I am honestly beside myself... I will try to keep this as short as possible.
My mom is in her 60's and is very lonely due to isolation (pandemic). She's been chatting with guys on Tinder for about 6 months. She has a "type" - "bad boy" military men. They are always on "assignment" somewhere, in the special forces, and love bomb her. I've told her countless times they are scammers. I don't know a lick about the military, but I can clearly tell they are scams. After awhile they would ask for money - she laughs cause she has none and blocks them...
Recently, she's been talking to one guy in the "special forces" who "lives" on a base in DFW area. Supposedly she cannot call him directly, she needs to call "base" and then he calls her. I've told her it's most likely a scam. Last week she told me he's coming to her city (Houston), but the military will need to verify her identity (why?). I told her DO NOT GIVE OUT ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION.
She just called me and told me he's coming, and that money for his trip will be deposited into her account. RED FLAGS are flying in front of me. Why tf would military personnel not have a bank? I ask her what info did she give them. She told me she gave her social and bank info - like her login details. Her credit dropped because they made a hard inquiry!!!!! How can she not realize by now it's a scam?! I admit, I was livid and screamed at her to freeze her credit and call her bank ASAP. I just can't believe my mom could fall for something like this - even after I was right with the other scammers...
Anyway... I need help on finding resources to protect her. She doesn't have much money (only SSDI). I told her to call her bank and tell them EVERYTHING and to freeze her credit via the 3 reporting agencies. What happens if they opened a card or loan under her name? What else can she do? What else can they access with her social and bank info?
Edit: She was able to close her bank account (thank goodness). I am driving down tomorrow to help her set up a new account with her bank and go to the Social Security office to give them the new bank info and report the scam. I don't know if the scammer charged anything to her debit, but he did get notified her account was closed (and is attempting to call/text her). I told her to call at least one of the credit reporting agencies tonight to freeze her account and request details on the hard inquiry/claim it as fraudulent. She finally realized it is a scam. The really sad part about this is the "military" emails she received that were requesting her personal information are clearly not from the military and it pains me she didn't realize it at the time.
I will also request account access to her credit cards, bank account, and any other important accounts to help her monitor activity. I plan to call my company's legal department (it part of benefits) to see about setting up a financial and medical PoA (not executable until absolutely necessary). I'm just so sad, she's had a really difficult life and this just makes it worse...
Edit #2: So the good news is that they did not withdraw/deposit anything in her bank account. She called all three credit reporting agencies and froze her account. I told her to pack her bags and she'll be staying at my place for a few days so we can change her account passwords/user names, call SS, and get her annual credit report. I told her that it would be best for me to have access to all of her accounts - and she agreed. Right now she feels so stupid for falling for this scam, and I tried my best to reassure her that everything will be okay. We will get through this - just block the scammer's number and do NOT respond to him at all. I will also report this scam to the ic3 and FBI. Thank you all for the resources you provided.
I just hope this can be a lesson for some of you who have aging parents or a parent, especially during these times when many are cut off from so many resources. I did not realize how lonely my mom was. I feel like I could have done more... I was always a bit dismissive of these encounters when we spoke... I will try my best to make up for it now. Thank you again.
Edit #3: We went to her bank to open up a new account. Turns out her old account wasn't totally "closed," so we got that shut down and all money withdrawn. We had to schedule an appointment for tomorrow to create a new account, so I will be with her tomorrow too. Although it looks like she will have to unfreeze her accounts in order to open a new account. Then call SS to add her new account for direct deposit. So there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.
I changed her passwords to all possibly compromised accounts, including SSA and closed her my.id (it wasn't set up and he actually asked for that info). I now have access to all email addresses, Credit Karma, and loan company. Set her up with TrueId and some other credit reporting agency free monitoring accounts. No cards/loans were added to her reports, but that makes sense since it can take over a month to show up. The drop in her score was her doing (yes, she also is terrible with money, like really bad although had good credit until now - and we've gone over this before numerous times). I will assist her with monitoring all reports. I may sign her up for Lifelock, but the cheap plan doesn't really do much..so we shall see.
I've read some of the emails from this guy, a few imessages (for some reason her messages disappear on her phone, so I was only able to see recent stuff). The sad part about it is that she was questioning why he needed all this personal info. The one issue my mom has is this extreme fear of abandonment, as she told me that she was afraid he'd leave if she didn't give him her info (no kidding). It just reminds me of the cycle of abuse. 9/10 times she picks these POS guys and she is very aware of this (my father was one). She's just way too trusting. Like any victim of abuse, you can guide them, tell them they are worth more, tell them what's happening isn't normal - but it is up to the victim to act. The ball is in her court and I will be there for her (but I will never bail her out financially).
As for the people saying it may be Alzheimer's/dementia - I told her she should get checked by a neurologist just in case, even though she's had memory problems for quite some time (due to illness and medications). It was really hard finding out what accounts were compromised and explaining several times that a credit freeze does not freeze your credit cards.
I'll also see about signing her up for Reddit and subreddits she'd be interested in. Perhaps also get her involved in local senior activities. Maybe see if she'd be interested in borrowing my Switch for games.
Anyway, that's about all I can really do right now. I stayed calm and was there for her and she's super grateful for that. Thank you everyone for your advice, kind words, etc. I can now sleep easy knowing I've done all that I can and hopefully she learned her lesson.
Edit 4: Well now things are getting weird.. I didn’t know this since I don’t use Credit Karma, but she has a CK savings account. It has 2 pending large transfers totaling $16,000. I asked her if the visible last digits of the account number where the deposits are coming from are hers. She said no (has her old account routing/account number written down but I will confirm tomorrow). I filed a complaint with CK online (I honestly can’t believe they don’t have a CS number). Not sure if I should keep the CK account open or not, but I’ll wait to hear back from CK and her bank.
This makes absolutely no sense to me.

*I guess my new boss is messing with the wrong single mother
Obligatory I'm using mobile and not a native English speaker. Trying to limit some info cause I'm not sure if she's on here.
A little background, I just gave birth a few months ago. During my maternity leave, I was requested to join in a Zoom meeting, they said it's very important so I obliged. I love my company so much since it always had my back when I got pregnant (ehem single mom) and got sick on my 6th month. Meeting was about me being transferred to a new boss due to realignment.
This new boss then started calling me and asking me to do stuff which actually could wait until I get back from my maternity leave cause of course the company knows I'm on leave. She always say there is a deadline for some online learning and stuff. She also asks me to attend some meetings, company annual online parties (which she said is mandatory to attend to) and most of my officemates will ask me why I'm attending since I'm on leave. Well I'm the kind of person who doesn't really complain much, If I can do it I just do it. Talking back or talking ill against somebody is a waste of my energy. Everything is remote anyways and my baby is sleeping almost all the time and camera is off so I can breastfeed.
Now fast forward to this week, it's been three weeks since I'm officially back to work (still work at home set up) and I know bosses have different leadership styles but I'm afraid I can say she's kinda a pain in the ass. She demands things to be done asap when these are the ones which should really take a little time to get the best results. She will talk in the sweetest voice and tone but her message is basically telling you to "fucking finish this now". Just imagine an evil character in a movie smiling at you but the eyes are scary while telling you that she's about to kill you. I then found out from my old boss that this one is full of pride and always wants to be the best. Never asks help from anyone and wants to impress the big boss all the time.
Two days ago I messaged her sincerely apologizing that I have to file a leave the following day cause my baby is set to do vaccines. I said I was sorry cause in my calendar it's a week from now and planning to file the leave this weekend but the doc's secretary just called and it has to be that next day. And in my country, I have the solo parent ID so leaves like these are really valid. She called me up and asked how many hours it should take. I said it's gonna be in the morning but I really want to file a leave cause most of the time babies get fever after and of course I want to take care of my baby. She said since we are just working from home, I don't need to file a leave and just adjust my working hours. I wanted to explain that I really want to take the entire day off and not work at all specially at night cause I want to observe my baby but she literally ignored me and did not let me talk and just said her goodbyes and hung up.
Imagine my surprise when around 9 am the mf messaged me to join the conference call for our meeting. Cue malicious compliance. I said I'm on my way to the clinic and will just join once settled. I just ride the tuktuk to the health center so I can't join just yet cause I'm holding my baby securely. So once I'm in the clinic, I graciously obliged to join the conference call while a lot of other babies are crying. Vaccination schedules are the same day so maybe half of the town's babies are there and they are all my accomplice. I press mute of course but when it's my turn to speak, I speak super close to the microphone while other babies were either shouting due to the injections, crying just because they're bored or maybe laughing at my boss right now. My own baby is just so quiet looking like the cutest mf latching on me. I can hear in my boss' voice the regret of not allowing me this day off but she can't do anything about it now. I'm on the meeting answering all her questions and impressing everyone in my team like a boss! I can imagine their faces when they have to lower the volume when it's my turn to speak.
I then sent her a message regarding the next vaccination schedule and that I want to ask permission to file for a leave that day. Well of course she said yes.

It looks like the original method AND the "everyone" (not "passengers only") Methods are somehow unpatched and WORKING AGAIN (for now).
So, the old GCTF Glitch was patched. (When you get in your friend's car while invisible, it kicks you to story mode).
[Work-Around/Changes Begin at Step 13]

Method Below WORKING Feb 12, 2021

This Glitch seems long..but it is not. The walk through is long because it requires detailed explanation, but is a short GCTF Glitch. (The Receiver does most of the work)
Here is the video of the patched glitch. Its a great guide because the steps are the SAME all the way up until your character goes invisible outside of the MOC.
Receiver needs:
👉Arena Workshop or Nightclub
👉MOC with personal vehicle storage
👉BOTH NEED TO HAVE VEHICLE ACCESS SET TO "PASSENGERS ONLY"
Step 1) Receiver goes to their arena garage on Level B1 or Level B2 or Nightclub garage and tell the giver to start any mission
Step 2) Receiver goes to the elevator and hover over "enter arena workshop"
Step 3) Receiver then tries to join giver in mission by spamming A on Xbox or X on PS when the prompt comes up asking if you're sure. (Your character will start walking into elevator as you go into clouds.)
Step 4) Quit the job and tell your friend to quit too
Step 5) Receiver will spawn back inside the arena workshop (or outside your nightclub if you did it that way.) Re-do this part if you spawned somewhere else
Step 6) Receiver now gets in any car and drives outside then drive forward a bit and then reverse into the blue dot by your garage door. Hover over the garage choices and press A(or X on PS) and then start spamming Y/Triangle and you will fall through the map.
Step 7) Receiver will spawn in road and needs to die in any way (take the easy way out)
[Receiver is now glitchy and ready to go to glitch location and start receiving cars. Steps 1-7 only need to be done 1 time. After this, numerous cars can be duped using the next steps over and over.]
Step 8) Both go to this location which is 3 streets down from the Ammunation in the north side of the city.
Step 9) Receiver go and put face against the wall and call in MOC and an Elegy(This Elegy will be replaced with the new Dupe) The Giver now parks the car they're giving in front of the MOC.
Step 10) Both get in Elegy, Receiver driving and giver in passenger side. Passenger(Giver) now clicks down on the d-pad to choose character switch to Michael (which brings up the "quit to story mode" screen) and stays on that black "are you sure?" screen.
Step 11) While both now in the car, and giver still on that screen, Receiver drives up to back of MOC and press right d pad to enter the MOC and it will kick passenger out. Receiver now move your elegy out of the way and get out of the car. Passenger now "takes cover" against the back of the MOC for the rest of the glitch.
Step 12) Receiver now on foot does the "attempt character switch to Michael" then "cancel" 2 times (by clicking the d-pad to offline character then "cancel" when the menu asks if you want to leave GTA Online) and then enters your MOC. Screen will be black.. immediately start doing the "character switch to Michael then cancel" button combination a few more times. You will spawn outside the MOC invisible.
Step 13) (Receiver, invisible) gets into Passengers Seat of car.
It will glitch you and the car into your MOC.
The car is now yours!

Rinse and repeat from step 10-13, to dupe as many cars as you want in about a minute or two each.

