Welcome, this is Melissa Arma with the Stockswashing and Reviewing Tiff. Huge play here today and a great call because this took a while to break. It took a while to go today and I believe and held conviction in the gap.  A lot of people don't do well in the market because they don't believe at all in what they're doing. They don't believe in their system. They don't believe in their strategy. If you come to me and you learn, you got to believe in it. You got to hold the conviction because not every trade is going to go like a split. I mean, it's great when that happens and I hope we get one like that tomorrow.  This was a great gap. So I rated the gap, the gap rated 22 points. What does that mean? I have a 26 point scale system. Anything over 20 means you can do it in the direction of the gap. This was 22. That's pretty good. But it didn't go right immediately. So here you have tiff open rally. People tried to buy it in here and in here, here, here and these big spikes up.  You had to hold the conviction and that's what I'm talking about. How do you do well in the market? You got to get good at one thing. You got to stay focused on one thing. You got to hold the conviction in that one thing. And that's exactly what I did in this today and it was a nice call and this is still lower. She called an option, went to 92. Look at that. Look at that. So this is basically just ran out of day here. This is still lower. Call to put in this today for the people in the options letter and the day trade. Really nice move no matter how you did it. Okay? Tiff is lower and considering this and just the whole way that the gap set up and just look at this here. And the stock closed at 104.95 the night before, this thing got pummeled and it opened in 93.25 more than 10 points down and people like to buy these for Gatvils. If you're doing that, don't do it. Stop. It doesn't work. Okay? And trading rooms called it all the time. This was a short. It was always a short. It was a short. It just took a little bit longer to go. Huge training tip today. Great call. That's a fantastic call by me because it was not easy to call it and to hold the conviction and I told everyone, stay in this through the low. I don't know what everybody did, but I knew would break the low. I knew it would go from green to red and that is exactly what it did. Show great job here with everyone with a tip and if you're in the option, looks great. Looks good. Looks like it could continue tomorrow. This is on its own. It has nothing to do with the market and that's another nice thing about my system too. Many, many of the trades that we do in fact, 99% have absolutely nothing to do with the market at all. You don't need to worry about reading the market, getting anything in the market's direction. Sometimes the market can help you, but in this case here, it didn't even matter anyways. It wouldn't have the gap rated well. Congratulations to everyone that did tip. If you're in the option, looks fine to hold it. Looks like it's going to go to the dream target, play it on through. If you got out of it today, you made money. Good job. Have a great day everyone and I will see you soon.


Income Tax 2021-2022 Recovery Rebate Credit Overview. Get ready to get refunds to the max diving into Income Tax 2021-2022. Most of this information can be found in the Form 1040 Instructions Tax Share 2021 on the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov. Income Tax Formula. We're down here at the bottom with the credit area noting that credits and deductions are both good, but if you had a dollar deduction and a dollar credit, the dollar credit would typically be better because you typically get the full dollar of the credit as opposed to the dollar deduction, which would be a decrease to the taxable income resulting then in the tax being calculated based on the taxable income. The credits down below are generally categorized into two categories, non-refundable credits and refundable credits. Non-refundable credits don't take the tax liability below zero whereas the refundable credits may and if they did you'd get something that would still be called a refund but isn't it really a refund at that point but more of a benefit program at that time. This is the second page of the Form 1040. We're looking at line 30, the Recovery Rebate Credit. We've got the little worksheet to calculate the Recovery Rebate Credit. It is down here in the refundable area meaning it could take the tax liability in essence below zero. Now just give a quick recap on the Recovery Rebate Credit here. Note that the Recovery Rebate Credit is tied to the stimulus payments or the economic impact payments. There are three stimulus payments up to this point in time. The first two stimulus payments are actually applied to the prior tax return. The third stimulus payment is the one that's applied here to the tax return for 2021. The way these things are tied together meaning the stimulus payment or the economic impact payment and this Recovery Rebate Credit is that the stimulus payment is basically a pre-payment in a similar way as the advanced child payments were pre-payments to the child tax credit. It's a little bit more confusing with these credits because we've never seen a Recovery Rebate Credit before. Number one and number two, the names are nothing similar with regards to the stimulus payments being a pre-payment of the Recovery Rebate Credit. They didn't call it pre-payment. They didn't name it Recovery Rebate Credit. And three, if everything went correctly, you would have gotten the entire amount of the pre-payment of the Recovery Rebate Credit in the form of the earned income credit already and therefore you wouldn't really be reporting anything on the tax return. The tax return is here to kind of fix the problem in that the stimulus payments or the economic impact payments did not go out properly. That's when the Recovery Rebate comes into play unlike, say, the child tax credit where you have the advanced portion which only part of the credit therefore everybody kind of calculated. So the