u/neodoggy

I own a townhouse in Northern Virginia (Fairfax County) which is an extremely expensive housing market. I bought my house in 2020 with a 2.75% VA mortgage for $425k, with about $350k remaining balance. Property values have risen sharply since then, and though I haven't had it appraised yet, Zillow at least claims a $580k value, and comparable sales in the area support that that's at least in the right ballpark.

One selling point I have in my favor is that my 2.75% is transferable - a buyer can't refinance at that rate, but they can take my remaining $350k balance at 2.75% and pay cash or do something else to cover the remaining balance on the sale price.

I'm considering retiring overseas and so will no longer need my VA mortgage benefit (if a non-veteran assumes my mortgage I can't get another until the buyer pays it off, which is normally a problem but not one I'm worried about in this case).

All this being the case, how huge of a benefit is this for me as a prospective seller?

Can I expect lots of competition? Will I see offers above asking like the market had in 2020? Is this going to be a case where my house is basically sold sight unseen the same day I put the sign up?

Or is this not nearly as important a benefit as I think it is?

I noticed that my employer has a partnership with this credit union that I'd never heard of called Skyla. They offer a zero-AF Visa Signature that is:

• 2% back on everything

• metal

• 0% APR for 12 months

• SUB of $250 in points for $1000 spend in 90 days

• 1% FTF (not as good as zero, but still better than some cards)

• 3% cash advance fee (not something that anyone should be using regularly of course, but if you have an emergency and need it, this is a good rate)

It's an average 2% card by itself, but there's also an interesting combo factor - Skyla also has a checking account with a 4% APY on up to $25,000 balance, requiring only that you have $500+ per month in direct deposits and make 10+ purchases per month with your Skyla credit card.

The card itself, while good, does not really excel over other 2% cards (except maybe for being metal, there aren't too many metal no-AF cards that I know of). But combined with that 4% checking? I think it's definitely worth a look for people interested in a good straightforward cashback setup. And to top it off, the credit union has easy eligibility through ACC membership, so just about anyone can join.

Suppose I'm a wealthy art collector and one day I make the (perhaps inadvisable) decision to hang priceless Renaissance oil paintings all over the exterior my car (not covering the windows or otherwise making my car illegal to drive). I then go out for a cruise.

While I'm out, another car lightly impacts my car. Ordinarily the damage might be very nearly negligible, but it so happens that the spot they dinged my car was right where my priceless Vermeer painting was hanging, causing a million dollars of damage to my artwork.

Is the other driver now on the hook for the value of my painting or the cost of properly repairing it? Or does my incredibly poor decision to put my paintings in such a precarious position get them off the hook, even though it was my legal right to do so?

Last week got a 2025 Mach E (my first EV and I love it by the way) and today decided to try using a charger at my workplace, which is branded ChargePoint. For some reason though, the charger does not appear in the Ford app when I search for chargers, and as far as I could tell could not be paid for without a ChargePoint account (and I didn't have time to set one up so I didn't get to charge).

ChargePoint appears to be a BlueOval provider, so why does it not appear as a charger I can use? It looks older and kind of beat up, so I'm guessing it has been there for a while. Are older chargers not usable with the Ford app? Or is something else going on?

I currently ride a 2019 Ducati Diavel 1260S that I've had since buying new in 2019. I love it and it's a wonderful bike, but I've recently bought an EV car and now I'm considering giving up the Ducati to switch to an electric motorcycle (I'm currently leaning towards either Livewire One or Livewire S2 Alpinista).

I'm not extremely familiar with how electric bikes deal with charging and weather and parking though, so I thought I'd ask here.

I ride my bike year round including in the winter, as long as the roads are clear. I ride a lot less these days than I used to, but I think I will still take it to work at least once or twice a week throughout the year. I live in a townhouse with assigned parking spaces in front of my house, and so at home I park outdoors but with a weatherproof cover over the bike most nights. I intend to use L1 charging overnight as needed, or L2 charging is available at work.

So if I get my Livewire I will be using it probably in the same way. I live in the Washington DC area, so we get a few months of cold (10-30 F is common, especially overnight), plus two or three good snowstorms a year. When the snowstorms come, my bike stays safe under its cover but remains parked until the snow is melted, possibly up to 2-3 weeks if it doesn't warm up.

My Ducati tolerates this quite well, even its battery is still just fine after seven years of this. Can I expect my Livewire to manage as well? My minimum riding temperature is about 20 F, any lower than that and I'm not riding (and honestly these days I'm less inclined to ride if it's under 50 F). Even in these lower temperatures, aside from reduced range will the bike still perform normally? If I plug in the charger at work or at home while it's extremely cold out, will it know to charge in a safe manner, or know not to charge at all if that's the safe thing to do? My biggest concern is keeping the battery healthy and safe, and if it's not safe to charge at some super low temperature I'd like to be sure the bike won't let it charge until it's safe to do so.

Say I have 2000 South African rand in my wallet, and someone steals it from me. At current exchange rates that is about USD $123.

Legally, did they steal $123 from me, or did they steal personal property worth $123?

Would that value be calculated at the time of the theft or at the time of recovery, if there was a sudden change in the exchange rate in the interim?

Also, some countries maintain that physical currency remains the property of the government while in circulation. Would it be a viable argument for the thief to say that he technically stole the property of the government of South Africa and not my property, so I'm not actually the victim in the case?

I'm going from memory here so my details might be a little off, but the gist of the scenario is this. In the movie The Godfather, Michael Corleone is in hiding in Sicily following his murder of the police captain. His fiance doesn't know where he is, and asks Tom Hagan, the Corleone family attorney, to get a letter to him. Hagan refuses, saying something like "If I accepted this letter they could prove in a court of law that I know where Michael Corleone is."

How accurate is that? Would simply accepting the letter be enough to legally prove his knowledge? And even if they could prove that, can an attorney be compelled to share such information about his client? What is the actual legal risk being taken if he had agreed to take the letter?