Retirement Advice From Those Who Learned the Hard Way

[rapmarks]

I suppose when you don’t make the sale you end up vilifying the poor people.

Boy, that would be me getting vilified. husband was really good at saying in front of salesman “it’s up to you, we can get it if you want it”

 

[DrQ]

Boy, that would be me getting vilified. husband was really good at saying in front of salesman “it’s up to you, we can get it if you want it”

I gotcha!

When I would get a particular aggressive "richard", I occasionally use the term "salesweasel" and point out that the sooner we get our "prize", the sooner they get to try their pitch on the next victim. I'm just getting in the way of them closing any more deals for the day.

 

[winger]

Then at 70 collecting max SS payments I will party like it's 1999.

Party in your timeshares!!!

 

[TheTimeTraveler]

BTW we were just told at our annual checkup diagnostic that we needed a new battery charging module.

PERFORMED VEHICLE SCAN AND FOUND FAULTY P31EA00 BATTERY CHARGER CHARGING MODULE 2 FAULTY IN MEMORY. ...RECOMMEND TO REPLACE J966 MODULE

Do you think this would be still covered by the warranty since it involves the Battery Charger? The VW dealer told us it would be $900 to repair. I am going back to the VW dealer to confirm that it is not covered in the warranty especially with the Calif warranty law.

I'd try a different VW Dealer..... It may be worth it due to warranty interpretation and you just may get lucky!

All it costs you is time to find out......





.

 

[artringwald]

 

[HitchHiker71]

Thanks for the information, this is good to know and well worth considering. I've been looking at the 2023 Model 3 Long-range. Does that one have the FRP pack?

I just realized I never directly answered your question since you were asking about the M3 LR. Currently the only US model Tesla that uses a FRP battery pack is the M3 RWD base model. The M3 LR and/or the M3P (Performance) still use a NMC higher energy density battery pack, as has been the case since Tesla started selling this model in 2018.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

I'd try a different VW Dealer..... It may be worth it due to warranty interpretation and you just may get lucky!

All it costs you is time to find out......





.

Thanks for the great advice. We will try another dealer since the current dealer doesn't consider this part of the "high voltage system."

Thanks to everyone's advice, we will keep the eGolf for now. After which warranty below does it become extremely expensive to repair that everyone is worried about? i.e. should we aim to sell next year (5 year warranty) or 8 years to replace the vehicle? We only have about 23k on the vehicle.

- 5 years/60,000 miles power train and high voltage system
- 8 years/100,000 miles for the battery for defects/workmanship and net capacity below 70%

 

[HitchHiker71]

@HitchHiker71 Your thoughts are much appreciated.

Can you provide the source of the statement about California Warranty law? I googled and there are too many articles with legalese.

All, I also don't know what "High Voltage System" means in the current 5 year warranty. Do you think that includes a battery charger module?

Yes, I would consider anything associated to the J966 module to be part of the high voltage system by definition. This TSB might apply to your situation: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2017/MC-10126854-9999.pdf

Here's a quick synopsis of the components included in the HVS:

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Thank you! Can you provide me with the source on your definition above? I would like to share it with the dealer.

BTW...this TSB is for 2016. I own a 2019. However the situation described of not charging is what we are experiencing.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Thank you! Can you provide me with the source on your definition above? I would like to share it with the dealer.

BTW...this TSB is for 2016. I own a 2019. However the situation described of not charging is what we are experiencing.

The 8 Main High-voltage Components in Electric Cars

The top eight essential high voltage components needed in an electric vehicle. BMS, electric motor, electric compressor, MCU, DC/DC, PDU, OBC, PTC heater and high voltage cables consist of the high voltage system of an EV.

www.guchen-eac.com

VW affectionately calls the J966 module the "Charger manager" module, but it's really called the High-Voltage Battery Charging Voltage Control Module to be specific. Per the article above - this is what the article refers to as the OBC or the On-Board Charge module. This includes the connector or the charging socket - since I'm not sure from the description you pasted from the dealer what exactly is faulty.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Thank you @HitchHiker71 Wow Tuggers are the best! Who needs ChatGPT when you have the TUG team?

I am disappointed the dealer is interpreting this so narrowly under the High Voltage Warranty. I am going to have to request the official warranty because we never received one AFAIK because we initially leased it then we bought out at end of lease.

If they don't honor this I will never buy VW again. This may also rule out a future Audi under consideration since this is the same corp. I don't have time to fight for warranty repair.

 

[Chrispee]

Generally speaking if you’re having trouble getting a dealership to do a repair that you think should be under warranty, it’s the manufacturer who has rejected it. It’s in the dealership’s financial interest to do the job as they get paid by the manufacturer for the work.

 

[dago]

Aren't we getting a little bit off topic? I thought this thread was about Retirement Advise?

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Apologies for the detour. Now back to the main topic.

 

[WaikikiFirst]

Retirement is a period where some doors close, and other doors open (at least for awhile.)

Status is a door that closes. People who value status will have a problem with that.
Time is a door that will open. To be happy with that, you have to be internally driven and self-disciplined. An extremely annoying (to me) advertisement I hear on the radio says that retirement is a time to be a teenager without supervision. ARRGH! YOU are the adult, and the only supervision you get is your own. And if you "blow it", there's no making up for that any more.

