I've gotten more than a few DMs so I just want to offer my thoughts in a larger setting. I apologize for wasting others time and space.
Background: MBA w/+20 years including stints in Investment Banking, Equity Research, VC and Corporate. ( = I know enough to be dangerous.)
Should I invest tomorrow?
I would invest with the understanding that you're playing a high risk/high reward game vs. the best on Wall Street (WS) who aren't accustomed to losing. (Hell, you put a 50% dent in one of the most high profile HFs on the Street.) Reddit/WSB (WSB) is beating WS at its own game and WS will not accept that. The reason that I would still buy shares is because I'm perfectly comfortable waiting out the shorts, who I believe didn't cover entirely based on some sketchy trading volumes and price action on Thursday known as ladder attacks, which is basically artificially lowering a security's price by selling it back and forth between two parties. (Note: the WSJ is reporting that Melvin closed their positions at a loss of 50% to the fund. Maybe they did, though I don’t trust Melvin or the WSJ. Regardless, I have no doubt that other HFs are salivating at the short opportunity given where GME shares are currently trading.)
The key is the somewhat unreliable short data which comes out next week. As I mentioned in a previous post, getting accurate short data is next to impossible. It makes polling data look flawless by way of comparison. It has gotten to the point that I don't believe anything I read because there is not only time lag but synthetic longs and ladder attacks all of which serve to obscure the data. No firm wants it positions known so there is a strong incentive to obscure/hide the data. Another reason why Melvin publicly releasing its positions is just highly unusual/odd.
I would also be aware that a lot of HFs are making bank off the GME volatility by selling options and taking long positions. Just look at thetagang. The group is making their entire investment decisions based solely on the option premium without any concern for the underlying narrative to the point where they're short GME puts at the 200 strike. (And they think WSB is full of retards!)
To use an analogy, I'm a lifelong Giants fan who put a $1,000 down on the Giants beating the Pats in the 2008 Superbowl. The Pats went undefeated all season and the Giants entered the playoffs as a wildcard. The bookie even told me when I placed the bet that I was just throwing away my money. I bet the money line, i.e., no points, and ending up winning $5,000. The bookie just smiled at me when I handed him my ticket. Sometimes you just gotta trust your gut and stay loyal to your instincts no matter what others think. It's what separates the men from the boys.
TLDR: It’s a cliché, but don’t invest in GME what you can’t afford to lose. At this point, you're going against some very powerful hedge funds, i.e., the Pats in 2008. That said, WSB already scored a very impressive victory and is retarded enough to not realize how good their competition really is (just like the Giants in the Super Bowl).
How will the media portray the narrative?
The media have already started spreading the narrative that WSB is going to cause a financial collapse rather than the true culprits, namely, the HFs which leveraged up 5x to short 120% of a company's shares outstanding setting the stage for an infinity squeeze, which is the financial equivalent of a nuclear chain reaction. I mention this because the greatest risk IMHO is government intervention to quell the markets when the HFs start unloading positions to meet margin calls and borrowing costs. Nobody will lose sleep over a few billionaires losing a few commas in their net worth but hitting 401Ks, pension funds, and endowments is a different story. The official narrative will involve large commercial banks which loaned Melvin and other HFs billions to leveraged up with. These banks are regulated by the SEC and FDIC because they hold commercial deposits. When the narrative shifts from Melvin and HFs to names you recognize, e.g., JPM, BofA, Citi, rest assured the game is almost up. My guess is we're in the seventh or eighth inning of this game before it's stopped.
When people ask me about WSB I first discuss the HFs who created the conditions and then secondly note that thankfully we're dealing with a relatively small company in GME with a market cap of $20bn (so far!) compared to a company in the S&P 500, which is the basis for index funds and portfolio construction. In short, WSB did everyone a favor by calling attention to such a disastrous scenario in as optimal circumstances as possible. We should be very thankful WSB alerted the public to a systematic flaw in the financial system before a much greater meltdown occurred.
TLDR: The media are the PR firms for Wall Street. They exist to promote a narrative and receive access and compensation in return. They have no interest in reporting how the retail investor is being swindled. In contrast WSB did everyone a favor by pointing out a very serious systematic flaw in as optimal fashion as possible. This is the truth and the message that needs to be heard.
What’s the next step?
FINRA releases short data next Tuesday, February 9th for the period ending this past Friday, January 29th. Roughly 700mn GME shares changed hands last week or 10x the total shares outstanding so I'm pretty sure the short interest (SI) has fallen below 100%. However, I expect it to still be well above 50% given the typical HF’s risk appetite by which I mean they expect the retail investors to run for the exits sending shares back to $20-ish levels. I would love to know the borrowing costs for these firms because it basically tells you how long they can wait before such costs negatively impact their returns. My guess is until March when they have to report 1Q results to investors.
TLDR: Short data will show a decrease in SI, which is not necessarily a bad thing but it’s important to note that the risk/reward profile of the trade has moved.
How much good did this GME trade really do besides transfer a lot of wealth?
A heck of alot. At a minimum, WSB drew well needed scrutiny to the role of option clearings firms such as Citadel* and Wolverine, i.e., the shadow economy, and their dual roles as market makers and hedge funds (players and referees). This screams conflict of interest. A revolution doesn’t happen overnight but this is another step forward in demonstrating how rigged the game is against the retail investor and guy in the (Main) street. Our regulatory agencies exist to enforce transparency and fairness. WSB has demonstrated that the derivatives market and particularly short selling lack both and have the capability to cause a financial panic. And of course, there is the unbelievable amount of charitable donations from WSB gains which prove who the real Robinhood is. (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

Citadel alone handles more than 25% of US equity flow. The company is a monster and barely anyone knows it exists, which is how they like it. They tell Wall Street what the regulation is and they pay Washington to enforce it. Former Fed heads Bernanke and Yellen have received almost a million in combined comp for speeches and advisory services from Citadel. In short, Citadel makes Goldman look like the United Way. And oh, yeah, 40% of Robinhood's revenue comes from Citadel in return for order flow. Assume what you will.

TLDR: Sunlight is the best disinfectant – Justice Brandeis
*********************
For the questions below and messages:
As I tried to communicate in the write-up, I would characterize the trade as more risky than a week ago when the SI was above 100%. I have no doubt many shorts have since closed. That said, I suspect the SI is still well above 50% given where the stock is and typical HF risk appetite. This is not a trade for your parents or grandparents.* There is serious risk here that the share price collapses based on who the counterparties are and the lower SI. That said, I still like it and I'm in it. IMHO, it comes down to a game of chicken in the sense of who is willing to hold longer. HFs have investors to report to in 1Q vs. WSB who have bills, rent, and life to deal with. As my old coach would say, who wants it more.

The market has returned ~11% per year for the past decade. A good HF aims for 2x that. You guys are banking +1,000% returns on a trade lasting approximately a month against the best HFs on the Street. These returns are not normal or even within several standard deviations. They are clearly not for the faint-of-heart. We are in unchartered waters here. No shame in heading back. The fact you've come this far is simply amazing. Even you wife's boyfriend would be proud of you.

Some thoughts on $Doge from a (mostly) professional Day Trader:

Questions on Short Float, Short Ladder Attacks and Short Squeeze.

Here are the main questions many have. Post will be updated with more answers and questions from the comments. This will help a lot of people!

Q1) The short float % seems to be going down from a number of sources. Why are these not correct?

Responses:

From u/kevinjing11: Short float % is what's publicly reported. Many ways that MMs and hedge funds can essentially fake this number through unreported phantom shares
From u/Candle-Sticks: The short float % numbers we've been seeing are all estimates. The official reports don't come out until 2/9.
From u/JesusHimself69: There's no way the hedges could have paid out their shorts that fast without the stocks rocketing up. Some on Thursday/Friday? Sure. But not over the weekend. It's just a scare tactic.
From u/ whateverathrowaway00: http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-08-09/s70809-407a.pdf The documents listed here show that the DTC ( central clearing house for stock trading ) has allowed counterfeit stock trading to occur for a long time. It is this environment that allows naked shorting to occur. The SEC article above is from 2008 basically laying out how the restrictions put in place could be side stepped and it lines up. With this explanation, no one needed to call the DTC. There are no more shares of GME... period. That’s why even though short interest is being manipulated exactly as spelled out in the SEC paper above, there are no available shares to short in most brokers. The DTC raised deposit prices. They didn’t need a phone call. They’re not doing it to help any brokerages or hedge funds. They’re doing it to save their own ass. This is an opaque company that has the ability to shrug off congressional subpoenas. Independant actors all acting for their own gain is a much more likely explanation then widespread collusion. This is what makes sense to me. DTC raised deposits, allowing the shorts to unwind over time. The media will vilify the brokerages and hedge funds and no-one will ever ask where all the shares are. If that tactic does not work they will crash the economy in response.

Q2) Can't the hedge funds just keep doing more short ladder attacks and drive the price down?

Responses:

From u/FudgieThaWhale: No, because they're losing money doing ladders in an attempt to acquire additional shares. If investors don't sell a dip then they just flat lose the money. They won't keep doing it because they can't.
From u/Candle-Sticks: The ladder attacks rely on the HF holding shares, they can keep selling and laddering until they run out of shares. Of course they can easily buy more at the dips they artificially create.
From u/storyhungry: Interactive Brokers currently says that the borrow rate is 16.97% for HFs

Q3) All these hedge funds are saying they're out of their short positions to align with question #1, we obviously don't believe them and they're probably racking up a ton of fees. How long can they really last?

Responses:

From u/FudgieThaWhale: It can last as long as they want to pay margin fees. I imagine that won't be for very long.
From u/autodrafter2020: There is a massive amount of Failure to Deliver, and short sellers have to pay the clearing houses soon, it could be just days: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lak773/why_were_still_winning_and_why_were_still_going/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Q4) When the short squeeze happens, what period of time are we talking about? Does it last 10 mins, 2 days, etc?

Q5) How do I know if it's a short ladder attack?

Responses:

Click and read through this comment: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/la7bhj/gme_mms_have_until_tomorrow_22_to_buy_shares_it/glmatag?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

Q6) What % of the float do we need to own before this starts to squeeze (and is this publicly available)?

Responses:

From u/thejewsdidnothing :It is possible (and likely imo) that we already hold over 100% of GME’s float. Why haven’t we squeezed? Because the shorts are able to dilute the float with fake shares as much as they want. The real question that should be asked then is “at what point does the government step in to stop them, or when do the shorts accrue such heavy losses that they have to cover?” The answer is that we don’t know, but it’s only a matter of time.

Q7) Why can't I buy more on Vanguard (relevant to other brokers too)

Responses:

From u/Tainthairtwizzler : Vanguard no longer allowing you to use money transferred immediately. Just got off the phone with support and the funds need to be cleared through the 7 Day Hold before you can spend them. Must have been set over the weekend/today because I was able to buy BB from the same account but wasn't allowed to buy GME all during this morning.

Q8) Isn’t it plausible that HF have been shorting at 300- 400$ level and are now taking in big time on their own ladder attacks to around the 250$ level?

Responses:

From u/Thefsm93: It is possible that they have been shorting at 300-400, except that the volume of shares being traded doesn't match the volume of shares needed for the short. If the question is more geared at them buying in at 300-400 and trying to short at 250, that would just make this situation worse because they would still then need to BUY. Plus, why would they be artificially driving the price down with ladder attacks?

Q9) How does the short % of the float matter if there are approximately 10M shares to cover with?

Q10) (from others) I’m trying to get into the gme/amc craze but public / webull apps is taking anywhere between 1-7 days to confirm deposits before i can use the funds in my bank account. is this new? is there a way to expedite the process?

