Adam Savage

My favorite from my time working in the news industry:

Neighbor puts toilets in their yard facing other neighbors house. That neighbor builds a fence so they don’t have to look at the toilets. Original neighbor then hangs toilets from the tree so it is visible over the fence. Cue complaints to get toilets removed by city/county.

I believe the original dispute had to do with tearing out a shared bush and parking on lawn, but I don’t recall the details.

Oh fun. $330k for a 500sqft shack that is partially collapsed. The only info on the listing states the lot will need to be scraped, so basically that is the cost of an empty lot.

Going out a bit further, you can find a couple of houses around $350k that are liveable. They are 700-900 sqft and 0-2 bedrooms.

How high are you OP?

A while back I applied with the USPS and got called in for an interview. It wasn’t a real interview, but more of a presentation on all the required next steps to be hired (there were at least 20 of us in the room). I ended up getting a different job before my start date, but if you were able to do all the steps by the deadline the job was yours.

That is the example that OP referred to in their question

Go for daily walks in nature.

Do yoga

Play a recreational sport that interests you

Read (I guess that’s still consumption)

Write

Volunteer for a cause you care about

This is pretty niche, but I’m in a casual curling league and nearly everyone is over 40. Everyone there is super welcoming and friendly.

Asking where you are from is pretty normal conversation, especially if you have a noticeable accent. Asking where your parents/grandparents/etc are from is less common. Are you by chance not-white? Sometimes these sorts of questions have a race element to them

General retirement advice is to contribute 15% total to your retirement account. Since your employer adds 12%, you should contribute a minimum of 3%.

As for your coworkers advice, it may or may not be valid. Contributing to your 401k or a taxable account, both allow you to invest your money. The 401k comes along with tax advantages. Assuming you are making Traditional contributions, then you are saving taxes at the marginal tax bracket (potentially 22 or 24%). If you contribute enough to drop your MAGI to the 12% bracket, then the tax benefit is much less. You can still contribute to Roth, which means you can withdraw that money tax free in the future but you have to pay taxes on it now.

Another thing to consider is the fees in your 401k. Since you are limited to the options provided, sometimes fees are quite high. If you don’t have any options that cost less than 1%, you likely are better off investing your money elsewhere.

Finally, you get into the really personal part of personal finance. What are your goals? Do you have short/medium term goals that you would prefer to save this money for? For instance, if you want to save up for a down payment for a house in the future, putting that money in a 401k is a bad choice. Do you have a comfortable emergency fund to pay for unexpected expenses? Do you have high interest debt to pay off?

A good resource is this flowchart from r/personal finance: https://imgur.com/u0ocDRI

We took the dogs to run around at a park before the festivities. We were definitely the only people there.

This seems like the author stole the concept of Bob the World’s Worst Market Timer.

But the point still stands. Investing in broad market indexes and forgetting it is the best thing you can do financially for yourself.

if I did, I would have to be obliged and follow their cultures

This doesn’t seem true to be. There is no culture police who will come and enforce the way you live your life to follow the norms of your ethnic label(s).

I don’t have a culture

This is impossible. Everyone has a culture. You may not follow all the cultural norms or traditions of where you are from, but it is guaranteed that who you are was impacted by the culture you were raised in. There is no such thing as neutral, otherwise you are saying your personal culture would fit in everywhere in the world (Mexico, USA, Italy, Russia, Japan, Philippines, etc).

What do you think the term Latino means, and why don’t you want to identify as one?

FYI Central America is also in North America

My uncle was born on Feb 29. We both had our 16th birthdays the same year.

If you don’t know much about investments, there should be a target date fund that is a mix of stocks and bonds. Pick the date that is closest to your expected retirement date (eg if you’re 25 and aiming for retirement at 65 you’ll pick the 2065 fund), and invest in that one.

A good thing to ask about is the expense ratio. This is how much the fund will cost you in fees, and can seriously impact your returns. If the fees are 1% or higher then seriously reconsider that fund.

John Oliver did a piece on 401ks a while back that was very informative.

Anything a chiropractor can do that will actually help, a PT can do better. They’ll also teach you what exercises to do to prevent needing to see them again.

A chiropractor will just tell you to come to them more often, and take more of your money over time.

It’s ok. English is my first language and I don’t understand what OP means by “cold camera shoe.”

Ikea sells cloudberry jam, or at least they used to a few years ago when we impulse bought it.