The growth and withdrawal is tax free when used on medical expenses. 

Tax free growth and tax free withdrawals when used on qualifying medical expenses at any age.

I’d agree with this. I fall into the super saver category and would say no to those two questions.

That rule was just never adequate, it has nothing to do with wages not keeping pace. If you started at 25, invested 10% of your salary, got a 7% rate of return, 3% yearly raises and then followed the 4% withdrawal rule at 65, you’d replace just under 39% of your pre-retirement income.

You are correct, but I’m still able to max out 401k, HSA and invest quite a bit outside of that. If I didn’t have “extra” money, it would not be in my budget.

I agree with this take. I average about $15/day  and 200 days a year. $3000 isn’t an insignificant amount of money, but it’s budgeted in and completely worth it to me. 

I finished up this process with a 2018 Pacifica last month. Mine was only about 25% higher and involved some hoops to jump through, but it was worth it.

7% is often quoted because it’s the historical S&P 500 return after inflation. Meaning you’re close to 10% real return and are losing 3% of the real return to inflation.

Link got messed up, it should be https://www.putnam.com/literature/pdf/II508-ac37f7ad02b2d8889f7e5361f0e8ac86.pdf

Where are you getting that the average investor loses money? If you put money into an S&P 500 fund, used dollar cost averaging and stayed invested long term, 7% is the historical average adjusted for inflation (closer to 10% un-adjusted). The big thing is don’t try and time the market and accept short term volatility…

I agree. I got a pool, hot tub, and screen (including a large entertaining area under screen) for $50k 4 years ago. A friend looking at a similar setup today is getting quotes between $75k-$80k.

While I would normally agree with the pool, the market in my area in Florida is all kinds of weird now. Pools are giving a near 100% return currently, but that probably won’t last. I’ve seen a $75k difference in sale price between identical floor plans with similar options (new construction area) with the pool being…

My sister’s 2016 Honda Odyssey had a misfire and went into limp mode with flashing CEL about 90 min from her house. Had it towed to the Honda dealer about 10 min from where she was. Estimate came back at $7000 for new coils on all cylinders, new spark plugs , replacing piston rings on 4 of the 6 cylinders (why not 6…

No idea, he also may have known that we would take away his driving duties on the 12 hour each way road trip.

Went on a road trip with a friend who didn’t understand that there were more throttle positions than WOT and coasting. He would full throttle accelerate to about 15 over the speed limit full throttle and coast down until he got under the speed limit then repeat the process. He no longer had driving duty after about 15…

You can pick up some pretty cheap and pretty new Pacifica’s if you’re good with a rental. There is a flood of them ranging from 2018-2020, but they are slightly out of your price range. I did see a 2017 40k mile Pacifica Touring L for $17k at a local dealer.

I have mixed feelings on this as well. I’m more for something like public service loan forgiveness getting expanded to others. Get on income based repayment, pay for 10 years, at that point debt is gone. You have some responsibility, but not a debilitating debt that you will never pay off.

The area where I’m at started vaccinating over 65 in early January. It was done via a phone reservation system. It crashed the phones within a couple hours. They switched to Eventbrite. That lasted about an hour and a half before every appointment was booked.

I’ve got a Logitech harmony smart control remote with hub that runs on a single 2032 watch battery. I've replaced the battery once in 3 years. Why can't more remotes be like that? 

My opinion is that student loan debt should not be cancelled until we fix the problem of ballooning college costs. If we cancel that much debt today, in 5 years, we’ll be back at square 1. Fix the underlying problem first.