Responses:

From u/waqas961: If you have a cash account linked to your bank on webull and you transfer an amount it will be available same day if did in morning or available next day as provisional funds to trade with until your actual deposit goes through which can take upto 5 days. I bought on 27th and 28th Jan but my actual deposits still show pending. Wire transfer however is different and for that you need to actually wait the whole time till it gets processed.
From u/sutsusame: If you want to invest money right away, see if the brokerage will let you do a wire transfer. I use E*TRADE and incoming wire transfers usually clear within minutes, with no hold period. You will probably need to pay a fee to your bank.

Q11) What are some in depth posts that people believe should be read?

Responses:

An insane amount of deception has been in the works for a long time: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l97ykd/the_real_reason_wall_street_is_terrified_of_the/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Shit's about to get crazy: https://www.reddit.com/usebcRIPstecomments/labq6u/follow_the_crumbs_gme_exposed_the_meta/
Why the squeeze hasn't happened: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/ladv7v/gme_will_squeeze_and_heres_the_10_reasons_why_i/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Shorts covering: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lae73m/psa_remember_shorts_have_two_days_to_deliver_this/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Q12) I've read a couple of posts that casually mention the possibility that GameStop could issue more shares, pulling in a bunch of money and essentially letting the shorts off the hook. Can GameStop do that? If so, why the hell wouldn’t they?

Q13) What happens if HFs have artificially created the counterfeit shares to the amount we hold which they exactly need and then when the short squeeze takes place, restrict all of us 🦍 and basically resell it to themselves and make our shares burn to the ground?

Q14) What happens if the short squeeze takes place and all of the brokerage houses crash, as we have seen they have restricted us from buying? Wouldn’t be surprised of seeing them not allowing us to sell at the most important moment. Btw, as we see that there is an insane amount of counterfeit shares, does that mean that this is hope they will save their asses by restricting the fake shares to be sold?

I really want this to be helpful for everyone. If you are an expert or have other questions for me to ask, please comment and I will update this post.
Holding 10 GME shares from $90/share. Got another one on Friday at $320 a share. I can't buy anymore but wish i could!
UPDATE: Keep the responses coming please, and note: we are not financial advisors, just awesome retards!

I am in my early 30s, make $75k a year ($120k joint), live in the South, work as a Development Director, and hate capitalism but love a little luxury!

