zurch1818

Investing in single stocks is too risky for me. I know a lot of people do it but it something I personally wouldn't ever do. If I were to invest in something more risky like that, it would be into a business that would play a physical active role rather than with a public company. For retirement, I believe in very boring compound interest from slow and steady growth style mutual funds. I'm happy my work has a pretty good mix of them. The stock market is on sale right now, so my wife and I just decided to start our early retirement brokerage account, something to tap into before we can touch our main nest egg. It can also double as big purchase fund. We invested in two Vanguard index funds, their growth one, VIGAX and their total stock one, VTSAX, to try to diversify a little bit (yup very boring). They seem to have a very good track record.

Awesome Jimbo! Congrats! Glad to hear you landed something. Hopefully this new place has a great culture that matches what you were looking for and also gives you an opportunity to add value to the company and gives you room to grow.

My educated guess is your resume may not be making it through a software keyword scan. You likely are competing against the same people. Some of which may be employed by other places you are actively applying to. Online job application is both a blessing and a curse because it can take so little time and effort to apply for a position. Link As someone that has manually scanned through dozens of resumes in one sitting, I can tell you it is very time consuming, mind-numbing and also very difficult to judge character and how well a candidate would fit with the company culture. As someone that works for a small company, I can't imagine the volume of resumes a big company gets. This is why I'm a big fan of cover letters. A good cover letter showing your character can easily put you in front of the line. There are 2 ways I can think of to get past this barrier and slip through the backdoor after already submitting an application online One, hand deliver a resume and cover letter to someone at the office. Since they are all so close to you, pick a few out and make a little road trip out of it. Link Two, if you know someone that works there, try giving your resume to them. A personal reference from someone from within is such a huge asset.

Sorry to hear that. That would be incredibly awkward training your replacement. At least they were honest with you. Just curious, what type of engineering do you specialize in? Part of the reason I ask is I'm a structural engineer and we hired a mechanical engineer a year or so ago and it has really worked out great. There was a huge amount of up front training, but it was a good personality fit with our group. We aren't looking to hire right now, but I can say that there is no reason why you have to pigeon hole yourself into looking into something that exactly matches your education and past work experience. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but a good personalized cover letter and resume hand delivered definitely helps for an outside the box application.

Brave has a built in ad blocker that you can whitelist sites on. It's currently what I'm using on my phone. Brave also has an experimental dark mode setting (I think it is under display in the appearance menu) that makes this site much nicer to read. Chrome has one too, but it isn't as easy to activate on and off.

This site has been a significant improvement compared to what the old site was in terms of other content. I completely understand why ads are necessary. However with my internet connection, the ad-free experience is probably the only way I will actually consume data on this site. I'm sorry, it just is. With my income level, I have no issues paying my fair share to cover my costs. What would you want me to pay for a year? I just want to pay it once a year and be done with it. Its the same reason, I pay cash for cars and don't take out auto loans. Those monthly subscription payments make me feel like I'm getting nickeled and dimed. I asked about this earlier in the forum and I don't think I ever got a response other than what I feel as being "shamed" because I won't white-list the site. A little background on me. When I come home from work, I try to give my wife a break by chasing around my 18 month old as she has been doing it all day. When I get some free time in between the chasing, I bust out my phone and will consume information on this site. I just don't have the energy to put up with the ads or play the "ignore the ad" game.

I completely understand why ads are on the site. Is there a way to have a "pro" version and avoid the ads? I make enough money where I have no issue just paying my ad cost per month to support the site. It's really hard for me to justify whitelisting a site to have it run noticably slower. To put it into context, at times my internet at home is quite terrible (which is a whole other issue). The load times are noticably different when I use Chrome vs Brave on my phone. The ads just about make the site unreadable.

https://youtu.be/yH_ArqoB0no

I'm not exactly sure I follow what you are doing but I think a vlookup or better yet index match would accomplish what you want. Side note...if you are a fan of vlookup, I highly recommend learning index match. The format is pretty much the same, but way more powerful. It can actually accomplish an hlookup too and you can choose your lookup column (instead of the first column all the time and you can insert columns without breaking the formula.