fact that it's new, the fact that the name is a little bit confusing and it's kind of confusing to note that it was a pre-payment in general makes the economic impact payments and Recovery Rebate payments a little bit confusing. The other confusing component is that there's three of them that went out. The first two were pre-payments for tax year 2021 to be remedied in the same fashion with the Recovery Rebate Credit if there was something wrong with them but in that case for the first two that would happen on the 2021 on the 2020 tax return. The third one is the one we're focused in on here that if there was any problems with it we would remedy those problems ultimately here with the Recovery Rebate Credit on the 2021 tax return which would be filed at some time in 2022. So that's the general recap. Okay so the Recovery Rebate Credit, the 2021 Recovery Rebate Credit was put out to eligible individuals as an advanced payment called an economic impact payment. So we might have heard it called the stimulus payments or the economic impact payments. There's three of them that went out. We're looking at the third one and you want to think of it. Basically it would have been nicer if they were able to think this through. This is the first time this has ever happened but if they were able to think it through they could have called it an advanced Recovery Rebate Credit which would have told you that it was an advanced payment or something like that but no it's the economic impact payment which is an advanced payment of the Recovery Rebate Credit. So the economic impact payment was based on your 2019 or 2020 tax year information. That means that it's a free payment and they had to make an estimate because we note that the taxes are basically based on 2021 taxes are going to be based on the information that you give to the IRS in 2021 which you don't really have until you report the taxes by some point in 2022 typically April 15th or April 18th. That means if they're going to give a pre-payment out for tax year 2021 they have to base it on something other than the 2021 tax return and obviously they would then go back to the 2020 tax return if they had it and if not back to the 2019 tax return or possibly then to any other information that they have to send out the economic impact payments. That means that they can make an error with those payments because even though it's a pretty straightforward payment there's not too much like complexity or nuance in the calculation. It still has a phase out related to it and it still has a component related to dependence related to it and people need to have filed in order to for the IRS to know about them. So we still have issues where the the payment could have been different than what should have been basically received if you were actually to file the 2021 tax return and that would mean that we would remedy any of those problems when we have the actual data that we would give to the IRS with the 2021 tax return the recovery rebate credit then shoring up any problems if necessary. So the 2021 recovery rebate credit is figured like the economic impact payment except the credit eligibility and the credit amount are based on 2021 tax year. So we're just going to do the same thing it's a pretty pretty straightforward calculation but again there's still a phase out with it that can complicate things. We'll calculate it for 2021 compared to 2020 if it's different we'll try to remedy that difference here. So if you don't receive the full amount of your 2021 recovery rebate credit as an economic impact payment you may be able to claim the recovery rebate credit on your 2021 form 1040 or form 1040 SR. Generally you are eligible to claim the recovery rebate credit if in 2021 you or your spouse are filing a joint return where a US citizen or US resident alien weren't a dependent of another taxpayer and have a valid social security number. So those are basically that's basically it so it's fairly straightforward that they should be able to get the calculation right for the most part. Use the recovery rebate credit worksheet to figure the credit if any you can claim. For more information on the recovery rebate credit go to irs.gov or slash eip3qa and note if you are preparing a return for someone who died in 2021 if that person was otherwise eligible to receive the rrc recovery rebate credit you can claim the rrc recovery rebate credit for that person on their return economic impact payment the eip3 so again we're talking about the third economic impact payment enough to be confused with the first two economic impact payments which were similar in nature but applied to the prior tax return 2020 prepayments that is if the 2020 tax return eip3 economic impact payment 3 stimulus payment 3 then is applied to 2021 prepayments of 2021 remedied by the recovery rebate credit if there was a problem with it for tax year 2021 which we would file by April 15th or April 18th generally of 2022 the advance of the 2021 recovery rebate credit was the third round of economic impact payments otherwise known as the eip3 these payments were sent out beginning in March 2021 note eip3 was the only economic impact payment made between March and December 2021 you should get we have notice 1444c you should have received a notice 144c from the irs that shows how much eip3 the economic impact payment 3 the stimulus payment 3 you were issued including any plus up payments made after the irs processed your 2020 tax return now what's a plus up payment you they might have got the payment wrong for some reason and they tried to put in all these tools where's this whole thing to try to shore up and get people the to remedy any kind of problems with the stimulus payments so they would call those basically a plus up payment so for example if they had the 2019 tax return but and they based it on that but they didn't have your 2020 tax return and if they have the 2020 tax return they could have made an estimate which would be higher so you gave them the 2020 tax return and then they gave you a plus up payment even though this