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The Art of Money Getting

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Re: The Art of Money Getting

#91

Post by 578_Observer »

throw0101a wrote: post #74
wiseowise wrote: post #29

Nobody is going to seriously discuss moneymaking tips from 1880, right? …right?

Is the advice from The Richest Man in Babylon , published in 1926, out of date? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon Avoiding greed, envy, the hedonic treadmill, etc , will never not be good advice.

Adding an even older, non-Western data point to your Babylon example: a Kyoto shopkeeper, Ishida Baigan, was teaching nearly the same list in 1739 — honesty, diligence, frugality, plus "find your proper vocation" (shokubun), independently, with no contact with the Western tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishida_Baigan

Two civilizations re-deriving the same short list from scratch is about the strongest version of your point — "outdated" just isn't the right axis for it.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#92

Post by Garlef »

xp84 wrote: post #82

> " 2. Avoid Debt Like the Plague" Does anyone else feel like they overindex on this principle? I have on multiple occasions found myself too conservative to take advantage of the leverage available to me. (Example: doing a refinance in 2020 I could have taken out a 30-year mortgage at the rock-bottom rate, but chose to do 15. This is irrational given that I could have taken all the money I didn't have to pay toward…

Yes. That part should be taken with some caveats.

And unless you're born rich, you start your life with debt: You need some form of retirement money for the last 20 something years you might not be able to work anymore.

If you buy assets on a loan/mortgage/etc, it's more like you're materializing this debt early.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#93

Post by roncesvalles »

Michelangelo11 wrote: post #14

> Barnum’s first rule: pick the work you’re built for, then aim to be the best at it. Edsger Dijkstra, in one of his letters, giving advice (IIRC) to a PhD student: "Do only what only you can do." Kind of funny to see one of the greatest computer scientists and one of the greatest public entertainers giving the same advice, but I guess that speaks strongly in its favor.

I've come to learn that "do only what only you can do" is not great advice at all. It's leagues better to be the 10,000th-best SWE at Meta than the world's best basketweaver. Often doing something super unique is an excuse for shying away from mainstream competition.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#94

Post by sowbug »

xp84 wrote: post #82

> " 2. Avoid Debt Like the Plague" Does anyone else feel like they overindex on this principle? I have on multiple occasions found myself too conservative to take advantage of the leverage available to me. (Example: doing a refinance in 2020 I could have taken out a 30-year mortgage at the rock-bottom rate, but chose to do 15. This is irrational given that I could have taken all the money I didn't have to pay toward…

Yes. I wish my parents had been more nuanced in their advice about debt. Carrying a revolving balance is way different from borrowing to buy a home, for example.

I was proud to pay off my mortgage early, but missed out on nearly 20 years of tech-stock growth. That's a chasm rather than a nuance in retrospect, but there isn't a lot of nuance in aphorisms like "Avoid Debt Like the Plague."

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#96

Post by goodmythical »

andrepd wrote: post #44
idiotsecant wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people now are so wildly different from people 150 years ago? We are exactly the same, with slightly shinier toys.

Many things in the world are radically different, and the economy especially is a different beast. The point about avoiding debt for example, is hardly relevant for businesses (even if it's generally good advice for personal debts.

It wasn't true even then. Leverage has been an accelerator for a long time. Precious few of the world's largest businesses were built out of single pocket book.

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#98

Post by linguae »

Garlef wrote: post #92
xp84 wrote: post #82

> " 2. Avoid Debt Like the Plague" Does anyone else feel like they overindex on this principle? I have on multiple occasions found myself too conservative to take advantage of the leverage available to me. (Example: doing a refinance in 2020 I could have taken out a 30-year mortgage at the rock-bottom rate, but chose to do 15. This is irrational given that I could have taken all the money I didn't have to pay toward…

Yes. That part should be taken with some caveats. And unless you're born rich, you start your life with debt: You need some form of retirement money for the last 20 something years you might not be able to work anymore. If you buy assets on a loan/mortgage/etc, it's more like you're materializing this debt early.

Wow, this is very insightful and I haven’t looked at saving for retirement as a type of debt before! Thanks for sharing!

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#99

Post by djeastm »

sporadicism wrote: post #30
jonners00 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this book, but its authority is somewhat undermined by the infamous Steve Jobs passage...

How's that? I am not familiar.

IIRC, he spends a few pages talking about how Steve Jobs is going to be the ruin of Apple

Re: The Art of Money Getting

#100

Post by lelanthran »

voidfunc wrote: post #65
draftsman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find joy in using LLMs to write software? I tried using Claude/Cursor/CodeX/etc. for personal projects and experimentation, and I found no joy in it. I learned nothing, and when my MVPs were complete, I only had a shallow understanding of how the code that powered them worked.

I like building stuff. I don't care about the code. I convinced myself over 20 years that I liked coding to get myself through the drudgery of corporate work but the reality is the building was the important thing to me. I'm able to build things quickly with AI.

> I like building stuff. I don't care about the code.

Sounds like you like having stuff, not building stuff.

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