1 Seater Method:

Method 1: Try with vehicle set to "everyone" instead of "passengers only" as it seems to be unpatched now.
Or....
Method Below Confirmed working on PS4 by Ismokealot666 and OdonnieO420.
1.) Once invisible, the giver uses jerry can then shoots at vehicle till it burns and before it explodes, the Receiver hop onto it.
The Receiver will spawn in the MOC with the one-seater but ITS NOT SAVED YET.
2.) Before exiting the MOC, the Giver needs to call Mors Mutual to claim their car. One they have it, the Receiver can exit the MOC with the duped one-seater.
3.) Receiver needs to take the one-seater to the Nightclub, get off bike, walk to garage blue circle, and when the menu comes up, back out and take your one-seater to the MOC.
One-Seater vehicle is now stored
Credit to: GTAGlitches and Se7enSins for the original glitch and TheChxice & DKR Crew for the new workaround.
Enjoy!
IMPORTANT: THIS GLITCH IS NOT MEANT FOR $ OR SELLING CARS. - IT IS MEANT TO ALLOW YOU TO GIVE/TRADE PEOPLE COPIES OF YOUR CARS (This is a "Give Cars To Friends" Glitch)
You WILL get dirty dupes from this which can NOT be sold without a custom plate or the "clean dirty dupes" Glitch.

Visit /GTADupe to Trade, Give, or Receive Cars while this Glitch is active!

🚫Don't Make Trade Requests Below!🚫

🚫Don't put your Gamertag/PSN ID in this thread!🚫

Visit /GTADupe to make Trade Requests

​
This is not a happy ending story.
​

The beginning

It all started back in 2014. I had a startup whose clients were advertisers. It was a platform for users to review video ads in exchange for online points that could be redeemed for money or coupons. Watch and ad; rate it; be rewarded. Simple.
After 100 campaigns I kept hearing it would be wonderful to connect their offline ads (e.g. TV ads, billboards, magazines, etc) with our platform. Advertisers wanted real insights and analytics from their offline advertising investment.
As dedicated founders we started working hard on this concept: “from offline to online with your phone”. Within 4 months we had our first version. I remember showing it to our friends and constantly hearing “Wow this is brilliant! It’s like Shazam but for videos”. I was ecstatic!
​

The investment

The revenue was coming in but it wasn’t recurrent. It was difficult to enter the yearly advertising budget. Advertisers assumed our platform as an experiment (mainly to get feedback) and not as a serious distribution channel — despite the fact we picked at 100,000 registered users.
We needed investment to grow and build the new technology’s infrastructure. It wasn’t cheap to maintain a technology that recognized millions of videos within 4s. More on this latter.
In 2015 we raised $0.5M from angels and led by a VC. This allowed us to grow our team to 7 members and accelerate product development.
We were ready to storm the world!
​

The pivot

In retrospect, our product decisions after the investment killed our startup. We shifted our focus from the local videos ads review platform — where we had 100k users and 60 clients — to a global video recognition consumer product.
We created an App — like Shazam — that recognized millions of videos. Our goal was to have advertisers make their offline assets interactive and invite their audience to download our App and use it to unlock “something”. The practical end was the same as the QR code. How cool is that? Scan a video and “magically” show related content on your screen? Exciting, right?
Wrong. Very few people downloaded the App. It turns out the barrier of downloading the App was too much for the reward (whatever the brand wanted to offer). Don’t get me wrong, we did some cool campaigns with Kia, Unilever, or Volkswagen. But again these were one-shot campaigns. Basically an investment in innovation from the brands.
After long days discussing our future, we thought of something. What if our technology was embedded in native apps like Snapchat, Facebook, IMDB, or even in the Operating Systems of mobile devices — Android and iOS? This would mean everyone could easily interact with their offline environment and get something in return. Brilliant!
​

Interactive The Walking Dead

This is now 2016 and we had a new strategy. White-label our technology and allow anyone to embed it in their platforms. We built SDKs for Web, Android and iOS and off we went searching for customers. One of our main goals was to have TV shows interactive. Allow viewers to point their phone to the TV and delight them with a new experience.
In this quest, I scrapped all my network, cold reach on Linkedin, went to conferences, traveled between London, New York and San Francisco. I ended up talking to all major TV networks — Comcast, BBC, FOX, PRISA, Viacom, CNN — and closed a contract with FOX. This was a pilot experiment where FOX would use Portugal as an assessment market. It took us 9 months (!) to close the contract.
Even so, we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The worst part was over, we could take our learnings from our local pilot and catapult it to the world. We will change how people consume TV and will take our place in the TV innovation history.
We were ready to build a $1B company.
After several negotiations with FOX we were able to add our technology to three shows: The Walking Dead, MacGyver and Prison Break. What a victory! All the major shows were interactive. FOX will advertise the shows are interactive, people will scan the TV and have an amazing, memorable experience. Win-win-win.
When the first results started to come in… well let’s take a detour first and come back to the results later.
​

Entering Facebook

During 2016 I was mainly traveling demoing our technology to as many people as I could.
Besides TV networks I’ve met with Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Verizon, Blippar and Facebook. Our goal was to integrate the technology in their existing apps and make their users interact with the world connecting the offline and the online seamlessly.
The main feedback was something like: “amazing technology, great demo! But (there’s always a but) something like this isn’t on our product roadmap”. Except for Facebook… It was late 2016 and I’ve met with a Business Developer Director.
Here’s how it went:

(After I’ve demoed the technology)
Director: Wait, can I try it?
Me: Sure, here’s my phone.
(Director takes the phone and scans the video. The phone showed information about the actor from the exact second Director scanned. Director stays hesitant for a couple of seconds…).
Director: I need this.
Me: Uhh… Ok!(My mind was like: Errr, what, how, can I ask… Wait, what?)
Director: Here’s the deal. We have a huge problem right now. We launched Facebook Watch recently and are having a lot of copyright infringements on the platform. We need to build something like YouTube’s ContentID. More info here.
Me: Ok, we can definitely help.
Director: I’ll put you in contact with the product team responsible for this and they’ll take it from there. We are evaluating acquisitions in this space to speed up our go-to-market.

​
After exiting the meeting I vividly remember the next five minutes. As I went through the lobby I decided to seat on a couch to recover from the excitement. There I was, all alone, in one of the most incredible buildings in Menlo Park after a meeting in one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I found myself looking at the ceiling and smiling for no apparent reason.
​

The M&A process

After the Facebook meeting, we discovered we had a potential new market to unveil: copyright infringements detection. Users uploaded copyrighted content with small changes (e.g. by tempering with the audio pitch, by slightly rotating the video and by changing the original video with many different techniques) to bypass Facebook’s algorithms.
Because our technology was designed from scratch to recognize videos from low-resolution images, we were pretty effective in recognizing tempered videos. We recognized videos that were rotated, mirrored or cropped. Our algorithm didn’t use audio. We even recognized a bunch of different videos inside one. Here’s a demo with a) 10 trailers in the same video and b) a rotating video.
We arrived in 2017 with our FOX partnership generating mediocre results. No relevant revenue was coming in and the user interaction data wasn’t exciting. We learned that people need a huge reward expectation to take the effort of scanning the TV. Without undisputed usage from viewers, FOX was gradually losing interest in pushing the technology and the opportunity faded during the rest of 2017.
In February we started talking with the Facebook team. They wanted to test our technology at scale. We thought it was a fair request and agreed to be tested without any compensation. We signed NDA’s and were comfortable enough discussing the internals of how our technology works.
After a couple of meetings to discuss the technology, Facebook started to test us with hundreds of hours at a scale we were never able to test before. It was scary as hell! We were all extremely nervous to see if the servers’ architecture wouldn’t crash.
When the first results started to come in we were shocked… 95% accuracy and 0.13% false positives. This was incredible for us! This was paired with the audio industry leader: Shazam. My eyes started to tear up.
We were tremendously proud and happy about this achievement.
Facebook wasn’t…

Thanks for following up with us. It was a great experience working with your team and we think there is a great potential for your company and service.
We want to provide an update about the evaluation result. From the result, overall we see a good coverage and recall, and your team solved the problems real fast. However, due to low precision and high false positive rate, we decided not to moving forward to the next stage of the evaluation.
Thanks for your time and effort. I am sure our career will get crossed in the future

Caption: Facebook’s engineer email rejecting us
​
Did you feel that punch in the stomach? I surely felt it. It was so unfair to have amazing results on our side and receive this email. When we asked about the differences — to understand what went wrong on our side — we got this:
​

Facebook has our own metrics and process to evaluate the product value of the algorithm. But due to the policy, we are not allowed to share with you. My colleague’s point is the final result. Look forward to getting chance to work with you guys in the future.

Caption: Facebook’s lead engineer email really rejecting us
We felt kind of used and disrespected to be honest. Remember this was a two months process with several emails and calls between us. It was one of the most difficult moments of my professional life mainly because of the expectations I’ve built.
We were devastated. I was immature enough and almost took it personally. At the end of the day, it was business as usual for a big company like Facebook — they ended up acquiring Source3 to help them solve the problem. For us, it was a Technical Knock Out.
If someone from a big company is reading this and it sounds familiar, please take a moment to rethink the way you say no to a startup. Especially if you’ve been interacting daily or weekly for the past months. Invite them for a meeting or call and explain them the general decision process. It will take you half an hour and it will make a huge difference for the startup. Believe me on this…
Unfortunately, after this, we weren’t having solid revenue from our FOX partnership. After discussing with our lead investor we decided to close our doors in an unfortunate ending to what could have been a tremendous success.
​

Lessons Learned

So many lessons learned! We could have done so much differently. It was a rollercoaster ride with so much emotional commitment. It’s a challenging exercise but I’ll try to generally sum up the main learnings from the whole journey.
Here’s what I learned:

• The line that defines success and failure is extremely thin.
• If you are being evaluated (by customers, partners or possible acquirers) define success KPIs beforehand. That way everyone will have the same common ground.
• Don’t put all your eggs (expectations) into one basket.
• Stick to what is working, i.e., work on what people want and measure it with data; not words nor promises.
• Be kind to everyone. If you feel disrespected or hurt, take a step back. Take some time to breathe and don’t reply right away. Time heals everything and gives your perspective.
• Don’t take life too seriously. Be patient but persistent.

​
Despite all learnings, the cold reality is that this was a failed startup… but I’m trying it again. This time I’m doing things differently.
​
Hope you guys had a good read and learned a thing or two :) Let me know if you have any questions.
​
​
EDIT: I'm overwhelmed by your feedback, support and love. Thank you so much! I've been getting a lot of questions about my next step / startup. Follow me at Twitter as I continue to share my learnings and document my journey as a founder.

Finally a new month!

Strongly recommend using a computer to request your payments if at all possible. Mobile browsers can hide popups without you knowing, which could cause you to miss questions.

Program integrity hold ID.me link request form Use this to request access to ID.me to clear a fraud hold!
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CDLE has put together a page of available assistance programs
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What is Work Search Activity? PDF
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List of all workforce centers
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January thread. .
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment - Unemployment Homepage .
ALERT | 2.4.2021 | 2:00 p.m. We have extended the hours for our customer support line at 303-536-5615. The call center will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday, February 4 and Friday, February 5, and will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, February 6. If you have a program integrity hold on your claim, please contact us at 303-536-5615, OR fill out the online form. Learn more >
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Let me know if there are any other links I can include here to help, even if they're permalinks to answers in previous threads.

Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls,
I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps.
​
I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders.
While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months.
Any feedback or additions are appreciated
Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer.
Here's what I tell options beginners:
I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot.
I like this beginner book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7
Helpful websites:

• Tasty Trade (TT) and Ally Invest have helpful articles and videos.
  • https://www.tastytrade.com/tt
  • https://www.youtube.com/c/tastytrade1/featured
• Ally training:
  • What is options trading? https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/trading-options-for-beginners/?CP=EM2012111
  • Top 10 options mistakes: https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/top-10-option-trading-mistakes/?CP=EM2012111
• 3 common option mistakes: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/library/options/common-mistakes-options-traders-make
• Common options strategies: https://www.optionsbro.com/basic-options-strategies/
• Investopedia has tons of great investing info for stocks and options: https://www.investopedia.com/
• Kamikaze Cash Theta Gang Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOweupE79XXiBaeH_xBpkUcYUsrAaKQen
• 20 rules of professional traders: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/022715/20-rules-followed-professional-traders.asp

Don't trade until you understand:

• You can lose your entire contract value when buying.
• You can lose a lot of money when selling "naked", theoretically unlimited.
• How option expiration works.
• Theta (decay) and how it works. This is imperative since it's attrition when buying and a payout when selling. https://www.optionseducation.org/advancedconcepts/theta
• DTE: Days till expiration/expiry
• Options positions with respect to price:
  • ITM: In the money; strike is below stock value. Signif
  • ATM: At the money; strike is just at or above the stock value, often very highly traded. Can be very effective with moderate - long term expiry.
  • NTM: Near the money; strike is above the stock value, but fairly close. Slightly unofficial term.
  • OTM: Out of the money; price is at least a few strikes from the current stock price. I would say 10-30% over stock price.
  • Very OTM: Not a real definition, this is essentially a lottery ticket. Cheap, but almost certain to expire worthless unless there is explosive movement.
• Understand delta in general and how delta changes with ITM and OTM options.
• Understand all the greeks at a high level, as you get better understand them well. The greeks: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/options-introduction/option-greeks/
• IV, IV crush, and how IV affects pricing. In general, you want to sell when IV is high and buy when the IV is low. Increasing IV is good for held calls/puts. IV drop or crush is generally good for sellers.
• Selling options can be quite beneficial. Once you have a good general understanding, lookup thetagang . Kamikaze Cash has good youtube videos on most theta strategies (linked above). I personally believe selling options (especially cash secured) is much safer and can consistently make you profits. Θ Gang 4 life.
• FOMO and how to avoid chasing a dangerous trend. DO NOT CHASE FROM FOMO!
• What intrinsic and extrinsic value are. Know how they are affected by being exercised/assigned and how theta affects them.
• Understand that some of WSB recommendations are straight up high-risk gambling and factor in the information accordingly. Be careful with Meme stocks and the survivorship bias on YOLO plays. However, I love the sub and think it’s hilarious. It has a lot of valuable information / DD if you are comfortable with the “colorful” language. It’s also great if you like rocket ship emojis.

Basics / Mechanics

• Understand the 4 "main" option types. Buying or selling a call and buying or selling a put. Spreads and more complex multi-legged option strategies are based off these in some way (see below)
• You can sell calls with 100 shares of stock or if you own an underlying longer term option; see LEAPS and PMCCs later. Selling calls naked is incredibly risky and often requires Level 4 (very advanced) permissions and usually a lot of capital. I will literally never sell calls naked since I don't want to ruin my life and end up living in a dumpster eating saltine crackers.
• Puts can be sold/written cash covered (cash secured), which means you have the cash in your account to buy 100 shares. Your broker will put this money on hold until the trade is closed. Puts can be sold "naked" using Margin and Level 3 (with most brokers). Your broker will hold a percentage of cost of 100 shares (often 30-40%, 100% on meme stocks) allowing you to sell more puts. This increases your available capital/power as well as increasing risk.

General Tips and Ideas:

• Don't EVER leave (short) spreads open on expiration day, close them. (more details below)
• Start off trading very small. Slowly build up over weeks / months. You need to get accustomed to a fifty dollar swing a day, then a few hundred, then a few thousand. You need to ensure you don't get emotional (see below). I started trading options with 5k, then 25k, 50k, and later over 100k. I added my own funds over time and used my gains to build my account. Don’t go all in immediately, that’s dangerous and unwise.
• Especially as you build up the amount of money you have invested, keep it diversified among several stocks.
  • Don't go all in on one thing, ever. Be able to take a hit from one stock and not mortally wound your portfolio.
  • A company may be doing great, then there's a major product issue out of nowhere. If you are overexposed in one stock this can really hurt you.
  • I had to roll options I sold that were about to expire completely worthless because FDX's CEO changed and the stock took a hard dip.
• Don't trade emotionally. If you realize you are emotionally trading for vengeance, you should probably exit the trade and cool off for several days with that stock. Same if you get caught up in a wave of hysteria.
• Have a plan for every trade, ideally with entries / exits that are specific values, ranges, or a set condition. This helps remove emotions. This is super important for strong movements and high volatility (see later).
• Use an options profit calculator from your broker or an online one before entering a "new" trade, especially a complex multi legged trade: https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
• “Rolling” an option: Closing your existing option and opening a similar one at different strike and/or expiration.
  • Rolling a call “Up” would be selling a call you own and buying a cheaper call at a higher strike.
  • Rolling a put “Down and out” closes your original one and buying or selling one at a lower strike at a longer expiry.
  • Better broker interfaces have a literal “Roll” button. I know E-trade does. You can manually do it by selecting relevant contract legs.
• If you have a losing trade, re-evaluate it. If your initial assumption is definitely incorrect, close it. Don't stay in losing trades forever and lose the entire value of the option over stubbornness. If you re-evaluate and you think your assumption was right, hold, potentially consider adding another cheaper option (or buy another call / put). Rolling out sold options can help here.
• Don't try to day trade, especially with options. It's statistically unlikely to be profitable. Day-trading with options introduces extra liquidity risks and is dangerous, especially with spreads.
• Try not to over-trade, you'll likely mis-time the market over time. When I get emotional I over trade, then lose additional money on wash sales. If you scale your entries into positions it should help alleviate your desire to exit positions when they turn badly against you. Whenever I buy calls I do it at larger increments after W almost made me loss my hair; luckily it eventually came back.
• NEVER enter a position on a stock you have no idea about, especially when you read about it online or heard about it from some rando.
• At market open options contracts are often volatile and inflated. Buying during this time can be more expensive. Options are usually cheaper mid-day, I read somewhere 2-3PM is cheapest. I’ve had success around 12-1PM EST after prices settle.
• Try wheeling on cheaper stocks once you get all fundamentals down.
• When selling puts if you are very bullish consider "doubling down"; note this is higher risk. Use the credit from your put sale to buy shares or a cheap call. This can be roughly inversed with puts, except I wouldn't ever recommend shorting shares.
• Learn from your mistakes. You can’t go back in time and beating yourself up (to a point) is useless. Make a physical &/or mental note of it so you don’t do it again. If you don’t learn from it, then beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.
• If you have friends that like to trade, I find it helpful to discuss strategies and planned plays. I talk openly with my close friends about my current holdings and planned trades, it helps keep me accountable. If I get a wide-eyed look, I might be doing something excessively risky or stupid. I’ve over-leveraged myself in calls twice and I knew I shouldn’t have done it both times. When I tell my friends what I did and I’m embarrassed, it exemplifies the face that I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You will also get ideas for new strategies or plays from them. It’s good to stay versatile and use multiple strategies when appropriate. Beware of group think/echo chambers.
• I recommend NEVER telling someone what to buy/sell and when. I’ll tell people MY plays or what I like and why, but I will not encourage them to emulate what I do. Depending on the audience, I’ll tell them my exact positions along with my exit and entrance strategy. With closer friends I’ll offer my thoughts on their trades (if asked). If my friend is doing something really risky (one of my friends does some scary stuff) I may ask them if they want my advice, and provide it, especially if they overlooked a risk/event. I will not encourage someone to execute/enter a trade since it has a high potential for hurt feelings or animosity all around.
• Don’t fall in love with a stock. Just because something made you money before and you have high confidence in it doesn’t mean it will keep performing. I joke that FDX betrayed me when it started dipping and losing me money. I was over-confident of its bounce-back and sold too many puts too quickly. I’m in several losing trades because of it. However, I will keep good stocks in my rostetracking list or try different strategies or re-enter trades when they change their behavior.
• As you start to both buy and sell options and get more experience in general, you'll start seeing the two sides to every trade. You will likely start adjusting your strategies or trying new trades out because of this. Things will likely click one day. Most/all the greeks and options concepts will become almost second nature. For me this was when I could build an Iron Condor from scratch, which was a watershed moment involving a good understanding of many strategies.
• Understand Liquidity and volume.
  • Trading in low volume, low open interest contracts results in wide bid/ask spreads and difficulty having your contracts filled. Look at all the data for a contract, not just the strike and price.
  • Monthly Expiration dates typically have better liquidity.
  • Multi-legged trades (Common examples are 2-legged vertical spreads or 4-legged iron condors) have more difficulty being filled, especially on bad brokers like Robin Hood. Having very liquid options for all legs is extremely helpful in obtaining timely and well-priced fills, which maximize your potential profits.
• Time in market vs timing the market:
  • It is extremely difficult to time the market perfectly. If you wait for the perfect opportunity forever, history has proven you will miss out on gains. Keeping all your money out of the market has proven to be ineffective. Now if there is something serious happening with a stock/the market (like say a new pandemic), don’t go all in. I recommend entering incrementally at dips. If the stock has huge upside potential it may never go down, so it might make sense to partially enter at the current price.
  • IMIO selling puts is a great strategy to get into a stock you like, or at least make money off it. I think buying stock in lots of 100 is usually for suckers. Selling an ATM or ITM put (assuming the math works out) on a stock you were going to buy and hold is ALMOST free money.
  • I recommend keeping some cash available regardless. If you have a very large account or expect a downturn, hedging with indexes like QQQ, SPY, or VIX or calls/puts may be wise.
• Every trade can't be a winner. You will take some losses, you must get used to it. I don’t like having a realized loss of 1K or more on any trade. However, this will happen, especially with larger accounts.
  • As long as you win more often and beat the S&P that year I consider it okay. I’m kind of aggressive, so I consider 20%+ annually good. 30%+ annually is great. 40%+ and I’m dancing. After trading options I am almost baffled by my old belief that 5% annual returns (mostly from dividend ETFs) was “good”. That’s nothing to me now since I’m willing to take risks. Note: While lots of people danced in 2020, realize that’s an insane Bull Run year and is atypical.
  • Adhere to your own risk tolerance and never over-extend yourself, especially with margin use. Don’t make huge gambles leaving you uncomfortable. Only gamble with money you are willing to lose.
  • My personal strategy is to make safer gains for the year and then enter slightly riskier strategies using those gains. I can be slightly-moderately more aggressive and compound my gains. For me I often sell puts to make money, then when I see a big opportunity I’ll sell a put and buy an OTM or moderately ITM call.
• Understand it’s not safe to try and get rich overnight. However, once you hit big “steps” things may start to snowball. You can enter more positions and take more risks if you choose to.
  • For me this when I hit 50k, then 100k. I was able to balance low and moderate risk positions to more significantly grow my account. I’ll even do a high risk thing now and again because my gains can absorb it (assuming I have them).
  • I can’t wait to get to 250K, then 500K. I know it’ll take quite a long time, but I am confident I’ll eventually be able to have 500K and (hopefully) 1M in my non-401k trading account with gains and additions from my job. I can only imagine how “dangerous” I will be with that kind of capital.
• If you missed "the next big thing" like AAPL, TSLA, or the time machine I’m building in my basement. Don't get upset, learn from it. Adapt and become a better trader for next time.
  • Figure out why a company was so promising, before they mooned. Determine how you would have traded differently in hindsight. Apply those lessons to the next company you believe has long term growth prospects.
  • For me that's putting in 1-2.5k towards shares and/or buying LEAPS on it. Depending on my bullishness I may buy “cheap”, fairly far OTM calls. The far OTM options are sort of lottery tickets. If I'm right the (relatively) low cost will have explosive profits; if I'm wrong, they didn't cost that much so it's a calculated loss I’m willing to accept. For more serious bets I’ll buy ITM LEAPS to run PMCCs on. I also like to buy 1-2K in my 401k for very long-term plays.
• The stock market hates uncertainty, it seems to crave the status quo. A shakeup can potential tank a stock, even if it's nothing. With shares you can wait it out, but this can be problematic for options. If you see volatile/uncertain times ahead (politics, disease, manufacturing, earnings, etc.), you might want to reduce your overall portfolio risks or hedge.

Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation

• If selling options, it is a viable strategy to close early after a large gain with many DTE left until expiry. See TT videos / strategies on this.
• Don't hold options through earnings unless you literally want to gamble. I like playing on earnings run ups, but that can be risky.
• If you hold options through earnings, IV crush will happen immediately afterwards, devaluing the option. However, if the option is profitable enough, IV crush won’t matter, which will still make money for a call buyer. A sold put sufficiently far OTM will benefit from IV crush, even if the stock dips after slightly bad or lukewarm earnings.
• Don't throw good money after bad. Don't gamble on a recovery if your assumption appears to be wrong or the market is flat out tanking. If you are wrong and still believe in the company, wait twice as long as your original plan (wait for your 2nd entry point vs 1st) before adding to your position.
• Consider using stop losses to lock-in profits on rides up or sometimes use them to prevent losses. Note, stops can be easily triggered in volatile options. Now when I'm up a lot on calls (especially around earnings or large momentum run-ups) I always set stop losses. I have been burned too many times. In December 2020 I didn't set a SL on several thousand dollars of FDX calls I was already up on and I "lost" ~$5K of unrealized gains. If you're up big, don't get too greedy.
• A possible strategy if a stock is on a tear and you have multiple options open: Close some positions (I prefer to do this incrementally if the stock has momentum), but leave 1+ open in case the stock goes into outer space/the floor. Next, set a stop loss with a little buffer below its current movement / range so it doesn't get hit unless the stock falls hard. Finally, watch the stock closely and if it keeps rising, keep moving the stop loss up in little bits incrementally. This will let you keep more profits on a hot streak, but give some protection and secure more gains. It will also help eliminate FOMO if a stock exceeds your expectations.
• Have rules when to roll out, down & out, or up & out. I like TT’s roll at break even or at 1x loss and to always roll for a credit (or for me a very minor cost). Obviously these rules need some monitoring. Know your stocks, the news, and technicals so you don’t jump the gun.
  • If you roll early for a credit and you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll just need to hold longer, which will obviously tie up capital. Sometimes it’s better to tie up some money (especially if you aren’t paying interest) than eating a huge loss.
  • Rolling too late can be worse though. I currently have a very underwater FDX put I sold that is over 2x loss, rolling it does almost nothing unless you want to pay a debit or extend it extremely far out.
• On huge options gains, I strongly you recommend taking profits by rolling up/down or incrementally sell your contracts at several different prices (this is why having multiple contracts is nice).
  • Rolling up involves selling your initial call, then using a fraction of your proceeds to buy a cheaper, further OTM call with the same expiry; puts are inverse this. When rolling up I like to ensure the new option’s cost is 15-40% of my realized gains. I’ll buy a more or less expensive new optoin based on my convication to the stock and predicted movements. You can also roll up and out to get a further expiry and strike.
  • This is monumentally important if you are playing with incredibly high rising stocks or during a short squeeze.
  • Sad story time: I completely screwed up when I forgot to roll up, twice, during the GME gamma/short squeeze. I didn’t take my own advice; I didn’t have a real exit or transition plan and I got emotional. It all happened so fast and I was at work; the insanity of the run up and subsequent gamma squeeze caught me off guard. I should’ve clocked out and thought through the situation for 15-30 minutes to form an impromptu plan, then executed trade(s). My moderate risk tolerance coupled with my desire to take profits took over. When the stock partially cratered after a run up, I sold to retain gains. In the heat of the moment I thought the squeeze was squoze and it was going to plummet into the ground and I wasn’t being rational.
    • On 1x 4K call I would’ve made an additional 15-25K if I rolled up to a cheaper contract with some of my profits.
    • I know I missed out on significantly more with a 2nd call I had. Depending when I rolled it, it would likely have been an additional 25-50k in profits.
  • I talked about learning from your mistakes above. This mistake is branded into my brain due to the massive gains I missed out on by not rolling up. I’m furious with myself as I write this 1 week after the GME gamma squeeze, I’m a planner and I didn’t plan. If anything I own is significantly up ever again, I’m rolling up (or at least setting a stop loss). If necessary, I’ll roll up a trade multiple times to keep extracting profits.
  • Learn from my mistake so you don’t miss out on gains too. I strongly recommend rolling up when you are up big on a call / roll down when you are up big on a put. This enables you to take profits, stay in the game, and keep extracting more gains.
• If you trade a lot of options, talk to your broker about a discount. I was getting the standard $.50/contract with E-Trade, but I traded over 300 contracts a quarter and was able to get the fee reduced by over $.10 by just asking. I am now doing more spreads and condors, so once my volume gets very high, I’ll ask again.
• If you have a broker that isn’t great and you want to switch, leverage your current trading fees to the new broker. Tell them you’ll move over $### thousand if they beat your current options trading fee per contract.

Trade Planning & Position Management Tips

• As you gain experience, start monitoring what kind of Delta, OTM, DTE, etc. you are most profitable with. Use it in your future trades. You'll often see the tasty trade 30-45DTE .3 Delta strategy for selling.
• Before entering a trade, look at rough technicals like resistances and supports to consider your relevant strikes as well as entry/exit points. Look at upcoming earnings & dividend dates as well as stock/market news.
• Consider staggering strikes and expirations for safety and diversity; it’s nice to avoid assignment on 3 puts at once because you used the same strike for all 3.
• Incrementally enter positions on large rises/falls. One of my favor strategies is to buy dips after over reactions. By doing this slowly in large price "steps" it helps combat FOMO and helps you avoid getting slaughtered.
  • This will also help you avoid "chasing a falling knife". It also ties into having a plan.
  • I set alerts at several predetermined prices and I REALLY try not to enter new trades unless I hit my preset points. It makes me less emotional and usually more effective.
• Don't buy far expiration options with poor liquidity for shorter term plays. I bought 1x GME 1-year+ LEAPS call before the 2021 short squeeze. That was stupid, I should've bought 2-3x 60-120 day calls to have better liquidity. I also paper-handed it and missed out on my lambo.
• If selling options, consider rolling (for a credit) to avoid assignment when it makes sense / meets your plan. Rolling closer to expiration can be a valid strategy to get theta on your side. On the flip side, if the stock moons or plummets it could've been better to roll before it got crazy deep ITM. See rolling “rules” above.
• Covered Calls:
  • If a stock has a large movement range, I think it can be worthwhile to wait to open a CC after the last one is closed/expires. I have been more successful waiting for another opportunity vs. opening one immediately on the Monday after the second the last one expires.
  • Consider selling covered calls at all time highs/peaks. If you sell a CC and the stock dips significantly, and you think it’s temporary, you can buy to close your CC for a quick profit, then reopen it later.
  • If you own Meme stocks, selling covered calls runs the risk of missing out on large gains. On these stocks I typically only sell them further OTM than I normally would or not at all. If I do sell CC on a Meme stock I try to ensure I have 25-100 other shares that won’t be called away.

-Advanced Beginner-
Spreads

• Spreads (with 2 legs) are neat because they manipulate how delta and theta act. It caps your gains and losses, but you can profit with less stock movement. Try several spreads on a P/L calculator to see for yourself.
• Spreads usually require margin trading.
• Spreads allow you to define max losses (assuming you close before expiration day) and use less capital.
  • Experienced traders will open many spreads at identical/similar strikes to heavily profit off movement. Spreads can make you/lose you a lot of money if you are right.
  • For example. I could make a $200 premium off a $500 risk trade, max loss would be $300. This is much more effective capital utilization than a naked or cash secured put, however it does not have the same downside protection or “wheel” potential as a sold put. Higher risk, higher reward.
• Vertical Debit spreads: I think of these like mini calls/puts. I personally don’t use them unless calls are outrageously expensive or the break even is absurdly high, but there’s nothing wrong with them. A call debit spread will lower your breakeven and overall cost vs just a call. You can do clever things like making a positive theta call spread if you’re creative. I like doing this since I hate losing money to theta.
• Vertical Credit spreads:
  • Very good theta strategy to define downside/upside risks.
  • A put credit spread is bullish and allows you to bet on upward movement with less capital and defined losses.
  • A call credit spread is a bearish strategy that allows you to bet on downward movement. These are very cool since they allow you to sell calls without selling naked calls, which can ruin you financially. I see selling these as better than buying puts since it’s so much easier to be profitable; to be redundant, Θ rocks.
  • https://www.schwab.com/resource-centeinsights/content/reducing-risk-with-credit-spread-options-strategy-0
• I repeat this on purpose: Don't EVER leave short spreads open on expiration day, close them. If you don't close, they better be VERY far from the strike on a non-volatile stock. In after hours a stock can jump/dip below your strike and be exercised without the other leg to protect you. This can lead to massive, life ruining losses. This is not an exaggeration, google this and be scared. It happened to a fair number of people with TSLA. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVFj9nRRDo&t=315s
• Short Straddle:

Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation

• Learn about wash sale rules. They suck and are very easy to activate with options. This will eliminate your ability to write off losses. Over trading can easily cause wash sales. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp
• Short attacks:
  • Learn to recognize these sketchy attacks by hedges/firms. They manipulate the market, it’s been documented countless times. A common one is rapid short selling, which pushes the price down.
  • Short Ladder attacks:
    • https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/3096735-anatomy-of-a-short-attack
    • Some people say short ladder attacks don't exist. I've seen some very strange stock nosedives off low volume, so I tend to think they do.
  • If you plan well enough and the market doesn’t give up on the stock you may be able to use it as a great opportunity to buy the dip.
• Cramer explains how he intentionally manipulated the market when he ran a hedge fund years ago. Multiple links to the video are below since this video gets pulled often, Cramer / The street never wanted this to go public.
  • Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/cramer-interview-idUKN2036292620070320
  • httpss://youtu.be/r07Gg92YjOI
  • https://youtu.be/VMuEis3byY4
  • https://youtu.be/JEzsfPmh894
  • https://youtu.be/QFfjX8dW-QQ
  • Due to this video I don’t fully trust Cramer. His show can give you stock ideas to buy (or inverse), but you never know where his true loyalties lie.
• Plan for taxes if you are up big. You may need to over withhold or contribute to taxes quarterly depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306

-Intermediate / Advanced Strategies (work in progress)-
You’ll notice many of these strategies inverse one another.
Options Strategy Finder
This website is great for learning about new strategies, you’ll see many links to it below.
https://www.theoptionsguide.com/option-trading-strategies.aspx
Short Strangle / Straddle

• Both of these strategies profit from little price movement. I recommend using a P/L calculator to determine BE, profit, etc.
• A straddle sells (or buys) two options at the same expiry and strike.
• A strangle sells (or buys) two options at same expiry with different strikes.
• Both these strategies involved selling a Call and a Put for a credit. Straddle uses ATM legs, strangle uses OTM legs.
• Limited max profits and unlimited risk. Due to the unlimited risk, I am not a fan. However, many people like these a lot.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-strangle.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-straddle.aspx

Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies

• These strategies profit from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. They receive a credit to open and benefit from theta decay. If your stock is range bound, these may be a good choice.
• These are both 4 "legged" trades, so you will have 4 trading fees to enter or exit the trade. A lower cost or zero cost broker shines here. However, “bad” free brokers will give you poor fills, which may not be worth the discount.
• Condors and butterflies have "wings" which are your purchased puts and calls. The wider the wing the higher the max profit/risk. The condor body can be riskier and skinny with a narrow high profit range or wider for a much greater chance of success with lower payout.
• An iron condor is built by combining a put credit spread and a call credit spread with the same expiry.
• An iron condor can be thought of as a modified short strangle with limited risk, and therefore a bit less profit. I prefer defined limited risk.
• The butterfly is similar except instead of a plateau it has a sharp peak. My personal mental note is that a condor looks more like a strangle with wings, while a butterfly looks like a straddle with wings.
• Pay attention to earnings dates when you open these, I have forgotten to check before and it led to bad trades.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-condor.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-butterfly.aspx

Long Condor (Debit Call Condor)

• The debit version of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to stay inside your defined range. This strategy profits from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. I’ve never tried this, Iron Condors make more sense to me.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/condor.aspx

Short Condor (Credit Call Condor)

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Credit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• Can be harder to set up. I want to try these, haven’t yet.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-condor.aspx

Reverse Iron Condor

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Debit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/reverse-iron-condor.aspx

LEAPs

• LEAP Options are options that are long term with many DTE, often over a year until expiration. LEAP calls are great for long term growth plays (downtrends with LEAP puts) or simply when you really like a company and can't afford 100 shares. LEAPs (or any "longer term" option) enables you to sell a PMCC or PMCP (below)

PMCC / PMCP

• PMCC or PMCP are poor man's covered call (or poor man's covered puts). They are diagonal options often used with purchased LEAPs. You sell a shorter DTE call/put with a further OTM strike than your purchased call/put. For PMCC/PMCPs it is often recommended to recoup your extrinsic value as soon as possible, some recommend with your first call CC or put sale, to ensure you are positive if the option is assigned early. These have a lot of moving parts and strategies. If you buy a barely ITM call/put and sell a nearby strike call/put you run the risk of the purchased option getting "blown by" on large stock movement and ending up with a very negative losing trade. Keeping your purchased LEAP deeper ITM should protect you. Check your initial PMCC using an options calculation to make sure you don't screw up.
• I'm currently tinkering with these myself. So far I like .7-.9 delta call LEAPS with 30-45 DTE calls on my CC. The goal is to hold the LEAP long term, potentially until expiration, and constantly sell calls/puts on it that expire worthless. Typically the call/put is rolled up and out or down and out if it's going to be assigned, unless you don't want your LEAP anymore.
• Some people look at these many sold CC or puts as profits, I look at them as lowering my cost basis until it's zero (or even negative). I have a page in my notebook I write each CC on my NIO LEAP (I Meme stock sometimes). I find it satisfying to slowly see the cost of the original option disappear. When I originally wrote this I had ~2 years left on it and it's 9-10% paid for; that doesn't even count the actual gains the LEAP has.
• TT states this is considered an IV play, which I partially agree with. You want to buy these during low IV times since an IV drop will hurt your LEAP value. I look at them more as a way to sell calls/puts on a high IV company with a lot of price movement and potential upside/downside.