payment is actually based on is going to ultimately be based on 2021 taxes so so that's where that you could have multiple payments now uh you should get this form if you don't get this form or if you want to check it in another way you can also go to the irs website and take log into your account there and i believe that you can find the payment information there i think it's useful to get yourself on that and clients logged in because they're trying to do more and more online similar to a banking situation you would think that they could do a whole lot more online people you would think would have an online account similar to like a banking type of situation and be able to do that in a secure way and everything and as they do these kind of prepayments it becomes more and more necessary because you need that information in order to calculate your tax return properly and if you do it incorrectly meaning if you report something that's different than they report on form 1444c then they're probably almost certainly going to give you a notice or it's going to cause a delay of some kind because it's just like you reporting something different unlike a w2 form than the w2 form you were given the iris already has a copy of it so if you report something different then this the machine will pick it up they don't even need a person to kind of pick that up and it could cause problems at that point again if they're wrong you might have to take action and try to fix it in some way but you know in general you want to you want to be reporting the amount that's on the iris aside reported on the 1444c in general unless again there's an issue that comes up so have the notices available when you complete the recovery rebate credit if you haven't received notice 1444c or you can't locate your notices you can also go to the irs.gov forward slash accounts for the amounts to enter online 13 of the worksheet so you can go to your account on irs.gov you may be able to claim the recovery rebate credit only if your economic impact payment was less than your credit this happens when so meaning the payment got was wrong for some reason because they based it on 2019 or 2018 or some other information and they didn't have all the information they needed for 2021 and therefore there's a difference that's when you would have to get this recovery rebate credit in action so that could happen you you are eligible but we're not issued an eip3 so possibly they just didn't give you one because they didn't have your information possibly that's one option your eip3 was less than 1400 or 2800 if married filing jointly plus 1400 for each dependent you had in 2021 and that could happen maybe if they didn't have the dependent information or if someone a new child was born or saw adoption happened or something like that or if uh if there was a phase out kind of thing that happened with an income level phase out so you don't qualify for the recovery rebate credit if you received 1400 plus 1400 for each dependent you had in 2021 so if they got it right and you're supposed to get 1400 and you received 1400 for you know yourself and each dependent then you already got the credit and it's not like the advanced child tax credit where they only give you like half the credit and then you get half at tax time no they're trying to give you the whole amount up front and the recovery rebate credit is really just a fixing tool to fix any kind of problems that have happened with the prepayment that should be the entire amount so you're filing a joint return for 2021 and together you and your spouse received 2800 plus 1400 for each dependent you had in 2021 married filing jointly if your 2000 if your eip3 the third economic impact payment the third stimulus payment that is was based on a joint return you and your spouse are each treated as having received half the payment that was issued so they could send it out in joint but they really you kind of think about it as them sending it out basically per social security number so if you're say you're married filing joint then they sent you like twice you know the amount for the married filing joint but you don't really think of it as one amount per return it's kind of like they sent out per social security number in essence per person so if only one of you has a valid social security number and neither you nor your spouse was a member of the u.s armed forces at any time during 2021 your credit amount will be limited if applicable if applicable include your spouse's eip3 as shown on your spouse's notice 1444c line 13 valid social security number what does it mean to be valid social security a valid social security number is one that is issued on or before the due date of your 2021 return including extensions caution if you reside in a u.s territory don't enter an amount online 30 and do not complete the recovered rebate credit worksheet in general the tax authorities in american Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and us virgin island islands and the northern mariana islands islands will provide the recovery rebate credit to eligible residents territory residents should should direct questions about eip3 or the recovery rebate credit to the tax authorities in the territories where they reside


