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CAE_Jones comments on How can I spend money to improve my life? - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: jpaulson 02 February 2014 10:16AM

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Comment author: CAE_Jones 02 February 2014 11:09:23AM *  1 point [-]

Since I don't have $50/day type money, I would do these things if I had it:

  • Buy healthy food.
  • Buy exercise equipment, or a gym membership.
  • Put enough away until I could hire an accountant/start a business and/or nonprofit / etc, or at least hire people for the parts of my various projects I cannot handle alone or with too low charisma to amass an army of reliable volunteers.
  • Due to my disability, the amount of independence I have and the amount of money under my control are likely to correlate. I can't know for sure without being rich, but money would let me travel more freely, hire people who know what they're doing if ever I need assistance, pay Meta Med to point me toward the most likely cure, and in the meantime, buy all the accessibility gadgets I can't currently afford/justify asking the government to pay for.
  • Healthcare! Life insurance! I'm still not completely convinced regarding cryonics, but it's not like I could afford it even if I was.
  • Books. Books are orders of magnitude more expensive for me than you, but the same principal applies. I have a good decade worth of books I haven't been able to read, and if I suddenly had the money to get them...
  • There's probably useful training I could buy, I dunno. My communication and charisma need work. Purchasing power means I can shop until I succeed.

And that's just the list I could make without stopping to draw breath (If I stuck to the identifiers rather than descriptions). I suspect I could come up with more, given a little effort. Even if I don't move, my trailer could use some serious work, not to mention a security system.

While some of those are luxury type things, most of them are serious health / quality of life-related, and boons to rationality besides (good health and books and access to more people seem like they'd help on that front, at least).

Comment author: CronoDAS 02 February 2014 09:31:55PM 5 points [-]

Books. Books are orders of magnitude more expensive for me than you, but the same principal applies. I have a good decade worth of books I haven't been able to read, and if I suddenly had the money to get them...

Assuming this is a money issue and not a time issue, your local public library can get you almost anything via interlibrary loan.

Comment author: garabik 05 February 2014 01:56:36PM 3 points [-]

Assuming this is a money issue and not a time issue, your local public library can get you almost anything via interlibrary loan

And there is this thing called internet where you can get a lot for free - and in some jurisdictions and under certain conditions it is even perfectly legal.

Comment author: Creutzer 05 February 2014 02:03:18PM 0 points [-]

Reading a novel on a computer screen sucks.

Comment author: jaime2000 05 February 2014 02:38:06PM *  1 point [-]

The Amazon Kindle is very cheap ($70-$210 depending on the exact model and features you want; assuming you buy one every 2-5 years, it is a trivial expense for all but the most destitute).

Comment author: garabik 07 February 2014 10:07:23AM 0 points [-]

Cheap low end tablets cost around €30. Their parameters and battery life suck, but for indoor reading they are acceptable. And as a bonus you can do more things with them (such as using tap-and-search dictionary if you are often reading in foreign languages).

Cheap e-book readers are a bit more expensive, from €40 up.But they weight less and their battery life is vastly superior.

Still, if your genre preferences are somewhat "traditional", IMHO public library is the way to go.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 20 February 2014 06:46:07PM 0 points [-]

My mileage strongly disagrees with yours.