Edited to remove the tables because when I obsessively checked this post on my phone I couldn't read them?? Also I tried to, but was prevented from, editing the title. I know it looks sanctimonious but that's just one small part of my personality I swear. D:
❤️ Section 1: Assets and Debt
Total Net Worth: $30,875 - all equity.
Retirement Balance: $0 for me; $20,500 for my husband in the state pension program for teachers. (My partner, L, has been paying into the state teachers' pension system for 5 years. For most of my 20s, I either worked at very low-paying jobs, or supported myself and others on a teacher’s salary, so no retirement for me. My current job does not have a retirement program, but one of my goals for this year is to either start a Roth IRA or get a new job with a 401k match… or maybe both?)
Savings Account Balance: $23,733 We’re moving this summer to a city closer to our families, and are saving all we can for a down payment on a dreamy spot. After we move, some amount of what’s left over will go into a retirement fund, and the rest will stay in this HYSA as our emergency fund. For us, three months of expenses, including childcare, is about $18,000.
Checking Account Balance: $455
Credit Card Debt: n/a, pay off each month
Student Loan Debt: $80,000 for L’s undergrad and MAT. $18,000 for my undergrad and (unfinished) MAT. (My undergrad degrees were mostly covered by the Pell Grant, scholarships, and a $10,000 529 from my parents. L was a nontraditional student - didn’t start undergrad until he was 24 - so none of his was covered. Most of my debt is for a MAT program I dropped out of after one year. I was trying to find any way out of teaching at the time (it is demanding, all-consuming, and carceral at once) and thought a PhD would be my only route. When I got my current job I promptly left the program and any dreams of a PhD behind.)
Equity: $83,875 (This number is from an online equity calculator, and is for our house in a very popular neighborhood in a very popular city. Our outstanding debt on the house is $295,000. We put our whole savings down in 2019, which was $9,000 at the time.)
❤️ Section 2: Income
Monthly Take Home: My base pay is $65,000, and L’s is $45,000. I worked a side gig last year that totaled about $10k in additional compensation; all of it went to savings so we don't budget for it. My take home is $4096/month for my full time job, and my current side gig income (grant writing) is variable, between $300 and $600 a month. L’s take home is $2262/month. My health insurance is paid in full by work. L’s insurance and B’s come out of L’s paycheck, as does L’s retirement contribution.
Income Progression: I’ve been working since I was 15 years old, moved out for college at 18, and paid my own bills starting that year. I won’t include that money here though (it was like $12,000 a year as a college student, for reference). Income below starts when I graduated with two BAs that had nothing to do with teaching.
Year 1: $15,600 (part time ABA therapist, full time baby anarchist)
Year 2: $32,000 (year 1 teacher salary: I accepted a spot in Teach for America for this giant salary even though I thought it was an obnoxious neoliberal org. Yes, I was also obnoxious at the time.)
Year 3: $33,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 4: $34,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 5: $35,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 6: $15,000 (community organizer; at the time this felt like a dream job)
Year 7: $20,000 (community organizer & cafe worker)
Year 8: $40,000 (back to teaching, felt rich; this includes a side hustle writing grants on the side for $50 an hour)
Year 9: $45,000 (left teaching for my current job, quit the grants side hustle)
Year 10: $55,000 (got a raise, got pregnant)
Year 11: $65,000 (got a raise and promotion, had a baby)
Year 12: $75,000 (was promoted again in January but waiting on the pay increase to hit, hopefully with backdating. This money diary doesn’t reflect this salary as it hasn’t been reflected in my check yet)
❤️ Section 3: Expenses
Mortgage/PMI/Insurance: $2,110
Retirement Contribution: n/a (L’s retirement is pulled out of his check before he receives it: it’s $169 a month. Right now, I don’t have a retirement contribution)
Savings Contribution: $1000 to main savings, $400 to sinking fund (This is a super aggressive goal for us and is only possible because our childcare costs are covered by work)
Debt Payments: n/a right now (We have student loans to the tune of $100k but haven’t been paying a dime since they were paused due to COVID. But then the other day I checked and saw they've gained interest? Should we be paying them then? WWJD? I legit don’t know.)
Electric: $130
Internet: $100
Cellphone: $65 (For L & I both. We are on a bigass family plan with 40 gajillion other people.)
Subscriptions: $45 ($10 Spotify; $10 Youtube music; $2.99 Apple data (Why?!); $22 NYT (for newspaper and cooking app); also have a split subscription to the New Yorker with bestie F but we paid for a yearly deal.)
Car Payment and Insurance: $150 for a car payment; $202 for insurance (Insurance covers both of our used cars and my dad’s used handicap van. Our car payment is for our used Honda. We only owe $6,850 on the car and I’m back and forth on whether to pay it off with savings)
Medical/Therapy: $0 (My therapist is $140 a session, and I just started seeing her again once a month, but this is reimbursed by work. I also get an inhaler at least twice a month - that’s reimbursed too, costs $60 total.)
Misfits Market: $120 (For a weekly box, which really helps us cut down on overall grocery cost)
Gym membership: $30 (For my intense local yoga studio’s app which is so great in the winter. We also run and bike a lot, as long as it’s warm enough)
Donations: $100 (We give monthly to our local Democratic Socialists of America; the Working Families Party; and a small, local org. I’m also on an organizing committee for that org. We’ll give them one big gift of at least $250 this year, probably in May. I support a couple organizations with grant writing and grant-finding support as much as I can, which usually amounts to a few hours a month.)
Childcare: $0 B goes to a very precious Montessori preschool, and we can walk him there. It’s pricey af ($1300/month). The other $200 is to account for some babysitting from my little sister when L or I have to work weird hours. For now, work reimburses this full amount as a COVID perk; if that changes, we will have to cut costs significantly.
House cleaner: $160 (They come twice a month and charge $80 each time.)
❤️ Section 4: Money Diary
NOTE: We are masked and afraid everywhere we go.
✨DAY 1: THURSDAY✨
4:20 am: Good morning world! I shuffle into the kitchen in my panties and my slippers to fill up the gooseneck kettle. I recently got into pour over coffee even though it’s quite a commitment. With a toddler, a full-time job, and a Libra sun, I don’t really have time for meditative morning routines. This lengthy, half-naked coffee regimen is my closest attempt. As soon as I get the coffee brewing, our 18 month old, B, starts making noise. I open the door and see he’s got his pacifier in his mouth and his pillow in his arms. He wants to lay with Dada. I help him get in the bed with my husband, L, as quietly as possible. Last week L was super sick and we thought for sure he had picked up COVID. Blessedly all of our tests came back negative, but on the heels of that, he started having major tooth pain and had to have an emergency tooth extraction, AND he got an ear infection as he was coming down from whatever virus he had. I hate it :(
I get dressed and do some chores while they snooze to ease L's morning. I start the diaper laundry (usually his job - we use cloth), put away the dishes, start the Eufy vacuum, and get B and L’s breakfasts together: sunbutter and a little bit of syrup on some banana pancakes I prepped earlier this week.
6:30 am: B and L are up! The hour before we take B to preschool is kind of a marathon. L eats with B (and supervises his syrup consumption) as I clean out some more dirty diapers, brush my teeth, make another cup of coffee, strip our sheets, spray my hair with water to refresh the curl, return a few group texts, and wash some breakfast dishes. Somewhere in here I also eat two boiled eggs with Everything But the Bagel seasoning, and a bunch of grapes.
I help L get B loaded up in the car, and just as they pull off, my parents Facetime me. They’re calling to see B but are polite enough to talk to me for a few minutes. They live a few hours away, and are divorced, but cohabitating. The full story is long and spiritual for me so I’ll spare you. Anyway, my mom and I talk for a while about this couch she thinks I should buy from one of her friends, but it’s two hours away and we’d have to rent a U-Haul, so I think we’ll pass. I do hate our current couch though. Please drop comfy toddler- and dog-friendly recommendations in the comments!
8:15 am: I set out to walk the dog and listen to the Daily’s recent update on the coronavirus. Donald G. McNeill, Jr., says we’re in this through the summer, which is a bummer on the personal and global front, but I suppose it could be worse??? Maybe?? As soon as they finish talking I switch over to You’re Wrong About. I’m deep in the Jessica Simpson series and highly recommend this pod for any other nerdy, lefty, kinda burnt out millennials, especially those of you that are queer or queer-adjacent. Once home, I take my whole operation onto the front porch to work, since the cleaner will be here soon and I don’t want to crowd her in this time of COVID. I LOVE a clean house and I love paying someone else to do the big stuff, which is a recent luxury for us.
11:00 am: I’ve been working steadily in my email and google docs for a couple hours now, and it’s COLD out here. The cleaner leaves and I am grateful to go back into the heat. I Venmo her $80 for the cleaning (included in monthly expenses). I take a break from work and check out the job boards. My current job is the best, and highest-paying, gig I’ve ever had, but I’m planning to leave some time this year for several reasons. The premier reason: I recently learned that I’m qualified for several positions that pay over $100k at similar organizations. With that kind of money we could pay off our student loans, help our families out more, make sizable donations, and L could explore a career outside of teaching without freaking about a slight cut in his pay for a few years as he finds his niche. Or - maybe he’ll get into Edtech somehow and we’ll join Resource Generation. Who knows.
12:30 pm: I have a quick break and pull together lunch: half a cheese quesadilla, a big bowl of Smitten Kitchen’s roasted tomato soup, and a LimonCello LaCroix. L is on his planning period and asks me to edit his most recent job application, and I oblige. Since we’re both job hunting, I ask him if I can buy a resume template and guide on Etsy. I have sworn off online shopping for the year to curb my impulse spending, but he says we’ll just count this one as his purchase. Great news because I hate the formatting of my resume from 2016 and don’t want to fix it myself! $9.95
3:30 pm: My Zooms are over, my inbox is at 0, and I put up my out of office message because I’m taking the day off tomorrow to work on my resume and do some things to prep our house for sale. My high-functioning anxiety created an ambitious backwards timeline for this process back in December, and that timeline currently runs my life. I work for a few more minutes to tie up loose ends, and then walk O to a nearby shop to buy my favorite candle, curbside-style. When I get there the owner gives me some percentage off because it’s slightly discolored from the sun. Huzzah! $27.25, marked down from $40
4:45 pm: My angel of a baby sister, J, who lives just a few blocks away and is in a pod with us, comes to hang out with B for an hour so L can rest. I head to my good friend D’s place for my investment overalls appointment. She's going to alter their awkward wide leg into more of a tapered, mom jean shape. I have a capsule wardrobe which means I’ll wear these babies at least once a week, and plus I get to pay my friend, so I’m fine with the extra expense. When I arrive, she and her partner have the fire pit going, and we drink a couple glasses of wine together, yet more than 6 feet apart. I learn they are planning to move to the same new city as us in the next couple of years and legit cry happy tears.
Afterwards, I head out to pick up dinner for tonight. We are getting burgers from L’s favorite place as a treat. On my way, the WOLF MOON appears over the water and my stomach does triple flips. Then I pick up our dinner: a veggie burger with eggplant jam and kale for me; a real-meat burger with mushrooms, bacon, swiss, carmelized onion, and horseradish mayo for L; and an appetizer plate with pretzels, pimento cheese, onion jam, pickles, and chips for B. Delicious and unhealthy. The total is $34.54.
6:30: Home and eating dinner. B loves his meal, especially the “chokes.” He calls pretzels “chokes” because when L first started feeding them to him, I worried aloud that he would choke every time. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how a pretzel almost took out George W. Bush. Turns out our toddler is better at chewing than George W. Bush.
After dinner, L gives B a bubble bath while I do my own, very minimal, bedtime routine. Then L and I lay down with B to put him to sleep. He has a floor bed, which is a Montessori thing I learned about on mom blogs. L is a very hot and talented woodworker, so he took my floor bed dream to the next level by building a lovely house-shaped frame. The top beam is wrapped in twinkle lights and fake ivy. It’s a nice place to sleep, and we pass out here all the time.
10:30 pm: L wakes me up and we wander to our own bed.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 71.74
✨ DAY 2: FRIDAY✨
4:15 am: Wake up and go look at the clock. Decide this is a silly time to get up on a day off, drink some water, and go lay back down. But once in bed all I can think about is how much I want to read the news, organize my resume, and update this money diary. This is the problem with falling asleep at toddler time. So I get up again at 4:45, make my coffee, read a New Yorker article about Biden’s pandemic response on my phone, and sit down to work on this diary.
6:00 am: L wakes up! He works on breakfast for himself and B and I start meal planning for the month. This is one of my best and most recent life hacks. I found that if I chart out our cooking, weekly takeout, and leftovers at the start of the month, we save lots of money and are so much less stressed about the labor that goes into feeding ourselves. I pull out Smitten Kitchen Every Day and use it to inspire the month’s meals. So quaint to cook from an actual BOOK.
6:45 am: B walks out of our room and announces that he drank my water off the side table. He’s so proud! And so ready to eat. While he eats breakfast, I snack on some grapes and, at B’s request, blast 7 Days A Week by They Might Be Giants. This is the consummate children’s song for any household that dreams of a self-determined world. Over the next hour I take B to school; make myself a real breakfast (a soy chorizo and egg taco); and browse TikTok. Eventually I find a series about this Gamestop situation by a smart Irish woman and L and I watch it together. When it’s over we feel like shrewd stock brokers ready to win money, and L gets to work teaching virtually.
I spend the morning painting our front door and our kitchen wall to prep our house to sell, and talking to my (other) little sister on the phone. She’s an HR person with a job that’s taken her far away from our family, and we don’t talk that often. It is so good to catch up on her life. After that I have a fun, day-off Zoom call with longtime bestie and coworker K. We drink coffee and talk about The Future.
12:30 pm: I make lunch (tomato soup with goat cheese on top, and a savory scone on the side) and get a text from another bestie, M, who offers me a little grant writing contract work this week. Yay! I love them and love working with them. Next, I order our groceries for the week. I get baking powder, eggs, cremini mushrooms, vegan sausage patties, oat milk, ginger root, shredded cheddar cheese, plantains, black beans, doggy bags, broccoli, vegan chicken strips, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, capers, ciabatta bread, grits, bananas, avocados, greek yogurt, and on impulse, a pineapple on sale (?!). Maybe B will love it. The total comes to $94.08.
1:15 pm: I do a brief power vinyasa class in B’s room and take a shower. It takes me approximately two Drake songs to shower and dry off, as I don’t have to wash my hair today and I never shave. I work on my resume until L and I leave to pick up B. On the way home we stop at the park to play, and then we all get in the car to pick up groceries.
6:30 pm: We get home later than planned and eat together: leftover tofu ramen for us and veggie lasagna for B, who is so sleepy that he hardly touches his lasagna. L gets him in the bath around 7:15 and I run through my evening routine. There’s a lot going on in the house - preschool lunch and clothes to put up, a mountain of laundry in our room, all of the groceries for the week waiting to be put away, and dinner dishes are languishing in the sink. L starts on chores while I get B dressed.
As I’m dressing B, my mom Facetimes and B shows her several of his board books. While we’re talking my dad texts me a heart emoji - he overheard B and my mom talking from his room. He lives with a disability and a painful illness, so he goes to bed very early. We hang up with my mom and record a video of B making “P” sounds and saying “I love you” to my dad, and send it over. This is the first time B’s ever said “I love you!” Huge news. We read books and fall asleep next to B.
9 pm: I wake up and nudge L but he wants to keep sleeping. I go clean the dinner dishes, put away the food and reorganize the cabinets and fridge, and mop the kitchen floor while I listen to The Daily’s latest reporting on QAnon believers who are at once totally bananagrams and also remind me very much of my aunt. L wakes up at 9:30 because he and Y, my sister’s boyfriend, are gonna game. Cute! He finishes the laundry and I fold a few diapers to help out. Then we lay in bed together until game time, when I fall asleep.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 94.08
