Are there topics that need to be addressed for the LessWrong audience that aren’t covered in the usual literature?
I would personally be interested in a discussion of unusual financial decisions in the pursuit of unusual goals, somewhat along the lines of Early Retirement Extreme—for example, how does your financial outlook change if you don’t plan on buying a house or having a family, if you’re willing to invest a large percentage of your income rather than spend it, if you’re optimizing for efficient charity, etc.
Not buying a house is actually well treated in many good books on financial planning. Indeed, that’s one of the signals you can use to distinguish the good from the bad. Good books rationally discuss the upsides and downsides of home ownership, and who it is and is not appropriate for. Bad books tell everyone to buy a home (sometimes more than one) and make provably false statements like “home prices never go down” or “if you rent, you’re just throwing money away.”
Not having children just means everything gets a lot easier. You have a lot more money to play with without kids, but it shouldn’t change most of your financial practices.
Optimizing for maximal charitable donations: now that’s an interesting one I have not run across in the standard texts. I’d have to research that. One thing I would hope to gain by posting chapters here first would be harnessing the collective knowledge of LessWrongers who have thought about topics like to improve the content. I don’t have a lot to say about optimizing for charitable donations, but I know some other folks here do.
I would personally be interested in a discussion of unusual financial decisions in the pursuit of unusual goals, somewhat along the lines of Early Retirement Extreme—for example, how does your financial outlook change if you don’t plan on buying a house or having a family, if you’re willing to invest a large percentage of your income rather than spend it, if you’re optimizing for efficient charity, etc.
Not buying a house is actually well treated in many good books on financial planning. Indeed, that’s one of the signals you can use to distinguish the good from the bad. Good books rationally discuss the upsides and downsides of home ownership, and who it is and is not appropriate for. Bad books tell everyone to buy a home (sometimes more than one) and make provably false statements like “home prices never go down” or “if you rent, you’re just throwing money away.”
Not having children just means everything gets a lot easier. You have a lot more money to play with without kids, but it shouldn’t change most of your financial practices.
Optimizing for maximal charitable donations: now that’s an interesting one I have not run across in the standard texts. I’d have to research that. One thing I would hope to gain by posting chapters here first would be harnessing the collective knowledge of LessWrongers who have thought about topics like to improve the content. I don’t have a lot to say about optimizing for charitable donations, but I know some other folks here do.