monadnocks

Good to hear! I'll have to spend some time doing some research...

Thanks for the advice! While we've had the Jeep, we've also gone through a Forester and have replaced that with a Crosstrek. So we're definitely part of the northern NE crew with Subarus. The Subaru / Jeep mix has served us well. There have been times when the Subarus weren't going to cut it either in terms of clearance, power or 4 wheel low and it's been nice to have the Jeep. Otoh, the I don't necessarily want to spend 40K or more for a Jeep.

Anyone research small to mid SUVs recently? My 2003 Jeep is showing its age and I need to decide to either put money into it or buy something new. Being able to drive through snow on hills is an absolute requirement. I know there's a chip shortage for vehicles, low interest rates are probably driving some purchasing and at least some people have a lot more liquidity this year. Thanks for any advice / data / trends.

I've gotten notice that a cybersecurity conference that I was supposed to attend last summer has already made the decision to be virtual this summer. I'm glad I got ticket refunds and didn't request that they be used for this year. I also volunteer for a youth robotics organization which has signaled that there will be limited off-season events this year. I'm expecting those to be only overseas, if they happen. It'll be interesting watching the economic impact over time.

Thanks!

How accurate is that likely to be?

I could also skip another 2008 ice storm. Our power was out for 12 days. The roads were drivable, though challenging. And because the plow trucks needed drive up and down the roads, at least sanding, some of the wires that were on the roadway but still attached to houses got ripped off.

Thanks for the links!

ARKX is something I've been interested in as soon as I read about its filing. I'm not sure about new Fidelity customers but my experience with ETFs hasn't been that I needed to wait until the cash actually landed in my account.

2" here and almost 15 degrees.

If you think of it in terms of the three C's: close, crowded and continuous, the TSA people are probably at less risk than other professions. I think there's so much variation on what schools are doing that it's not an easy answer.

I can tell you that when I went to Nashua about a week and a half ago, social distancing was pretty much a pipe dream in stores. When people were waiting in line, the carts enforced some spacing but other than that, it was business as normal but with masks. And I do understand, the viral load that I'd probably get from the guy who just has to pick out cheese just when I am is probably super small. As a marker for a "everything is normal but you have to wear a mask" thought pattern, I think it's probably about right. There's an old saw about economic downturns: If you lose your job, it's a recession. If I lose my job, it's a depression. And at this point, I suspect that there's a lot of people who are just not personally seeing it and so are feeling like it's not a big deal. And yes, I think that we're going to see some eye opening case numbers in December. The CDC advising people not to travel for Thanksgiving now is a late to the party. People have already made their plans.

We're having just our household for Thanksgiving. My siblings are either working with the elderly in a hospital or already have several of the high risk factors for getting a bad case. The medical professional also has a child in private school which has strict guidelines about school approved activities. The other people who might have come over are a group of young 20-somethings who live in the city and, I'm going to assume, have a social life still. We're not in the coldest part of New England but the 20-somethings aren't going to be excited to drive out to the boonies and be cold. We opted to go for the virtual meet-up with everyone.

One of the things that I don't see being discussed is the multiplier effect that's happening with COVID-19 in terms of economic impact v. personal impact. As an example, I live in the Monadnock region of NH and there's a nonprofit that was hit pretty hard by the economic impact - Crotched Mountain Rehab. The foundation that manages it had dealt with a variety of subpar financial events before COVID-19 hit so this was just another thing in the pipeline. It's hard to ensure personal safety for residents and staff when, due to a variety of disabilities, clients may not be able to comply with COVID-19 requirements. The foundation decided this summer to close the school because of the financial drain. That led to layoffs, area businesses saw less income (the store, storage place, etc.) and so on. Another organization, Gersh Academy, is in the process of buying the Greenfield campus and is currently managing it. They're accepting applications but it will probably be quite some time before it's fully operational. I believe that Crotched went above and beyond what the state was requiring from them in an effort to keep everyone safe. It wasn't a matter of whether or not a sick person became sick with something else or if an old person died. It was an exogenous event that wasn't scoped within their plans. The economic impact was independent of government regulations in this case. And the area is lucky that the New York based founder is so happy with buying the school that he's moving his family to New Hampshire so I expect that the school will thrive with that level of oversight. The crux of the problem lays with the analysis that we are all called to make - how to spread the risk, pay for the costs (immediate, implied, societal and long term debt with its resulting economic impacts) and allocate resources. It's not often that everyone is drawn into an ongoing conversation to assess their actions with these types of time frames and probably most people don't think about these types of forces / actions with that type of scoping. (For those of you who agree with MMT and federal debt, I disagree.) There are similar problems that we all address, indirectly or directly, but with longer timespans. SARS-CoV-2 created an opportunity for us to look at our actions and see the ripple effects in close to real time.

