61–70 of 138 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there some factor you can share that allowed you still to enjoy your “freedom” even after having kids? I share that same fear.
One thing to consider is that the sooner you have kids, the longer you get to have them in your life.
Personal financial tracking - budgeting and tracking everything in Mint or YNAB. Going from "I spend about this much total money per month" to "I spend this month in each of these categories" was big as far as having confidence in my finances.
Similarly, setting up a retirement account. You should do this as soon as you're over 18 and have a full-time job, no matter whether your salary is low.
For me, it was budgeting my money with intention. YNAB happened to be the tool that worked for me, after many failed attempts with other products. I believe that my quality of life would have been significantly better if I had started those habits earlier in my money-earning years.
Same here. I thought budgeting was only for when money is tight, but it is amazing how much clarity and overview a budget gives you over your financial situation, and how it helps in attaining even larger goals. It’s just a shame that desktop YNAB isn’t developed anymore. I will hold onto YNAB4 until it falls apart.
For me, it was budgeting my money with intention. YNAB happened to be the tool that worked for me, after many failed attempts with other products. I believe that my quality of life would have been significantly better if I had started those habits earlier in my money-earning years.
Same here. I thought budgeting was only for when money is tight, but it is amazing how much clarity and overview a budget gives you over your financial situation, and how it helps in attaining even larger goals. It’s just a shame that desktop YNAB isn’t developed anymore. I will hold onto YNAB4 until it falls apart.
I've tried giving copies to friends who live paycheck to paycheck but no one can bite the bullet of manually tracking everything.
For me, it was using version control on my code. I was up late finishing a large programming assignment for class, when inexplicably at 3 am, my code stopped compiling with a super generic error message. Turns out I had somehow added a random character at the top line, but it took me the next 1-2 hours being dumbfounded, confused, over-tired and frustrated before I found the problem. It would have been a 60 second fi…
(I imagine you can probably extend the same reasoning to many things, but for me, it was bin bags.)
For example, if I feel lonely because my friends didn't invite me to the party, don't blame them. Loneliness is my feeling, so I should do something about it. i.e. Go out and do something that I like, invite some other friends over, whatever... If I don't take any action, blaming other people for my feelings won't change how I feel.
Physics in particular has been oddly life changing. At some point I think we all look for some purpose or meaning in life. I found it in discovering how little I truly understood about our universe and how bizarre and illogical a universe we truly live in. The mystery and intrigue of our universe leaves me with that child like enthusiasm and interest for discovering ever more.
I mean understanding something relatively simple like time dilation, and its implications, is something that is sufficient to upset one's entire view of the universe. Or even very simple things that we all learn in high school but mostly take for granted such as the beautiful interaction in energy conversion and conservation - and again the implications of such. On that topic the nature of energy itself. Could most people describe energy to a person with no knowledge of physics? And then you can start getting into truly bizarre things which I suppose is an appropriate synonym for quantum mechanics. And this is all just a random sampling of one specific area. Understanding things on a deeper level, and the interaction between all of our physical systems - it just creates a very interesting and exciting universe that I'm happy to simply seek to learn more of. Prior to pursuing physics more seriously, I did not have any clue how little I knew. And it's the sort of subject where the more I learn the more I understand how little I know. Fun stuff!
Getting professional help for everything. Speaking, singing, powerlifting, acting, etc. I enjoy learning on my own but having a good coach can accelerate my progress and catch bad habits.
Cool. Where have you found good coaches for these activities?
I've got two: buying a house and going back to grad school. For buying a house, I latched onto the idea that I needed a 20% down payment so I wouldn't have to pay for mortgage insurance so I was trying to save like crazy. Meanwhile, the property values were going through the roof and I realized that I'd always be chasing that 20%. I sat down and ran some numbers with a mortgage lender and that made everything a lot c…
For going back to grad school, was this a masters or phd or mba or something else?