• 2 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Wife is pregnant for the first time (very early, so we’re still in the ‘fingers crossed’ stage). Definitely not ready to tell family/friends, but exciting times nonetheless!

    We’re slightly older than most new parents and have been down the FIRE path for a while so we’re financially prepared, which is nice. Definitely grateful for the financial security.

    Now I get to look in to 529 plans for the first time. Not thrilled that I have to use one of the ones run by the state to get the state tax benefit. Didn’t want to have to manage a separate account from my brokerage/IRA. Oh well!














  • Really jumped in the deep end with your research, huh? :)

    I guess a good place to start would be deciding what actually bothers you. Megacorp sucks because of [shitty capitalism, shady labor practices, locking down devices, privacy, insert other complaint]. Weigh those against the benefits you get.

    My biggest concern is generally privacy and monetization of my data, but I still use an iPhone because my family wouldn’t get off my case about ease of sharing photos, videos. So I only have the iPhone. Don’t buy anything else from them. I turn off as much tracking and data collection as possible. I only have two outward-facing files in iCloud — my encrypted password keeper so that I can access it both from phones and mobile, and an encrypted file vault that can only be opened if you first get into the password keeper.

    FWIW on the FOSS side, I still use Linux. I used to use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 5a that worked otherwise well.