Life

[Cordeos]

I want to take control of my money, but I have no idea what to do. I spent about an hour today reading about ISAs cash/stocks and shares, but it's so complicated and so boring. 

 

Leaving my money in an account with basically no interest is pretty much just losing money for me. I wish there was something or someone who could just say "This account is what you want and this is why. Do it."

There was recently an episode of planet money about how Index funds are a better investment than picking stocks. Might be worth looking into. 

[Dewar]

I want to take control of my money, but I have no idea what to do. I spent about an hour today reading about ISAs cash/stocks and shares, but it's so complicated and so boring. 

 

Leaving my money in an account with basically no interest is pretty much just losing money for me. I wish there was something or someone who could just say "This account is what you want and this is why. Do it."

 

My 401k has grown precisely 1% in the last year, so *shrug* it might not be that much better.

[Griddlelol]

There was recently an episode of planet money about how Index funds are a better investment than picking stocks. Might be worth looking into. 

 

My 401k has grown precisely 1% in the last year, so *shrug* it might not be that much better.

 

I guess this is 99% of my problem. I have literally no idea what an index fund is, or how to invest in it. Nor do I know what a 401K is. I don't even know if they're solely american things. The worst part is reading about it all. It's so tedious, there are so many rules and exceptions. Bleh.

[jennegatron]

I know you're not in the US, but things like CDs and bonds are reliable low risk investments that are better than just leaving it in a savings account.

 

401ks are called that as a result of being tied to part of the IRS tax code, so there may be an equivalent in the UK/Germany, but i don't know what they'd be called.

 

(The nice thing about a 401k is it contributions can be taken out of your paycheck pre-tax, your employer may offer a $ for $ match up to a certain percentage of your salary & there's a big disincentive to touch that money before retirement, so that you will truly get 40+ years of accrual out of the money you put in early in your career)

[Dewar]

An Index fund is an account you pay into that buys a selection of stocks (a large variety) and manages which ones come and go each year. It has the advantage of not losing all of your money if one stock tanks, but also you're not going to gain a ton of money if one stock excels.

[Cordeos]

I guess this is 99% of my problem. I have literally no idea what an index fund is, or how to invest in it. Nor do I know what a 401K is. I don't even know if they're solely american things. The worst part is reading about it all. It's so tedious, there are so many rules and exceptions. Bleh.

Index funds are essentially betting that the stock market in general will do well. Usually its buying shares in the top companies on the market. If you ever hear people talking about the S&P 500, that is an index fund.

here is the episode if you are interested. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/04/469247400/episode-688-brilliant-vs-boring

[Stack Smashing]

I decided to make a list of all the media related things I started at one point and never finished, but which I still intend to. ... man, there is so much stuff on it, I really need some time to catch up. It actully makes me a litte bit anxious, though writing most of it down already helped. (Im shure I forgot a lot of things.) It's not so much that I feel an obligation to watch, play and read all these things, but that I really want to. But I also really love that rush you get from starting something new. The possibilities of what it could be.

Also, it's weird watching a series you left years ago and feeling how you seem to have moved beyond it, even though it was something that really defined you in a way at one point in time. (As much as liking a piece of media can and should define you. I'm not crazy.)

[SuperBiasedMan]

(As much as liking a piece of media can and should define you. I'm not crazy.)

 

The weirdest version of this I've had was when I played a DS game called The World Ends With You. I loved it, and the philosophy of it super resonated with me, but I felt like I'd already internalised it's "message" a year or so before I played it. If it had existed sooner it could have genuinely pushed me into having that realisation, but what really happened was that I felt like it was a really good illustration of something I already realised.

[Dewar]

I get caught in feeling weird obiligations about my hobbies, to the point of making pile of shame lists and tracking the number of games I buy and beat. In the good times, it can be a really useful tool to not forget those games that I really liked but are in danger of falling through the cracks, as well as a good budget tool. In the bad times I end up flogging myself with those lists. I happy to say that I've been list free (in my hobbies at least) for a couple of months now. If I ever feel the need to compile something like that, there are so many ways of figuring out my purchase history, I can always build backwards if I need to.

[Vulpes Absurda]

My thought on the guilt of not playing/reading/whatever is that if I look back in my life and regret the mediaci didn't experience enough for it to matter then I probably lived a pretty good life regardless. Not that I don't get stressed out about sometimes. It's just that pondering my own crashing mortality helps me deal with it.

[N1njaSquirrel]

Hey guys it's been a while! I've not been on the forums much lately.

 

since January I got fired and now I've found a new role. It's also in the public sector, which is a lot nicer. Better pay, better people, better company. All good. And still in Leeds. 

 

And I'll probably be more active on this forum now.

 

My main hobby guilt is the stack of single issue comics i collect and haven't read. like 10 behind on chew, saga, black science. The more i get the less likely i'm going to catch up too. Maybe when my well of games dries up. Whenever that happens.

[osmosisch]

Congrats man! That's great to hear. Welcome back.

[Bjorn]

Also congrats, always rough losing a job but it's awesome that it sounds like you've ended up in a better place.

[Dewar]

Hey guys it's been a while! I've not been on the forums much lately.

 

since January I got fired and now I've found a new role. It's also in the public sector, which is a lot nicer. Better pay, better people, better company. All good. And still in Leeds. 

 

And I'll probably be more active on this forum now.

 

My main hobby guilt is the stack of single issue comics i collect and haven't read. like 10 behind on chew, saga, black science. The more i get the less likely i'm going to catch up too. Maybe when my well of games dries up. Whenever that happens.

 

I'm stuck in the same pile of comics as well. Thankfully, it only takes one good evening to catch up for me.

[Griddlelol]

Congrats on losing and finding a job so fast. 

 

My contribution to this thread is how I hate that my phone's battery doesn't even survive a day of light usage any more. I miss the old days when I charged my nokia 3310 once a week on Sunday night.

[Mangela Lansbury]

I've hit an extremely frustrating roadblock at work that has me really bummed out.

 

I work in healthcare quality -- an administrative role where you pull data to see where there are improvement opportunities, and then explore how to implement the necessary interventions to improve the value of healthcare that the institution provides, with value being defined as patient outcomes over cost. I'm also a bit of an LGBTQ+ activist, so I've been trying to combine these two things into a concerted effort to improve trans* healthcare because there is a whooooole lot of improvement to be done there.

 

The roadblock that I'm hitting has everything to do with data. To kick off an effort, you have to pull data to show that there is a gap that needs to be bridged. For a lot of projects, this is pretty simple. When someone has a chronic condition, there's an easy way to identify the population; someone will have charted them as having hypertension, diabetes, asthma, etc., using ICD-10 diagnosis codes and you can run a query and get a whole host of data about that population. When someone has a specific surgery, you can query the electronic health record system for patients who have a specific CPT procedure code and pull a lot of data about that. There's a ton of work that actually goes into getting the data and medical data warehousing is incredibly complex, but the process itself is fairly simple to conceptualize.

 

There is no easy way to pull data about trans* people. Our system of electronic health records was built with two genders in mind, and there is no good way to code trans* health related episodes of care. The powers that be have decided this isn't an issue, as is apparent by the CDC lumping transwomen in with men who have sex with men in almost all of their public health studies. The best that you can really do is the ICD-10-CM (it stands for International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification, and international standard for putting diagnoses into electronic health records) codes in the F64.* class -- Gender identity disorders -- but these are often unused because trans* health is discriminated against to an extraordinary degree, and if you aren't socially transitioning yet you might not want the explanation of benefits or bill that comes to your house to have on it that your visit was coded for the treatment of a gender identity disorder. The patient might also ask their doctor to not lump them in with that because they don't have gender identity disorder -- this is valid and common. This lack of a codified, standard approach to treatment makes it impossible to gather reliable data on trans* populations. There is no good way to gather information about trans* health issues the way that you can gather information about cisgendered health issues.

 

Because the health data warehouse is constructed in, frankly, a transphobic way, I cannot pursue pulling together a concerted institutional effort to improve trans* healthcare. I am unable to identify specific gaps that can measured with specific metrics to gauge statistically relevant and accurate improvement.

 

I'm at a total loss for how to keep pursuing this. My institution isn't providing any help. This is something that I really care about and really want to make happen, but my efforts just keep being frustrated by the very structure of the system I work in. I'm going to keep trying, but right now I'm feeling extremely discouraged. I have a meeting with the team that's helping with the one trans* health project I've been able to cobble together this week, and it's an incredible and experienced group of people that I'm hoping can point me in a new direction because I feel like I'm at a dead end.

[Problem Machine]

Could you push an effort to change the data system to better address those issues, or is that not within your domain?

 

I discontinued my food stamps today: There's a new policy this year pushing anyone who gets food stamps and spends less than 20 hours a week working (ie getting paid by someone else, other kinds of work don't count) to register with an employment program that requires vocational training, applying for 3 jobs a week and submitting logs of job applications, etc. I decided that rather than spending all this effort getting a job I don't want, I'd be better off trying to make up the ~$200 in grocery money by putting in more work or trying to make my current work more financially rewarding.

I'm wondering if I should start a patreon or something. I don't know if anyone actually cares about any of the work I do enough to pay for it. I can't tell if choosing to avoid this intrusive program was decisive and independent or self indulgent and short sighted. I don't know.

[Gormongous]

I have three exes with whom I'd like to think I have friendships post-relationship. We talk regularly and trade advice, the usual. Still, all three will interrupt me mid-sentence if the discussion ever moves in a direction that makes it possible for them to tell me that I was a terrible boyfriend. I know that I was, mostly owing to inexperience and insecurity but also to selfishness, but I've apologized for all that, many times, and I don't feel like I deserve to have my nose shoved in it repeatedly, five or ten years down the line. If I'm even a decent friend, my weakness of character as a young man shouldn't really be on the conversational menu right now. The worst offender, the "love of my life" circa college, is definitely the hardest for me to bear, saying that our five years together was "one big mistake," whenever anything from our mutual past comes up, and never missing an opportunity to remind me of how unfaithful I was. I never cheated on her, of course, but she never found me particularly trustworthy anyway, and that's somehow still a bee in her bonnet now that we're both in our thirties.

 

I've always been big about keeping fences mended, so to speak. My current partner teases me about it, but I like to think that the people from my past, girlfriends and partners especially, are an important part of who I am and that keeping the lines open with them is the best means of acknowledging that. Still, after I have an amazing weekend with Jen visiting and then immediately get brought down by one of my exes shitting on me (again, for being "unfaithful") in the middle of asking for advice about how to juggle two guys she's currently dating... I don't know, I don't want to cut anyone out of my life, but maybe I should answer the phone less. I'm not awful for thinking this, right?

[jennegatron]

Not at all gorm. Maybe they think they're being funny and teasing you, maybe they're being genuine. Either way it's a shitty way to treat someone, and I don't know what they thing is being achieved by that except to make themselves feel like the better person in a relationship that is over.

 

I'm a happier person when I cut out people who make me unhappy. I would highly recommend just shutting conversations down when they do that shit. Maybe they'll get the idea that that's not an okay way to treat someone.

[Gormongous]

I'm a happier person when I cut out people who make me unhappy. I would highly recommend just shutting conversations down when they do that shit. Maybe they'll get the idea that that's not an okay way to treat someone.

 

Yeah, I've been moving in that direction myself. I have repeatedly told her (and the other two) that her "reminders" don't do anything besides make me feel bad, but she's got this stock speech about how she believes in "honesty and remembering things how they happened" and I tend to give ground in the face of that because she's not wrong, per se.

 

Tonight was the first night in a while that I really caught her out, bringing up our former relationship out of nowhere when I was talking about something entirely unrelated and then not backing down when I pointed out how it had nothing to do with anything we'd been saying. If she's not going to apologize for making digs like that when she's cut-and-dried in the wrong, it's probably appropriate for me to get up from the computer or get away from the phone. It's just too bad, I really do want to be friends, but it does seem like she's still mad about me breaking up with her four years ago, even though the relationship was supposedly terrible and all she wants is that part of her life back.

 

Anyway, thanks for the ear and the sympathy!

[namman siggins]

 "honesty and remembering things how they happened" and I tend to give ground in the face of that because she's not wrong, per se.

Man, fuck that bullshit. There's a difference between doing that (which I have problems with myself because people misuse it) and using that to hold it over someone's head. 

 

Gorm, you seem a cool, legit person and you don't need that in your life. You've grown and learned and if they want to bring it up, it's their problem, not yours. I would personally drop her and move on.

 

Also, you don't have keep fences mended; the past is the past and keep it there. You don't have to keep apologizing for it or keep up with it. I personal don't want to or feel like keeping with people I dated or friended with back when I was younger. Who I was back then is not who I am now which means my interaction with is going to be radically different. Sometimes that difference stops me from growing, so I need to drop them and move on and I won't apologize for it.

[Problem Machine]

Staying friends with exes is nice, but if they're not going to do their part in the friendship by respecting your feelings then I don't see why you should have to be the bigger man. You're under no obligation to continue to talk to people who make you feel shitty -- and arguably obligated, to yourself and to your loved ones, not to do so.

[YoThatLimp]

Staying friends with exes is nice, but if they're not going to do their part in the friendship by respecting your feelings then I don't see why you should have to be the bigger man. You're under no obligation to continue to talk to people who make you feel shitty -- and arguably obligated, to yourself and to your loved ones, not to do so.

 

Yep, could not agree more.

[gdf]

Heard this thread mentioned on a recent episode so thought I'd stop by, hi guys. Holy hell is it cringeworthy reading over your own old posts. I was still in secondary school back then, now I'm halfway through my PhD and living with my girlfriend as if I'm some kind of adult human being.

 

Me rn.

[root]

I ordered some un-hemmed pants from the internet and hemmed them myself and it filled me with a dramatically disproportionate sense of accomplishment and pride in my ability to handle my shit like an adult.