No.19414
I see myself in front of a really awesome new high tech futuristic laptop computer
No.19438
>>19420How can you see yourself as MIA? I've never lost track of where I was, I'm always right here.
No.19445
Dead
No.19452
This thread is depressing. I'm gonna rob a bank and buy a rocket so I can blow up the earth.
No.19453
Wandering the world and exploring different cultures and environs.
No.19482
Doing yoga to lessen symptoms of aging and getting ready to be enslaved by AI.
>Human-level artificial intelligence could be achieved "within five to ten years", say expertshttps://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2018/09/25.htm No.19513
If I end up getting a job in the industry I'm training for, I'll probably be severely depressed and in really bad health. If I don't, I'll have to settle for a low-paying retail job and that will be just as depressing (although less stressful). I can't see myself ever earning enough in either job to afford moving out during the housing crisis so I'll probably be living with my parents. If I do somehow manage to move out, I'll be sharing a house with multiple people (like most people that age do) which would be hell on earth or I'll be living in a dodgy area where I fear for my life on a daily basis. None are great options. The due date I set for myself to have my first child will be 2 years away and that will likely be on my mind. With no savings or a house, I won't be able to achieve my dream and I'll likely be preparing myself for the reality that I'll never be able to afford to have children.
My dream situation would be to get so good at my job that I could work at home with my bf. Move to the countryside where houses are cheaper and get a cosy house with lots of dogs. I'd turn a spare bedroom into a cinema room with a projector. Hopefully we'd only be an hour or two from the city so we could go shopping regularly. But that's the best case scenario and it's really unrealistic. I need to prepare myself for the worst. I know really successful people always dream of things like that but the people giving advice to "follow your dreams" or "dream big" are mostly from very wealthy backgrounds anyway. Their words mean nothing when they were destined for success from birth.
No.19515
>>19513I agree with
>>19514 .
Don't know what's his reasons, but I think you don't need to rush into making a child. Why? Don't put yourself in such a harsh deadline, take your time to become financially stable. It's never late to have a child and, judging by your post, you're still young. Why are you in such a rush? Why you want to have a child in 2 years?
No.19524
>>19514I don't want to be lonely in my old age and my bf also wants a kid so.
>>19515Not 2 years but 7 years. I'll be 30. Maybe my post isn't clear but I want to have a house and good savings before I even consider having a child. If I don't have both of those things before I'm 30, I'm going to have to come to terms with the fact that I won't be able to achieve my dream of having a child. It's something I want but only if I'm comfortable financially and in 7 years I don't expect to be. Hope that makes sense.
No.19525
away from the place i'm living in now or dead.
No.19527
>>19524>I don't want to be lonely in my old agePredictably selfish reason. If you do end up having a kid, please don't raise them with the expectation that they'll be your friend/nurse/piggy bank as an adult. They wont really owe you anything.
No.19531
>>19529And you don't? What's your point?
I'm still right. No.19534
>>19531I agree with
>>19529.
No.19537
>>19529Why? He's mostly right. You don't need to be a parent if you're doing this because it's a right thing to do or just because you want to achieve your own dreams by having your child. It's just not the most right thing to do.
No.19538
>>19529But he isn't wrong.
No.19539
>>19531My point is that you don't know me and you haven't changed my mind about having a child. Your assumptions are wrong.
No.19543
>>19539>you don't know melol, such a cliche line
>Your assumptions are wrong.What assumptions? You said you expected your kid to make sure you weren't lonely when you're old, right? How should somebody interpret that? I wasn't even trying to convince you not to have kids. I'm just saying that they don't owe you whatever you expect them to do for you after they become independent, and you should be mindful of that.
No.19544
>>19539So I just found out about this thread, and if your reason for having a child is just not wanting to be lonely at your old age, I think it is selfish just like anon says, a baby is a living thing.
No.19545
>>19543No I just want someone to call so they can tell me about their day in the evening. Someone who will go for a coffee with me on a Sunday. You assumed I wanted a child to be my full-time carer and cash cow which is a huge and wild assumption and doesn't apply to me at all. Do you understand now?
>the expectation that they'll be your friend/nurse/piggy bank as an adultHonestly it just motivates me more. My new goal is to be a better parent than yours were if you get so defensive at someone even mentioning that they want to have a child, that's scary. Idk what happened to you but not all parents are narcissistic, overbearing monsters. Mine weren't and maybe that's why I have a more positive view of raising kids.
No.20868
I have no idea where I would be in 5 years. I could either be in a collapsing country or I would probably already be dead.
No.20938
5 years?
I'll be 33 years old.
>graduated from college
>found a relevant job in desired field
>making at least $45k a year (enough for me but more is nice)
No.20940
Hopefully in a higher paying job that doesn't involve customer service. Tech support sucks less than food service but you still have to deal with unreasonable people sometimes, and there is still the stress of having to satisfy lots of people and keep on a happy persona. I'd rather be in software development at the company I'm working for.
Also it would be neat to be a powerful wizard.
No.21039
either dead or in prison
No.21738
FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early)
https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/Embrace Your Inner Dirtbag
Personal-finance guru Mr. Money Mustache breaks down how Outside readers can stop wasting hard-earned cash on expensive gear and trips and start putting it toward real freedom: the financial kind
It was 2011, and Pete Adeney was fed up. Not with his own life in Longmont, Colorado—that was going great. The former software engineer had retired six years before at the tender age of 30, thanks to the savings he’d accrued through the extremely frugal lifestyle he and his wife at the time had adhered to, as well as some smart investing. No, Adeney was frustrated by the conversations he kept having with friends and acquaintances who would say they wanted to leave the grind, too, but felt perpetually cash-strapped despite making decent salaries. As he tells it, “These comments were generally made over expensive pints of microbrew at a restaurant, or on Facebook between announcements regarding the purchase of brand-new dealer-financed Subarus, snowboarding trips, and road-biking equipment.”
So Adeney started a blog. Adopting the alias Mr. Money Mustache, he began dishing advice about how to live in a nontraditional, low-cost way to achieve what he calls “a frugal yet Badass life of leisure.” Over the next decade, the blog would be read by millions of people worldwide, and Adeney would become a leading voice in a movement referred to as FIRE—financial independence, retire early—which was then gaining traction among millennials in particular, who were learning these personal-finance tactics primarily through online resources.
Key to the FIRE approach is slashing expenses in order to generate savings that can then be invested, with the ultimate goal of retiring from full-time salaried work by your thirties or forties. But that mentality can often run counter to the expensive gear purchases and epic trips that seem core to the outdoor lifestyle. In an email interview, Adeney, now 46, shared his thoughts on how Outside readers can make better financial decisions and achieve the long-term freedom we all really want.
Outside: It seems that a lot of us outdoorsy types are bad with money. Why do you think that is?
Adeney: It’s not just outdoorsy types, really, it’s almost everyone in our rich but spendy country.
I think it boils down to a few behaviors that are innate to us as a species—social and status cues, herd mentality, and some of our irrational decision-making tendencies, known as cognitive biases. When you start with these natural weaknesses, and then nurture them with lots of persuasive marketing, you end up with people who buy just a bit more than they can afford, year after year. We end up spending most of our lives in debt while considering it normal, which is pretty much the definition of being bad with money.
A quick example: About 85 percent of cars in the U.S. are bought with some form of financing. Cars depreciate, so the last thing you should ever do is spend all your money on one, let alone go even further and spend more than all your money. We do it because we see other people doing it—that’s the herd mentality at work.
Then we’re programmed with all sorts of excuses as to why we should do this: “I need an SUV to carry my two tiny children safely,” “I’m an outdoorsperson, so I need high ground clearance and four-wheel drive.” These justifications, which are actually pretty feeble from an engineering standpoint, are fed into our brains from that big marketing program.
We pay lots of money for little conveniences and luxuries, which may be a fine strategy for a multimillionaire. But if you have any other possible use for money, you should give it another thought.
No.21739
>>21738What would be a better decision than buying a new truck or SUV?
Right now a great multisport car that’s also money smart would be a 2011 Honda Fit, with good snow tires and a hitch so you can mount a bike rack or pull a small trailer. That’d be about $6,000, instead of spending $36,000 on a Subaru that’s really just a bloated and jacked-up version of the same basic car. This type of thinking can make a difference of $100,000 per decade in car costs alone, through the combination of a lower purchase price and lower operating costs.
You can apply the same type of logic to your choices of bikes, skis, or even the activities you plan for yourself. For example, I love both snowboarding and mountain biking. But I live only 15 minutes from the mountain-bike trails, and they’re free to use and much better exercise. So I bike frequently and board rarely.
A common trope is “Spend money on experiences, not things.” But what if your experiences require the purchase of expensive items? Like a $60,000 Sprinter van, or a $19,000 camper, or an $8,000 carbon road bike? What’s worth spending money on?
Wow! Those are some spectacular numbers. And that brings us back to the idea of being good with money. Because the true definition of being good with money is having a realistic sense of what you can afford at the current stage of your life.
While you still have things like a car loan or a mortgage, you just can’t be thinking about an $8,000 bike. Heck, I ride bikes every day, have no mortgage, and enough savings to last several lifetimes, and I still would never spend even half that amount on a bike. So instead of thinking about what’s worth spending money on, I encourage people to break it down more like this:
What things really make me happy in life, and which things bring me stress or unhappiness?
What is the most effective and least costly way to cut out some of that stress and bring more of the happiness into my typical week?
When you look at the bigger picture like this, you might realize that your commute to work or maybe even your entire job is stressful. So you find a way to shorten the commute or find a new job. You might wish you had more time to spend with friends or family, which might mean scheduling less into your days, focusing on quality rather than quantity.
On top of that, a proven formula for happiness and satisfaction is to emphasize production over consumption. For example, volunteering to build trails is often more satisfying than walking on them. Creating an adventure by camping is more satisfying than passively consuming from a buffet at a resort. For me, building my own really nice house is more satisfying than buying an existing one and living in the luxury that somebody else created.
Only at the end of all that do you decide if you really need any new upgrades. I rarely get any new outdoor equipment these days. I already have what I need, and it’s way more than enough stuff to keep me busy. Even as a retired guy with no pets, and a child who’s nearly grown up, I still find that my main shortage is that of time.
No.21740
>>21739Related to that, can we talk a bit about what you call “tiny-details exaggeration syndrome?” On your blog, you define it as “the tendency of humans to zoom in on increasingly irrelevant details as their material wealth increases.” How might this behavior play out when we’re making gear purchases?
Yes! TDES, as I like to call it, is particularly endemic among outdoorspeople. For example, I happen to own a $2,400 Giant Reign mountain bike, which is the fanciest bike I’ve ever had. But I got it on Craigslist for $400, because it’s a 2010 model.
This bike is insane. Every part of it looks like it was sculpted by an advanced alien race. Yet many cyclists, even those who aren’t professional racers, wouldn’t even consider such a lowly bike—because of TDES, they buy themselves brand-new $3,000 versions of the same basic thing. Yet I can ride the same trails as them and have just as much fun. More importantly, I can ride whenever I want, even if it involves disappearing to Chile for six months to explore the Andes, because I never have to go to the office again, because I made decisions like this one.
Is there any framework you recommend that people use for making a decision on whether to spend a big chunk of cash on something like a pair of skis or a guided international trip?
Absolutely. I suggest asking yourself questions like these:
Do I have any debt like a car loan, student loan, credit card, or anything besides a very moderate and affordable mortgage? If so, the answer is: Hell no, you are in a debt emergency, and you shouldn’t be buying anything besides groceries until you get out of it!
Is there any way I can get the same happiness at a lower cost? For example, doing a local version of an activity instead of a far-flung one, or buying high-quality used equipment instead of new stuff.
After clearing those basic hurdles, if you have thought it out for a good long while and still think the purchase is a good idea—go for it.
No.21741
>>21740Can we also talk to the person who’s reading this from, say, a ski town where they’re making minimum wage waiting tables or patrolling? A lot of these folks might think, Saving and investing seems impossible for me right now, making $13 an hour. Is there anything they can do differently to attain long-term financial freedom?
That’s a challenging lifestyle, but I like to think of it like an optimization game, because I lived it for a long time, too.
I grew up in a poor, small town. My parents probably had a middle-class income, but they lived so frugally that my siblings and I would never have known it. We were always the last family in school to get flashy new technologies, like the VCR or the microwave, and we generally had to buy our own toys or bikes or movie tickets. I started working at age 11 as a newspaper delivery boy—yes, I’m that old—and then cutting grass, painting houses, and working my way through minimum-wage jobs in order to save for college and pay for my own clothes, food, and gas and insurance for the rare times I was allowed to borrow the family minivan.
This made me really appreciate how valuable money is, so I learned to stretch it. The tricks were pretty basic: Don’t own a car unless you absolutely have to, and if you do, make sure it’s a manual-transmission Honda hatchback that you know how to maintain yourself. Cook your own food, brew your own beer, grow your own pot, and share a rental house with great friends rather than rent your own apartment. Work hard, and take a step up the ladder whenever you get a chance, and start a side hustle or help somebody else who has their own business. Save money, stay out of debt, and eventually you won’t have a shortage of money anymore.
I don’t want to sound too glib here—there’s still privilege inherent in my situation. But the biggest gift my parents gave me was the assumption that I need to work for what I get, and conserve it. Learning to optimize everything in order to have the most fun with the lowest cash flow was the real trick that made my teens and early twenties still work out well, even when I didn’t have money.
Many people put off financial planning, because it can be viewed as boring compared to planning something outside that weekend. What do you want to say to people who have that attitude?
I admit, I do find money interesting and I like talking about it. But that’s not always necessary for success. After all, I went from zero money to retiring at age 30 without ever even making a budget. All you really need to think about is, Is there a way to make the most of this life, while wasting the least amount of money I can?
Spending money can be good—if it truly creates happiness, you’re using it right. Wasting money is the only thing you need to avoid. My definition of waste is to spend more money than you need to get a given level of overall life happiness. In other words, to get better at money, sometimes you need to get more creative with your entire life.
No.21742
>>21741What are a few pieces of your most straightforward, actionable advice for outdoorspeople who want to live a “frugal yet Badass life of leisure”?
Drive less, and do it in the least expensive, most reliable, and most efficient car you can find—ideally, a small hatchback. Transportation is usually the biggest and most easily cut piece of our excess spending.
Don’t go out to dinner or buy drinks in bars, except as a last resort. Host parties instead. By being the leader of your social group rather than a follower, you get to set more of the agenda, save money, have more fun, and be more popular as a side benefit.
We all have way more opportunities to do fun stuff than we have time. Put everything that you want to do on a list, then sort it by activities that are less expensive and more healthy, and prioritize those first. You’ll find that you never even get to the bottom to do the more expensive stuff, because life is too busy.
Have some courage, and drive to make a bit of money outside of your regular job. If you have a house, rent out a room. If you’re a renter, shop around regularly for a home that’s close to work and has other benefits, like an opportunity to earn money by helping the owner with their own business.
Stop watching TV, and use that time to read books or absorb podcasts on things that broaden your knowledge and give you new ideas on what to do with your free time. That time is your chance to get ahead—and make your life a lot more fun in the process.
© 2021 Outside Interactive, Inc
No.22555
>>22367I'm still here though it hasn't been 5 years yet either.
No.22601
>>19412>>19420off the grid
living the hermit's life
No.22602
>>19412i don't know, i hope i'm still with my partner and will be living with them by then but apart from that i have no clue. i don't have any career prospects and i am scared about money in the future. i wish that kind of thing was easier for me. but i just hope i'll be alive and healthy.
No.22603
>>19412i'll be 24. there's a big change i'm being optimistic, but i think most of these are manageable if i keep up the pace
>out of college>decent job that i can do at home and gives me just enough financial comfort>living on my own>a couple personal projects that i can say i am proud of >shittier health if i don't start working out now>steadily uglier, not too bad>mostly the same circle of friends as now>no gfi'll try to make things go this way
No.22604
>>22603>big change*big chance
i knew i should've proofread… sorry anons T_T
No.22673
>take the anime world by storm by becoming the first western manga-ka in shonen jump that doesn't even live in japan, series becomes an instant hit and even knocks one piece off its high horse, sales for tankos, merch, and anime bring in hundreds of millions
>use money to build first class music studio, become one man modern beatles and invent new genre of music that becomes the new sensation of the 21st century, I play literally wherever I want and it sells out every time, finish every show with karaoke with anime openings on the projector
>open first chain of topless weed dispensaries(bulletproof glass protects the girls from creeps but you can look all you want) in every legal state, the shops also double as concert venues where I have my events
>live in 5 story loft warehouse in los angeles, aquariums with exotic fish sea creatures one very wall, nightly raves where I DJ exclusively for stacked cosplayers that always end in orgies in homebuilt onsen
>eventually settle down by finding the descendant of a famous samurai so we can breed the ultimate warrior clan, move to semi-rural environment and live self-sufficiently teaching my own children about the world and sending my ideas to my indie game studio I bought so they can produce them to whatever painfully specific details I have in mind, every game I make revolutionizes the genre its from and is hailed as one of the best of its kind
that's just the beginning of my plans
No.22675
>>22636Your chances of making bank off one book aren't good. In my opinion you should work on a smaller scope book and work hard on it and get it done and published in a few months as soon as you can. You'll learn a lot about publishing, money, writing. Then forget that one and move on to your next book. You'll improve a lot more writing 5 or 10 or more books in 5 years than one huge one. You can still use all that worldbuilding you've been doing, just tell smaller stories within it. Look at discworld for example. You can definitely do it.
>Getting help for my piece of shit dietYou can do that yourself. If you're problem is that you're fat, this is the guide recommended in the fat general on 4/fit/, I read through it and it seems pretty good
https://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/>>22673Lmao fucking do it my man.
>finish every show with karaoke with anime openings on the projectorI could see that being a hit. There's obviously a lack of raw non-westernised otaku culture in the west, crazy man belting out anime kareoke on stage could carry the passion of an underground idol show if you know what you're doing. Or maybe you just want to do it as a power move, that's cool too.
No.22784
>>22675 fantasy book anon. ty for the advice, I’ll keep all that in mind. Discworld looks interesting, I’ve had my eyes on terry pratchetts work for a while as a source of inspo but had no idea how to get into his stuff. I’ll see what I can do in terms of smaller stories with the world I have, although I do have an alternate universe thing going on that has a smaller story in the same setting which I’ve been thinking of making a ‘first book’ as it were. Smaller scale but same setting, yk? Smaller scale sounds good for a long running set of stories in the same setting
as for my piece of shit diet, it’s not that I’m fat (although I’m chubbier than most), I just physically can’t eat most food bc autism. Haven’t eaten a vegetable since I was a baby. It’s a psychiatric issue more than anything. Thanks for the link tho, I’ll give it a look if my weight gets worse
I’ll keep all that in mind for my future plans
No.23908
on a train station, contemplating my existence
No.24151
Opening a fried rice restaurant
No.24581
Hopefully drawing for a living by that point and with a college degree, maybe with plans to move out of my city with a girlfriend.
No.24583
probably married to my gf. hopefully getting her parents house in our names when they retire. hopefully not working the same desk job but doing my own thing for less money but more time to draw.