Advanced Orders

• Guide to several order types: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/events/webinars/order-types-from-basic-to-advanced-07162019
• One Triggers Other (OTO):
  • Good brokers will allow you to set these up, some will require a desktop to do it. This lets you link one action to another. In programming think of it like an if-then. You’ll tie a buy/sell to another buy/sell
  • Setting trailing stops on options is very chaotic since their price movement can be drastic due to volatility. I prefer to set my trailing stop to a stock.
  • What I like to do is set a trailing stop on a stock (or just link it to a stock price drop) and have it sell 1 share I own. Then it immediately executes a market order to sell my call. I’ve had good luck doing this with incredibly volatile plays were stop losses aren’t effective. I’ll often have an order saved and ready saved for when a strong run up starts. When my price alerts start blowing up my phone, I’ll immediately hit execute to turn it on.

​
Disclaimer:
I’m not a financial adviser, I'm actually an engineer. I’m not telling you to invest in a specific stock/option or even use a specific strategy. I’ve outlined and more extensively elaborated on what I personally like. You should test several strategies and find what works best for you.
I'm just a guy who trades (mainly options) part-time for financial gain and fun. I don't claim to be some investing savant.

Edited to remove the tables because when I obsessively checked this post on my phone I couldn't read them?? Also I tried to, but was prevented from, editing the title. I know it looks sanctimonious but that's just one small part of my personality I swear. D:
❤️ Section 1: Assets and Debt
Total Net Worth: $30,875 - all equity.
Retirement Balance: $0 for me; $20,500 for my husband in the state pension program for teachers. (My partner, L, has been paying into the state teachers' pension system for 5 years. For most of my 20s, I either worked at very low-paying jobs, or supported myself and others on a teacher’s salary, so no retirement for me. My current job does not have a retirement program, but one of my goals for this year is to either start a Roth IRA or get a new job with a 401k match… or maybe both?)
Savings Account Balance: $23,733 We’re moving this summer to a city closer to our families, and are saving all we can for a down payment on a dreamy spot. After we move, some amount of what’s left over will go into a retirement fund, and the rest will stay in this HYSA as our emergency fund. For us, three months of expenses, including childcare, is about $18,000.
Checking Account Balance: $455
Credit Card Debt: n/a, pay off each month
Student Loan Debt: $80,000 for L’s undergrad and MAT. $18,000 for my undergrad and (unfinished) MAT. (My undergrad degrees were mostly covered by the Pell Grant, scholarships, and a $10,000 529 from my parents. L was a nontraditional student - didn’t start undergrad until he was 24 - so none of his was covered. Most of my debt is for a MAT program I dropped out of after one year. I was trying to find any way out of teaching at the time (it is demanding, all-consuming, and carceral at once) and thought a PhD would be my only route. When I got my current job I promptly left the program and any dreams of a PhD behind.)
Equity: $83,875 (This number is from an online equity calculator, and is for our house in a very popular neighborhood in a very popular city. Our outstanding debt on the house is $295,000. We put our whole savings down in 2019, which was $9,000 at the time.)
❤️ Section 2: Income
Monthly Take Home: My base pay is $65,000, and L’s is $45,000. I worked a side gig last year that totaled about $10k in additional compensation; all of it went to savings so we don't budget for it. My take home is $4096/month for my full time job, and my current side gig income (grant writing) is variable, between $300 and $600 a month. L’s take home is $2262/month. My health insurance is paid in full by work. L’s insurance and B’s come out of L’s paycheck, as does L’s retirement contribution.
Income Progression: I’ve been working since I was 15 years old, moved out for college at 18, and paid my own bills starting that year. I won’t include that money here though (it was like $12,000 a year as a college student, for reference). Income below starts when I graduated with two BAs that had nothing to do with teaching.
Year 1: $15,600 (part time ABA therapist, full time baby anarchist)
Year 2: $32,000 (year 1 teacher salary: I accepted a spot in Teach for America for this giant salary even though I thought it was an obnoxious neoliberal org. Yes, I was also obnoxious at the time.)
Year 3: $33,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 4: $34,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 5: $35,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 6: $15,000 (community organizer; at the time this felt like a dream job)
Year 7: $20,000 (community organizer & cafe worker)
Year 8: $40,000 (back to teaching, felt rich; this includes a side hustle writing grants on the side for $50 an hour)
Year 9: $45,000 (left teaching for my current job, quit the grants side hustle)
Year 10: $55,000 (got a raise, got pregnant)
Year 11: $65,000 (got a raise and promotion, had a baby)
Year 12: $75,000 (was promoted again in January but waiting on the pay increase to hit, hopefully with backdating. This money diary doesn’t reflect this salary as it hasn’t been reflected in my check yet)
❤️ Section 3: Expenses
Mortgage/PMI/Insurance: $2,110
Retirement Contribution: n/a (L’s retirement is pulled out of his check before he receives it: it’s $169 a month. Right now, I don’t have a retirement contribution)
Savings Contribution: $1000 to main savings, $400 to sinking fund (This is a super aggressive goal for us and is only possible because our childcare costs are covered by work)
Debt Payments: n/a right now (We have student loans to the tune of $100k but haven’t been paying a dime since they were paused due to COVID. But then the other day I checked and saw they've gained interest? Should we be paying them then? WWJD? I legit don’t know.)
Electric: $130
Internet: $100
Cellphone: $65 (For L & I both. We are on a bigass family plan with 40 gajillion other people.)
Subscriptions: $45 ($10 Spotify; $10 Youtube music; $2.99 Apple data (Why?!); $22 NYT (for newspaper and cooking app); also have a split subscription to the New Yorker with bestie F but we paid for a yearly deal.)
Car Payment and Insurance: $150 for a car payment; $202 for insurance (Insurance covers both of our used cars and my dad’s used handicap van. Our car payment is for our used Honda. We only owe $6,850 on the car and I’m back and forth on whether to pay it off with savings)
Medical/Therapy: $0 (My therapist is $140 a session, and I just started seeing her again once a month, but this is reimbursed by work. I also get an inhaler at least twice a month - that’s reimbursed too, costs $60 total.)
Misfits Market: $120 (For a weekly box, which really helps us cut down on overall grocery cost)
Gym membership: $30 (For my intense local yoga studio’s app which is so great in the winter. We also run and bike a lot, as long as it’s warm enough)
Donations: $100 (We give monthly to our local Democratic Socialists of America; the Working Families Party; and a small, local org. I’m also on an organizing committee for that org. We’ll give them one big gift of at least $250 this year, probably in May. I support a couple organizations with grant writing and grant-finding support as much as I can, which usually amounts to a few hours a month.)
Childcare: $0 B goes to a very precious Montessori preschool, and we can walk him there. It’s pricey af ($1300/month). The other $200 is to account for some babysitting from my little sister when L or I have to work weird hours. For now, work reimburses this full amount as a COVID perk; if that changes, we will have to cut costs significantly.
House cleaner: $160 (They come twice a month and charge $80 each time.)
❤️ Section 4: Money Diary
NOTE: We are masked and afraid everywhere we go.
✨DAY 1: THURSDAY✨
4:20 am: Good morning world! I shuffle into the kitchen in my panties and my slippers to fill up the gooseneck kettle. I recently got into pour over coffee even though it’s quite a commitment. With a toddler, a full-time job, and a Libra sun, I don’t really have time for meditative morning routines. This lengthy, half-naked coffee regimen is my closest attempt. As soon as I get the coffee brewing, our 18 month old, B, starts making noise. I open the door and see he’s got his pacifier in his mouth and his pillow in his arms. He wants to lay with Dada. I help him get in the bed with my husband, L, as quietly as possible. Last week L was super sick and we thought for sure he had picked up COVID. Blessedly all of our tests came back negative, but on the heels of that, he started having major tooth pain and had to have an emergency tooth extraction, AND he got an ear infection as he was coming down from whatever virus he had. I hate it :(
I get dressed and do some chores while they snooze to ease L's morning. I start the diaper laundry (usually his job - we use cloth), put away the dishes, start the Eufy vacuum, and get B and L’s breakfasts together: sunbutter and a little bit of syrup on some banana pancakes I prepped earlier this week.
6:30 am: B and L are up! The hour before we take B to preschool is kind of a marathon. L eats with B (and supervises his syrup consumption) as I clean out some more dirty diapers, brush my teeth, make another cup of coffee, strip our sheets, spray my hair with water to refresh the curl, return a few group texts, and wash some breakfast dishes. Somewhere in here I also eat two boiled eggs with Everything But the Bagel seasoning, and a bunch of grapes.
I help L get B loaded up in the car, and just as they pull off, my parents Facetime me. They’re calling to see B but are polite enough to talk to me for a few minutes. They live a few hours away, and are divorced, but cohabitating. The full story is long and spiritual for me so I’ll spare you. Anyway, my mom and I talk for a while about this couch she thinks I should buy from one of her friends, but it’s two hours away and we’d have to rent a U-Haul, so I think we’ll pass. I do hate our current couch though. Please drop comfy toddler- and dog-friendly recommendations in the comments!
8:15 am: I set out to walk the dog and listen to the Daily’s recent update on the coronavirus. Donald G. McNeill, Jr., says we’re in this through the summer, which is a bummer on the personal and global front, but I suppose it could be worse??? Maybe?? As soon as they finish talking I switch over to You’re Wrong About. I’m deep in the Jessica Simpson series and highly recommend this pod for any other nerdy, lefty, kinda burnt out millennials, especially those of you that are queer or queer-adjacent. Once home, I take my whole operation onto the front porch to work, since the cleaner will be here soon and I don’t want to crowd her in this time of COVID. I LOVE a clean house and I love paying someone else to do the big stuff, which is a recent luxury for us.
11:00 am: I’ve been working steadily in my email and google docs for a couple hours now, and it’s COLD out here. The cleaner leaves and I am grateful to go back into the heat. I Venmo her $80 for the cleaning (included in monthly expenses). I take a break from work and check out the job boards. My current job is the best, and highest-paying, gig I’ve ever had, but I’m planning to leave some time this year for several reasons. The premier reason: I recently learned that I’m qualified for several positions that pay over $100k at similar organizations. With that kind of money we could pay off our student loans, help our families out more, make sizable donations, and L could explore a career outside of teaching without freaking about a slight cut in his pay for a few years as he finds his niche. Or - maybe he’ll get into Edtech somehow and we’ll join Resource Generation. Who knows.
12:30 pm: I have a quick break and pull together lunch: half a cheese quesadilla, a big bowl of Smitten Kitchen’s roasted tomato soup, and a LimonCello LaCroix. L is on his planning period and asks me to edit his most recent job application, and I oblige. Since we’re both job hunting, I ask him if I can buy a resume template and guide on Etsy. I have sworn off online shopping for the year to curb my impulse spending, but he says we’ll just count this one as his purchase. Great news because I hate the formatting of my resume from 2016 and don’t want to fix it myself! $9.95
3:30 pm: My Zooms are over, my inbox is at 0, and I put up my out of office message because I’m taking the day off tomorrow to work on my resume and do some things to prep our house for sale. My high-functioning anxiety created an ambitious backwards timeline for this process back in December, and that timeline currently runs my life. I work for a few more minutes to tie up loose ends, and then walk O to a nearby shop to buy my favorite candle, curbside-style. When I get there the owner gives me some percentage off because it’s slightly discolored from the sun. Huzzah! $27.25, marked down from $40
4:45 pm: My angel of a baby sister, J, who lives just a few blocks away and is in a pod with us, comes to hang out with B for an hour so L can rest. I head to my good friend D’s place for my investment overalls appointment. She's going to alter their awkward wide leg into more of a tapered, mom jean shape. I have a capsule wardrobe which means I’ll wear these babies at least once a week, and plus I get to pay my friend, so I’m fine with the extra expense. When I arrive, she and her partner have the fire pit going, and we drink a couple glasses of wine together, yet more than 6 feet apart. I learn they are planning to move to the same new city as us in the next couple of years and legit cry happy tears.
Afterwards, I head out to pick up dinner for tonight. We are getting burgers from L’s favorite place as a treat. On my way, the WOLF MOON appears over the water and my stomach does triple flips. Then I pick up our dinner: a veggie burger with eggplant jam and kale for me; a real-meat burger with mushrooms, bacon, swiss, carmelized onion, and horseradish mayo for L; and an appetizer plate with pretzels, pimento cheese, onion jam, pickles, and chips for B. Delicious and unhealthy. The total is $34.54.
6:30: Home and eating dinner. B loves his meal, especially the “chokes.” He calls pretzels “chokes” because when L first started feeding them to him, I worried aloud that he would choke every time. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how a pretzel almost took out George W. Bush. Turns out our toddler is better at chewing than George W. Bush.
After dinner, L gives B a bubble bath while I do my own, very minimal, bedtime routine. Then L and I lay down with B to put him to sleep. He has a floor bed, which is a Montessori thing I learned about on mom blogs. L is a very hot and talented woodworker, so he took my floor bed dream to the next level by building a lovely house-shaped frame. The top beam is wrapped in twinkle lights and fake ivy. It’s a nice place to sleep, and we pass out here all the time.
10:30 pm: L wakes me up and we wander to our own bed.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 71.74
✨ DAY 2: FRIDAY✨
4:15 am: Wake up and go look at the clock. Decide this is a silly time to get up on a day off, drink some water, and go lay back down. But once in bed all I can think about is how much I want to read the news, organize my resume, and update this money diary. This is the problem with falling asleep at toddler time. So I get up again at 4:45, make my coffee, read a New Yorker article about Biden’s pandemic response on my phone, and sit down to work on this diary.
6:00 am: L wakes up! He works on breakfast for himself and B and I start meal planning for the month. This is one of my best and most recent life hacks. I found that if I chart out our cooking, weekly takeout, and leftovers at the start of the month, we save lots of money and are so much less stressed about the labor that goes into feeding ourselves. I pull out Smitten Kitchen Every Day and use it to inspire the month’s meals. So quaint to cook from an actual BOOK.
6:45 am: B walks out of our room and announces that he drank my water off the side table. He’s so proud! And so ready to eat. While he eats breakfast, I snack on some grapes and, at B’s request, blast 7 Days A Week by They Might Be Giants. This is the consummate children’s song for any household that dreams of a self-determined world. Over the next hour I take B to school; make myself a real breakfast (a soy chorizo and egg taco); and browse TikTok. Eventually I find a series about this Gamestop situation by a smart Irish woman and L and I watch it together. When it’s over we feel like shrewd stock brokers ready to win money, and L gets to work teaching virtually.
I spend the morning painting our front door and our kitchen wall to prep our house to sell, and talking to my (other) little sister on the phone. She’s an HR person with a job that’s taken her far away from our family, and we don’t talk that often. It is so good to catch up on her life. After that I have a fun, day-off Zoom call with longtime bestie and coworker K. We drink coffee and talk about The Future.
12:30 pm: I make lunch (tomato soup with goat cheese on top, and a savory scone on the side) and get a text from another bestie, M, who offers me a little grant writing contract work this week. Yay! I love them and love working with them. Next, I order our groceries for the week. I get baking powder, eggs, cremini mushrooms, vegan sausage patties, oat milk, ginger root, shredded cheddar cheese, plantains, black beans, doggy bags, broccoli, vegan chicken strips, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, capers, ciabatta bread, grits, bananas, avocados, greek yogurt, and on impulse, a pineapple on sale (?!). Maybe B will love it. The total comes to $94.08.
1:15 pm: I do a brief power vinyasa class in B’s room and take a shower. It takes me approximately two Drake songs to shower and dry off, as I don’t have to wash my hair today and I never shave. I work on my resume until L and I leave to pick up B. On the way home we stop at the park to play, and then we all get in the car to pick up groceries.
6:30 pm: We get home later than planned and eat together: leftover tofu ramen for us and veggie lasagna for B, who is so sleepy that he hardly touches his lasagna. L gets him in the bath around 7:15 and I run through my evening routine. There’s a lot going on in the house - preschool lunch and clothes to put up, a mountain of laundry in our room, all of the groceries for the week waiting to be put away, and dinner dishes are languishing in the sink. L starts on chores while I get B dressed.
As I’m dressing B, my mom Facetimes and B shows her several of his board books. While we’re talking my dad texts me a heart emoji - he overheard B and my mom talking from his room. He lives with a disability and a painful illness, so he goes to bed very early. We hang up with my mom and record a video of B making “P” sounds and saying “I love you” to my dad, and send it over. This is the first time B’s ever said “I love you!” Huge news. We read books and fall asleep next to B.
