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The Water Cooler, Scuttlebutt, Chit Chat Thread

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The Water Cooler, Scuttlebutt, Chit Chat Thread

Old 01-30-20, 12:56 PM
  #4401  
echappist
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Originally Posted by topflightpro
Congratulations on the wedding and house.

My MIL offered to give us the money they would have spent on the wedding had we eloped. My wife insisted on the huge wedding. Then she realized what a PIA it is to plan and how much she hates being the center of attention. Oh well, it was too late at that point, and we had the huge wedding. I don't remember much of it. We spent the whole time thanking everyone for coming, which took several hours considering we had like 300 people there. It wasn't a lot of fun for us, but everyone else loved the party.

As for your house, make sure you get a good home inspection.

the other one being (at the risk of sounding like a killjoy), unless one knows the stay at the house is greater than 4-5 years (@TKP mentioned moving for schools), it's most often better to rent and invest (CD for the risk averse, index fund for the more adventurous). Taxes (1-2% of purchase value per year), closing costs (2-3% of purchase value), and agent's fees (6% of purchase value) costs that one has to eat. Also plan to spend ~1% of purchase value per year on maintenance. Don't use the NYT buy v rent calculator (as it assumes a 3% appreciation and the fact that itemized deduction would be more favorable), use this one: https://michaelbluejay.com/house/rentvsbuy.html

When my then partner (and now wife) and I moved to Wisconsin, we were seriously considering about buying, but as we will most likely leave in another ~3 years, it made no sense. The aforementioned costs on a $300k house (with tax rate of ~2%) would have been ~$95k for a 15-yr mortgage and ~$102k for a 30-yr mortgage. Breaking even would have required an annualized return of ~2.5% (and this doesn't take into account of the maintenance costs), and we weren't confident that we'd necessarily see that sort of return. Remember that buying for short term with a loan is basically investing using margin accounts: the gains could be amplified, but so could the loses. Caveat emptor and all that
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Old 01-30-20, 01:52 PM
  #4402  
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One option on the home buying front is if you can buy a home that is easily rentable (usually a smaller place in a medium to big city works), and with a reasonably large down payment, you could choose to keep the house and rent it out if you happen to move. This also gives you flexibility to sell at a good time for the market vs. when life dictates. It does come with a lot of work and some risk as well.

As for a wedding ceremony, my fiancee and I are both in our 50's and heading into a 2nd try at this. We won't be going full city hall style, but a small wedding with just close family and friends. We've already combined two homes worth of stuff into one, so we are definitely not in need of traditional wedding gifts. We've joked that we'll require every guest to leave with something from our kitchen - thanks for coming, here is a blender for you!
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Old 01-30-20, 04:10 PM
  #4403  
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My first wedding we had a few hundred people. But both our parents invited loads of people, and my dad and I had a company together and we invited lots of business folks. It got huge really quick. My second wedding was sub 50 people and 25% were between 5 and 11 years old.
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Old 01-30-20, 04:32 PM
  #4404  
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My girlfriend and I are talking about moving in together. The fact we both own places makes that harder. My place is nicer but too small, hers doesn't have heated parking which I really enjoy.

I want to rent a house or larger condo and then rent out both our places. Anyone here manage two rental units? Experiences?
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Old 01-30-20, 05:28 PM
  #4405  
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Originally Posted by echappist
the other one being (at the risk of sounding like a killjoy), unless one knows the stay at the house is greater than 4-5 years (@TKP mentioned moving for schools), it's most often better to rent and invest (CD for the risk averse, index fund for the more adventurous). Taxes (1-2% of purchase value per year), closing costs (2-3% of purchase value), and agent's fees (6% of purchase value) costs that one has to eat. Also plan to spend ~1% of purchase value per year on maintenance. Don't use the NYT buy v rent calculator (as it assumes a 3% appreciation and the fact that itemized deduction would be more favorable), use this one: https://michaelbluejay.com/house/rentvsbuy.html

