More impaired drivers on Valentine's Day maybe?

That is definitely being done.

I don't know if you could do anything useful with past polling results, since that only gives a person's first choice, but in most cases you could make reasonable assumptions about 2nd and 3rd choices, and try some simulations or something.

Most of the examples you have 3-4 candidates that are all almost equally liked. That may be more likely in a primary than a general election.

What I'm less sure about is whether these are weird pathological cases thought up by math nerds (like myself) that would be vanishingly unlikely to happen IRL, or if these are serious problems that more people need to be thinking about. But until someone convinces me that these are extremely unlikely to happen IRL, I will continue my skepticism of RCV. It may still be better than what we have now though!

I agree that we need a better voting system to get out from under the two-party stranglehold and make it viable for people to vote for someone they actually like.

However, RCV can lead to some strange and undesirable outcomes (such as where voting against your preferred candidate helps them win by eliminating their strongest competition) See this article for some examples:

>http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html

Ranked choice voting sounds good on the surface, but there are some pathological cases -- some are described in this post http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/irv.html

If that 2500 minimum net commissions isn't reliable, then that's more risky. I'm taking OP at their word that it ranges between 2500 and 5K/month in commissions and they can more or less count on at least the minimum.

The 30% rule doesn't make sense in all situations. Without any car payment, they can afford to go even a little over the 30% if desired, assuming they either don't need a car at all, or have a reliable one and aren't going to need soon.

When my husband and I were grad students, we spent well over 50% of our income (stipends) on rent, but had basically no other expenses other than groceries and textbooks (tuition was paid by fellowships/assistantships) and it was fine. No cars, no other expenses.

A rule of thumb assumes certain typical expenses, several of which OP does not have.

They net $3K/month from their first 55K gross salary. They net about as much again per month in commissions. So estimating about another 55K gross in commissions. which is ~$110K/year Gross or ~9K/month gross.

that's $5500 NET

Very few people can afford their housing for long if they get laid off. It looks like their base is only half of their total income. And they have 4 months' rent in the bank, and could easily keep adding to that emergency fund while renting.

Yeah, it looks like you can. They say 30% of gross as a rule of thumb and it looks like your gross/month is on the order of 9K+ so I think you're good, especially without a car payment.

What are your other expenses, both now and after you've moved?

All the more reason to take job 2 and be forced into responsible retirement saving.

What about Paid Time Off?

Assuming the same, I'd say job 2 has a slight edge. Assuming 1950 paid hours per year with no weekends, the hourly rate comes to $66,943.50. 10.5% into a retirement fund adds another $7029.06 for a total of $73.972.56. That's $1027 less than job 1, but no commute 2 days per week probably more than makes that up financially, not to mention quality of life (time you don't have to spend commuting) though the full analysis of that depends on how bad the commute is. And job 2 has the potential for bonus weekend pay, assuming that's not a quality of life negative for you.

The real question is where do you have the better potential for advancement and raises. What are each of these going to be paying you next year, and 5 years down the line?

I'm pretty risk averse, so I would be pretty cautious about borrowing money to invest.

Do you have a job lined up that you will be using to make the payments, or are you planning to pay it back out of the money invested?

If you need the loan proceeds to pay off the loan, you could still do something pretty conservative with the money like a treasuries ladder (if in the US) and just pay it off if the yields on those ever go below the 3% interest you are paying. Assuming you can do an early repayment with no penalty.

If you don't and are confident you can make more than 3% on the money over the course of the 5 years, and can just leave the money invested for the long-term, so you're just kick-starting your investing with this money, then that's less concerning. But if you're using income to pay back this loan that you should be putting in an emergency fund or investing in retirement savings etc., I wouldn't.

Speak to an estate/elder law attorney.

The way my city does taxes, it makes our escrow payment "swingy." We pay quarterly payments but they only set the new rate after 2 payments are paid. So suppose one year my property taxes are 10K and the next year it's 12K. In the 12K year we pay 2500 for our first 2 payments, then we've only paid 5K toward 12K total so it gets raised to 3500 for the next 2 payments to get us up to 12K for the year. At that point our mortgage company thinks, oh, your taxes are now 14K per year (3500 per quarter) and they raise our escrow payment accordingly. It all works out in the long run, but because escrow tries to bank several months worth of payments in advance, the cash flow on it is weird.

Houses cost more than your mortgage payment. Even assuming your including property tax and insurance in the payment. Remember that all maintenance is now on you. Furnace goes on Thanksgiving? Take out your credit card...

:)

It's real silver. It has value just for the metal even if it has no numismatic value.

That's probably worth a bit.

oh noes!