ritswd

I think this is all very sensible thinking. Thanks a lot for sharing.

I think this is the main thing for me. I’m less shocked by Reddit’s decisions (it does make some sense that they need third-party apps to die, even though they could have done it a bit more sensibly), than by this one guy’s deeply disingenuous handling of it all. I can’t stand dishonest obnoxiousness at that level. I think if they admit wrongdoing and fire the guy, I might go back even if they don’t change their other plans. Provided all the interesting subreddits are not dead, obviously.

Although I’ll be honest, for now I’m in the Lemmy honeymoon period, so right now I wouldn’t, I’m enjoying it too much here (and I don’t have time for 2 of those!). But if the honeymoon wears off and they fire the guy, I might.

Yeah, it’s all a game of chance. My feel is that the combination of legislative risk + risk that those funds would not match at all their plans is low-ish enough, lower than it was or I thought it was a few years ago, that it threw me over the fence now. I was firmly against getting 529s until recently (mostly because of my annoyance with scammy colleges, which is most colleges).

Ultimately I fully agree with everything you said. They will build their own projects and ambitions, and our role as parents is to build around to support those ambitions, whatever they are, that is what makes kids successful. In fact, my sudden interest in the 529 is exactly to that end, to be sure they get opportunity if their ambitions happen to be aligned with what 529s are helpful for, while being sure that it is not too harmful if they’re not aligned.

So what if they’re not aligned and they can’t use those funds in meaningful ways for their goals? Well, right now they can transfer it to a Roth; or transfer it to any family member. Those rules can change, but they’re more likely to be that way a while than they were a couple of years ago when those rules weren’t yet a thing; and even if they do change, I feel it is reasonably to expect that there will be similar-ish ways out, hopefully. Otherwise, they can use some of the funds to buy various roughly educational things, like computers and similar expenses. And otherwise, if it’s really terribly unaligned and the law changed so much that those funds are locked as heck, there’s always the possibility to cut our losses, and take them out paying the 10% penalty; but hopefully that won’t be needed, who knows.

Oh, yeah, I’m glad you’re bringing that up, thanks; my state (Illinois) allows to deduct from state taxes up to $17k per year per account in donations, which ain’t bad, and is in fact more than I’d be willing to put in, I think. Which is useful, because it goes to show that even though I’m confused and feel like I have no idea what a good amount is, I do actually have some idea of an upper bound I probably wouldn’t go over.

Yeah, that is a very good reminder. I’m definitely worried about being dependent on them someday, I really do not want that to happen. Thanks for highlighting how front-and-center that is.

This is a good suggestion, and I am definitely worried about college degrees being overvalued. I’m totally gearing up to having to talk with them about the various choices and how financially reasonable each is, in quite a bunch of years. But ultimately, I also know that the outcome may be a compromise between financial reason, and their desires and ambitions. Their choice might not be ideal, and while I would probably disagree to help fun a frivolous degree, I want to have prepared for them to have various opportunities, not just the optimally least risky ones.

Damn, being a parent is hard.

Yeah, I’ve been delaying putting money into a 529 exactly because of college degrees being overvalued. But now I’m regretting that choice, considering they indeed can be used for other stuff like you said, and also because of the new ability to transfer to a Roth IRA without penalties. Also, I’ve learned that in my state (Illinois), only ~5% of the money placed on those 529 count towards getting grants and loans; so basically the more you put money in there as opposed to just giving it to your kid from a regular bank account, the more money you get from elsewhere. Pretty compelling.

But yeah, at the end of the day, unless the landscape changes dramatically, I fully intend to have the “colleges are mostly scams” talk with my kids as we get closer.

Oh, I like that line of thinking! Thanks a lot for that.

You can think of it as having an email brad.brace@gmail.com and another email brad.brace@hotmail.com. You can email the same friends from either, and receive the same newsletters to both, but ultimately they are 2 separate email accounts.

Not a lawyer, but this is happening in federal court in Florida.

If it happened in state court in Florida, then supposedly the executive branch (which the governor leads) is not allowed to interfere, but it’s the same government of people who might know each other, so it’s possibly murkier.

But since it’s federal court, I believe if the state government started doing anything, it would be trivial for that federal circuit to consider it problematic and just move it to another state. So with that, I believe no, DeSantis couldn’t do anything even if he wanted to.

That, and they are now political rivals competing for the Republican nomination, so I doubt DeSantis minds much of what’s going on with this anyway.

Yeah, people have been using the words treason / sedition / insurrection interchangeably. January 6th is obviously not treason, but it’s understandable that people meant something else and got confused.

Definitely the email metaphor helped me at the time too.