✨DAY 3: SATURDAY✨
5:40 am: Wake up at a ~*~weekend hour~*~!! Start my kettle, clean and moisturize my face, pull out the ingredients for waffles, and pick up around the house while I wait for it to boil. I try to read some, but get bored a few pages in. I’m currently reading How to Do Nothing and it’s good enough, but I think I need to chill on the nonfiction and read, like, saucy romance novels with hot bisexual leads. Send me your recs please!
Waffle time! This recipe is my go-to. I recommend whipping the egg whites first. B wakes up around 7:15 and helps me cook which is cute and very messy. He eats his waffle with honey, peanut butter, and grapes. L wakes up after him - he had a late night gaming!
8 am: I open yesterday’s mail and find an anti-abortion DVD from L’s grandma. It’s Abby Johnson’s “memoir.” Abby Johnson is an opportunistic right winger and documented liar who once moonlighted as a Planned Parenthood clinic manager. L is a preacher’s kid, so we’re not surprised to receive this from his grandma. For example: 10 years ago, when L and I were a couple years into our relationship, her Christmas gift to me was a book about how one can recover from being a slut by getting married and finding Jesus. This particular package really sends me over the edge, though. I decide to write them a short note later that states my own experience with abortion and sets a clear boundary on this kind of propaganda, and includes an article about Abby Johnson’s bullshit life. It’s unlikely this will change their minds - they are septuagenarian Southern Baptists, after all - but at least I’ll be in my integrity.
In the meantime, I group text L’s siblings, and they commiserate with us. His one sibling who is transitioning shares that grandma recently sent them a book about how to tell your gay friends they’re sinning. We agree that’s hilariously dense (and fucking rude) of her, and talk about how everyone under forty is a gay slut living their best life, so really it’s grandma’s loss. During this time I clean the kitchen, finish the waffles, and freeze them for B’s weekday breakfasts.
9:30 am: B asks to use the potty and does a great job peeing on his own! He’s geeked about it and is especially excited to have my parents on Facetime cheering him on. After that we head out on our morning walk. L takes B to the playground and I take O to the dog park nearby. She gets tired pretty quick and we all head to the thrift store. We need chairs for our hand-me-down kitchen table. The ones that came with it are awkwardly wide. L spots two sturdy ones that are just $5 each. Score! $10
11:30 am: B and L are both wiped out once we get home. They eat lunch and go to sleep. I clean up the kitchen, repot one of my plants, water our porch plants, and eat some leftover ramen for lunch. The Marie Antoinette episode of You’re Wrong About keeps me company all the while. 10/10 would recommend.
2 pm: B wakes up and eats some lunch. We watercolor together for a while (he on his big paper, I in my bullet journal), then walk down the street to the local high school while L preps potatoes for our fondue. The high school grounds are open on the weekends, and there’s an amphitheatre on site. B loves the echo in there.
4:30 pm: L joins us in the amphitheatre and together we drag B two blocks back home. I prep the fondue: brie, gouda, and more gouda with white wine. It ends up being a little clumpy but so delicious. My sister, J, and her boyfriend, Y arrive while I’m cooking. Y brings yummy baguettes from his bakery job for the dipping and we prep broccoli, green beans, and tempeh too. We sit down in our new chairs to eat and for the zillionth time I am so thankful we’ve been able to make a pod together this year. Fondue would be a terrifying proposition with anyone else, really.
While we eat, Y tells us he put in his two weeks at the bakery because their COVID protocols aren’t so tight and his coworkers are continuing to go to bars and out to eat. His plan for now is to get back on unemployment and find a virtual job sometime soon. Both he and my sister have worked food service their whole adult lives so the pandemic has been tough on them. Besides the fact that they’re delightful and perfect, this is one key reason we’re planning to move with them to our new city this summer: L and I will be able to easily afford the majority of the rent, deposits, and utilities on a pretty big, and centrally located, house. Living together will allow us to grow our savings and take our time looking for a Forever Home, and will allow J and Y to pay really low rent as my sister goes back to school full time and Y looks for a full-time job. I’m really looking forward to living with them and know it’ll be good for B, too. They leave around 7 pm and we put B to bed, this time without falling asleep ourselves!
8:30 pm: Turn on How I Met Your Mother in bed and the episodes are baaaaad bad. One entire episode casts sex workers as a punch line. Ick. L and I agree to find a new show, and fall asleep around 10.
11 pm - 2 am: B is up and between our two beds. Wahhhh.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 10
✨DAY 4: SUNDAY✨
6 am: Up and at ‘em! Discover I’m out of my fancy coffee and don’t want to emphasize the flavor of our grocery store beans with a slow pour, so make a french press instead. B wakes up too early so we watch toddlers together on TikTok while I drink my coffee, then read books while L makes us all eggs for breakfast. We head out for our morning walk around 9 am and stop at a coffee shop a few blocks away. I pick up Counter Culture’s Iridescent beans, buy an espresso brownie on a whim, and tip the cashier because she’s so sweet and tipping is good. The total is 23.03. L takes B to the playground and I drop my purchases and O back at the house before I head out for a run.
9:45 am: It’s 65 degrees and my run is glorious. I run to the water and pause Lil Yachty for a minute to take it all in. Once home I shower and put on a black LA Apparel catsuit and a marled black and white cocoon sweater from AA of the past (I like what I like!). We feed B lunch and then L puts him down while I clean up.
Around 11:30, J comes over after to watch B while we remove the storm windows from our whole house and clean the windows underneath as part of our work to prep the house for sale. We’re a solid team: L removes the storm windows and caulks all the gaps in the wood while I follow behind him and wash the windows inside and out. Our sweet neighbor catches us cleaning and offers to let us use her power washer for free next weekend to clean up the front of the house. I resolve to bake them some cookies.
2:30 pm: We are done with the window operation and it’s time for me to water all 57 plants in the house. Along the way, discover that I overwatered B’s hoya last week and it’s rotting. Noooo! I unpot it on the porch to dry the roots, but it’s raining so this might not work. There’s only one surefire solution: buy a replacement plant! I try to convince L we should go to the nursery, but he’s not so into it. I walk around dejectedly with a towel to clean up all the water I spilled, and Zelle J $70 for babysitting even though she insists she would do it for free. Next B, L, and I share a snack: crackers with goat cheese and harissa. Mmm. B skips the harissa but loves the goat cheese. Meanwhile I begin to stress about making dinner. We’d planned goddess bowls but L and I just aren’t feeling it after our marathon of house work. L requests Chinese and is suddenly more amenable to visiting the nursery, which is near our favorite Chinese takeout spot. Score!
5:00 pm: We leave the plant shop with a heartleaf philodendron for B’s room and a giant, lovely, perfect monstera deliciosa just because. The total comes to $53.24. Then we pick up our food: $33.08 including the tip. L ordered a large veggie lo mein to share with B and General Tso’s chicken, and I got family style tofu and vegetables. We start B’s bedtime routine at 6:30 and he’s out by 7:00 - early for him!
After he’s down, L preps his breakfast sandwiches for the week and I do some dishes. Then we take mutual advantage of the extra hour we have together. Even after 12 years it’s always so good with L. I fall asleep around 10 pm feeling blessed.
🌿 Daily total: 179.32
✨DAY 5: MONDAY✨
5 am: I make my pour over and get started on work first thing. I have a couple of deadlines this week and the side gig to balance so I’m already feeling pressed for time! I wrap up an entire grant report before 6 am and feel very accomplished. Then I pause work to start our breakfast, which is all pre-prepped, hallelujah. While L and B eat breakfast, I get dressed in a black turtleneck minidress, busted old tights, black ankle socks, and my Doc Martens.
I help L load up the car with B and all his gear, and tell L to be careful. Today is L’s first day back teaching in person since December, and we’re both nervous since COVID is still running wild in our red state. On the way to work he fills up his car for $18.33.
2:30 pm: After another grant report, seventy gajillion emails, forty Slack messages, and several hours of Zoom calls, I’m ready for a break. I finish eating the quinoa salad I prepped during Zoom call #2 and then eat a pear too. I see our Misfits box has been delivered. It’s $30 a week, and is included in our monthly expenses. I unpack it, clean the counters, wipe down the bathroom sinks, take O for a walk, and sit down to work on my side gig grant report, which is due Wednesday. I set a 30 minute timer because I don’t want to be too late picking up B.
4:25 pm: Worked longer than I meant to! Pack some snacks and pick up B. On the way home we get a giant bag of potting soil so I can repot those plants. It’s $18.52. Come home and engage in B’s favorite winter activity: pressing all the buttons in the turned-off car. Meanwhile, in another car across town, L picks up a big bag of Purina One, butter, maple syrup, and applesauce. That total is $28.64.
5:30 pm: The whole family is home and we kick it inside until it starts to get dark. L and I gather all the things and take the creatures out for a walk even though there’s a light, but very cold, rain happening. B is cranky and so are we, so the walk is quick.
We eat leftover Chinese food around 7 and start B’s bedtime routine. B falls asleep at 8 and I update this diary for a while, then go watch Ted Lasso in bed with L til about 9:30. It’s much better than How I Met Your Mother, for the record.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 65.51
✨Day 6: TUESDAY✨
3 am: B wakes up and needs a diaper change. I have the hardest time falling back asleep after: I can’t stop thinking about how I left B’s hoya out in the cold with its roots exposed most of the day yesterday and into tonight. But it’s too cold for me to get up again and pull it inside! So instead I toss and turn and hope it’s not dead yet.
6 am: L’s alarm wakes me up! No early morning reading and writing time for me. I get right up, make a giant pour over, and get breakfast together while L wakes up B. Then I actually sit down with them to eat: B and I both eat boiled eggs with everything but the bagel seasoning and some coconut milk yogurt, and L sips his coffee while his breakfast sandwich heats in the oven. I get dressed in my workout gear and walk the dog while L gets B ready for school. They leave, and I finally bring the hoya in, and start work, around 7:30. L buys coffee and snacks from the gas station on his way to work: $6.88.
9:30 am: I grab some crackers and peanut butter from the kitchen and notice a DMV bill on the fridge I’ve been meaning to pay, but don’t totally understand. I call them up and respond to emails while I sit on hold. Turns out I owe the DMV $10 for paying my Dad’s van insurance late. With the “processing fee” it comes to $11.17.
1:30 pm: Been on Zoom calls all morning, and decide to switch over to the side gig work for a bit. Meanwhile I eat that quinoa salad I prepped yesterday. At 2 pm, my longtime bestie and neighbor F comes over and we take O for a walk in the park together and have such a good conversation. While the context is (very) different, I’m reminded of the Toni Morrison quote when I think of F: “She’s a friend of my mind.” Such a gem, and such a smartie. At 3:30 I start a HIIT yoga class and it kicks my butt even though it’s only 20 minutes long. Afterwards, I shower and pick up B.
5:00 pm: L arrives home while B and I are playing, and we get in the car once more to check out a cute couch L scoped out on Facebook marketplace. It’s a sweet vintage brown velvet actually-for-real midcentury situation. Unfortunately we discover it’s also small and very uncomfortable. $200 not spent. Once home, my family goes for a walk and I make dinner - this grits and beans recipe from NYT cooking. It’s blessedly quick to pull together. Meanwhile D texts me and says my overalls are ready! YAY! She’s gonna drop them off in a couple of days. She says the total is $30. I include a tip and Venmo her $40.
7:00 pm: At bedtime, B cannot get enough of his books and we read All The World several times. He finally falls asleep around 8:20 and L and I eat dinner on the couch, with Ted Lasso. I drink a glass of red wine, which is a mistake: my anxiety spikes right after, my stomach hurts, and I can’t sleep. This is very upsetting as I want very much to be a wine mom. Does this happen to anyone else?
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 58.05
✨DAY 7: WEDNESDAY✨
5:45 am: Wake up with B cuddled into my back - L moved him to our bed in the middle of the night after his second wake up. Get my coffee and breakfast together and sit down at my computer to work on the side gig grant while everyone's asleep. Then L and I manage the morning rush together. I eat sourdough toast, two scrambled eggs, and some pineapple along the way.
7:30 am: Take O out for a walk and on a whim decide to listen to one of my favorite easy-listening pods: A Beautiful Mess. Normally the two sisters and co-hosts, Elsie and Emma, chat about things like home decor or craft making or how to balance kids and work. This episode is about the host’s evangelical upbringing, though, and is a real raw and honest tear jerker. Pair it with this, one of my top reads of 2020: “What Does the White Evangelical Want?” It gets me thinking about L’s upbringing in the church. He and all his siblings are all agnostic now.
Finally sit down at my desk and debate taking Adderall. I used it regularly in college and for a few years after in order to Do All The Things. I try to stay away from it now - I’m not trying to live an impossible life any more - but I also really want to pick B up earlier than normal today, and that means I need to meet all my deadlines and make it through two Zoom calls with my direct reports by 3 pm. I decide to take 4 mg. Right after I take it, three different friends text me at once and then, suddenly, I’ve spent an hour catching up via text. Get to work for real around 9 am.
3:00 pm: Wrapped all my calls, answered all my emails, washed all the dishes, ate some lunch, and finished the side gig work! OK Adderall, you beautiful bitch. Spend a few more minutes tying up loose ends and then gather my things to pick B up from school. The plan today is to go “play basketball” in the park near his school because he is OBSESSED with balls, and I’m trying to do more magical things every day with him. It’s cold but I’m ready to brave it on his precious, curly-headed behalf.
At 4 pm J calls and asks to go pick him up with me. Hooray, things just got even more magical! We head to a different-than-usual park together and run around until B sits in, and then drinks from, a puddle. We panic and J googles “What happens if my baby drinks from a puddle?” The search returns lots of stories of babies eating muddy rocks and surviving, so we decide it’s ok.
5:00 pm Head home and L is back from work! We take the smols on a walk and I tell L that I think nighttime screentime is making me anxious. I’m a sensitive creature and I really don’t want to blame the wine. He’s very perfect so he helps me think through an alternate plan for this evening: hot tea and book reading in bed, and maybe sex, too! Fun.
Next, I head home with O to pot the plants we bought the other day, and L takes B to the playground. They get back around 6:30 and I am very excited to reveal my new plant placements. Everyone feigns interest except O. Then we eat leftovers together and B gets in bed around 7:30. L and I promptly fall asleep next to him and don’t wake up again til 11 pm. Guess our new nighttime routine will have to wait til tomorrow!
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 0
❤️ Section 5: TOTALS
Total Expenses: $478.71
Food & Drink: $220.25
Fun & Entertainment: $0
Home & Health: $109.01
Clothes & Beauty: $40
Transport: $29.50
Other: $79.95
❤️ Section 6: REFLECTION
This week reflects a new normal for us, I think! We just set the goal of saving up for another down payment in December, and that’s when I swore off online shopping both to save money and to stop lining the pockets of evil billionaires like Bezos (no shade to anyone who uses Amazon, this is purely a personal goal & I’m not sure I can meet it). This self-imposed rule is helping me reign in my discretionary spending overall. L and I have only been living a two-income, middle class life for a few years, and my lifestyle creep was a little out of control in 2020. That said, I can and do still regularly justify spending money on things that make life more luxurious and beautiful - like a $40 candle or a totally unnecessary but very lovely plant.
There are a couple of things not reflected in this diary that we regularly spend on: gifts (my achilles heel - for example, we spent three! thousand! dollars! on Christmas gifts in December), and medical bills. Both B and I had to visit the emergency room in 2020 and we are still getting random bills in the mail as our insurance company and the hospital duke it out. As I was editing this diary on Thursday, I received one for $787. Wahhhh. I think I’m gonna get on a payment plan, but even so that it will be over $200 a month.
Last thought: this process got me thinking in some detail about the contradiction of organizing for the fall of capitalism (and the rise of a more gentle and just economic system), yet believing everyone - including ourselves and our own families - deserve to live full and abundant lives. This means I compromise my own anti-capitalist values and beliefs every day, in big and small ways. Discuss?

