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My strategy with a dealer is to let them finance so I can get the best price, and they think they'll make money from the loan; then pay off the loan before the first payment's due. They don't need to know I'm not going to pay all that interest while we're negotiating price.

Yes. Have you not heard of tolls?

My 2023 taxes were 0 to the feds and about $1200 to my state. How do we figure out how many times higher the state tax is over my federal tax? Pretend the federal tax bill was $1 and go from there?

I owed 0 federal tax, so I guess my effective federal rate is 0.

If your roof can handle an inch of snow, it can certainly handle solar panels, which weigh much, much less.

Prohibition of a "LOGO" isn't content-neutral, is it? The court is an agency of government, and our government is expressly forbidden under our Constitution form make a law (or "rule," as it were) "abridging the freedom of speech."

The last time I was called, the instructions (which I'm copying directly from their web site, hence the 'all caps') were: "NO UNIFORMS, SHORTS, CUT-OFF JEANS, T-SHIRTS WITH LOGOS, TANK OR HALTER TOPS, GYM CLOTHES, PAJAMAS, OR HATS" I'm sorry, but the First Amendment is valid even in a...

Yet when I sold the home I'd owned for many years in 2022, I just about broke even on it. Not everyone makes huge gains.

Well done!

I'm not that conservative. On a cynical day, I might say that big business runs the country (by 'owning' the government), and the huge corporations that donate large sums to politicians have a strong interest in not letting the whole system collapse.

Well, 100% equities _isn't_ exactly what you're doing. You have diversified your investments. You have an income stream so you don't have to sell equities in bear markets; and whatever amount you have in those properties is the portion of your portfolio that isn't in equities.

I built an extra $1400 a month into my budget that I call "contingency spending." An appliance breaks, the cat has an emergency vet appt, that sort of thing. I rarely use all (or even most) of it, but I put the amount I haven't used in a separate account each month, and I can draw on that...

I used to be a row eater, but now I have a hybrid style. I do a circle on each end first, to hold the cob, then I do horizontal rows on the rest.

My long term plan has me spending less annually than my investments should generate (on average). I know there will be down yearts, but the longer I live, the more it should grow. I expect that if things go well, at some point I'll look at the total and say to myself, I clearly have more than...

I had some lucky breaks, and managed stuff well. The lucky breaks: I won a $30k literary prize when I graduated at 20 years old. I had an aunt who gave me a similar amount in utility stock in my teens. And I inherited $75k from my grandfather early in my 20s. With the literary prize, I...

I did this at my old house (which had solar panels). I didn't find it creepy at all, in part because it was completely voluntary. They had a limit on how many days they would do it, and it never occurred on weekends. (And they gave you a couple times each summer when if you were home and...

I have a 403(b) instead of a 401(k). I have to draw from it to be counted as a retiree from my University (which keeps my employee health insurance) ... so I signed up for a monthly $8 payment ($10 before taxes are withheld). The account is part of my overall retirement strategy; but until I...

I've been known to put a little WD40 on the trap mechanism, to make it snap super easily

I've always just done it myself. I'm around $25-$30 dollars for 5 qts of oil and a filter. I usually try to buy a 5 qt jug when they're on sale.

I own a 2011 Ford Ranger 4WD. Spare tire has never been used.

Instead of doing Roth conversions, I'm planning to pull from my traditional IRA just up to the standard deduction each year starting at 59 1/2; the rest of my income will come from long term cap gains and I'll stay in the 0% bracket on those. I should be able to use almost all of my traditional...

Annuity. That way, if I screw up and lose everything .... hey, 29 million again next year!

Even buying a 'reputable warranty from a reputable dealer,' the company selling warranties has to take in more money than they pay out (including overhead); otherwise they would go bankrupt. That means, on average, most people will pay more for the warranty than they receive in benefit. When I...

This is the way: if you are a single filer, take $12,500 or so from your traditional IRA annually. Take the rest of your income from a Roth, and/or from selling stock in a non-IRA brokerage (being sure to keep the amount of capital gains under the max to stay in the 0% cap gains tax zone)...

When you move $100k to the non-IRA account, you're taxed on that as though it's just regular income. If you move it into something like equities in a regular brokerage, and they increase in value, then, yes, you would be taxed on the increase. Let's say you moved $100k out of the IRA into the...