9 pm: I wake up and nudge L but he wants to keep sleeping. I go clean the dinner dishes, put away the food and reorganize the cabinets and fridge, and mop the kitchen floor while I listen to The Daily’s latest reporting on QAnon believers who are at once totally bananagrams and also remind me very much of my aunt. L wakes up at 9:30 because he and Y, my sister’s boyfriend, are gonna game. Cute! He finishes the laundry and I fold a few diapers to help out. Then we lay in bed together until game time, when I fall asleep.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 94.08
✨DAY 3: SATURDAY✨
5:40 am: Wake up at a ~*~weekend hour~*~!! Start my kettle, clean and moisturize my face, pull out the ingredients for waffles, and pick up around the house while I wait for it to boil. I try to read some, but get bored a few pages in. I’m currently reading How to Do Nothing and it’s good enough, but I think I need to chill on the nonfiction and read, like, saucy romance novels with hot bisexual leads. Send me your recs please!
Waffle time! This recipe is my go-to. I recommend whipping the egg whites first. B wakes up around 7:15 and helps me cook which is cute and very messy. He eats his waffle with honey, peanut butter, and grapes. L wakes up after him - he had a late night gaming!
8 am: I open yesterday’s mail and find an anti-abortion DVD from L’s grandma. It’s Abby Johnson’s “memoir.” Abby Johnson is an opportunistic right winger and documented liar who once moonlighted as a Planned Parenthood clinic manager. L is a preacher’s kid, so we’re not surprised to receive this from his grandma. For example: 10 years ago, when L and I were a couple years into our relationship, her Christmas gift to me was a book about how one can recover from being a slut by getting married and finding Jesus. This particular package really sends me over the edge, though. I decide to write them a short note later that states my own experience with abortion and sets a clear boundary on this kind of propaganda, and includes an article about Abby Johnson’s bullshit life. It’s unlikely this will change their minds - they are septuagenarian Southern Baptists, after all - but at least I’ll be in my integrity.
In the meantime, I group text L’s siblings, and they commiserate with us. His one sibling who is transitioning shares that grandma recently sent them a book about how to tell your gay friends they’re sinning. We agree that’s hilariously dense (and fucking rude) of her, and talk about how everyone under forty is a gay slut living their best life, so really it’s grandma’s loss. During this time I clean the kitchen, finish the waffles, and freeze them for B’s weekday breakfasts.
9:30 am: B asks to use the potty and does a great job peeing on his own! He’s geeked about it and is especially excited to have my parents on Facetime cheering him on. After that we head out on our morning walk. L takes B to the playground and I take O to the dog park nearby. She gets tired pretty quick and we all head to the thrift store. We need chairs for our hand-me-down kitchen table. The ones that came with it are awkwardly wide. L spots two sturdy ones that are just $5 each. Score! $10
11:30 am: B and L are both wiped out once we get home. They eat lunch and go to sleep. I clean up the kitchen, repot one of my plants, water our porch plants, and eat some leftover ramen for lunch. The Marie Antoinette episode of You’re Wrong About keeps me company all the while. 10/10 would recommend.
2 pm: B wakes up and eats some lunch. We watercolor together for a while (he on his big paper, I in my bullet journal), then walk down the street to the local high school while L preps potatoes for our fondue. The high school grounds are open on the weekends, and there’s an amphitheatre on site. B loves the echo in there.
4:30 pm: L joins us in the amphitheatre and together we drag B two blocks back home. I prep the fondue: brie, gouda, and more gouda with white wine. It ends up being a little clumpy but so delicious. My sister, J, and her boyfriend, Y arrive while I’m cooking. Y brings yummy baguettes from his bakery job for the dipping and we prep broccoli, green beans, and tempeh too. We sit down in our new chairs to eat and for the zillionth time I am so thankful we’ve been able to make a pod together this year. Fondue would be a terrifying proposition with anyone else, really.
While we eat, Y tells us he put in his two weeks at the bakery because their COVID protocols aren’t so tight and his coworkers are continuing to go to bars and out to eat. His plan for now is to get back on unemployment and find a virtual job sometime soon. Both he and my sister have worked food service their whole adult lives so the pandemic has been tough on them. Besides the fact that they’re delightful and perfect, this is one key reason we’re planning to move with them to our new city this summer: L and I will be able to easily afford the majority of the rent, deposits, and utilities on a pretty big, and centrally located, house. Living together will allow us to grow our savings and take our time looking for a Forever Home, and will allow J and Y to pay really low rent as my sister goes back to school full time and Y looks for a full-time job. I’m really looking forward to living with them and know it’ll be good for B, too. They leave around 7 pm and we put B to bed, this time without falling asleep ourselves!
8:30 pm: Turn on How I Met Your Mother in bed and the episodes are baaaaad bad. One entire episode casts sex workers as a punch line. Ick. L and I agree to find a new show, and fall asleep around 10.
11 pm - 2 am: B is up and between our two beds. Wahhhh.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 10
✨DAY 4: SUNDAY✨
6 am: Up and at ‘em! Discover I’m out of my fancy coffee and don’t want to emphasize the flavor of our grocery store beans with a slow pour, so make a french press instead. B wakes up too early so we watch toddlers together on TikTok while I drink my coffee, then read books while L makes us all eggs for breakfast. We head out for our morning walk around 9 am and stop at a coffee shop a few blocks away. I pick up Counter Culture’s Iridescent beans, buy an espresso brownie on a whim, and tip the cashier because she’s so sweet and tipping is good. The total is 23.03. L takes B to the playground and I drop my purchases and O back at the house before I head out for a run.
9:45 am: It’s 65 degrees and my run is glorious. I run to the water and pause Lil Yachty for a minute to take it all in. Once home I shower and put on a black LA Apparel catsuit and a marled black and white cocoon sweater from AA of the past (I like what I like!). We feed B lunch and then L puts him down while I clean up.
Around 11:30, J comes over after to watch B while we remove the storm windows from our whole house and clean the windows underneath as part of our work to prep the house for sale. We’re a solid team: L removes the storm windows and caulks all the gaps in the wood while I follow behind him and wash the windows inside and out. Our sweet neighbor catches us cleaning and offers to let us use her power washer for free next weekend to clean up the front of the house. I resolve to bake them some cookies.
2:30 pm: We are done with the window operation and it’s time for me to water all 57 plants in the house. Along the way, discover that I overwatered B’s hoya last week and it’s rotting. Noooo! I unpot it on the porch to dry the roots, but it’s raining so this might not work. There’s only one surefire solution: buy a replacement plant! I try to convince L we should go to the nursery, but he’s not so into it. I walk around dejectedly with a towel to clean up all the water I spilled, and Zelle J $70 for babysitting even though she insists she would do it for free. Next B, L, and I share a snack: crackers with goat cheese and harissa. Mmm. B skips the harissa but loves the goat cheese. Meanwhile I begin to stress about making dinner. We’d planned goddess bowls but L and I just aren’t feeling it after our marathon of house work. L requests Chinese and is suddenly more amenable to visiting the nursery, which is near our favorite Chinese takeout spot. Score!
5:00 pm: We leave the plant shop with a heartleaf philodendron for B’s room and a giant, lovely, perfect monstera deliciosa just because. The total comes to $53.24. Then we pick up our food: $33.08 including the tip. L ordered a large veggie lo mein to share with B and General Tso’s chicken, and I got family style tofu and vegetables. We start B’s bedtime routine at 6:30 and he’s out by 7:00 - early for him!
After he’s down, L preps his breakfast sandwiches for the week and I do some dishes. Then we take mutual advantage of the extra hour we have together. Even after 12 years it’s always so good with L. I fall asleep around 10 pm feeling blessed.
🌿 Daily total: 179.32
✨DAY 5: MONDAY✨
5 am: I make my pour over and get started on work first thing. I have a couple of deadlines this week and the side gig to balance so I’m already feeling pressed for time! I wrap up an entire grant report before 6 am and feel very accomplished. Then I pause work to start our breakfast, which is all pre-prepped, hallelujah. While L and B eat breakfast, I get dressed in a black turtleneck minidress, busted old tights, black ankle socks, and my Doc Martens.
I help L load up the car with B and all his gear, and tell L to be careful. Today is L’s first day back teaching in person since December, and we’re both nervous since COVID is still running wild in our red state. On the way to work he fills up his car for $18.33.
2:30 pm: After another grant report, seventy gajillion emails, forty Slack messages, and several hours of Zoom calls, I’m ready for a break. I finish eating the quinoa salad I prepped during Zoom call #2 and then eat a pear too. I see our Misfits box has been delivered. It’s $30 a week, and is included in our monthly expenses. I unpack it, clean the counters, wipe down the bathroom sinks, take O for a walk, and sit down to work on my side gig grant report, which is due Wednesday. I set a 30 minute timer because I don’t want to be too late picking up B.
4:25 pm: Worked longer than I meant to! Pack some snacks and pick up B. On the way home we get a giant bag of potting soil so I can repot those plants. It’s $18.52. Come home and engage in B’s favorite winter activity: pressing all the buttons in the turned-off car. Meanwhile, in another car across town, L picks up a big bag of Purina One, butter, maple syrup, and applesauce. That total is $28.64.
5:30 pm: The whole family is home and we kick it inside until it starts to get dark. L and I gather all the things and take the creatures out for a walk even though there’s a light, but very cold, rain happening. B is cranky and so are we, so the walk is quick.
We eat leftover Chinese food around 7 and start B’s bedtime routine. B falls asleep at 8 and I update this diary for a while, then go watch Ted Lasso in bed with L til about 9:30. It’s much better than How I Met Your Mother, for the record.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 65.51
✨Day 6: TUESDAY✨
3 am: B wakes up and needs a diaper change. I have the hardest time falling back asleep after: I can’t stop thinking about how I left B’s hoya out in the cold with its roots exposed most of the day yesterday and into tonight. But it’s too cold for me to get up again and pull it inside! So instead I toss and turn and hope it’s not dead yet.
6 am: L’s alarm wakes me up! No early morning reading and writing time for me. I get right up, make a giant pour over, and get breakfast together while L wakes up B. Then I actually sit down with them to eat: B and I both eat boiled eggs with everything but the bagel seasoning and some coconut milk yogurt, and L sips his coffee while his breakfast sandwich heats in the oven. I get dressed in my workout gear and walk the dog while L gets B ready for school. They leave, and I finally bring the hoya in, and start work, around 7:30. L buys coffee and snacks from the gas station on his way to work: $6.88.
9:30 am: I grab some crackers and peanut butter from the kitchen and notice a DMV bill on the fridge I’ve been meaning to pay, but don’t totally understand. I call them up and respond to emails while I sit on hold. Turns out I owe the DMV $10 for paying my Dad’s van insurance late. With the “processing fee” it comes to $11.17.
1:30 pm: Been on Zoom calls all morning, and decide to switch over to the side gig work for a bit. Meanwhile I eat that quinoa salad I prepped yesterday. At 2 pm, my longtime bestie and neighbor F comes over and we take O for a walk in the park together and have such a good conversation. While the context is (very) different, I’m reminded of the Toni Morrison quote when I think of F: “She’s a friend of my mind.” Such a gem, and such a smartie. At 3:30 I start a HIIT yoga class and it kicks my butt even though it’s only 20 minutes long. Afterwards, I shower and pick up B.
5:00 pm: L arrives home while B and I are playing, and we get in the car once more to check out a cute couch L scoped out on Facebook marketplace. It’s a sweet vintage brown velvet actually-for-real midcentury situation. Unfortunately we discover it’s also small and very uncomfortable. $200 not spent. Once home, my family goes for a walk and I make dinner - this grits and beans recipe from NYT cooking. It’s blessedly quick to pull together. Meanwhile D texts me and says my overalls are ready! YAY! She’s gonna drop them off in a couple of days. She says the total is $30. I include a tip and Venmo her $40.
7:00 pm: At bedtime, B cannot get enough of his books and we read All The World several times. He finally falls asleep around 8:20 and L and I eat dinner on the couch, with Ted Lasso. I drink a glass of red wine, which is a mistake: my anxiety spikes right after, my stomach hurts, and I can’t sleep. This is very upsetting as I want very much to be a wine mom. Does this happen to anyone else?
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 58.05
✨DAY 7: WEDNESDAY✨
5:45 am: Wake up with B cuddled into my back - L moved him to our bed in the middle of the night after his second wake up. Get my coffee and breakfast together and sit down at my computer to work on the side gig grant while everyone's asleep. Then L and I manage the morning rush together. I eat sourdough toast, two scrambled eggs, and some pineapple along the way.
7:30 am: Take O out for a walk and on a whim decide to listen to one of my favorite easy-listening pods: A Beautiful Mess. Normally the two sisters and co-hosts, Elsie and Emma, chat about things like home decor or craft making or how to balance kids and work. This episode is about the host’s evangelical upbringing, though, and is a real raw and honest tear jerker. Pair it with this, one of my top reads of 2020: “What Does the White Evangelical Want?” It gets me thinking about L’s upbringing in the church. He and all his siblings are all agnostic now.
Finally sit down at my desk and debate taking Adderall. I used it regularly in college and for a few years after in order to Do All The Things. I try to stay away from it now - I’m not trying to live an impossible life any more - but I also really want to pick B up earlier than normal today, and that means I need to meet all my deadlines and make it through two Zoom calls with my direct reports by 3 pm. I decide to take 4 mg. Right after I take it, three different friends text me at once and then, suddenly, I’ve spent an hour catching up via text. Get to work for real around 9 am.
3:00 pm: Wrapped all my calls, answered all my emails, washed all the dishes, ate some lunch, and finished the side gig work! OK Adderall, you beautiful bitch. Spend a few more minutes tying up loose ends and then gather my things to pick B up from school. The plan today is to go “play basketball” in the park near his school because he is OBSESSED with balls, and I’m trying to do more magical things every day with him. It’s cold but I’m ready to brave it on his precious, curly-headed behalf.
At 4 pm J calls and asks to go pick him up with me. Hooray, things just got even more magical! We head to a different-than-usual park together and run around until B sits in, and then drinks from, a puddle. We panic and J googles “What happens if my baby drinks from a puddle?” The search returns lots of stories of babies eating muddy rocks and surviving, so we decide it’s ok.
5:00 pm Head home and L is back from work! We take the smols on a walk and I tell L that I think nighttime screentime is making me anxious. I’m a sensitive creature and I really don’t want to blame the wine. He’s very perfect so he helps me think through an alternate plan for this evening: hot tea and book reading in bed, and maybe sex, too! Fun.
Next, I head home with O to pot the plants we bought the other day, and L takes B to the playground. They get back around 6:30 and I am very excited to reveal my new plant placements. Everyone feigns interest except O. Then we eat leftovers together and B gets in bed around 7:30. L and I promptly fall asleep next to him and don’t wake up again til 11 pm. Guess our new nighttime routine will have to wait til tomorrow!
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 0
❤️ Section 5: TOTALS
Total Expenses: $478.71
Food & Drink: $220.25
Fun & Entertainment: $0
Home & Health: $109.01
Clothes & Beauty: $40
Transport: $29.50
Other: $79.95
❤️ Section 6: REFLECTION
This week reflects a new normal for us, I think! We just set the goal of saving up for another down payment in December, and that’s when I swore off online shopping both to save money and to stop lining the pockets of evil billionaires like Bezos (no shade to anyone who uses Amazon, this is purely a personal goal & I’m not sure I can meet it). This self-imposed rule is helping me reign in my discretionary spending overall. L and I have only been living a two-income, middle class life for a few years, and my lifestyle creep was a little out of control in 2020. That said, I can and do still regularly justify spending money on things that make life more luxurious and beautiful - like a $40 candle or a totally unnecessary but very lovely plant.
There are a couple of things not reflected in this diary that we regularly spend on: gifts (my achilles heel - for example, we spent three! thousand! dollars! on Christmas gifts in December), and medical bills. Both B and I had to visit the emergency room in 2020 and we are still getting random bills in the mail as our insurance company and the hospital duke it out. As I was editing this diary on Thursday, I received one for $787. Wahhhh. I think I’m gonna get on a payment plan, but even so that it will be over $200 a month.
Last thought: this process got me thinking in some detail about the contradiction of organizing for the fall of capitalism (and the rise of a more gentle and just economic system), yet believing everyone - including ourselves and our own families - deserve to live full and abundant lives. This means I compromise my own anti-capitalist values and beliefs every day, in big and small ways. Discuss?