Great. So welcome. This is a GSOC Google summer of code panel as we have that every year because we have a liberal office Google summer of code season every year since the inception of the project Everybody I think Whom do we miss is there more mentors here Stefan? I don't know Cloth so if anybody cloth want to come on stage as The mentors at least this we don't we don't have all the students here unfortunately So we have Paris here, and we have two mentors presenting for their students, and we have a two videos Come on So this is this is a panel and Very quickly so GSOC if you don't know what it is. That's an annual program sponsored by Google and It's it used to be for students only, but it opened recently for everybody eight older than 18 and There's two kinds of projects a smaller one and the larger one It's always in the in the summer break like us kind of you a centric for you as Americans and Yeah, liberal office as I said has been part of GSOC from the start since 2011 We're very grateful for Google to spawn the students this year We had Five projects so five students and a bunch of mentors things to all The mentors and the org admins and of course things to Google for providing the steep hens But first and foremost of course things for the students for doing great work and things for the mentors For put in substantial amounts of time they're mentoring Okay, and then without further ado, let's start with the student presentations and the first one is Paris with the adding APNG support Hello. Hello. That's a typo My project was on adding APNG support so What is an APNG? It is an animated the PNG It is an unofficial extension that was added to PNG around 2008 by the Mojila Foundation Initially didn't have that good support. So it wasn't really ever added to liberal office, but eventually it started getting supported by all Major browsers that I could test and a lot of image editing software It has some advantages over GIF. So one is partial transparency GIF supports transparency. You can make the background transparent, but you can't have partial transparency So PNG supports that And then you also have direct coloring GIF works with palettes. You can have 256 colors per frame, but PNG doesn't care And generally smaller file sizes from from testing This format is backwards compatible with PNG also, which means that in the past APNGs would appear as the first PNG frame So how does it work? It introduces three new ancillary chunks in the PNG format unsupported ancillary chunks are ignored So that's also another reason why it was backwards compatible. So the first one would be the ACTL which just describes how many frames there are and how many times The animation should be replayed The FCTL which describes the frame that is Upcoming like the sequence number with height offsets, etc And then the FDAT which is like the I.Chunk It contains the pixels of the frame and it's also preceded by a sequence number to match it up with FCTL So the work done for this project was import support We use the graphic class and the animation class that we have in LibreOffice that is used by GIFs already and export support So because it's imported into a GIF it also means that there is support to roundtrip from GIF to APNG and back and also rendering However There were some bugs The first one the first big one that still needs to be fixed is a Partial transparency was broken after the big switch from transparency to alpha. There was some work In fixing that but there's still stuff to do. I think it was fixed in Skiya, but not in hardware rendering Then presentation mode seems to ignore blending modes There are some blending modes in the APNG format Which allow to either blend with a previous frame or not it didn't seem to work in presentation need to look into that and then roundtripping wouldn't retain the animation it says but actually I noticed that The image itself would be correct is just that when opened through an ODP file. It just wouldn't It wouldn't import as an animation. It wouldn't stand import as a static frame So that's work to be done there. It should be finished before 24.2 hopefully and have it nice and working and of course to add unit tests and Yeah That's all Yeah, thanks very much Paris and thanks also to quickie for mentoring next one up is Deep-hums work on converting writer API tests to C++. I don't know. I think quickie is not here. So Let me pretend. I know something about it and and read the slides so The the reason so this is an ongoing process since it's quite a number of years and why is it necessary or why is it actually desirable to convert that the Java based tests rather quite complex both in writing and also in debugging and fixing So if you break a test and figuring out why you broke it is quite a level more complex than if you could just Attach your debugger because it's a C++ test because of course the core There's also C++ and then you have the bridging in between and so you really don't have a backtrace etc So it's it's really quite quite easier for the project in total and for the poor developer who broke a test Then to fix that up And it's also substantially faster to run obviously if you don't need bridging if you don't need to pull up Java and And that's probably the most important bit. So you don't need a Java dependency You don't need Java installed You don't need to build everything with Java because usually you don't need that for almost anything when you develop the office So so that it's super useful for the project Conversion steps quite involved So I'd leave that let that stand here You can you can read that if you like if you're interested. I think the bottom line the the big picture the summary is It's complicated. It's a lot of work. You need to focus So it's kind of ideal to have that as a GSOC project where you the student has the time And the focus and can run this like get into that process and run it done for a number of tests rather than some project volunteer who has a few hours every day and then like Gets distracted and something else happens. So it's good thing to have that and to have it and in this like focus form for GSOC Examples what was what was done there? Is here like some some some conversion that that's also useful To reference that like as work done as a template for future work It's always great to have some example that people can then follow for For new contributors who want to get into that Yeah, so product was successful very grateful for that very important for the project And of course thanks to to the mentors for for supporting Deep home there and next one up is Byram with the search functionality to options dialogue and that's something that I think hi cool can show us I Can show a little bit I can try to show a little bit. I Mentored this project by run Conducted it. I was rather the co-mentor the first mentor is Andrea signer. So all the kudos to him the