I have 1.3mm in various IRA accounts (80% in stocks) 400K in cash, 1 paid off town house worth 500K that my daughters live in while they attend university. Cars are paid off but they are expensive cars that I got when I had a great paying job and maintenance is expensive.

Trying hard to balance my income and expenses which are high right now due to layoff in Dec 2024 and underemployment in HCOL where i live.

When I started writing this post I was excited but now I am worried if I can ever retire especially given health insurance and the fact that I have been unable to find high paying jobs for the past 2 years.

I am afraid to invest the 400K cash because it took me 18 months to find my current job.

How am I doing? What do I need to change? 😥

Edit: I am 49... turn 50 in December. Married. Rent is 4000 per month now but considering moving to lower cost area if I can find another job there or if i get laid off again.

any tips and tricks for someone starting out? we have a small house with T mobile wifi. in expecting the system in the mail today.

I got my rental offer, paid for the year. I went to their office 3 times and it’s always some IT issue or the other. After repeated emails over the last month they aren’t responding. I even tried wecare@colliers etc.

I am now out of the country on annual leave what do I do?

My daughter lives alone in a town house with a large flimsy sliding patio door. There is a patio with walls on the 2 sides of the sliding door.

My wife is an adamant that we should get a lanai put in the patio to increase Security. My thought is that if someone were to break in they would be in view but with a lanai, they can take their sweet time breaking into the house unseen if they get into the lanai. Am I wrong?

Edit: there will be a camera outside the lanai/patio area irrespective of whether we put in a lanai.

I have an old HSA with $7000 from my employer. I was laid off in December 2024 and was without insurance. I am 50.

I just got a job outside the US for 3 years.

I have to buy insurance for 2 kids in college (in the US). Reading IRS 929 I cannot use the HSA money for it.

What can I do with the HSA funds without paying penalties or taxes? I don’t want to leave it in my employers plan.

With RSUs now becoming a single trigger event how are people going to be paying tax.... it'll hit AMT for a bunch of current and ex employees.

Considering a Program Manager offer in Mission Dominance.

1. When someone raises bad news, identifies a risk, does leadership listen and adjust, or do they pressure the messenger to just figure it out.

A former employee told me that he got shipped a unit that the US team knew did not work and he was told to just fix it in the field. I do not know if this is just him being disgruntled or what.

2. Do people typically hide problems that they cannot solve until they explode and then everyone does heroics?

3. Who burns out here, and why?

4. Have you seen any PM fail to point they were fired? What happened?

Sorry for the long rambling post, but I am extremely distraught. After being jobless for a long time my daughter had to be hospitalized, and the stress gave me a heart attack. I’m feeling the same kind of pressure now.

I’m around 50 and was laid off last year from a niche senior role. I was out for a while and eventually took a job at a much smaller company at a very large pay cut just to get stable again. Think roughly going from low/mid 200s to something closer to 50k. I love the work I do even though the hours are long and I love the people that are around me. The work is stable.

I now have an offer from a larger competitor in the same general field. It is much closer to the type of work I used to do, and they made it clear I am a very strong fit / hard-to-find candidate. The role had apparently been hard to fill.

The offer is materially better than my current job, but still much lower than what I made before doing similar work. Roughly speaking, it is around 85k equivalent for a role that previously paid me much more. I made more than 85K in 2014!

I pushed back once with market data, prior comp context, and the scope/risk of the role. They came back saying compensation reviewed it and they feel the offer is already strong / generous / their best foot forward.

I’m trying to decide whether there is any point making one final push, or whether that phrase usually means “take it or leave it.”

For recruiters / comp people / hiring managers: when a company says “best foot forward” after one negotiation round, is there usually any room left? If there is, what is the smartest final ask?

The role is higher risk than my current job, and part of my concern is what happens if I leave a stable role and they end the job or assignment early. Is it reasonable at this stage to ask for some kind of defined separation / transition protection instead of more salary? Or does that usually make companies nervous?
I do not want to lose the offer, but I also do not want to accept something underpriced for the risk and scope just because it is better than my current reduced salary.

How would you handle one final conversation here? I’m really afraid that I’ll be jumping from a stable job that doesn’t pay the bills to one that barely pays them and in 1 year I’ll be laid off again because the second company is known for that. Open interviewing for 3 years now and this is the best offer I’ve gotten.

Sorry for the long rambling post, but I am extremely distraught. After being jobless for a long time my daughter had to be hospitalized, and the stress gave me a heart attack. I’m feeling the same kind of pressure now.

I’m around 50 and was laid off last year from a niche senior role. I was out for a while and eventually took a job at a much smaller company at a very large pay cut just to get stable again. Think roughly going from low/mid 200s to something closer to 50k. I love the work I do even though the hours are long and I love the people that are around me. The work is stable.

I now have an offer from a larger competitor in the same general field. It is much closer to the type of work I used to do, and they made it clear I am a very strong fit / hard-to-find candidate. The role had apparently been hard to fill.

The offer is materially better than my current job, but still much lower than what I made before doing similar work. Roughly speaking, it is around 85k equivalent for a role that previously paid me much more. I made more than 85K in 2014!