So this is my first post here and I hope I'm in the correct subreddit. I've been wanting to say this little story and it happened a couple of months ago when the Covid pandemic was already rampant hence we were working from home.
So a bit of background, I am a (26F) software developer in a small private company where we specialise in custom applications. At times we receive calls from our clients [the system owners] or their users and provide them with tech support. It is important to note that since we have several systems done by different developers, some of us would be specialised in a certain system more than others, hence when the users call, we usually route it to one of the developers who implemented it.
On this particular day, I was still setting up my laptop because I had suffered a hardware failure the previous day and the hard disk decided to go kaputt (What joy). I had just made myself some tea and was going to start the day when the phone rang and I picked it up. An agitated voice came from the other side

$me : "Hello. This is Company XYZ"
$user: "I AM TRYING TO DO A PASSWORD RESET BUT IT IS NOT WORKING!!!! I'VE ALREADY RECEIVED 5 EMAILS FROM YOUR SIDE!! THIS NEVER HAPPENED AND THE PASSWORD STILL DOESN'T WORK"
$me : "Hi miss, please tell me which system you are referring to, as to see whether I can help you"
$user : "It's _____"
$me: "I will check with someone who has access to that system as currently I cannot. Usually I take care of them but my laptop died yesterday and I'm still setting it up. What is happening exactly please?"
$user : "I've forgotten my password and requested a new one! The new one didn't work and now I received like 5 emails from your side. MAKE IT STOOOOOOOOP AND MAKE MY PASSWORD WOOOORK"

Meanwhile I was messaging my colleagues who I knew worked on this system whether they could give me a hand. Usually I handle this system myself but due to that hardware failure I mentioned, I couldn't be of use

$me : "Is it showing any..error? Or messages? Maybe it would help us more?"
$user: "YES IT IS SAYING IT IS INCORREEEEEECT. Please do help me as I have work to do and this is basically wasting my time! Why isn't my password working. Why is it so complicated to change a password???"

