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Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

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Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#241
post #187

Kipling's If: If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; I…

This is the only "life advice" that i have framed and put up in my room. Very idealistic and hard to live up to (we are biological Animals after all) but nevertheless something we should all strive towards.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#242

1. How to spend less than you earn. Lots of people desire “financial freedom”, meaning they can spend what they want when they want it. Solving this via revenue leads to the hedonic treadmill, and you’ll never out earn your growing wants. Instead solve this by controlling your wants, and you’ve achieved financial freedom immediately. 2. How to take risks. Finding the balance between recklessness and absolute risk avo…

1. For some reason I always ignored ebay auctions. I wanted a guarantee and a fixed price. Although used items are available through this model I never bought any because the seller demands e.g. 50€ for an obsolete soldering station with hard to source tips.

Turns out, most of used items are actually sold for a reasonable price at those ebay auctions. Nobody on earth is going to bid 50€ on that soldering station, so you will actually find good deals. You can often get away with paying the minimum price as well because nobody else bid on that item. I got stuff 50% off which makes buying used actually worth it. I'm talking about stuff that one uses for a few weeks and then just collects dust in a drawer. Like a raspberry pi 3 kit with power supply, case, SD card selling for 40€ including shipping. If you bought this stuff used for a fixed price you'd pay 70€ for it so most people just buy everything new for 80€. I know that because that's what I've done my entire life and I always felt like this was a waste of resources.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#243
post #29

How to handle your finances. I can't believe this basic lesson wasn't taught to me at all during my formative years, either by my parents or in school.

I admit I could be mistaken, but often when I hear people complain that they wish they had been taught to handle their finances or learned about budgeting, it reduces down to "I wish I had been taught not to spend outside my means." Which reduces down further to "I wish I had been taught self-control." To me, the fundamentals have always seemed relatively straightforward: don't spend more than you have, and only take…

If people knew how the stock market actually worked then you would see far less retail investors losing their money. Many people think it's equivalent to gambling and that it is a zero sum game. There is also the common misconception that stocks that don't pay dividends (e.g. they do stock buybacks) can never actually return their investments and therefore every investor is looking for a greater fool until the stock plummets. Lots of people think buying the stock from another investor does nothing for the company unless they issue new stock for financing purposes. Obviously, if you knew even the tiniest bit about the stock market you would know that all of these are wrong.

Stock trading makes money and produces value by providing liquidity but it has diminishing returns therefore it is slightly positive sum. Stock investing makes money off of company growth. Investors can sell their shares via stock buybacks directly to the company (no greater fool needed). Buying stock from another investor increases the market cap of the company which helps it secure funding through traditional means such as a line of credit from a bank even if the company does not sell stocks.

No one on this planet is going to teach you this. You'll have to figure it out by yourself and this is merely information an outside observer needs to know to understand news articles regarding the stock market. Actual investment requires far more in-depth knowledge.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#244
post #43
post #21

I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and learned how to tile a floor. I imagine if you do it consistently you can learn a lot of things.

But did you do it properly ? :D Floor tiles are the worst, a real pain in the arse. I don't want to do that again, ever.

My supervisor said he's never seen such a straight line but yeah, it is back breaking work.

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#245

Enough carpentry and building skills to be able to build decks, porches, sheds, renovate rooms in your house, etc. If you're a homeowner and can improve your home with little help from contractors, you will be able to affordably increase the value of your house immensely, as well as the quality of your home life and that of your family. The return on investment can be crazy -- imagine being able to take a couple week…

So, more generally, you could say that you can save money by doing a task yourself that you usually leave to a professional specialist. In most cases, this is clearly ridiculous. I'm not going to start sewing my own clothes, or doing maintenance on my car beyond maybe changing my own oil. What makes home repairs different?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are good life skills for people to learn?

#246

Enough carpentry and building skills to be able to build decks, porches, sheds, renovate rooms in your house, etc. If you're a homeowner and can improve your home with little help from contractors, you will be able to affordably increase the value of your house immensely, as well as the quality of your home life and that of your family. The return on investment can be crazy -- imagine being able to take a couple week…

So, more generally, you could say that you can save money by doing a task yourself that you usually leave to a professional specialist. In most cases, this is clearly ridiculous. I'm not going to start sewing my own clothes, or doing maintenance on my car beyond maybe changing my own oil. What makes home repairs different?

Not OP, but I just rebuilt a big wall outside for 85 bucks in materials and a week off from work by reusing the old materials, where a contractor quoted me 12000 to build a new one.

By all means call me ridiculous. You do you.

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