I work for a small engineering firm where we really don't have titles. Our department when I started was 3 people (including me) and now we are 7.5ish (including me). It's a relatively flat structure. People that perform quickly see their pay and responsibility increase quickly while others are content and don't see the same change. We just don't have enough people to have the well defined titles you describe. Although I am technically the lead of the group, I feel just like everyone else. I also wear a coding, Excel guru, and IT hat for the company...all of which are not in my technical job description which technically hasn't changed since I started almost 10 years ago. My opinion, a title is nice to have, but for a small company, it is kind of meaningless. The culture and how well you feel your skillet is valued are much more important than a title. There is an opportunity for more breadth growth with a small company. That isn't saying there won't be depth growth too as there will be that too. It just probably won't be as specialized as working for a large company. It all depends on how specialized the company is.

When I look at resumes, I prefer one pagers and see how close you live to our office. Our company also has very low turnover which makes us not ever need to do huge hiring sprees. We have also been fortunate enough to stay quite busy these past 2 years. I don't necessarily hold it against them for two pagers. The one thing that I really like is when there is a cover letter that doesn't really mention something on the resume or goes into depth on something on the resume and it is directly tailored to the job posting. It also shows things about your character, and how you might fit into the culture of the company. This moves you to the front of the line. I think experience is something better for the cover letter, but maybe I'm just old school in how I review resumes. Our company is small enough where we don't really have an HR department to process resumes and there is no computer algorithm. It's a manual process. A lot of times if there isn't a cover letter, I'm not really that interested as it just shows me that you aren't really that interested in the position. Career fairs are also a great way to get moved to the front of the line.

I feel I'm in the same place you are now (9.5 years in)...but without the dropoff in satisfaction in the last 2 years. I have thought about what I would do if your situation happened to me and I'd probably feel the same way. I have told myself if the company (especially the culture) went downhill, I would look to jump ship. Just because the company treated me fairly in the past does not mean they deserve my current loyalty. The part that is scary thinking about is the grass isn't always greener and trying to chase the largest pay may actually make the situation worse. Culture is so important to me...and so difficult for me to pick up on in an interview. When I started (first job using my degree after college), I was the third person on our team. Seven months in, the two people that were in the group when I started left. Luckily we hired another stamping engineer and another junior engineer right at about the time those two people left. It was awkward when I was only 7 months in and being responsible for training the new employees. It was especially even more awkward when I was training my superior...the one in charge of reviewing my work. Luckily, I was about to mold a lot of the culture of our group at that point. Now I'm the leader of this team of 7 others. If the owners decided to start demanding quantity of projects at the cost of quality, there is no doubt that I would push back...and if that didn't work, I would definitely look for other opportunities. Our company has grown quite a bit since I started, so I'd be shocked if something like this won't happen in the future. It seems the bigger the companies get, the more you feel like a number and less like family. Good luck on whatever you decide to do. Just remember that you should stay for you...not the company. If you feel you have been baited and switched, I'd recommend discussing with them (obviously after the bonus kicks in) and then look to leave if you don't pick up any chance of changing.

Here are my numbers for a $175k loan on a 15-year fixed load at 4% refinanced to 2.75% last October. [attachment=0]Screenshot 2022-01-18 071437.png[/attachment] First line is current mortgage schedule (+25k payment payment in last month), Second line is my current mortgage with only making minimum payments (+25k payment payment in last month), Third line is if I didn't refinance at all but did the first line and the last line is minimum payments only with no refinance over all 15 years My payoff period is going to be about 4 years. Good old conventional extra principal payments is going to save me about $40k in interest. I have no idea how a tax deductible payment HELOC would have saved me any sort of significant money. Sure, the 107k extra in payments has saved me a whopping 3k in interest to date. It will eventually pay off. The reason banks give HELOCs out are because they can make more interest (plus a typical higher interest rate) on the equity in your house.

Interesting. That is genius if the interest rate is lower than what is on the mortgage. If the mortgage rate is lower than the HELOC, I don't know if I agree. Plus it saves you the closing costs.

