• 95 Posts
  • 465 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • It’s both my birthday and spreadsheet day!

    It’s pretty crazy to think about how far I’ve come, since it was exactly 10 years ago I started making major moves for FIRE. Back then I was stuck in a dead-end job, had a bad relationship, and was living in my parents basement. I decided around that birthday I was going to go back to school and get a masters degree to jumpstart a career change.

    That choice led me to my current job that I’ve been at for roughly 9 years, am happily married to someone who respects me, have my own house and dog, have been able to travel to multiple countries, and have increased my net worth by roughly $750k.

    For anyone in their mid-20s who thinks getting ahead in life is impossible and is feeling hopeless. I am living proof that it’s not. A decade can change absolutely everything so long as you can work up the courage to jump out of a bad situation.









  • For some reason, everyone always assumes the next downturn will look exactly like the last one. And then they’re always surprised when it’s caused by something completely different, so they assume this is the time everything will go to zero.

    Maybe someday they will be right and this is the time everything collapses. Or maybe it won’t. But it is different every time. Either way, I hate that the US gov is intentionally crashing the market for stupid reasons. I can only hope it is temporary and people aren’t too badly hurt by this.




  • Would they be interested in learning about those things from someone other than you? JL Collins’s stock series was enormously helpful for my understanding of investing when I started out. You could give them the book the “Simple Path to Wealth” (the edited/published version of the series) and it would be zero effort on your part. Bonus: he started writing it to teach his teenage daughter about investing, so the target audience would be perfect for your nieces (making some assumptions re: ages).




  • Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.

    I did do some market timing today by contributing the last $200 to max out my IRA. I was waiting for my next paycheck in 2 weeks, but decided to finish it off after I saw the market drop for the day. We shall see if I made a good choice in the coming days.

    Overall, I have a comfortable e-fund and enough years to retirement that the volatility isn’t a big concern. I mostly check out of curiosity.






  • Got home from being out of town and my personal laptop is broken. It seems either to be a dead motherboard or dead hard disks? Not really a computer person and mostly used Gemini to even get that close to understanding what was going on. It is probably ~4.5 - 5 years old so I’m guessing it’s about time for a replacement.

    Any one have suggestions for a decent laptop? I mostly use it for web browsing/streaming. I do also use it to process photos after vacations. Not trying to break the bank while still getting a decent product with a hopefully better lifespan.