We live in a world full of over-commitment. Being passionate about something has become akin to goodness, but for all the dedication and passion, I don’t see a tremendous amount of good being done in the world. We are also constantly exposed to fictional characters who have absolutely no balance in their lives but who […]
Category: Financial Independence
Morning
For the past few days, I’ve been taking walks around the neighborhood during what would have been my morning commute before my company switched to working from home. This has been very relaxing, and has also given me food for thought. These walks are one of the big reasons I hope to retire very early. […]
Risk Surface
Risk Surface is a way of thinking about all the things that could go wrong. It’s a strategy for reducing present and future expenses, both perceived and theoretical. You can kind of put a dollar amount on it, but it’s also more involved than that. Risk Surface, in so far as it can be calculated, […]
Brief Thoughts on Escape Velocity
For most of the working years of my life, I believe I have made reasonably good decisions with money. But this was all put to the test four years ago when I found myself out of a job for 3 months. I thought my emergency fund was fairly large, but it was scary just how […]
Thoughts on Higher Education
A lot of people are beginning to question the value of higher education. Much of this questioning is important, in my opinion, but it’s easy to read about these issues and crushing student loan debt elsewhere. Here, I really wanted to reflect on some of the more personal elements. Last night, out of sheer curiosity, […]
Does Your Job Make a Difference? – Part 2
The economic value we bring to the world is heavily stressed from a young age. When we’re in first grade we’re already being asked what we want to do when we grow up, though we hardly have any idea what this even means. It’s not necessarily wrong to ask these questions, since you will be […]
Does Your Job Make a Difference?
Several weeks ago, I went metal detecting on my grandmother’s farm. I finally took the plunge on buying a detector because I didn’t want to miss that opportunity, and I knew that if only I could decode the legal rules around the hobby, it’s something I would love. Also, Uncle Sam basically paid for it, […]
Life Engineering
How you write a program can have a dramatic impact on its performance. I once wrote a query against geospatial data that took several hours to complete. After searching extensively online for ways to speed it up, I discovered an optimizer hint, one tiny piece of code, that effectively reduced the time to complete from […]
How to Win with Homeownership
It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of homeownership. I’ve detailed this before, and I’ll detail it again. But that doesn’t mean I believe homeownership, in itself, is wrong or bad. In fact, you could say my frustration is more with the blind importance, status, and reverence which American culture confers upon homeownership, […]
Options
My motivation to be diligent at work often depends on the level of interest I take in a project. Building something new, making it look great and function exactly as it should? Piece of cake: I’m engaged all day. Go back over this and fight an existing system, full of mysterious and hidden standards, to […]