Ugh. When saving up for our house, I was keeping some of our money in my savings account at BoA. The interest rate was such a joke that I had 20k in there and was getting back like 34 CENTS a month. Folks thought I was joking when I said scratch offs seemed to yield a higher return on investment. It was downright…

Yeah, not talking the construction, just the idea of playing on the joysticks. I use them for fighting games, and when you have a long session, you’d much rather be comfortable on a couch, then hunched over at a table. Having them built into a cabinet creates nostalgia for the 30 and over crowd, but that wears off…

I wish I could do this one, but the CCs we have with anything that has actual interest rate is already ridiculously low, or we are paying it off this week and saying “Good riddance” anyways. I do want to do something about my wife’s student loans, but that’s been a landmine whenever I step on it.

Plastic bins from the dollar store are GREAT. However, I can’t co-sign cookware or tools. Cookware seems to have low melting points - so its fine for mixing utensils, but if it goes into a pan/skillet...eh. And tools...if you are in a pinch - fine, but the metal used - at least with the screwdrivers I’ve gotten from…

I’ve got real cabinets, have built cabinets, have built 4-player controllers, big and small single player joysticks, etc, and my current project is a small cabinet for two people (kids). Truthfully speaking, almost all “built in” joysticks will wear thin eventually, they aren’t natural. If you can get close to the…

I was listening to one podcast and some listener mentioned listening at like 2x speed, I thought they were crazy. Well since I never have time to watch sports, I typically keep up with them through a litany of sports podcast, but some of them can get rather ‘long’, and feel longer when recycling storylines (First…

While working on my degree (elec eng), I developed a practice I call “Juggernaut Principle” (the tactic was born from when I did comp sci in high school though)...yes, its based off the comic book character. His main thing wasn’t just his size, it was that once he started moving, nothing could stop him, but he had to…

I do tons of podcast, but I typically save them for my car ride in and out of work, only doing music during the day as background ‘noise’.

...during the frying process, wouldn’t the cheese just melt out...like overcooked mozzarella sticks?

I wouldn’t call it a rule of thumb per say, BUT (I guess identifying it as a flag) if the offer comes through that fast/on the spot, you need to research it some more. My current job was almost on the spot. I interviewed on a Thursday, they told me they had about a weeks worth of interviews left to go through and…

had nothing to do with code or anything, the value of the house is based on what’s permitted, and according to the state or county the basement is considered “unfinished”. So while the value of the house should have been X amount of dollars because it was finished, the perceived value is actually minus the…

When we bought the house, the fact that the basement wasn’t permitted, lowered the “value” of the house, the lending company wouldn’t approve lending more money than the house was worth, so we actually got our house for about $20k less. While my wife has no intentions of us every moving to another house (even if we…

You missed (or I didn’t read) one big thing that separates ownnership from rental - control. If I want to paint a room blood red (working on it heh), the only person who can stop me is my wife. If I want to finish out my attic, sure I need to get permits, but they won’t stop me. If I want to tear down walls in my…

Yeah, we started developing a “stash” of “opened but not eaten” packages as well, it seems the ones we really liked, often were easily eaten quickly, while average or middling ones (like say bar-b-que sunflower seeds) just sit there as they “survive” the first night, and aren’t approached again until the next box…

I used Naturebox for a little over a year. We loved it at first, but eventually it regresses from “trying new things” to “order the same thing again, over and over”. It was always a blast when a box would show up and we’d spend the next 15 minutes or so all opening up the different pouches to try them out, but…

I’ve been anti-machine for years. I abhor them (well 75% of them, there are exceptions). However, it isn’t some free weight snob type of thing, there are legit reasons.

eh...I kind of have to put my hand up against this one. I’m not saying the math is in accurate or anything like that, but it ignores the purpose of calorie counting...to curve your overall consumption to a certain level. Nothing about weight loss or even eating healthy is an exact science, there are too many…

I dunno. I typically (short handed) sum up my incomes, sum up my forced expenditures, sum up my credit (flexible), add them up, see what’s left, create a bare minimum budget, force ‘X’ daily into savings, and the rest becomes “float”, either towards the daily budget or towards debt as needed - or savings if possible.…

It’s been a nightmare for me. Absolute nightmare. I ironically moved towards my friends, from DC to Raleigh, only for us to still be 45 minutes apart in all directions, and now with multiple kids. As mentioned, the evening usually boils down to less than an hour of true free time, and for me its magnified even further…

It really boils down to something breaking on a major purchase. Our AC breaking. Electric panel going bad. My wife just spent $500 on tires last week due to a flat.