Wife's a flight attendant. Planes are the cleanest they've ever been. Study compared risk of covid between planes, subway, being in a car and others. Planes had the least risk and was extremely low. We were supposed to go to a conference this summer in Vegas, which was cancelled. Now we have airfare just waiting for us to use. And realistically, there's just not a ton of places that I can see planning a trip to visit and being able to count on it being open, dining outside, etc. It's not so much the flying but the "Where?" question. If we were going to see someone, that would be one thing. All the relatives in the flying distances live in states with way, way worse COVID rates so that's a big "No thank you" now.

There was no compacting done with a compacter other than driving the dozer over after a load of fill was dropped off and spread, so this probably qualifies as compacting to some extent. Garage will be 14x24'. It'm pretty sure that we weren't dealing with any steeper of a grade on the far side. Ours is a two car garage with a good sized upper story so bigger than yours. We definitely had the compactor equipment going over it for quite a while - I remember the racket that it made. Consider either talking to the Extension Service or your local feed store for quick sprouting cover mixes. You're close to the ocean and depending on the elevation / exposure, you might be able to get something to grow. That also looks like pretty poor soil which will make it more of challenge.

We has a similar landscape problem with our garage when we built it about 20 years ago. Did you already have a compactor go over it? I hope so. I'd be mindful over time with placing heavier than usual items on the downhill side. We needed to store some particularly heavy items in the garage for about 6-8 months one year and sadly choose the downhill side. After they were all cleared out, we saw the cracks that had formed. This lead to predictable issues and maintenance.

I had a conversation this evening with a friend who was absolutely adamant that not only did Hollis, NH get more snow that the Temple / Greenfield / Francestown area in NH but because Teslas could drive in Hollis snow, they were superior to other vehicles. (We started talking about the new electric pickups that are coming out.) I took a brief look at CoCoRaHs data but it didn't seem to have stations in right area and I know I'd get skewed data. Greenville, for instance, almost always gets less snow than the Monadnock towns I mentioned. I know the Tesla v other vehicles isn't an important argument but it did get me thinking about data granularity. Is there another site with reliable snowfall data?

I've been thinking about it a lot too. I suspect that Thanksgiving is either going to look a lot different this year or we'll really be looking at a spike mid-December. We've had Thanksgivings with enough snow to cut our power and some that have been relatively mild. I suspect if we're going to host people this year it will be something on the order of "If the weather's at all decent..." Our school district has already decided that from Thanksgiving week through MLK day, the schools will be fully remote. I imagine it will be helpful in a number of ways. I've heard that the high school alone is going through a tremendous amount of heating oil with having the windows open. It's one thing to think about cooler weather next week in terms of yard work. When you think about heating all the schools with open windows, it makes me wonder how it's all going to get paid for.

Assuming you've done your research about what you think the ETFs will do, why not put in some limit orders and then re-evaluate as news flows? At least that way, you'll get the sale prices you want. You could possibly divide the money between different scenarios to make both of you at least OK with the purchases. For what it's worth, Fidelity put up a bunch of resources related to the election: https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/2020-presidential-election I don't always agree with Jurrien Timmer at Fidelity but I intermittently read his analysis / tweets. I think some of his content is behind the login / password wall there but a lot of it is duplicated on Twitter.

Absolutely perfect!