I bought 5 years ago when it was still reasonable. I have a great rate on a great house that has increased by about 50% since I bought it.

I don’t want to, because this is just about the perfect size house for us in a great location, but I can’t really “trade up” as the interest rates are through the roof and everything is more expensive too.

It really depends on how complicated your set up is and how much you value your privacy. I use personal capital (now empower), which also helps me manage a budget as well, and see our multiple investment accounts all in one place, so I can balance both mine and my wife’s. So I would recommend that, with the caveat that you might not feel comfortable sharing all of that with a third party.

Yeah it’s not for everyone, but I just have an event on my calendar for every six months, and I just rebalance when it goes off. Only takes a short while, especially if you are using some tool that will tell you what your weights are.

If you’re really hands off these are a good choice. But if you are willing to rebalance a couple of times a year, it’s unnecessary to pay the extra fees associated with these funds.

Yeah it’s a lot of fun. I had a few adults that were there the whole time, but then a bunch of other neighbors/friends wandered in and out throughout the night. Probably had a total of about 10 different people hanging out.

Normally I wear a costume, but mine fell apart this year.

Lol I’m definitely doing this next year

At my house we get north of 200 kids every year it’s decent outside. Sometimes over 250. We’re talking about a kid every minute for the 3.5 hours we do it.

I just set up a table outside, invite a few friends over, drink some beers and give kids candy as they show up. Fuck having to answer the door every minute for 3.5 hours.

My older neighbors complained that the kids don’t have to come up to the front door and are skipping their house because I sit outside. I felt a little guilty, but honestly sitting outside (it it’s cold I get a fire pit going, not tonight tho) is much nicer. One older couple followed my lead this year and agreed. So I’m over it now. Welcome to the new world.

That game is tons of fun, but I suck at it.

My wife had a very stressful and demanding job that paid well. I sacrificed my career advancement so she could pursue this dream. After a few years she burned out, was miserable, and wanted to quit to find a new job. However this came with a huge pay cut too which made the decision more difficult and I was (hopefully understandably) frustrated because I had made all of these sacrifices so she could follow her dream.

But I wanted her to be happy so we figured it out.

Moral of this story? Since then I’ve learned how much truth there is to the “happy wife, happy life” idiom.

You know it’s funny how many times I’ve heard that “it’s just predictive text algorithms!” As a dismissal that I’m beginning to think we’re just predictive text algorithms.

Because you were like the fourth person to tell me to get takeout after I explained it in the comments multiple times.

My bad. I did search for “drive” and “pick” and saw nothing. But apparently I didn’t scroll down so all of the comments weren’t loaded.

I didn’t?

No, you didn’t. That was your explanation as to why you couldn’t cook. I presumed one reason you got pizza was because it was a smell you could tolerate. Expecting people to understand that your reasoning for not cooking was the same reason for not driving is ridiculous.

I respect that and it makes sense. Why you had to be such a prick about it is beyond me.

You didn’t head off the question as to why you didn’t just pick it up. It looks your delivery costs were a whopping 28% of the total. If you ain’t cooking, you’ve probably got the time to drive. Or better yet walk or bike (obviously only if it’s close enough).

But that being said, I recommend always considering getting a large pie. Remember, the area grows with r²

So for 6 extra dollars (to get the 16 inch) you get the equivalent of 2.5 10" pizzas. And you have some leftovers. Granted this doesn’t make sense if no one else is going to eat it but her, but even going to a medium, you get almost an extra half pizza for 2 dollars. That probably would buy at least a second meal out of it for her.

During the period when inflation was real hot, my wife got a 35% pay raise and I got around a 28% pay raise. We beat inflation by a long shot.

Should I recognize that my situation was the representative of the general economy? Or should I say something like “my personal situation reflects the general state of people in the economy” and then argue that wage growth was outpacing inflation?

Wage growth has been outpacing inflation for well over a year now in the us. The issue is that there was a huge spike of inflation during the pandemic and many people have fallen far behind so there is a lot of catching up to do.

I’m not sure if they changed, or my taste changed, but the fries are almost inedible to me now. They smell fantastic still, but they just taste so fake.

Many items in cocktails also have long shelf lives after opening or are cheap/move quickly.

This is why I think we see variations on actual cocktails so much…you have it, it’s open, so move it.

Is this coming from experience or are you just kind of guessing? There are plenty of cocktails that use non-shelf stable stuff that you can get anywhere. On top of that, the new movement towards providing non-alcoholic drinks on the menu just reuses these same ingredients in different ways.

I feel like this joke would have landed better 5, or maybe even 3 years ago. Every even remotely fancy restaurant I go into has jumped on the mocktail bandwagon and offers plenty of options for people avoiding alcohol.