Four… maybe even $10/mo after the manifest v3 chaos hits in full force.

The narrator for Project Hail Mary does a great job, so maybe that will be helpful to get through the opening act. Once the meat of the story picks up, it’s pretty awesome IMO.

I’m in the same boat for Game of Thrones… Everyone says I’ll love it, but I can’t bring myself to dive in knowing it won’t be finished. Honestly, I wouldn’t have read Name of the Wind had I known, but the person who recommended it failed to mention the trilogy wasn’t finished! That being said, it leaves a lot of room for imagination, and really inspires more reading when you get to the end of book 2… with a healthy dose of utter frustration.

I had the same void to fill after finishing The Expanse series a couple years ago. But I was also still on a bit of a sci-fi “high”.

A quick series that I jumped to afterwards was The Bobiverse. It has a more casual writing style, but entertaining in its own way. I especially liked the first couple books. You and I seem to have similar tastes, so you might consider jumping into the first book to see what you think. ( the exception of strong disagreement on HHGTTG 😁, though I can understand your comment on first vs second half)

The Andy Weir books suggested by others are also great reads, but surprisingly, I would recommend them as audiobooks… because they are even better listens if you are into that. I rarely do audiobooks, but The Martian and Project Hail Mary are hands down the best listening experiences I’ve had. Typically audio doesn’t have the same charm as reading, but I have no hesitation suggesting a listen to those two!

The Last Human by Zack Jordan and Recursion by Blake Crouch were a couple nice one-off reads that had some fascinating themes as well. There were things I didn’t love, but still not bad as a transition if you didn’t feel like jumping into a whole new series.

For a recommendation totally out of left field, sounds like you enjoy deeper fictional world building. You would likely enjoy the fantasy book The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, but prepare for epic disappointment when you find out the third book of the trilogy isn’t released, and may never be written.

I would agree with the other comments that this is probably a risky idea. 90% of the time it will hold up fine without a problem, but given that the money is allocated as an emergency fund, it should be liquid and stable to help you during times of instability. I would argue that 90% isn’t good enough for this purpose.

There are currently quite a few high yield savings accounts or even money market funds with interest rates around 5%. IMO, with that level of guaranteed return, it is hard to justify putting emergency funds into any higher risk investments.

One other point to consider with stop loss and stop limit orders is that they typically only execute during market hours. It’s not unusual for the market to make big swings overnight or over weekends. In the event of a major market change, there is a good possibility that the order would execute far from the limit that was set. That in addition to the execution queue times in a sell off scenario could result in lower prices than you expect. Not to mention also the possibility of a circuit breaker stopping trading altogether if conditions are bad enough.

TL:DR do whatever you want with the rest of your money, but don’t risk your lifeline for the chance of gaining a couple extra bucks.