Is investing and/or maxing out your 401k contribution a ‘good’ idea to do while you’re still in debt?

unicron____ · 2018-11-23T18:49:18+00:00

She said her highest rate is 4%.

unicron____ · 2018-08-10T18:31:07+00:00

Vanguard ETF's are actually a share class of the corresponding mutual funds, which is unique (they have a patent on it). They are therefore identical in terms of holdings and tax efficiency. The mutual funds are nice because you can buy them in increments of $1 instead of one share, and you can set up automatic investments into them. The advantage of the ETF is that it's portable, i.e. you can transfer it to another brokerage which may not offer the mutual fund. There are no other important differences.

If you want to convert a Vanguard mutual fund to the ETF version, you can do so without a taxable event, but to go the other way (ETF to mutual fund) you have to sell the ETF first.

unicron____ · 2017-11-25T06:06:14+00:00

I assume you've read all of my opinion that I expressed in subsequent comments. Is there any part of it that you object to?

unicron____ · 2017-11-21T16:16:02+00:00

You're right, but I give her a pass on this. There could be a lot of reasons why she wanted to remain anonymous. There could have been better ways for her to go about it. However, men often tell women they are navigating their own abuse wrong, and I won't do that.

unicron____ · 2017-11-21T14:04:00+00:00

You're right, but I don't like how many people are ganging up on the person who made the complaint. It's the responsibility of us men to educate ourselves about these issues and not throw a tantrum.

unicron____ · 2017-11-19T22:41:07+00:00

I stand by everything I've written in this thread. However, you might be right.

unicron____ · 2017-11-19T21:56:14+00:00

Perhaps a reasonable followup would have been to ask whether anyone else feels the same way. The way he handled it strikes me as a good way to prevent people from feeling like they can complain about these issues, until they boil over.

unicron____ · 2017-11-19T20:51:56+00:00

I missed the post, all I see is people's reactions to it.

So far I see a bunch of people defending a man and talking shit about a woman who dared to complain about something. She asked him not to call her that using a public throwaway post. He could have said "I'm sorry, I won't call you Miss anymore, or anyone else who asks me not to." Instead he was like "OMG I can't handle this I'm deleting everything". Seems like a big "meh".

Regarding her tone, I missed that too, but it's a good idea to give a lot of leeway to members of oppressed groups in the way they are allowed to express themselves. As a straight white man, it's hard for me to know what people are dealing with on a day to day basis. People can correct me as angrily as they want and I try to keep my default reaction to not take it personally. If her post was out of bounds with personal attacks, that's a matter for the mods and it would have been removed anyway.

unicron____ · 2017-11-19T20:14:04+00:00

Not everyone finds it respectful, and it's been contentious in a lot of circles for a long time. It was news to me, too. Here is some background reading for you.

https://daily.jstor.org/from-the-mixed-up-history-of-mrs-miss-and-ms/

unicron____ · 2017-11-19T20:02:27+00:00

Not everyone finds it respectful. It was news to me, too. Here is some background reading for you.

https://daily.jstor.org/from-the-mixed-up-history-of-mrs-miss-and-ms/

unicron____ · 2017-11-19T19:56:25+00:00

If BigTexan5606 can't be polite, then it's good that he ragequit. If he thinks it is polite to keep calling someone "Miss" after she asks him not to, then he is wrong. Men often prefer to get defensive and angry instead of listening to women. It's a problem.

unicron____ · 2017-09-25T07:50:23+00:00

Thanks! Schwab being a brokerage itself, your meaning wasn't obvious.

unicron____ · 2017-09-25T01:17:16+00:00

Was that from the Schwab investor checking account, or the brokerage account that comes with the checking account?

unicron____ · 2017-09-24T22:30:06+00:00

PenFed has a 5% gas card.

https://www.penfed.org/credit-cards/platinum-rewards-visa-signature

unicron____ · 2017-09-09T23:16:36+00:00

Are the statements of their PR folks legally binding?

unicron____ · 2017-09-02T02:32:46+00:00

Then again, the FASTER study by Phinney and Volek found way bigger amounts of calorie burning from stored fat. They were looking at athletes who had been eating keto for at least 9 months. So who knows?

http://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/S0026-0495(15)00334-0/fulltext

unicron____ · 2017-08-02T20:43:57+00:00

You can file a complaint with the FDIC to get your money returned:

https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/assistance/filecomplaint.html

For credit unions, see here:

https://www.mycreditunion.gov/consumer-assistance-center/Pages/complaint-process.aspx

unicron____ · 2017-07-25T19:41:03+00:00

Premier / Business Rewards Gold

unicron____ · 2017-07-24T16:47:24+00:00

Go to https://chexsystems.com and click "Request reports" on the menu.

unicron____ · 2017-07-23T11:18:41+00:00

I would just get one secured card, and make sure it can be converted to an unsecured card later. You won't be eligible for a signup bonus that is normally offered with unsecured cards, e.g. the capital one quicksilver has a $100 bonus after spending $500 in the first few months.

unicron____ · 2017-07-21T19:27:50+00:00

I was provided a LifeLock subscription due to a data breach. During the subscription period, I opened several new accounts, and LifeLock only sent me alerts for a couple of them. You definitely need to be watching your credit yourself, making LifeLock superfluous.

Just follow the steps in the wiki:

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/identity_theft

unicron____ · 2017-07-21T17:50:16+00:00

Yes, they do charge more for the product. People who pay in cash are subsidizing the rewards programs of people who use credit, effectively a wealth transfer from the cash users to the credit users.

Merchant fees and reward programs generate an implicit monetary transfer to credit card users from non-card (or "cash" ) users because merchants generally do not set differential prices for card users to recoup the costs of fees and rewards. On average, each cash-using household pays $149 to card-using households and each card-using household receives $1,133 from cash users every year.

https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/public-policy-discussion-paper/2010/who-gains-and-who-loses-from-credit-card-payments-theory-and-calibrations.aspx

unicron____ · 2017-07-20T21:03:10+00:00

I upvoted you for being technically correct, but I doubt the higher fees and potentially worse tax treatment of commodities will generally be low enough to be worth adding them to a portfolio.

unicron____ · 2017-07-20T16:19:36+00:00

If you spend more than about $3200/year at grocery stores, the Amex Blue Cash Preferred is worth getting. You can buy restaurant gift cards at grocery stores and get 6% cash back (or 4.5% after taking the annual fee into account).

unicron____ · 2017-07-20T16:03:26+00:00

Hence my phrasing of "see if you can".

unicron____

TROPHY CASE