When my then partner (and now wife) and I moved to Wisconsin, we were seriously considering about buying, but as we will most likely leave in another ~3 years, it made no sense. The aforementioned costs on a $300k house (with tax rate of ~2%) would have been ~$95k for a 15-yr mortgage and ~$102k for a 30-yr mortgage. Breaking even would have required an annualized return of ~2.5% (and this doesn't take into account of the maintenance costs), and we weren't confident that we'd necessarily see that sort of return. Remember that buying for short term with a loan is basically investing using margin accounts: the gains could be amplified, but so could the loses. Caveat emptor and all that
So, the house we are most interested in is newly renovated and *appears* to be in stellar shape. We will definitely be having an expert looking it over before we put in a formal offer though. New everything though, even the roof.

We are essentially looking at saving 1200/month in saved rent if we buy the house we are looking at, even including taxes, utilities, and insurance. So our break even on closing costs and money down is 3-4 years allowing for wiggle room for repairs or improvements. So we get to build equity pretty quickly and have a silly low interest 30 year fixed. We were thinking of like a 5/1ARM but prefer the flexibility of a 30 year in case we decide to stay put. It's also in a relatively sleepy town that seems pretty well situated to be discovered by people who realize Brooklyn sucks and beacon is no longer cool in the not so distant future, but that's an educated guess on my part.

All contingent on a home inspection coming out clean of course!

Edit: ha, the calculator you linked says we are better off buying a house even after one year.

Last edited by TheKillerPenguin; 01-30-20 at 05:38 PM.
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Old 02-03-20, 10:46 AM
  #4406  
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Superbowl...I give Shakira the better Latin half time performance - better singing (13 Grammys), dancing (effortless), she plays guitar and drums and she was in great shape. Sorry J-Lo.
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Old 02-03-20, 11:00 AM
  #4407  
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Originally Posted by Hermes
Superbowl...I give Shakira the better Latin half time performance - better singing (13 Grammys), dancing (effortless), she plays guitar and drums and she was in great shape. Sorry J-Lo.
She works very hard at it. Gotta give J-Lo the best pole dance performance in the 50+ category, though.
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Old 02-03-20, 12:13 PM
  #4408  
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I'll say they're both doing incredibly well for 43 and 50. They'd both run circles around me and I'm well younger than that.
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Old 02-03-20, 02:55 PM
  #4409  
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Shakira is 43? I had her pegged as a decade or so younger than that.
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Old 02-03-20, 03:23 PM
  #4410  
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Originally Posted by himespau
Shakira is 43? I had her pegged as a decade or so younger than that.
Indeed.

She doesn't appear to have aged since I was in high school and listening to her.
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Old 02-03-20, 04:30 PM
  #4411  
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As a lifelong 49ers fan, yesterday wasn't a good day, but life goes on and I've seen them win 5.
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Old 02-04-20, 09:32 AM
  #4412  
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Originally Posted by Hermes
Superbowl...I give Shakira the better Latin half time performance - better singing (13 Grammys), dancing (effortless), she plays guitar and drums and she was in great shape. Sorry J-Lo.
And her hips don't lie.
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Old 02-05-20, 06:19 PM
  #4413  
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I feel pretty smug that I knew about Shakira before she started singing in English.

(My sister's partner is Colombian and she loaded a bunch of her early stuff on my iPod back in the day.)

Last edited by caloso; 02-06-20 at 10:27 AM.
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Old 02-05-20, 09:22 PM
  #4414  
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Today I rode 60+ miles with 5 friends who are all normally faster than I am but today they slowed a bit because one was hurting a little. An old friend who I haven't seen much for the last few years was there. This guy was one of the best climbers in the club 30 years ago @6 feet and 140 pounds. He's now 73 and still tearing it up. He was bemoaning the fact that he isn't able to match his past Strava KOMs since breaking his pelvis in 2017. I've never seen anyone his age climb like he does. He can't sprint, doesn't like descending, but when the road tilts up.....
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Old 02-05-20, 11:51 PM
  #4415  
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https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...il4-story.html

