Yeah, I think we discussed option two and I gave you my opinion as to why I dislike it, but I’ll go over it again and add some more reasons for you to at least consider.

I think the point here is, you usually are going to want to pay for medical expenses from tax-advantaged accounts if at all possible. If you’re using after-tax dollars to pay for healthcare expenses, you’re losing money.

I think you’re focusing on the trees and missing the forest. You’re almost always going to be better off paying for medical expenses with before-tax money. Think of it this way, if your total income tax rate is 30%, then if you pay for a $100 medical expense out of pocket, you’re paying about $43 extra on taxes versus…

Because of the tax benefit of an HSA, paying for medical expenses out of pocket doesn’t make a lot of sense. It shouldn’t matter how you invest your HSA as long as those investments are relatively liquid (e.g. can be converted to cash easily).

I mean, it’s really not that hard. You simply ask some simple questions like: what is your relationship to each other and why are you outside of your home.

Maybe then they should buy a cheaper car or save more for the down payment? It shouldn’t take you longer to pay off your car than it does to graduate from college. 

That’s a nice strawman. The emergency order doesn’t apply to people who are commuting to or from a business that is lawfully operating during the state of emergency or a task related directly to their employment. And nobody is being thrown in jail simply for playing basketball or gathering with a few friends in the…

Much of San Francisco is this way too. It’s nothing like what the article makes it out to be. If you’re going to be closed for a while, best to fortify things as much as possible, especially if you still have merchandise there and aren’t going to keep it manned.

The fine should only be a last resort, only when someone ignores police orders, is a repeat offender, or is deliberately doing something egregious to violate the order like throwing a party.

Yeah, honestly, fuck them. They’re almost at the verge of committing manslaughter. They’re lucky they are only getting a fine. If it wouldn’t make the problem worse, I would say throw them in jail. Fines are really the only way you can stop repeat offenders or people who refuse to obey police enforcement of the…

The problem is, that doesn’t work from a public health perspective. Someone goes out, hangs out unnecessarily with other people, comes home and coughs in the common-area of an apartment, and now their grandmother and everyone who passed through the common areas of the grocery store, the bodega, and their apartment…

I think for people under emergency shelter-in-place orders, the expectation is that only essential repairs get done, those that would otherwise violate the warranty of habitability (no heating, no hot water, sewage leak, et cetera) or present an immediate hazard to the tenant (structural unsoundness, et cetera).…

I mean, to be quite frank, the landlord is responsible for paying the mortgage, not the tenant. You’re running a business and businesses need to have contingency plans. What happens if you’re unable to get income from the property for an extended period due to circumstances beyond your control like natural disaster, a…

There’s a few different moral imperatives. I think for this situation you want to use what is called the veil of ignorance. Pretend like you don’t know what your place is in society: you don’t know if you’re healthy or ill, young or old, poor or rich, work as a Wall Street trader or a deliveryman. Now, what is the beha…

The problem with just looking at the death rate though is that it hides the serious injuries and hospitalizations that occur. Like, if you look at the death rate for measles in children in the United States, it is very low, but it hospitalizes a lot of children and causes lasting or lifelong injuries for some.

Federal student loans are generally pretty forgiving. My experience, at least with Nelnet, was that you can easily request a forbearance online and that they’ll even remove missed payments from your credit report after you start making regular payments. This is all automatic, without even having to speak with a…

I agree. I’m working from home and making my normal paycheck (for now). I’m not going to say “no” to $1000, but I would prefer the money go to small businesses and the unemployed and underemployed as well as those essential workers like healthcare workers and deployed National Guardsmen that should be getting at least…

Does it affect contributions to an IRA/HSA for the 2019 tax year?

I’m pretty sure that it’s likely to be a straight-up check that will be taken out of the federal budget/revenue, not something that will impact your federal income tax. Basically, it’s coming out of the national deficit and we’ll worry about how to pay for it later. 

Last I heard, they were still trying to go ahead, but it was put on hold by a federal judge and who knows when the courts will convene to hear non-essential cases?