Took 10 minutes... and most of that is the re-wording through ChatGPT to not make it sound like I was a complete moron.

Everyone should do this, as this is strictly what many of us started on this journey for.

This doesn't sound like him at all. I've posted a comment coming from the Reddit subs, but it seems like a bunch of his interviews, put into ChatGPT and spewed a bunch of negative sentiment.

I then noticed, "we must be profitable." That's not something he'd say like that. He always has learned the intersection of customers and profitability. Definitely not how his father taught him.

Welcome. Glad to see you over here.

There's plenty of posts that didn't get much either. The guy walking up at 2:45 being the more annoying one for me.

Now they're playing the place crap again (seems like the Reddit crowd needed to get more attention after all the API changes they screwed up with)

It is that bad for my situation. I've invested generically in the system for a couple decades following the all knowing advice. Put it in index funds that follow the market, don't do anything too risk adverse, you can't beat stock pickers... You know, the ones that force you to keep into that system.

It ended up being a pretty heafty amount I've accomplished before this whole saga started. 2020 was a shock to the total amount, but still doing better than most.

The main problem is the US tax code is a progressive system. The less you make, the less you pay seems to be a valid consensus.

Problem is, the higher your income (not investments as that's a different part of the code, and it's how many billionaires hold their wealth) the more that money is taxed. As any money that is taken out of a traditional account (not dealing with ROTH as that has it's own scenario... See lots of crappy parts) that money is considered income and it's placed on your top income bracket (federally the highest being 37% of the amount of money, not including state, local, county taxes which for me adds up to that tax hit in at least the 60% rate). That's a very broad overview, and I could do things to make it work, but there's a consideration of my personal obligations that also put the strain on resources (mortgage, childcare, bills).

If I were to do this hit, my only recourse is to sell quite a few of the shares (which means I guarantee the losses of decades of retirement savings I've worked for).

That amount is a drop in the bucket in the total shares you see, but we've been at this for over 2 years now, who knows how much longer it'll be before MOASS happens, let alone when I'll get that "tax hit" back.

I'm willing to pay what I need to guarantee the shares don't get sold (wasn't that the original premise). It seems the LLC route is the next step to jump over.

You can create an LLC holding company which can hold the shares as the custodian. You are the owner of that LLC, so it's a backwards way of saying the shares are in your name because you control the entity that holds the shares "for you"

It's a tax advantaged account... There's already plenty in Computershare in my name and some in the brokerages that are planned on being sold at my price, but those will likely be screwed over in some shape as well.

The tax advantaged accounts aren't for me and what I have to worry about in taxes... They're the accounts that will be donated, they'll be put through a trust and estate planning, they won't be taxed at all (in current US laws) and I don't plan on using them for myself at all. That's a huge hurdle many don't understand. The taxes I would have to pay now aren't taxes at all in the future use of these accounts. The worst part of it, is that it has to stay under the US codes because of the account, best part, it's an asset that I can hold in those accounts that will never even have to be taxed.

This is unfortunate, but seeing the total number having two commas... That's kind of a sign it's getting really close...

I mean, who is going to care about less than 0.5% of the total shares in existence?

Seems like I'll have to go create my own company. Add for those that complain about "take the tax hit." It must be nice to not have a tax hit larger than your total household income and not have family to worry about... I for one can't, I absolutely can NOT put my own family's lives in jeopardy over this. It's literally also saying, "sell shares to cover the cost."

That has been pulled for so many other things, but it's better to sell a portion of 1 share to book, rather than 40% of an individual's shares.