Most of my career I've had mandatory lunch breaks, either required when hourly or implied when salary (based on the norms of when people arrived and left each day). However, the worst was definitely an overnight hourly job I had stocking shelves. We had a mandatory unpaid lunch break in the middle of the night, but even if there was somewhere to go, we weren't allowed to leave the building for security reasons. The doors were locked for most of our shift and would only be opened for an emergency. I think I quit after 3 months.
I keep a little in a MMF for quick access and the rest in a treasury bill ETF (TFLO). My HYS account is nearly empty now.
If I were doing this, I would get an average balance for the month (start of month balance + end of month balance divided by 2) and multiply by monthly interest rate (interest rate divided by 12). I would add that interest payment to the end of month balance and that would become the next months starting balance. My spreadsheet columns might look like this:
- Month
- Beginning Balance
- Deposits
- Withdrawals
- Ending Balance
- Interest Earned
Beginning Balance formula would be =sum(Ending Balance, Interest Earned) from the previous line
Deposits and Withdrawals would be numerical entries
Ending Balance formula is =Beginner Balance + Deposits - Withdrawals
Interest formula is =average(Beginning Balance, Ending Balance) * rate / 12
I agree with this view. If there is no minimum holding period or a very short period that you are comfortable with, buy as much as you can afford and sell immediately for a quick profit.
With a holding period, you are now speculating that the price won't drop more than the discount. I was very disappointed when my company added a 1 year holding period, but it is a large, stable company with minimal volatility, so I'm continuing to participate.
Holding beyond that, you need to evaluate it as an investment outside your work relationship. Based on what you know as an investor, would you buy and hold shares? What % of your portfolio would you allocate to a single investment? I recall a lot of employees were wiped out when Enron and Worldcom went out of business. They both seemed like great companies until everyone found out about their fraudulent financial statements.
It depends on what alternatives I have available. Prior to this year, I was aiming for 3-6 months of liquid savings and the rest in my investment accounts.
Now that reasonable interest rates are available, I have changed my priorities. My goal now is 2 months savings in my checking account. This allows me to cover nearly any expense that comes up without the annoyance of transferring money to cover it.
I keep another 1-2 months of expenses in a MMF earning >4% interest and immediately available for withdrawal.
Then I have a decent amount (no particular target) invested in a short-term treasury ETF (TFLO) earning >5% interest, but it takes about a week to sell and transfer funds if I need it.
Altogether, I'm probably keeping 6-12 months readily available, but most of it is earning interest now. I would also likely get 3-6 months severence if I lost my job and could probably cut back on some expenses to stretch things a bit further.
Finally, I used to contribute to a Roth 401k (I've since switched to traditional 401k), so I should be able to access those contributions without penalty, if needed. This would only be relevant for someone in the US though.
A Dog's Breakfast
Nuclear reactor diver
I've had mine for a month or two now. I think I spent the first week just modding Skyrim...not even playing. Since then, that's the only game I've put any significant amount of time in to. After all, I've already played it on PC, Xbox, and Playstation, I couldn't not play it on Steam Deck!
I love my Skyrim Deck! I wonder if it can be modded to play any other games. :)
I really liked Alton Brown's show Good Eats. I thought he did a nice job explaining the science behind cooking methods and ingredients in an easy to understand way.
So does anyone know if there is a bot I can load on my phone and PC to auto solve these and save me the annoyance?
I'm at 11% if you only count mortgage, property tax, and homeowners insurance. If you include all the maintenance costs of ownership, then it is wildly variable, but also difficult to split out living expenses from discretionary improvements.
For example, this year I spent money on replacing a broken HVAC unit, which I would consider a cost of ownership. I also had to have a large part of my lawn replaced after it was dug up for a major plumbing repair. But since I was having landscape work done anyway, I also had them make some improvements to another part of my yard. I don't cleanly track required expenses separately from discretionary in that category.
All that said, if I add my home maintenance category I am 15.5% this year and if I add landscaping I'm at 23.7%.
This year and last year have been particularly expensive in maintenance costs. I replaced 2 large HVAC system and a mini-split heat pump, my yard was excavated to clear a sewage pipe block, I cleaned up some unsightly landscaping, my front porch was repainted and front door restained, 30 year old single pane windows were replaced with energy efficient windows, I had the crawl space encapsulated, among other things.
We did all this now for 2 main reasons. First, we had a lot of deferred maintenance that we couldn't afford with our savings goals and paying down student loans. We paid off the loans in 2020 and I got some decent raises the last 3 years that finally put us in a good spot to both increase savings and catch up on home maintenance.
Second, we spent a lot of time reflecting on where we want to go in the future and decided we would likely be in our house for 10 more years, but maybe not much longer. We decided that we would rather invest in the house now and enjoy the full benefit rather than defer it and pass most of the benefit on to the next owner.
With all of that done, I'm hoping the next several years will be much cheaper, but home ownership is very unpredictable. I think we have had a significant unexpected exense almost every year. I know I'm going to have to do major work on my deck soon, so that's definitely an upcoming expense. I miss renting an apartment sometimes.