Optimistic DD

Fellow apes,
I believe we are in a very interesting position right now, and we still face the very real possibility of seeing a massive short squeeze on GME. Full disclosure: 11 shares @ $180 average, I am poor college ape. This is also not financial advice, I am dumb ape.
This is going to be a long post. I know you apes hate reading, but I think this post is going to contain some very helpful and reassuring information for many of us, and I encourage all ape to try their best to read. TLDR at bottom for silly monke.
Let's take a moment to consider where we are with respect to GME, and rethink all the events that have just unfolded over the last few weeks. Starting early January, we saw the price of GME hovering just below the $20 mark. GME had been floating around the $10 - $20 range since about mid October. As GME started to increase in popularity on WSB, due to rumors around Ryan Cohen's interest in the company, the price continued to increase. During this time, short sellers began rapidly opening positions because they believed GameStop was headed to bankruptcy due to the shift away from physical retail stores, and because they were betting the hype around GME would eventually die off and the share price would fall. On January 11th, Ryan Cohen gained a seat on the board, held a 13% stake in the company, and the share price jumped almost 20% to $20.65. This is an important date and an important price in our story. The January 15th official short interest report stated 61,780,000 shares had been sold short. On the 15th, the share price was about $35. This is a crucial piece of information to consider. Short Interest is reported twice monthly, so the last report before January 15th was from December 31st, and the next report won't be issued until February 9th. The next report will show short interest up to January 29th. Keep that in mind, I'll come back to this point later.
Back to the January 15th report. 61.78 million shares had been shorted at prices less than $35. Every single short of those 61.78 million was betting the price would be less than $35, and it's more likely that most were shorted around the $15 - $20 mark. I don't have exact numbers, but for the sake of simplicity and also conservatism, I am going to assume these 61.78 million shorts were for $30. These shorts would only make profit if the price was to go below $30. For ape who STILL doesn't understand what shorting a stock is, please read this. On January 15th, at least 130% of the float had been sold short. Yes this is possible, and does not necessarily indicate wrong doing by hedge funds or market makers. The January 15th report serves as one of the main catalysts for the giant price leap from $35 to $483. The report was released on January 27th, and the share price hit $375 the same day, followed by a peak at $483 on the 28th. Since then, the price has decreased all the way back down to $65 at the time of writing.
This is where we get into the main point of my thesis, and why I believe we should not be worried about this massive drop in price. My argument: MOST short positions from the January 15th report have NOT covered yet. Why would they have? What we saw from January 11th to 28th was a run up fueled entirely by hype and a couple of gamma squeezes. The short squeeze did NOT happen. But it will. Hedges are still better off paying their interest payments on their short positions than covering millions of shares for prices over $300.
The hedge funds and other players were able to drive the price down from $483 to $65 in less than a week. Regardless of the illegal actions they took to make this happen, it is still the reality we face. Their biggest win was hitting a big stop-loss raid when the price went down to $250. The price was forced down not just because of "short laddering", but because they were able to hit psychological prices were many holders had set stop losses. $250 stop losses dropped down to $225, which dropped down to $200, etc. Shares were sold at these prices, not to the shorts looking to cover, but to other retail investors and some institutions hoping for the eventual short squeeze.
The hedge funds knew they would be able to do this. It didn't even take that long. In 6 days they had brought the price down over $400. So why in the world would they have covered even a single share above $100?? Answer: they didn't. They are waiting to bring the price down to an acceptable level, buying far OTM calls, and letting the hype die down a bit before they even begin to cover. It really is the only logical thing for them to do.
Here's a simplified version of what I believe has happened so far. I shorted a stock at $10, because I believed the price would drop down to $2. I'm paying 50% interest annually. Even if it takes an entire year to hit $2, I will still profit $3. Unfortunately for me though, instead of the price dropping, it gains upward momentum and hits $20. Interest payments are a bit higher now, but I still believe the price is going to sink. I double up on shorts. All of a sudden, a huge wave of hype blindsides me, and the price hits $50. This triggers a gamma squeeze, as calls issued far OTM were suddenly expiring ITM, and MMs have to cover these calls, further forcing the price up to $80. Now I am in a really bad spot, but it's not over for me yet. My original short position has not been margin called, and I am still under no obligation to hedge up to the new price. I know the gamma squeeze causes a temporary increase in demand, and that apes have a low attention span and the massive hype will eventually die off. The price will not drop back down to $10 though, since there's new support at $50, so I need to come up with a game plan. I wait for the price to come back down to $60, and maybe do some shady shit to get it all the way back down to $30. I know this is probably the lowest price I can get, so I'm now ready to start covering my shorts. Being a smart monke myself, I know that when I start to cover, the price will begin to jump up again. Currently I'm in the red, but what if I can offset my losses with calls? I see there are far OTM calls at a strike price of $100 being offered for cheap. I buy them up. Then I start covering. The price hits $150. I cover to an acceptable level, sell my calls for profit, and short the stock all the way back down. Short squeeze over, I make money.
This is what we are waiting for now. The hedges are waiting for the price to sink enough before they start covering. They are buying calls at $800 that expire on February 19th. Remember what I was saying about the short interest being released only twice a month? This is when it becomes a super important piece of circumstantial evidence. The next report will be released sometime between the 9th and the 14th. It's going to show that the old shorts have not yet covered, and the price will start rising. The shorts will finally start to cover, the squeeze will happen, they will sell their calls for profit, and then short it on the way back down. During the last run up to $480, we saw a dip in the overall market, likely due to people selling their positions to jump into GME, and also from MMs having to hedge ITM calls. On February 19th, there are THOUSANDS of puts expiring on SPY. I think the hedges are expecting another dip in the overall market for this date, and are doing everything they can to offset their losses.
Some may argue that the shorts already followed through on this game plan on the way up to $483. I do not believe this could have been the case. First of all, if they had purchased large amounts of calls they expected to expire ITM, there would have been no reason to force the price back down prematurely. Before brokerages blocked buying on the 28th, we were positioned to break $500. If shorts had already positioned themselves with calls to offset their losses, there would have been no need to frantically halt buying. Second, on the 27th and 28th, there were no shares available to short. Hedges would not have been able to capture profits on the way back down. The current drop in price is working in the favor of hedges in three different ways. First, calls far OTM are very cheap, and hedge funds are able to scoop up millions of dollars worth of options that they will later be able to sell or execute for profit. During the first peak, the furthest OTM call available were too expensive and to NTM for hedges to offset their losses. If my theory is correct, hedges stand to gain substantially on their far OTM calls expiring Feb. 19th. Second, the extreme price drop means there are tons of shares available for hedges to short now. During the last rise, there were nowhere near enough shares for hedges to short as the price dipped. Finally, it is obvious that shorts are better off covering at $50 rather than $480. The current situation we face will allow shorts to cover their positions, profit off their OTM calls, and further offset losses by shorting on the way down. I believe it is illogical to think that hedges would have covered for a loss. Citadel did not give 2.75b to Melvin to flush down the toilet. They are expecting Melvin to at least break even, if not profit on this whole game.
TL;DR: I believe that hedge funds who shorted GME before January 15th for under $35 have not even begun to cover. They are waiting for the hype to die off and the price to sink enough, while loading up on far OTM calls to offset their losses when the short squeeze does finally happen. I am buying more GME when my deposit clears and holding. This is not financial advice. I am very dumb and delusional ape and could very well be entirely wrong about this.
I'm on desktop right now and idk how to insert emojis, but obligatory rocketship.emoji x 10
My apologizes if this is the unemployment line, ape was trying to get Wendy's.

I am 35 years old, make $56,000 ($231k combined), live in Seattle, and work in higher ed administration

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

My (29m) ex-girlfriend (34f) flew in her new partner (26m) and now he's living with us (FINAL UPDATE AND LONG READ)

