birb_cromble
No bio...
User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
11hr ago
A good grilled sausage in a roll with all the fixings is hard to beat
birb_cromble
12hr ago
It's tragic. Local libraries were a refuge for me growing up. Learning that there was a place with air conditioning and more books than I could ever read, for free, only an hour and a half's walk away, was one of the most mind-blowing things that ever happened to me.
birb_cromble
13hr ago
I would imagine we've invented new ways of making fast food more expensive.
Franchise fees and real estate costs have gotten bonkers over the last ten years. Unless you're a real estate company masquerading as a fast food joint like McDonald's, this can be back-breaking.
Sometimes I feel like the data is capturing an accurate average of a highly lumpy picture.
My extended family is scattered to the four winds. The difference in outcomes in different circumstances and different regions is shocking.
The lucky ones in Northern Virginia are doing great. They all have six figure government-adjacent jobs and they bought homes before the real estate market exploded. Their retirement funds are bursting at the seams and their hardest decisions are whether Becky is taking dance lessons or violin lessons this year. The unlucky ones in Northern Virginia either live in run down shitty rentals an hour and a half away from their jobs that cost an increasing fraction of their paycheck every year, or they're reaching the point where they have to sell their farms.
The lucky ones in Pennsylvania are doing great. They work in healthcare or education and they bought their homes before the real estate market exploded. I don't think they could get fired unless they committed a felony on the clock. The unlucky ones in Pennsylvania can't hold down a decent job because the plants keep closing, and several have had to sell their homes because they have to desperately move around to follow the work. The skyrocketing cost of rent makes it harder and harder every year.
I have no lucky relatives in Kentucky. They're all doing their best to not starve to death as they try to recover from the floods a few years ago. There's very little work. The environment is hard on cars. It's reaching the point where they can't even afford to move out of the area. Drugs are a common escape.
I don't have any more relatives in West Virginia. They're all dead. The deaths over the last five years were not due to natural causes.
I don't disagree with @iprayiam3. I also don't disagree with all the people telling him that he's wrong because Actually Look at Line - Line Go Up. Line Definitely Go Up. I've read the same graphs as everybody else. I can't disagree with the direction that Line Going.
On the other hand, it feels like the truth of the average person doing better is obscuring another, separate truth, which is that the American middle class lifestyle is more precarious than ever, and a concerning number of people are falling through the cracks. It points to a structural weakness in our country that troubles me, both because it's a structural weakness and because so many people choose to use Line Going Up to avoid even discussing it.
My cousin who died of a fentanyl overdose after he got hurt in a forklift accident doesn't give a shit about how big his TV is. His widow doesn't really care either.
My cousin who's working 60 hours a week at three jobs just to make rent is doing his best. He's working far harder than I do. When my uncle smugly tells him that he "should invest in them mutual funds, boy", he's missing the entire damned point.
I'm reminded of a quote from Jeff Bezos
When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. It doesn't mean you just slavishly follow the anecdotes, then. It means you go examine the data. It's usually not that the data is being miscollected. It's usually that you're not collecting the right thing. If you have a bunch of customers complaining about something, and at the same time, your metrics look like they shouldn't be complaining, you should doubt the metrics.
Clearly, a lot of people think something is wrong in this country. It's easy to suggest that the people complaining are retarded, lazy, and wrong. After all, Line Going Up! Look at Line! If Line Go Up, why aren't you Going Up along with aforementioned Line? The thing is, that's exactly what the quote above is trying to warn us about. But if that's true, what the hell is actually wrong? What data are we missing that prevents us from getting a clearer picture?
I have some thoughts. I don't know if they're complete, or even correct, but I want to get them down.
One thing I've mentioned repeatedly above is the cost of housing. I don't think it's the whole picture, but it really seems like housing instability has an outsized psychological impact. It also tends to be the biggest single monthly cost most people have, so even a small percentile increase tends to be a big bottom line number.
