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Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/this-doesnt-look-like-the-best-economy-ever-40percent-of-americans-say-they-still-struggle-to-pay-bills/2019/07/04/855c382e-99b5-11e9-916d-9c61607d8190_story.html?utm_term=.c0ea31a9df80

The article does a nice job of being very neutral in how it presents the story of two struggling households in the context of the national data.

My take on it is that there are both systemic issues holding these families back (very likely racism, access to education as they were growing up, access to family planning education in particular) and personal choices that led to their predicaments (Passat as a second car in a household with 1.25 jobs, a $450/mo car loan in the second for someone making $10 and change per hour, that both of them had multiple kids early in life).

$15/hr and Medicare for all would be a good start, but won't magically fix all problems.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
The body shop finally got the parts in from Tesla to fix its minorly mangled face. July 5. IIRC the shop got the order in for the parts on June 2.

Next time they can get me in is July 11, and then it’ll be 7 to 8 business days yet until it’s done.

Good thing I have the Land Cruiser, eh? (Given that it is cheap to own this argument actually does make a tiny bit of sense compared to rentals +/- Uber.)
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
In news that may remain relevant for a week, I have decided on the following:

- scrap plans to upgrade the 2019 PacHy to a 2020 as it probably would be a wash financially compared to the depreciation involved in holding the 2019, plus doing so would require a bit of a financial two-step to line up loan balances and trade-in values, etc.

- keep the soonish-to-be-repaired Tesla indefinitely, squashing my cheap-instinct to simplify in favor of the argument that it is a car that my wife and I both like

- while the market remains subjectively overinflated don’t contribute to my kids’ 529s but instead pay down my various debts from highest to lowest effective interest rate. That’d mean the Land Cruiser then a tie between the Tesla and PacHy. If/when there’s a market correction then I’ll pivot back to investment in the 529s and taxable account when those assets are comparatively cheap.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969


This excites me, but will probably both never happen and never fit into my life’s constraints.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969


860W of PV. They claim it can add 35 miles driving range per day of charging. That’s actually sufficient for most driving cycles.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
rideit said:
Do you have any links on this thing?
It's in my wheelhouse.
I would be on the waitlist for the Tesla 'pickup truck' if it wasn't such a heinous, piece of shit travesty (style-wise)
Click to expand...
It’s just a mock-up by a non-Tesla designer. So too are all the pickup renderings besides the one unrevealing shot by Tesla.

Maybe you are conflating Tesla and Rivian for the truck?
 
rideit

rideit

Bob the Builder
Aug 24, 2004
24,927
12,665
In the cleavage of the Tetons
No, I like the Rivian. Would bang for under 70, but not for the 90 a fully loaded one is projected to cost. I realize they are all Tesla mockups, but holy shit is it hideous (with no real bed).
At least they made one rivian.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Just ordered a Mac Ride, as demonstrated by our own @Da Peach . My 6 year old is skinny and I am long of torso so I hope I can see over her head. 4 year old Yuna should be no problem.
 
Da Peach

Da Peach

Outwitted by a rodent
Jul 2, 2002
13,793
5,260
North Van
Toshi said:
Just ordered a Mac Ride, as demonstrated by our own @Da Peach . My 6 year old is skinny and I am long of torso so I hope I can see over her head. 4 year old Yuna should be no problem.
Click to expand...
Awesome.

I’m just trying to squeeze a few more rides out of it. Ben is way too big now, but Alfie still fits.

The kids knees stop fitting under the handlebars as they grow.

Make the most of it!
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1148072753867546624

Elon Musk forecasts Q4 2019 timeline for computer upgrades of HW2/AP2.5 Teslas whose owners have purchased the Full Self Driving package. (That’d be me and my car fitting that description.)