If you haven't already, please checkout Link 1 and Link 2 in that order to get caught up to speed.
Once again, names, places, and certain specifics have been changed for privacy reasons,
(Aso fixed the ages to the actual age of each person.)
I overheard Amber and Troy going at it one Saturday night and I got fed up with constantly hearing them. I knocked on their door to let them know I could hear, and then I knocked on the wall in my room when I could still hear them. A shirtless Troy soon opened the door to my room and asked what was up, and I asked him if they could at least not fuck while I'm still present in the apartment. He gave an annoyed response of “ok sorry” and walked off and then Amber showed up almost immediately after he went away. Amber confronted me about the knocking and then had Troy stand in their room and sing the ABCs to see if she could hear him. I could hear him as he got to L M N O P, but I guess her hearing isn’t as good as mine because she couldn’t hear him in the slightest. After that childish display was done, I asked her the same question that I asked Troy “Can you at least please not fuck while I’m home? It's rude and inconsiderate! Besides, you promised me you wouldn’t long before he even arrived here.” She didn’t anything and just closed my door, and after that, I thought it was the end of it. I thought wrong.
I woke up on the following Sunday morning and checked my phone for any messages and/or alerts like I usually do. At first, I had to collect myself because I saw that I had some discord messages from Amber that read “and also GTFO” and “not asking too much :)”. I had to collect myself a bit because maybe I was imagining things, but once I had some time to fully wake up, I saw that what I saw was real. I opened discord on my phone to see if there was more she had sent me, but upon opening our DMs there was nothing there, almost as if she had conveniently deleted them. I hopped on my laptop to check discord because I thought that maybe my phone was acting weird, but as I turned on my laptop and waited for discord to load up, the notification bar on the bottom right popped up with two more discord messages from Amber that read “STFU” and “XDD”.
It was then that I realized that I needed out of there as soon as possible. If that’s how a grown woman is going to respond to someone asking her to not fuck her boyfriend while someone else is still present in the apartment, then who knows how that same grown woman will react if there's a bigger and nastier disagreement down the road. I didn’t want to stick around to find out if it would have evolved from hateful highschooler-Esque messages to fists flying or things being thrown. That same Sunday morning I applied for as many apartments within my price range that I could find.
I was scheduled for an interview for an apartment on Tuesday, literally a few days after my initial (post). My heart was kind of pounding because the demo unit the lady was showing me happened to be right next door almost to the original apartment that I shared with Amber and Troy. We had to cut across the back before reaching the demo unit. The unit she showed me was newly renovated and the perfect size for someone like me, not too big and not too small, and it even had space for a balcony on top! I was thoroughly impressed with what I saw, and to be honest, I would have been impressed with any unit so long as it got me out of my situation at the time. The lady who was giving the tour of the unit said she has a couple of other prospects looking at similar units, but they hadn’t come to decision yet. It was then my joy got the better of me and I ended up shamelessly blurting out “Sold! I’ll take it!”. It got a good laugh out of her and we made our way back to the office to confirm the acquisition of one of the units she was talking about. I was fortunate enough to be able to select an upstairs unit because she had sent me a text that stated there were two units available, an upstairs unit and a ground floor unit. After sending an initial fee for the application, I was almost instantly approved the next day over and soon after had sent in my deposit.
The Friday of that same week, however, Amber brought up the topic of the incident that occurred on Saturday night earlier in the week. She wanted to get to the bottom of how I knew they were having relations and that it made her “livid-pissed” when I knocked a second time. She then went on what seemed to be like a rant/discussion about the entire incident for a little over an hour, trying to figure out just how I was able to hear them. She made statements of “Why were you listening?” / “why did you hone in on what we were doing?” / “You said you could hear everything, so clearly that means you can hear everything and anything we can say or do!” / “That’s both creepy and an invasion of privacy!”. Amber told me that she was so angry that Saturday night that she was wanting to kick me out and had typed up what she described as “an entire book worth of a message” out of rage. She only deleted it because her boyfriend Troy had convinced her to, and said that “It's not worth it, let it go”. She even went as far as walking to her bedroom, playing a video on her phone at full volume, closing the door, going into my room and closing the door, and trying to listen for the sound of her phone. Surprise surprise, she could hear it, and only proved that I wasn’t lying or making things up. She wanted to know how I could “hear everything”, and I told her…6 separate times…that I can’t hear exactly what they are saying, just mumbles that sometimes get loud as well as laughter, but it's pretty easy to differentiate between whats a mumble and whats a moan. Any adult worth their salt should know what a moan sounds like, or at the very least, understanding that a long drawn out muffled tone sounds kind of weirdly suspicious and different from what you'd hear if it was from two people talking or laughing.
Amber basically called me a tyrant and that I was acting like a nazi as she went on to tell me viewpoints, stances, and opinions on the matter. It was basically a slap in the face as she (for lack of better phrasing) demanded to know how exactly I could tell what was going on. I don’t just sit there in silence and wait for something to happen, I either have music playing or a video going while I play a game on my console. I keep one headphone on and the other off my ear because I want to hear my game as I play music for background noise whenever I'm not watching a cutscene. (Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this) It’s not my fault if I happen to overhear her laughter as it raises a few handfuls of decibels and I don’t choose to listen or hone in on whatever is they're talking about.
Amber has this nasty habit of exaggerating things when she talks about something. For example, when she was talking to me about all of this, she said that I constantly knock whenever I hear something and now whenever she hears me get up and out of my room, she always huddles in place and waits to hear what I'm doing. (much like a child who’s up late past their bedtime and is trying to be stealthy. Freezing when they hear their parents up and about) The only time I knocked on her door is when I wanted to talk to her or Troy and/or see when they wanted to go get groceries, or even just casually brief and friendly conversation.
Amber told me that she’s never been this stressed before in her entire life and that she’s going to need therapy after all of this. (to which she repeated that she’ll need therapy more than once) I couldn’t agree more in all honesty, this whole experience is nerve-wracking, a huge mental strain, testing our patience, and it's putting our mental stabilities on a rusty razor wire. The messed-up part is that NOBODY should have to be going through this situation, to begin with! Nobody should be forced to basically live with their ex and boyfriend of said ex. The mature and responsible thing to do is to live out the rest of the lease and THEN either person can live with their new partner after they’ve acquired their own places. Again, I just want to reiterate that I know I wasn’t the best boyfriend. I said and did things that I shouldn’t have and I accept and acknowledge that I did my fair share of wrongdoings, but I wouldn’t invite an LDR (long-distance relationship), partner, to come to live with me while my ex was still present in the remaining duration of the lease, regardless if they were here to help with bills and rent. I’m not a bad person for asking her to not have relations while I'm in the house, and I don’t actively go out of my way to spy and eavesdrop on every little thing that happens to go on in their room. I sincerely don’t give one Fresh Prince of Belaire’s fuck of what goes in their room, and I don’t even give them any shit when Troy smokes his pot out on the balcony (neither he nor she smokes on the balcony. They just sit on the floor in the apartment and crack the door open, they don’t set foot on the balcony in the slightest. They’ve even smoked in the apartment with the doors closed because they didn’t want to have to deal with a wasp. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve woken up smelling cigarette smoke or pot smoke. I was too afraid of being called a “tyrant” or a “nazi” to speak up and ask them to go outside) or in general.
Amber is solely focused on the fact that we’re struggling financially, but we were doing just fine financially when we were together because we pooled our money together and were able to slowly build up a savings of sorts for when we really needed money. The only poison we encountered in terms of finances was DoorDash. (it gets addicting because of the comfort and ease of use). Amber even said it herself, we got by because we pooled our money together. We were even at one point on our way to a substantial amount of 5k within almost a year’s time, and we were doing extremely well for ourselves! She was never for want and we were never starving ourselves to pay bills or rent, we were able to get nice things and live comfortably.
Another issue I faced is Troy’s fondness for pot. Troy liked to smoke weed to unwind and whatnot, the problem is that it’s illegal in the state I reside in. I ran the risk of going to jail by way of “guilty by association” even though I myself have never smoked any or plan to smoke any. I couldn’t say anything about it because I know it would just be another “Demand of The Nazi Tyrant” in Ambers's eyes. I was always on edge and stressed out of my mind for fear of cops showing up at the apartment one day and then arresting everyone present. My perfectly clean background record would have been smudged and stained by the actions of another, and it wouldn’t matter what I would say to law enforcement, Id still be residing in a house where drugs were present, and I know for a fact they have it because Amber took the liberty of showing it to me one night.
Amber and I had somehow had a moment of civility one day as we talked about Christmas like two mature adults. She was brainstorming on what to get Troy for Christmas, and that she knew he liked unique knives…and guns. You guessed it, she wanted to give him a gun, and needless to say, I wasn’t about to let there be a mix of alcohol, pot, AND guns in a place that I don’t have any legal ties to and wasn’t moved out of yet. (mainly because if they were to get busted somehow, it would only worsen the shit pit for me that I would be inevitably thrown into). Amber proceeded to call me a pussy multiple times while laughing before finally giving in and agreeing to give up the pursuit of gifting her boyfriend a knife. The conversation about the gun for Christmas took place on Thursday, December 17, the week before the week of Christmas. The apartment complex didn’t have a move-in date for me on my apartment, but I was in communication with the complex and they informed me that they would have a “better update” next week.
I called the apartment complex and inquired about the status of my unit, I was informed that the remodeling team was behind a bit, but all they had left to do was to finish with painting the walls and that she would check in on the following Monday of the 28th. Despite my constant advice (warnings) of telling Amber to save her money, she went out and bought me a pair of skull candy (noise-canceling) headphones for Christmas. She also bought Troy some gifts, as well as getting a tree, stocking, and stocking stuffers to decorate the apartment with. While Amber and Troy lounge in the living room, I finalized getting my utilities turned on and ready for my move-in date.
The date was set for a solid 01/01/2021 with no foreseeable bumps or hiccups. The plan for that Friday was to go to bed like normal on Thursday, set an alarm to wake up when they do on Friday, wait for them to go to work, text/call my folks to give them the green light to come here, load up the Uhaul, drive a few seconds across the way to my place, and then load my stuff into my place. I only had 6 hours to get a head start, but it was better than none.
I was hit with some extremely unfortunate news on the 28th of December in the morning after I had started my shift at work. The entire staff (save for one technician) had been stricken with covid were unable to complete the punch card (checklist of things that are or aren’t up to their standards) necessary for me to move in on the 1st. Needless to say, I was absolutely devastated, because that not only meant that I had lost my 6-hour window to pack the Uhaul while they were at work, but I would also need to wait for an additional 2 (maybe 3) weeks due to the move-in date being pushed to the 8th of January. Another blow was the fact that I had to pay rent TWICE, once for the place that I was staying at with Amber and Troy, and again for my own place once I was finally able to move in. I pushed the Uhaul reservation out another week and I made the necessary calls to utilities to push the service-start date to the same week. It was getting hard to stay positive and upbeat after being hit with not only this bad news but the bad news of 3 extremely close members of my family catching covid and not doing so well. What little good news or small wins I had won were quickly being overtaken and overshadowed by a fast-growing tsunami of bad news.
I went to work Wednesday that same week with my soul crushed and basically, all hope lost. It was a grueling day that week and I was in the middle of a task when I had received a phone call from the apartment complex. I could hardly contain myself as spoke to the lady helping me with my case, she informed me that they had a similar unit just a few doors down from the one I was supposed to move into and that a similar unit was available for a Friday move-in date. Needless to say, I said yes.
Fast forward to Thursday, I found out that it was going to start snowing late Thursday night and would keep on snowing until noon on Friday the following day. I got in touch with my parents and we all agreed that the best course of action was to move in on that Thursday before the snow had a chance to fall. The only downside is that I did the move while both Troy and Amber were present in the apartment.
The move went surprisingly well, save for Troy and Amber only speaking up when my parents weren't present in the apartment. They asked me why I didn't give them a sooner heads up, and I told them that they gave me my 30-day notice when I was told to STFU and GTFO. Amber tried saying that she didn't say that, but I wasn't about to let that blatant lie slid on by without being called out.
Once all my things were moved into my new apartment, I started receiving texts from Amber that varied from levels of being civil to straight-up rude and filled with over exaggerations and lies made up to strengthen her crusade against me. She told me that I took things from her that she herself got, and when I apologized and tried to return them, she told me to not worry about it and that she would replace them. At first, I thought that would be the end of it, but then she went on to say "You must have told your mom to take everything" and "it's spiteful and you're doing it out of hate. How else would your mom know that some of the things were stuff that my own mom gave me?".
I would say that I was surprised at her text messages, but honestly, I wasn't. My own parents knew what to take because they're the ones who literally bought me all of my kitchenware, anything else was by accident and I would have GLADLY returned it civilly and rationally and I would have also apologized in person. I got sick of her rude and immature way of speaking to me, so I called her out on it. She resorted to calling me a child and a hateful asshole, and that I shouldn't "try and be a martyr", and then tried guilt tripping me with "My mom asked about you, and I bet you anything she has presents for you.". When I tried giving her a taste of her own medicine by telling her that I don't appreciate that guilt trip, she claimed that I was being hateful and that she was only stating a fact. So suddenly when she's the one doing it, she's giving out facts, but when I'm doing it, I suddenly "have an answer for everything" and I'm "hiding the truth".
She then told me that "If I wanted to be hateful, I could spread all of your toys onto the floor for you and your parents to walk in on when you come to get the rest of your things.". I'll admit, I got a good laugh out of that one. What would a pile of sex toys on the floor accomplish other than proving that she's being childish and immature?
After my folks and I finally moved into my new apartment and we finally settled down, I heard through "the grapevine" that she's telling people I "emptied the apartment and took everything," and that she had to replace what I took with money she doesn't have. Yes, I did empty the apartment, but I didn't take EVERYTHING. The furniture (save for one couch), the utensils (save for a few things she bought, plus what she didn't want me to return), the shower curtains, the showerheads, the toilet seat covers, the toiletries, the appliances, the vacuum, all the electronics I brought with me when I moved, and the seasonings/spices/herbs....all mine.
All of that was either stuff I brought with me or stuff I bought after. I left behind the shower curtains, some food, the toilet seat cover, the showerhead, the seasonings/herbs/spices, some food I got for myself, a couch I bought, and a memory foam queen-sized mattress I bought. She also has the audacity to spread rumors, calling me a snake. She's and the ones that gravitate to and around her are so focused on the bad and negatives I did during the time that we were together, that it somehow makes them believe it gives her a golden ticket to do what she did to me. In what situation or setting is it ever ok to fly down your new love interest from another state to come to visit and then live with you and your ex after you just broke up with them not even a month ago?
However, karma is catching up to her because last I heard, she's about to lose her apartment and her car. I have since blocked both Troy and Amber from everything and anything I can think of, and I'm only looking forward and up from here on out. I don't wish misfortune on anyone, but sometimes there's only so much you can take in life, and when you reach that point, your mental health and sanity instantly become your top priority. I wanted out and I couldn't take another moment in that hell hole.
The only thing on my mind right now is completing the Kingdom Hearts games and enjoying me, myself, and I. I don't plan on dating anytime soon because I want to focus on not only healing but learning to both love and live with myself and be comfortable with just my own space and my own thoughts. I don't want to be romantically involved with anyone any time soon because I'm afraid they might unintentionally become a rebound, and I wouldn't wish that evil on anyone.