I pushed back once with market data, prior comp context, and the scope/risk of the role. They came back saying compensation reviewed it and they feel the offer is already strong / generous / their best foot forward.

I’m trying to decide whether there is any point making one final push, or whether that phrase usually means “take it or leave it.”

For recruiters / comp people / hiring managers: when a company says “best foot forward” after one negotiation round, is there usually any room left? If there is, what is the smartest final ask?

The role is higher risk than my current job, and part of my concern is what happens if I leave a stable role and they end the job or assignment early. Is it reasonable at this stage to ask for some kind of defined separation / transition protection instead of more salary? Or does that usually make companies nervous?
I do not want to lose the offer, but I also do not want to accept something underpriced for the risk and scope just because it is better than my current reduced salary.

How would you handle one final conversation here? I’m really afraid that I’ll be jumping from a stable job that doesn’t pay the bills to one that barely pays them and in 1 year I’ll be laid off again because the second company is known for that. Open interviewing for 3 years now and this is the best offer I’ve gotten.

Hi, I just accepted a project manager position and am wondering how AI tools are used at Anduril.

At my old job, I used to have ChatGPT work with me constantly on helping me. Write emails update slides guide me on how to use advanced Excel functionality, etc.

Ironically, I found that this slowed me down, even though the quality of my product was much better.

I have heard that they use Claude code at Anduril. Do the non-engineering functions get to use Claude for things like helping answer emails properly or helping them prioritize and helping make PowerPoint slides?

I had a card that had a zero limit on it for some reason so I never used it and in 2021 I reported it lost or stolen.

Suddenly, now, five years later, it shows up on my list of credit cards. It has a 399 dirham charge for an annual membership fee for the card. Because there was no credit limit available there is a 400 dirham penalty for overdraft fees.

I called my relationship banker who said that I should pay it so that I don't get hit with late fines on top of this but when I tried that the system wouldn't let me pay it because it said that the credit card did not exist. He said that he sent an email to the relationship team, but there is nothing else he could do.

Has anyone encountered something like this? How do I make it go away? If I go to the branch, I don't think they will be of any help either.

Edit: after a total of 13 phone calls several emails. Somebody called me back and said don’t worry we’ll take care of it. Then they charge me a late fee and overdraft fee on the late fee. 1200 AED and counting.

In Abu Dhabi we have the really high-end places to get our glasses like the places inside malls and hospitals, then you have the really cheap places in Mussafah that cost 80% less but they dont have a good selection of frames.

Does anybody have a suggestion for something mid range?

My lease is due for renewal soon. The unit is owned by a private Emirati landlord, but the property is managed by Colliers.

Before the recent ADREC rent-freeze announcement, the property manager sent a renewal notice with a 15% rent increase. I responded citing the rent freeze and asked them to confirm the renewal terms. They replied once asking me to schedule an appointment to sign, but did not actually confirm the rent amount or send me a copy of the renewal agreement they expected me to sign during the appointment. I followed up asking for confirmation of the renewal terms and some outstanding issues, but have now been waiting almost two weeks with no response despite multiple follow-ups.

On a side note, my 3-bedroom villa is shown as a 1-bedroom in the Tawtheeq, causing visa sponsorship issues. Colliers have not responded to my emails or WhatsApp messages (blue ticks, so they have read them), and I'm not sure how to get that corrected.

But the bigger question is: what happens if they simply never respond? Can I go through the TAMM app and renew the lease myself, or is the landlord/property manager required to initiate the renewal process?

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation in Abu Dhabi?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy031el03po

This is why the US economy wont be in recession any time soon- From the article:
Americans are very solutions-oriented and much more comfortable with taking a short-term risk in service of a long-term advantage. Europe as a culture is risk-averse.

The US is a land of very high inequality," she says. "If you're struggling, you are really going to have a hard time because the labour market is not adding piles of new jobs, things are getting more expensive, many cities have housing crises."
Her deeper worry is that inequality hits a tipping point. "Even then having the dollar and fairly stable banks won't help if you have a real jobs crisis in the real economy."
So far, there is little evidence of that. In fact, American employers added 172,000 jobs in May, smashing expectations.

But new inflation data this week, showing consumer prices rising at their fastest pace in three years, suggests the limits of America's resilience may be approaching. Prices in May were 4.2% higher than a year earlier, up from 3.8% in April.

I feel like we have lost our way. Apes came together so we could bring about MOASS and life-changing money. We did not come to get the share price up to 53 or 60.

We wanted to see the Hedgies suffer and go to jail for manipulating the market and making money off our backs.

I don't know if Roaring Kitty will ever be back, I hope he will, but we can't count on it. We don’t need a hero, and we don’t need a savior. We just need to remember why we bought GameStop in the first place.... and the real thesis- Apes Together Strong.

Whether Roaring Kitty comes back or not, the thesis either stands on its own or it doesn’t- and that’s what matters.

was informed today that HR is putting together my offer and would get back to me tomorrow. i am expecting that they will come slightly lower than my current comp and supplement with RSUs. Current job is 36-40 hours/week tops. Only reason I'd join and work 60 is if it allows me to retire earlier. Assuming that I sell them as soon as the 2 conditions (vesting and PO) are met- would it be rational to assume that these RSUs would be worth millions after taxes?