Not a complaint: I’m a little bit smug that you guys are having a moment of Hoth April.
It’s not snowing here today.
Car: ok, so new or new-ish. Can someone point me at a calculator or facilitate math for dummies so I can see if buying used with a higher interest rate or new with a lower one makes more sense?
I bought a brand new Yaris 12 years ago for about 12k (I think?) for a current cost of approximately 1k/year. I financed it, but then paid it off in like 1.5 years (to be fair, I was also paying back student loans at that time). I’ve had no major expenses except for the recommended servicing, and (I think) 2 sets of tires. It has just under 100k miles, it still runs great, and I fully expect it to last another 10 years. I get around 38mpg combined (yes, on a 12-year-old car).
Recommended: Toyota, Honda. If you live somewhere hilly where it snows a lot, Subaru (my entire (rest of the) family drives Subarus, the only caveat is that they get worse gas mileage, but they are great cars for hauling dogs). Get last years’ model and less popular color for more cost savings. I know about the deprecation factor, but honestly, if you can afford it, I would buy a new car over a late model one, unless you can find one a friend or something is selling a relatively new one. I personally think the potential extra cost is worth knowing exactly the history of the vehicle, rather than rolling the dice and wondering if the previous owner(s) had kept up with maintenance or had expensive work done.
I don’t know of a calculator though. You can do what I did and ask for a longer term (mine was 5.5 years!) just for extra insurance (like in case I lost my job or something) and pay it off fast, just make sure there is no pre-payment penalty.
A coworker had a birthday and my work was determined to observe it as normally as possible so the birthday person received a cake thing of some sort and we all got on a videocall (cameras off for pretty much everyone so is that still a videocall?) and sang the worst rendition of happy birthday ever and the rest of us are cake-less. The social contract is bad singing in exchange for cake, I’ve been robbed.
My ribs and hips don’t work today. You would think that ribs don’t do anything and so don’t need to work, but they really really do.
My body has all the anxious things happening. At least my brain is just like “what, no, things are actually fine” which isn’t strictly true but COMFORTING DELUSIONS
Here’s an example of a loan calculator: https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/loan-calculator.aspx
What I do when trying to figure out depreciation is I estimate what I think a comparable car would be worth at 10 years old, compare that with purchase price new, and divide by 10 to get an annual depreciation rate. Then if I look at a used car that’s (for example) 3 years old, is the price on this reduced by more or less than 3x the annual depreciation rate? With both of our current cars (Toyota minivan, Subaru crossover) the discount buying using was less than $1,000 per year which I thought wasn’t worth it.
Not sure about in your market, but something to also keep in mind is that used car asking prices are often priced at pretty close to final prices whereas new car MSRPs often have a decent amount of wiggle room. Usually by emailing a dealer for their internet or e-price quote you’ll get very close to their final offer right up front. Two dealers gave us 10% discount, one dealer 11% but their ownership group are kind of dicks so I really didn’t want to deal with them if I didn’t have to, on our last purchase. You can then if you want to maybe eke out another $500-$1,000 if you play dealers off each other. I did this on one of our cars but not the last purchase because only one dealer had exactly the right car and they had some extra perks for buying through them that I thought were worth not getting every last $ discount I could get.
My app apparently has a bug but I should do my real work and not go fix it right now even though it’s bugging me. I’m pretty sure I know EXACTLY the problem too.
My lungs burn and I cough when I take a deep breath. Chances of this being anything serious are low, but I’d rather it not be happening.
I participate in a fairly large online baking community and the number of folks who are starting sourdough starters right now and asking why their starters aren’t looking right – but who then say “I’m not discarding…”
What a waste of flour. 
Finally inflated my fit ball, but it’s too small / low to be of any use with my desk.
By the end of today, I will have attended 58 hours of meetings this week.
So, what, they expect you to do your actual work in the extra time in your workweek?
Yep. And after hours during the week. Because week hours are 6 am to 6 pm for me now. But hey, I’m working from home, so I can work during the time I’d normally commute!
WTFF? I thought my wife’s company was bad with meetings…
I know they pay you well, but jesus.
Yeah… If this goes on past the crisis, I’ll have to have a talk with them about compensation. If I’m going to keep executive type hours with executive responsibility, I want that compensation package too.
But I’d rather work about 25 hours a week
Wow. Sounds like Mr. Meer, except he hard caps at 40 hours (he himself, I’m sure work would be happy to have him be available all the time for no additional pay). I can only imagine that he gets little bits of work done while giving half an ear to some meetings but it doesn’t help with he needs to do focused work.
Oh god. This 90 minute meeting is listening to a sales pitch for a tool we don’t need. But I have to write up an evaluation of it later.
It’s like listening to Rick Sanchez talk. If this dude burps or gags into the mic one more time I’m going to lose it. How hung over is he?
Gross! I hope there’s some creative way you can work the burps and gags into the evaluation.
“Not sure if salesperson was just hung over, or actively pounding gin. If this is the level of service they provide during a sales call, I can only assume that they’ll switch out to plastic jug grain liquor once we sign the contract”