Yeah, if you don’t need that money to cover expenses right now, absolutely, if you have a HSA provider with good investment options.
If you ever do want to pull money out, you can save your medical bills not paid with the HSA and submit them in the future for reimbursement.
And if the provider your work is contracted with does not have good investment options, you can roll it over periodically to a different custodian that does. A lot of people recommend Fidelity.
My wife’s employer just let us straight up switch providers. We use Health Savings Administrators, which has primarily Vanguard options, and lets you buy Admiral class shares with no minimum balance. But for a long time we’ve needed to use every $ for bills so no investing happening.
My employer uses Health Saving Administrators now, as of a couple years ago, so I switched the old balance over to them.
So, my car died and I’ve moved past “should I pay to fix it” to “what kind of new car should I get” to “wow apparently I want an EV”. I’m looking at the Kia Niro.
My question is, does anyone have experience with EVs vs plug-in hybrids?
The plug-in hybrid version gets ~26 miles fully electric, which would be plenty to get me to and from work every day without charging. After tax rebates, I think it ends up being about $5k cheaper than the full EV.
The full EV is fully electric, which I like, and is super peppy to drive, but it’s more expensive. The full range is about 240 miles. Plenty for me to drive to visit my parents (~150 miles), not enough to go, say, camping in the mountains. We have an Outback, so we’re not fully reliant on my car choice here for distance driving.
While I’m convinced that in a few years the average EV range will be much longer, I wouldn’t be “upgrading” to a new EV regardless of which I get now. It’s still influencing my decision making a little. I’m in analysis paralysis but my mom needs her car back, haha, so I need to buy SOMETHING.
How often would you take advantage of that extra range? And how much hassle would recharging be?
Unless we installed an upgraded outlet, charging the battery FULLY takes (according to Google) 59 hours at 110V, lol. However, my office has 2 charging stations, and I work on Sundays when there’s no one else with an EV, so they’d always be open for use at least once a week.
ETA - I live 10 miles from my office, so unless I’m running a ridiculous number of errands, once a week charging would be more than enough.
We might drive my car more if my husband liked it better, he feels cramped in my Golf. And if my car got such amazing gas mileage. We haven’t been camping or hiking much in the last two years, because fires, COVID, and a 2 year old, but I’m hopeful that will change.
One other consideration is how extreme is your weather? Extremely hot and extremely cold weather conditions affect the amount of charge the batteries hold and their lifespan.
Well, LATELY the weather has been hot, and I’m expecting that trend to continue. Not as hot as you guys have had it, though.
Last year the low was -4 F and the high was 99 F. We had 12 days with a low in the single digits/negative values and 49 days with a high of 90 or above. Northern Colorado on the Front Range is fairly moderate (for now).
My understanding from my husband (who specializes in this stuff) is cold will lessen the total charge it can hold, as long as it’s cold. Extreme heat is what shortens their lifespan. If you can store in a garage it moderates those factors a lot.
I got a pair two years ago and hate them. Though to be fair I didn’t try them that much because I hated them so intensely. The changing prescriptions made me dizzy and I didn’t like having to look through a specific part of the frame to see at a particular distance.
I’ve worn reading glasses since I was 8 so I’m used to those. My distance vision is getting worse now though, which is why I tried the progressives. But it’s not SO bad that I really need glasses for distance yet so I gave up on them quickly and just wear my reading glasses.
I’m also weird in that I hate getting new glasses. I usually procrastinate picking them up for weeks and then procrastinate switching from my old ones. I do not like change. I don’t like noticing new stuff on my body (glasses, shoes, clothes, etc)
Is Duo lingo plus worth it?
I’ve never tried it, but I never felt the need to pay for additional features. You can demo it for a little bit I think.
Iirc it lets you do lessons offline. It was worth it while I had a 1hr underground commute. I don’t know what other features there are though.
I liked the free trials a lot, and used it more when I had free plus, but I am not willing to pay for it.
(If they haven’t updated it since I used plus) There are no hearts on Plus, and no ads, so you can just keep cranking out lessons forever.
I was able to access duo lingo - don’t know about plus - through my library’s subscription for free. Could that be an option?
Interesting! Do you get ads in Duolingo?
I don’t remember, as it’s been a couple of years.
Plant people! Two part question.
How do you get cheap/free plants? Must I use facebook? We hates it.
Any suggestions on hearty indoor plants? I have no idea what to look for. The room it will be in gets a lot of sun for about 3/4 of the day, but the plant might not be in direct sunlight.
Thanks!