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Hi all. I'm driving a 1993 Lexus GS300. It's a nice car, paid off, reliable, inexpensive to insure and maintain. But it's getting long in the tooth - the paint clear coat is failing, there are various would-be-challenging-to-fix cosmetic defects on the exterior and interior, and being 30+...

Hi all, Not a big deal, but usually if I go to "User CP", click on the new posts link in an updated thread and view the thread, it disappears from my User CP. That has always happened with regular threads, and is continuing to work fine with regular threads. However, the post on the E-R...

Hi all. Just watched this: https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2023/11/01/living-on-a-cruise-ship-mh-cprog-orig.cnn Interested in people's opinions. I wonder whether I would be OK without a home base. I wonder how to tell whether I would. I wonder about the budget. $35K a year for two...

Hi all. I am interested in wisdom and insight from those of you who have navigated through a period of time where you have college funds set aside and the offspring in question has stopped out of college for a period of time. I am in that situation now. I 100% love and support my offspring...

Hi all. I thought I understood this FIRE finance stuff, but I'm unclear on how to proceed with my current situation. I asked on Bogleheads about this situation and got some advice. I'm asking here now to perhaps get some different and additional eyeballs on it. I am 54 and single. I have a...

Hi all. I think I've seen several threads here recently on large increases in homeowner's insurance policies. I just got my renewal from USAA and they're increasing my rates by about 25%. I haven't had any recent changes to my policy that would have caused such an increase; I suspect it's...

Hi all. We're checking with attorneys but also asking here for opinions and thoughts. My son bought a PHEV last fall. Over the past two months, it started to have an intermittent charging problem which was becoming more and more frequent. He took it to the dealership in our city. The...

Hi all. It is moderately challenging to find out what the 2026 tax brackets will be. I'd love to see a source that has the brackets for a single filer if TCJA expires and Congress doesn't otherwise act. Plenty of sources have the bracket rates. What I'm interested in are the dollar cutoffs...

Hi all, I own a house with, unsurprisingly, a roof. The house and roof are both 18 years old. The roof is standard 3-tab 20-year asphalt shingles. I have home insurance through USAA. I have accurately informed them of the age and type of roof I have on my home. I assume they take that...

I'm now SS representative payee for my Dad. I know I'll be asked to report once a year how the funds were spent. He has several sources of income: a pension, investment income (via RMDs), and SS. He has several expenses: AL rent, medical expenses, income taxes, gifts for his GF. Since...

Hi all. I don't know a whole lot about bond mutual funds. Suppose there exists an investor who has some money lying around in a taxable account. Federal tax rate of 22%, state tax rate of 5.8% with the typical rule where USGO is state tax exempt. No real plans for the money; it's sort of a...

Hi all. My mother passed away in 2016 and my father is 87 with mid-stage dementia. As a result of my father's dementia, we are moving him into assisted living. As a result of that move, one of my sisters and I went through all his belongings to decide what to move to his new assisted living...

Hi all. I have three adult children. The oldest two are living at home while saving up for a house and while starting a business. The youngest is away at college but plans to be home this summer. I have a typical FIRE net worth. My kids are typical just-out-of-college to junior-in-college...

Hi all. FYI, this morning when I logged in to my Vanguard account, I got a very annoying pop-up window regarding "Your privacy" and cookies. It's annoying because: 1. It pops up every time you navigate to a different URL. 2. The window is aesthetically ugly, even at 100% zoom in Chrome on...

Hi all. A poster over on Bogleheads regularly recommends that inheritances are provided in trust rather than outright, asserting that doing so keeps those inheritances out of the beneficiary's estate. He also asserts that this helps with other things like bad spouses and Medicaid and...

Hi all. Curious about something. You've probably seen advertisements on TV for the Camp LeJeune Justice Act and related legal proceedings. There are a number of similar advertisements for things like Tylenol and autism, hernia mesh implants, Zantac, RoundUp, etc. Have you, or anyone you...

Hi all. I have a Quicken category called Recreation. For the most recent six months, that category represents 8.18% of my spending. It includes things like golf, bridge, movies, swimming, skiing, and vacations. Basically anything I do that is optional and fun (to me). It excludes eating...

Hi all, I have a straightforward tax-related math problem in my RMD/conversion/IRMAA spreadsheet that I can't seem to wrap my brain around. When I am trying to optimize my Roth conversions, I want to convert up to, but not beyond, a marginal rate that I will face later. But I know that at...

I ordered a new mattress set (mattress/foundation) about six weeks ago. Due to a store promotion for Memorial Day, the purchase price was about a 50% discount off the MSRP and they threw in a free foundation and free delivery. It was originally scheduled to arrive two weeks ago, but they...

Hi all. I'm considering doing an SEPP for tax reasons (see my reply to @38Chevy454 here for reasons: https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/my-current-plan-and-two-alternatives-that-might-be-better-109817.html#post2630504). Technical question #1 I'm considering doing withdrawals...

For the past few years, I've tried to Roth convert up to the level where my current marginal rate was approximately equal to my projected marginal rate at age 75. I'm thinking about increasing that age 75 target to age 82 based on the SSA longevity tables indicating that age 82 is the age at...

Hi all. My son is a college sophomore at a school he seems to like, and was working towards a degree in mechanical engineering. He's been struggling. Today in a phone call we seem to have arrived at the conclusion that mechanical engineering is probably not the right degree for him. He isn't...

Suppose a single taxpayer owns a capital asset with an unrealized capital loss. If they die, the capital asset gets a step down in basis to FMV on date of death. If they gift the asset, the gifter gets a double basis which involves the FMV and the original basis. If they sell the asset, they...

Hi all. I've been working on my RMD projection spreadsheet. One thing I attempt to do is project and include my IRMAA in my analysis. I'm seeing some wonky results: my IRMAA surcharges exceed my federal income taxes in my early 80s. I've traced this back to my decision to use 7.7% as my...

Hi all. What is a fair price for a 2020 1 ounce gold Buffalo proof coin? I know a person who paid $434 over spot. A local gold shop offered $20 over spot. I understand about the gold value. I would have hoped or thought that these might have collectible / numismatic / other value as well...