u/OddPressure7593

Good morning.

So some quick background - I'm turning 40 in a couple months. I completed my PhD a few years ago, and have just been offered a job in Washington (state) with a salary of $205k.

I've got DEBT, and I also don't really have any meaningful retirement saving - my 401k is currently sitting at about $13k. I have a car loan ($~20k at 10.5%ish), a debt consolidation loan that I used to payoff my credit cards (~$33k @ ~8%), private student loans (~$7.5k @ ~ 6.5%), and public student loans (about $190k @ ~ 6.5%). On the plus side, I've somehow managed to deal with all that - and my mortgage, and my credit score is above 800.

With this new role, I'm looking at some degree of financial security for the first time in my life, which is pretty exciting. We are looking to sell our current home in Oregon and buy a house in WA, and we're targetting around $750k and monthly payments in $5-6k range. There might be cheaper options, like renting, but home ownership is personally important to us, so is a priority.

So, that's the brief financial picture. We live pretty non-extravagant lives, so after mortgage payment and making at least minimum payments and other bills, I'm looking at around 3-4k/month that I'll have "left over", and I'm trying to decide what to target that money towards. Obviously I'm going to max employer match on 401k, but I'm still gonna have several thousand per month "left over".

One option is to aggressively pay off loans, with the goal of having a better DTI to buy a "forever home" in ~5ish years. in 5ish years, the debt consolidation and car loans will be gone with minimum payments (already accounted for in budget), and I could put a big dent in the $190k public student loans or depending on how things shake out, maybe get out from under it entirely in that period. That would obviously be good if we're looking to stretch our budget to get a "forever home" around that period.

Another option would be to make minimum payments on the loans - which would still pay off the car and debt consolidation loan - but probably wouldn't have a meaningful impact on the big student loan balance, but focus the "extra money" on ensuring I'm hitting annual 401k contribution limits to try and "catch up" after not really having anything put aside for retirement up until this point. That's attractive because, yknow, interest. Any funds leftover after maxing out 401k contributions could then go towards debt service, but again, not likely to meaningfully impact that big debt.

Are there other options I should consider? Out of the two options I listed, are there pros/cons to each I might want to consider?

Good morning

I'm anticipating an offer for a job in Issaquah, and I'm trying to get a better idea of housing costs. Pretty obviously, some areas are more expensive than others, so I'm trying to figure out what a reasonable geographic range to look at might be. With that in mind, would anyone be able to give me any idea of what areas would be within a roughly 45 minute daily commute to Issaquah?

Yeah, title says it all. We've had a backyard pond for the past several years with zero issues. We had a few koi and a bunch of feeder goldfish that had grown quite large over the 3 or so years they were in there.

But my wife found a goddamned heron standing in our pond this afternoon, and it looks like all our fish are gone. It's extra frustrating because the pond is about 3 feet deep at its deepest, there are all kinds of nooks and crannies and ledges for the fish to hide under, but that feathered fuckass got to them anyway.

I'm both angry and sad - coming home from work and watching the fish swim around the pond plants is (was) one of my favorite things to do.

I've been looking at how to deal with fuckass birds, and I wanted to see what peoples' experiences had been with the various methods. We have pets that regularly use the pond as a water source, so I'd really like for them to still have access to it. How well do the heron decoys work? Are there other methods to protect the pond I can try that would still allow the pets access?

Good afternoon!

I've recently been interviewing for a CSL position with a med device manufacturer. I've gone through a couple of online interviews, including with the HM, who went out of their way to say that they are looking for someone with my exact qualifications/experience (said it several times, in fact). I followed up that interview with a thank you email, that the HM responded to within 30 minutes telling me that I'd be hearing about the panel interview, which I did from their HR person by the end of the day. I'm taking that all as very good signs.

So now I've got the panel interview scheduled with all the different stakeholders (regulatory, R&D, marketing, sales, etc). My gut feeling is that the panel interview isn't going to relate to any of my technical qualifications or experience, but just making sure that I'm someone they're OK working with and that no one sees anything that would be disqualifying for that role.

I really want this job, as it would mean that for the first time in my 40 years I would have something that might actually approach financial security, in a geographic area I love, talking about things I think are interesting. So I'm a bit nervous, and I just wanted to take a poll as to whether or not my gut feeling as to the panel interview seems reasonable, or if I should be preparing to really "make a case" for myself. Any thoughts?

I ask because I've seen a variety of postings from ICON for a variety of positions. however, To the handful I've sent an application to, they've all resulted in rejection emails within minutes - even when I've sent in applications late on a saturday night. It makes me question whether or not it's a real company or what. Anyone have similar experiences? Do people actually get hired through ICON? Did I do something to get blacklisted and anything with my email auto-rejected?