I still recall from the computer roll out presentation that Tesla hasn’t worked on getting driving on snow right, and that this 2019-2020 winter will be when they collect and annotate data to allow for this after the algorithm chews those data up.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Went on another pedal ride, still on @Nick ’s Chromag Stylus as my Shuttle is still awaiting its fresh rear triangle and such. No firm ETA on that.

I did a single/short loop at Green Mountain, up the rerouted Rooney Valley Trail, over on Summit Ridge or whatever that’s called, and then down the somewhat misleadingly named Box o’ Rox. There are a few rocks, at the very end.

I discovered a bit into the Box descent that I’d been riding Nick’s fork halfway locked out. That would explain why it felt somewhat non-compliant at Mountain Lion. :D (For the record I did the same thing but with full lockout while following @Full Trucker down Mountain Lion last season on a rented Specialized e-thing.) It felt substantially better after unlocking it, but I still miss bigger meats and the pick-any-line freedom of full suspension.

On the upside, I didn’t walk too much of the climb, just one steep stretch near the beginning. I also wasn’t passed by anyone while climbing, which is probably just a freak thing due to people choosing which trails to ride. On the downside, said climb was very slow. The short loop (so one time around, about 800 ft vert) took me 1:20 or so.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Italian PHEV minivan decided today would be a good day to light a CEL and inform me to service the charging system.

On the other hand it seems to be charging just fine. I’m going to go ahead and ignore this for now.



Update: CEL went away on its own after a day or three. Everything seems to be working fine.
 
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Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
I requested two printed brochures from Thor, since I like such physical media and like wasting companies’ time and money.

Those “brochures” arrived today and are pretty sad. Each is a single, almost normal paper-thin 8.5 x 11” sheet. One side has tiny font specs. The other has colors and layouts as shown here.

Things I found interesting from the sad little sheets of paper:



- big bus-like Tuscany has nice specs (15,000 lb towing, Freightliner chassis on 22.5” commercial rolling stock, 10 kW auto-start generator, 3 heat pumps)
- Tuscany interior layouts are just terrible for a family, with tremendous amounts of wasted space (see wasted bathroom floor space at the tail of the 45MX!) and not that much sleeping capacity (king bed, over-cab drop bunk but then three convertible pieces of furniture otherwise on that same layout)



- standard-looking Class A ACE has decent specs still, with 8,000 lbs towing (but only 5,000 lbs headroom between GCWR and GVWR—still enough to tow a normal vehicle) and two AC units and a 5.5 kW generator on the layout I like. It’s a pusher (ed: front engine with super long driveshaft) gas layout with the Triton V10, which I imagine in future years will migrate to the new gas Ford 7.3L V8.
- said preferred layout is the 32.3, which looks like it’d be great for multiple kids on the road, with a king bed, bunks, and then the over-cab drop bunk. Wouldn’t have to convert (and redo each day) the sofa bed or dinette

As I rightfully concluded a few posts back renting these things in lieu of hotels doesn’t really make sense… but what if I could drop to 0.5 FTE and boondock in the National Parks throughout the summer with the family while the kids are still somewhat young? Hmm.

Per Mint tonight I only have $791,528.56 in debt to retire before I can consider such folly, inclusive of the mortgage, and it’d have to be weighed against other fantasy plans (Breck condo as always). Gotta have a dream, though, and sooner or later I’ll whittle that pile down to nothing.
 
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Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
42,122
19,553
Riding past the morgue.
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Rode NTM today on Nick’s hardtail. No epiphanies regarding the purity of climbing effort with no assist have been had. It just sucks. Plus it was over 90 degrees today.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Re: RV posts here and there in the last page:

This isn’t actually reflective of me wanting an RV any time soon: from all I’ve read they are almost uniformly pieces of crap thrown together by minimum wage workers in Elkhart without a care to doing things right. Slides in particular seem very problematic.

RV park life also sounds pretty dismal. I do not want to spend time 15 feet away from an elderly conservative couple or a rambunctious family.

Instead what the whole RV-shitposting bit is about is the dream sold by RV advertisements, which is very akin to the imagery used to sell SUVs like my Land Cruiser. It’s the dream of a life untethered by the city, by regular work schedules, where one can cavort in the wilderness with loved ones.

That’s what I want, and I just like to mentally explore paths of action that might get me more towards that goal. Vehicles are a nice outlet for this exploration because their specs are easily available and thus ripe for comparison. (I have a sneaking suspicion that I will remain a mountains-VRBOing type indefinitely, driving up in our conventional 4 wheeled people movers… but that’s not very exciting to think about.)
 
SkaredShtles

SkaredShtles

Michael Bolton
Sep 21, 2003
68,156
14,368
In a van.... down by the river
Toshi said:
Re: RV posts here and there in the last page:

This isn’t actually reflective of me wanting an RV any time soon: from all I’ve read they are almost uniformly pieces of crap thrown together by minimum wage workers in Elkhart without a care to doing things right. Slides in particular seem very problematic.

RV park life also sounds pretty dismal. I do not want to spend time 15 feet away from an elderly conservative couple or a rambunctious family.

Instead what the whole RV-shitposting bit is about is the dream sold by RV advertisements, which is very akin to the imagery used to sell SUVs like my Land Cruiser. It’s the dream of a life untethered by the city, by regular work schedules, where one can cavort in the wilderness with loved ones.

That’s what I want, and I just like to mentally explore paths of action that might get me more towards that goal. Vehicles are a nice outlet for this exploration because their specs are easily available and thus ripe for comparison. (I have a sneaking suspicion that I will remain a mountains-VRBOing type indefinitely, driving up in our conventional 4 wheeled people movers… but that’s not very exciting to think about.)
Click to expand...
Srsly - I realized this quite some time ago. Car-camping/RV'ing/Van'ing is a shitty idea, from my own personal perspective.

If I really want to get out in the woods I'll just go backpacking.

If I just want to "get out of town" I'll get a damn hotel/motel/condo.

YMMV.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
A better set of ideas than most which emanate from my brain:

1. Pay down debt first.

Don’t buy too much useless shit, although I’ll still swap the FCA minivan out for a Toyota PHEV or VW BEV. Resume paused 529 contributions once car notes gone. Refinance mortgage when student loans dispatched.

(2. If a big market correction or housing crash then buy what is rendered cheap, whether that be extra index funds in the kids’ 529s or a Breckenridge condo.)

3. Once all debts paid then cut back on work.

I can pick any 0.6-1.0 FTE number in 0.1 increments, I believe. I’d be able to cut back by, say, 0.3 FTE and have an effective take home pay cut of significantly less than 30%. I’d structure this so that I’d still be able to max out my tax-deferred accounts but would replace debt service money with not-working time.

4. Continue to do this until I hit my 4% rule number +/- cutting back for a few years at the tail end to the minimum amount needed to retain benefits, and then peace out from the workforce completely.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
I just back of napkined whether my off the cuff estimate of being able to cut back to 0.7 FTE once debts are retired is reasonable. (In doing so I found that despite my tax deferral efforts I nevertheless had some income taxed at 35% last year due to bracket limits changing with the tax law. Good for me, I guess.)

Anyway, it is reasonable. Accounting for the persistence of property tax and insurance and allowing for resumption of $1k/mo 529 contributions, if I had no debt service then I could make about 32% less pre-tax and have the same net income. Right now 20% of my post-tax income is devoted to debt service and that extra 12% is due to said taxes not needing to be paid if I don’t earn that money.

As I run at a year over year surplus currently and am in the middle of the most expensive year kid-wise (paid for the extra half day of kindergarten that Denver doesn’t cover as well as full day preschool for kid 2) it is possible that I’d be able to cut 0.35 or 0.4 FTE out and still make the math work.
 