Issue itself. It's pretty clear. There's a request of Xila to add a search functionality to the options dialogue options are very complex we provide all the customization that One can imagine and it is necessary to search through it. Everyone experienced the situation to Being interested in some particular Switch but looking through all the tabs is annoying. So the idea was to add a search field It took by run not much time. I think it was the first patch was realized after a week and it Was able to reduce the tree on the left side of the option into What you are looking for so if you type something the tree reduces the question is how to get the data into the search and the first approach was To do it while compile time to extract all the strings from the UI files every Entry on the left side the tree on the left side Has a separate UI file with strings and you don't have access to it During runtime so strings needs to be accessed somehow else and first approach was to extract it Just during compile time create some text file large text files and take it with the application into The product it has a lot of it has a lot of shortcomings for example It is not local specific. It is depending on the language that you have while compilation obviously English so a second and a Little bit ahead it is patch set 36. So a little bit later Everything was changed and the data is now created It's a first start. It is parsed through all the individual tabs running in the thread and it is blazingly fast Surprisingly fast. I cannot judge how well it is implemented, but I haven't seen any delay in the creation so it looks in the end as Requested it is typical a bad presentation The the field where internet is Written that's a search field and it is a true field So you see it and I searched here in this example for internet and the left side is reduced and they you Get way more quicker to the result. Let's try a live example if we have time Have to be Those are challenges now to get the map Not a big challenge apparently so this is important information. This is a Locally built a variant it is submitted to master so it will be in the next release What you do here is to type and turn and you see it reduces Everything and you get all the entries here on the left side this internet internet is boring Let's try this icon and you get quickly to the place where icons are Somehow on the UI another example that is more realistic Quite often you want to change units. So let's search for unit and you get to a place unit Great inches. How about few what is the unit here? part of the implementation Was to not only use the strings that you see in the UI, but also see Access but that's a missing part, but also the tooltips if a Control has a tooltips that contains Information you may be interested in this too and here on this page. It is yeah You can see inch here as a unit the horizontal ruler has some unit and You probably want to change it to if you want to set it to centimeters You want to change all the inch to centimeters So you search for unit and you find the place where unit is addressed in the tooltip future future enhancement Enhancements to this is to also add the accessibility strings. It is Not implemented and to make it easier to find the exact place Could be for example to draw a frame around the the actual control That is end up here


First of all, thank you all for making it to this conference. We think it's the 20th conference, so it's very exciting that our conference currently is the largest conference, I think, by a good measure relative to conferences in the past. And we're just excited to see all of you and we're excited about all of the people who are volunteering and making other contributions. We're especially excited about our speakers who are all donating their time to be here. So one thing we test ran last year that worked out really well was this idea of doing a university where we're doing a full day or a half day of educational sessions. And that went over really well. Pretty much everyone who attended the conference made it to university, so we decided to do it again, but we decided to break it into two tracks. So in this room we have kind of a somewhat more basic track and then in the next room we have a more advanced track. So this is 101, we have 501 going on next door. There's absolutely nothing wrong with mixing and matching. If you want to be here for part of this one and move over to the other room for the next one, that's absolutely fine. But one thing to know is that the times don't line up perfectly. So when we have our breaks for this session, it won't necessarily be a break for the other session. So you'll need to mind the schedule if you want to dip in and see sessions in the adjacent room. We have a very tight schedule for this session. If you attended last year, you remember we really kept things moving along very quickly. We'll do the same for this event today. We'll be watching the clock very, very quickly. I wanted to make a note about questions. We're handling questions a little bit differently than we've done in the past. So some of you may have remembered we had kind of an open mic set up for questions. This year we are doing written questions, so use sheet of paper, whatever you've got handy, to submit a question. We have Gory here who is going to look through your questions and help us decide when we get to the question, part of the discussion, will help us decide the most worthy questions. And I'm sure that we'll have more than we need, but please go ahead and submit a question. Wanted to start with my portion of the presentation, which relates to kind of what I call primordial, asset allocation, things to do before you actually get started investing. Because even though at Bogleheads we're all very passionate about the idea of getting started and investing, getting your money to work for you as soon as humanly possible, it's actually better to lay the groundwork. So that's what I'm going to be talking about today. So this is just a slide. We've all seen a million like this that