The Monday Read

Well, I’m still alive

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Had a jiu-jitsu competition yesterday, and I’m still in one piece. Something to be grateful for 🙂

Here are this week’s links:

  1. I’ll be keeping mine for now: It’s Not Time to Hit the Ejector Seat on Emerging Markets.
  2. Why not start today? 10 things you can do today to reset your life.
  3. This video is a great explanation of why you need to invest.
  4. Not sure I agree: Here’s why you shouldn’t retire super early — even if you can.
  5. It’s all relative: that’s rich.
  6. An ex-military millionaire interview.
  7. I’m aiming for a 4-5 day weekend: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend.
  8. What will your retirement look like? Watch What People Do, Not What They Say.
  9. A nice summary: How to Retire in Your 30s With $1 Million in the Bank.
  10. How many do you have? Avoiding a Single Point of Financial Failure.
  11. But will it give them legal protections and help them integrate? Kono says Japan will accept more foreign workers.
  12. A farmer millionaire interview.
  13. The end of value? Is Software Eating Value Investing?
  14. How’s your year going? If you haven’t made progress in a year.
  15. What game are you playing? Games worth playing.
  16. Chop chop: What to Do When You Have Too Many Ideas and Not Enough Time.
  17. Get a free copy of Ray Dalio’s new book here: A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises.
  18. Don’t worry about your saving, focus on your spending instead: Spending rate versus saving rate.
  19. I hope this is replaced with other incentives to move to renewables: Japan to more than halve its solar power feed-in tariffs.
  20. Pretty impressive: nothing into something.
  21. Good points: live local, think global.
  22. You are not Warren Buffett: Don’t Take Asset Allocation Advice From Billionaires.
  23. This is a weird story: The Billion-Dollar Mystery Man and the Wildest Party Vegas Ever Saw.

Phew, a bumper edition this week. Anything you like in there? 

And here are the books I am reading/planning to read:

  • Death’s End (book three in the Chinese SF trilogy I’ve been reading) -really enjoyed book 1, book 2 was okay, and I have high hopes for this one 🙂
  • The Girl in the Spider’s Web (sequel to the Millenium trilogy by a different author but it’s supposed to be okay so going to give it a try -more Lisbeth Salander)
  • Artificial Condition (sequel to the Murderbot short story I enjoyed -more SF)
  • Reset -How to Restart Your Life and Get FU Money (title is cheesy but it seems promising)

9 Responses

  1. Agree with Number 7. I’m not quite there but I have got my 5th day of the week down to only one hour of teaching. I still do a bit of prep that day so I would say I am on a 4 and a half day week at the moment, but even that has done a lot for my general well-being. Definitely not as stressed as I once was!

  2. “The truth is most people have no idea what they’ll spend in retirement.”
    Ain’t that the truth.
    My goal was something close to my pre-retirement take-home. It turns out I’m spending a fraction of that, even with a few splurges. Those splurges put me over my total pension payments, but not by much.
    My car is fine–I don’t need anything new/flashy/different (esp. when I was just gone and didn’t use it for two months). Maybe I should be considering some housing improvements (reform), absolute no-holds-barred on the veggies or fish that we buy, or something else? (gifts to our kids?)
    Hmm…
    As for #14, I walked up Emei-shan in February, ’83. Snow, and cold, and no heat at night. It was foggy, and there were no views, but the people along the way were wonderful, as were the other hikers. You can probably drive up or take a cable car now.

    1. I walked up Emei shan in 1997. There was a cable car then, which meant we had the trails to ourselves. Slept in a monastery at the top and caught the sunrise.
      Good times.

  3. A sidepoint: amid the 60-hour week, the car commute and the healthy bedtime, where on earth do you get the time to fit all this reading in? I’d like to read more but never seem to have enough time to do it in – do you go with audiobooks, use Kindle Word Runner or something else?

    1. Heh, well, my bedtimes are anything but healthy, my commute is 25 minutes and my work week is variable. Can be extremely flexible, can be 80 hours if something unpleasant happens (less common these days).
      I read almost everything on Kindle, which means as long as I have my phone (or if I’m at home, my Kindle) I can read a few pages any chance I get. That’s how most of my reading gets done now.
      Just making sure your reading material is with you all the time is the key I think. I just read a few pages waiting in line at the supermarket 🙂

    2. There’s a quote I really like that says something like: “reading is how we upload new software into our brain”.
      Now I just need to read less Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and SF, and more literary fiction and academic stuff, and I’ll be set…

      1. Roger that I’d shied away from using the Kindle app as I thought I’d be distracted from reading by all the other stuff on the phone but hard to beat the convenience. Thanks!