Last edited by big john; 02-05-20 at 11:56 PM.
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Old 02-06-20, 12:27 AM
  #4416  
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4 to 5 times world GDP seems steep, but I'm not a lawyer.
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Old 02-06-20, 09:27 AM
  #4417  
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Originally Posted by Flatballer
4 to 5 times world GDP seems steep, but I'm not a lawyer.
He didn't say how he would distribute the payoff. I wonder if I could get a little piece of the action.
“Could I go into a courtroom and say viewing what you put in that screen put me in danger of hell fire?”
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Old 02-06-20, 10:59 AM
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Originally Posted by big john
He didn't say how he would distribute the payoff. I wonder if I could get a little piece of the action.
“Could I go into a courtroom and say viewing what you put in that screen put me in danger of hell fire?”
He's got nothing on the Au Bon Pain lawsuit guy. Filed in 2014 (can't find an updated status, I'm assuming it's not going well for him though) and even has a helpful xkcd What If.

$2 undecillion. It's a mindbogglingly large amount of money. The weight of the sun at the current market value of platinum wouldn't get you enough.

The payoff of the xkcd (seriously, they're funny, read it) is you could pay high-powered lawyers $2000 an hour, 7 billion of them per planet, on 40 billion planets in the galaxy, for a thousand generations, and still not be within an order of magnitude of the money he's asking for.
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Old 02-06-20, 11:58 AM
  #4419  
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"Although, surprisingly, the complaint appears to be frivolous", you think?

It's only 2 octillion gigadollars, what's the big deal?

Last edited by big john; 02-06-20 at 12:04 PM.
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Old 02-06-20, 12:11 PM
  #4420  
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Not sure why this was even allowed to be filed. Some of these nuisance lawsuits should result in penalties from the state bar on the lawyers who file them.
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Old 02-06-20, 12:28 PM
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They're usually (always?) filed pro se.
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Old 02-06-20, 12:52 PM
  #4422  
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A friend used to work for the city of L.A. screening lawsuits. He said the most common lawsuit was for bee stings. Yes, people who were stung by bees would try and sue the city.
The most famous one he was involved with was the family of a bank robber who sued on behalf of the bank robber's daughter after the robber was killed by police (while he was firing an automatic rifle at them). They said that a bank robber could make around $2million during his "career" and this guy's daughter was deprived of that income when he was killed. I don't know what the final outcome was.
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Old 02-06-20, 02:25 PM
  #4423  
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So because of the Corona Virus, our trip to Thailand (via Hong Kong) is going to be cancelled by American Airlines. It really sucks as we planned it a year out and have most everything paid for and it was my birthday vacation (which I only get every 4 years).

I wanted to push everything back to September, my wife wants to refund everything....so we refunded I'm not sure we'll ever get to go now; Thailand is just so expensive to get to and there are other cheaper options (Hawaii, Cancun, Costa Rica) its hard to plan for. Because of my wife's work travel we essentially get to travel to those places for free (because we have a boatload of points on Southwest).

On the plus side, I wont have an 8 day 'diet immunity' so I should be in race weight most of the season. We still may plan something, I'm not sure what. Part of the fun of vacations is planning them and even if we found somewhere to go, having to rush to get a room and figure out an itinerary ruins much of the fun.
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Old 02-06-20, 03:24 PM
  #4424  
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Total bummer!

More on the plus side you might not get the coronavirus!!
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Old 02-06-20, 03:48 PM
  #4425  
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Originally Posted by himespau
Not sure why this was even allowed to be filed. Some of these nuisance lawsuits should result in penalties from the state bar on the lawyers who file them.
Knowingly filing a frivolous claim or motion is grounds for discipline. In California, and I'm sure in every other jurisdiction. And it can be grounds for a court to impose sanctions. The thing is, you don't know if a complaint is frivolous until it's been filed.
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