illustrates the importance of getting an early start. And there are other versions of this that show that even if someone got started later and contributed larger some than that person who got started very early, it's very hard to make good strides on catch up if you haven't started early, which is one of the reasons why we all evangelize about the importance of first job, get started in investing. So getting started is super important, but there are other things that you need to attend to before you start investing. So what are the things that you need to address before you begin investing? The first thing is identify your why. Why are you investing? What are your goals? Articulating, quantifying, probably prioritizing goals, that's top of the heap. Then thinking about human capital, especially for people who are young and just starting out in their lives, that their human capital is their most valuable asset by far. We'll talk about how to burnish human capital. Creating a safety net should also precede investing for the long term, so you'd wanna be sure to have property and casualty insurance and so forth, as well as a basic emergency fund. We'll talk about how debt fits into this. Many new graduates especially come out of school with significant loads of debt and have to figure out how to balance having debt and paying down that debt alongside longer term investing goals. And finally, creating a budget and a savings target. So this is just a slide of what I think of as kind of a pyramid when you're thinking about your financial plan. And you can see that at the tippy top is the thing that many of us obsess over, investment selection. But really when you think about the most important determinants of whether someone succeeds or fails, I would say that having a goal, having a well articulated goal and also having a vision for what you're investing for is one of the key reasons why you would want to put that at the bottom of the pyramid. Human capital, I discussed just in passing but the human capital is the value of your earnings power over your lifetime. It's the economic value of your earnings power. It's, as I mentioned, young people's most powerful asset. So it's important to be really thoughtful about growing that human capital because there's a direct connection between your eventual investments. The more you have to, the more income you have, the more you will have to save and invest. So thinking about human capital is super important. For younger people especially, thinking about making additional investments in education can be very, very valuable and pay for itself many times over. But even those of us who are older and further along in our careers, I would argue that there are still plenty of opportunities to continue to invest in your own human capital. So how do we do that? Well, we would think about investing in our own health. We'd think about investing in additional training. We'd think about making sure that our connections within our employment circle are robust. And so really thinking about that whole range of activities that you can do to embellish your own human capital is really important. But as I mentioned, higher earnings, there's a very tight connection with higher savings opportunities. So this is a slide that depicts income groupings and shows that folks with higher incomes quite logically have many more opportunities to put money to work. And many of us have likely found this in our own lives where as we earn more, we have more funds at our disposable for saving. So kind of a logical, intuitive connection there. Creating a safety net is another thing that I would urge everyone to think about before beginning investing in long-term securities. So there are really two ways that I think about this. The first would be to make sure that you have purchased all the appropriate insurance products. Probably don't wanna overdo insurance, but make sure that you are covered in terms of property and casualty, disability. We've all heard statistics about how you're much more likely to be disabled than certainly to die. And so it makes sense to have disability insurance and then life insurance obviously if you have dependents, people who are depending on your economic wherewithal. So laying a safety net in terms of having those insurance products and then sort of the self-funded insurance where you have your own emergency fund, where you have liquid reserves set aside. When I think about young people who are just getting their lives started, I would say this is really job one, two, and three, is making sure that they have liquid reserves set aside to cover them for those outlays that are really difficult to predict. So the baseline in terms of emergency funding, the one I learned when I went through the CFP program was that you would wanna have three to six months worth of living expenses at a minimum. But I like the idea of really customizing that based on your own situation. So if you're a higher earner, if you're an older worker, if you're someone who has, if you're the sole earner in your household, so you have other people depending on your income, I would argue you would think about having an even larger emergency fund, more like a year's worth of living expenses. And I think young people sometimes get daunted by that three to six months reserve. And the way I always think about it is it's not how much you're spending currently, it's how much you could get by on in a pinch, right? That you don't wanna think about this overwhelming sum of what your current spending is, think about the things that you might change if, for example, you experienced job loss. But I like the idea of each of us stepping back and thinking about, well, how much do we wanna hold in terms of liquid reserves? Little bit more on emergency funds. I like the idea of keeping it super liquid. I think it makes sense to keep it liquid. The idea is that it is there in a pinch, so you wouldn't want to invest in anything where there is a risk of you not being made whole if you in fact need those funds. So I would say bond