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moridinamael comments on Group rationality diary, 1/9/13 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: cata 10 January 2013 02:22AM

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Comment author: moridinamael 10 January 2013 07:33:52PM 3 points [-]

Several of my old friends and I have started a YouTube channel where we document, in whatever fashion we choose, our achievement of our 2013 New Years goals. My goals are

  • Win a programming contest
  • Learn to cook 8 impressive vegetarian dishes
  • Be able to complete 100 consecutive push ups
  • Sign up for Cryonics
  • Learn 5 songs on the drums
  • Write a first draft of a novel
  • Learn a simple magic trick
  • "Figure out the stock market"
  • Finish the goddamn PhD

The goals vary considerably in scope and difficulty, and this is intentional. It will be nice to be able to "knock out" some of the smaller ones to build up momentum.

The YouTube channel has been a really fun way of focusing my mind on the goals. I admit that we are only 10 days into the year and might not last. On top of this, I'm going to be writing up a Stikk-esque commitment contract for most of these goals. I became sort of ... depressed ... when I read another LWer's New Years goals paired with their own probability assessment that they would actually acheive them. I realized that if I took a similar Outside View assessment of my goals, I probably won't achieve any of them. So I resolved to not give myself a choice. I figure something like $1000 hostage to the Church of Scientology should force me to behave more strategically.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 11 January 2013 04:16:19AM 2 points [-]

Regarding the 100 pushups, have you taken a look at one hundred pushups? I found it very helpful (together with logging everything on Fitocracy); I went from ~25 to ~50 before I got distracted by finals.

Regarding the novel, NaNoWriMo might be a good time to knock that one out.

Comment author: moridinamael 17 January 2013 06:15:02PM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the link to the push-ups website. I was using an iPhone app which is essentially identical, but the web-based solution is actually better for my purposes.

Comment author: Vaniver 12 January 2013 02:10:00AM 0 points [-]

Regarding the novel, NaNoWriMo might be a good time to knock that one out.

NaNoWriMo, while it has a lot of social pressure associated with it, is a really accelerated schedule. If moridinamael isn't able to produce ~2k words on a normal day, they will fail it, and then only have a month to catch up. So... start early, finish early!

Comment author: AspiringRationalist 12 January 2013 02:38:06AM 0 points [-]

"Figure out the stock market"

The rest of your goals here seem well-defined, but I'm not sure what you mean by this one. Can you elaborate?

Comment author: moridinamael 17 January 2013 06:13:28PM 0 points [-]

I am in the position that I know enough about investing to understand that I should do it, but not enough to know how to do it well; consequently I am poorly diversified. I would like to remedy this in 2013.

That goal is in quotes because I am aware that it is a silly phrasing; part of the goal is to clarify what I should want to do.

Comment author: AspiringRationalist 18 January 2013 03:52:04AM 2 points [-]

Being well-diversified is a good goal here. The best way to do that is to invest in a portfolio of low-cost index funds. Target date funds are a great way to do this, because they automatically re-balance for you (caveat: some of them are expensive, although there are plenty of low-cost ones available).

If you're American, a good approach is to:

  • Invest as much as you can in your 401k and IRA. It's usually (but not always) best to max your 401k first, then Roth IRA if you qualify, and finally traditional IRA if you don't qualify for a Roth account. All of these accounts get massive tax breaks, so take full advantage.
  • For your 401k, see if there are low-cost (expense ratio < 0.20%) target date funds available. If there are, put everything into whichever one best matches your expected retirement date. If there aren't, look for whatever low-cost index funds are available. How much of each you should get depends on the specific funds, but basically you want to mimic the general allocation of a target date fund.
  • For your IRA, once again, a target date fund is generally a good idea. I don't know enough to say which is best, but Vanguard is probably a reasonable choice.
  • If you max these out and have additional money to invest, put it in SPY (an ETF that tracks the S&P500). It's certainly not a perfect solution, but it's reasonably diversified, low-cost and has the tax advantages of an ETF. I use Scottrade as my broker, and they're good enough that I don't find it worth seriously investigating alternatives.
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