@maique Thanks, you too! And I wouldn't have it any other way 😀
The Week #129
by
James
- After years of regularly and then sporadically saving for retirement, I've finally automated it again...kinda. If I were in the US, I'd have access to regular retirement accounts and things could be deducted in a tax efficient way from my pay check. As an American, I also can't take advantage of any non-US retirement savings schemes (🤪). So what I'm basically left with is depositing some amount into into a regular taxed brokerage account.
What I've setup is: an automatic from Wise to my US bank account, and a few days after an automatic withdrawal from my US bank account to Vanguard. The two bits I can't automate are: the wire/furikomi from my Japanese bank account to Wise and once the money is actually in Vanguard, purchasing of ETFs (VOO index funds, mostly). My hope is that Wise will send me an email with the amount I need to send in yen each month (because exchange rates change). - Setting this up makes really happy. It's been one of those tasks in the back of my head for quite a while and the crap exchange rate made it even less attractive. The exchange rate is still horrible (but less so). I reckon it will all even out in the end. But perhaps the best bit is I discovered I can now purchase fractional ETFs.
I'll explain. Let's say I have $200, and I want to buy 1 share of VOO (a S&P 500 index fund) that I'll sell off when I rewrite, and it costs $350. Normally,I have to hold my $200, not earning anything, wait until I had $350 and hope that by the time I did the cost hasn't risen to $400 and make my purchase. Now I can just buy $200 worth of the stock, which makes it much easier to invest the same amount each month, no matter the price of the stock. - There was a bunch of noise on the bird site with the owner doing stupid, stupid shit. Like blocking linking the other sites stupid. ON THE INTERNET. :facepalm: Good riddance. So glad I've made my home on the internet my own domain / IndieWeb enabled.
- I've been making really good progress on my major refactoring of the Tanzawa. This has me mostly pulling logic out of ModelForms and moving them into application/domain functions that I can reuse throughout my site. The create methods have been refactored and the update methods are mostly so. I reckon I'll need another pass at views themselves as they're a bit crufty, still.
- We had a Christmas social at work to celebrate the year and it was a lot of fun. We've grown so much in the past year. We went to Soul Food House in Tokyo. I've been wanting to try that place for years, but it's in central Tokyo – some place I'm not going to go unless I'm in the area. Maybe it was the classic American cooking, or maybe it was the Christmas poem read in an English accent, but it finally felt like Christmas is starting.
- Friday was Leo's Christmas pageant where the school puts on a play about the birth of Jesus and then they sing some Christmas songs. When thinking about the amount of chaos you'd expect at a pre-school production of...anything, and then reflecting on the various happenings (kids crying, kids running around, props falling over) that happened during the production...I came to the conclusion that there was just the right amount of chaos this year that it kept things interesting. Not enough and it gets kinda boring, "what are these kids? professionals?" you think to yourself. But they really hit the mark so well, I even heard one of the moms mention the chaos during the show. I'm looking forward to next year when it's Leo's grade's turn to have speaking roles...and maybe a bit less chaos.
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@jamesvandyne Happy holidays, mister 🙂 We also had kindergarten party today, similar mess 🤣
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@jamesvandyne It was brilliant! But so messy no photos are available, my hands were full! 🤣
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