I've checked with my colleagues and the developer ($dev1) who usually handles this issue hasn't come in yet

$me : "Hi miss, Currently the person in charge of this isn't available yet but me your details with me please so that we can send you an email or call you when we have investigated. We shall try to get to you as fast as possible"

​
So the user gives me her details and goes on her not-so-merry way. Meanwhile, I manage to contact another colleague ($dev2) to check whether we can check it off together from her machine since I still don't have access. We were checking logs, database errors, audit logs trying to debug the error. Not 10 minutes pass that this same user calls..

$me : "Hello This is-"
$user: "STOP SENDING ME MORE EMAILS!!! THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! WHAT COMPANY ARE YOU?? STOP IT, ANOTHER 5 EMAILS ARRIVED IN 10 MINUTES! DO YOUR JOB AND MAKE THE PASSWORD WORK! STOOOOOOOOOP SENDING ME EMAAAAIIIILLLSSSSSSS"

*SLAMS THE PHONE*
I stare dumbfounded at my laptop and call back $dev2 to try and help me out. Meanwhile the developer ($dev1) I was waiting for logged online and added him to the call.

$me : "HEY I need your help, a user just called and she wants my head on a plate screaming at me as her password reset isn't working"
$dev1: "Sure let's check"

So we go through the audit logs and find out that she requested 10 password resets... Strange. We tried the password reset (on our accounts) ourselves, and lo and behold. It works. So we try to go through any log we can find.. server logs, check for any downtimes, error logs. Nothing. All is stellar.
She calls again around 10 minutes later...I sigh and tell $dev1 to stay with me on the call as this wasn't going to be pleasant at all.

$me: "Hello This is -"
$user: "What did I tell you to STOP SENDING ME EMAILS!!!"
$me: "Wait wait before you start shouting at me. I have a colleague who can help you and he is online. Like I said I CANNOT help you as my laptop died yesterday."

I rope my colleague in the same call. Meanwhile we both go on Discord so we can communicate whilst one is muted.
​

$dev1: "Hello Good Morning, can I help you?",

Please note that my colleague is a male.
​

$user: "Oh hello!"

With the sweetest tone ever. No roughness, no demands, no aggression, no screaming.... Nothing. She heard a male's voice and just went cute puppy mode.
​

$user: "My password isn't working! I tried telling your colleague but -"
$dev1: "Yes she briefed me up and we are checking about it. Don't worry WE are trying to fix it but we need to ask you WHAT steps you took because we found 10 PASSWORD reset requests. That means that Either you or someone else is pressing the FORGOT PASSWORD and entering your id"
$user: "Yes yes, me and my colleagues were pressing them as NONE of passwords wooooorked"

So much for blaming me for sending her 10 passwords but anyway...
​

$dev1: "Each time you press the button, the password will change and the system will send you a new email. Do you know that? Are you sure you are inserting the LATEST password?"
$user "Yes I am Sure!!! I tried it multiple times but it is always showing me incorrect password. I even wrote it on a PIECE OF PAPER and typed in letter by letter but nothing is working! ohh please do help me! I'm pressed for work and this is wasting my tiiiime"
$me: "Can you please try the process again whilst we are on the phone with you so we can catch any errors should they happen?"

The user scoffs.

$dev1: "Yes OP is right. Please do a password reset and tell us when it is done"
$user: "Ohh okei! Give me a second because my computer is far away from my phone and I have to get to the table".

Her sweet voice never falters when she speaks to $dev1
So we hear her footsteps scuttling away whilst me and $dev1 are discussing about what could be the issue and monitoring any changes happening in the last few seconds / minutes
​

$user : "I did the password reset"
$dev1 : "Yes I can see it now, did you enter the password it gave you?"
$user : "Yes and the saaaaaaame happened. It says the password is incorrect. What's wrong with your company and the passwords???"

​
Me and $dev1 just went silent as we couldn't understand what the problem was. There were no errors. Nothing. I tried it, he tried - all worked. What could be the issue?
​

$dev1: "Everything is working fine miss. Nothing is wrong from our side. Can you please send us the email you last received so we try it ourselves please?"
$user: "Yes wait a second to get some paper and pen to write your emails"

She scuttles off again whilst we are pondering what the issue is. Some seconds later
​

$user: I am here, what are your emails?

​
I proceed to spell out our email addresses and we hear her scuttling back to her computer to send us the email. Unbeknownst to her, we could still hear some of the background noise of her and her colleagues, and that's when we heard her voice, her glorious loud voice giving off the most exaggerated and surprised screech as if she has discovered some universal mystery.
​

$user : "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I KNOW WHAT IS WRONG!!!! THE KEYBOARD ISN'T WORKING LOOK!!! THE KEYS. THEY DON'T TYPE LOOK. I PRESS AND NOTHING!".

​
And I lost it. Oh dear reddit, I fucking lost it. I had tears streaming down my face, holding my sides trying not to fall from my chair. I was laughing so hard I nearly choked and my family members thought I was going bonkers. My colleague wasn't in a better shape but he managed to keep it more together. All that abuse I suffered from her, that morning, all that shouting, slamming of the phone, looking down on me ... Only to find her keyboard DOESN'T WORK had turned me into laughing maniacally.
​
We hear her scuttling back to the phone whilst I muted completely as I was still laughing my ass off. Remember, she didn't know we were eavesdropping
​

$user: "Hi, forget everything I said, the keyboard doesn't work. that's why the passwords weren't changing. when I was writing letter by letter I didn't notice they weren't working since they come up as black dots but whilst writing your email addresses I noticed!!! [She doesn't use copy / paste people]. I will tell the IT people to change my keyboard. Thank you and goodbyeeeeee"

​
No apologies for her insults, her rudeness or her behaviour towards me (mostly suspecting because I'm a female). Nothing, as if nothing happened.
She wasted an hour and a half in all...
​
TL;DR - $user tries to reset password. Blames us for the incorrect ones. $user discovers most of her keyboard doesn't work.
EDIT: The password sent by email is just a temporary and randomly generated password which will be changed upon first login with it. The actual password is safely stored and securely hashed just in case it wasn't clear :)
EDIT2: the system has since changed and now their login is connected to an SSO they use so this password thing cannot happen again. The system was old, over 15 years and we were rewriting it. I cannot go into more specifics without giving me away but all I can say is it was a known issue and couldn't do much about it

On December 12th I tried to withdraw some money from Binance.
P.S Please upvote, I'm probably going to get attacked online by the user symbiotic_bnb who works for binance and every time ive had an issue on their reddit, ive received snarky replies and my thread has been removed.
However, my bank decided that they would no longer accept payments from Binance, even though they are using their partner: Clear Junction. The reason was:

BINANCE DIGITAL LIMITED
(Company number 12340481)
Hub 26 Hunsworth Lane, Cleckheaton, England, BD19 4LN
is registered as "Business and domestic software development" but in fact participates in cryptocurrency transactions and holdings.
Ordinarily, we do not allow for crypto payments >> please see our AUP 1.2.2.c.> "Companies involved in the exchange or trading of cryptocurrencies, or any other virtual currencies."
Including payments for the purpose of purchasing cryptocurrencies.
Our regulation on crypto currency payments only allow for payments from platforms that are regulated and / or supervised in the EU or the UK.

My bank refunded the payment on December 14th.
The money didn't re-appear in my account so I contacted binance support (which was a gruelling 4 hours wait) to ask them where my money was. They sent me a receipt to tell me the money had transferred to my bank and was accepted. I told them it wasnt. I showed them the screenshot that my bank app provided to show it had being refunded.
They told me they had contacted their fiat team and the clear junction team and are waiting to hear back. As soon as I end the chat, I will get an automatic message with an explanation. Sounds a bit weird so I asked why do I have to end the chat? They told me it would generate the email automatically.
So I did, assuming it was just some badly designed interface. To my surprise I did get an email from them, however the email just said that it had been escalated to a ticket and I will be contacted again in 48hours:

Dear User,
Your inquiry in chat has been upgraded to a ticket for further processing, your ticket number is: XXXXXX. We will respond to your request within 48 hours.
If you have any questions or additional requests, please reply to this ticket.

As this is usual with a lot of places, I thought meh.. its shitty but I'll just wait. Annoyed I didnt have my money but I could wait.
I then got an email about 4 days later:

Thanks for your patience! Our apologies for the amount of time it had taken for me to get back to you. Our team has received a high volume of inquiries and we've been answering them in the order received, thanks for your patience during the period.
We understand that your bank has returned back your GBP FIAT withdrawal. However, we have yet to receive the money that they claim to have returned to us. Will you please ask them to provide transaction records of the refund? As well as the refund reference number?
We are looking forward in hearing back from you. Thank you for your continued patronage.

I contacted my bank whom sent me a whole pdf with all the information on, including the faster payments ID used to return the refund, bank details, dates and confirmation. I replied to the email with these details, This was the 22nd December. (8 days after this whole thing started)
I didn't hear anything back so I went on to the chat again 2 days later (again waiting for hours) I was then told that the fiat team is monitoring my account and working on the final part of the transfer and I will have my result in 48 hours. At this point I was getting frustrated so I started recording my screens for the chats to binance and taking screenshots.
Then Christmas came along and I thought, give them the benefit of the doubt, its xmas now so i'll wait until the new year and try again. I mean banks and stuff are closed anyway.
In January, around 7th I went back onto the binance chat which had a whopping '498' people in the queue and took me almost 5 hours to get to speak to someone. They told me "I am not sure why you were told 48 hours but it takes longer than that". I asked what was happening and they said they have contacted the fiat team and when I end that chat I will get my answer.
so again, I ended the chat and was hit with the same message, it will take 48 hours.

It seems binance support are just trying to get you off the chat queue as soon as possible without actually doing anything.

Again, I wait patiently and put it to the back of my mind. A few days later, I find myself back in the queue and finally get put through to a representative is who is actually behaving like a child.
They tell me they need my email, and account ID and for me to go on the app and get this information. I told them "I am using the binance app for support, I cant leave this screen as it closes my chat down and ive been waiting for hours"
They reply with: "It will not close the chat only place it on hold"
I replied with: "Yes it will, I have done this twice before so please just use my email, can you see my previous message where I give it?"
Then they proceed to argue with me about whether or not the app will actually close. At this point, I am like, dude, Why are you arguing when I am telling you what happens. Just do your job and get me the information about my ticket.
They reply: "ok"
After, 3 mins, they ask me for my email again.. FML !!!!!
This chat also concluded with a "We will contact you in 48 hours" and "There is nothing more to tell you".
A week later (today) I contact binance support again to ask what is happening and explain that it has been a whole month since my refund had happened and I still have had 0 information and why no one is even replying to my tickets.
After confirming my account, and reading through my messages I am told to wait why they check my account. After several minutes and me having to keep typing messages to keep the auto chat shut off timer from kicking me out I get this:
https://imgur.com/a/KwMJcPZ
Like, WT actual fuck are they doing? What else would I be talking about except the ticket I am enquiring about.
So, we go through the whole thing again, and I confirm with them "Do you know what we are talking about?". To which I get a yes.
After several more minites I get the response the fiat team are dealing with it, and it will take 3 days to process the payment. By this pointI have 0 confidence with the support team so I check where the payment will be procesed and then they ask for the details again I have already provided:
https://imgur.com/7tTteU3
I tell them I have provided it, but they tell that It does not contain the refund date. I send them all the information again:
https://imgur.com/1visPYL
I then send them another screenshot with the refund date in a red box.
Then they ask me for the Transaction ID (which is on the screenshot I sent them):
https://imgur.com/cISBtvR
So I send them it again.
then after a few mins of waiting, they ask me if I want to open a ticket? WTF!!!!!
https://imgur.com/CHRlUW2
I tell them I want an answer to when this is going to be done, when they will pay me and what the reason for waiting a month is for and then they land this beauty on me:
https://imgur.com/e4IrTeF
and without any more prompting it gets sweeter:
https://imgur.com/6pfJTeo
After a few more minutes of them telling me they will open a ticket and I will be updated soon I just end the chat. This whole ordeal wasted hours of my time, on several occasions. There is still no resolution, I still do not have the refund, there is no offer of compensation, zero competence in the support team and I am in the process of submitting a claim with all the evidence and emails and information to the Financial Ombudsman. Binance are supposedly trying to open a UK branch (binance.uk) I'm hoping this causes issues.
EDIT: My case and point earlier about the reddit user has come true.. if only I could predict crypto markets this well.