I'm 35 years old with a joint income of $490k, live in New York, and work as a program manager

0️⃣Section Zero: Background
Hello, MD! I hope you're all doing well, and are safe and healthy. I've gone back and forth for a while about whether I should share my money diary. I signed up to do one last year to chronicle our home buying process but chickened out (I'm so sorry mods!). I was worried I'd be judged for what I spent money on, not having a college education, or what might be perceived as frivolous habits. I don't know. Internet strangers terrify me. But I'm finally sharing this money diary because I want this to be a data point: you can have a career (or two!) without a college degree.
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
I moved to the US right before entering elementary school. I spent half my childhood in a simple four room shack with no running water or electricity (mom's side of the family) and the other half in a large house with a nanny and domestic help (dad's side of the family). From a young age I was told that college was chance at a better life and I believed it -- not going to college wasn't an option. My mom completed a healthcare related degree in our home country but she couldn't practice in the US. My dad dropped out of college in our home country due to his work as a student protester. Both of them worked blue-collar jobs to support our family and were always working. As with just about every parent, they wanted more for me.
I was accepted to a top ranked private university but didn't get a sizable scholarship so my parents and I took out loans, separately, to fund my tuition. I dropped out halfway through my sophomore year due to poor mental health stemming from an assault. No one knows (except for my fiancé and now, internet strangers) the real reason why I left school.
Did you worry about money growing up?
Yes. My parents never talked about their money struggles with me, but I knew money was always tight. After my youngest brother was born, I remember how excited I was to find a jar of peanut butter in our cupboard. We hadn't had any for a while. It had a "WIC" sticker on it and I didn't know what it meant at the time. My parents never talked about receiving government support but I'm thankful that we had a safety net available to us when we needed it most.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I started paying my parents rent to stay in my childhood bedroom when I moved back home. I didn't pay for groceries or to use one of their cars, which was nice. I was about 21 when I was completely on my own. My parents and I had a falling out over me dating a much older man who I'd come to learn was very abusive. There were a few months where I slept on a friend's couch because I barely had money to feed myself. My early 20's were rough. But if I were to go completely broke now, my parents would be there to help me. They're doing much better financially.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
No. I've never received an inheritance or any other passive income.
Finally, a note on Erik: he also doesn't come from money or finish his college degree. He immigrated to the US less than a decade ago and does not receive or provide monetary support to his mom or dad.
1️⃣Section One: Assets and Debt

Combined net worth:	$3.7M
Combined brokerage balance:	$2.14M	$317,587 (mine) + $1.82M (Erik)
Combined retirement balance:	$195k	$116,300 (mine) + $78,700Erik). We're behind on funding our 401ks. I finally convinced Erik to take advantage of his employer match program two years ago. He was concerned about the ease of withdrawing funds since we plan on living outside of the US when we retire.
Joint checking account balance:	$111k	We have a lot of cash on hand right now because we need to prepay income taxes, and will be furnishing our place.
Equity:	$1.42M	We put 40% down on a 2 bedroom/2.5 bath condo (<1,200 ft²) in a new construction last summer. Our down payment came from the sale of some of Erik's RSUs.
Mortgage:	$1.61M	For our financial situation, an interest-only mortgage made sense. We have a 2.35% APR 7/1 ARM since we don't intend to stay in NYC longterm. Our plan is to pay off the remaining mortgage in full after five years and either sell the condo or hold onto it as rental property.
Combined credit card debt:	$0	We pay off our credit cards in full every month. We put between $6k - 20k on our cards every month in a typical year. He's also the authorized user on my credit cards; I added him to my accounts about six years ago to help him build his credit file since we knew we'd eventually buy a place together.
Combined student loan debt:	$0	I finished paying my student loans two years ago. Erik received free tuition as an EU resident but had some cost-of-living loans which he's paid off.

2️⃣Section Two: Income My fiancé and I ended 2020 with a total cash compensation (base + bonus) of $493,750 but with last year's vested RSUs, our overall compensation is:

	Mine	Erik
Base	$131,250	$268,750
Bonus	~$13,125	~$80,625
Vested RSUs	$121,500	$835,500
Total Compensation	$265,875	$1.18M

Income Progression I don't recall my salary increases so I'm listing my starting base salary for each role. I'm also not including additional compensation such as bonus or RSUs.

HS and into my early 20's: minimum wage. I started working when I was 16 as a hostess for a restaurant and worked there throughout high school. In the summer before and after freshman year of university, I worked at a department store on commission. After I left university, I worked there full time and also picked up two part-time jobs (restaurant hostess, receptionist) to make ends meet.
Job 1: $30,000 as a business development manager for a staffing agency in a HCOL (rent was $600 for a room in a 2bd/1ba). I worked there for three months.
Job 2: $50,000 as a recruiting assistant then promoted to recruiter for a large non-profit in a HCOL (rent was $1200 for a room in a 3 bd/2ba). I was there for three years.
Job 3: $75,000 as a recruiter for a large research institution in a VHCOL (rent was $1600 for a 1bd/1ba shared with ex-bf). I was there for three years. Looking back now, I didn't realize how burned out I was at the end. I fully believed in our mission to save lives and was so grateful to have that job. I was working directly with these world class physicians and scientists, and I had no college degree. I felt like I had to prove I belonged there. To me that meant staying in my office until 2-3am some nights (mornings?). When an opportunity to change industries, I took it.
Job 4: $90,000 as a recruiter for a tech company in a VHCOL (rent was $1400 for a room in a 3bd/2ba). I was in that role for 2.5 years. When I joined the company, there were less than 5,000 employees. It was an amazing experience to have a hand in building teams of incredibly bright and kind people, many of whom now are now leading global teams of their own. But, I was traveling non-stop. It was exhausting and I experienced burnout (again). I had turned in my notice to HR and started letting people know. It was in one of those "goodbye" conversations that a director I closely worked with asked me if I'd be interested in joining her group as a PM. That opportunity changed the trajectory of my career. I stayed and switched roles.
Job 5: $110,000 as a program manager for the same tech company in a VHCOL (rent was $4400 for a 2bd/2ba with Erik). I was in that role for 2.5 years. I worked on public-facing initiatives, built some awesome programs, and partnered with senior leadership daily. By this time, the company had grown 10x and had no signs of slowing down. But I needed to slow down. I didn't really take time to decompress after my two previous roles. Erik saw how unhappy I'd become. He supported me leaving the workforce for a year and I'm grateful I had his support, the opportunity, and the ability to do it.
Took a year off. –$20,000 withdrawn from my brokerage accounts in a VHCOL (rent was $4000 for a 1bd/1ba with Erik). I didn't do anything remotely awesome during this time. I was coming out of a pretty bad depression so I took it easy on myself. I watched a lot of Investigation Discovery, cooked, napped, went down many Wikipedia rabbit holes, and joined Erik on all his business trips.
Current Job: $125,000 as a program manager at a tech company in a VHCOL (mortgage + common charges is ~$4400 for a 2bd/2.5ba with Erik). I've been in this role for almost two years.

Main Job Monthly Take Home

Deductions	Mine	Erik
Retirement	15% of paycheck to Roth 401k	7% of paycheck to 401k
M/D/V	under Erik's employer; my employer also provides free M/D/V but we would have different providers	covered by his employer + $~250 for mine
Life insurance and AD&D	covered by my employer	covered by his employer
Short & long term disability	covered by my employer	covered by his employer
Net monthly take home	$7,000	$10,00

3️⃣Section Three: Expenses This is what our YNAB budget roughly looks like (for annual expenses, I set aside an amount per month towards the expense):
Housing

Mortgage: $3,155
Common charges: $1,260
Property tax: $27,509 annual
Homeowner's insurance: $837 annual
Utilities: $300
Staff bonus: $1,200 annual (1 super, 5 FT front desk, 2 porters)

Transportation These would be significantly higher in normal times. We rarely leave our place and if we do, we walk.

Public transportation: $20
Rideshare/taxi: $30

Entertainment

Books & Magazines: $50 (Audible, Readly, news+, NYT)
Music & Podcasts: $25 (Pandora, Spotify, Patreon, Blinkist)
TV & Streaming: $120 (Hulu, Netflix, Masterclass)

Donations: $10,000 annual We donate to Children International on a monthly basis. The remaining amount is donated throughout the year to different causes. Last year, we supported AIDS research, mental health and addiction support, food banks, and international food programs.
Hobbies:

Fitness: $176 (Aaptiv, Future, Whoop)
Flowers: $125
Photography: $10 (Photoshop)

Fields

Pet insurance: $1,500 annual
Veterinary care: $1,500 annual
Pet food & medication: $500

Savings & Finance

Backdoor IRA: $6,000 annual
Acorns: $250
Betterment: $500
Credit card annual fees: $1,890 annual

Food & Drink Pre-COVID, we'd budget $3,000 to a "Restaurant", increase "Cafes & Bars" to $1,500, and decrease "Delivery & Takeout" to $1,000.

Delivery & Takeout: $3,000
Cafes & Bars: $700
Groceries: $300

Wedding: TBD Our original budget was $75,000 (international, <50 people). We've had to reschedule it twice now and have already spent $10k in lost deposits and rescheduling fees. We'll re-evaluate our budget later this year when we start planning again.
4️⃣Section 4: The Diary

Day 1: Monday | Total: $111.84

8:00am - First day back from holiday break for both Erik and me. He's still snoozing so I turn on the bedroom TV to see if our dog is still sleeping too. We adopted a senior dog, Fields, over the summer and quickly became one of those dog owners that installed cameras everywhere so we can watch him anytime, anywhere. Fields is still asleep so I check my work accounts and respond to anything urgent.
8:30am - Normally, this is when I'd take Fields for his morning walk while Erik makes our coffee. But our espresso machine is broken so we can't use it until the replacement parts arrive next week. Erik and I both start getting dressed to take Fields for a walk together. Before that happens, I take the dog outside to relieve himself and we quickly head back to the apartment for his breakfast.
9:30am - We walk to our favorite coffee spot in our neighborhood and get our usual: cortado with whole milk for Erik, cold brew with a splash of oat milk for me, and a breakfast BLT to share. We walk back to our apartment and get to work. $23.69
12:30pm - I take Fields with me to pick up our lunch at Sweetgreen: a kale caesar salad (hold the tomato and swap for the blackened chicken) for me, and a hot honey chicken plate for Erik. $27.71
4:30pm - Erik and I are dire need of coffee. We take the dog for another walk, this time to our other favorite coffee shop. The decor is very IG-friendly and their coffee is fantastic. I get their matcha latte with oat milk, Erik gets a cortado with whole milk, we split an avocado toast with smoked salmon, and Fields get a whole lot of snacks for being a good boy while he waits for our order to be ready. $29.95
4:45pm - We walk past a cute mochi ice cream shop that I've been meaning to try. I pick up eight mochi ice creams: ube, chocolate hazelnut, passion fruit, mango, and some seasonal flavors. $30.48
5:00pm - We get home just in time to feed the dog. His food is laughably expensive but we think it's worth it and most importantly, Fields is worth it! He's the best dog and we want to spoil him during his final years. Especially since the poor pup was returned to the shelter twice within a year. I can't imagine giving up this sweet old guy.
9:00pm - I log off work and head down to our building's gym to workout. I've been working with a trainer through the app, Future, and like it so far. Pre-pandemic, I was in really good shape as I was training for a half marathon and our now-postponed wedding. Since the lockdowns started, my healthy eating habits and will to workout has gone down a very messy spiral. I do a mile run on the treadmill followed by a set that includes split squats and deadlifts. Ouch.
10:15pm - I walk into the apartment to find Erik's made dinner from yesterday's leftovers: tacos! I quickly eat two tacos, then tidy up the kitchen while Erik takes Fields out for his last potty break before bed.
10:45pm - I rinse off in the shower and start my nighttime routine. Erik won't see me for another 45 minutes, at least. Tonight, I use a dermaroller on my arms and legs before rubbing in vitamin C lotion. While the lotion dries, I start on my face: facewash, essence, serum, niacinamide and azaleic acid, eye serum, and all topped off with a nighttime cream cream. This is a typical nighttime routine for me.
11:30pm - Finally in bed. We put on a Netflix comedy special while I finish my routine in bed: foot cream, hand cream, and cuticle oil. Erik is browsing on the iPad looking for pots and planters. We call it a night just after midnight.