My retirement is busy, all with self imposed tasks. I garden, roses and other plants. I'm now keeping and breeding tropical fish. I enjoy my massive video library I built up since 1998. I read. I even do some writing, for entertainment. I trade stocks, for fun and profit. I travel occasionally. I read scientific papers in my old degree subjects (molecular biology). I post in various places from TUG to a forum on aging experiments (with working scientists - I am accepted there, even if I'm not a working scientist.) Today, I'm going to build an "impossible" computer - a Windows 7 machine on hardware that is supposedly impossible to do it on. (I like a challenge. If this works, then I'll build an Windows XP machine.) Next week is a tropical fish show in Houston.

Like my Dad in retirement, I'm busier than when I was working. . .

Ralph, you're knocking them out of the park. Not sure I could agree more. Of course, you are light-years ahead of the, um, was it "research", in the article, since you managed to list hobbies without mentioning GOLF! Honestly, anything written about retirement that mentions GOLF is nonsense. It is simply Not To Be Read.

 

[Ralph Sir Edward]

Ralph, you're knocking them out of the park. Not sure I could agree more. Of course, you are light-years ahead of the, um, was it "research", in the article, since you managed to list hobbies without mentioning GOLF! Honestly, anything written about retirement that mentions GOLF is nonsense. It is simply Not To Be Read.

Cow Pasture Pool?

(By the way, I've got Windows 7 up on the modern machine. The only thing that doesn't work so far is the Kindle for PC program. . .)

 

[SmithOp]

Well in the immortal words of Harvey Penick

"If you play golf, you are my friend".

He had lots of other great quotes.

TOP 25 QUOTES BY HARVEY PENICK | A-Z Quotes

Discover Harvey Penick famous and rare quotes. Share Harvey Penick quotations about golf, mistakes and winning. "Golf tips are like aspirin. One may do..."

www.azquotes.com

 

[DrQ]

Urgent 401(K) warning for Gen X households as research shows they have saved just a fraction of what they need for a comfortable retirement​

• Average gen X household headed for miserable retirement, new study shows
• The group - known as the 'forgotten generation' have suffered from stagnant wage growth and higher student loans, compared to baby boomers

Gen X have just $40,000 saved in their retirement plans, study shows

Millions of Americans aged between 43 and 58 are headed for a miserable retirement, experts say as they have just $40,000 saved per household.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Hasn't it always been this way? I remember seeing similar warnings in the 1990s...

 

[PigsDad]

Hasn't it always been this way? I remember seeing similar warnings in the 1990s...

Me too. This is nothing new.

Kurt

 

[jabberwocky]

Get a education in a subject with clear and obvious economic value. Don't follow your heart - follow your wallet.

I agree with much of what you’ve said - but I’d gently push back on this. Yes, make sure whatever you study will provide you with transferable skills that you can apply to a field that is economically viable.

When you find a sweet spot that allows you to both follow your passion and make a decent living you know you’ve made it.

I’ve seen too many people think that adding a few letters behind their name will be the ticket to success. While it opens the door, if you don’t love what you’re doing then you will probably need to get out sooner rather than later.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Me too. This is nothing new.

Kurt

What’s new is the asset inflation that most BBs don’t have to deal with as they bought their homes prior to the vast majority of the asset inflation and are actually advantaged due to the marked real estate asset price inflation. It makes a huge difference in the real world and is one of the reasons my generation, and particularly the younger Y/Z generations, has more difficulty saving money.

I remember debating one of our older sets of friends back in 2010 about this exact topic. At that time I was making double what he was making every year and he was lamenting this fact. They bought their nicer home in a nicer neighborhood for around 200k roughly seven years before we bought our smaller home in a less ritzy area for 389k in 2008. Almost twice the price in seven years. Our mortgage payment was more than double what his payment was at the time. That difference basically ate up the the vast majority of our income delta after taxes at the higher income level is taken into account coupled with double the mortgage payment - for a home that was smaller and in a less desirable area as well. Homes in his neighbor were another 100-120k which was beyond what we could afford at the time.

Asset price inflation way beyond CPI, on top of stagnant real wage inflation, is eating away at savings rates. It will get worse until we actually decide to solve for these problems at a macro level.

Future retirees plan to work longer, partly due to savings shortfalls

According to a new survey by the nonprofit Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, 55% of workers plan to work after they retire. That includes almost 20% who plan to work full time and more than a third who plan to work part time. Even more eye-opening: a staggering 15% of all workers...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[BJRSanDiego]

Same MO for me, but I'm very near the tipping point for an EV. I'm still driving a 2007 Hyundai Sonata that I got a great deal on when it was only 6 months old with 13K miles on it. I commuted in it for 10 years and since then have been driving it as much as possible during retirement, while sparing our newer 2015 Honda Accord from some of the wear-and-tear. Even that car is now 8 years old (54K miles on it, and still drives like new). However, the Hyundai's AC no longer works, and I'm not willing to spend the $$ to fix a 16-yo car. I've been eyeing EVs for awhile now but holding off until the ranges got better. Now they're at the point where I may finally pull the trigger.

Hyundai AC - - it depends on what the underlying issue is. But when was running 15 to 25 year old cars and the AC got weak, it was usually low on refrigerant and I'd recharge it myself. Typically took a $15 can of R134A (available at any auto parts store and some big box stores). It wasn't a permanent fix but it would give me another 2, 3, or 4 years of coolness. Just a thought....

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Many in younger generation will inherit this real estate someday.

 

[HitchHiker71]

Many in younger generation will inherit this real estate someday.

While that may or may end up being true - that doesn’t help younger generations afford the much higher mortgage payments on their homes today, nor does it help them fund retirement accounts today - and saving later in life or inheriting money later in life doesn’t provide the considerable advantage of compound interest on their own retirement savings over the long term.