At the same time, there are fewer and fewer places where a person can exist in public for extended periods without a financial transaction involved. This goes back to the $20 burrito. Maybe it's not universal, but for hundreds of miles around me, public libraries are cutting hours or shutting down. Small corner bars dying along with their owners and getting replaced by Another Goddamned Chipotle. You can't shoot darts at a Chipotle on a Friday night. You can't even linger for too long before they ask you to buy another burrito. The end result is that if you want to be out of your house, you're either deep in the woods, or you're spending money on another goddamned burrito in a way that simply didn't happen 20 years ago.
On top of that, job security is getting worse. Layoffs used to be the kind of thing that would get an executive fired, because it meant that they fundamentally misunderstood the nature of their business and client demand. Nowadays layoffs are just good clean fun that will probably result in the bosses getting a bonus. It was a lot easier to have a positive outlook about a meagre lifestyle if you know it represented a solid floor. That's less true in the year of our Lord 2026.
Am I ignoring the fact that Line Go Up? No, I am not. In fact, I'm one of the lucky ones. I have been able to capture some of the Upness of Line, and I'm doing better than I ever expected to do in my life as a result.
At the same time, the fact that this discussion is even happening suggests that there's something wrong that we're not capturing. When people say "It's just lifestyle creep," I'm reminded of the line from Chernobyl when Dyatlov says "3.6 Roentgen. Not great - not terrible". He's making decisions based on the readings while simultaneously not considering the limitations of those readings, and coming to a specious conclusion as a result.
Keep harping on Line and its Up at your peril. Calling people lazy and retarded and wrong feels good in the short term, but it feels like it's dangerously close to shooting the messenger. The fact that they're not communicating it in clear, quantifiable terms doesn't mean there's nothing there.
birb_cromble
16hr ago
That's funny. I use SGOV for my Roth IRA contributions for the upcoming year, and VBIL for general savings.
birb_cromble
19hr ago
If I'm reading this correctly, you have to itemize to get the benefit, right?
I'll be have to do some math to see if that would beat the standard deduction for them.
birb_cromble
19hr ago
What's your prediction on SBRs and SBSs? I feel like SBRs will probably get legalized because pistol braces have already made them de facto legal, but we'll see some kind of weird, made-up exception for shotguns.
birb_cromble
1d ago
birb_cromble
1d ago
Spending is $3,091.99 less than the same day last year.
The contractor finally started the work this week, so I expect that buffer to crater in the next week or two.
birb_cromble
1d ago
that pay taxes
The Shapiro administration’s latest budget estimates show Pennsylvania could lose out on about $2 billion in revenue by mid-2031 due to a tax break that some lawmakers want to repeal.
birb_cromble
1d ago
Well, I guess I can stop looking at that.
birb_cromble
2d ago
@stolen_brawnze asked me to info dump what I've learned about fixed income over the last several months. I'm on the stationary bike and I'm getting bored, so let's go.
If anything here is wrong, please correct me and I'll update the post. I'd rather somebody tell me I'm wrong than spread misinformation.
At the highest level, I've been looking at government debt and corporate debt.
Government debt, like the name suggests, is issued by government entities. At the federal level, that includes treasuries, and below that, you're mostly looking at municipal bonds. Treasuries are considered the gold standard for low risk investing. Municipal bonds usually offer lower rates, but are are tax exempt at the federal level. In most states, they're exempt from state tax as well if the bond is issued by your state if residence as well; if you're high income or high net worth, that can be a real win.
Commercial debt is a lot more varied. Unlike sovereign nations, corporations generally don't have standing armies and taxable citizens to guarantee their loans. Instead, there are a handful of private groups that rate corporate credit. Generally, riskier companies offer higher rates to entice lenders. Safer companies can get away with lower rates, because they're probably not going to go out of business before the bond matures.
Bonds are great, because if the company doesn't default, you'll always get back your face value, but they're kind of a pain in the ass to hold individually. Bond funds offer an alternative to this, but they come with their own risks. Bond funds hold rolling collections of bonds and generally returns distributions monthly as ordinary income. Bond funds that hold significant amounts of US treasuries are usually state tax exempt.
Bond funds that hold significant amounts of municipal bonds also carry a tax advantage.
