As a vegetarian for almost 18 years now, I will often get weird looks when I say I don’t like bell peppers or mushrooms. “But, you’re a vegetarian” they will say. “.. and you’re a meat eater, so that must mean you love headcheese, cow tongue, and pig’s feet?” And they usually get the point.

You can also make a stuffed animal jail. I took an old cheap bookcase, drilled a line of holes in the bottom and top lips, and threaded stretchy bungee cord up and down. Keeps them contained, and is super easy to reach through and grab the one you want.

I knew someone who didn’t know black beans were black. He thought they turned black from the broth.

Well, the sample dogs lived at home, in the basement, playing a lot of “bark-box”... so barely sexually active might be accurate.

It’s based on an expected age calculation. See: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/uniform_rmd_wksht.pdf

Yeah, these changes seem like strange bed fellows. Unless they also added an exemption for low IRA balances to this act, the two don’t work well together. (Roughly) The RMDs are calculated on your total IRA retirement savings as of Dec 31. So if you contribute to your traditional IRA at age 73. The next year, you have…

I agree, that’s why I made the cheat sheet.  It’s enough of a reminder to get the steps back in my head when I forget.

I found this guide from Rubik’s was the easiest for me to learn from. My 9 year old daughter used it too. For her I made a cheat sheet of the moves for each step.

Well, the rule of thumb is a starting point, to get people in the ballpark. Most retirement calculators basically assume you spend all of your income and give you wildly inflated estimates of what you will need in retirement.

Sure looks like I can buy tickets at my local Regal, on their website right now.

I still use regular table salt in most of my recipes. Specifically because it does have iodine. We use very few prepared items, so using kosher salt for everything could lead to an iodine deficiency. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-Consumer/ 

Child’s age in dollars, per week, rounded up to multiple of two. They get half in rooster, and half goes to a CapitalOne account. So they have a 50% savings rate. I plan to open up a UTMA account for them with the CapitalOne money.  That will make it easier for them to continue saving on their own. 

And if you want a bump in your numbers, don’t just use Autopay. Pay off your balance BEFORE the statement. That will lower your credit utilization, and bump your number up.  If you are planning on big new credit (like a mortgage), do this for a few months before you apply, and you should see your score improve quite a…

Marvel’s Wolverine podcast is good.

A friend of mine did this when we were teens. Steam hit him in the face. Luckily he was wearing some Oakley razors, so he just had a light burn around his face, but his eyes were ok.  His dad and brothers were mechanics, but apparently he didn’t get that lesson. 

Every time we go hiking I bring a bag with me just for trash. And just about everytime we get back it’s full.

Yes, VTSAX has a minimum, but VTI is the ETF equivalent with no minimums, and once you have $3000 invested, you can convert to VTSAX with a single click in Vanguard. Note, that transaction is considered a sale, so you’ll have capital gains (hopefully) on the gains.  But those are better than waiting on the side lines.

Related, use all those same words with your infants/toddler too. I remember the early pediatric checkup where the Dr said our kid should be saying a word or two. We laughed, because our kid had a 50 word vocabulary by then. By the next meeting we kept a list. The Dr expected 30 words, we were over 300.

A good time to bring up “Legacy Binders” again. I’ve written one for my spouse, and for our kids in case we both die. A couple of key points that aren’t always clear, is that would want to put yourself in the mind of the survivor, and be INCREDIBLY specific. I created a call log, with phone numbers and account numbers…

This features prominently in Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway