The end of November
Eeek, it’s almost 2019. Where did the time go?
Here are this week’s links:
- How are you deceiving yourself? House prices, mental accounting, and leaky buckets.
- Time to get your taxes in order? Japan’s tax agency gears up to pursue hoarded funds abroad.
- Woooah: Japan’s economy has a $5 trillion problem.
- I’m thinking of using 4-5% of portfolio, not changing for inflation: Revisiting the 4% rule.
- The government seems to be acting in bad faith by fudging the stats: Wrangling over planned shake-up of Japan’s immigration control law intensifies after government admits to data errors.
- I like The Escape Artist: Can anyone retire in their 30s? Meet the people who say yes.
- This petition seems fair: Stop denying my mum and 520,000 Brits their full UK Pension.
- It’s basically just the oil price: Japan’s inflation held steady at 1.0% in October, but could wane in coming months.
- This was a fairly predictable development: Gov’t plans to raise working age limit to 70.
- I try to avoid building up stuff, but I can’t say I am completely innocent: we’re stuffed.
- This offer wouldn’t last two minutes in Japan: Ukraine bank offers 21% interest rate for doing 10,000 steps a day.
- The Japanese government continues to go backwards on renewable power: Gov’t threatens to cut solar power subsidies.
- Interesting online game to teach about various investments: build your stax.
- Iterate to succeed: how to overcome your fear of failure with the Bucky method.
- Cutting costs is important for individuals as well as businesses: Let’s talk about startup costs.
- The world is not flat: Where’s the edge?
What do you think? Anything good in there? I enjoyed #1, #6, and #13. I think #3 and #9 could be significant in the long run.
And here are some books I finished/bought/started reading:
- Columbus Day (Craig Alanson) from last week grew on me as I went through it. It still seems kind of dumb, but it’s become enjoyable dumb.
I played the investment game (#13). That was interesting! But I felt like I didn’t have enough information to really know what I was doing. I guess the point of the game is just to let people know what kinds of investments are out there!
FIRE people seem to be folks that don’t like what they are doing. Their often stated goal is to save enough so that they can then do what they really want to do, or at least explore freely. (Like at one point, they went on down the the crossroads and made a deal…)
And tho I might be mis-reading their desires, goals, and dreams, when I read about that, I find myself thinking, “That reminds me of what I see on instagram”—a sort idealized projection of one’s life.
While there were some years during my last job that we had a 理事長 that can best be described as donald trump in a really small pond, I’ve always enjoyed the students—they’re one of the things I miss. It was a small, private school, and after being there a while I knew and had worked with (or had at least talked to) all of the office staff—some were even my former students. It felt a little like home, or an extended family. Certainly not something that I couldn’t wait to get away from.
Some lives/careers can be pretty satisfying. If they’re so dissatisfied that FIRE is the “out” they see, maybe these people could skip the FI part and start doing what they want far sooner.
Well put. This is just what I don’t like about the FIRE movement, even as I get some good information in many of their blogs. I don’t want to overdue my enthusiasm for my job because I could lose it at any moment, but I would feel like too much of my life was being wasted if my career was something I was rushing through just so that I could retire.
#1. There are just sooo many things to dispute in this. The (pre)suppositions, assumptions, etc. That person is going on about…
No, it’s not worth the time.