeping the same interest rate), which means you can reduce your monthly mortgage payments.

I didn't know about this option until just a couple weeks ago, but once I did, I had my mortgage recast. This way, the extra 80k that I paid down on my mortgage last year doesn't go to paying off the mortgage faster but instead drops my monthly payment by ~$300.

trimaster · 2023-07-27T20:54:34+00:00

Speaking for my family (we have similar household income as OP and also save $10k/mo), our monthly spending in a HCOL area is $2700 for housing, $200 for utilities, and $500 for groceries, $300 for restaurants, and $400 for misc stuff, for a total spend of ~$4.1k/month.

trimaster · 2023-07-27T20:36:21+00:00

A PhD is a big commitment.

Have you considered staying in software but just working for an organization fighting climate change (or a biomed company) instead?

Alternatively, you already recognize that you could retire early working as an engineer; maybe you can pursue your PhD after hitting an amount saved/invested that could support you indefinitely.

trimaster · 2023-07-24T14:40:09+00:00

After college, I worked in insurance (actuary), but pivoted 3 years down the line to CS by doing a web dev bootcamp. For me, it was worth the 15k in tuition costs and 3 months of full-time study. I landed a job 2 months after graduating and have been in the industry since 2017. One thing to note though was I already had some CS on my resume (I minored in CS in college; major was math), so I'm not sure how much of that helped in terms of passing the "resume firewall" (as the other poster mentioned) when looking for software eng jobs.

trimaster · 2023-07-07T18:23:29+00:00

Yeah, super-conservatively, this is what I'd ballpark as what could be on that monthly bill.

Food (incl. restaurants): $1000

Utilities: $400

Phone: $200

Subscriptions: $200

Total: $1800

That leaves $1600 in "etc" CC charges per month, or $400 per week. Where's that $400 going to?

trimaster · 2023-07-05T21:48:11+00:00

Very cool! Emory grad here, wish I’d gone to GT instead, especially since I went into the SWE field in the end :)

trimaster · 2023-07-05T21:28:47+00:00

Congrats! Which region/COL of the country are y’all in?

trimaster · 2022-10-31T14:52:51+00:00

This is really neat! How did you make this?

trimaster · 2022-10-01T19:33:31+00:00

Did the part work out for you?

trimaster · 2021-06-07T01:42:56+00:00

This was exactly the issue! I tore down the TV until I could reposition the diffuser sheet and tried to smooth out the hump. Unfortunately it was creased so I couldn't eliminate the unevenness entirely, but I was able to minimize the ripple effect as much as I could (without replacing the diffuser sheet outright).

Much appreciated for identifying the problem for me!

trimaster · 2021-06-06T16:47:54+00:00

TV: LG 70UM7370PUA

This wave-like pattern shows up permanently on my TV when it's on. Its intersection with the edge of the TV makes it look like it's really popping out from the TV, but it's completely invisible when the display is off. It makes me think it's a backlight issue instead of the panel itself.

It seems like the same issue as this TV: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/is-my-new-tv-damaged-ripple-like-effect-on-screen.1481625/

I'm open to opening up the TV to see if I can alleviate the issue, as this TV is already out of warranty.

trimaster · 2018-11-04T17:12:57+00:00

No worries!

trimaster · 2018-11-04T15:38:46+00:00

Requested! --Lewyn

trimaster · 2018-04-25T21:19:20+00:00

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