This is one thing I never liked about many of the providers. They do every marketing gimmick in the book. Tiers so you really end up needing premium or business at some crazy price, prices that shift through the filing season, discounts through various paths so it is an Easter egg hunt, not showing you your return until you pay.

Personally, I think FreeTaxUSA is great. It really should be the first thing most people consider.

H&R Block has a Web version I think. Have you tried it?

Did you do the web or PC version? Just curious regarding what you thought of the web version if you used it. I think going back to H&R Block would be my next jump if I cannot work with FTU or OLT. H&R Block was pretty reasonably priced this year too compared to TurboTax and TaxAct. TaxSlayer for some reason was not listed as certified on the MN tax site this year. Do not know if that is a trend or just a one of.

IP blocking is a lazy move in general but it is common. Also lot of orgs like to use geoip to know where people are from. Probably observe ads too.

Tor and legal. Sure. But an org may both want to serve some regions because of their local laws. For financial institutions there are rules too.

For what It is worth, it took a lot of years, but Vanguard now has a few social funds.

Tor. I wonder if that is a more fraud or trolling concern. Or maybe for financial houses more of a US law concern.

Also I can imagine that discussing specific investments is out of scope for Boggleheads as that philosophy is to buy the market. It is not a stock picking group.

Thanks. For finance, there is also https://www.bogleheads.org too. They have a web presence which I have not tried except for their wiki which can be useful. There subreddit was pretty reasonable so I assume their web forum would be too.

Not sure the other options.

Yes. Medical, legal, tax are things hard to find outside of reddit. Just annoying to have to go back there.

Financial seems to be broad enough that there are other choices.

Thanks.

Libreoffice has an HTML mode and also you can take any document and save as HTML.

Another way is use Markdown.

Another is to use a template editor like Bluefish. This is coding HTML but more easily.

It has to have the money to do that and it needs to run a surplus to do that. Meaning reduce spending increase taxes. Political forces are to reduce taxes and increase spending. Your are asking politicians to not play politics and people to support that. What are the chances.

Also people would have to be willing to sell them at a price that seemed reasonable. Most government bonds are not callable meaning redemption cannot be forced.

Many cell providers have a mail to SMS gateway. Just sent email to the correct address and you’ll get SMS. As far as sending mail either with bash or with Python. That is quite possible and not hard.

Sorry I do not have the code at hand. Memory is Python standard library has SMTP capability and Bash you can just use the mail command. May have to configure mail on your Linux box too or just use a remote server.

I would not assume a few years of this means that it will never change. Housing prices and especially interest rates were unusually favorable since the 90s for decades. High interest rates do not tend to last forever.

A short list:

• The current one is a Linux system backup tool written in Python that I use for my systems.

• Recently worked through Mozillas PWA materials to learn how to make Progessive Web Apps. I need decide on what to do with that next. This HTML, CSS, JavaScript, pretty much. Put up a Python web server for some of it.

• I have a security system that is tied together via various Python services. I need to work on that more.

• A few years ago I write a big Monte Carlo financial simulation for retirement planning including taxes. Again Python.

• A while ago I wrote a bunch of test code too benchmark all of the ways to make Python fast. Also looked a C extension, parallel computing, vectorization, GPUs. Some results not that intuitive.

I have a ton more.

No. Only adjusts basis when you sell. There are tax benefits and a lot of them. Some general but a lot very specific. Lot depends if you make money on the property. My house I have had 20 years. Maybe made 1% a year return while the cost is 5%. Typical house returns are about inflation though mine is less. Typical investment return in the market though are 5 to 10% above inflation.

I think his math is questionable and his logic even more so. My house costs about 10% of the value of the house. About half is capital opportunity cost and the other half is maintenance, taxes, and utilities. This is a cash purchase and never goes away.

Sure if you rented the same house it should be cheaper to buy. Generally one does not do that. I rented a much smaller place then I purchased. Then there is the a risk. If you buy in an up market and you have to move in a down market especially a one company town there that business went bad you are skewed.

Not saying no to home but there are many considerations. In the end it is a total numbers game. What are your exact alternatives. Then places to live including a house you own is a cost center not an investment. So cheapest apartment and smallest house is generally better.

Another related thing I have seen a lot is people obsessing over investing and thinking they can work 10 years and be independently wealthly if they invest well.

Well maybe if you have a crazy huge income compared to expenses but it will be on savings rate not investment returns. Investment returns just are not going to drive asset growth until your assets are like 10 or 20 times your savings rate. Which is 10 or 20 years out.

By the way, the link does not work.

This is not related to US solvency. It is related to Republican political gandstanding. Totally irresponsible.

For planning I used detailed monte carlo model for planning that included expected age varying costs. Like SWR but not constant spending. Played with simpler models too.

For execution between now and age 70 pensions, SS, and an annuity will phase in to cover all of our basic inflation escalated expenses. Portfolio will only be for discretionary stuff. I also have a spreadsheet that I used as kind of a control chat to model spending, assets, and spending capability over time.

I might try to do something more sophisticated in the future … Like a monte carlio model with partial variable spending and taking CAPE into account but for now that is beyond what I do.

Personally I think the constant inflation escalated payout people talk about is not that useful during the execution phase. Handy during planning though.