I agree with a lot of what LouisEly said above. The only thing that I don't think people take into account when renting vs buying is property taxes. I feel like what I am paying in property taxes now is equivalent to what I was paying in rent. Because property taxes are increased with the home value, these also get increased. Now at least it probably is going to be a little more predictable than what the rent rate goes up or down. However, it is an expense that needs to be considered. I think we may be saying the same thing in different ways and I may have typed it wrong. All I can say is my monthly mortgage interest is calculated solely off the remaining principal balance. [Principal balance]*[interest rate/12]. It does not take into account any previously paid interest. Therefore, this technically makes it simple. https://www.thetruthaboutmortgage.com/are-mortgages-simple-interest-and-compounded-monthly/ I also still think because you are borrowing money on your equity, that makes it a type of second mortgage. I agree that it works much differently than a conventional mortgage. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/heloc-home-equity-line-of-credit I still don't quite follow what you are doing. Are you taking the heloc money and putting it directly on the house? Or are you investing that money in another account and using the proceeds from that investment to pay off the loans? I also am not sure if your heloc has a fixed or variable interest rate. Variable interest rates scare me. It sounds like with your mortgage, you completely figured it out. I don't know if that would have worked with how mine is structured. I also probably am not as disciplined as you. It bugs me when my credit card bill gets above $3000 and I don't really even like having my checking account get below $4000, so I don't know why I worry so much. I do sort of diversify in the fact that my company match and profit sharing is put in as traditional. Outside of that, everything else is Roth. I just don't want to mess around with having a huge amount of non-retirement outside investing until my mortgage is paid off or trying to figure out what tax brackets will be in the future. Once that is done, I can then move to aggressively saving (and giving) in taxable non-retirement funds as I won't have any risk.

The rule of 72 boggles my mind. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/what-is-the-rule-72/ This helps me rationalize investment growth over time. It's all about just keep chunking money in the account and don't look at what it does year in and year out. Since my work offers Roth retirement accounts, I have also decided to do that instead of traditional. That way, I get tax-free growth. Otherwise, I have to pay taxes on withdrawals in retirement and there are also minimum distributions that you need to take out. Sure, my tax bracket may be lower than what it is now, but I have just decided that I want to know what my nest egg actually is and not say it is this and then find out it is 20% (or my worse fear, 50%) less. I have no idea what tax brackets will be like in 30 years when I retire (or hopefully sooner). I just want to get to a point where I decide to retire because I want to and not because I have to.

Congrats GAME05. I bet that is a great feeling to finally be debt free. I think all the readers of this thread are officially unicorns as we Brewer fans reading about investments on a Brewer fan forum. It's like going to a fish fry and ordering the chicken. I'm happy to share my experiences for anyone that wants to hear me on my soapbox. Although I am super conservative when it comes to money, I really enjoy hearing the prospective from all the other unicorns reading this thread.

I don't understand that method. Aren't mortgages calculated with simple interest based on the principal balance? The difference between that and the minimum payment is what goes to principal. Maybe it's about leveraging your equity? If that is the case, if your house is worth $300k, does it make sense to leverage a million dollar mortgage/2nd mortgage (HELOC) off it? My risk-averse self said no despite the possible gain. This is why when I ran the numbers, on my mortgage with minimum payments the 30 year mortgage had almost 2.75x the interest. When you look at a 15 year mortgage, the interest number doesn't make you want to cry. For me renting and getting a big down payment was the safer and faster way to home ownership and wealth. I also rented a cheap apartment ($9.6k a year) and was able to save and aggressively invest the down payment. I figured what ever money I was "losing" to rent, I was gaining in taxes saved. For the record, my property tax bill in Madison is about $8k (yikes!) and my homeowners is $1.1k, so basically a wash. Plus my down payment fund was growing at a higher return rate that what houses typically appreciate in value each year and I had no yard to mow. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052015/which-has-performed-better-historically-stock-market-or-real-estate.asp Obviously if you borrow more money, you have the potential to leverage greater returns, but that is a risk I didn't want to take with my family and highly variable income. I have maxed out my Roth 401k the last 4 years first. Any extra bonus/other income I received went straight to the house (or down payment fund prior to closing). In the years before, I was the only saving enough for retirement to get the company match and growing my down payment fund more aggressively.

Thanks. I think any little bit makes a huge difference in the long run. With how mortgages are structured, I feel like how they make you want to make minimum payments. I just took your extra $200 a month and put it in my spreadsheet (as if it were me on my mortgage, your milage may vary). It would have saved me about $12k in interest (20% of the total) and shaved off almost 3 years from my 15 year note. Crazy how little of an effort can have such a big effect. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep doing what your doing!