funds, even very safe short-term bond funds, I would take off the table in terms of emergency funding, stocks absolutely off the table in terms of emergency funding. And then if you're using CDs, and the good news is that interest rates on all manner of savings instruments are looking better today, but if you are using CDs, you'd wanna make sure that you're not going to pay a penalty if you need to tap into those funds earlier than you expected to. So just read the fine print if you're using CDs. Another key point here is that your emergency fund can be kind of scattered in a few places. So maybe it's whatever you keep in your checking account on an ongoing basis, maybe it's some liquid reserves that you hold in your taxable investment account side by side with your investment so it doesn't have to be all in one place. In terms of the where, a key thing to note while we're talking about strictures, you just wanna be careful to hold those emergency reserves in something that you could easily tap without taxes or penalty. So retirement accounts would generally not be a first stop or would not be a stop at all. In terms of emergency funding, you'd probably wanna use some sort of taxable non-retirement account for those assets. But I would say there are a couple of investment accounts that could be sort of standby liquid reserve accounts. So one I like to call out is Roth IRAs. Ideally, you would have the money invested for long term and you would never touch it until you reach to retirement, but the Roth IRAs do offer a really nice escape hatch in terms of being able to withdraw those contributions without any penalty or taxes at any time. So especially for sometimes young savers when I talk to young workers, I often say that the Roth IRA can be a really great sort of compliment to the emergency fund. So if in a worst case scenario, you need to tap those funds, they are there for you. Another account that can fit in here would be a health savings account. It shouldn't be anyone's first stop emergency fund, but health savings accounts have a really nice feature in that if you're using the health savings account to save and to invest for long term and you're using non-HSA assets to actually cover your health savings or your health expenses as you incur them, the good news is that you can tap the HSA at a later date as long as you have receipts available to substantiate those expenses that you paid with non-HSA assets. So it's a super nice feature. I know Mike Piper is going to talk about all manner of tax advantaged vehicles, but from a pure tax standpoint, HSAs are easy to love because they have a lot of nice features. So the debt versus invest question, that's a fork in the road that many people hit really at all life stages. And a key point I would make there is that you want to use your return on investment and I would put that in quotes to light the way. So I'll just use a simple example from my own life. Probably seven years ago, my husband and I still had a little bit left on our 15-year mortgage and I remember my husband had shopped around and locked in a 2.875% mortgage rate, which at the time was really quite a low mortgage and he loved having that very low, no one had a mortgage rate that low, but we looked at our savings and we looked at our liquid reserves and what we were earning on the money, and this is before yields went up as they have recently, and we said, well, this is kind of an easy decision to pay off this mortgage. We weren't getting any mortgage interest deduction at that point either. It was an easy decision to pay off our mortgage rather than earning next to nothing in our savings, especially because we really didn't need those savings imminently. So I like the idea of using that concept. Think about the expected return on your debt paydown, which is basically your interest rate plus any, or less any tax benefits that you're earning to hold that debt alongside whatever you expect to earn on your funds, on your invested funds. And I think that that can be a great sort of centering mechanism when figuring out how to address debt paydown. Right now, I would say that given how high interest rates are on very safe investments and how low many mortgage holders rates are relative to those safe returns, it's probably much less attractive to continue to consider mortgage paydown, but it's a very personal decision. Use your expected return on each of those uses of funds to help illuminate. Finally, creating a budget and setting a savings target would be the next step before you actually determine whether you want to go ahead and invest. You'd want to think about having that budget that you use on an ongoing basis. And there are really two main ways to think about budgeting. There's certainly lots of software out there to assist people with budgeting. But two ways I think about it would be think about using the old fashioned expense tracking or you can use some sort of digital expense tracking system to track your outlays on an ongoing basis. And periodically check up on your spending to make sure that it's in line with whatever you said you would spend within those categories. The way that we do it in our household and have done for many, many years is that we let our savings target light the way. So we just automate those contributions to our retirement plans, to our IRAs, to our taxable brokerage account. And we have those funds coming out of our checking account on an ongoing basis. And then the amount that's left over for us is an amount that we are free to spend or we can certainly save more if we're able to do so. But that's been a really powerful tool for us where we're not monkeying around with tracking spending in each category. So I would say it's very individual specific for us, for my husband and me. That was kind of an intuitive way to approach it. It was something that worked for us, but I would urge you each to experiment with different strategies. If you're working with young people, talking to young people in your life, I would counsel them to choose one of those two strategies.