Everyone complaining or saying leave but nobody talking about alternatives that solve some of the problems. Mastodon exists. Nostr exists. BlueSky kind of exists.

+1 for this system. I do the same and it makes day-to-day spending guilt free and simple. A few times I have run #2 dry and had to eat beans for a few days, but I've gotten better.

25% US Large Cap

25% US Mid

25% US Small Cap

25% International

No bonds. Will reconsider at age 40.

Tax strategy - Traditional is more focused in Large and Mid. Small and Intl (higher expected returns) go in Roth.

I think you're okay either way but personally if I have an emergency fund and no higher interest debt, I'm paying that off for sure. Even if I lost a couple bucks, worth it for peace of mind.

Would be different if the debt was a mortgage at 3%, which many people do have right now.

Edit: One note for folks doing similar math, don't forget interest and yield on bonds are taxed as ordinary income (20~30% in the US).

It would be trivially easy to add privacy any number of ways if they didn't insist on tracking the users and logging that info.

They could even track it and just not make it available by web. Or require 2FA. Not exactly a nation-state level attack being described here.

People have just become accustomed to not caring about privacy and so that's what we get.

Every city had a fine system using cash/coins or cards you could fund at a kiosk by cash coin or card. Those cards were anonymous.

Now everyone has to be fancy and link credit cards and phones to accounts for every activity of daily life.

This comment is the perfect balance of sarcasm and valid analogy

Hard to believe these days. Do you have a blog or publish any list of your alternatives? Particularly difficult around smartphone and apps like email/calendar/photos etc isn't it?

Controversial take - no budget. Split income into 3 or more buckets - savings, critical bills (rent, utilities, debt, etc), and discretionary. I manage as separate accounts.

Spend discretionary freely and enjoy the peace or mind that your financial future is secured by the first 2 buckets. If you run low, rice and beans til next paycheck.

No need to track coffee expenditures, you'll realize during rice and beans week that you can make it at home.

Your mileage may vary.

I think a community like this should have two goals:

1. Be on the fairly cutting edge of personal finance topics like saavy tips for current credit cards, tax codes, retirement plans, and retail promotions that help people maximize their money and plan for futures.

2. Maintain resources for basic financial literacy. IMO these are best done as sidebar items since they don't change much day to day, but they are critical for bringing in new members and frankly helping people since most schools don't do it.

I do think part of #2 is letting people ask dumb questions (What do I do now?), but only if their situation is not obviously covered in the sidebar. As sidebar grows, these should become less frequent.

I'm glad to find this comment here. I was about to unsubscribe because I'm here for personal finance; not tax policy debate or politics.

Now if a policy like that did come out and the article helped to navigate or take advantage of it as an individual, then I would be interested.

There seems to be some confusion about the level of jobs involved here. This isn't about standing on an assembly line for as long as you can hold your bladder. Low-level tasks like that are highly automated in these factories. But these also aren't smoothly running processes where tasks are all routine and well-defined.

These are equipment technicians who find out one day from another team that a robot arm off by one tenth of a mm results in ruined product, and the current calibration only has mm resolution. A delay in addressing this could cost millions. Folks will need to stay late. Orders will need to be followed. Just an example.

Starting up a fab is like building an airplane mid flight. It's not as simple as hiring more workers because the new problems aren't predictable, and knowledge can't be conveyed to new folks fast enough. Workers learn on the fly.

This is what Asian cultures have been kicking our ass in as far as semiconductor fabs. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on work culture and hours, but I don't think we (Americans) can expect to compete with Asian peers in this space without compromise.

Also, these are great careers for people who don't mind working and enjoy challenges.