Aetherous

The Millionaire Fast Lane was a paradigm shifting book for me a few years ago (although not life changing, since I haven't been able to implement it yet). It basically discusses how it's wise to create passive (or nearly passive) income streams. For instance, writing a book that sells well would mean you're getting paid during a time that you're not working at all for the money. Same with writing songs for famous performers. Another example, for wealthier people, would be to own rental property. The book is more convincing than me. ... Mindset: a friend and I were talking recently, and we both came to a conclusion. Throughout probably much of human history, survival was about having certain skills - being able to build a fire, construct or find shelter, have a clean water source, and to hunt and gather food. With those skills, you could survive. In the modern world, the equivalent skill is managing your money.

I'll definitely use some of those tips!

One way for the low income worker, or college student to have financial gongfu: Read Millionaire Teacher while taking notes. It teaches good things about investing money over the long term, and sums up the work of many smart people. You will be able to start investing now, but not with the method from the book quite yet (that requires having more money). Use some kind of spreadsheet, like Excel if you have it, to make a budget. I think Google Drive has a free version. You can look online for how to do a budget, but basically you should include: 1) what you currently have and your income, 2) monthly bills and their dates, 3) typical monthly expenses if you know them, 4) what's left over for the month. Estimate your expenses above what you actually pay, so that you never go over your budget. Spreadsheets are nice because you can plug in new numbers (such as a new checking account balance after you buy things) and all of your numbers will adjust for it...you'll be able to see in a second what you have left to spend. Check your bank account on a daily basis from now on. Know that if you're afraid to look, that's exactly the time you need to look. You should always know what you have left to spend, what you can't spend, and what bills are coming. When numbers change for the day, put them into your spreadsheet. So now you've got a handle on budgeting to some extent, and know how much left over you can invest. If you have enough income or money to autopay $100/month into investments, use Betterment. Thanks be to another Daobum for suggesting this service. With Betterment, you actually only need $10 to begin...but without the autopay, your account is charged $3/month...not an acceptable fee for low money accounts. Other than that, Betterment is good because it does fractional shares...every cent you're investing into the Betterment account is reaping the rewards, versus just sitting there like is the case with most services. Excellent for a beginning investor. If you don't have enough to autopay $100/month, you can start with Stash Invest for $5...however, they begin to charge $1/month after the first 3 months...something you'd probably want to avoid with a small account. Wealthfront is another service that a Daobum recommended. They don't charge fees at all for low accounts (up to $10k...great for a beginning investor), but you need $500 to open an account with them (not foolproof to start). So if Betterment isn't possible, then you could start with a combination of Stash Invest and Wealthfront...put money into Stash Invest $5 at a time, and once you have $500, take it out of Stash and put it into Wealthfront. If you want to avoid the $1/month fee of Stash, just set aside however much you can per month until you reach $500, then put it into Wealthfront. Tip: with the money you're investing, realize that it could be totally gone in the short term future. This is not a high interest bank account with FDIC insured money. There may come a time when you need extra money in your life, and you shouldn't count on your investments necessarily being there for you. Look into setting aside a little bit into an emergency fund for that purpose. Think of money you're investing as being accessible like 30 years later. Also, get the Credit Karma app, so you can easily know your credit score and improve it. If you don't have an emergency fund and something big happens, you can use some credit to survive. Also, it builds good credit to pay off your purchases by the due date. There are cards with rewards for those who have good credit, such as getting 1% cash back on all purchases, or airline miles which would allow you to travel for free. These kinds of things mean that you have more money to invest. (EDIT: also get Credit Sesame. It found things that were dragging down my score which Credit Karma didn't find. Both are good apps. And if there is anything on either of these, get your full credit report and then try to get those things off of your record) If your checking account is greater than $2,500 on a daily basis, you can earn 1% back with a Summit Account (a free checking account with a debit card that works at any ATM) from Aspiration. If it's smaller, you'll earn a smaller percentage. (EDIT: I've heard from one person that when they had fraudulent charges on their Summit account, Aspiration simply closed their account. That might have been without reimbursement. So this may not be a good idea for a checking account...better to use established banks that have a higher return) It's good to look at everything in life as being either losing money or gaining money. Those kinds of things (rewards cards, high interest bank accounts) are about gaining money, and are risk free. So, that's an easy way to get started taking control of your financial present and future. Knowledge isn't power, but applied knowledge is. Compounding interest works best when started earliest...so I think it's good to start investing today, whatever the amount is. If you know about this and don't use it, you later regret it. I personally knew about this stuff back in 2009, and even earlier...probably the earliest was when I understood the basic principle of how to do well long term in the stock market thanks to a 5th grade teacher of mine, who had us pretend we were investors. But I only finally started investing this year, 2017! I've lost a lot of potential money as a result of having knowledge, but not applying it. ... To do the smart method of the book I recommended, you need Vanguard accounts, which have a minimum investment of $3,000 (I think for each one...keep in mind that I've only begun and haven't had experience with Vanguard yet...also, this advice is primarily for US investors. The author of the book has more information for people around the globe at his website). Using Betterment or Wealthfront, you can work up to $3,000. Once you're there, here are the indexes you want: Total US: VTSMX Total International: VGTSX Total US Bonds: VBMFX The book recommends to keep your portfolio in these percentages: US and International roughly equal, and bonds percentage should be roughly the same as your age. So if you're 28 years old, the US bonds is 28%, and the other two are each at 36%. What made that book worth every penny for me was in how it helped me realize that you can actually beat the market without taking extra risks. Maybe this is a basic concept to seasoned investors, but I was under the impression that you can't beat the roughly 10% that the S&P500 returns on average, on a consistent basis. With "dollar cost averaging" (investing the exact same amount at the exact time each month), you get roughly the same return as the market on average. However...you can take advantage of when the market is fluctuating. This is one of the reasons for investing in bonds, which don't perform as well as stocks (why would you want less returns in your portfolio? This is why). When the market crashes, you want to buy as much stocks as you can because the value of the stocks is really great...you end up getting more shares for your dollar, which will amplify your investment returns when the market rises again. It's too bad that you can only invest a certain amount per month from your income during those times...but you can sell your bonds and buy more stocks when it happens. More money to wisely invest. Also, for way down the road when you're reaching retirement...you want the bonds to match your age so that you can rely on it for living expenses. What if the stock market crashed and you relied only on stocks in your porfolio? You might have no money. So, having this portfolio is smart. If you want to be convinced, read the book...I'm just summing up what's involved here, for the benefit of the Bums. ... With some more research, I think I've discovered the better way of going about this... Start out from day one with buying Vanguard ETFs. To begin, you just pay the current price of a share, and you can control your own portfolio from day one (instead of Betterment or Wealthfront, which have some strange things in their portfolios, probably there to make year to year seem more stable). I've been reading Paul Merriman's articles, and he recommends a certain portfolio that has subdivisions of things like small cap value, etc...apparently making the portfolio have slightly better returns than the market, with about the same risk. It can be a difference of millions of dollars by retirement. Good idea to look into his work in depth...while at the same time, keeping in mind that most experts suggest it's hard for anyone to beat the market's returns. In terms of starting investing late (for instance, I'm starting at 32 years old)...it's a good idea to not even worry about bonds, which would just lower the returns. Do all stocks at first. "Risk" in a portfolio just means that it can fluctate more from year to year...it doesn't mean "risk" in the same sense as gambling, where there are odds that you'll lose your money (which would be the case with investing in individual companies...but 99.99% unlikely with investing in the broad market...which would also be the case if you end up selling any shares, which should not be done). Because this type of investing is looking at decades down the road, risk is irrelevant in the beginning, and just sounds misleading. About market timing...no one know what's going to happen in the future. It looks like the market is high right now, and that it could go down. But it could also go up. So, in this situation it seems like a good idea to dollar cost average...investing some each month, rather than any large amount. At least this way you're starting, and even if the market crashes shortly after, decades down the road the investments will still be worth a return. While investing some each month, watch where the market goes. If it's a bear market (it drops quite a bit for a period of time), or especially if it crashes, then invest as much as you're able to at that time. When it rises again, you'll be happy. About rebalancing a portfolio...to me it seems like a bad idea for beginners, with what I've been reading. Consider this simple concept: the market rises over time. We want to buy when it's low, and sell when it's high. If we're looking at a span of decades, rebalancing the portfolio (selling some stocks) halfway through our investing career (lets say a decade from now) means that in the long run we're actually selling low...because the market tends to keep rising. So an idea: rebalance/sell stocks when the market is said to be very high, at a time slightly before retirement. Not prior to that point. In the meantime, just buy stocks and don't sell any. The longer a share in the overall market is held, the more it makes. So for the beginner: consider Merriman's ideas for a portfolio, get only stock indexes for now, no bonds, use Vanguard ETFs, invest some each month for now but be able to invest a lot more if the market crashes, and don't sell your shares because they're worth a lot later on.

I like the idea of supporting Israel just because it's an ally which represents civilization/counter-terrorism in the region.

The best thing for that is relaxation, and not paying attention to how the throat feels. Feeling it causes a stagnation there.

Ah sorry, I think you may be right. I fully agree with your original post here.

Limiting certain discussions (attempting to make the forum non-partisan and non-denominational, when in fact it's just eclectic and egalitarian) seems like silencing people to me. I don't think going in that direction encourages diversity of discussion...it attempts to stamp it out. Also, the General Forum and others like the Daoist sub-forum are for all matters spiritual. I want to say this in a way that comes off as respectful to you: if all you're wanting is spiritual discussion, it's best to stay in the areas that are for that.

Off topic is where everything non-spiritual goes, like partisan politics. If there were moderation so that no political disagreements could take place somehow...well, that'd be pretty weird, but I think it would be acceptable. Most people are primarily here for the cultivation side of things. It's interesting to see the views of various long term cultivators...it's fair to say that we've come to find - it doesn't necessarily bring everyone to a consensus on how to go about benefiting the world.

IV Necessary conditions "Q is true only if P is true"...an example is that you can only be accepted to a university if you're a human. Being a human is necessary for that.Sufficient conditions "If P is true, then Q is true". The video uses the example of a 17 year old winning a science prize, and being accepted to the university because of that. It was sufficient to impress the university enough to accept them, but it wasn't necessary for all students to do the same in order to be accepted there.Necessary but not Sufficient conditions Example...steering well is one aspect of driving well, but if you only steer well you could still be a bad driver for other reasons.Sufficient but not Necessary conditions Example...boiling potatoes is sufficient for cooking them, but it's not necessary. There are other ways to cook a potato.Both Necessary and Sufficient Example...getting all of the answers right on the test is necessary for getting a perfect score. Why? Because it's necessary to get all answers right in order to get a perfect score. It's also sufficient if you get all answers right in order to get a perfect score.

Is there a really abbreviated version of yang taiij form? It seems to me that hyperactive kids would calm down with it.

It seems that there are remnants of the Pagan traditions, but they're hard to find. Does anyone know of an intact tradition?

I too am not a fan of viewing people as having this or that disorder (whether medical or simply a social stigma). It didn't appear to me that's what dawei was doing, from briefly looking at everything here...but just wanted to offer a voice of support. Daobums should not be made to feel lesser for being who they are naturally.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+5%3A27-34&version=NRSV

I agree, any link with nefarious people makes one look bad. (I'm giggling inside, about the Clintons)

I had success with "calm abiding meditation", with an "external support". So basically, pick something in the room that you like to look at...gaze at it and let it be your object of meditation. Look at its details any time intrusive thoughts or feelings come, so that you lose focus of those things and pay attention to the object. It was very effective for me...I wasn't diagnosed with anything but was delusional at one point. This helped me get into the real world and out of my head, which was sufficient to heal the brain.

May all Daobums lay the most positive and beneficial eggs!

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Wikileaks says it wasn't any Russians, but DC insiders. It's not every intelligence agency saying the Russians did it...primarily (some of) the CIA, who spoke for the other agencies. ODNI and FBI weren't on board with their analysis. Furthermore, absolutely no evidence was provided to the public, or more importantly, even to Congress. World wars should not be started based solely on partisan claims without any proof.

The entire article was ridiculous (that should be obvious starting right off the bat)...but its point was to insinuate that Trump is placed by Putin and/or is his puppet, and it attempts to appear legitimate in proving that viewpoint. The idea is easily disproven by watching the video of Trump speaking over the past 30 years about possibly running for office. To point out an obvious falsehood which appears as truth in the article, it cites the (fake) news about how the Russians did the recent hacking leaks. There's been absolutely no evidence provided for that, and good reasons to believe it's a lie...but the people at Slate have taken it as truth and cite it without flinching. So to sum this up: I viewed the article as ridiculous simply for what it is, there are so many reasons to doubt the point they were aiming at...and I have at least one reason for criticizing its sources.