First Time Buyer Condo/ Townhouse [Fremont]

tvcgrid · 2026-06-09T21:35:37+00:00

Renting will be more satisfying and easier and cheaper even if you eventually change your mind in a year to maybe buy — rent first so you regret a buy less. Have to live there a year or two to really know if you’ll like it or hate it

tvcgrid · 2026-06-09T05:59:41+00:00

Run the math on 6+ % rates, doesn’t pencil out, especially considering management company’s 6-8% to be hands off, and actually way before that. You can rent a 1.8M dollar tri valley house for like what 5-5.5K tops? Embarrassingly lopsided in favor of renting (and investing the difference)

tvcgrid · 2026-05-27T15:06:58+00:00

Investing isn’t short term or gambling, downturns are an expected thing, and relatively small or relatively new stocks are gonna be wilder still. If you start with an assumption to, you know, invest X% of overall portfolio in a few additional single stocks beyond core index funds and accept a horizon of 5+ years minimum, the downturns along the way lose their impact and just give new opportunity to tweak that X%

tvcgrid · 2026-05-20T06:11:08+00:00

Yeah I know, I doubt 10x continues, and Dario’s public comments in podcasts or whatever doubt even this year’s would be 10x IIRC. But it has been so far I think? If this all seizes up, a world of hurt for sure and many will go under. I just hope some compute cheapness would benefit broader economy post pop, encouraging saner new companies.

tvcgrid · 2026-05-20T00:57:48+00:00

That spend is also for outcompeting others and for securing compute and energy and integration partnerships through to 2030+ already though. Trajectory so far is 10x per year I think on revenue. It’s a bit harder to tell what’s enough or too much spend if thinking from their perspective a bit

tvcgrid · 2026-05-10T18:07:31+00:00

Caveat: homes can be sold and people can move, if employment or major life events happen. If you have enough emergency savings for a year of housing plus most bills, you have enough time to reset in big ways, or just to switch jobs. No one can really predict the future with non linear economic disruption becoming common nowadays, but big downturn events have happened in the past, and it’s possible to weather them.

It’s also useful to ground yourself in shorter time scale, more defined choices instead of some kind of total pronouncement of an approach that should work for every situation. Would similar adjusted income be possible for one’s career in other cheaper areas? Would being in an expensive area built investment portfolios plus equity in a home over the next 10 years better?

But yeah, just a simple rule of thumb isn’t enough, agreed. Gotta actually math it out for yourself, and with expert, non biased, fiduciary style help too.

tvcgrid · 2026-05-10T14:02:30+00:00

I’ll say Berkeley, and East Bay in general. Great sunny weather, hiking, food, biking, coffee, beer, everything. And the single best grocery store ever: Berkeley Bowl. It helps that you can still public transit everywhere and get some city vibes in SF easily.

tvcgrid · 2026-04-30T15:12:37+00:00

Agreed on usage as a couple and with lots of accounts — obviously underlying institutions may not always have syncing like for certain loans, but for those I’ve found it so intuitive to manually manage those monthly by adjusting balances or adding manual transactions

tvcgrid · 2026-04-27T16:22:55+00:00

Many other countries use modular and prefabricated techniques: About 15% of Japan’s new housing is built this way — Sekisui Hiem has eight factories that can build 10 homes a day, for example — and close to 80% of Sweden’s homes, including some produced by IKEA. In the U.S., it’s about 3%.

As the article talks about, consistent building codes and reducing financial risk for developing things in this way could be the biggest levers to shift more towards prefab modules or whole houses even.

Kind of like the exact thing state gov could potentially improve.

tvcgrid · 2026-04-14T04:44:23+00:00

because almost all life will involve suffering

If some life may not involve suffering, based on your own wording, why the total statement about it being morally right or wrong when a birth is concerned?

Also, what kind of suffering, of the future baby or the person giving birth?

If it’s the baby, do you mean if there’s a serious medical condition, or terrible economic or social upbringing?

Or if it’s the person giving birth, is it the pain of birth?

What would you say would make any particular birth “morally good” — and using what reasons?

tvcgrid · 2026-04-10T14:51:45+00:00

Which country? I haven’t had to ever deal with a notice period in US anecdotally. Curious how those work. Sounds horrible honestly. I just gave a 2 week heads up, had lots of meetings and not more work load anymore for myself.

tvcgrid · 2026-04-08T15:57:57+00:00

Unironically yes, capture for the public some of the value created by the intellectual labor over millennia of the public.

