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birb_cromble  2d ago (text post)   444 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2026-08-01

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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  • Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
  • Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
  • Be kind. Remember that everyone here comes from different circumstances. We all have different resources available and different risk tolerances.
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For somebody who has that extreme level of risk aversion, what options are there that beat a HYSA? Browbeating her into equities isn't going to fly.

Ibonds? $10k/person/year limit, indexed directly to inflation + a fixed rate, state tax exempt, 30 year term, and 100% safe (well, unless the entire US burns to the ground, in which case nothing would be safe). The only "risk" is that you can't cash them for the initial holding period, and lose the latest 3 months of interest if you cash them within 1-5 years of purchase. Some years, it won't beat an HYSA (current inflation + fixed rate is 4.26%, so if you'd had a 4.5% HYSA earlier this year that would've been higher), but it will always beat inflation by the fixed rate.

On a similar topic, are there "non optimal" things that you do financially, but you do them anyway?

I have some very silly auto-invest/auto-transfers set up, just because I like the flow a bit better, and in some cases I've set them up so they can continue for the future instead of just investing the cash on hand now and then setting up the auto-system.

Related, but I tend to use different accounts as "buckets", even if one of them is giving me less of a rate than, say, an MMF would -- or if one MMF is giving a slightly worse rate than another.

Related related, but I use NFCU's savings account (earning dimes) over a different HYSA/MMF. Will I ever need that immediate liquidity? No, but I like having it there all the same.

The other one is that I'll actually keep a few index ETFs (at around $100) in an account that I also have a mutual fund in. I like being able to log in, see what it's at throughout the day without having to look up the ticker. So for instance, if I'm in an international mutual fund, I'll also have ~$100 in VXUS.

So for instance, if I'm in an international mutual fund, I'll also have ~$100 in VXUS.

Just curious, why not hold VXUS instead of the mutual fund?

I like mutual funds. I like that when I buy, I can only buy at the end of the day, when there's no worry about "is the market going up or down."

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