Bond funds have an average duration, which is the weighted average time it takes for a bond in the fund to recover its face value. Longer durations tend to offer better returns, but this is not always a guarantee. Longer durations also carry more risk, because the interest rate is locked into the bonds that are held by the fund. When you hold a fund at X%, it's not as attractive if the same issuer offers the same bond at X+1%. Rate increases tend to make the share price of a bond fund drop. Conversely, rate drops tend to make older bonds with higher rates more attractive, which makes the share value of a bond fund rise. If you're using a bond fund for savings, you should favor shorter durations. If you're using a bond fund for income, duration matters less because the yields tend to even out. Roughly speaking, a 1% increase in rates will cause the share price of a fund to drop by a number of percentage points equal to the fund's average duration. This is why 2021-2023 were so terrible for bonds. The fed jacked up rates seven times in rapid succession and absolutely obliterated a lot of bond funds.
On the corporate side, there are also collateralized debt funds. Collateralized debt funds hold a basket of debt (mortgages are common) and divide the returns into tranches. When everything is going well, everybody gets paid, with the lower tranches getting a higher rate. When things go shit wise, the tranches might not get paid. The highest tranche is AAA, and these funds tend to be very safe by the standards of corporate debt.
Tickers
Ultra Short term treasuries: I like VBIL. SGOV is also good. Average duration is about a month, so the share value is extremely stable. You can see a clear sawtooth pattern every month as the value builds up before a distribution. I like this as an enhanced savings account that has state tax advantages.
Short term treasuries: SCHO and VGSH. I haven't found a particular use for these. Average duration is just shy of two years.
Weird outliers: Bondbloxx is doing interesting under XHLF and XONE. These offer a six month and one year duration, respectively. I'm also looking at BOXX, which is doing some sort of synthetic fund that converts returns into capital appreciation for tax efficiency. I'm still not sure how that works or how it's legal.
Collateralized debt: My go to here is JAAA. It has a short duration (about 2.5 months right now) and a decent return. Be aware that the distributions are considered ordinary income. If you want more return, there's also JBBB. If you want alternatives there's also PAAA and CLOA.
Short term corporate debt: I like VUSB and I hold it as ballast in my HSA. It has an average duration of about 1.9 years.
I want to put my balls on the table: If you're bold, there's FALN. FALN is a junk bond fund for companies that have lost their investment grade rating. The thesis for the fund is that companies that were once investment grade are more likely to get their shit together and pay you than their bond yields would suggest.
Municipal bond funds: Not every state has its own municipal bond fund. If you want a national grab bag for the federal tax advantage, there's VTEB. For particular states, California has CMF. New Jersey has FNJHX. Pennsylvania has FTPA. New York has NYF. You'll probably need to check your own state of residence. These are only usually worth it if you can find one for your own state or if you're fuckin' loaded and need to keep your tax burden down. Municipal bond funds tend to have a very long duration because they tend to fund large projects.
I don't want to think about this shit: BND or BNDW. The former is a snapshot of the whole US bond market. The latter is the whole global bond market.
I am very patient: EDV is a treasury ETF with an average duration of twenty God damned four years. The 30 day yield is 5.1% though, so if you're looking for income it's not bad.
Other notables:
Bogleheads like USFR, which is a fund that holds floating rate notes instead of fixed rate treasuries. It has a slightly better 30 day SEC yield than SGOV.
JSI was something of a fixed income darling earlier this year, but it's been having a hard time, having lost 2.68% of its share price YoY. It does have a 5.83% SEC yield, however.
VTIP is interesting. It holds Treasury inflation protected securities. TIPS have a base rate, then a second additional rate that varies based on inflation. In theory, it should help you hold on to value if inflation spikes. In practice, the government lies about inflation and even if they didn't you'd get taxed on those returns. I'm not sure how it would fit into my portfolio.
birb_cromble
2d ago
Are you sure you want that kind of autism?
birb_cromble
2d ago
If you're feeling bold, there's also XONE
birb_cromble
2d ago
My understanding, corroborated by some people in previous threads, is that you generally want the longest duration you can manage without going over the date when you need it.
A 52 week treasury bill coupon equivalent is over 4% right now. That's not awful if capital preservation is a big deal. To get higher than that, you'd be looking at commercial debt like JAAA, and even then you'd have to consider the tax implications.
birb_cromble
2d ago
First, say a prayer of thanks that she's dispositionally a saver.