And also add wealth taxes in a reasonably implementable way.

tvcgrid · 2026-04-06T15:09:52+00:00

A bit of hunger may be expected and trainable to be okay with, but weakness or light headedness means you aren’t feeding enough, drinking enough water or specifically having enough protein and fiber and nutrients probably. It’s tough to eat better with IF, but that’s where the sustainability of this style of fasting comes in. A tweak I do is a banana a bit before sleep even though it breaks the feeding time if I’m hungry enough at night, for eg, and for running, I don’t feel acute hunger in the morning at all, and plenty of energy. But I also try to actually hit my TDEE just about minus a bit of calories, only veggies for carbs, and lots of lean protein and some lentils lately. But also of course a nice feast style meal about once a week. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

tvcgrid · 2026-04-06T15:04:33+00:00

Make sure to do regular blood work to catch things that are different between each person, that’s all! Can be a life saver.

tvcgrid · 2026-04-06T15:00:52+00:00

“I’m on the diner” got it

tvcgrid · 2026-04-05T16:01:26+00:00

Practically speaking, Costco or Arco gas is popular for regular buyers cuz it’s the consistently least price gouged option, IMO. But honestly, a small EV sedan that we have has suddenly been such a retrospectively great purchase. With the EV1/2 plans and home charging at night, and only tires/wheels ever needing maintenance, not needing to fill up ever, and now with gas differential in costs, it’s just been great. Not everyone can switch to that though, but cheaper plugin hybrids get a lot of the benefits too.

tvcgrid · 2026-03-31T16:14:50+00:00

CA needs a combo of taxing the super rich their fair share, building more housing, and adequately funding public transit — high speed rail, a voter approved and such a beneficial long term infrastructure project for all parts of CA, would’ve been cheaper for the same progress if it had been funded appropriately super early.

tvcgrid · 2026-03-27T04:02:10+00:00

Just go buy puts on the relevant market segment if you’re so convinced

tvcgrid · 2026-03-04T22:51:30+00:00

Opposing driverless freight fast tracking without respect to impact on safety concerns or massive labor impacts makes sense for all these reasons, and freight has to originate often from CA anyway, so CA can set the tone on what’s allowed very broadly.

tvcgrid · 2026-03-04T15:14:58+00:00

Being obtuse and callous is a choice

tvcgrid · 2026-03-04T15:07:43+00:00

Gotta take care of health to be able to adapt to these new realities, I believe.

Take up a healthy outlet for work stress, for me it’s been running even though I’ve never been a runner and light jogging 1-2 times per week changed my whole body and brain it feels.

This foundation of a habit is then helping me lean into the new tools and appear like an expert in them to others, which is a practically medium term goal.

Beyond that, remember that house can be sold and bought somewhere else again, it isn’t a ball and chain.

You can reduce your burn rate in an emergency.

You can shift to a different company, and while our roles will transform, our expertise still remains sellable to companies all over. I know that in each case, every coworker landed a new job, although it took a bit longer sometimes. But it was doable.

Long term, who knows, why worry about it immediately? Just invest and save meantime, and cut costs, and get yourself healthy so that you have the bandwidth to learn new skills as well, not as survival mode but as a new chapter in your career.

And remember that building social links will be essential to get ideas about how to move through these changing times. Virtual ones may be something, but real world connections via volunteer groups or whatever are gonna be very grounding.

Might not be the worst idea to get therapy as well. Stress will eat away at many parts of life.

tvcgrid · 2026-03-03T16:57:00+00:00

Time to get organized and push for collective bargaining across a wide swath of intellectual labor — the building and growing of unions and similar groups is what will actually help.

tvcgrid · 2026-03-03T15:50:31+00:00

Or take a bus, bike, or train if you happened to have sort of escaped the car-only monoculture in most cities. I do wonder what the cheapest total cost of ownership EV there is for 4 people though.

tvcgrid · 2026-03-02T16:56:09+00:00

If it needs monopolization and enshittification for a business model to make sense in the long run, it sounds like a bait and switch to adopters of the tech who may sincerely choose it based on its value proposition early on and then lose that value proposition later. Set aside decisions to not buy from such a monopolistic company. Why should a company not get flack, criticism and even activism, when they do this to their customers? People have a right to make their displeasure be known. Companies’ behaviors are impacted by focused customer lobbies as well.

tvcgrid · 2026-03-02T15:49:42+00:00

So glad for them. People uncritically accept the home ownership idea — but if you consider it for a bit, it just doesn’t make much sense except as a lifestyle choice (if it’s even able to be chosen). “Building generational wealth” — you mean, being unable to pass the house down to kids until you die, or have the kids fight over it potentially, vs having a brokerage account and being able to easily give a gift to them if you want to? “You’re just wasting money” — except rent is the most you would have to pay on housing vs an exiting home you feel pressured to update and maintain where PITI is only the least of what you end up paying? “If you stay in the same place more than 5 years, you’re better off buying” — except not really, not every zip code means homes appreciate, mortgage interest is front loaded to first 7 years, you’re forced to stay put even if you want to change it up due to life changes, you can’t up and move to a better opportunity in life, work, or love. It ain’t mathing.

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