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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Stop. The Vanguard retirement funds all did this if the target is before 2060. And those are invested in index funds by professionals. OP likely had the VTINX

    OP’s losses are more exagerated than just the Target Date fund experiencing a dip from bond exposure.

    Here’s OP’s same initial investment on the same day but 100% in VTINX:

    So instead of a $4k loss that OP showed, it would been a $71 loss. OP went picking individual stocks and got burned (assuming they liquidated their position after seeing their portfolio balance).


  • Or I completely disagree with the idea of individuals investing for their retirement as a base expectation when the options available are not universal nor affordable for half the population.

    Then you should have led with that. I wouldn’t have wasted my time trying to explain how to use the system to someone not interested in any part of the system. None of your arguments are about the mechanisms of the system, but instead lack of its universal applicability. You weren’t interested to learning how the system can work, you’d already dismissed it from the get-go.

    Your post comes across as dismissive of anyone criticizing the current system.

    Your posts come off as trolling because you’re arguing about particular internal steps to the current system when you don’t even care about it.


  • You do understand a significant portion of the population doesn’t have a dollar to spare when they live paycheck to paycheck, right?

    Listen friend, its entirely possibly you started off with good intentions in this thread, but somewhere along the line it looks like you got so concerned with “being right” or “getting zingers” that your responses got more and more useless and simply argumentative for arguments sake. I’m human, I’ve been there. Look where you started off this line of conversation with this:

    So if the market crashes the year before I want to retire I should just put off retiring for another 30 years.

    The way I know you went down the wrong path is that if you were genuine with your argument, you would have started HERE with your comments about people not being able to save anything for retirement. Instead, you attacked a legitimate way to save for retirement for those that can save for retirement. Worse, you did so from a position of ignorance, but then attacked the response that informed you how your stated position was inaccurate.

    The other possibility is that you started your whole rant without any thought to having a good faith conversation about the benefits or challenges to Americans saving for retirement. That would make you a straight up Troll. I don’t that thats who you are, so maybe just let this conversation thread die because its not producing anything productive for you and its otherwise a waste of time for everyone.



  • Only 32% of people have 401k accounts.

    45% of 18-29 year olds have a retirement account. That number keeps rising to 77% of people 60+ having a retirement account. source

    You don’t need a 401k account to save for retirement. You can do this same savings/investing in an IRA or even an brokerage account (but you wouldn’t get the tax benefits). There are ZERO employer requirements to opening an IRA, you just have to be someone that earns money.


  • I recommend FSKAX over FZROX. There are few minor differences. Yes FZROX has a lower expense ratio, but it BARELY lower when compared to FSKAX. My understanding is the biggest downside to FZROX is that you can’t hold that in any other brokerage. So if one day you decide you don’t like Fidelity you have to sell all your FZROX and then buy something else offered at the other brokerage. In a retirement fund this isn’t so much a big deal, but could mean you miss out on gains between the sale and the purchase of whatever else you replace it with.

    If you’re investing in a non-retirement account this is a BIG deal, as any gains would be taxed at the time of sale. This can mean you pay 15%-20% on the gains just to switch brokerages. FSKAX doesn’t have that limitation, and you’d be able to simply do an “in kind” transfer of the securities to your new brokerage without any tax events/consequences. To me, that portability is worth the tiny different in expense ratio.



  • So if the market crashes the year before I want to retire I should just put off retiring for another 30 years.

    Thats not how to do it. As you approach retirement age (5 to 10 years out), you move your money out of riskier (but higher return generating) stocks and into safer (but lower performing) investments like bonds or even cash (actual cash, CDs, Tbills, etc). Generally you also don’t move it ALL out of riskier stock. You don’t need 100% of your savings on day 1 of retirement, so you convert a few years worth (5 maybe?) to safe stuff and let the riskier stuff ride usually gaining more value even after you retire.


  • I lost $4k on my retirement plan. It’s invested in total market funds, some tech, some big cap companies, and healthcare. But every sector has been ravaged by the stock market changes.

    Its not your total market fund killing you, its your individual stocks. I don’t recommend picking specific stocks for your real savings. Save individual stock picks for money you can afford to lose. In your case it cost you $7,000.

    I used your same data and here’s what it would have looked like if all of it was in your Total Market fund.

    You would have $18,679. This would have been a gain of $3479 or a 22% return on investment in only 2 years. That is crazy good! Retirement isn’t a total scam, but unless you are VERY lucky, picking individual stocks is risky. You can successfully save for retirement with just one, two, or three funds: Total Stock Market fund, Total Bond Fund, and perhaps an International fund. I mainly focus on just the boring Total Stock Market fund and it performs fairly consistently well over time.

    EDIT: Just to underscore retirement is possible with saving and investing with boring Total Market investment, if 20 years ago you had that same $15,200 and invested it in a boring Total Market investment and never save another penny, today it would be worth $88,982.

    I’m not saying that you can go back in time, but with 20 years of growth (very typical for retirement savings) it can really grow. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.








  • Kale has a naturally high pH, so it’s basically just an antacid.

    I have mild reflux, but know what triggers it after what time of day and can make easy diet adjustments to avoid those triggers too late before bed. For whatever reason, I never considered looking at the alkaline level of the foods I eat. In just doing so now, I see a whole bunch of my regular diet. Have I been unconscious choosing these to mitigate my reflux? I mean, I seek out these foods (that I now know are alkaline) because I like them, but do I like them more than just for their taste?




  • You could accomplish what you’re trying by putting the GPU in a second computer. Further, most UPSes have a data interface, so that you could have the GPU computer plugged into the UPS too, but receive the signal when power is out, so it can save its work and shutdown quickly preserving power in the UPS batteries. The only concern there would be the max current output of the UPS in the event of a power outage being able to power both computers for a short time.