Some of us have a spare bath, spare kids and 2.5 baths. We can fight over our refugee friends if tonight goes well. If not they might look elsewhere
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@rural I think teaching English or in private schools could be great short to medium term plans for you and your partner
@Bracken_Joy told me that you have to thoroughly clean a bird feeder weekly or you poison the poor birds. Is that also true of bird BATHS? I want a bird bath but not if it’s a ton of work.
It’s the bird flu, very transmittable.
Plus bird baths are likely to get kinda stagnant if you don’t have a fountain feature and can become breeding grounds for mosquitos and mold and algae.
I know less about bird baths, but I would fear mosquitos without regular cleaning.
I think we will get like a statue or something instead and support birds through our vegetable choices and our nice tree rather than offering direct support.
We will see if I still feel that way during grasshopper season…
I have to clean my bird baths more than I clean the feeders because they get gross. It’s for the benefits of the birds and also the water gets algae.
Hummingbird feeders are the worst - they need to be cleaned every 24 - 72 hours.
If you want to enjoy seeing the birds: we sometimes put out a shallow dish of water. Then at the end of the day it can just go in the dishwasher. I definitely don’t do it every day, and you’ll see more birds drinking than bathing, but it’s an easier chore than cleaning a birdbath!
I’ve been working with a financial advisor. He is a fiduciary in the legitimate way. He had me fill out an application for whole life insurance. Is this egregious enough that we should stop working with him?
It would make me question his judgement.
Does he work for the company that is providing the insurance?
Do you have kids or expenses you or your partner cannot cover if the other dies?
Overall sounds sketchy to me - but there may be details that could make this make more sense.
One source’s quick summary (moe on the site):
The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. NerdWallet, Inc. does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.
Whole life insurance offers coverage and accumulates a cash value over time.
This type of permanent life insurance may suit high net worth individuals and parents with lifelong financial dependents.
Depending on your budget, the low rates of return might not offset the high premiums.
On the surface, life insurance is a simple concept: You pay an insurance company a premium and, when you die, the company pays your beneficiaries. But whole life insurance also features a cash value component, which is where things can get complex.
These policies earn interest in a tax-advantaged account and offer guaranteed returns, but they’re expensive and not suitable for most people.
I also feel like it’s an old-fashioned strategy so if the planner is Boomer age maybe I’d be more lenient if otherwise you were getting good advice
He is younger than me and independent.
Does independent mean he won’t get any commission from the insurance company?
I’m sure it doesn’t!
I would ask why he thinks Whole Life would be better than term in your particular circumstances, and what sort of commission he’d be getting if you went with Whole Life vs. Term.
It’d make me ask questions, anyway, specifically why that and not term insurance assuming that the loss of one partner would put the other in hardship (house, kids, etc.) but that hardship wouldn’t necessarily be true for forever/by the end of the term (eventually house paid off, kids grown up, also etc.)
There was one financial show I used to watch that managed more nuance than usual when people had questions (ALWAYS X, NEVER Y generally annoy me, probably because a good part of my job involves thinking up those corner cases, albeit in a very different field), and I want to say they had one person across the couple years I watched for whom universal life would have been the right choice so it’s very much an outlier…from what I remember it was an older couple where only the husband had worked, he eventually retired and got a pension they lived on (very little savings and no social security for whatever reason, I think it had to do with the type of job), but when he passed the pension was cut off, and suddenly the widow was having to live on next to nothing because life insurance had been for when he was working and they hadn’t considered the pension was only for him. Keeping whole life insurance would have given her something to live on.
Ok so good distinction: he hasn’t recommended anything yet, just submitting applications for both term and whole life. He said that would happen once came back. I was under the impression that whole life would always be a much worse option (to the extent that we shouldn’t consider it) but am willing to be told I’m wrong!
I think that it’s very, very unlikely for whole life to be better than term. I would be cautious and see what he recommends, but wouldn’t dump him altogether yet.
What are people using instead of Mint these days? For several lines and at least 5gb of data?