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Grouchio posted:My mom wants me to invest into a 529A Account on account of my qualifications for it (autism). Is this wise? If it doesn't impact your ability to get other services due to asset limits then yes. I would take their money as long as it's not going to negatively impact their life.
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Mar 14, 2021 19:06
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H110Hawk posted:If it doesn't impact your ability to get other services due to asset limits then yes. I would take their money as long as it's not going to negatively impact their life.
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Mar 17, 2021 01:12
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Grouchio posted:Looks like I'm going in for a 529 Able plan. Thing is, in order to maintain Mainecare disability benefits I have to keep my liquid cash below 8k and earn under 33k a year. How the hell's that gonna work when I get a raise or two and I'm making 60-80k? You should talk to an attorney about this honestly. One who specializes in disability benefits. Do you have a social worker? Hopefully at 60-80k you're also getting healthcare through work, I don't know what other services you need though such as in home help etc.
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Mar 17, 2021 01:17
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I vaguely remember a while ago there was a goon that was some sort of nuclear weapons grade rated tax accountant guy (could represent you in IRS matters or something ?) in here, does this person still exist ? I've got a question about capital gains taxes and I figured I might as well ask him.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:57
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MREBoy posted:I vaguely remember a while ago there was a goon that was some sort of nuclear weapons grade rated tax accountant guy (could represent you in IRS matters or something ?) in here, does this person still exist ? I've got a question about capital gains taxes and I figured I might as well ask him. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3394641
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Mar 29, 2021 19:01
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 Thank you!
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Mar 29, 2021 19:16
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Turns out the specific Maine care benefits I get for disability ensures free healthcare as long as I'm earning <65k a year and have <10k on card. With that in mind I'm getting a 529 able account for sure. Question is: Is the CA or VA plan better?
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Mar 29, 2021 19:17
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MREBoy posted:
If you're looking for furushotakeru, do note I don't think he hangs out here often anymore, so you might be better off emailing him or going to his website.
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Mar 29, 2021 20:10
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i have some simple question about estate planning as someone in their 30's with no dependents. i did a quick look for a thread covering the topic, but couldn't find any. would this be the right place for those kind of questions, or does anyone know a better thread?
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Apr 17, 2021 04:11
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:i have some simple question about estate planning as someone in their 30's with no dependents. i did a quick look for a thread covering the topic, but couldn't find any. would this be the right place for those kind of questions, or does anyone know a better thread? Sure, but the general answer is going to be find the right attorney to do the things you want to do. Because lol no template sites aren't good enough. But your needs should be super minimal no you don't need life insurance unless you have a stay at home spouse, etc.
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Apr 17, 2021 04:16
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:i have some simple question about estate planning as someone in their 30's with no dependents. i did a quick look for a thread covering the topic, but couldn't find any. would this be the right place for those kind of questions, or does anyone know a better thread?
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Apr 17, 2021 04:22
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moana posted:What kind of assets would you be leaving behind, and to whom? Usually the most important part of a will is the guardianship provisions for children, and the most important part of a trust is to keep your assets out of probate and going to the right people. If you have very basic assets (a bank account, a 401k, etc), you can generally put in beneficiaries directly on those accounts to keep them out of probate. Even if you have a will, for example, the beneficiary named on your IRA documents supersedes the will, so there's no real good reason to do estate planning unless there are other pressing issues. yeah, probably about 95% of my assets are in accounts which already have named beneficiaries, and the majority of my remaining assets are non-fungible stuff like my car and personal electronics. so i'm trying to figure out if it would be useful to have a simple will to streamline things like funeral arrangements and the disposition of my remaining assets, my debt (essentially just paying off whatever credit balance i have on my most recent statement), and the sundry personal effects i'd like to have distributed. if it doesn't have to be an out and out will naming my own executor, and some statement with suggestions to whoever the courts appoint works, that's fine with me. i'm more looking for best practices for having the right things in place that might make things simpler for my family if something stupid happened
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Apr 17, 2021 06:18
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:yeah, probably about 95% of my assets are in accounts which already have named beneficiaries, and the majority of my remaining assets are non-fungible stuff like my car and personal electronics. so i'm trying to figure out if it would be useful to have a simple will to streamline things like funeral arrangements and the disposition of my remaining assets, my debt (essentially just paying off whatever credit balance i have on my most recent statement), and the sundry personal effects i'd like to have distributed. if it doesn't have to be an out and out will naming my own executor, and some statement with suggestions to whoever the courts appoint works, that's fine with me. i'm more looking for best practices for having the right things in place that might make things simpler for my family if something stupid happened A basic trust package is a couple grand. It will also get you a will, advanced medical directive, and some power of attorney docs as relevant. If someone starts talking about exotic trusts and other bullshit and you are stupidly rich don't pay them. Run.
