What, you don’t want your keys to crunch when you press them?

People like you are why I love Lemmy. Thank you. Even when I was looking online earlier I couldn’t find anything nearly as thorough as what you sent.

So it sounds like 240V would be better as far as sheer power goes but is much more fidly. However, my provider is also unlikely to care too much about balance as far as household consumption goes. If I have 3 phase then the heaviest consumer in my house (hvac) is going to be running on that and therefore perfectly balanced anyways. Basically every other load is going to be intermittent so I shouldn’t ever have an unbalance large enough that my provider would care.

That’s kind of what I was figuring on the phase imbalance. I’ve seen it before on industrial sites. I just wasn’t sure if a household power draw could cause the same issue or not.

Good point. Ill add it to the og post. USA:MN

Yes? If I could get everything in one place then I would happily pay for that. I don’t pirate to save money. Saving money is just a nice sideeffect. I pirate because it’s literally more convenient than juggling 15 different services.

Of course! I’ve actually used those for marine connections before. For some reason I just forgot those existed. Thank you.

Yeah, I’ll have to bring some of that along next time. We have it at the shop. I just didn’t consider bringing it last time because it hadn’t occured to me that heat shrink would be impossible to use in there until I was nearly done.

I don’t think a soldering iron would retain enough heat. I had considered warming something else up with a torch but any hot work anywhere in that site requires all sorts of permitting even where it’s possible.

I had never heard of that. Definitely going to look into it now though.

In this situation it was butt splices. We almost never solder anything. We just need the butt splices sealed in case of condensation or dirt.

There’s an idea. As long as I’m using boiling water there will never be an ignition hazard because it will never go much above 100C. I could probably do something with a bit of water and quicklime to have an instant ignition free hotplate.

I’d need to figure out specifics and test it elsewhere of course but that is probably workable. The real question is if it’s practical in the field. Either way it’s something I’ll probably try out at home just for fun.

Yeah, tape is fine here and logically I know noone will complain but it still rubs me the wrong way so I was hoping there was an alternative. If not then oh well, tape it is.

Luckily my new job is actually paying far better than I expected so I can just float the debt for a bit and be fine. But this is still good info to have in case I need it in the future. Thank you.

You know it’s honestly more believable that she was bought than that the dems just accidentally ran a campaign that was so heinously out of touch.

Taking a loan from my 401k is not something I would be considering if I had any other credit options available.

If you can’t get a loan due to crappy credit, then what harm would another default do?

You can’t default on a loan you can’t take out in the first place.

I recommend negotiating the bills down and just cash flow paying them off. Use that discomfort to light a fire under your butt to take care of it ASAP, and then keep the spending low until you get a full emergency fund so it never happens again.

The bills I’m refering to can’t be negotiated lower. I’m talking, mortgage, utilities, liability only car insurance, and medical debt which has already been negotiated as low as possible. Any dischargable debt was discharged a bit over year ago via bankruptcy (which is why I have no credit options), unfortunately a medical issue cropped up after that. My optional spending is already as low as I can get it and even necessary expenses have been delayed far longer than they should be. Mainly, I have some fairly critical issues with the house which I can’t afford to fix but only get worse and more expensive to fix every day. I can’t even rent out part of the house for extra money due to those issues and the rental restrictions in my city.

Trust me, I absolutely know I should leave my 401k alone, if I had any other options to get money I would be pursuing them. Right now though I need a fair chunk of money basically immediately and my only options are:

1. Fall further behind on bills so I can buy the tools I need and plan to catch up later. My creditors won’t be happy and the bank may threaten forclosure again. But I can do that and it shouldn’t be an issue outside of the short term and delaying the recovery of my credit score a bit and delaying when I can start getting an emergency fund together.

2. Borrow money from my 401k. This has the various pitfalls you brought up but it would get me caught up and able to start building an emergency fund more quickly than option 1 which would save me money in the long term which would allow me to make higher contributions to my new 401k sooner.

3. This one is an even worse idea but it is an option I just recently found out about so I’m listing it. Roll my current roth 401k (I probably should have mentioned all my contributions are roth) into a roth IRA and then withdraw enough off the principal to cover immediate expenses. The literal only reason I’m even entertaining this idea is because not having to make loan repayments would enable me to start building an emergency fund immediately and having an emergency fund would save me money in the long run which would allow me to contribute more to my new roth 401k even sooner.

4. Remain behind on my bills by the current amount and just use option 2 or 3 to cover the cost of the tools. Then plan to catch up later.

Right now I’m mainly just torn on which way to go because option 1 costs me the least on paper. But at the same time being broke is costing me more money right now. The question is if I could use that money from my 401k (in one way or another) to start getting ahead of things now would it save me enough to eventually counteract my losses on my 401k. Considering I’m not really anticipating any gains (I’m pretty sure we’re all expecting a crash any day now) on my 401k in the near short term anyways I may be able to make better use of that money to increase my earning and saving potential now so I can make larger contributions while the market is recovering.

Thank you for your advice. That helped a ton. Assuming that they let me I will be going through with the loan.

Is the 401k plan from your previous employer? I’d first check if your plan admin will let non-active employees take loans out.

It is from my previous employer, however the allowed loan amount is already based only off my vested balance. So I’m not sure why they wouldn’t. But I will ask.

Otherwise, if it helps your decision, the interest accrued from a 401k loan goes back into your own account, so it’s like you’re paying yourself interest.

That is excelent to know! Thank you. So it sounds like I’d effectively just be contributing a bit extra to my 401k for a few years. That does make all the difference in my decision.

The main pitfall would be making sure you can pay it back on the agreed upon schedule, otherwise you get penalized.

At less that $100 per month I shouldn’t have any issue making the payments. I could probably even make those payments on my old income after things got sorted out.

Also, while your money is removed from the market, you’re technically losing out on potential growth, but sounds like you’d benefit more from having access to the money now.

Honestly I’m not picturing the market being in the best shape for a bit anyways considering the current US political situation. But even so that’s a good point and with that in mind I’m going to try and pay it off as early as I can. I would definitely benifit from having the money now though.

Honestly, if it were me and it would set me up for a career and I probably would do it and just make sure to contribute as much as I can to my retirement once I’m able to.

That’s going to be my plan going forwards. It’ll be a few months before I get access to my new 401k plan but I always try to put as much in as I can. I figure I can always cut back on my contributions later if it starts looking like I will have plenty in there.

Some alternatives would be a credit card or retailer with a fixed fee pay-over-time feature or a 0% interest intro offer. Failing that, you may just to get creative (sell things, pick up some side gigs, etc.)

Unfortunately a fairly recent bankrupcy and my current credit score means I have basically no credit options other than my 401k right now. I also don’t really have anything I could sell. But I have been looking at side gigs. My old work schedule made those tricky but I can probably do some side gigs with the new job if I don’t wind up working too much overtime.

If he had the right plumbing then a zip tie would have also worked.

He has been violating laws left and right since he took office. But it’s kind of meaningless because nobody is going to enforce them against him. Instead what he wants is just going to happen anyways as most of out political body applauds and some stand there hand wringing about how its illegal while doing nothing about it.

Sometimes when I’m scrolling I accidentallu bump a vote button because that’s just where my thumb sits. I reverse it when I catch it but I’m willing to bet I don’t always catch it.

Yes but if you reply to a clone bot, it’s not like the clone bot is going to reply to you back. The fact that replies are cloned doesn’t change the fact that noone is actually there and you’re just talking to a wall. I use social media to interact with people. If I wanted to see redit posts and not interact with people then I would just browse reddit without an account.