Adam Savage

My favorite from my time working in the news industry:

Neighbor puts toilets in their yard facing other neighbors house. That neighbor builds a fence so they don’t have to look at the toilets. Original neighbor then hangs toilets from the tree so it is visible over the fence. Cue complaints to get toilets removed by city/county.

I believe the original dispute had to do with tearing out a shared bush and parking on lawn, but I don’t recall the details.

Oh fun. $330k for a 500sqft shack that is partially collapsed. The only info on the listing states the lot will need to be scraped, so basically that is the cost of an empty lot.

Going out a bit further, you can find a couple of houses around $350k that are liveable. They are 700-900 sqft and 0-2 bedrooms.

Go for daily walks in nature.

Do yoga

Play a recreational sport that interests you

Read (I guess that’s still consumption)

Write

Volunteer for a cause you care about

This is pretty niche, but I’m in a casual curling league and nearly everyone is over 40. Everyone there is super welcoming and friendly.

Asking where you are from is pretty normal conversation, especially if you have a noticeable accent. Asking where your parents/grandparents/etc are from is less common. Are you by chance not-white? Sometimes these sorts of questions have a race element to them

New one dropped in September. Get it if you’re able

General retirement advice is to contribute 15% total to your retirement account. Since your employer adds 12%, you should contribute a minimum of 3%.

As for your coworkers advice, it may or may not be valid. Contributing to your 401k or a taxable account, both allow you to invest your money. The 401k comes along with tax advantages. Assuming you are making Traditional contributions, then you are saving taxes at the marginal tax bracket (potentially 22 or 24%). If you contribute enough to drop your MAGI to the 12% bracket, then the tax benefit is much less. You can still contribute to Roth, which means you can withdraw that money tax free in the future but you have to pay taxes on it now.

Another thing to consider is the fees in your 401k. Since you are limited to the options provided, sometimes fees are quite high. If you don’t have any options that cost less than 1%, you likely are better off investing your money elsewhere.

Finally, you get into the really personal part of personal finance. What are your goals? Do you have short/medium term goals that you would prefer to save this money for? For instance, if you want to save up for a down payment for a house in the future, putting that money in a 401k is a bad choice. Do you have a comfortable emergency fund to pay for unexpected expenses? Do you have high interest debt to pay off?

A good resource is this flowchart from r/personal finance: https://imgur.com/u0ocDRI

You should wait for the statement to pay your spending instead of covering it same day. Otherwise it’s not reported to the credit agencies and it looks like you have no activity on your card.

Also, generally speaking some fluctuation from month to month is to be expected. I wouldn’t worry too much about 10 points in either direction.

We took the dogs to run around at a park before the festivities. We were definitely the only people there.

This seems like the author stole the concept of Bob the World’s Worst Market Timer.

But the point still stands. Investing in broad market indexes and forgetting it is the best thing you can do financially for yourself.

If you don’t know much about investments, there should be a target date fund that is a mix of stocks and bonds. Pick the date that is closest to your expected retirement date (eg if you’re 25 and aiming for retirement at 65 you’ll pick the 2065 fund), and invest in that one.

A good thing to ask about is the expense ratio. This is how much the fund will cost you in fees, and can seriously impact your returns. If the fees are 1% or higher then seriously reconsider that fund.

John Oliver did a piece on 401ks a while back that was very informative.

Ikea sells cloudberry jam, or at least they used to a few years ago when we impulse bought it.

I can see all posts and comments when I go to my profile, in order from most recent to oldest. There is an option to select just posts or just comments as well.

TIL Henry Kissinger was still alive. I would’ve guessed he’d died in the 90s.

Lol, like that would stop the spam.

I’ve found whenever you get a new number, it was probably abandoned by someone with credit issues and/or stalkers.

I think the only thing you can do is put your phone on silent for everything except whitelisted numbers and have it go directly to voicemail for everyone else.

Are you budgeting and allowing for fun when you’re in the A phase? If not, or if you are but not at a reasonable level, it might be caused by a reaction to extreme limitations on yourself.

Lasik. Being able to wake up in the morning and just see things with zero effort was life changing.

The same way I always do. Ignore as much of it as I can until I get my ballot.

Research people/issues as I fill out the ballot.

Check the results the next day to see how the results shake out. Repeat for the next election.

Most people I know with taxidermy are hunters. So it is more “Let me relax in a space full of the creatures I’ve murdered.”