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Apr 17, 2021 06:51
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In the last several months, and especially in the last month or two, I've heard lots of people becoming much, much more vocal against inflation. It was so universal, and seemingly from both sides of the political spectrum, that I've been just assuming that everyone is just ignorant and parroting glib talking points like "Who's gonna pay for all this?" and poo poo like that. At the moment, I am under the impression that QE still reflects the leading economic theory in crisis situations. Still, it's so universal and so common that I am starting to wonder if I am out of the loop, like someone famous tweeted the real answer and I missed it. Can anyone set me straight on this? Or offer a resource to learn more?
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Apr 22, 2021 20:22
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It's a combination of a bunch of things. Producer price index and commodity prices are way up The fed has stated that they'll move to more level targeting of inflation instead of just aiming for 2%, which means they'll let it run at higher levels for longer Anecdotal reports of businesses struggling to find workers Expectation of increased government spending in proposed bills Market inflation expectations as defined by relative bond prices are way up Inflation expectations can drive inflation, even if those expectations are themselves irrational I honestly don't know what will happen but it's not exactly baseless to expect higher inflation in the next few years.
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Apr 23, 2021 15:41
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The biggest, most relevant point isn’t whether inflation will happen, it’s WHEN (and by how much). It’s easy to say that it will happen and give a million good reasons for it, but that doesn’t matter if it takes a decade to come true.
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Apr 23, 2021 20:01
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esquilax posted:Anecdotal reports of businesses struggling to find workers I have to say I am surprised at how many "help wanted" and "now hiring" signs I've been seeing lately. Also, just saw this which is kind of amusing: https://www.fox5ny.com/news/florida-mcdonalds-offers-50-just-to-show-up-for-job-interview
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Apr 23, 2021 21:43
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"You just can't find good help these days," complains local business not offering benefits or a living wage.
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Apr 23, 2021 21:47
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Sundae posted:"You just can't find good help these days," complains local business not offering benefits or a living wage. That probably also treats their employees like poo poo. What do you want to bet their turnover is high because of at least one lovely manager?
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Apr 23, 2021 21:49
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Also 1) In some industries, there's a mismatch of needed and available skills 2) A lot of people still concerned about catching the virus 3) A ton of childcare issues too (far more so than usual), and 4) More generous unemployment than usual. Some of these will probably work themselves out, given sufficient time.
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Apr 23, 2021 21:51
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Sundae posted:"You just can't find good help these days," complains local business not offering benefits or a living wage. The same people that worship at the altar of free market competition complain very loudly when they can't/won't compete in the market. If your lovely business can't offer more than part-time no-benefits work at $11/hr guess the market has decided that you don't deserve to be in business anymore.
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Apr 23, 2021 22:03
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Thanatosian posted:That probably also treats their employees like poo poo. What do you want to bet their turnover is high because of at least one lovely manager? Turns out the 'treat your part time(up to 39 hours a week exactly so they don't get benefits) minimum wage employees as infinitely replaceable' mindset bites you in the rear end once people are in a position that they don't have to come to you begging for a job. Who would've guessed?
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Apr 23, 2021 22:03
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Small White Dragon posted:Also "You" is generic in the stuff below, btw. Not you you. All of these can be sorted out with more money and better benefits (except maybe #2). 1) Pay more and those skills will make themselves available. They're not available because you're not worth their time. 2) Fair enough. 3) Offer childcare reimbursements or pay enough that one parent can stay home. 4) If you don't offer enough to be competitive with unemployment then  I have this discussion with my employer's upper management all the time. There is a shortage of entry-level engineers and equipment operators because they're offering what I made thirteen years ago in rural CT, but instead in the SF bay area. No loving poo poo people aren't accepting offers.
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Apr 24, 2021 06:20
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I don't think #1 and #3 are as easy to solve as you suggest. There are plenty of fields where we pay a lot more than average, but you don't see everybody rushing out to become an engineer or doctor all the sudden. For #3, a lot of childcare centers are closed, or operating at reduced capacity, and nannies and so forth are difficult to come by. I'm in favor of raising the minimum wage substantially (of course, there's a limit to how far we can reasonably go) and these sorts of reforms but it's naive to think that paying people a lot more will just magically fix all these problems.
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Apr 24, 2021 07:10
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Sundae posted:"You just can't find good help these days," complains local business not offering benefits or a living wage. Well what changed? They've never offered benefits or a living wage before, yet they managed to hire anyway.
