lol if only we could! i have fantasized so many times about luring them onto a space ship and then boop! right into the sun!
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Iām cranky and probably not bringing my best self to this conversation.
Also I have too many trumpets in my life.
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itās okay, i like your worser self a lot too.
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Yay
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Literally the plot of one of the Hitchhikers Guide books except the idiots were just being sent to another planet.
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A big realization for me was when I was stewing over how it felt like people were voting against my kidsā future. But no one would vote against future so obviously they are seeing it differently.
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Makes perfect sense, and itās also a blast of refreshment to read.
100% no expectation for the reasonable and reasonably well-informed to buddy up with those voting for Trump.
BUTā¦ if you might hope to convert someone from āmoderateā Trump voter to ānotā, it helps to not see them as garbage, do see where they get their information and belief a vote for Trump is a good idea, and finally be able to communicate with them in a way that doesnāt escalate negatively.
Butā¦ such conversions have low success rates, take incredible patience and energy, and there are too many that need to be made. sigh
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iām not sure if this is my ministry or if iāll ever be ready for that, but i do see the sense in it.
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Tangent / Soapbox
I was once hopefulā¦ that the stewards of big tech (social media, in particular) might help here a bit. During COVID, āfact checksā and casting doubt on misinformation was popular.
Of course Trump and friends flipped the script on what ācensorshipā is and where itās most dangerous, so their supporters think censorship is when you let your government tell you whatever they want to, but companies and people donāt āblockā the government from telling you those things. (Same goes for candidates/campaigns and media that supports that.)
āIf youāre not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.ā
ā Malcolm X
So of course Elon bought Twitter and is exercising āfree speechā by tilting the scales of disinformation in his favor. And I think Meta and Google have pulled from back from previous efforts to filter out conservative disinformation campaigns. 
My point overall beingā¦ there are big players with big megaphones that should be helping tilt moderates away from madness en masseā¦ so that individuals arenāt required for such ministry!
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Yup. And bezos prevented the WaPo from endorsing Harris. Itās a really scary time for media.
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Ok I said a few days ago that I wasnāt moving anything around but now I really want to pay off my mortgage. This is mostly so I can have lower monthly expenses and I can quit my job to do good things for the world instead of what Iām currently doing. I am the primary earner and spouseās salary alone will not cover our necessities including the mortgage.
I have a 2.65% mortgage and Iād have to liquidate so much stock to pay it off that my tax bill would be enormous. This is not a good plan. Sigh. I still want to.
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What about liquidating monthly whatever you need to cover the mortgage? Itās essentially dollar cost averaging, but as you get out of the market, not into it.
If you only start this after youāve quit, your income tax will probably drop dramatically? And the stock would be mostly capital gains at 15% I think?
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I think Iāve talked myself into āone more yearā syndrome, or maybe two more years 
.
Spouse and I ran all the numbers again and he would be able to support more of our costs than I thought if we stop contributing to retirement accounts (which would probably be fine, we lived like grad students for a decade after leaving grad school). But I donāt feel comfortable dipping into investments when we are at barista FIRE but not actually FIRE wealth.
But, Iām going to use this year to dig into topics that I care about (sustainability as it relates to urban planning as well as capture/conversion technology and womenās health.) I have a clear path towards being able to work in those environments if I do some work on it now so I should use my cushy job to take time learning and making connections in these areas while I fund our bathroom remodel lol.
For anyone interested, Iām starting to work through this reading list: Books for adapting cities to climate change Ā» Yale Climate Connections
ETA i realize this is not super related to the original topic but it a lot of ways itās driven by it.
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re-upping this thread to talk more strategy.
it seems pretty likely to me that tfg and all the other fgs around him are aiming to crash the economy. no one knows the future, of course, but this is how things are looking to me.
i have a lot invested in the stock market, and iām thinking about cashing out a good chunk of it and recasting my mortgage to a lower monthly payment. this would give us some breathing room in our monthly budget, and also free up some capital to get a solar project started on our property, get rainwater harvesting set up, and invest more in our gardens.
in ānormalā times (aka if a non-deranged political party were in control), i wouldnāt do this. but in the current circumstances, there doesnāt seem to be much downside from where iām sitting.
what do you all think? i would be cashing out one brokerage account, not a tax-advantaged account, that represents about 10% of my householdās current net worth.
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Only thing I didnāt see you mention but may not apply to you would be capital gains. If they are long-term already, and your income is low enough that you pay 0% tax on LTCG, then it doesnāt apply. If they are short-term, theyāll be treated as income and taxed as such. Not suggesting you didnāt think of this; I just know I tend to forget it in my napkin math and then remember it later.
I kind of got āluckyā this year in that being unemployed for a while brought me lower on taxable income, and some long-term capital gains ended up untaxed! Woohoo! Shouldāve calculated in advance of tax time and taken some more out 
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yes, good point ā i will be taxed long-term capital gains but i believe that will amount to 15% of the 12% returns i have on that money since i started the account, give or take. do i have that right? or are there subtleties i should be aware of? iāve been buying shares in that account for 5 years or so. havenāt contributed to it in more than a year.
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Is anyone taking steps to plan for the end of FDIC insured deposits? Weāre fairly liquid and want to keep it that way.
I really thought the finance guys had the upper hand over the crash the economy and establish a Christian ethnostate guys but I am starting to think that was overly optimistic.
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I would say that despite my enjoyment of OMD I donāt know Anything About Money. I have A Big Chunk of Cash in a savings account. should I try to get that all in cash? My wallet is too small to put it in so I donāt know where I would put it??? I was going to hopefully figure out this year post-taxes how to put this into stocks or whatever but that is a bad idea now, right?
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If you do anything with solar, Iād check into the nonrefundable tax credits (no guarantee they will be there next year) but if they are, you can make your tax bill big enough to take advantage of the full tax credit. Roth IRA conversions are one thing that come to mind.
If the stock market really does crash and stock prices fall very low, I may do a large Roth IRA conversion.
Although if that happens I may also be getting a job.
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This is what is a little scary too. I am considering moving slightly more of my money to euros and out of usd
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