ALEXIS_DH

ALEXIS_DH

Tirelessly Awesome
Jan 30, 2003
6,236
862
Lima, Peru, Peru
Toshi said:
A better set of ideas than most which emanate from my brain:

1. Pay down debt first.

Don’t buy too much useless shit, although I’ll still swap the FCA minivan out for a Toyota PHEV or VW BEV. Resume paused 529 contributions once car notes gone. Refinance mortgage when student loans dispatched.

(2. If a big market correction or housing crash then buy what is rendered cheap, whether that be extra index funds in the kids’ 529s or a Breckenridge condo.)

3. Once all debts paid then cut back on work.

I can pick any 0.6-1.0 FTE number in 0.1 increments, I believe. I’d be able to cut back by, say, 0.3 FTE and have an effective take home pay cut of significantly less than 30%. I’d structure this so that I’d still be able to max out my tax-deferred accounts but would replace debt service money with not-working time.

4. Continue to do this until I hit my 4% rule number +/- cutting back for a few years at the tail end to the minimum amount needed to retain benefits, and then peace out from the workforce completely.
Click to expand...
My plan for the next 5 years is to wait for privatization in Venezuela, once Maduro is out of the country... and shoot for riches, wild-west sooner style.

Buy whatever street-front commercial property I can get and stock on utility companies and banks. My CDs in Lima pay 7%/year (on a 3% inflation) and my retirement portfolio has been doing around 9%/year.

Quite a few family friends made 8 digit fortunes from a similar run in Peru in the early 90s, once the gvmt transitioned from a quasi-socialistic society to a foreign-inversion engined economy (which is pretty much the only way up for Venezuela, there is no way the world bank/IMF/Uncle sam will allow for anything else). 20%-40%/year returns (compounded over 10+ years) were fairly common in such scenarios in south america.

General index market cap between 1995-2000, ~1,800. Record low was 22 in 1992.
https://es.investing.com/indices/lima-stock-exchange-general

Peaked at 22,000 (!) in 2007 (riding the raw metal rush from china), now at ~20,000.

Pretty much all south american SE experienced similar numbers when they became open economies
 
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Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Nick said:
a. won't the college years be the more expensive years, kid wise?

2. you ever consider having some more kids?
Click to expand...
SkaredShtles said:
From my un-scientific observations... EVERY year is more fucking expensive than the last with kids. They're like little (and not-so-little) dollar-vacuums. Fuckers. :mad:
Click to expand...
IX: Much (most? some?) of their college costs will be covered by said 529 accounts I have. Also I hope they are full of merit such that they land some merit scholarships.

But I may be wrong. They sure aren’t going to Oberlin on my dime, though.

ALEXIS_DH said:
My plan for the next 5 years is to wait for privatization in Venezuela, once Maduro is out of the country... and shoot for riches, wild-west sooner
Click to expand...
That’s the nice thing about my position: I don’t need to gamble so won’t. I’ll have some exposure via index funds covering the world markets but don’t need to risk any part of the farm.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Fatness update:

On their official scale I now clock in such that I’ve surpassed 40 BMI. I just got done chatting with my primary care doc and the following is happening:

- repeat echo (apparently my last was 2015—I forgot I’d had it that recently) for my joint laxity related concerns

- blood pressure is fine (126/72 today iirc) so in combination with my barely positive sleep study he thinks the CPAP is probably unnecessary

- referral to the campus Wellness Center, which has a multidisciplinary MD led program including nutrition, etc.

- referral to bariatric surgery to chat with them now that I officially meet at least one of their criteria

- labwork (CBC, chem panel, lipid panel, A1C, TSH)

This explains why my biking performance uphill is pretty sorry these days! Onward and downward.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,064
8,969
Just saw an Audi e-tron in the flesh, exiting my neighborhood. (There are a bunch of 3s here, several Ss and Xs—we are a prime EV target area.)

It looked pretty good. Seems in profile to be half between a Q5 and an allroad. Too bad about its disappointing range and price.
 
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