I will have more to say about this in the next post.
bog-standard automatic investment into index funds
Definitely preferable to not investing at all. You should at least be doing that much for now. But I think you can do a lot better than that, for less effort than you think. (And better still with more effort, if you’re in a hurry.) Which I will be explaining how to do later in the sequence.
in favor of reducing expenses
This is part of the poor-person mindset you need to break away from. Reducing expenses is not necessarily wrongper se. But you need to focus on acquiring resources instead. Think 20% conservation, and 80% acquisition, not the other way around. It’s one of the things covered in that Douglas Kruger talk I linked to. Particularly that story about the buffalo.
from “$75k income associated with happiness” to “therefore, you need $75k
It was $90k in today’s dollars, but I did suggest settling for $45k to start, and this is an oversimplification, because the exact numbers are not my point. These numbers will vary with time and place. But I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting you settle for $90k, or $45k, but that that an income is the bare minimum to be doing OK, and we will need a lot more than that to hope to afford some critically important goals that a hypothetical more enlightened culture would consider the very basic of needs: you are not immortal!
I wasn’t asking for advice, and I would appreciate it if you would avoid the lecturing tone. Assume that people you are talking to know about as much as you do about this subject.
Tone policing is a violation of my commenting guidelines.
This is a public forum with multiple readers. Don’t assume that everything I say is directed to you personally, even if it’s in a reply to your comment, unless I PM you. It’s not about you.
If I believed everybody knew as much as I do about the subject, I would not be writing the sequence at all.
It’s not about me, but you should know that many people will be less willing to listen if you take a lecturing, dictatorial tone. You can teach without doing so, and you will be a more effective teacher if you teach with emotional intelligence.
I will have more to say about this in the next post.
Definitely preferable to not investing at all. You should at least be doing that much for now. But I think you can do a lot better than that, for less effort than you think. (And better still with more effort, if you’re in a hurry.) Which I will be explaining how to do later in the sequence.
This is part of the poor-person mindset you need to break away from. Reducing expenses is not necessarily wrong per se. But you need to focus on acquiring resources instead. Think 20% conservation, and 80% acquisition, not the other way around. It’s one of the things covered in that Douglas Kruger talk I linked to. Particularly that story about the buffalo.
It was $90k in today’s dollars, but I did suggest settling for $45k to start, and this is an oversimplification, because the exact numbers are not my point. These numbers will vary with time and place. But I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting you settle for $90k, or $45k, but that that an income is the bare minimum to be doing OK, and we will need a lot more than that to hope to afford some critically important goals that a hypothetical more enlightened culture would consider the very basic of needs: you are not immortal!
I wasn’t asking for advice, and I would appreciate it if you would avoid the lecturing tone. Assume that people you are talking to know about as much as you do about this subject.
Tone policing is a violation of my commenting guidelines.
This is a public forum with multiple readers. Don’t assume that everything I say is directed to you personally, even if it’s in a reply to your comment, unless I PM you. It’s not about you.
If I believed everybody knew as much as I do about the subject, I would not be writing the sequence at all.
It’s not about me, but you should know that many people will be less willing to listen if you take a lecturing, dictatorial tone. You can teach without doing so, and you will be a more effective teacher if you teach with emotional intelligence.