I'm turning 35 this year and my wife and I are scheduled to pay off our mortgage this year (4 years). Granted, we saved money like crazy to put a huge 60% down payment and have been aggressive on paying down our mortgage while still contributing to retirement enough to where we aren't ignoring it. For me, it's all about cash flow. I look at it as getting an under the table (taxes have already been paid on it) $1500 raise per month. It just frees us up to get more aggressive with our investments or go on a random trip while not having to worry about losing a job or some other unforeseen issue. We also should be able to be more generous in causes we believe in too. I feel the group that talks about always having a mortgage doesn't account for risk as much as I do. Sure you can in theory make more money, but you can also lose it if the market crashes right when you lose your job and now you can't make payments. No thank you for me. With having no mortgage and reduced expenses, I won't need as much money to be happy. I think as people say though, as long as you have a plan, you should be good. The bottom line is you need to save money for retirement. If you don't save any money and keep refinancing, you will end up chasing your tail and will work forever. Because of the nerd in me, I am going to miss tracking our mortgage. I will say that I'm shocked how little it has saved us in interest to date, some $3k over making only minimum payments. However, over the life of the 15 year loan, it will save us a whopping $41k over making minimum payments. Oh the refinance that we did last year is going to save us about $300 (including closing costs). Seems like a waste for all the effort that went into it now. Oh well, it bought us security by severely reducing our minimum payment as my income at the moment is highly variable in a given year.

I like to think that me pausing my membership was what pushed them over the edge. I have since reactivated it. My only complaint is I had to log into my parents spectrum account to watch the championship women's volleyball match...and the ESPN app doesn't have any dvr functionally. Its weird because the NHL ESPN+ content (exact same app) has dvr functionality. Oh, and I'm also not happy that all the Disney channels on YTTV are no longer sorted the way I had them, but that can be fixed.

I just paused my YouTube tv membership in protest. It was supposed to renew in 4 days.

The only downside to Roku right now is there is a major dispute between them and Google. YouTube TV has been pulled a while ago from their channel store and there is talk of also pulling the YouTube channel soon too...but I don't think that has happened yet. I was lucky enough that on both of my Rokus that I have them both channels downloaded already, so I am in the clear. I believe Google added a way to get YouTube TV to work through their YouTube app (which I believe is why they want to pull the YouTube app from their channel store too). Since I am a subscriber to YouTube TV, over the summer they gave me a "free" Chromecast with Google TV. It is true that I didn't pay anything for it, but I'm sure I paid for it somewhere in my $65/month subscription. I will say that the experience on that device is nice. I've got two minor gripes with it. First, I tend to watch a lot of documentaries with closed caption on and some of the channels have the words cut off and I can't figure out how to fix this. It's not bad, but sometimes I have to pause to figure out what the first and last letters are. Second, I miss Roku's go back 10 seconds button. There is a way to kind of have it work that way, but it is more clunky. But overall, it is a pretty neat little device. It's basically a Chromecast that has a remote control and an actual "home" screen. Anyone that uses a Roku probably wouldn't notice that much of a difference. The remotes are nearly identical in size and functionality. There is even a volume rocker in the same spot.

I just decided to pony up and buy a mesh network (Google Nest WiFi router and one access point). Now I am getting the speeds Spectrum is advertising both on my wired connection and my wireless devices (if they are capable) - 225mbps. My max local phone speed is about 425mbps. I have no idea why I need that much speed now, but we are set for the future. I also had trouble getting the Bally Sports app working on my Roku. You have to create an account and login. The is one page that ends in /account and another that ends in /activate. It's annoying...but it did at least wok for me

Unfortunately they use your ip address...so those games would be blacked out. I've had something similar happen to me in reverse. I was trying to watch the Coyotes in AZ on NHL.TV...and I couldn't. The place I was staying did not carry the channel they were on. Blackout rules are outdated and need to be updated to current times. It's kind of like having the a city speed limit of 12mph for horseless carriages so the horses don't get spooked (actual law in Connecticut from 1901) in today's society.