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Apr 26, 2021 06:47
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Its funny the opposite is happening in my field. A new hire is making around accounting for inflation 10% more than I was when I started working. Im literally racing the bottom as I climb, its ridiculous (but makes me happy future mes are making better money than past me)
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Apr 26, 2021 10:42
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human garbage bag posted:Well what changed? They've never offered benefits or a living wage before, yet they managed to hire anyway. A virulent pandemic?
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Apr 26, 2021 12:48
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I liked Personal Capital at first for getting an overview of all my accounts, but in more recent years it seems to get constantly blocked by different financial institutions, such that I have to jump through hoops every month or so. That's very annoying. Are there comparably good financial overview websites that don't have this problem? I did use Mint several years back, didn't like the UI, but I'm open to trying it again if it's improved. I see that the new Google Pay also sort of has this functionality, but the presentation isn't great for easily seeing what's going on.
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Apr 26, 2021 14:20
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Cicero posted:I liked Personal Capital at first for getting an overview of all my accounts, but in more recent years it seems to get constantly blocked by different financial institutions, such that I have to jump through hoops every month or so. That's very annoying. Are there comparably good financial overview websites that don't have this problem? I use Mint still today, but I wouldn't say it has improved in any noticeable way over the past few years. My current workflow is that each month, I take a screenshot of how Mint looks on that day, since Mint gets real screwy if you remove an old account (it removes the history, so you basically have to mark old accounts as 'inactive' but leave it in Mint which makes it a huge mess). My wife and I also make our budget in a Google sheet and then set the category budgets in Mint, since it thinks we're overspending due to savings goals including pre-tax dollars but Mint only really sees post-tax "income". Things it does well: - Transactions are auto-imported - Can change allocation of each transaction - Total net worth (at least as of today, historical can be screwy as mentioned above) - Goal tracking - Budget category tracking - Some good graphs (if you keep the data allocation clean) - Splitting transactions is nice - Seeing all transactions from all accounts in one giant list is actually pretty useful for seeing unexpected charges Things it does poorly: - Auto-allocation of transactions is hit-or-miss at best - Investing stuff (aside from 'total invested') is generally garbage - If a connection to an account breaks, it can take a loooong time for them to fix - It's a lot of ads/'suggestions' - It's not great for planning IMO, more for allocating transactions after you've already planned
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Apr 26, 2021 18:38
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There is probably a very easy way to do this, but how can I calculate/find out the cost of living increases per year for the town/county I'm in?
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Apr 27, 2021 17:23
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Looks like Numbeo has snapshots, you can change which year you look at: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp edit: oh they also have this - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/historical-data Cicero fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2021 17:35
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Can someone explain to me the whole "houses aren't an investment and you can only expect 2% on them before expenses" thing? If I run my city's housing indexes through a CAGR calculator, I see 4% over the last 40 years and 7-8% since the post-2008 lows. Even if you bought at the absolute previous peak, you would've cleared 2.5%. They're not always a great investment class, but it seems like they at worst outperform renting unless you get really house poor. The options are buy vs rent, not buy vs invest, unless you can live in Mom's basement. These figures come from overall home sales too, which include a lot of areas that were blighted since before 1980 getting snapped up for pennies on the dollar, and not places where middle-class people used their homes as a store of investment value, which from what I can tell from individual houses has been more like 5-7% annually over the last 20 years. All of this is using numbers from the start of Q4 2020, we've seen something like 10-18% and rising fast in the past 5 months.
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Apr 27, 2021 19:15
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SchnorkIes posted:Can someone explain to me the whole "houses aren't an investment and you can only expect 2% on them before expenses" thing? I think its less that house values wont go up and more that you should think of them as a requirement for day to day living. For example you need to live somewhere, presumably in a house that meets your standards. You dont care to a degree what it is or isnt worth because you just need someplace to live. Even if it does go up in value and you sell it down the line you'll need another place to live that meets your requirements. Anyway thats my 2 cents on it.
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Apr 27, 2021 19:30
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SchnorkIes posted:Can someone explain to me the whole "houses aren't an investment and you can only expect 2% on them before expenses" thing? If I run my city's housing indexes through a CAGR calculator, I see 4% over the last 40 years and 7-8% since the post-2008 lows. Even if you bought at the absolute previous peak, you would've cleared 2.5%. They're not always a great investment class, but it seems like they at worst outperform renting unless you get really house poor. The options are buy vs rent, not buy vs invest, unless you can live in Mom's basement. Buying a house is fine , it’s just there are downsides that really make it where sure, you could come out ahead, but it certainly isn’t a slam dunk. Maintenance costs is a big one. Lifestyle is another. And personally, more and more potential environmental risks have to be factored in. Certain areas that now get hit by fires, floods, hurricanes, etc can make an impact. Or if you’re super unlucky and your house gets impacted by something random like fracking making your water catch on fire. Most people probably don’t have major major issues, it that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be factoring in this stuff on what is usually the most expensive thing someone owns. Cynically, the reason house buying is probably good for a lot of people is that it basically is a forced investment, vs it’s easier to punt on retirement savings, etc.
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Apr 27, 2021 19:43
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SchnorkIes posted:Can someone explain to me the whole "houses aren't an investment and you can only expect 2% on them before expenses" thing? If I run my city's housing indexes through a CAGR calculator, I see 4% over the last 40 years and 7-8% since the post-2008 lows. Even if you bought at the absolute previous peak, you would've cleared 2.5%. They're not always a great investment class, but it seems like they at worst outperform renting unless you get really house poor. The options are buy vs rent, not buy vs invest, unless you can live in Mom's basement. 1) Houses aren't an investment because you need somewhere to live, and because your investment requires major maintenance and cost outlays every year in the forms of insurance, property taxes, upkeep fees, utilities, and likely mortgage interest. You have to live somewhere. Treat it as somewhere to live, that if you're lucky, pays for itself or appreciates in value. 2) The point of "houses aren't an investment" isn't to say that you will not make money on your house, but to indicate that you shouldn't expect to make money on your house. That leads to poor decisions, and if everyone treats it the same way, leads to horrific outcomes at a social level and ironically enough, at a personal level that may cause them to lose their shirts. 3) People aren't talking about your market or their market. They're talking about broad national trends. If I said "housing doesn't make an investment return" in the bay area, people would rightly look at me like I have three heads. The market here and the laws that prop up the market are utter bullshit, but they also don't apply to Iowa City, let's say. Now to be fair: A lot of the historical market when you look back far enough may be unrealistic to use as a baseline now because of the differences in institutional investment in housing these days vs historically. There appears to be a far, far larger amount of the market being bought up by corporate investors than had previously been, which skews housing costs.] quote:The options are buy vs rent, not buy vs invest, unless you can live in Mom's basement. You typed this, and pretty much directly says housing isn't an investment. It's a requirement for continued life and safety, and it's a lifestyle choice. Whether it has any monetary benefits is secondary to the core fundamental that you need a roof over your head. Last thing to add: One of the core reasons I do not view housing as a long-term investment is specifically because of how badly they outpace earnings growth in the population. If my house gets more valuable while the population does not, I have a smaller pool of people to sell it to. If this continues indefinitely, it either becomes a corporate-owned property because billionaires are the only ones who can afford it, or it doesn't sell at all... which means it isn't worth the price tag... which means selling it for less. Housing cannot go up forever while the population that needs it does not get wealthier at the same rate, or you will eventually (how long of a timeline, who knows!) have no buyers who can afford your house. Sundae fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Apr 27, 2021 20:11
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SchnorkIes posted:The options are buy vs rent, not buy vs invest, unless you can live in Mom's basement. This is sort of true and sort of not. It can depend a lot. How much is rent, how much are you tying up in a down payment, how much are houses, etc.? There is a lot of math that goes into it. Ultimately, if you are able to buy, the choice to me is do I want to rent and call someone to fix poo poo or do I want to own, do whatever I want in the place, and fix stuff when it breaks.
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Apr 27, 2021 20:18
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spwrozek posted:This is sort of true and sort of not. It can depend a lot. How much is rent, how much are you tying up in a down payment, how much are houses, etc.? There is a lot of math that goes into it. Relevant video: https://youtu.be/Uwl3-jBNEd4
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Apr 27, 2021 20:24
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spwrozek posted:This is sort of true and sort of not. It can depend a lot. How much is rent, how much are you tying up in a down payment, how much are houses, etc.? There is a lot of math that goes into it. The thing about renting to me, someone whose last moves were downgrades into more and more substandard housing due to rent hikes, is that it seems like inevitably time delay homelessness. I can only assume white collar raises are driving house prices and rents, but my wages don't increase very much at all year over year.
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Apr 27, 2021 20:54
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SchnorkIes posted:The thing about renting to me, someone whose last moves were downgrades into more and more substandard housing due to rent hikes, is that it seems like inevitably time delay homelessness. I can only assume white collar raises are driving house prices and rents, but my wages don't increase very much at all year over year.
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Apr 27, 2021 21:39
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One thing about renting vs owning, rent will go up year over year. Mortgage cost tends to stay flat or even go down. You can refinance and further reduce cost. That will never happen with renting.
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Apr 27, 2021 21:43
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