Day 2: Tuesday | Total: $199.41

8:30am - We're both really tired. I want to lay in bed a little longer but Erik has a call at 10am and we need coffee. Since his pants are on first, I convince him to take the dog outside so I can get ready. He agrees. I put on sweats and prepare Fields' breakfast.
9:15am - We walk to a cute Australian coffee shop and order: a cortado with whole milk for Erik (it's the only thing he drinks), a cold brew with oat milk for me, and share one of my favorite breakfast sandwiches. It's got prosciutto on it and a perfectly runny egg! $23.58
12:45pm - I lost track of time and forgot to order lunch. I place an order at Chop't: avoketo chicken club salad sans tomatoes for me and a kebab cobb wrap for Erik. Once it's ready, I take Fields with me to pick it up. $25.67
1:15pm - While eating lunch, I order Ess-A-Bagels to be sent to two girlfriends across the country as very belated Christmas gifts. I meant to send them their gifts earlier but they've had family visiting them and I wanted to make sure they got to enjoy their gift. I know they both really love Ess-A-Bagels and wouldn't be too keen to share. $213.90 - $100.00 AMEX offers credit = $113.90
3:00pm - That salad was not enough. I pull a Daily Harvest mint + cacao smoothie from our freezer to make a smoothie with oat milk and split it with Erik.
4:30pm - Ok, we really need coffee. We head back to cute IG-friendly coffee shop we went to yesterday and order the same drinks but skip the sandwich. $12.74
4:45pm - On the way home, I tell Erik that I need to eat something more substantial. I was feeling hangry. We stop by our favorite mediterranean cafe. I order a kebab bowl and Erik gets the kebab sandwich. $23.52
5:15pm - We get home just in time for me to get ready for my last meeting of the day and feed Fields his dinner. Today, he gets lamb and red quinoa.
8:45pm - My trainer has a run scheduled for me today but I'm so tired; I don't think I slept well. I message my trainer to tell her I'm taking the day off but will make up the run tomorrow!
9:30pm - I catch up with some girlfriends on the west coast over text while watching an old Dateline: Secrets Uncovered episode. I remember we have mochi ice cream and eat two of them. This is a great night.
10:30pm - I need to sleep earlier tonight since I need to get a run in tomorrow morning. I have a Morpheus8 appointment at 11am and I can't workout after that.

Day 3: Wednesday | Total: $290.44

8:00am - The alarm goes off and I yell at Siri to stop. I roll back over and snuggle Erik. The run isn't happening.
9:00am - I receive a call from the clinic where I get my Morpheus8 done. My esthetician has a family emergency and can't make the appointment. I'm secretly excited to reschedule for a later date since I have a face lipo, neck lipo and buccal fat removal procedure in exactly a week. I know, I know. Scheduling procedures so close to each other isn't the smartest idea, but I wanted to finish my Morpheus8 series before more invasive procedures. To get the kind of results I wanted, I needed three Morpheus8 sessions booked about a month apart. Today was supposed to be my last one.
9:20am - Walk Fields with Erik to get our usual coffee order and split a bagel with smoked salmon, alfalfa sprouts, picked red onions, chili and dill. $27.85
3:00pm - During our team meeting, my director asks me if I've seen the news. I grab my phone to look at the news and feel my anxiety spike as I learn that the Capital is actively being breached. I know my mental health is going to take another hit after this. Instead of working, I doom scroll the rest of the day. I also realize that salad isn't going to cut it for lunch. Not today. I need something more comforting and warm. We decide on Chinese food: ma po tofu and black pepper beef with a lot of fluffy white rice. $64.52
4:45pm - It's time for my sort-of monthly nail appointment. I go every three weeks to this amazing salon that specializes in nail art but they're also superb at taking care of your nails. I pick a sunny yellow color to offset the shit that happened this afternoon. They're pricey ($75 + $20 tip) but my nails and cuticle beds have never looked healthier. I also buy a ceramic cuticle pusher tool ($15). $114.40
7:15pm - I convince Erik to meet me at our neighborhood pizza spot to pick up dinner. We order: a pepperoni Sicilian slice, Hawaiian slice, ham and cheese calzone, and four slices of cheese, root beer and diet soda. $46.65
8:30pm - While scrolling through IG, I see a dermatologist use snail extract for her NuFace. I've been meaning to buy more NuFace gel and this seems like a good cost-effective replacement. I find the same bottle on Ulta and add an eyeshadow brush to get free shipping. I'm project panning my eyeshadow palettes so this will be a fun new tool to play with. $37.02
12:00am - Bedtime.

Day 4: Thursday | Total: $112.13

8:00am - Same routine as the days before: get dressed, take Fields out, give him breakfast, and head out for our family walk.
9:00am - Another day, a new cafe. We order our usual coffees, and split a breakfast sandwiche: herb omelette on a toasted baguette slathered with spicy aioli and topped with bacon. $27.22
9:15am - I realize that I dropped Erik's credit card somewhere between the cafe and our apartment (I didn't bring my wallet so I asked Erik for his card at the cafe). I call the cafe and ask if they'd seen it; they hadn't. And just as I'm about to call the bank to cancel the card, the cafe calls back -- someone found it on the sidewalk and turned it in! We thank them for following up and tell them we'll pick it up tomorrow.
1:00pm - I wake Fields up from his nap so we can walk to get our usual Sweetgreens order. $27.71
7:00pm - Erik and I take Fields on a walk to pick up Thai food for dinner. We order beef pad kee mao, shrimp tom kha soup, chicken pad thai, and mango with sticky rice. $51.75
9:00pm - While reconciling this week's expenses, I see that my Sephora credit card payment was returned and I was charged not only a late fee, but a finance charge! I signed up for the Sephora card over the holidays to take advantage of their cash back program and this was my first payment to them. I go on the website to investigate what happened and find that I missed entering a "0" to my linked bank account. I call their customer service rep to explain everything. I ask her if she could waive the late payment fee ($35) and the finance charge ($5.45) if I paid the balance in full. She said she's able to waive the late payment fee but not the finance charge. I thank her for her help and hope this doesn't affect my credit score too much. $5.45
12:00am - Zzzzzzz.

Day 5: Friday | Total: $245.56

8:00am - Same morning routine as yesterday.
9:00am - Same breakfast routine as yesterday but add additional tip since they held onto Erik's card. $28.67
12:00pm - Wake Fields up from his nap for a quick walk to Just Salad. I get a chicken caesar salad while Erik gets a chicken poblano salad. $23.70
7:10pm dinner - Friday's are our date nights. Before the pandemic, we'd get dressed up and go out for a nice meal and spend quality one-on-one time. These days, we usually order in fancy sushi and watch a movie. Between us, we order 19 pieces of sashimi and nigiri like uni (my favorite), zuke, wagyu, and tamago. $193.19
10:30pm - As soon as Erik gets back from taking Fields out, we pile onto the couch to watch Jurassic Park.
1:00am - Sleep.

Day 6: Saturday | Total: $375.24

9:00am - It's a late start to the morning. After feeding Fields, we walk to pick up breakfast. We get our usual coffee order, a bagel with smoked salmon and a chocolate croissant. $34.12
1:20pm - I saw someone post in a cooking subreddit about seasoning that a local restaurant uses on their wings. Of course I google the restaurant and get hungry from looking at their photos. I end up ordering lunch from them: wings (of course), coconut crab curry, shrimp chips and chili jam, thai iced tea, and khua kling. It was all delicious but holy cow everything was so spicy. Definitely will order from them again though! $93.40
3:45pm - I see a notification pop up for a charge on our card. I assume it's something for Erik's current house project (building our custom closets). I ask him about it and it's actually a router extender. $125.85
8:00pm - We've been missing Mission-style burritos lately and haven't found a good replacement in New York yet. But we did find a restaurant that makes delicious Mexican food. I get two spicy pork tacos and one al pastor taco, Erik gets a spicy pork burrito and a mandarin Jarritos, and we split a large chips and guacamole. $49.87
10:00pm - While browsing Reddit), I see someone post decants for sale of fragrances I've been meaning to try. Fragrances were a serious hobby of mine for a while, to the point that I hired a fragrance "fixer" on a Paris trip to take me around the local shops. I've since scaled back my collecting and have been focusing on learning to differentiate scents better. $72.00
11:00pm - Goodnight!

Day 7: Sunday | Total: $134.57

9:00am - Another late start to the morning. We do our morning routine with Fields and walk to get breakfast. This time, we head back to the cafe that found Erik's credit card. We get our coffees along with the herb omelette baguette with bacon. $27.56
12:00pm - There's some leftovers from yesterday's very spicy lunch so we eat that for lunch. I think the food might actually be spicier today.
6:00pm - I FaceTime with a girlfriend on the west coast who shares some amazing life news. Her and her husband are moving from the west coast! While I'm sad they're not moving to New York, I'm thrilled that they'll be closer to us and that she has an amazing new role. This is a huge win for her career and I'm really proud of her.
9:40pm - We realize we haven't had dinner. We both want something much less spicy so we order in Italian: caesar salad, pasta alla gricia, and a spicy vodka pasta. $107.07
11:00pm - We owe a response to our wedding planners about our wedding date. Do we move forward with a summer 2021 (originally summer 2020) wedding or do we postpone another year? I have strong feelings about trying to hold a destination wedding in the middle of a pandemic. I don't want to put our friends and family at risk since we won't know when vaccines will be widely available. But Erik is worried that his dad won't make it to 2022 since his dad already isn't in the greatest health. We agree on a new game plan: we hold off on our wedding celebration until 2022. In the meantime, we'll travel to his dad as soon as it's safe and get married with him in attendance. I email the wedding planners our decision to postpone (again) and go to bed.
5️⃣Section 5: This Week's Total & A Brief Reflection

Food & Drink	$1,000.57
Fun & Entertainment	$0.00
Home & Health	$125.85
Clothes & Beauty	$223.42
Transport	$0.00
Other	$119.35
GRAND TOTAL	$1,469.19

This was a pretty normal spending week (during the pandemic) for us, minus all the coffee trips due to our broken espresso machine. I know we spend a lot on food and we're okay with our level of spend, for now. It gets us out of the house, gives us a reason to take Fields out for a walk and explore the neighborhood, and allows us to support our favorite spots. My goals for this year are to increase the amount we put into investments and learn more about tax-efficient strategies.
Apologies for any and all typos!
EDIT: typos and a few words

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GME: Next Steps

Some thoughts on $Doge from a (mostly) professional Day Trader:

Questions on Short Float, Short Ladder Attacks and Short Squeeze.

Q1) The short float % seems to be going down from a number of sources. Why are these not correct?

Q2) Can't the hedge funds just keep doing more short ladder attacks and drive the price down?

Q3) All these hedge funds are saying they're out of their short positions to align with question #1, we obviously don't believe them and they're probably racking up a ton of fees. How long can they really last?

Q4) When the short squeeze happens, what period of time are we talking about? Does it last 10 mins, 2 days, etc?

Q5) How do I know if it's a short ladder attack?

Q6) What % of the float do we need to own before this starts to squeeze (and is this publicly available)?

Q7) Why can't I buy more on Vanguard (relevant to other brokers too)

Q8) Isn’t it plausible that HF have been shorting at 300- 400$ level and are now taking in big time on their own ladder attacks to around the 250$ level?

Q9) How does the short % of the float matter if there are approximately 10M shares to cover with?

Q10) (from others) I’m trying to get into the gme/amc craze but public / webull apps is taking anywhere between 1-7 days to confirm deposits before i can use the funds in my bank account. is this new? is there a way to expedite the process?

Q11) What are some in depth posts that people believe should be read?

Q12) I've read a couple of posts that casually mention the possibility that GameStop could issue more shares, pulling in a bunch of money and essentially letting the shorts off the hook. Can GameStop do that? If so, why the hell wouldn’t they?

Q13) What happens if HFs have artificially created the counterfeit shares to the amount we hold which they exactly need and then when the short squeeze takes place, restrict all of us 🦍 and basically resell it to themselves and make our shares burn to the ground?

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