The Finance Buff

> With your phone, if all you care about is texting and making calls, yeah, you're not getting any added value paying more.

If that's all you care about, paying $400 like I do is silly - you can get it much cheaper.

The $400 phone I get takes fairly good photos (it's one of my main criteria in deciding on phones). Sure, if I want great photos, I'll have to pay more. I've decided that an extra $1100 over 3 years is not worth it for the marginal improvements in photo quality. But I know for some people it is, and that's fine.

Regarding the boots, we're both saying the same thing, which I think is not what the author is saying: You're fixing a time interval (e.g. 30 years), and calculating that it's cheaper to get the expensive boots vs the cumulative cost of cheap shoes in that time period.

When you fix the time interval (e.g. 30 years), comparing rates vs comparing absolute totals is equivalent.[3] What I typically see is that people take this equivalence and begin to compare against different time intervals (option X is for 2 years, option Y is for 5 years). This is what leads to so many silly blog posts saying you'll never get a better investment than your employer's ESPP benefit, because you get a huge return.[1][2]

In any case, the author isn't using the Boots Theory. He's looking at cost per use - and not utility/cost as a whole.

[1] https://thefinancebuff.com/employee-stock-purchase-plan-espp-is.html

[2] I'm pro ESPP - but looking at those claimed return numbers…

I've tried dozens of this type of tools over the years, most in the past ten years as we got ready to retire and then retired a few years ago. Many of the tools were simplistic like Fortunately, but some give better information like I-ORP, On Trajectory, Pralana, Flexible Retirement Planner, ESPlanner and the Bogleheads Retiree Portfolio Model. See the BogleHeads Wiki page on retirement calculators [0] for a bigger list and links to these tools. Darrow [1] also has good reviews of retirement calculators.

Fortunately in its current state doesn't help me at all. It wouldn't have helped me 10 years before retirement either.

You probably want to join the BogleHeads forum [2], as many of these folks could be your potential customers, but they are also your competition that gives away excellent advice for free. Look at the questions that are asked and the high quality answers and see if you can replicate them in your tool.

Claims from the FAQ page:

- Takes into account capital gains. But it didn't ask any basis information about my brokerage balance. Does it guess? What value did it use?

- Takes into account income tax. It didn't ask my breakdown of stocks/bonds in the brokerage account or in my retirement accounts. How are dividends and interest handled?

- Social Security needs to be modeled. The free open source tools at https://ssa.tools and https://opensocialsecurity.com contain the minimum that you need to model. The question "Should I work one more year?"…

> even if you’re educated it can be frustrating to simply read tax regulations (which turbotax translates to simple english)

Not sure I agree with this statement. My experience with TurboTax is that the actual tax regulations are not that hard to read, and that TurboTax's translations do nothing to resolve the ambiguities of the tax code.

For example, the tax code might allow "deduction of reasonable expenses for blah blah blah" and the TurboTax "explanation" will be "You can deduct blah blah blah, but be sure the expenses are reasonable". Ok, what is "reasonable"? Oh, well, you know, reasonable.

It's like a high school student plagiarizing something they found on the internet by rearranging each sentence just enough that it isn't googleable.

Turbo tax is great if your income comes from one or more W-2 jobs (that pay cash) and a simple stock portfolio or investment properties. As soon as you start dealing with RSUs, stock options or (horror! ESPP), it starts becoming more trouble than its worth.

The ESPP thing is especially weird. Every office job I've ever had offered ESPP (so it's not some edge case). TurboTax will double tax your ESPP, unless you know the trick to enter your real cost basis[1]--and TT won't ever prompt you with "Hey, looks like you have some ESPP! Want a step-by-step guide to enter your cost actual basis so that you only pay as much tax as you actually owe?"

[1] https://thefinancebuff.com/adjust-cost-basis-for-espp-sale-in-turbotax.html

No one is forcing people to use a bank, it’s just the “easy default”. Related: quoting from “Ditch Banks — Go With Money Market Funds and Treasuries”⁽¹⁾

”Many people don’t realize that there’s a fundamental difference between the roles banks and brokers play. The fundamental difference is that banks and credit unions offer a two-party private contract while a broker serves as an intermediary between you and the public market. … When you have a two-party private contract, your interest is in direct conflict with the other party in the contract. … A broker acts as an intermediary. They get you the market rate and take a cut. A broker doesn’t set the rate. The market does. The broker only sets its cut.”

⁽¹⁾ https://thefinancebuff.com/goodbye-banks-credit-unions.html

> The author does get into it more here: https://thefinancebuff.com/best-vanguard-money-market-fund-your-tax-rates.html

Interesting, the linked article says this:

> Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) is the settlement fund in a Vanguard brokerage account. You don’t have to do anything extra to buy or sell this fund. It requires no minimum investment. Any cash you transfer into your Vanguard brokerage account will automatically land in this fund.

I didn't know that. It definitely has better returns than most savings accounts. Instead of parking money in a savings account you could just leave it there until you decide whether to invest it or transfer it out to do something else with it.

Man, I wish I could cancel laws just by getting a "conservative public policy think tank" to talk about them; have you actually got a link to anyone contradicting this? Because so far I haven't seen one.

Here's a guy who actually quotes the law in question, and since the health care bill manifests as a patch to the original law, also expands out the 1099 law to what it now says: http://thefinancebuff.com/2010/05/1099-filing-requirement-in-health-care-law.html

I have no idea what his political affiliation is, I just linked for the law quote.

Or do I not have to worry about this law, because the Heartland Institute are global warming heretics?