I do that pretty much every day.
Since she's aware of inflation, I've been gently pushing the idea of SGOV to her. I'm emphasizing the fact that her bank is likely using treasuries to fund the interest on her HYSA, so buying SGOV just cuts out the middle man. My hope is that if she can see it grow for a while without any catastrophes, she might accept more risk and investments that have a longer time horizon.
Do you believe you're so bad at controlling yourself that you will spend more than you can afford if you use a credit card?
I've met a surprising number of people over the years who seem perfectly functional, only to later learn that they have five figures of credit card debt. I'd rather not even put myself in a position where I could find out I'm that kind of person. I've got a lot of people in my family with addiction and impulse control problems, and putting a fence around temptation has kept me from finding out I have the same problems.
birb_cromble
4d ago
You know what drives me apeshit? I've worked on a dairy farm, and an orchard. Sure, it's hot, dirty, and uncomfortable work, but it wasn't really any worse than a dinner rush in a commercial kitchen on a Friday night. I really get the impression that a lot of people assume manual labor is worse than the ninth circle of hell.
birb_cromble
4d ago
Then where exactly is this mass of currently non working American citizen
In the case that you are actually asking this question seriously, and not as a half-assed attempt at a rhetorical dunk, they're in the Appalachians. I have some family and old acquaintances in ${UNDISCLOSED}. One of the largest employers in the area has historically been a prepared food facility, which recently came under new management. This new executive team has been doing rolling waves of layoffs, and regularly furloughing workers who they retain an attempt to force them to quit. For the last year, both a relative and a friend have repeatedly noted that despite the rolling layoffs, the overall workforce at the plant has not decreased. It has, however, started to feature an increasingly large number of five foot tall Guatemalan men in their 20s who don't speak English, but present work papers claiming that they're John Billings from Madison, Wisconsin. It's agonizingly obvious that they're hiring people with stolen identities.
My cousin got laid off recently, and he's looking at trying to file some sort of suit against the company. I doubt it will go anywhere. He has placed upwards of thirty job applications in the fields of construction, municipal maintenance work, security, and HVAC. He hasn't heard a damned thing back from any of them. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that he has a felony drug charge on his record from 20 years ago, but in that area, that's not really uncommon.
You're welcome to pretend this is all about "jobs nobody wants to do", but believe me when I tell you it's climbing up the food chain.
birb_cromble
4d ago
I'm not a fan of this policy at all. It incentivizes the kind of person who wants to be in New York to be somewhere other than New York. Given that I live somewhere other than New York, this presents an unacceptable risk of me being exposed to the kind of person who wants to be in New York.
birb_cromble
4d ago
You know what's more American than having an all-American name?
Having a funny name and being so goddamn American about it that you tell pearl-clutchers to go fuck themselves. One of the most patriotic, overwhelmingly American people I know is a Korean man who goes by "Gun".
America isn't a guy with a proper Anglo-Saxon WASP name. It's not a collection of clothes. It's a commitment to the belief that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
You're in America now, and America built itself out of exiles and outsiders who held an ideal that no other country in the would would accept. You're no different. Be proud of your name. Carve out a space for yourself and remind us what America is.
birb_cromble
5d ago
I'll try to see if my library has a copy. It sucks when someone comes to me for advice and I can't offer anything.
birb_cromble
5d ago
That’s why I would suggest a bond: it’s liquid in a way that individual bonds are not
Do you mean a bond fund?
birb_cromble
5d ago
I am violently skeptical of EA as a concept due to the events of the last several years. Between Situational Awareness, FTX, the castle debacle, the zizians, and... just the entire AI industry right now, I think setting my money on fire would result in more net good being done than giving it to anyone who is EA-affiliated.
With that out of the way, are you specifically looking for EA charities, or are you looking to maximize the utility of your charitable giving? If it's the former, I absolutely cannot help you. If it's the latter, can you explain why you're taking that approach over donating to a local charity that has a good reputation, that's close enough to scope out yourself?
What do you consider very well paying?
I started programming for money in the 90s and I could make more in a day programming than I could in a week delivering pizzas. Maybe my calibration for very well paying is fucked, but that seems pretty good to me.
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