site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2379 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 8, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is a question which has been asked here before, as well as in similar places, but more ideas are always welcome.

Through career progression and timely company changes, next week I will be starting a job at which I will earn far more money than I ever expected to make at any point in my life. My cost of living has not scaled with this at all. Something on the order of 15-20% of my income will amply cover all my needs. The rest is just gravy.

With this being the case: what are some ways in which I can use a surplus of money to improve my life?

I am also in a similar situation (not so dramatic perhaps, but I definitely didn't expect numbers on my income sheet to go up so fast). I even made a post here half a year ago before accepting the job offer asking for advice! I personally have too much of a middle class upbringing to ever consider spilling money into something that I can't convince my brain is good value for money. So so far I have just been treating people around me to nice restaurants and stashing most of the earnings in a checking account. But still some suggestions that might be of interest, roughly in an order of increasing cost:

  • Hire a cleaner. Not even that expensive if you don't have a large house.
  • High-end gym and/or private trainer.
  • Build yourself a solid wardrobe of high quality pieces that fit you well and match each other well. You can even hire professional help for shopping if you aren't sure about your judgment and don't want to spill money on expensive items that you will later not wear.
  • Do charity. Not the type of charity where you are feeding Western NGO types with your donations or giving mosquito blankets to African villages but stuff that leads to you having some standing in your community. My parents used to pay for medical treatments of poorer family members/acquittances and help with college tuitions of their kids etc. The respect and loyalty you get from such acts is difficult to describe if you have never witnessed people building such charity networks around them.
  • For any sporty hobby (surfing, skiing etc) you can spend a couple weeks with great private tutors in the best possible location and you will achieve a level of skill you didn't think possible. Later on this can lead to amazing vacations.
  • If you are the type of person (no judgment intended), high-end sex resorts in some Caribbean countries are the closest a man can reach the Islamic idea of heaven with money (at least non-billionaire level of money).

Ideally you will recognize that your brain is wired to seek all such status markers and worldly pleasures ultimately only for the purposes of passing on your genes in the best circumstances possible to the next generation. Try to leverage your situation to find a good partner and raise children in a favorable environment.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats