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birb_cromble  3d ago (text post)   751 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2026-08-08

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I need $43,200 to pay for yearly expenses. Unemployed, no degree, spent 5 years programming professionally and am utterly burnt out. I've got about a year to figure it out. My current plan is:

  • Work somewhere mentally easy, like a call center or a warehouse. I've done both jobs in the past and really enjoy just putting my brain on autopilot.
  • Study for tests like GMAT, LSAT, etc. and try to become a tutor. This will hopefully take care of my medium- to long-term aspirations whatever I decide to do with my life.
  • Try to write. I've always wanted to but it's tough as I am not yet a good writer. Now, in between mentally demanding jobs, feels like a good time.

Mostly I'm wondering whether anyone has ideas for a potentially better or more braindead job, and the medium-term viability of tutoring provided I can get a 99th percentile score on LSAT/GMAT.

braindead / slacker jobs tend to exist wherever there are stupid rules. They are largely unique to the specific stupid rules, but for example:

  • a company needs to send confidential files to other companies. There are rules about who is allowed to touch the files. The company employs a small team of professional uploaders/downloaders who literally click upload and download on some professional file transfer software, then watch the progress bar, then unpack the files and email someone to tell them it's done.
  • property owner is renting out some property for temporary use. In addition to security, they also hire a representative to be physically present on the property to be the first point of contact for questions or concerns. Job consists of sitting on the property, and maybe once a day answering some questions, or escalating if required. I don't entirely know why these jobs exist, but it's probably because they are making so much money on the rental, it's worth it to them, or possibly some insurance reason.
  • government agency is allotted a yearly budget. If they do not spend this entire budget, it shrinks, and is hard to get back. They hire staff and contractors to fill the budget, even though there's very little actual work to be done, and indeed very little work is allowed to be done. Days mostly consist of going for coffee, applying to get something purchased, and perhaps working on small projects that don't need approval from anyone.

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