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Yuck. Been there. When the nice TSA person checks your ID and marks the boarding pass, does the mark look something like "S" or "SSSS"? That means that you are very special today! OK, it actually means that you are subject to additional screening, in the TSA area and possibly again at...

I had to look. Including market fluctuations, and my annual withdrawals of selected gains and dividends, I'm down 13.3% over this Nov 2021 to present interval. Meh. M... E... H... Meh. It's well inside my long term plans. I've seen worse. Heck, I retired in March 2008, and some of us may...

Ah, BofA! I closed my accounts there after each encounter with a teller resulted in my having to check with a Vice President. As it turns out, I 'had to see' the branch Vice President of Annuity Sales and Investing Opportunities. The teller would check my balances, a checking account and a...

Quite a few places tax capital gains just like any other income. The wealth tax, taxing our intangible assets, should bother any of us ER folks who have a few hundred million socked away to help cover our retirement expenses. Washington state is threatening to tax intangibles over just...

WinCo for most routine shopping. Safeway when there are very good deals on something, buying only those special somethings (Ice cream at 22 cents a carton, bacon at $2.39/lb, that sort of thing). Fred Meyer's when we just need a few things and it is convenient, and for $0.79/lb hams that show up...

DW finished her hydroponic garden project, and I popped in some plants I already had started in our little hydroponic garden. Her big garden holds 54 of the 2" net cups, and 15 gallons of nutrient solution! It's going to be a fresh salad bar!

Realistically they likely couldn’t have stopped either of us. We were being cooperative. Laurie was also considered to be in quarantine because of her direct and prolonged contact with a person who tested positive for CCVID-19. As a person can be contagious for over a day before a rapid test...

Laurie and I just got off of a 16 day cruise, ship repositioning from Miami to Seattle. It was an experience... We’re home. We’re recovering. What was supposed to be the ‘vacation of a lifetime’ was turned into the ‘vacation from heck’ courtesy of corporate corner-cutting in every direction...

Thank you, everyone! It’s been an adventure, but the chaos and medical issues are in my past, and life is better now. The big change for me is the move north. Laurie and I decided that a single-family home was best for us. Laurie’s sister lives with us, and we had to make sure that any place...

Well, I’m still alive and kicking after 14 years of retirement. I’m Michelle Paquette, and used to be fairly active here until I had to take a break from online life to deal with personal issues. Since then, life has been interesting. I’ve relocated twice, gone through a divorce, remarried...

When I do, I'm listening to one of the Oregon Public Broadcasting stations, either for news or the local jazz broadcasts. My other over-the-air activity is generally amateur radio operations.

I finally bit the bullet after over a decade in retirement, and moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Portland suburbs. Lower cost of living, better overall living situation for us. Yes, income tax is roughly similar to California, but there’s no sales tax, and overall cost of living is...

Mine will be going towards this year’s tax bill. *sigh*

I’m so sorry to read of this. She was a big influence on my decision-making processes right before retirement. She will be missed.

Bronze HSA Eligible. The max out of pocket (MOOP) plus Bronze premiums came to slightly less than the (smaller)MOOP + (larger)Premiums for more expensive plans. The more expensive plans tend to be bought by heavier service users, so the total cost is weighted higher. If one uses minimal...

I’m so odd. I still dress in business casual, although I have adjusted my style and replaced much of my wardrobe the past few years, after a serious bout of “Marie Kondo” cleanout. (I reduced my worldly possessions to about what would fit in three trips of a Prius...) Much of the replacement...

I retired in March 2008, coming up on my 11th anniversary. Initially I had a slightly goofy portfolio that FinancialEngines had cranked out and I rather mindlessly followed, while I studied and learned. In the summer of 2008 I started selling off all the goofy stuff, with not much in gains or...

Think of it as evolution in action.

Consider an artificial general intelligence dedicated to running a paper clip factory. The AGI is given an overall mandate to optimize production of paper clips. It commences it's goal-seeking behavior, exploring all pathways available to produce the most possible paper clips at the lowest...

Targeted data mining. Right up there with "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime." And everybody knows the Bilderberg Group is just a front for the Bavarian Illuminati... Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

It's great to speak up, until the perpetrator collects some 'friends' and seeks to vigorously convince one of the error of one's ways. I generally save speaking up for very controlled environments. I like the idea of a long retirement. Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

In unrelated news, scientists announce that everything causes cancer in rats. It looks like that was 9 hours of steady transmitter operation. Interesting, because cellphones are a packet radio system, transmitting even constant voice as short, compressed packets with the transmitter off...

Could be worse. Could be 2008. Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

Heh. Malware. There's a flavor of malware that redirects Microsoft's update links. That's used to inject even more malware when you grant access for the update to run. One of these gems likely assisted you. Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

Quite adequate... Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum