(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best business & money books

Congratulations on being wise enough with your money at such a young age to do your research and ask questions. That's exactly what you should continue doing, as it will pay off in the long run far more than any single investment you can make right now.

Along those lines I would invest a small amount of that money in some basic books about money that will help you develop a fundamental philosophy about your relationship with money and building wealth. Ebook, blogs and apps all have their benefits, but you really should have a basic financial library of physical books you can have on hand.

Your Money or Your Life:
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143115762

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533667926%5D(https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533667926/

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118921283/

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1589795474/

That short list is in no way complete, but will get you started.

As far as websites/blogs/free reads here's a few to consider:

http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

https://yourmoneyoryourlife.com/book-summary/

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/

https://www.thesimpledollar.com/

It's great that you have a nice little lump sum of money to invest right now, but the key to building wealth generally won't involve lump sums every now and then and finding places to put them. The key is to discipline yourself to set aside portions of any amount money that comes in and have an automatic system to invest it and let it grow without touching it.

Have a plan for every paycheck, bonus, tax refund, inheritance, bank heist money :) you come into to have a portion funneled into your investments before you're tempted to find other, unlimited, things to do with it.

This is the greatest book probably ever written on that concept:

http://www.ccsales.com/the_richest_man_in_babylon.pdf

Having a goal, a plan for getting there, and the discipline to actually execute it will make you wealthy. Wealth gives you choices, freedom, and opportunity, and the earlier you start building it, the easier it will be to have these things. If you don't appreciate how important those are to living a good life, I guarantee you will in the years ahead.

At some point you will hear the name Warren Buffett (if you haven't already). He's the single greatest investor who's ever lived and my personal favorite. Once you have the basics down, and you might have further interest in investing I would recommend studying him. Even though there are countless books and websites devoted to him, he's already left us nearly everything you need to know about investing right there on his simple company website in the form of his annual letters--basically a free master class on investing, written by a genious who also happens to have great wit:

http://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

In a much broader sense beyond investing, there is a book more than a hundred years old that discusses getting to wealth in a very interesting and powerful way. I've used it as inspiration from a standpoint as a business person, but I think it's worth studying seriously for anyone trying to build wealth.

I believe you can still get a free copy here:

http://scienceofgettingrich.net/subscribe.html

If you don't want to subscribe, just Google "The Science of Getting Rich".

And here's a good audio version as well:

https://archive.org/details/TheScienceofGettingRich

No matter what philosophy and path you take, I always include another personal recommendation to set aside a small portion of your portfolio into something "alternative" that interests you and might have the potential to build or at least preserve wealth. For me it's basically precious metals, and more specifically collectible silver and gold coins. I've also collected old paper money, stamps, stock certificates, rare books, and music and movie memorabilia all to a lesser degree. Keeps things interesting, and sometimes you can do pretty well with experience and a little luck.

And best of luck to you!


*Edit: Sp+fixed links, and here's my best TLDL:


Buy physical copies of some basic wealth building books. Consider :

Your Money or Your Life: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143115762

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533667926/

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118921283/

Read "The Richest Man in Babylon" and follow the concept of always paying yourself first:

http://www.ccsales.com/the_richest_man_in_babylon.pdf

Warren Buffett is an investing God. If/when you're ready to learn more, just start here:
http://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

Read and/or listen to "The Science of Getting Rich":

http://scienceofgettingrich.net/subscribe.html

https://archive.org/details/TheScienceofGettingRich

Diversify a small portion of your wealth with physical assets you can hold and that might have a lifelong interest to you. A quick recommendation would be to start with 5% of your portfolio in precious metals, perhaps a small variety of silver bullion coins and bars. (I'd be happy to give you specific suggestions on these if wanted).

Well this seems like a good opportunity to post a few of the lessons I learned in my 20s.

To my former self:

If you're depressed, here's how to turn it around

• Stop drinking, this is the main cause.
  
  
• Lift weights. This alone could also stop depression. It's likely related to low testosterone levels
  
  
• Fapping too much makes the depression worse
  
  Fap less, and never to porn
  
  
• Ejaculating too often removed your motivation to take actions and start tasks. You can consider porn like a poison for the mind. Pleasurable but it desensitizes you to all other pleasures, making life seem bland and boring. Until the only thing you want is porn. It perpetuates itself.
  
  
  Gratitude
  
  
• Whatever you are grateful for will grow
  
  
• Gratitude is the only way to be happy. If you think about what happiness is, it's appreciating what you have. When you think of something that would make you happy, you are imagining yourself appreciating it when you get it.
  
  Wealth
  
  
• You can have anything you want, as long as you create enough value for others first.
  
  
• To be wealthy, don't try and do tomorrow's work today, just have a successful day each day. If you have more successful days than unsuccessful days, your wealth will grow. As you have successful and productive days, opportunities will be attracted to you.
  
  Theories
  
  
• The key to success in any area is having the right theory. A small amount of work, or a massive amount of work, with the wrong theory, won't lead to success.
  
  
• With the right theory, success will be relatively straight forward. When you do the thing, it will basically work every time. Anything that has been done many times before, can be done yourself with the correct theory
  
  
• When most people speak of the 'years of hard work' they put in before they 'cracked the game', usually means they were laboring under the wrong theory, and then one day they found the correct theory, and when they applied it, it worked. (excluding world class athletes, talking about common things like starting a business or growing muscles)
  
  
• Theories can be gathered by spending tens of thousands of dollars on seminars or tens of dollars on books. Both can contain theories that work and theories that don't work. Higher cost definitely does not mean they have the right theory
  
  
• Some theories can seem like they are guaranteed to work, but on testing, actually don't. When someone says they have the right theory, it will seem worth any price. Often they actually don't. Beware. If possible buy their book and test it for yourself, it's just as good in book form.
  
  
• This whole list is a list of theories, as you can see, they are usually quite simple and easy to understand. Complexity is usually a sign the person doesn't really know how things work
  
  
  Girls
  
  
• You cannot make a girl like you, you can however find a girl who likes you
  
  
• They key to getting girls is to get in excellent shape (lift weights), dress well, and talk to girls until you find one that likes you
  
  
• If a girl is unsure if she you likes you, won't go on a date with you, or doesn't let you touch her in anyway. She doesn't like you. Find one that wants all those things. Don't be fooled by girls who seem to REALLY like you but doesn't have time to meet, or won't let you touch her. They do not like you like that.
  
  
• Hot girls are just as likely to like you as not hot girls
  
  
• If you like a girl more than she likes you, and she doesn't want to meet up/hang out/have sex. Let her go and move on
  
  
  Career
  
  
• It's very easy to get ahead if you just try, most people don’t
  
  
• You career will naturally progress just through normal learning, don't worry about it
  
  
  Flow
  
  
• If you want things to happen without effort and struggle, live a life with gratitude and presence. Things will seem to happen easily and naturally.
  
  
  Meditation
  
  
• Mediation gives you the ability to be your best. Very handy for improving at anything, particularly gaming, as you see more and learn more. It gives you access to creativity in solving problems and improving your performance
  
  
• Mediation allows you to 'stop the mind'. Do this if you're stuck in over-analysis
  
  
• To meditate, set a time on your phone for 20 minutes, sit still and don't move a muscle, and focus on your breath as often as you can. Your mind will try to stray, just focus on your breath as much as able. This is how you quiet the mind
  
  *****
  Edit:
  
  To answer some requests, here's my list of resources.
  
  Wealth/Metaphysics
  
  
• http://www.audible.com.au/pd/Health-Personal-Development/The-Science-of-Getting-Rich-Audiobook/B00FMUQVSI
  This audiobook has the best summary I've found of how wealth works
  
  Lifting
  
  
• https://stronglifts.com/5x5/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-Basic-Barbell-Training/dp/0982522738
  
  
• http://startingstrength.com/
  
  
• http://www.leangains.com/2011/09/fuckarounditis.html
  
  How Procrastination works:
  
  
• https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
  
  
• https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.html
  
  How Business works
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572
  
  What innovation actually is and how to do it:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Entrepreneurship-Peter-F-Drucker/dp/0060851139
  
  How economics works:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X
  
  How to get things done:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
  
  Task Management tool:
  
  
• https://todoist.com/
  
  Spiritual Books
  
  
• Spiritual books won't make sense unless you've had an awakening, and you can't make this happen, it happens by chance/grace. If you have, anything by Eckhart Tolle will be amazing.
  
  How to be a man:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Way-Superior-Man-Spiritual-Challenges/dp/1591792576
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Truth-Spiritual-Guide-Death/dp/1591792592
  
  Audiobooks (most of these can be found on audiobook):
  
  
• Audible.com
  
  Frame Control (Anytime you feel like you're trying too hard or begging for something, you lost the frame)
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-Persuading/dp/1501211811
  
  This is my favourite book of all. They talk about the new type of conscousness which is really really interesting to me. May not apply to all people.
  If anyone find this book interesting I'd love to talk about it:
  
  How the world works:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Spiral-Dynamics-Mastering-Values-Leadership/dp/1405133562
  
  
• https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Spiral-Dynamics-Integral-Audiobook/B00FO5660E
  
  

> I think if I learn how to program with an aim to work as a software developer and make games on the side, is this viable after just turning 20?


There's nothing wrong with the age of 20. I started school at 20, graduated in four years, and found work as a software engineer right out school.


What you have to figure out is how to make the best of your time left in school: should you take a class or two on programming and graduate on time, or (more dramatically) change your field of study to computer science and spend a few more years in school? That's something only you can decide. If you want to finish your architecture program and graduate in a reasonable amount of time, I can assure you that your math and physics background will be enough to get you work as a software engineer, but only if you can actually program.


Part of working as a software engineer means being able to program in multiple languages. That's because it's not really about the language, it's about the logic. All languages follow certain patterns and while syntax or wording may change, they all share ways to implement the same logic.


It also means knowing what data structures to use for what scenarios. The phrase "There's no such thing as a free lunch" comes to mind. All data structures have advantages and weaknesses and no data structure is perfect for every occasion. Know the differences, know the performance impact, and be able to speak to them. This won't just help you write better code, it will help you land a job. Interviewers love to ask questions about data structures.


As a corollary to data structures, you also need to know your algorithms. You need to know the performance impact of different ways to search and sort, traverse graphs, and find the shortest path (particularly relevant for game programming).


You said you're learning Python and that's great. Python is a great way to learn how to program. It's dynamic, it's friendly, and it has a rich library. Learn Python inside and out, then pick another language and figure out how to do the same things. C++, Java, and C# are all pretty popular in the industry, pick one of those. Once you know how to program in a few languages, you focus less on minute implementation details specific to one language and more on high level abstraction shared across multiple languages. By that point, you'll no longer be speaking in code, you'll be speaking in plain English, and that's the goal.


I don't know many good free online resources for learning languages, I learned mostly out of textbooks and lecture slides (along with lots of practice). There are some links in the sidebar to some tutorials that are worth checking out. Beyond that, I can recommend some books you may want to read.

• Algorithms in a Nutshell - one of the best quick references on algorithms you can read
  
• C# 5.0 in a Nutshell - excellent language reference, aimed more at advanced programmers, though it's comprehensive in scope, covering everything from language syntax and structure of a program to more complex tasks like threading, multiprocessing, and networking
  
• Learning XNA 4.0 - a great game programming book, teaches 2D and 3D game development using Microsoft's C# and XNA framework
  
• Java in a Nutshell - another great language reference
  
• Starting Out with Java - introductory programming text, has end-of-chapter problems for reinforcement, a little pricey so see if you can find a used older edition
  
• Starting Out with C++ - another good introductory programming text from Tony Gaddis
  
• Python in a Nutshell - I can't speak to this one as I haven't read it, but I have been extremely happy with O'Reilly's "... in a Nutshell" series so I suspect it's as good as the others
  
• Learn Python the Hard Way - free online book about learning Python, begins with simple examples then teaches you how to break it so you know both sides of the story, wasn't as comprehensive as I'd hoped but it taught me the basics of Python
  
• Programming Interviews Exposed - sort an all-in-one book covering lots of different topics and giving an insight into what to expect for that first interview
  
  EDIT: I added Programming Interviews Exposed because it's a good reference for data structures, algorithms, and interview questions

Before I begin, let me say this: in asking this question at your age, you are several spots away from the bottom of the totem pole.

This is not to say "oh don't worry about out, you're still young." You need to be serious about becoming competent, but very few people are competent at anything meaningful at your age, and very, very few fields require that you be already competent by age 19 (most of the fields that do require this are things like sports or music, which are so competitive that you basically have to grow up with it). So you're not behind. I think the above comments have been useful, but incomplete. Yes, your mentality is of the upmost importance here, but you do need things to do. Especially if you have interest in trades.

I'll tell you a little bit about myself. When I was 19, I was finishing a degree in automotive technology. I was working as an entry level technician and a cook, and I had plans to attend the University of Northwestern Ohio for a Bachelors in High-Performance Motorsports, which would have put me among the most elite technicians in the country, where I would have been able to get into just about any kind of motorsports I wanted.

Now I'm 23. I have a Bachelors, but not from UNOH. I completely switched fields. When I was 20, I found myself drawn toward Philosophy and Literature, and so I completely dropped motorsports as a career path. I'd spent 2 years getting my associates, I'd spent tons of money on tools, I'd studied to pass ASE certifications test, but I dropped it all, went back to school and got my Bachelors with a double major in English and Philosophy. I'm now working for a while, and I'll be going back to graduate school next year to get my PhD. I'll probably be 27-28 years old before I have real, meaningful competency. This time frame has been a real challenge, since I'm impatient, and don't want to waste my 20's. Here's how I handle it: I love what I'm doing in the academic world (I'm starting a podcast soon just because I can't get enough of philosophy), and so hypothetically, I would be okay with doing it even if it never paid off financially (and it's a humanities PhD, so that's not unlikely).

Your goal, at least for the next couple of years, should be to figure out what you either already love, or what you are likely to come to love if you tried it. Very, very, very few people do this, and so they end up being moderately competent in something that they don't hate, and require all kinds of other things to make their life meaningful. Let me emphasize that this is absolutely, not a bad thing, and if you really think that creative pursuits are your thing, you may want to find an additional career to pay for your creative work.

In any case, you can almost certainly find things that you love without college (though you may need it once you get started). In fact, college often gives a distorted view of what the field is really like. Take psychology, for example. The world of acutally practicing psychologists is radically different than psych-academia, and if you used college classes with postmodern profs to gauge whether you'd like psychology, you might falsely assume that your practice will consist of talking to transgendered sexually abused black handicapped gay attack helicopters rather than the real client base. If you find you want to be an academic, then...sorry fo ya.

What I would do is expose yourself to as much as possible. Try something as simple as youtube. If, for example, you find that you like watching youtube videos of motorcycles, maybe you should try going to a race or a bike show, or reading a book about it. Keep in mind though, that it takes real engagement (more than just youtube) to see if it's something you could learn to love.

Notice I said "learn to love." The reason for this is that its perfectly likely that you won't absolutely love anything. Most people are like that. It's maybe 1/1000 people that naturally know instantly that they love something that they end up doing for the rest of their lives. Let's go back to motorcycles. Maybe you know nothing about them, but you know that you're analytical, so you might like diagnosing them, and you have an adrenaline-junkie streak, so you might like riding them, but right now you know so little about them that you don't really feel any particular way toward them. You need to have the self-awareness to know what kinds of things you might like. If you're analytical but don't have the adrenaline junkie in you, then maybe you need to try being a boat mechanic, because of how much you've enjoyed time on the river, and the people you've met who are also into boats.

One last thing. You may have noticed that I have a soft spot for mechanical things. I noticed that you said you may be interested in the trades. If what I've been saying resonates with you, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend reading at least one of the following books by Matthew Crawford: either Shop Class as Soulcraft or The World Beyond Your Head. They're truly unconventional ways of thinking, and unlike what your high school counselor or typical self-help are likely to teach you.

Milton Friedman speaks fairly eloquently on the topic of trade and tariffs. I'll post a mixture of his statements on the issue of free-trade and the promotion of it, as well as his thoughts on tariffs as a matter of protecting industries to allow it to gain a temporary advantage over other countries, thus creating employment in the process.

> Today, as always, there is much support for tariffs–euphemistically labeled “protection,” a good label for a bad cause. Producers of steel and steelworkers' unions press for restrictions on steel imports from Japan. Producers of TV sets and their workers lobby for “voluntary agreements” to limit imports of TV sets or components from Japan, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Producers of textiles, shoes, cattle, sugar–they and myriad others complain about “unfair” competition from abroad and demand that government do something to “protect” them. Of course, no group makes its claims on the basis of naked self-interest. Every group speaks of the “general interest,” of the need to preserve jobs or to promote national security. The need to strengthen the dollar vis-à-vis the deutsche mark or the yen has more recently joined the traditional rationalizations for restrictions on imports.

As stated, trade tariffs which are often lobbied for and advocated by certain groups of people commonly make the argument that it is in the self-interest of the general population. The contrary is true: it is in the interest of a select group of people to have tariffs raised or implemented or have subsidies granted under the guise of competitiveness and efficiency. If a U.S. manufacturer is 2x less effective than a Japanese manufacturer at creating a certain good, is it the right decision to subsidize this manufacturer in order to raise its level of competitiveness versus the Japanese one? I would say no. As will be discussed later, jobs lost in export industry are gained in import industry, which is a point often forgotten. Americans will still desire cars or televisions even if there are no American manufacturers to produce said products. New jobs and business in import will appear to fill this employment gap and to provide for the consumer what they desire.

> One voice that is hardly ever raised is the consumer’s. That voice is drowned out in the cacophony of the “interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers” and their employees. The result is a serious distortion of the issue. For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number–for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs–jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.

Countries should produce goods of which they have the comparative advantage in producing. This is low hanging fruit but a good example of this. Why should Canada outsource the production of postage boxes to Belgium when we could readily manufacture them in Canada? If it is inefficient for us to do so then we should not do so, if we can get the good for cheaper elsewhere then we should strive to do that and to produce goods at which we are more effective. If a lawyer is 10x more efficient than practicing law than his secretary and also 2x a faster typist, should the lawyer do both jobs? No, of course not. The lawyer should practice law as comparatively he has the advantage in doing so, and let his secretary do the typing. The argument should not be surrounding the "creation of jobs", but the creation of jobs that are meaningful and more productive and beneficial for our population to be employed in.

> Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.

Imports are not bad, and trade deficits are not (necessarily) bad. Nation A trades with Nation B, but Nation B also trades with Nation C, Nation C also trades with Nation A and thus Nation A's currency will return back to their country. Because of markets for foreign currency, it is desirable that we import goods and do not necessarily need large trade surpluses as an indicator of a strong performing economy. The worst case scenario in this example of three countries trading is that if Nation A's currency never returns back into the country. If you were to think of a country as a household, you would certainly wish to pay less to receive more than the other way around.

In fact, Friedman describes almost perfectly why people who believe that the reduction of tariffs will in fact hurt domestic industry are misguided:

> The fallacy in this argument is the loose use of the terms “high” wage and “low” wage. What do high and low wages mean? American workers are paid in dollars; Japanese workers are paid in yen. How do we compare wages in dollars with wages in yen? How many yen equal a dollar? What determines the exchange rate? Consider an extreme case. Suppose that, to begin with, 360 yen equal a dollar. At this exchange rate, the actual rate of exchange for many years, suppose that the Japanese can produce and sell everything for fewer dollars than we can in the United States–TV sets, automobiles, steel, and even soybeans, wheat, milk, and ice cream. If we had free international trade, we would try to buy all our goods from Japan. This would seem to be the extreme horror story of the kind depicted by the defenders of tariffs–we would be flooded with Japanese goods and could sell them nothing.

> Before throwing up your hands in horror, carry the analysis one step further. How would we pay the Japanese? We would offer them dollar bills. What would they do with the dollar bills? We have assumed that at 360 yen to the dollar everything is cheaper in Japan, so there is nothing in the U.S. market that they would want to buy. If the Japanese exporters were willing to burn or bury the dollar bills, that would be wonderful for us. We would get all kinds of goods for green pieces of paper that we can produce in great abundance and very cheaply. We would have the most marvelous export industry conceivable.

> Of course, the Japanese would not in fact sell us useful goods in order to get useless pieces of paper to bury or burn. Like us, they want to get something real in return for their work. If all goods were cheaper in Japan than in the United States at 360 yen to the dollar, the exporters would try to get rid of their dollars, would try to sell them for 360 yen to the dollar in order to buy the cheaper Japanese goods. But who would be willing to buy the dollars? What is true for the Japanese exporter is true for everyone in Japan. No one will be willing to give 360 yen in exchange for one dollar if 360 yen will buy more of everything in Japan than one dollar will buy in the United States. The exporters, on discovering that no one will buy their dollars at 360 yen, will offer to take fewer yen for a dollar. The price of the dollar in terms of the yen will go down–to 300 yen for a dollar or 250 yen or 200 yen. Put the other way around, it will take more and more dollars to buy a given number of Japanese yen. Japanese goods are priced in yen, so their price in dollars will go up. Conversely, U.S. goods are priced in dollars, so the more dollars the Japanese get for a given number of yen, the cheaper U.S. goods become to the Japanese in terms of yen.

> The price of the dollar in terms of yen would fall, until, on the average, the dollar value of goods that the Japanese buy from the United States roughly equaled the dollar value of goods that the United States buys from Japan. At that price everybody who wanted to buy yen for dollars would find someone who was willing to sell him yen for dollars.

The actual situation is much more complex than this overly simplified answer, but it gives a good explanation as to why free-trade and a reduction in tariffs is beneficial. We often ignore the presence and importance of currency exchange markets when it comes to trade.

Hey eggshellmoudling! I'm at work so I can't pull up many references, but I'll see if I can help with some of your questions here.

First, the question of income inequality being a threat, and how it relates to redistribution. I definitely agree with your assessment of the last answer. It was more of a condonement of wealth redistribution than an explanation of the problem we (saying that as a libertarian, but I don't speak for all of us) have with calling income inequality a threat. In and of itself, wealth inequality is simply a consequence of how society is working. I think that a good argument could be made that inequality IS a threat in a system like we find ourselves in now, because money is so closely tied with power and rich people can use their money to influence the government and get richer. However, a small percentage of a population being incredibly rich isn't inherently bad. As long as they have come across their money in a fair (loaded word) way, as in without coercing or tricking people, they have given enough to society to merit having that amount of wealth. The only potential threat, which is a pretty minor one really, is that they don't spend their money responsibly. If, for example, they use their money to pay every person in the world to stop working, they would disrupt every market and people would starve to death. A more realistic example might be hoarding it in a place where it isn't effectively invested. If they are using the money to invest in other industries or employ people for tasks that add wealth to the system, which almost every rich person does, they aren't hurting anyone by simply being rich.
As far as redistribution goes, we believe that the current amount of inequality is heavily aided by things like redistribution of wealth and government regulations. For an example of that, say a really poor person finds out that they have a knack for orthodontics (not sure how they found that out :p) and that they could help a lot of people and make a ton of money practicing it. It wouldn't matter at all in today's system because they would be restricted by the barriers of entry to that field established by the government. Like I said before, you can argue that wealth inequality is bad right now, IMO, because the rich are so easily able to use their wealth to keep the poor poor through government coersion, which is unfair to the poor.


Second, how do we address the problem of a tiny minority controlling the wealth and allow people like you to thrive? I don't think you'll like my answer to this one, but please understand that I'm trying to be respectful and if anything comes off as rude or condescending I apologize. One way to think of wealth is as a big pool. Production adds wealth to the pool, and by adding to the pool people are allocated a certain portion of the pool. It might help to say this simple truth: there is only as much wealth in the world as is produced. That sounds simple but has huge implications. Mainly, it means that if everyone is doing the thing that they do most effectively, society as a whole benefits from a bigger pool. Now, back to your question. I have addressed the first part already, but when it comes to people that are trying hard but aren't getting a big enough portion of the pool, the fundamental reason (in a market society) is that they aren't contributing enough to earn a bigger portion. They are contributing less to the wealth of the world so they don't get as much wealth themselves. The ways to fix that are to either (1) grow the entire pool or (2) find a new way to gain more of the pool, thereby contributing to (1). That being said, I would be willing to bet that your situation is entirely different from that. For example, I highly doubt that you would feel maxed out on effort, talent, and luck if there weren't so many boundaries set up in society today.

I rambled a bit there but hopefully it was helpful. Let me know if you have questions about anything. If you are interested in why we (or at least I) believe that our system would be the best for every individual on average, I would highly recommend reading Economics In One Lesson or Capitalism and Freedom (this one is a little more difficult). They lay everything out very logically and had a huge impact on my belief system.

It's a good question - a lot of people just assume they can't ever be rich.

No you don't need to get a degree. You don't need to get a high-paying job. You don't need to be Elon Musk unless we're talking billionaire rich.

Making money is about delivering value at scale. Either deliver a little bit of value to a lot of people, or deliver a lot of value to a few people. Or do both to rake it in - but this is usually harder.

The most accessible way to deliver value at scale is by building a business.

You also need to figure out why you want to be rich and what kind of rich. Do you want to build a massive empire and make hundreds of millions or does making a couple of million a year and getting to travel whenever you want sound better?

The basic steps are pretty simple. You've got to start by reprogramming your brain a fair bit. Rich people - especially entrepreneurs, don't think about the world in the same way as most people do. More on how to do this later.

After that you'll want to start exploring the opportunities open to you at the moment. There are lots of business models you can replicate and do really well with - you don't need to start completely from scratch and build something the world has never seen before. You would not believe the ridiculously niched business models people make stupid money from. Example - I know a guy who built an online health and safety testing form for oil rig workers that was making $20,000 a month.

When you're starting out it's a good idea to keep things simple and use it as a way to build your skills. You don't want to be trying to build the next Facebook while trying to learn the basics of business. You're probably not as smart as Mark Zuckerberg.

The point is you have to keep learning and learning and learning. You know the business section of the book store you've probably never looked at? Pick the right books and you can pretty much learn anything.

You've been fed a lot of bullshit your whole life - so you need to read:

BOOKS FOR REPROGRAMMING YOUR HEAD

• The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
  It's pretty incredible how many successful people I've spoken to in the last few years have said something along the lines of "well it all started when I read the 4-Hour Work Week...". This is a great book that will give you a huge mindset adjustment and also a bunch of practical ideas and case studies of what you can do.
  
  
• The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ Demarco Yeah the book title sucks. But it's gold. MJ has quite a different approach to Tim Ferriss - so that's why I put it here. It's good to get multiple perspectives. The first hundred or so pages rip traditional thinking on wealth as well as guru advice to pieces - it's pretty funny.
  
  
• The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason This is a quick and easy read but it's got some great core lessons.
  
  Those will give you a good start. Once you've picked something to work on, you'll want to start reading up on learning sales, mindset, strategy, mindset, business management, mindset and some more mindset. If you jump in you'll quickly find the hardest thing about business is usually dealing with yourself.
  
  Hit me up if you take action on this and I'll be happy to recommend where to go next :)
  
  

Rich Dad Poor Dad catches a lot of flak, but it's actually really good at teaching the absolute basics in an easy-to-follow manner. Like, learn what a Cash Flow Statement is, increase your asset column, learn basic accounting language, separate emotions and money, minimize taxes. Just glean the overall principles he's teaching and don't blindly follow his specific strategies.

The Richest Man in Babylon is another great, easy to read, investing 101 book.

And The Millionaire Next Door is a research-based book on Millionaires in America and what kind of habits and mindsets got them to their current wealth. It's a wonderfully refreshing read after being brainwashed by tv and movies saying that millionaires won it or stole it and live lavish lives. Most actual millionaires are pretty frugal and hard working with modest lives.

---
And here are some resources to help you learn all the new words and concepts:

• Investopedia
  
• Bogleheads
  
• Khan Academy
  -- Microeconomics
  -- Macroeconomics
  -- Finance
  
• Personal Finance subreddit
  
• Investing subreddit
  
• Finance subreddit
  
• Accounting subreddit
  
• Financial Independence subreddit
  
• Business subreddit
  
• Economics subreddit
  
  ---
  And when you get pretty familiar with the basics and want to start messing with stuff, I've enjoyed the Think or Swim paper money route. They give you $200,000 in fake money to play around with and invest and practice your strategies. It helps you get acquainted with the research and the interface and the fees for investing. It's a wonderful tool.
  
  And then The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is supposed to be a pretty good comprehensive guide the advanced basics (is that a term?) of investing.
  
  ---
  Or if you want to skip alllll of this and just hire someone, I've read in those subreddits that you want to find a fee based financial adviser. Which you can do here.
  
  .
  
  
  I hope I've helped man! It's a lot of fun to learn about. I wish you all the best.

Came here to say basically this.

OP - you need to think about this from the customer end of things - how many people go out looking for "a creative mind"? No one I know of, unless they have a follow-on, "for ___". You need to make it clear what you provide and who your target market or markets are.

Sachbl makes a great point about kid-focussed services, so let's start with that.

You decide (in our example) to target the market defined as 'parents with 1 or more children under 7-8yrs of age' to sell a service that could be described as 'decorating/painting children's room and furniture'.

With that starting point you now know you need to make your service visible to that market. So, where do they go, what do they do, who do they communicate with or work with in their day to day lives?

A few answers might be day-care, pediatricians, and other service providers who target the same market. Perhaps even stores that sell second-hand kid supplies (more on that in a second).

Now, knowing that, how do you get information about your service into those areas? Are there day-care providers in your area that would be willing to make flyers available to parents, on a bulletin board, flyer rack in their lobbies or something like that? Same question with pediatricians offices.

If yes, put a flyer together - as professionally done as you can, make it clean, spell-checked, proofed by a friend, and go by businesses willing to let you advertise like that. Bring a portfolio in case they are interested in seeing your work - don't be pushy and do be mindful that they are doing you a huge favor by letting you advertise there. You are at their place of business and they may not have time or interest, but if they are interested, a good impression could lead to verbal referrals.

Now, back to businesses selling secondhand / hand-me-down / twice-loved goods for kids, these are an opportunity for B2B (business to business) rather than B2C (business to customer/consumer) work. How many of them get furniture in that they would be willing to pay to get reconditioned/refurbished? How much could you charge them while still leaving them an ability to make a profit off the final product? Would charging that amount be worth your time? If they can afford to pay $10 to have a chair done and it takes you 2hrs, then you are making $5/hr, out of which you are having to pay your own taxes as a small business owner. You've already had experience with this issue, but I wanted to reinforce that - it's something a lot of businesses lose track of sometimes - you don't just need to make money, you need to have positive cash flow, which you won't have if you spend too much time making too little profit.

What about people selling/renting homes or apartments to parents? Or companies that do home remodeling? Do either of these businesses market themselves to parents specifically? Would they be interested in a partnering arrangement, where they do some sort of construction/remodeling work and you come in and decorate? I have no idea if that's an opportunity, but partnerships where you can represent an additional service someone else can sell is another angle to use.

The above discussion is oriented around the example of decorating for children's spaces, but I think you can see the general ideas in play. Just ask the same questions for whatever market you are aiming for.

Resources

Business Model Generation
If you can track down a copy of Business Model Generation (amazon.com), I think you'll find it very helpful in organizing your thoughts on all of this, especially with the visual approach to modeling. If you can't afford it, check your local public library and see if they have it locally or available via interlibrary loan.

The Business Model Generation website is also useful.


The Small Business Administration (SBA)

You sound very motivated and at the beginning of the entrepreneurial adventure. A good resource for someone in your position, besides your local bookstore/library business section, is your local SBDC.

• The SBA runs local Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) throughout the country, in partnership with colleges and universities. You can which one is nearest you at Wisconsin SBDC Locations and call to set up an appointment. Most of their services are free, some classes and seminars may cost a modest fee. There is usually a lending library, and you can get assigned a counselor who can provide some advice on various matters.
  
  
• For that matter, the SBA website has various learning resources that provide plenty of reading material on the business end of running a business.
  
  
• Lastly, check out your local Chamber of Commerce. They will usually run networking events and may also have classes. Word of mouth and networking are probably going to be your best tools for generating business for a while. The more opportunities for exposure, the better.
  
  
  Last Thoughts
  
  Keep in mind these are also opportunities to make a very bad impression. A key thing you want to do is create the impression that despite your youth and the fact that you are in the early days of your business, you both understand that you have a lot to learn (and are thus seeking out resources, information, business education) and approach your business as a business, not a hobby you hope to make money off of.
  
  I'm not saying that in relation to anything in your post, but I've seen a lot of people who ... basically gave one the sense that they had no idea what they were doing, no idea that they had no idea what they were doing, and were basically just making/doing something for money and throwing it out into the market and hoping for the best. Ugh.
  
  That's about all I've got in me at the moment. I hope you find it helpful. Don't be afraid to take a day / weekend job to keep your head above water. Getting a business started can take time. You need to eat and have a place to live until then. Money helps with this. :)

Just my 2 cents, but I would try to refinance that mortgage given today's rates. Almost six percent seems really high, you can get 3-4% depending on if it is a 10, 15, or 30 yr mortgage. The thing you would have to keep in mind is to get it lowers you would probably need the LTV to go to at least 80% maybe 75% to get the best rates (don't know the structure of what the marginal benefit is, don't work in loan mod/refinancing). So you would have to put an add'l 5-10% down which could be 4.5-9K down.

I also noticed that you didn't mention a roth/traditional ira. I would put the max (5K for 2011 and 5K for 2012) into these avenues. The roth / traditional ira debate is whether or not you believe that when you take out the contributions if you will be in a higher or lower tax bracket.

Also definitely take the employer match to the max. I do not know what you have to choose from in your 403(b), but definitely choose the route of indexing. Active funds have too much performance chasing involved and 2/3s of actively managed funds are beating by index funds each year. The ones that beat the index funds over a 10yr period shrinks even further

If higher then do the Roth IRA, if lower then do the traditional IRA. If you choose the traditional IRA make sure that you include it on your taxes. If you already filed your taxes file an amendment to your taxes to reap the benefits.

My personal choice for choosing an IRA is Vanguard, but it depends what you will be using the IRA for. If you do not wish to invest in Vanguard funds it might be better to shop around for a better IRA. I personally have an IRA with Vanguard and think they are a great co.

Make sure that when you open the IRA to take advantage of the tax advantaged space. Meaning the Bonds and Real Estate portion of your investment portfolio that you want to invest is in this location. REITs/Bonds are not great for tax advantaged space because you have to pay for the distributions.

When you say the 15% gtd do you mean like I-Bonds/savings EE bonds. These can be purchased through the Treasurydirect.gov website. They have the full faith and credit of the US gov't so they are as close as gtd as you are going to get in investing.

The 64% equities is a little vague. If you want to be simple you can simply invest in X% of your equity portion in vanguard total stock market index (VTSMX) and X% of your equity portion in vanguard total international market index (VGTSX). Misnamed helped me out when setting up my portfolio and is a very useful asset to this forum.

He led me on the path that since you are tilted currently towards the U.S. (ie your job, house, car, etc) you should not be so heavily concentrated on domestic stocks. An even 50% domestic, 50% int'l breakdown of equities will help to protect you from the downside of the U.S. markets.

Since Real estate acts more like a stock your overall allocation above would be more like 73% stock 27% fixed income imo (and that's giving you the benefit that the 15% gtd portion is fixed income, could be labelled as cash depending on how you invest it). Generally a decent rule of thumb is are you willing to lose 50% of your equity value in a year. If not you are too much invested in stocks. This is not a conservative/moderate conservative approach to be honest. I am currently 75/25 and consider my portfolio very aggressive.

A good book to read is The Boglehead's Guide to Investing if you want to learn more about asset allocation etc.

TL;DR Refinance mortgage, contribute to IRA, do employer match to the match with your 403(b), make sure to use tax advantaged space correctly, and possibly modify your allocation.

Qualifications: grew up in a very modest (i.e. lower) part of town, parents worked in blue-collar professions, and started buying a rental property in the 1960's, then dad passed away (with four kids). Now definitely intergenerational wealth, all kids went to college in STEM, parents in their 90's (step-dad helped build up RE holdings to 36 units) with holdings in the 8-figures. No I haven't inherited any of it (yet) but well into middle age myself, make very good money (and will leave it at that), and have a few RE holdings.

> I'll have manager experience. I'm also reading a book called "real estate investing for dummies" and I just finished "rich Dad poor Dad"

Good for you, I didn't start reading books on anything finance related until well into my 20's, and then I read a lot of very good books. I don't think much of Kiyosaki, frankly, but as Brian Tracy said 'to earn more you must learn more'. So don't stop, keep on reading, and especially books over blog posts and short pieces. Why? Books will have more complex ideas and more research to back it up.

Regarding your game plan: you did not indicate what you are interested in doing, and what you do well, and what people will pay you to do, and what the world needs. Take a look at this ikigai graphic. Not sure if you know that welding or sales is this for you, and of course there are other things you may grow into. But hey if you have a good idea that this is the path you want to take, good for you!

I came here to say about sales, few salespeople are on Reddit, they are very busy making lots of money to talk about it. In my own (technical) sales field base runs from $65K up to $120K with another 40% commission, but you need to have the right background (STEM college degree, experience as a customer, and aptitude for outside sales) so barriers to entry are high. So yes, six figures in your late 20's is achievable, and it does take a lot of hard work, no doubt!

Of course owning your own business as a contractor, or becoming a top welder, or tons of other things you could do, I know of plenty of people who do very well.

Regarding the end goal, admirable, and I say your thinking is in the right place. The road to FI is varied - real estate is a very good method (the way my parents went, they bought low and held onto their properties in a HCOL area), investing into index funds another good method (again read books like Boglehead's Guide to Investing, or another favorite of mine on the sidebar called The Richest Man in Babylon) The amount these books can make you over five or ten years is a lot. Over 15 or 25 years is huge.

> Even if I don't get to enjoy it

I see many piling on here saying 'you should enjoy it' but I didn't interpret this comment in that way. You realize it's a road not many take (too many live way beyond their means, and don't have savings / passive income / true wealth to show for it). Yes there's sacrifice, and it takes a long time to build up $1,500 in monthly passive income much less $15,000, but people do this and often you cannot tell. (For example, look up the book The Millionaire Next Door.)

Are you on the right path? Definitely YES. The path to financial independence starts with a mindset, and the fact you are asking the question puts you out in front of all the peers of yours who are thinking about lots of other things, which you know all too well.

Will you make mistakes along the way? Of course, we are all human. The important thing is mindset, and the great thing of being younger is that you have time to make other choices, and learn along the way.

Review your basic algorithms and data structures. Sorting, graph traversal, linked lists, structs, arrays, and multi-dimensional arrays.

Know about memory management, know about orders of magnitude in runtime, know about pointers, know about debugging and what to test.

You almost certainly won't be asked one of those wacky brainteasers you hear so much about -- we've found over time they do little else but tell us how good you are at brainteasers.

If you can do every problem in this book then you'll be more than prepared.

Also, give a quick read of our general interview tips.

General advice:

Pay close attention to providing thoughtful, reasoned approaches. Don't get so tied up in providing a clever solution that you forget the simple answer. Points are definitely awarded for really clever or innovative solutions, but that isn't the only way to get through.

Additionally, RELAX! This is definitely easier said than done, I realize, but understand that most interviewers really do want you to succeed. They aren't there to scare or intimidate you, and interviewing isn't even their day job! They're engineers who once sat exactly where you were, answering the same things they're now asking you.

Try and think of your conversation with your interviewer as being a chat with a really good friend of yours that you haven't seen in a really long time. You used to be best buddies, but moved away and you haven't seen them since. You know you've both changed in all that time, so you're being a little restrained, but there's still a foundation of mutual trust and respect -- one that puts you at ease.

Lastly, verbalize your answers. We aren't asking you to write an algorithm to sort a linked list because we're curious how it's done -- we're asking you because we want to know how you think. Verbalize your thought process. Verify all your assumptions. And, if you get stuck, don't be afraid of stating your thought process to your interviewer and asking for some feedback on where to take the solution (this is a heavily team-oriented company, after all).

Hope this helps! Best of luck!

Source: I do interviews at Microsoft, both general technical interviews as well as PM interviews.

Employers like degrees, but employers also like people who know how to get things done. At the very least, teaching yourself is a good start for whatever else you're thinking of doing.

I've thought about it a lot: if I were trying to learn to program, today, from scratch, what tools would I want? Well, here are a few of my favorite things...

Free VS 2010 Professional for @edu accounts:

https://www.dreamspark.com/

Free Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers:

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Free team tools worth understanding:

http://www.perforce.com/ (version control)

http://subversion.apache.org/ (version control - pretty much the same thing as perforce, but not as good)

http://git-scm.com/ (version control - a VERY different way of doing things, but powerful and gaining popularity)

http://www.rallydev.com/ (task management - kind of a pain, but good to play with)

Tutorials:

http://www.khanacademy.org/science/computer-science?k (probably a very good place to start)

http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard (math - the value of this cannot be overstated)

Online course-ware:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/#electrical-engineering-and-computer-science

http://www.stanford.edu/online/

http://edudemic.com/2012/04/the-25-best-places-to-take-free-online-computer-science-classes/

Problem solving challenges:

http://projecteuler.net/ (we should go through these together)

Community:

http://stackoverflow.com/ (Q&A forum)

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming (some good links, okay place to ask questions)

Books:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Interviews-Exposed-Secrets-Programmer/dp/047012167X (once you're ready for a job, this is good to work your way through)

Possibly a good discussion about finding a software job, later in life:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350827

And then...

Depending on the kind of development you're interested in, there are a TON of other valuable resources, tutorials, tools, etc:

Free Cloud Services - depending on what you're doing, these might be SUPER valuable... Might not want to make an account until you're ready, because the clock starts ticking:

http://aws.amazon.com/free/

https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/

Free cloud development tools:

https://c9.io/

Sorry I'm a little late to the party, but I thought I'd add my two cents.

The great thing about copywriting is that anyone can do it, no matter their background. So don't stress about having the "schooling" needed for the job. All you need is a good work ethic and clever skills.

First — Definitely read up on all the books listed in other comments.

I'd also look into [Hey Whipple Squeeze This] (http://www.amazon.com/Hey-Whipple-Squeeze-This-Creating/dp/1118101332) by Luke Sullivan, [Pick Me] (http://www.amazon.com/Pick-Me-Breaking-Advertising-Staying/dp/0471715573) by Nancy Vonk & Janet Kestin, and any and all advertising annuals you can get your hands on. Annuals are a great way to learn what works and see it in action. You can find some [recent award show annuals here] (http://www.welovead.com/en/bookshelf).


Second — Build your book.

Free time is a great asset. Use it. In order to really break in, you'll need a portfolio or spec book. This is a book of ads you've created that prove you can solve problems and write. Pick some products and make a campaign for them. The rule of thumb is 3 products with 3 ads each to show you can expand the idea beyond just one print or digital execution.

Many people go to portfolio school to build their book, but it's not necessary for everyone. I didn't do it and many copywriters I know didn't either.


Third — Network.

Although all of the above are important, they won't mean squat if you're not in the right place to talk to the right people. Try joining your local advertising club and go to their events. I'd also strongly suggest looking into [Portfolio Night] (http://www.portfolionight.com/12/). This is a global event held throughout the year that brings young creatives face-to-face with advertising professionals. Not only is it a great way to get some feedback on your book, but an outstanding way to network. You'll meet others like you and start conversations with the very people who could land you your next job.

Hope that wall of text helps. Good luck, man.

I may have worded that part a little incorrectly, I don't mean to infer that subliminal messaging has no effect, just that the effect isn't strong enough to effectively utilize in advertising in favour of other, less seedy methods. I recall watching a video in one of my college classes where three groups of designers were picked up and brought to an office and asked to design a logo. This office had in it, a whiteboard with a sheet over it that had a logo that had already been designed, and would not be revealed until the group had finished their logo. What the groups didn't know is that the route that they were driven on was incredibly complicated in it's own design, and exposed the designers to specific stimuli in a specific way, and all three groups recreated the hidden logo nearly perfectly without ever having seen it before hand. Now keep this in mind for later in this post.

My understanding of subliminal messaging is that it works on a basal appeal for a basal response. I'm going to link a couple of peer-reviewed sources here, but you'll likely have to search for the article in a database that you have access to yourself.

This article describes a study where flashing an image of the word "thirst" or a can of coke in a frame during an episode of the simpsons created a positive response, increasing the amount of people who described themselves as being "thirsty" after viewing the episode. The problem here is that this isn't a clear response of what you want from an ad. These subjects describe themselves as thirsty, but not what for. At this point, despite being "tricked" into be thirsty, nothing has been sold. They may go to the store and get a coke, but they're just as likely to go and get a pepsi, or mountain dew. They're considerably more likely to go no farther than their kitchen for a glass of water.

It is possible to get a more complicated response, however. This article describes the use of placing the brand name for a particular brand of rum backwards within an ad, and the response from this was overwhelming. Up to 80% of the subjects showed a preference for that particular brand of rum after being exposed. That's incredible. An 80% positive response to an ad is every creative director's wet dream. However, it application, it's completely useless.

The fact is that we're constantly being stimulated on a subconscious level within our natural environments, and as fast as something goes in, its replaced by something else. The experiment with the designers and the logo from before? If they were taken on the contrived route, but told to wait a day before designing the logo, the results would not have been the same. Furthermore, from the 3 groups that were "successful," you didn't hear about the 30 that "failed." That kind of response is not a simple feat — it would've taken months of planning and testing and failing before a formula for exposure could be created to achieve that response.

This brings up two key points about subliminal advertising:

1. It takes an incredible amount of time and resources in order to effectively craft a subliminal delivery for a desired response. It's more likely that the amount of money spent on creating the ad will exceed the amount of money made because of it.
   
   
2. Time is a factor. In order to foster a long-term response, the subject must be repeatedly exposed in a controlled environment for a period of time adequate to shape behaviour. 80% response to that rum ad is all well and good, but want for a product is not the same as buying it. I just saw an ad for Lay's chips, and I want some now. However, it's raining, and I'm lazy, so I'm not about to run out to the store. By the time I find myself IN a store, and WILLING to buy chips, I'm probably going to get Doritos, because I just plain like them more.
   
   The only way for that rum ad to be successful is if I saw it as I stepped into a liquor store. It's only effective if I see it while I'm in the position to act upon it, and I HAVE TO SEE IT in that moment in order for it to achieve it's desired effect. Weigh that against "The Big Idea," where the goal is to have the brand appeal to me every time I find myself in a position to act upon it, regardless of whether or not I've just then been exposed to the ad.
   
   Think of it like this: I go to the drugstore for deodorant, and as I step in, I'm exposed to subliminal advertising that causes me to buy outside my brand preference. The next time I go, that ad isn't there, and I'm likely to buy my preference again, as I'm not being stimulated into doing otherwise. Of course, this could work if the brand I'm "tricked" into buying happens to be superior to my old brand, and I decide to continue buying the new brand, but realistically, that won't be the case. It's deodorant — the majority of brands work just as well, and offer the same range of scents, and it's very unlikely that I'm going to be swayed by the quality of one brand versus another, because it's just simply deodorant. It's not a complicated thing.
   
   In that regard, I was a Right Guard man until Isaiah Mustafa came on the scene, and I converted fairly quickly. I still buy Old Spice to this day. It's probably one of the best examples of "sex sells" done right. No subliminal advertising, no dirty tricks, just a damn good ad campaign, done right.
   
   In regards to your question about ad agencies and that kind of market research, that thing is often client side in the marketing department. Companies will either do that sort of thing internal, or hire an external research company to do it, and then sell the result in order to break even on the venture. They'll then include the results in the brief they send to us in the form of "We want an ad for this, that includes this, this, and this, and accomplishes this," where "this" is various angles of tactics that they want to employ.
   
   I'm not entirely sure if agencies have their own versions, but I do know that psychology degrees are not uncommon in the field, especially in copywriters, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. I've worked for a smaller agency since I got out of school, and we certainly don't have that kind of resources, but I can't speak for the bigger agencies. I have a few friends at BBDO, though, so I'll ask them the next time I see them if I remember, and I'll shoot you a message in response.
   
   Since you seem to have a lot of interest in the creative process in regards to advertising and your field of work, check out Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!, Differentiate or Die, and Do-it-yourself Lobotomy, three go-to books for ad creatives. They offer a pretty good outlook on what advertisers go through mentally in order to do what we do. I promise that we haven't sold our souls in order to get you to sell yours.

This is going to be the opposite of what you want to hear. But, you asked for it and I respect that. I think that there's no substitute for going about this old school and traditionally. The good news is that you can mostly do this for yourself, by yourself.

If you're disinclined (due to time or for another reason) to enroll in a culinary program get yourself either The Professional Chef or Martha Stewart's Cooking School

I know what you're thinking, "Martha Stewart? What am I? A housewife from Iowa?" Fuck that. I've been fortunate to have met and worked with Martha Stewart she's smart enough to know what she doesn't know and that particular book was actually written by a CIA alum and very closely follows the first year or so that you'd get in a program like that. It starts with knife work and then moves on to stocks and sauces. This particular book has actually been criticized as being too advance for people who have no idea what they're doing so, despite appearances, it may be perfect for you. If you want to feel more pro and go a little deeper, get the CIA text but know that it's more or less the same info and frankly, the pictures in the MSO book are really great. Plus, it looks like Amazon has them used for $6 bucks.

These resources will show you HOW to do what you want and they follow a specific, traditional track for a reason. Each thing that you learn builds on the next. You learn how to use your knife. Then, you practice your knife work while you make stocks. Then, you start to learn sauces in which to use your stocks. Etc. Etc. Etc. Almost like building flavors... It's all part of the discipline and you'll take that attention to detail into the kitchen with you and THAT'S what makes great food.

Then, get either Culinary Artistry or The Flavor Bible (Both by Page and Dornenburg. Also consider Ruhlman's Ratio (a colleague of mine won "Chopped" because she memorized all the dessert ratios in that book) and Segnit's Flavor Thesaurus. These will give you the "where" on building flavors and help you to start to express yourself creatively as you start to get your mechanics and fundamentals down.

Now, I know you want the fancy science stuff so that you can throw around smarty pants things about pH and phase transitions and heat transfer. So...go get Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking THAT is the bible. When the people who run the Ferran Adria class at Harvard have a question, it's not Myhrvold that they call up, it's Harold McGee. While Modernist Cuisine always has a long, exciting complicated solution to a problem I didn't even know I had, when I really want to know what the fuck is going on, I consult McGee and you will too, once you dig in.

Another one to consider which does a great job is the America's Test Kitchen Science of Good Cooking this will give you the fundamental "why's" or what's happening in practical situations and provides useful examples to see it for yourself.

Honestly, if someone came to me and asked if they should get MC or McGee and The Science of Good Cooking and could only pick one and never have the other, I'd recommend the McGee / ATK combo everyday of the week and twice on Tuesdays.

Good luck, dude. Go tear it up!

This is where other schools of economics really fall short of the Austrians: spending does not grow an economy. Saving, reinvestment, and increasing production grow an economy. Simply having more exchanges means nothing if the number of things available doesn’t change. Macroeconomists love to focus on spending b/c it's something they can measure and it's a number they can push up or down, but it completely misses the big picture. You can certainly look at spending as a sort of measurement of the size of the economy, but it's a rough tool at best, and it's certainly not the driving force of economic growth by any means. I mean, Keynes was so myopic on this that he actually suggested that having the gov't pay people to dig holes and fill them back in would help the economy. How could that possibly make us richer? Who gains from that other than the diggers? You're just taking money away from the people producing the goods that improve our lives and giving it to those who are uselessly spinning their wheels. This is also why these same people think WWII got us out of the Great Depression, and if you just look at it with any sort of realistic view, there's no way that constructing tanks and planes and ships and sending them off to get blown up and take lives improves the lives of anyone. But creating labor-saving devices or more efficient ways to create food? That's the shit that actually matters. Everyone alive today that was born in the US has lived in a wealthier society than kings of the past could ever dream of, and we've lost sight of how we got here and what the mechanics were that created the wealth.

You got $13? Read this simple book, and it will put it all in perspective. Then if you want heavier stuff, you can get into Hazlitt or Rothbard.

https://smile.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X

Or you can start here for free: https://mises.org/library/one-lesson

...continued...

> Test plans - When you apply for QA roles, you'll almost certainly be asked "how would you test ____?". The correct answer is to be methodical. Don't just spew out a stream of test cases as you brainstorm them. Understand the different scopes (unit, functional, integration, maybe end-to-end) and what the goals of each is, and how they differ. Understand that there are different areas of testing like boundary, happy path, special cases (null, " ", 0, -1), exceptions, localization, security, deployment/rollback, code coverage, user-acceptance, a/b, black box vs white box, load/performance/stress/scalability, resiliency, etc. Test various attributes at the intersection of a compenent and a capability (borrowed from the book How Google Tests Software), and I believe you can see a video that goes into this called The 10 Minute Test Plan. Understand how tests fit into your branching strategy - when to run bvts vs integration vs regression tests.

> Test methodologies - Understand the tools that make you an efficient tester. These include data driven tests, oracles, all-pairs / equivalency class, mocking & injection, profiling, debugging, logging, model-based, emulators, harnesses (like JUnit), fuzzing, dependency injection, etc.

> Test frameworks - Knowing all the tests you need to write is good, but then you have to write them. Don't do all of them from scratch. Think of it as a system that needs to be architected so that test cases are simple to write, and new functionality is easy to implement tests for. I can't recommend any books for this because it's something I learned from my peers.

> Test tools - Selenium / WebDriver for web ui, Fiddler for web services (or sites), JUnit/TestNG, JMeter (I have to admit, I don't know this one), integration tools like Jenkins, Github/Stash, git/svn.

> System design - As you're entry-level, this may not be a huge focus in an interview, but know how to sensibly design a system. Know which classes should be used and how they interact with each other. Keep in mind that the system may evolve in the future.

> Whiteboarding - Practice solving problems on a whiteboard. The process is more than just writing the solution, though. This is the process I follow (based loosely on the book Programming Interviews Exposed):

• Clarify the problem - resolve any ambiguities, determine behaviors for special cases (throw an exception vs return null?). Look for gotchas (like if you're doing some string manipulation with overlaps)
  
• Give a couple test cases to demonstrate your understanding of the problem, to make you think of other special cases, and because they want someone who's test-focused if you go into QA. Give a happy path scenario and a couple negative or special cases
  
• Propose a solution - do this verbally, and give its runtime complexity (and less importantly, its memory usage). If the runtime complexity is bad (polynomial, exponential), then say so and think of a better solution (there will almost certainly be one)
  
• Implement the solution - verbalize your thought process while doing so. If you don't know something, say so. The interviewer will likely help you out without penalty. Listen very carefully for clues, because the interviewer will be giving them. Really understand everything the interviewer says, and understand his motivation for saying it. If you see potential bugs, say so ("I want to be careful that I don't go out-of-bounds in the last iteration of this loop").
  
• Debug the solution - walk through it as if you're a debugger, using the happy path test case that you made earlier. Oftentimes, the interviewer will give you a test case with the problem. Use it - he probably selected it for a reason (the numbers are in an interesting order that will find the most bugs, for example).
  
• Test the solution - Add to the handful of tests you gave earlier. Think about the different types of tests, and if they apply.
  
  Resources:-
  
  > Learning to test:
  
  
• How Google Tests Software
  
• Guice, and another
  
• Google Test Automation Conference
  
• Netflix's Simian Army
  
• Google Testing Blog
  
• Hermetic testing
  
• The Art of Software Testing (I've only skimmed it)
  
  > Learning to interview:
  
  
• Programming Interviews Exposed
  
• Programming Pearls
  
  > Learning to program:
  
  
• Design Patterns (I'm embarrassed that I don't have more recommendations for this...)
  
  > Miscellaneous
  
  
• Meetup
  
• Inventing on Principle
  
  > What sort of skills should I really hone? I realize I gave you a ton of stuff in this post, so here's a shorter list:
  
  

1. Read How Google Tests Software
   
2. Understand dependency injection
   
3. Understand unit, functional (use hermetic environments), and integration testing
   
4. Understand mocking (Mockito's a good one for java)
   
   > Examples of projects that make you look valuable
   
   

• Refactoring product code to be Guice-friendly
  
• Tool to profile method calls simply by adding annotations
  
• Tool to automate bug filing/updating/closing - assign to the right person, re-activate when they repro, give good steps, close when they're fixed and don't repro
  
• Tool to automatically quarantine flaky tests that aren't caused by product bugs
  
• Aggregation of distributed logs into central, indexed location (I didn't write the solution, just did the work to integrate an existing one (Logstash/Kibana))
  
• Automatically display the picture of the team member who checks in code with the highest coverage (I didn't do this, just something cool I read about)
  
• Tool that logs messages with contextual information, so for example you can see all messages associated with user 123
  
• Tool that captures inter-server traffic, associated with the user-request
  
• Tool that provides metadata about test cases in your web proxy
  

Got it.. 1st, find out from your employer if they offer an employer match. Make sure you capitalize on that because that is free money. 2nd, 15% of your income should go into retirement (pref. after tax- better to get taxed on ex. $5,000 now, then to get taxed on $2 million when you retire and withdraw). There are two types of mutual funds, actively managed (have higher expense ratios) and index funds (lower expense ratios). Vanguard has tons of low cost index funds (thats what the author in millionaire teacher advises. He shows data in their also on how index funds have outperformed actively managed throughout history.

Dave recommends the current mix of funds:
Growth and income: These funds create a stable foundation for your portfolio. Brant describes them as big, boring American companies that have been around for a long time and offer goods and services people use regardless of the economy. Look for funds with a history of stable growth that also pay dividends. You might find these listed under the large-cap or large value fund category. They may also be called blue chip, dividend income or equity income funds.

Growth: This category features medium or large U.S. companies that are still experiencing growth. Unlike growth and income funds, these are more likely to ebb and flow with the economy. For instance, you might find the latest it gadget or luxury item in your growth fund mix. Common labels for this category include mid-cap, large-cap, equity or growth funds.

Aggressive growth: Think of this category as the wild child of your portfolio. When these funds are up, they’re up. And when they’re down, they’re down. This volatile growth usually accompanies smaller companies. "So small-cap funds are going to qualify—or even a mid-cap fund that invests in small- to mid-sized companies," Brant says. But size isn’t the only consideration. Geography can also play a role. "Aggressive growth could sometimes mean large companies that are based in emerging markets," he adds.

International: International funds are great because they spread your risk beyond U.S. soil. That way your retirement fund doesn’t totally tank if America goes through an unexpected downturn. It also gives you a chance to invest in big non-U.S. companies you already know and love. You may see these referred to as foreign or overseas funds. Just don’t get them confused with world or global funds, which group U.S. and foreign stocks together.

source: https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/how-to-invest-in-right-mix-mutual-funds

Hope this helps. If you would like more details on how to invest I'd be glad to send you millionaire teacher free (https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Teacher-Wealth-Should-Learned/dp/0470830069). Was actually written by a school teacher lol. I've been in your shoes and have always enjoyed guiding people. Seriously considering turning this into something I do on the side where I can help more people achieve financial freedom.

First off, read Hey Whipple and Ogilvy on Advertising to get some basics down for what creative advertising is.

Next, you should go and if you can, absorb as much as you can regarding marketing, business and advertising while in school. Could be at the library, could be trying to take an intro class or to, but anything helps.

Right now your current track is perfectly fine for landing an internship somewhere. Creative writing is a good transition, the only issue is that you will need to know the correct copywriting workflow. This means knowing stuff like creative briefs, creative concepting and how to write copy decks.

You then say this:

>I have considered the option of going to a portfolio school after graduation, but I'll be 25/26 when I graduate with my bachelors and more school sounds awful to me right now, so I'd like to avoid that if possible. I'm not throwing the idea out, but it does not sound appetizing to me.

Yeah dude. People in portfolio schools a lot of times are in their 30's. Don't worry about the age. What I will say is that if this is financially a viable option, do it. Remember those things that I said you need to bone up on? That's a bit hard to do without a base, and portfolio school not only helps you learn that, but also pairs you up with an AD/Designer to create a portfolio (which is a must for copywriters) and also will give you the right connections to help you land an internship/full time position.

Because especially if your plan is to move to NYC, that grind is an extremely hard one. Anecdotally, a lot of my friends went to good schools with advertising programs, and even they could barely muster getting internships, let alone transition that to full time.

Have a leg up on them helps a lot. A couple of years ago I believed in the narrative where as long as you had good work, you didn't need to care about your credentials. But now, there's a lot of really talented people out there, and there aren't too many new positions being made.

So yes, I know that being in college is a grind, and just want to get out and do your job. But, if do just stomach it for two more years, you'll have a much better chance at landing something solid and substantial.

Growth is good, but you can do better by getting directly into the underlying funds themself. However, if you just choose 'growth' option, you'll be doing a lot better then most people who just ignore super completely and waste away a lot of potential earninigs.

It would be easy for me to say to you "just invest in X Y & Z", but the problem is that it would be much better for you, if you took the time to understand why I would be telling you that in the first place. Learning about investments properly and having a competent understanding will change & improve your life a great deal and will give you a big edge over other people your own age.

I highly recommend that you find & read this book:- https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Teacher-Wealth-Should-Learned/dp/0470830069

I recommend this book specifically because I have found it is very easy to read and not intimidating for anyone from a non-financial background. I used to give this book to staff members who worked for me in a previous job where I had a lot of 18-25 year old staff members reporting to me, and they all said they wish information like this had been taught in high school.

There are other books you could read of course, but I have found this one is the best for people who are "newbies" to dealing with finance, wealth & investments.

Of course, I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have.

Your rent is really quite high, but it's Vancouver so I get it.

One thing that looks possibly missing is budgeting for longer term or infrequent regular expenses. This might be things like:

1. Saving up to buy gifts for people at Christmas. Or just saving up because you know you will spend more at restaurants around the holidays.
   
   
2. Saving up for yearly vacations.
   
   
3. Any regular bills that are yearly rather than monthly. For me this is my rental insurance, but it sounds like you have this covered. A lot of people have yearly car registration fees as well, but I think you don't own a car? Either way, make sure you budget for any expenses like this so you aren't blindsided in January when you get a large bill that you didn't plan for.
   
   
4. Clothing purchases? Maybe this is falling under "personal enjoyment" for you, but clothes wear out.. You're going to need to replace them.
   
   
5. When you get a new cellphone every 4 years or whatever, do you buy a cheaper one on contract so there is no up front cost? Otherwise, you should budget monthly savings for this. And similar regular long-term purchases (Computer?).
   
   
   Perhaps not high on your list, but if it's your thing, setting some monthly budget for charitable donations is a good idea. Alternatively, just have a budgeted "flex" category that can include this, so that you aren't off-budget for random purchases ( within reason ).
   
   Move-out expenses: I've got about a $1000 bill for IKEA furniture in the 1 bedroom place I live in now. This did not include a bed ( additional ~$800). You can certainly do this cheaper (kijiji etc.), but budgeting $2000 or so would be a comfortable start. It sounds like you have the savings to do so. You'll want a good set of cookware, cutlery, plates, and kitchen knives as well, which could set you back a couple hundred, depending on quality and sales.
   
   Retirement savings: Typical suggestion is 10-20% of your pre-tax income. Since you have a defined benefit pension, you could aim for the low end, if you expect to stay in this position long enough to get full value out of the pension. $600 / month would not be a bad starting point. At 7% yearly growth, starting from zero, this would get you to savings of 1.5 million at age 65. 4% withdrawal rate gives a retirement income of $63,000 a year which inflation adjusts to about $30,000. Disregarding the DB pension, if you include CPP of ~$7000 / year, this would give you enough in retirement to more than cover your current expenses.
   
   For your current savings, you should keep an emergency fund of about 3 - 6 months income in a regular savings account that is easy to access. This is to cover you if something unexpected happens like you lose your job, or have to take extended time off to help a family member, or have some unexpected bills. As somebody who owns neither a car nor a house, your "unexpected bills" are likely to be less frequent and smaller, so you could aim for the lower range of this. I would keep at least $20,000 for an emergency fund though.
   
   For the rest of it, you need to decide what your long term goals are. If you intend to buy a car in near future (5 years), then you should keep an appropriate amount of money in a savings account, or other guaranteed instruments (such as GICs). GICs often (sometimes?) pay more interest than savings accounts, but have specific maturity dates. If you pull the money out before then, you forfeit all / some of the interest (depending on the terms of the particular GIC). If you think you will buy a car in 3 years, don't buy a GIC with a 5 year maturity date. If you intend to buy a house in the future, basically the same story. Keep the appropriate down-payment savings in a savings account or GIC so that there is no chance of losing it before you need it. Stock market investments are great in the long term, but for short term savings there is too much fluctuation, and you could be underwater when you need the money.
   
   If a car, house, or other large purchase (Planned big vacation, wedding, etc?) is not coming in the near future, then you should invest the rest for retirement. I recommend you pick up the book "A random walk down wall street" for more information about how you should be investing for retirement. The short version is to get a low-fee online brokerage account (I use TD direct investing), buy ETF index funds, and just hold them. No day-trading or "I think this will go down tomorrow, I'm going to sell and buy it back then!".
   
   

I'll address your #1 below, but I want to focus on #2 for a second.

The feedback you've gotten regarding your degree choice is correct -- all of it, even though it may seem contradictory. You'll have a tough time finding a job in Art - and artists probably won't appreciate a degree in CS very much. The reverse couldn't be further from the truth.

It is a very rare individual that has the logical and mathematical nature to code efficiently and with broad scope but then uses their artistic creativity to inspire cleverness. Code, or more generally put a system, is a piece of art just like any other. A wide array of pieces which need to cleverly and harmoniously co-exist. The creativity of an artist is essential in recognizing the potential of an application.

I want you to look at this role. Read the job description, and picture it applying to a product where you design the User Interface and the User Experience. Understand that you will work with graphics artists, but it's your vision that determines what the user experiences.

If that feels right, chase it.

----

As for your #1 question, another very good one.

When I'm interviewing SDEs, I want to see mastery of concepts and, to an extent, cleverness of a solution. There are a few things, though, which make me almost immediately discount a candidate:

Starting before you have all the information. Make sure that you have a very clear vision of what the problems is before you begin. Understand that any assumptions you make must be checked first. For example, if I say take a pointer to the head of a linked list and then do X on it, and you assume that the pointer will never be null, you will fail my test. Either code for the case where the ptr is null, or ask the interview "Is it a fair assumption that the pointer will never be null?"

Being satisfied with a naive solution. When solving a problem, it's perfectly fine to give the naive solution -- but don't stop there. Once done, talk with the interviewer. Say things like "Now this is the naive solution, because it finishes in O(n^2) time. We can make this more efficient by doing 'X'" and then press forward.

Internalizing your thoughts. This is weird to do for candidates, but it's critical for a team environment. When you're solving problems, think out loud. I'm not asking you to solve these problems because I'm bored and need a show, I want to know how you think.

There's so many of these I could write a book (and others have). I highly recommend reading Programming Interviews Exposed. It's an awesome resource with spot on practice problems.

I am not a financial advisor or anything of the sort and this is all my opinion.

Before you do anything... READ.

This will take awhile to get comfortable with and organized but it will benefit you more then you can imagine. Being as young as you are and starting now is hugely beneficial. Please do this as it will benefit you for the rest of your life if your serious about it now.


I would recommend either (get it at your library)
Bogleheads Guide To Investing or Common Sense on Mutual Funds as an easy book to get started with. However, there are many others that can be just as good.

If you are serious you should not see an advisor. This is something you and almost everyone can do yourself.

Investing in index funds is the simplest and arguably the best way to save money. The books above explain this very well. Don't worry about stock picking or anything stressful as that is often a fools errand. Good investing is highly automated and only requires patience and persistence.

As for your questions.
Compound interest is not a type of account. It is the idea of earning interest on the interest you have already earned in the previous years.

What you should do is read, starting with the book mentioned above (get it at your library).

A Roth IRA is an investment vehicle for retirement, not any specific type of investment.
A Roth IRA is very practical and until you have a 401k(another type of investment vehicle) you should be putting all your money that you intent to save, up to $5,000 a year into it.
While as soon as you read retirement you may thing its not for you, starting to save now will put you incredibly far ahead of your peers during all parts of life.

Sorry to be so vague but the books I mention above will explain everything far better then I can here. As I said if you are at all serious PLEASE read one.

I'll answer very briefly, but /u/NoraTC covered a lot of really important things, the biggest being the variation in work. I'm answering as a line cook in what most would consider a good, upscale restaurant.

Working as a cook is both a tremendously rewarding and challenging proposition. The hours and schedule and pay aren't good. Many of your co-workers will be derelicts. It is hard, repetitive, stressful work. On the average day, you'll get there a couple hours before service (whether that means 4:00 am or 2:00 pm) and you'll get your station set. If your restaurant has lunch and dinner, you'll hope the person working the opposite shift didn't screw you over by using all your mise en place (abbreviated to meez generally). If so, hope you're good at what we'll call dispute resolution techniques. You need to make sure you're set for that day and you're staying ahead for the next few days too. Are there parties coming up? Better make sure you have what you need. If you have to rely on a sous chef to help you get set, it's bad news. The whole time, you'll be working quickly.

You eventually get to the point where your hands know what to do and your mind can wander a little. But you'll get done at whatever time and then go home exhausted. Usually, the managerial style is brusque. People get fired; practical jokes are played. The best source is Bill Buford's Heat, which is also an excellent read.

But despite its less great qualities, working in a kitchen can be really rewarding. It's satisfying to make stuff with your hands. See e.g. Shop Class as Soulcraft for more on this topic. The folks you'll work with form a real sense of camaraderie. It teaches you a lot about life. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. I'm probably even happier I'm done with it.

Edit: One of the things that's really rewarding, but I didn't touch on above, is knowing you can do it. There's a lot in life where you get a participation award. In a kitchen, it's not like that. If you're good, you survive, then you thrive, then you move to a new station and figure shit out all over again. If you can't cut it, you're out.

> I think you have trouble understanding that I know that Capitalism is a very effective way to drive innovation as long as it may generate profit.

Great, so now we agree on something... it's not much, but it's something.

> It is however a very bad driver for innovation when there is not much profit behind it.

I never said it was perfect! What I am saying is that overall, it's the most efficient way to drive innovation across the board. That is, overall, it will produce more innovative ideas than any other model out there.

> But even if it would be the most awesome innovation driver ever and have no downsides in that department, it is fatally flawed in its core. Now I could give you the work of Dr. Murray Low to read as well (https://www.amazon.com/Seventeen-Contradictions-Capitalism-David-Harvey/dp/1781251606/280-4905634-3720005)

If you're done trying to make the logical case for your position, then I'll start throwing books and videos your way too!

The fact is that good ideas stand on their own merits. I don't need to watch a 90 minute video from somebody with whom I can't have a discussion. If I don't agree with any of the premises he proposes, then I have no way to rebut them and get an answer.

> When a system is as flawed as Capitalism we must look out for alternatives. And that may be Communism (or for Marxists rather Socialism because that is the transition before Communism).

We already know which systems provides us with the fundamentals to consistently and efficiently produce the most good ideas and eliminate the bad ones:

• In science, it's the scientific method.
  
• In politics, it's democracy.
  
• In economics, it's capitalism.
  
  Are all of these system perfect? Far from it, but they're the most efficient ones we have available. Now, I'm all for the proposal and adoption of better ideas, but we've already tried the bad ones (religion, dictatorship, communism, etc.), so we don't need to try them again.
  
  > Also I am really interested in what "pure" Socialism is? There are multiple Socialist Systems: Anarchism, Market Socialism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, Planned Economy Socialism, and so on and on...
  
  We start with a fundamental concept: effort and reward. When I place my effort into something, which system will allow for the most efficient and largest yield of reward? If any of those forms of socialism do, and they do so more efficiently than capitalism, then let's adopt them. And if you're claiming that they do, then please bring forth the evidence that demonstrates it.

> 1. what are your recommendations for budgets for beginners? The ones on the wiki are slightly confusing to me

The main thing is to spend less than you earn. Certain exceptions for mortgages or college can be okay, but understand what you’re getting yourself into. If you feel like a more detailed budget with specific allotments for food/transportation/etc helps you, that’s fine, but spending less than you earn is the important part.

> 2. Any books/videos I should read/watch to get a good idea? I've watched a couple of people like Graham Stephan but that's about it

The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins. He wrote this book for his own daughter when she was starting her adult life. It covers the basics of investing, 401k’s, all that stuff, but also higher level concepts like why you should even care about personal finance at all.

> 3. I'm looking to open up an online bank account, credit card, and ROTH IRA soon and would appreciate which cards/index funds to go for vs which ones to avoid (I will be in the States)

Online bank account - whichever one offers the best combination of a high interest rate and convenience (ATM’s in your area, etc). Just google around.

Credit card - Given that you’re young without a credit history, the best credit card will probably be any card you can get, preferably one without an annual fee. Every credit card has a high interest rate, so be careful with it and pay your balance in full every month. If you pay the full balance then you won’t pay the high interest rate (or any interest). If you mess up and pay late or don’t pay at all you’ll damage your credit score and hurt yourself down the road (mortgages or other loans will be harder to get, and more expensive if you can get them at all).

Roth IRA - You can only contribute to this if you have earned income from a job, and cannot contribute more than you earn in a year. Assuming you have earned income, open a Roth IRA with Vanguard and invest it in VTSAX, which is a mutual fund containing small parts of the top 3000 company stocks in the US. You need at least 1k to start. You can contribute automatically every month or every pay day if you want. And the maximum allowed is 6k/year.

Search algorithms and data structures will be pretty important for the interview, but if you're a bit rusty, there's probably still time to brush up on stuff before the interview. Books like Cracking the Coding Interview or Programming Interviews Exposed really help.

One thing to be careful about on the interview though is to not get too hung up on finding the best possible answer to a question. Yes, coming up with an efficient solution is good (and if you give a less than optimal solution, your interviewer will probably ask you to improve it or add more constraints), but if you cannot come up with any solution, even a naive one, and aren't able to code it (or run out of time because you spent too long trying to find an efficient solution), you probably won't make it to the next round.

In general though, you shouldn't be asked too many questions that require memorization as long as you know the basics (and you should be able to discuss space and time complexity for any solutions you provide). If you have any more questions though, feel free to send me a PM (I work at Amazon).

Switzerland Follows Iceland In Declaring War Against The Banksters

Above Photo: From WakingTimes.com.

“If you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.” –Josiah Stamp.

Iceland has gained the admiration of populists in recent years by doing that which no other nation in the world seems to be willing or capable of doing: prosecuting criminal bankers for engineering financial collapse for profit.

Their effective revolt against the banking class, who drove the tiny nation into economic crisis in 2008, is the brightest example yet that the world does not have to be indebted in perpetuity to an austere and criminal wealthy elite.

[http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/06/07/icelanders-force-accountability-for-banks-why-cant-we/]

In 2015, 26 Icelandic bankers were sentenced to prison and the government ordered a bank sale to benefit the citizenry.

[http://theantimedia.org/first-they-jailed-the-bankers-now-every-icelander-to-get-paid-in-bank-sale/]

Inspired by Iceland’s progress, activists in Switzerland are now making an important stand against the banking cartels and have successfully petitioned to bring an initiative to public referendum that would attack the private banks where it matters most: their power to lend money they don’t actually have, and to create money out of thin air.

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/12/12/conspiracy-bring-honest-money-world/

“Switzerland will hold a referendum to decide whether to ban commercial banks from creating money.

The Swiss federal government confirmed on Thursday that it would hold a plebiscite, after more than 110,000 people signed a petition calling for the central bank to be given sole power to create money in the financial system.

The campaign – led by the Swiss Sovereign Money movement and known as the Vollgeld initiative – is designed to limit financial speculation by requiring private banks to hold 100pc reserves against their deposits.” [The Telegraph]

Switzerland is in a key position to play a revolutionary role in changing how global banking functions.

In addition to being the world’s safest harbor for storing wealth, it is also home to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a shadowy private company owned by many of the world’s central banks, and acting as a lender to the central banks. [https://www.bis.org/]

The BIS is the very heart of global reserve banking, the policy that enables banks to lend money that does not actually exist in their bank deposits, but is instead literally created electronically from nothing whenever a bank extends a line of credit.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/091298645X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?]

Reserve banking is the policy that guarantees insurmountable debt as the outcome of all financial transactions.

The Sovereign Money initiative in Switzerland aims to curb financial speculation, which is the intended and inevitable result of reserve banking, the tool that makes financial adventurism possible by supplying the banks with endless quantities of fiat money.

[http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/06/29/can-this-economy-be-saved-by-injecting-fiat-money-into-banks/]

Limiting a bank’s ability to produce money from nothing would be a direct blow to the roots of the banking cartel, and would cripple their ability to manipulate the world economy.

Here’s how it works, in rather simplified terms:

“…if we had access to the same computer terminals the banks have, we could magic in or out of existence all the imaginary stuff we are trained to think of as important – money – in whatever quantities we liked.

This is how it works: when they print quite a lot of this stuff there is a boom. When they print too much of it, there is inflation (actually, the printing of money is inflation). When they stop printing it or simply hold on to it, there is a depression.” [https://www.rt.com/op-edge/327191-switzerland-money-banks-ban-referendum/]

In Switzerland, 90% of all money in circulation is electronic, and for this, The National Bank of Switzerland has become the direct target of the Sovereign Money Campaign.

Swiss law has in the past required required banks to back all currency creation with collateral assets like physical silver or gold, however in recent decades the climate has changed, and, “due to the emergence of electronic payment transactions, banks have regained the opportunity to create their own money.”

The grass roots campaign said in a public statement regarding the intentions of the referendum, “banks won’t be able to create money for themselves any more, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks.”


This is an interesting twist in the human saga of man vs. banks, and while it remains to be seen if the referendum passes or not, it must be pointed out that it does have its own problems, articulated by Sam Gerrans:

[https://www.rt.com/op-edge/327191-switzerland-money-banks-ban-referendum/]

“… it does say that the central bank should be given sole right to create money.

This would essentially leave the creation of money in the same hands as those who control the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England rather than allow them to farm out the process.

But at least it shows that people are beginning to wake up to where the true power lies.

In the unlikely event that this grass-roots movement in Switzerland should get its way and its proposed legislation be enacted, and then begin to morph into something which really does threaten the banking elite, we must not be surprised if Switzerland is shortly discovered to be harboring weapons of mass destruction, or to have masterminded 9/11, or to be financing Islamic State.”

Part of the cultural conditioning of our time is an ingrained, pre-assumed dependency on sacred cow institutions like banking.

Just like it is impossible for most Americans to envision a world without Democrats and Republicans, it is difficult for most people to imagine a world without predatory global banking.

Yet, there are a number of other possibilities for trading, storing wealth, and facilitating development in the world.

[http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/08/24/the-next-global-financial-crisis-is-here-and-this-is-what-we-can-do-about-it/]

This is not the only economic system we can imagine, and as Iceland has proven, people can regain control of their collective wealth, so perhaps this revolution will foment further in Switzerland, presenting a chance to at least bring greater awareness to the truth about central banking.

https://www.popularresistance.org/switzerland-follows-iceland-in-declaring-war-against-the-banksters/

I will echo what was already written, but I will address two major points. The first is your acute state of mental health, and the second is philosophical background on the question you asked concerning work.

If you are having suicidal ideation than you need to get help to stabilize. If its possible, talk to professionals, and develop a support network if possible, that knows how you feel. You need to disconnect from the 'conspiracy' world a bit, and focus on something positive. Enjoy nature, and engage in some activity where you are physically moving with people you love.

Books that are topical and I found very helpful, center around what the meaning of 'work', as a category that structures our world as it actually is. The first books is [Shop Class as Soulcraft]
(https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467). In this work, the author, who actually worked for a Global Warming denial propaganda farm before quitting, engages in an exploration of the difference between skilled manual labor and unskilled labor, and what the differences are for being a human.

The second book, I am somewhat apprehensive to post, but I think it is really insightful. That is the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of Marx, especially the section called, " Estranged Labour". It is an exploration of what work really is, as an activity that connects human beings, where we satisfy each others needs, and in doing so reproduce a social organism, and it is an exploration how we become alienated, and how these activities start to appear as forces outside of our control, that control us, and are deeply exploitative. They don't have to be that way.

I hope this was somewhat helpful, and I hope you feel better soon.

I would cross-post this to /r/cscareerquestions since that's the subreddit that's more career focused.

My recommendation is to start building a coding portfolio. Specifically set up an account on www.github.com and start posting some of your projects there. Basically how github works is after you set up an account you download the client and create a folder on your computer. Any code or documents you put into that folder and then "push" will appear online. This will allow you to have lots of code samples to show a prospective employer. Another good idea is to build your own website. There are a couple of good web hosts such as www.bluehost.com and www.nearlyfreespeech.net. I personally use www.nearlyfreespeech.net because it's very very cheap. (You pay only for what you use and since your website will primarily be used to show employers it will be a few cents a month.)

Once you have a website and Github you'll also want to start studying more and learning more and then creating personal projects. There are a lot of good places to continue learning programming. You could sign up on www.pluralsight.com for their $29 a month plan and then follow along with courses. Alternatively you could buy books about programming and go through them and upload code samples to Github as you go through them. (A strategy I use is to look at books on www.amazon.com and buy used copies or copies that are 1 edition older than the current edition, it is very realistic to get books for $4 including shipping and handling.) There are also many free resources such as www.codeacademy.com.

Some good books you could buy that will help you once you get job interviews are: Cracking the Coding Interview, Programming Interviews Exposed, and Elements of Programming Interviews. Out of these books "Programming Interviews Exposed" is the best for beginners while the other two are more meant to get you ready to interview at huge companies like Google or Microsoft.

As far as projects to do just pick some ideas and implement them. For me personally I made a website (www.cslearner.com) and created my own blogging software. There is better blogging software out there then the stuff I wrote for myself but it beefs up my portfolio and gives me something to talk about in job interviews. One idea may be to make some sort of CRUD application/website. CRUD stands for CREATE, RETRIEVE, UPDATE, DELETE. Since a lot of what we do as software developers is data manipulation you can create some sort of app or website that creates and manages information. In my case the first CRUD thing I created was a comment section using PHP and MySQL. Literally all it did was allow people to post comments on a website and then a SELECT statement would display all the comments that people had left. You could do a similar project. The cool thing about CRUD is that you can build apps using a huge assortment of technologies. You could create a CRUD app using ASP.NET, server side Java(JSP), PHP and MySQL(the LAMP stack), or a bunch of other technologies.

Also a huge thing is to apply for jobs even if you don't feel very ready. Check out this YouTube video in particular. Employers put down a wish list of things they'd like in a candidate but know in advance they won't get everything they'd like. If you seem like someone that could learn the technologies they may hire you even though you don't know everything yet. Also you'll want to apply to a lot of places. I've had 15 job interviews so far (I'm graduating this next April) and I have no job offers yet. This means I have to apply to even more places. Even though Computer Science is a very high demand field job hunting is still hard and you still need to put out lots of applications.

A lot of this comes down to how actively you want to engage in the process, how much of an "enterprising investor" you want to be as opposed to a defensive investor.

For the more defensive position, a lot of /r/investing appreciates Graham's approach emphasizing value, even if a substantial quantity of capital is devoted to playing the market itself (something Graham called speculating). If that approach is interesting to you--which seems likely given your stated desire for low to medium risk with steady growth--then the main adjustments you'd need to make are as follows:

• Quit sinking the majority of your capital investment into just a couple stocks and stay away from actively managed mutual funds, too. For upwards of 80% to 90% of your capital, go with a balance of indexed stocks and bonds. A common way to do that is to subtract your age from 100 and let the difference be the percentage of stocks; in your case, we're talking 76% of your capital in indexed stocks and 24% in bonds if you did not set aside anything for more speculative forms of investment. If you set aside, say, 10% of your capital for speculation, then we'd be talking about roughly 68% of your total capital in indexed stock and 22% of your total capital in bonds. Periodically buy / sell to maintain this balance; some people who are really disinterested in closely playing the market do this only once or twice per year with long term success. Your goal here is to diversify your capital outlay in one of the most boring yet demonstrably low risk / consistent growth ways out there, and that is a portfolio heavily biased towards indexed stock and bonds. For a text that develops the logic and details of this approach, read The Millionaire Teacher.
  
  
• There are tax advantages to contributing to a 401k; so, a lot of people would council maxing this out. Nevertheless, a 401k is just a type of account; you would still want to follow the principle in the previous point in deciding specifically what sort of investment you want to "point" your 401k towards. (I say this because some people are under the mistaken impression that a 401k is itself a form of investment, e.g. "I have some capital in stocks, some in bonds, and some in a 401k.")
  
  
• With whatever quantity of capital you chose to devote to more speculative activity, say, 10% of your total capital outlay, think of this as your chance to experiment. If you like KO and WEN, great. As frequently as you want to play the markets, whether you want to go long on this stock or short on that, this (and only this) portion of your capital is yours to do with as you please. Have fun, but don't ever allow yourself to pull capital from your more secured forms of investment over to speculative activity if your goal is "low to medium risk with steady growth." Speculation is inherently risky; that's the way it works. And it's not something you can just do every once in a while with consistently solid results; it takes serious devotion.
  
  
• Since you mentioned holiding a normal savings account and/or a CD, I'm going to mention that most folks council retaining upwards of 3 to 6 months worth of expenses in a totally liquid form of savings. This won't make you any money whatsoever (well, unless we wind up with a nice drop in inflation and you can take advantage of some pretty crazy rates select credit unions offer, like Baxter's "Rainy Day Savings" at 3.0% APY). But that's okay; the goal here is to have cash on hand for an emergency. CD rates are pretty terrible across the board right now; so, you're better off going with a high interest online savings account like ING Direct Savings or Discover Online Savings if you don't want to bother with or cannot get credit union membership enabling you to snag those nicer savings account rates.

Credit card companies get ~3% off everything you spend on their card. So of course they're going to keep letting you do it. If you spend $10,000 on something and use a credit card, that merchant has to give the credit card company around $300. Interest and annual fees are just icing on the profit cake.

That's why you have things like 1-3% cashback cards; they're sharing that percentage with you in some cases, but still mostly keeping it for themselves. I buy everything with credit cards and sign up for new ones all the time, because I get tons of miles/points doing so. I don't overspend, and I never pay interest, and I've earned over 260,000 miles/points so far. I value each mile/point at 2-5 cents.

As far as what to do with your investments; there is a bunch of research available online. I'll again suggest The Bogleheads Guide to Investing as a primer for this sort of thing. There is also the Bogleheads wiki. Morningstar has tons of information on virtually every fund, but you need to know what you're looking at so read the book first to learn things like expense ratios, R-squared, and standard deviation.

As far as investing in things that match your value system, you could invest in local government bonds, which is very beneficial for tax purposes and usually a good, safe investment in your local community, but I wouldn't worry too much about it overall. Investing in any one sector or specific group of companies is never a good idea. You should be investing in index funds, i.e. the whole market. No one, over the long term, has ever beaten the market as a whole. Yes, you'll own a little bit of all the horrible companies, but it's the safest bet for your future and that's not something you really wanna screw around with.

More important than what specific funds you should invest in is at what percentages, i.e. your "asset allocation". I won't go into it in too much detail on this, read the book above for more information, but a popular rule of thumb is to invest your age (e.g. if you're 30, invest 30%) in bonds, and the rest in stocks. As you get older, you change that asset allocation to match your age. If you want to make it super easy, most investment firms have "target retirement funds" that do all the work for you. Most 401ks offer such funds, and you're probably already subscribed to one. It's a safe bet to stick with that.

tl;dr: banks get money whenever you use your card. invest in whole market index funds.

The immediate response is to your last point.

> We are, as a rule, talking about corporate profits here, so the connection between profits and social good is tenuous at best.

First of all, many smaller enterprises, such as YouTubers and other smaller producers are hurt by infringements of copy right as well as corporations and 'The Man'. Additionally, when no third party is harmed by the creation or transaction (called an externality in economics e.g. burning oil is an externality because everyone's natural resources suffer), a profit means that you created a social benefit. Big companies don't get paid arbitrarily; they're paid because people saw merit in their creations and chose to view or purchase those creations, hence, a social good.

If companies, small businesses, and content creators were paid far less for their work, far less quality content will be produced. If Disney knew they would barely turn a profit with every new release, would they throw billions at each movie and really ensure that it is a quality production? While many people are motivated by their own sense of creativity and desire to contribute, a significant portion of creation is driven by the desire for profits (not necessarily a bad thing). Without that desire, there would be no content, no creations for the public to enjoy.

Sauces:
https://youtu.be/tk862BbjWx4

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Anniversary-Milton-Friedman/dp/0226264211


PS: While I believe that copyright and defense of intellectual property is necessary, modern American copyright law is fucking insane. Don't get me started on the DMCA.

>Since the free market would fail to provide products and services (defense, public infrastructure, water resources, sanitary services) equitably, the government necessarily exists to provide these services.

This is completely untrue. How would the private sector fail to provide such services? Currently the reason the private sector doesn't provide for some of these services in certain areas (many of these services are indeed provided by the market) is that the government has a monopoly on these services. Before government got involved these services were solely provided by the market place.

>The concept of equity (equal protection) is a constitutional concept that tends to necessitate government provision of certain goods and services.

This is not how it works in reality. Government offers greater access and protection to certain wealthy connected individuals and corporations. When the government takes $500 from me that I would have spent on say new tires for my car and gives the money Haliburton, how is efficiency created? When the Fed prints a few billion dollars (thus lowering the value of the money we hold) and gives it to Lockheed Martin, how is efficiency created?

>While I will concede the point that the production of the federal government is not nearly equal to the resources it takes in, it is fallacious to assert that the government does not produce.

Creating a monopoly on services and providing less than the resources it takes in isn't equal to producing a product or service. In the market place consumers can weigh the trade offs between capital and a particular product or service. With a government monopoly the consumer isn't given this choice and efficiency is greatly reduced. For some basics you can read How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.

>I believe that a reasoned approach to governance, as asserted by Ron Paul in many respects, would bring us much closer to government efficiency...

Closer yes, but closer is quite relative. It still wouldn't be able to come close to efficiency that the free market could achieve.

>...and simultaneous effectiveness first by delegating more power and resources to state and local governments to provide those services that are best provided at that smaller scale and second by re-prioritizing the allocation of government resources within the federal government based on more appropriate measures of public health and safety.

Although Dr. Paul does indeed want to remove much of the power of the Federal government and return it to the states, he really would like to see most of government just get out of peoples lives all together. He understands that the free market would be far more efficient and that government will just continue to take away any liberties you might possess.

1. The first half that you talk about is well known now, but that's because of Ben Graham. Don't forget, the original edition of the intelligent investor was published in 1949 nearly 70 years ago. Those ideas were revolutionary at the time. For someone who hasn't been reading about investing or done a lot of research those are also invaluable lessons to learn which is why the book is recommended so often.
   
2. If you're looking for some more detailed security analysis I think Graham's other book security analysis will cover what you're looking for. I haven't read it personally so I don't know for sure, but from what I've heard secondhand I think it covers it.
   
3. My own personal thought on the Intelligent Investor is that it's a good general book about the market and can teach you a lot. However, Graham is not the most engaging writer and reading through his book is a slog to say the least. I think there are other more recent books that teach the basics without being difficult to read. A Random Walk Down Wallstreet is one I've personally read that's good. I'm currently skimming through Heads I win, Tails I win and so far it covers the psychology of investing pretty well while also quoting from The Intelligent Investor directly. I've heard that The little book that (still) beats the markets is also good but I haven't read it personally.
   
4. One final thought is that some of the ideas presented in the first half aren't necessarily so obvious to most people. If they were, you would never get valuations into the triple digit (or infinite!) P/E ratios like AMZN, NFLX, TSLA, etc.
   
   Edit corrected the years to nearly 70 from nearly 60. Did anyone else know it's 2016 and not 2006?

Oh sweetie, I think this is something everyone thinks about, and I don't know if you ever really feel "ready" to have kids. I know that I didn't--but 2 healthy kiddos later, we figured it out. We wanted to wait until we both had jobs, had our living situation figured out, and had been married for at least a couple of years. We felt "ready" and we started to try. I was still terrified when I found out I was expecting. Only you and your partner can decide when you feel "ready", but realize that it will never be the perfect time to have kids. Also, as a woman, you do want to keep in mind that the older you get, the harder it might be to get pregnant. (Not for everyone, but statistically.) It's something to keep in mind as you plan.

If you feel like you might be almost ready, talk to your partner about it. Talk about your hesitations. Are they big giant roadblock? of just little speed bumps? Does he have any ideas on how to work through them with you? Are you scared about being pregnant? having the baby? caring for the baby? What are your (and his) concerns?

Once you feel like you have worked through your major concerns, maybe set a date to stop trying to prevent (you have been using something to not get pregnant, right? that's important too) or a date to start trying. We waited until after a big trip we had been planning. Then, keep talking. Share your fears with him. Talk through them together. Maybe do some research or learning. It helped me to read about what to expect. Some books that I enjoyed or found helpful were:

​

Pregnancy Related:

• Expecting Better by Emily Oster
  
• What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff
  
• Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
  
  Babies:
  
  
• Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp
  
• Wonder Weeks by Frans Plooij
  
• What to Expect the First Yearby Heidi Murkoff
  
• Cribsheet by Emily Oster (wasn't around for me, but I loved her first book, so you might give it a shot)
  
  ​
  
  If you like to read, maybe give one or two a shot. You can also check out /r/Parenting and/or /r/BabyBumps to see what real parents are saying. Try to find some local moms to talk to about their experience--they can be a good support group later too.
  
  If you are a planner, do some checking on things that you might need to know about (daycare, pediatricians, etc) if that makes you feel better. Look at costs, locations, ratings, whatever you need to do to feel secure.
  
  Realize that even if you decide you are "ready" you may still freak out a little bit once it happens. Having a baby is scary and life changing, but that's okay! You can do this! You are awesome!
  
  Also, here's a little secret that no one talks about --no one knows what they are doing with raising kiddos, we all just fake it til we make it and muddle our way through the best we can. I still feel like I'm just pretending to be an grown up with kids.

>well, obviously you're always going to have some. but the gov't was too new at that time for business influences to infiltrate it deeply. Esp relative to the situation today.

Not true at all. The country was founded on the principle that the role of government should be to protect private property from the majority of people. Originally, you couldn't even vote if you weren't a landowner. Businesses didn't infiltrate it, they completely controlled it.

>how is that any different from having politician running things? who decides who gets to vote? doesn't direct democracy require that all citizens vote on all policy initiatives? what's to stop this small group of voters from colluding?

You honestly can't see the difference? If a factory (for instance) needs to make policy decisions, the workers all vote on what to do. They're all collective owners so they all get a say. It's not that difficult really.

>i don't give a fuck if i can survive on potatoes and a hut I grow and build myself. I want a plasma TV and to fly from New York to Seattle in 4 hours and a nice house and medical care. I think you're making a LOOOOT of assumptions about people's willingness to accept self-sufficiency for a horrible quality of life.

That's nice. I'm sure you also enjoy buying designer clothing that is drastically overpriced and made in sweatshops where the owners hire thugs to keep workers from organizing. I think you're also assuming that self sufficiency requires abandoning technology and living in a hut. It definitely doesn't. I can't tell if you're being deliberately ignorant or not.

>that's veeeery subjective opinion. i agree global warming is real, but it's a huge step to say it threatens life on Earth.

Then you must not know too much about global warming.

>this was not due to capitalism though, it was entirely the gov't bailouts, bank deposit insurance, and low interest rates.

According to Marx's social analysis, yes this is 100% capitalism. The bailouts and recession basically happened exactly how Marx predicted that the capitalist economy will function. According to Marx, it's not just about free competition, it's about the wealthiest companies using their wealth and power to stamp out competition and rig the system for their own interests. After all, they're only trying to make money so why wouldn't they? Money is such a strong incentive, isn't it?

>It seems our debate ends here. We seems to disagree on points that would take a lot of effort to explain to each other. And I'v got boards in a week. Take it easy. If you have time and interest to learn about Austrian Econ, I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370971957&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+schiff

Peter Schiff is an idiot and a pseudo conspiracy theorist. I've already taken time to learn about Austrian economics. It has some decent ideas but if you're getting your view of Marx from Austrian economists then you're not going to know what you're talking about. All in all, it's one school of economics but it's not the only school or even the most practical school.

Another vote for both of the Emily Oster books, and the best practical book I've read is Heading Home with Your Newborn. Also this one's not a pregnancy book but I would strongly recommend How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen if you're at all scared of the toddler through kinder stage. It's an entertaining read that aligns well with developmental psychology and has all these really funny real life examples of using the strategies from the book.

If I had to only pick a handful, I'd pick those.

I also liked the Ina May book which people will recommend a lot, but keep in mind it really is exclusively about childbirth and it's a bit crunchier than the average (though this pertains to the birth stories included more than Ina May's actual writing IMO). There's a good interview with her on the Longest Shortest Time podcast that addresses some of the things I felt the book could have benefited from stating outright to avoid sounding a little preachy at times.

If you're looking for like a detailed read that starts with absolute basics that would be especially good for anyone who hasn't researched much on pregnancy before, I would recommend Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: The Complete Guide. It's as thick as a textbook but it doesn't read like one. They have a page in most sections directly speaking to partners as well, which is neat.

You have a golden opportunity in front of you. You can either seize the opportunity, work your ass off, and transform both yourself and the company. Or, you can sit on the sidelines.


The more problems a company has, the more opportunities there are. Do you aspire to top out as a rank-and-file employee, doing your prescribed work in your cubicle, working for a company where you are completely expendable, collecting your paycheck and never doing much more in life? Or do you want to be an agent of change, grow to become a leader, and the COO in 7-10 years?


If you don't have ambition, than call OSHA, sit on the sidelines, bide your time, and complain about the problems.


If you have ambition, then devote yourself to your work. Make that company your engineering playground. You are young, this is the perfect time to reinvent yourself.

If you have ambition, here is what I would do:

1. Buy a copy of the The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. Order it today so you can read it over the weekend. You will probably want to refer to it, so buy it, don't bother with the Library.
   
   
   
2. Get a spiral notebook and begin mapping out the company. Take a brainstorming session over the next few days. Articulate as best as possible the following:
   
   

• What does the company provide? How do they get customers? What is their competitive advantage?
  
• Org chart to the best of your ability - with quick summaries on perceived job duties
  
• General process flows of the entire company. Start at a high level - Finance, Marketing, R&D, Manufacturing, Distribution, HR, etc - do this to the best of your ability. What are the inputs and outputs? This is just to give a basic idea of how the company operates. Regularly review and revise this as your understanding of the company grows.
  
• Detailed process flow of the manufacturing plant. Group by department and note inputs & outputs. Capacities. Bottlenecks. Production sensitivity.
  
  

3. Now the real work begins. Brainstorm every problem you can think of with the company. Take your lengthy list and then brainstorm all the root causes of those problems. And the root causes of those root causes. And so on.
   
   
   
4. Take your expanded list of problems and jot down possible solutions to each problem. I hate using buzzwords, but make them S.M.A.R.T. . With your list of problems and solutions, apply a loose PFMEA scale to each to get a sense of how severe each problem is, how frequent it is.
   
   
5. Considering your list of problems, your corresponding solutions, and the priority assigned, now you will go back through and assign costs. What is the cost of not correcting the problem? Lost throughput? Insurance claims? Turnover (costing money in training)? What is the cost of solving the problem with your solution? Estimate this all of this to the best of your ability. You will be coming back to this notebook daily in your career and revising as you grow in knowledge and experience.
   
   
6. Now it is time to act. Take the low hanging fruit, the easy problems to fix with simple solutions, and implement them. If they need buy-in from management, get it. Learn how to sell your ideas. Make concise presentations and keep them accessible so you can at any moment be ready to give someone above you a quick improvement strategy.
   
   
   To be clear your management isn't interested in hearing problems. They want to hear solutions. They want to hear solutions with clear action plans, costs, and value.
   
   If you have the ambition and motivation to be the person to drive the change, follow the above outline. It will take a lot of work. You can't just clock out at the end of the day, get high and play video games. You can have some unwind time, but spend at least 2 hours constantly analyzing the company and finding ways to change it for the better.
   
   
   To close, let me be clear on one thing:
   
   >They have me doing a little bit of every job
   
   
   This is a good thing. I hope you realize that. Please don't have the "that's not my job" mentality. If you have that attitude, you have already limited the amount of success you can achieve in life.

I could have swore I replied to this, but I guess my comment got lost because I keep like, fifty fucking tabs open at a time. My bad.

ahem Anyway, it's hard for me to say if my taste differs much from an NT's sense of taste. I do feel like I taste things with more complexity(?), but I don't have much to compare it to. I can say that I started learning to cook and bake after reading and memorizing large portions of [The Professional Chef] (http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355) and people love my food. And I taste-test it throughout the cooking process to make sure it's good, so apparently there's nothing wrong with my sense of taste. Maillard is one of my favorite words.

I hate the taste of liquor in things. I like alcoholic drinks where the taste of alcohol is completely disguised.

My favorite food is ice cream. My least favorite food is caviar.

I'm picky about the textures of foods, and I can't eat anything that smells bad (like kimchi). My sister-in-law makes this Filipino soup with tamarind and cellophane noodles that absolutely disgusts me. The smell of it drives me from the house. (Don't tell her I said that.)

I have a very strong sense of smell, which I think makes my sense of taste stronger than the average bear, but I'm not sure. I do know that certain smells which bother other people (skunk, gasoline, burning rubber, a catalytic converter) do not bother me at all. I actually think they smell pretty good. Meanwhile, some things which people think smell good (like certain flowers and perfumes) smell awful to me. I CANNOT go near a Bath and Body Works store.

I love to try cooking new and exotic things, but I personally have very simple tastes. I could happily live the rest of my life taking in nothing but coffee with milk and sugar, iced sweet tea, iced water with lemon, plain turkey sandwiches on white, and Campbell's chicken noodle or tomato soup.

Cilantro tastes like cilantro to me. Not soap. :D

Here is a random article I found about stock simulators.

How do you like to learn things? There are tons of books, podcasts and blogs about investing. Here are some popular ones or ones that I have read and used

• Books
  
  • The intelligent Investor
    
  • A Random Walk Down Wall Street
    
  • Your Money Your Life
    
  • The Richest Man in Babylon
    
  • I Will Teach You to be Rich
    
    
• Blogs
  
  • Stock Series
    
  • Mr Money Mustache
    
  • Mad FIentist
    
  • dozens of others, Google is your friend
    
    
• Podcasts
  
  • Money Tree Podcast -- pretty poor production quality but good general stuff.
    
  • There are tons of others, Google it.
    
    Warren Buffett famously/supposedly read every book in the financial section at the library by age 12--I think the important thing to take from that is you are still young and have tons of free time and aside from starting to invest as soon as you can (you can usually start as soon as you have earned income) you should be investing in yourself...getting good grades, figuring out what you want to do after high school, trying out businesses, learning marketable skills (e.g., coding, good writing skills, good interpersonal skills, good organizational skills, etc).
    
    Good Luck!

It really depends what you want to save for. Are you planning to buy a new car soon or go on a nice vacation? Saving up for a downpayment on a house? Saving for retirement? Some combination of these?

For any portion that is shorter term (car, vacation, house) you're probably good with just keeping it in savings accounts, though you might want to check out some high-interest TFSA accounts that probably pay a much better rate than what you're currently earning.

For retirement savings, you should invest in stock markets and bonds, though not directly. Mutual funds or exchange-traded funds are your best bet, ideally sticking with low-cost "index funds". There's a lot to be learned before you begin this journey, and so I suggest you start out by reading these great personal finance books:

• The Wealthy Barber Returns, by David Chilton. You can still get a free copy here even though it says the free eBook offer expired Dec 31.
  
• Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School, by Andrew Hallam. Check your local library, or buy it on Amazon in paperback or Kindle.
  
  Both of these provide solid coverage of all the basics of personal finance, and a good intro into investing. They are somewhat lacking in the actual implementation of the investment strategies they discuss, so for that I recommend an eBook called The Value of Simple, which you can get from Chapters, Amazon, or from the author's website.

Not much here to offer in the way of advice but thought I'd express a bit of sympathy. I'm an electrician and naturally persuade people into working in a skilled trade. Maybe something to consider over retail until you get your ideal gig. Maybe climb the chain of another field of interest using existing skills while acquiring more. I love my job, fresh air, no customers, exercise, feeling of accomplishments... I'm testing for my Master Electrical License and would love to have your skills in addition to my own to aid in getting my company going and looking more professional right off the bat.

Best of luck friend, life isn't defined by falling down, it's defined by how you get back up. Read this while you ponder how you'll get back up http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467

Not OP, but I asked the same question years ago and I compiled this list:

​

1. This is the best book on the subject that I've read. It is as fair to both sides as one can be. In fact, I came away with a better understanding of how and why the Palestinians feel the way that they do after reading the book.
   
   ​
   
   
2. The Arab Spring. This is a great journey through all of the countries affected by The Arab Spring. It helps understand where we are now.
   
   ​
   
   
3. The Prize. Technically, it is the history of the oil industry. As you should expect, it covers a lot of ME history, too.
   
   ​
   
   
4. Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS This book helps you understand how radical ISIS really is compared to AQ.
   
   ​
   
   
5. Michael Oren has two good books: Six Days of War and Power, Faith, and Fantasy. Despite Oren's affiliation with Israel, his books are fair and interesting reads.
   
   ​
   
   A book on the fall of the Ottoman Empire is another good place to start. I have not read this one yet. I've heard that it is a good read.
   
   ​
   
   ​

A rally is a period where the price continues to rise, because either new fiat money is flowing into crypto, or people are leaving one crypto for another at that time.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rally.asp


I use bittrex and coinbase and like them, but there are many options for exchanges. I live in Washington state, so I have less options because Kraken and Poloniex are not available here.


I'd recommend getting either a ledger nano s or trezor hardware wallet. I have a ledger and it's really cool. Others like the trezor, but I don't have experience with it. Look into both and figure out which one you like more. This is the most secure way to store many coins.


This stuff is definitely worth the effort. I think it will be a multi trillion dollar market in five years, so it's still really early days. If you have a background in tech, then you have a good advantage in assessing the technology and making a lot of money investing. Good luck to you!


Oh also, if you want to dive deeper into the tech, a good first read is Mastering Bitcoin. Even though it's about bitcoin, you'll learn the fundamentals that are used by all cryptocurrencies.
book link

If your teeth are bad and the enamel soft, it suggests that your diet was or is poor. Studies of remote indigenous people early last century showed that even though they'd never seen a toothbrush, decay was extremely rare and crowded teeth were unknown.

The dentist who conducted those studies, Dr Weston Price, concluded that vitamins A and D, as well as an unknown substance in butter (now identified as vitamin K2) were vital for the formation of bones and teeth, and successfully treated dental deterioration and decay with a healthy diet supplemented with cod-liver oil (contains vitamins A & D) and butter oil (contains vitamins A and K2). Check out Ramiel Nagel's book Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition or, if you can't spare funds for the book, he's got a series of 3 YouTube videos on the topic. He examines the work of Dr Price as well as two other dentists.

Another item to be aware of is the post-metabolisation acidity of foods. Too much acid-producing food in a meal causes your body to raid the bones and teeth for alkalising minerals to try and restore a more neutral pH that the body prefers. Check out The Acid-Alkaline Food Guide: A Quick Reference to Foods & Their Effect on pH Levels, or this brief online list. While we need essential nutrients from acidic foods like meat and mildly acidic ones like butter, it's best to ensure the alkaline-food portion of our diet is the bigger part.

Another item to address your enamel softness problem is to avoid fluoride as much as possible. Fluoride exchanges places with calcium quite readily, and is stripping away the very mineral your teeth need. Excessive exposure (dental/skeletal fluorosis) leads initially to white marks, then brown stains, and in extreme cases, pitting and visible structural deterioration. Fluoride-free toothpastes are available, many based on sodium bicarb/bicarbonate of soda. You can actually use bicarb on its own as a tooth-whitening agent. Before you go using abrasives or brushing extensively though, probably a good idea to boost teeth strength with a good diet for a while first. A variety of fresh produce with lots of leafy greens (chlorophyll contains magnesium, another alkalising mineral involved in bone/teeth formation), and be sure to take daily cod-liver oil and butter and/or cheese.

Remember, your teeth are a window to your bones.. they are like the tip of the iceberg that you can see. You can't put fillings in, or whiten your bones with dental cosmetics: proper nutrition is the easiest and most effective solution for bone health. Eliminating from your diet highly acidic foods such as white flour/bread, white rice, white sugar is an important first step, and has other benefits (like reducing diabetes & heart disease risk).

Regarding your old fillings, I'm afraid there's no easy advice if money is tight. On the financial advice front I can highly recommend George Clason's great little book The Richest Man in Babylon (PDF version here). If you currently drink sodas regularly, as so many people do, one idea to try is to carry an old fizzy drink bottle with you and fill it with water. On every occasion when you would have bought a sugary acidic fizzy drink, put those few coins aside, in a jar or box, forget about them, and drink the water instead. Check your hoard in six months and you might be surprised at its value. (If not sodas, look for other small savings you can make - and then be sure to save the money instead of "dipping into" it!) If you can save enough for the filling replacements, in the interest of your health, have any mercury-amalgam fillings removed very carefully, and replaced with non-amalgam fillings. You'll want to find a holistic dentist, who will remove the amalgam using a dental dam and a proper ventilation system to protect both you and him from the additional toxic mercury vapour that will be released (in addition to the normal continuous de-gassing) when your fillings are disturbed. The filling replacements might take time to save for, but as a first priority you net to stop the rot, and that comes from fixing your diet for the better. Convenience and fast foods have a cost that is far greater than indicated on the cheap price tag.

Interesting thing about bikes, they get your adrenaline up, but also get cortisol up as well.

Burning through traffic at 100+mph is awesome, but guys who just get off their bikes tend to have their eyes bulging out of their heads. Great for energy, but the extra good vibes don't really come until you've come down. Someone advised me against getting a panigale because it would roast my nads, and there are motorcycle related ED issues with some models.

If you are going to ride, get involved with the new wave custom scene by getting a cheap machine and building it out. The physical knowledge will be the real transformative aspect. If you are intellectual, read "Shopclass as Soulcraft," and check out sites like BikeExif to get the idea.

Also, mandatory viewing includes:

• TRP meets HD
  
• "How to Ride Bitch,"
  
• "Waiting out Winter"
  
• "Baja Ride Documentary"
  
• "Making fun of Waiting out Winter"
  
• More bike snark, but funny bike snark.
  
• Long Live the Kings
  
  
  

I got about 25 minutes into the video; I'm not wasting more time. If you want to know serious data about the dangers of central planning of the monetary system, there are vastly better sources that talk in real, economics, and not lofty, sensationalist terms.

The International Role of the Dollar: Theory and Prospect by Paul krugman

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

The Creature from Jekyll Island by Griffin

Milton Friedman's Free to Choose videos

--------

My main objections in the first 25 minutes of this "documentary" are:

1) They're not correctly defining or using the terms currency or money and not identifying their economic role. Money is not the center of an economy, it is the lubrication that permits economics to happen. Economics is the analysis of how scarce resources that have alternative uses are allocated by people (by markets).

Money doesn't create those allocations, money enables those allocations.

Even in an economic system without money, there would still be allocations of scarce resources that have alternative uses by people; whether that is choosing to use your time to cut down a tree for your neighbor in exchange for beef or choosing to use your time to mow a lawn for your mother in exchange for a smile and a thank you; your time is a scarce resource and you're choosing how to allocate it with zero money being involved.

Money is any medium of exchange and is created as a store of one's labor.

You receive a dollar in exchange for X minutes of your labor. That piece of paper stores those X minutes of your labor and you can use it in exchange for something you value.

So anyway - this video does a shitty job identifying what money is at the outset... I don't think it'll get better.

2) The banking system, monetary policy, and politicians making a killing off of those systems has not been hidden from anyone. As they admit, almost in a very quick juxtaposition with their incorrect statement, the bankers, academics, and politicians are very open about their systems.

The problem is that people are just happy with their lives and are safer than they've ever been throughout history.

3) A complete misunderstanding of what "interest" is and what fractional reserve banking is.

Interest is the cost of lending money... it is the price tag on a product just like on the coat or iPod you buy. The baker isn't going to give you all his bread for free; why should a bank give you money for free?

Fractional reserve banking can be done responsibly. Much like the interest rate, it should be done at the rate set by free markets. A fractional reserve rate of 90% almost completely guarantees that when you withdraw, you will always be able to withdraw all of your money. In exchange, banks will give you vastly lower of an interest rate than at a 10% fractional reserve rate because it is higher risk and lower reward for the bank.

Anyway - like so many other documentaries out there about extremely complex matters, this one is just trying to sell a product like every other good capitalist out there. They need to catch your attention and get you to talk about it to others to make money - so of course they're going to play to the 8th grade education market.

>So I dropped out and learned a trade. Perhaps I am still not stimulated intellectually, but I am stimulated mentally by the pride I take in doing things with my own hands and watching them work and serve a purpose and the challenge inherent to doing something I am not used to doing (working manually). This, I think, is the real reason women are overrepresented in college : men are not interested anymore because they aren't challenged anymore. It's the same gold star for participation, sit down, shut up and regurgitate mentality that has been ruining education for decades and that women excel in because it furnishes them with attention for not doing anything of note.

Yup... nothing I can really add to that. Other than an upvote.

---

Aw hell... I never could post a short comment like that in response. (LOL)

--
"Intellectual stimulation" basically just isn't going to happen in most of modern (post modern) academia -- if it ever even really WAS that, it ain't no more -- now it's just become an second iteration of (public/compulsory) high school, the main goal (other than indenturing people into debt via a loan & tuition extraction machine) now seems to be to create an extended adolescence, and keep young people OUT of the workforce for as many years as possible.

If you're actually really intelligent (i.e. 2+ SD's above average) then you pretty much HAVE to be autodidactic -- seek your stimulation (and satisfaction) via independent reading/studying (in whatever the fuck interests you at any given time); and then engaging in various hobbies -- IMO you were entirely right to seek out manual "hands-on" trade work; there's something about actually BUILDING/CREATING (or even "fixing") complicated or "custom" things with both your hands AND your mind that banal "academic" crap just cannot achieve.

---
By any chance have you ever read any of Matthew Crawford's books? I just finished his Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work piece... and it pretty much talks about and extends that very point; you might find that to be of interest.

Cheers!

You might find some of these resources helpful to get a sense of some of the moving parts for the "lean" / "customer development" approach:

Steve Blank's free Udemy course: https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245

And his protege Eric Ries' Lean Startup book:
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898

And Blanks'
https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417

A rough, top-level, possible roadmap for a bootstrapped solo product:

1. Talk with a bunch of potential customers to validate whether the problem you will be solving for is in fact an acute problem.
   
   
2. Validate that your solution is a good one to solve that problem. Again, you can start with customer interviews with a prototype of your product. Validation can also be pre-sales, one pager landing page "coming soon" sign ups and other things.
   
   
3. Product development and customer development happening in tandem. Customer feedback informing the product. Yeah minimum viable product: what's the minimum version of your product that proves your assumption that people will find this valuable?
   
   
4. Participating / building an audience / community around folks who value solving this problem can happen during development too. Some like to do this BEFORE building the product -- and having an audience to pitch different variations of products to.
   
   
5. Get early adopters in the door, helping you improve the product. "Doing things that don't scale" while you are still in learning mode.
   
   
6. Try different experiments to improve A) the product and B) different ways/channels to find customers.
   
   
7. McClure's Pirate Metrics: measuring the customer journey of acquisition, activation, retention, referrals, revenue. At this stage retention is probably #1: am I building a product people are finding valuable enough to stick around and continue to use?
   
   
8. "Product/market fit" means your product and the particular type of people you are helping are a happy fit. Time to make those "things that don't scale" more scalable. Time to hit the gas pedal on the marketing side. More experiments to find growth...

Yeah completely understandable, it's not too complicated, but from an outsiders perspective can look daunting. I can't really recommend any specific financial advisors, but if you have the time to do some reading I can recommend a few things that will help you out. A Random Walk down Wall Street and The Intelligent Investor are great, easy to read introductions to value investing, while this post on /r/AusFinance gives some pretty straightforward and practical advice.

While its not the advice you're looking for right now, do consider it as it may help save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

I found IOTA and joined this subreddit around Nov 2017. Since then I have been slowly learning about IOTA. I am a student majoring in Computer Science, and although college has not been going very well so far. I spend a lot of my free-time learning about technologies that interest me. I have been teaching myself to program for the past 9 years or so, and over the past year have been studying blockchain and distributed ledgers extensively. The book Mastering Bitcoin, by Andreas M. Antonopoulos Is a good resource I used to first get a good understanding of how blockchain technology works. It goes into as much detail as a programmer might want, but also explains most concepts in a relatively simple manner first before going into more detail about them, allowing most anyone with a slightly tech oriented background to get something from the book.

IOTA is one of my personal interests because it's team is aiming to create something bigger than most others are, the scope of what IOTA could become is huge, and the technology is cutting edge new.

I personally seek to have such a detailed understanding of the technologies I am interested in because I desire to one day help change the world through the contribution of my own innovations.

I am currently trying to teach myself to program with IOTA. My current goal is to build a program that uses MAM to control smart devices in a home. Being alone however, progress in my learning can be slower than if I was collaborating with others, and motivation to put as much time as I would like to in can be difficult. I am currently considering dropping school to pursue working the the crypto-space as a developer. I understand a lot of programs for training new developers are coming and and I hope to be a part of one of those, and then work my way up from there.

I am currently trying to build connections in the crypto space with anyone I can. Working on IOTA software with other developers would currently be the dream for me. Though I imagine if I partake in a training program, it wouldn't be for IOTA specifically. I will continue to try and learn to develop for IOTA in my freetime regardless, as I really believe in this technology's potential.

Hello! Also from Ontario Canada! The best advice I can give you is.... Spend less than you make (create a budget and stick to it), pay off all your credit cards in full every month, try to keep the life style creep to a minimum, and live in a low cost of living (LCOL) area (if you can).

In terms of buying vs renting there are calculators for that and it's personal choice, but try not to buy more house than you can handle (we live in the GTA so house prices are crazy right now...) If you can live with your parents for a while, you can save a lot of money that way too (just contribute to the household!! If not in cash, at least do the dishes and laundry or something...!).

If you want to buy and do nice things, budget and save for them! Striving towards FI doesn't mean you have to live like a pauper... But be reasonable and have your ultimate goal in mind.

Some nice books to read (that are Canadian!) Would be Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam and The Wealthy Barber/The Wealthy Barber Returns by David Chilton (you can just borrow from the library as an e-book or actual book!).

Since you are unionized and have a pension, I would say max out your TFSA first (check out the index fund model portfolios from Canadian Couch Potato and then your RRSP (whatever room you have left after your pension adjustment) and once you still have money left over open a marginal account (if you you are married by then,max out both those accounts for your spouse before you open any marginal accounts).

Also, read the side bar and the stickied posts. Enjoy your journey to FI. It's important to plan for the future, but you shouldn't forget to enjoy the present as well!

Actually there is a brilliant book that everyone should read, which you might have heard of:

The creature from Jekyll Island

You will find that this is in fact not the first time the bailouts have happened. The author has done some wonderful research to show how this cycle has played out ad nauseam. In fact it is in chapter 2 itself. I encourage you to read it.

The origins as well as the mission of the Fed is anything but altruistic. I'm going to sound like a crazy right-winger for a moment, but the system really is geared towards enriching a small segment of elite while tying the rest in debt servitude for life.

That's what housing bubbles like the current one do. They force you and me to auction our future wages against each other in a giant competition, so that we can sign our lives into debt-servitude. (Don't get me wrong, debt can be good if used productively, but not like this). Rising house prices benefit only the banks, who can collect massive interest over 30 years. Again I'm hesitant to quote RT, but literally like it says, Read it and weep.

The banks meanwhile can use fractional reserve banking to create money, and lend it to you and profit. If they make risky loans, they get paid more interest. If the loans default... why hello Uncle Sam, where's our bailout? It is a zero-risk way to make tons of money, and it is bullshit.

Let's see what happens with all these treasuries now. I'm amazed that we have all concluded that QE was such a grand success, when QT hasn't even been done yet. The Fed is looking to stop their purchase of treasuries in the coming months, and let the current ones roll off the balance sheets. China is looking to slow down or stop treasury purchases. The Government on the other hand gave out massive tax cuts, and is looking to finance a $1 trillion dollar deficit by issuing more treasuries! The NK war, which will happen soon, will also be financed with debt. Jesus. This is not going to end well.

There is a wonderful book about process improvement from about 35 years ago called The Goal by Eli Goldwater that is written as a novel. Wonderful book - terrible novel: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement https://www.amazon.com/dp/0884271951/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_AS.vDb6F2QH3T

And The Phoenix Project - on DevOps is an homage to The Goal and is also a novel: The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win https://www.amazon.com/dp/1942788290/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_9Y.vDb2981BYS

Also an amazing book and a terrible novel. Both of these are great examples of the power of different learning styles. The novel format accommodates Socratic Learning (questioning) and is just a terrific way to teach what would otherwise be very dry subjects. Humans are wired for storytelling and these books are exemplars of that.

And I have these in my list on amazon. Would love to get some opinions on them:

 

How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

 

Secrets of a Freelance Writer: How to Make $100,000 a Year or More

by Robert Bly

 

Words that Sell

by Richard Bayan

 

Tested Advertising Methods

by Caples and Hahn

 

Writing That Works

by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson

 

Confessions of an Advertising Man

by David Ogilvy

 

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

by Al Ries and Jack Trout

 

The Robert Collier Letter Book

by Robert Collier

 

Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose

by Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee

 

Letting Go of the Words

by Janice (Ginny) Redish

 

Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers

by Harold Evans

 

Can I Change Your Mind?: The Craft and Art of Persuasive Writing

by Lindsay Camp

 

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

by Roy Peter Clark

 

Read Me: 10 Lessons for Writing Great Copy

by Roger Horberry and Gyles Lingwood

 

Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads

by Luke Sullivan

 

WRITE IN STEPS: The super simple book writing method

by Ian Stables

 

On Writing Well

by William Zinsser

 

The Wealthy Freelancer

by Steve Slaunwhite, Pete Savage and Ed Gandia

 

Write Everything Right!

by Denny Hatch

 

The Secret of Selling Anything

by Harry Browne

 

The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time

by Chris Murray

 

On Writing

by Stephen King

 

Writing for the Web

by Lynda Felder

 

Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

by Ann Handley

 

This book will teach you how to write better

by Neville Medhora

I don't know of any that compare, but, the Napoleon's Buttons is SUPPOSED to be good.

http://www.amazon.com/Napoleons-Buttons-Molecules-Changed-History/dp/1585423319/

Other books, engineering related, that I liked are:

Norm Lieberman's Process Troubleshooting books, the guy cracks me up!

Working Guide to Process Equipment (3rd edition probably cheaper): http://www.amazon.com/Working-Guide-Process-Equipment-Fourth/dp/0071828060/

Process Equipment Malfunctions (not as good as the other one, some overlap, but still worthwhile, and covers more breadth for individual issues): http://www.amazon.com/Process-Equipment-Malfunctions-Techniques-Identify/dp/0071770208/

The Prize (mentioned above): http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1439110123/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/188-3799228-4803548

The Quest (Follow on to The Prize): http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Energy-Security-Remaking-Modern/dp/0143121944/

Oil 101: http://www.amazon.com/Oil-101-Morgan-Downey/dp/0982039204/

The Mythical Man Month (Not engineering directly as it pertains to software, but, projects and project management are huge in engineering, though this book is timeless): http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959/

Piping Systems Manual (You can NEVER know enough about pipe!): http://www.amazon.com/Piping-Systems-Manual-Brian-Silowash/dp/0071592768/

Pumps and Pumping Operations (OMG it is $4, hardcover, go buy now! This book is great... did you know OSU didn't teach their Chem E's about pumps? I was flabbergasted, gave this to our intern and he became not a scrub by learning about pumps!): http://www.amazon.com/Pumping-Operations-Prentice-Pollution-Equipment/dp/0137393199/

Any good engineer needs to understand MONEY too:

The Ascent of Money: http://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/

It's Nial Fergesuon, who has had his own series of dramas and dumb stuff. The Ascent of Money has a SLIGHT libertarian tinge... but it wasn't bad enough that I didn't enjoy it. I consider it a history book, and he attempts to write it like one.

Have fun!

I have never personally accepted equity funding.

It seems like you are new to learning about VC. i'm not an expert, but I do know a bit. Let me try to help clear some things up.

firstly, if you are interested in learning about venture capital and the terms in VC term sheets (the word we use instead of "contract") you MUST read this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

which includes a sample term sheet in the appendix, but more importantly, it explains everything on the term sheet in plain english, and then goes into the economics of VC, negotiating, and more.

you can see sample term sheets here.

http://www.google.com/search?q=sample+venture+capital+term+sheet&client=safari&rls=en&oe=UTF-8&oq=&gs_l=


Term sheets do not spell out when and how a founder leaves a company, or any sort of exit strategy as you defined.

Accepting VC is not an agreement to sell your company. Its an agreement for equity and usually some board seats in exchange for money.

Now, the VC can only get paid in a couple of ways. Either a liquidity event, such as an acquisition or an IPO, or depending on their agreement they can sell their equity back to the company or to other people. (i don't know how common the latter is)
So, the VC expects you to exit in some way, and since accelerators take equity as well, they also only get paid in a liquidity event (or the secondary market, as i explained above as selling equity back to the company or other people).

thats as far as it goes for an "agreement to sell the company".

also companies aren't really ever "finished" being built. Is Ford finished? Facebook? IBM?

The Law by Frederic Bastiat (awesome, short, soooo many quotable quotes)

Healing Our World by Dr. Mary Ruwart (old version available free)

Haven't read any of his books (have listened to many lectures and radio show), but something by Harry Browne should do quite nicely. I've heard great things about Why Government Doesn't Work

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity - John Stossel (do check out his excellent Fox Business show "Stossel" on hulu.com, and look for his old 20/20 specials on libertarianism - they're fantastic)

good economists: Peter Schiff, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Walter Block

You might be better off waiting til you get more comfortable with libertarianism, but G. Edward Griffin's Creature From Jekyll Island is a must read. It's more about the monetary system and the Federal Reserve than libertarianism in general though.

I haven't read anything that makes a good argument against libertarianism, but can recommend a guy who makes a seemingly good argument against capitalism and for socialism - Michael Parenti. I haven't read any of his pro-socialist books (but have one on foreign policy called The Terrorist Trap which is quite good and very short. Libertarians and socialists tend to agree on not inviting war and not waging war). But I have listened to his pro-socialist lectures - they're well delivered and impassioned and a person who didn't know any better would easily be tempted. They're worth listening to to use his arguments and twist them to actually make the case FOR libertarianism. He'll use some faulty facts/data that leftists typically do such as "Hoover was an ardent free-market advocate and we can blame him and capitalism for causing the Great Depression" (we can blame him for the depression all right (prolonging it, to be specific), not b/c he was a capitalist but b/c he really started all the policies that FDR continued when he got into office)

When I find myself in this position (which I'm currently in after burning 18 months and a big chunk of cash on my last startup only to have it fail), I usually slink off, lick my wounds, do a lot fo reading and then approach my next project feeling a little more educated, refreshed, and ready.

Some suggestions if I may:

• The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win: http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strategies/dp/0976470705
  
  
• Founders at Work: http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1430210788/
  
  
• Business Model Generation: http://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417/
  
  Founders At Work is an easy, fun and somewhat inspirational read. The concept behind 4 Steps to an Epiphany is pretty simple, so odds are you won't need to read the whole book as its a little dry. It is authored by Steve Blank and I highly recommend watching his lectures on youtube. Business Model Generation was a mind bender and I've read it about 6 times. I've run all my past businesses and current business through it plus a couple non-profits. It is fantastic and I love it.
  

Yup -- it's true. If we don't take the vitamins, baby will still draw what baby needs from our bodies. I didn't get GD or have any complications (and honestly had a relatively easy delivery; relative to the stories I've heard) -- most of my cravings came in the form of ice cream or pasta, I looked at it as 'more calcium, please!' haha.

Regarding the research -- this book "Expecting Better" (which I found out about in a comment on Reddit actually) -- http://amzn.to/2yksmeK explained all the current research and lets you make decisions for yourself. I didn't gain "too little" or "too much" -- right in the range of "appropriate" -- but I did worry initially when I was gaining very little weight, because though I wanted to stay fit, I also wanted what's best for the baby. I think baby did just fine with what I did (and the weight fell right off postpartum -- I'm already 20 lbs down). So, pros and cons on both sides, up to us to decide what works for our own lifestyles and choices :)

Whatever choice you make is the right one. Congrats and wishes for a good delivery!

Never ever ever ever ever ever ever EVER ever ever EVER tell a company "I'm not suited for the job". Have some balls! Sure, you messed up, but hold your head high. Everyone messes up in their life at interviews; I know I have many times. Confidence can go a long way in promoting your personal image.

FizzBuzz is probably the most simple, commonly used interview question out there to see if a programmer can actually program. It doesn't get much simpler than that. I hate to break it to you, but Modulus is one of the most basic foundation concepts you need to know, and it's definitely taught in any entry level OOP book or Uni program. I dare you to show me a "Learn programming in Java/C++/Any other OO Language" book that doesn't cover it in the first few chapters.

You are over-thinking the solution here: it's meant to show how well a candidate can easily write clean, short code. There's no reason for you to abstract the functionality of finding whether a number is evenly divisible into a method - that's over complication in design, and it's a red flag for employers. I think you may have believed that isolating specific mathematic processes into methods seemed like a good idea to show off that you know object oriented principles. You're on the right track. However, if the process you're writing can be completed in a single line of code, let alone under 10 characters, you're just adding more dependencies and complication to a simple block of code. I would suggest this as a more clean solution to fizzbuzz (in Java):

for (int x=0; x<=100; x++) {
if(x%3==0 && x%5==0)
System.out.println("FizzBuzz");
else if(x%3==0)
System.out.println("Fizz");
else if(x%5==0)
System.out.println("Buzz");
else
System.out.println(x);
}

I personally struggled with a decent amount of interviews until I started to actually prepare for the interview. I recommend finding time to work through these two books; they'll help prepare you for what kind of questions to expect.

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Interviews-Exposed-Secrets-Landing/dp/1118261364/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377704276&sr=1-1&keywords=programming+interviews+exposed

http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377704294&sr=1-1&keywords=cracking+the+coding+interview

And most important of all: NEVER get down on yourself! Every tough problem or terrible interview you have is just a learning experience. Never tell yourself you aren't good enough, or just outright give up. You aren't allowed. Stick with it, and prepare months in advance, like homework. You don't have to be that person dedicating every waking moment of their life to programming, but if you're serious about keeping your interview skills sharp, you need to dedicate some time to learning the questions. Good luck!

EDIT: Grammar, etc.

I've been pretty fortunate that I've been able to get interviews and job offers pretty easily within the game industry as a programmer.

I wouldn't consider myself a master programmer by any stretch and definitely don't spend as much time practicing on Code-Kata, etc as the poster. (The majority of my spare time is spent on unpaid overtime - if I can get that under control, then maybe I can apply some time to personal projects).

The 3 keys that I have found to make it easier to land the interview and the job is:

1. Networking - this is a MUST. If you know someone at the company that can vouch for you, sometimes the technical phone screen can be bypassed completely and it's a lot easier to position yourself above others when you have a good reputation before the interview. Call friends/colleagues that are still in the industry and ask if they are hiring or know anyone who's working somewhere where they are hiring. If there are conferences related to your specific industry (specialized types of programming), try to get to one of those and do what you can to get on a guest list for some of the company sponsored parties. Talking to people in a social setting goes a long way and is typically more effective that meeting a dedicated recruiting sessions.
   
   
2. Be energetic and friendly. Skills are only half the requirement, cultural fit and an easy going attitude go a long way to whether or not you'll get a job. How your potential colleagues feel about you is almost as important, if not more important, than if they think you are qualified (networking can help a lot to achieve this feeling amongst your potential colleagues).
   
   
3. Pick up this book and read it cover-to-cover: Programming Interviews Exposed. Most technical interviews ask questions from this book or variations of questions found in this book. Rarely do they really distinguish a good programmer from average/bad, but you're really competing with people that are good at interview questions and have seen them before vs people that are not or get a question they haven't seen. Every time I'm starting a new job search, I re-read this book, go over old programming tests that I saved and run through some of the problems from college programming tests on the ACM online judge website to get ready for obscure brain teasers.
   
   I can't really say whether the hiring process is broken or not, much of what they do does weed out people that really don't belong. But if you don't know the game or don't play the game, you may get swept to the side along with them.
   
   I hope this helps - good luck!

Yea, Google is your best friend-- I'm not sure why they wait so long to tell you the do's and don't's, particularly because fetal development has the most vulnerability in weeks 4-12. Causes for concern are pretty much limited to: LARGE amounts of blood accompanied with cramping/pain. Little bit of spotting = usually pretty normal. LOTS of blood and pain = usually a very bad sign. Other than that you're not going to notice much aside from nausea if you're 'lucky' like me.

Typically their only recommendations on exercise is not to start something more strenuous than your pre-pregnancy baseline. If you were a dead-lifter/marathoner, you theoretically should be fine to continue your normal routine. If you were a couch potato like myself, now is not the time to pick up Cross Fit.

For the Zika stuff, sounds like you've done more research than anything the doctor's office is likely to tell you, and you should not panic about the trip. Enjoy yourself but be careful. Congratulations by the way!! If you're looking for a book about the wonderful world of pregnancy I think you'd like Expecting Better by Emily Oster, she's also a researcher and gives a statistical/data-driven look at pregnancy and everything to expect along the way. I skimmed 'What to Expect' and was not impressed, but I thoroughly read and enjoyed Oster's book.

There is also http://www.reddit.com/r/EmploymentAssistance/ but the top post is currently "Looks like this reddit fizzled and died." You could also try the programming or coding subreddits for advice particular to CS interviews.

It's good that you're already practicing up on a whiteboard. I think practice and knowing how to prepare are key for interviews (general statement is general). You should consider trying to set up practice interviews if you know anyone in the field with more interview experience. Or you could try explaining CS concepts and solutions to your friends. Perhaps you could get used to being at ease in an interview by practicing with someone you know.

There are various books you could buy, or perhaps find in a library, on interview help and using whiteboards in particular. I think I've seen this book recommended here before but I can't remember the context.

Good luck!

> I am fairly ignorant on the different options available to me as far as investing goes, but that's what investment companies are for, isn't it?

Absolutely. We have a financial advisor that keeps a close eye on our money, and he's more than earned his pay. But I think it important to educate yourself enough to develop a functional BS detector. Otherwise, you won't know what to expect in different market conditions and will have a tough time picking an advisor.

We got in with our guy nearly ten years ago because he maintained the value of his clients' portfolios in the dot-com crash while still delivering good returns during market upswings.

I'd recommend interviewing a couple of advisors before picking one. Don't be shy to ask how they get paid. Many of them get commissions based on selling particular financial products. Get up and leave as soon as you hear that. Others are limited to selling a particular set of products. That would also make me nervous. Part of the reason we picked our guy is that he takes a flat commission off the value of our portfolio (originally 1%/year, now around 0.75%) and can get us into all manner of financial products including options, commodities, etc. We primarily hold mutual funds and individual stocks, though.

> but if people who are making moves on Wall Street do what they have done recently, there is no guarantee that my retirement fund will have any value by the time I'm ready to draw on it. My dad has been investing in his retirement for decades, and in the last two years, it lost $50k in value.

There's no sure thing. You have to do something with your money and realize that holding cash has its own set of risks, particularly now that we have a madman with printing press in charge of our central bank.

FWIIW, our portfolio value dipped in 2008/2009, but we were fully recovered in value by mid 2009. We recognized the housing bubble for what it was and stayed out of that sector. My parents were blindly turning over their money to a manager who had them heavily invested in Fannie and Freddie. They lost a couple hundred large in the 2008 crash, and it's not coming back.

> Do you have any advice on where to start learning without having to spend every hour after work piddling with it?

Four of my favorites include One Up on Wall Street, Fail-Safe Investing, The Black Swan, and How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes. The first book talks about picking individual stocks (gave me the confidence to load up on AAPL back when it was trading under $100/share), the second about structuring a portfolio for growth while still playing defense, the third about common fallacies and hubris, and the last about what drives an economy (particularly useful for recognizing bubbles).

Is this at all helpful?

Blockchain Basics is probably the best high level overall business blockchain book, which focuses on proof of work mostly.


Blockchain Revolution is a good use case book. Not technical, but gets a little sci-fi with how blockchain may be used in the future.


But if you want technical, the best I've found is Mastering Bitcoin.


Business Blockchain was pretty good and gave me ideas for a couple extra slides for my Blockchain 101 presentations throughout my company.


But Book of Satoshi was probably my favorite read. It was great to get a slight history of bitcoin and see some of Satoshi's views from his perspective.

My mentor in San Francisco is always railing me on "LEARN TO CODE." I'm okay at coding, and yeah I guess it would help if I was amazing at it... But there are plenty of start-ups with not coding founders. But they are always tech, or industry specialist founders. Never just a guy with an idea.

I am pretty well connected, so I asked a friend of a friend to connect me with an owner of a huge marketing agency, that decided to invest in the company and partner with me. I would say though, never asking for money is kinda the best way to get money for 2 reasons:

1. It lets them come to you and ask you to invest, rather than you convincing them... so if it's a really good idea, then you know. You can never trust friends and family (also, I really don't encourage family funded companies... most the time it's bad).
   
   
2. No one invests (any decent amount of money) out of pity... especially an angel, and it's really hard to ask for money when you have no product, or no revenue, or no experience. So it's best to give the person you end up meeting, a really solid pitch, and play kinda hard to get. I told my investor "we are raising x amount of dollars for investors." That was it, I didn't ask him, I didn't tell him his stake, nothing. I left it open. He ended the meeting with, "I really want to invest, email me." So I did.
   
   Read, Venture Deals (linked below)... kinda says the same thing, don't sound desperate. But that's my opinion.
   
   I'm more than happy to sign an NDA, or whatever you want, and give you my honest feedback if you PM me. I have no time to steal other peoples ideas ;)
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

An excellent book for you at this point would be Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques. From the description:

"Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques features everything the home cook needs to perfect: poach an egg, whisk a perfect hollandaise, knead a crispy baguette, or bake an exquisite meringue with the perfection and efficiency of a professional chef. Featured throughout the book, Pepin's classic recipes offer budding masters the opportunity to put lessons into practice with extraordinary results."

It also covers things like knife technique and other fundamentals, which you mentioned.

As far as French cooking goes, although they've been around awhile, two books that are still definitive on the subject are Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Volume One and Volume Two. All three of these books (Pepin plus these two) are foundational to learning about cooking. There are others, but these will give you a very good start, and will increase your cooking skills and knowledge exponentially.

If those aren't enough, you can also check out The Professional Chef, which is a fantastic book of recipes and techniques put out by the Culinary Institute of America. It's a bit spendy, but worth it if you want to learn. The Amazon links are provided for reference; if money is an issue you can quite easily find all these books used.

Yeah, some of the wording was a bit awkward.

for example: "We want to provide you that place where you can share and access any file, when you want and for free"

Say something along the lines of "Access your files from anywhere in the world at any time"

Example 2 "Fufox is not using your personal data for commercial purposes"

Instead say "Fufox(or we) respect(s) our users' privacy and we pledge not to sell your personal information to third parties.

Avoid using "you" and complete sentences. You're trying to get a point across and not make someone understand a legal contract. It's ok to be a little vague.


The web design is nice. A bit cliche but nice.
Best of luck! Just remember that in order to be successful, your product has to be a heck of lot better than the competition or a heck of a lot cheaper. Being slightly better than the competition (dropbox) isn't enough to succeed. I sadly have had to drop ideas myself because of this.

You can learn a lot from this book. It's easy to read. http://amzn.com/0470876417

>Let me be perfectly clear: there can be no liberty in a a world where no free market exists. Central planning necessitates control of every variable in order to maximize the result to society, which means that citizens participating in the plan must adhere to the central planners' decrees. Being offered choices by one's authoritarian rulers is not the equivalent to liberty; that is a false dichotomy.

Honestly, that's no more than asserting your own views.

I've seen some arguments in favor of economic freedom being necessary for other forms of freedom in Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom that are well-supported. Many such claims, though, seem to be little more than bald assertions. (And even of Friedman's arguments, while they may all be perfectly true, I'd prefer a more extensive collection of data supporting them, even if it made his book longer and more boring.)

I don't really understand the economics of these stores but I see it like this:

They need to either charge full retail and hope they can make enough sales that way for it to be profitable OR come up with an alternate solution.

Here is a suggestion for one kind of alternate solution. Retail sales is no longer the business model. Instead you move to a membership model. You sell games at prices that are competitive with online stores but only to people who have a paid membership. So, random people that come in to buy one thing that would have paid retail anyways can still pay retail. Regulars that would rather just buy all their games from CSI can but them locally instead now. It doesn't have to be an exact price match - there is some value in being able to just drive somewhere and get a game immediately, but it needs to be much closer than it is now. What else do they get for that membership? Maybe they can reserve seating, get in an hour earlier than everyone else, discounts on tournament entry fees, members only tournaments, etc. Preferably think of free or very low cost benefits you could throw in.

How much money do they need to make in board games annually? How many people would pony up $XX for an annual membership?

What is the expected profit from full retail sales vs membership dues + profit from reduced price sales + profit from full retail sales to non members?

Volume of sales should be higher with a low price, will that help them get a price break or some other kind of advantage with distributors?

This is a question of coming up with a good business plan. The traditional plan is getting crushed by online retailers so you have to come up with a new way to approach the problem. Check out Business Model Generation if you're serious about wanting to come up with a new business plan to focus on this.

The top 1% pays 47% of all taxes, here are some sources TaxFoundation, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and finally The IRS.

Now I want the bottom half who [pay 2% of all taxes] to pay their fair share.

Now the question becomes what is someone's fair share? Is it proportional to the amount of wealth someone has, The top 1% have 34.6% of the wealth but as I pointed out earlier they pay 47% of all taxes.

My solution is to take away voting rights for people who are net negatives when it comes to taxes; that is, you should not be able to vote to take more of someone's money because you feel you deserve it.

____

Millionaire flights are already happening in The US, France, and in the UK (three sources there) to the tune of billions in lost tax revenue.

____

Read this book called Millionaire Teacher It’s true that many millionaires have earned their money by starting (or selling) their own businesses or finding high-paying positions within organizations. But this certainly isn’t the only way to amass $1 million. In his book “Millionaire Teacher,” Andrew Hallam explains how he saved over $1 million as a teacher well before retirement age, outlining how he used low-cost index funds and a disciplined approach to saving, investing and living on a budget to build a nest egg most of his fellow teachers would envy.

In addition to investing in the stock market, like Hallam, other millionaires boost their bottom lines by adding second jobs or passive streams of income. For instance, investing in real estate can allow a middle-income wage-earner to develop rental income as a second, reliable income stream. Artists who pay the bills and invest with the income earned through a day job might sell paintings for hundreds or thousands of dollars on the side and bank the extra income. Those who don’t earn million-dollar paychecks can still reach the $1 million mark; it just requires discipline, creativity and focus on the goal.

The largest group of millionaires from 2014 actually came from media – Graphic chart

____


Our problem with economic growth is that the government pushed everyone to get a college degree so hard that now even the most menial jobs are asking for a degree and years of experience, either internship or volunteer/hobby, or a masters degree for relatively basic work. The government created an education bubble and when our manufacturing jobs went overseas, which was always going to happen due to our short term WWII based monopoly on manufacturing (We bombed nearly all of Europe's manufacturing and China was still agrarian), creating a bubble and popping. So now we have a bunch of college educated kids fighting for minimum wage jobs for two main reasons:

1. Education inflation
   
   
2. Housing bubble bursting, again the result of government encouraging banks to give out NINJA or No Income No Job Approved loans. Which tanked the market leading people to lose life saving both in the stock market and in home values prolonging, sometimes indefinately, retirement for some workers; for some of our younger workers that means no higher paying jobs because there are no openings and a glut of labor driving wages down.
   
   The following is from a HUD memo quoted here
   
   >For many potential homebuyers, the lack of cash available to accumulate the required downpayment and closing costs is the major impediment to purchasing a home. Other households do not have sufficient available income to to make the monthly payments on mortgages financed at market interest rates for standard loan terms. Financing strategies, fueled by the creativity and resources of the private and public sectors, should address both of these financial barriers to homeownership.
   
   ____
   
   
   Cool, so the housing crisis was largely a problem of government telling people to go out and buy houses, in some cases four or five, that they could not afford and the banks that we instructed by HUD to lend them the money anyway. Next, you have the college bubble, both the education bubble and the accompanying debt bubble, which are due to pop within the next three to five years at most, again due to government overregulating and pushing an equality of outcome secnario.
   
   
   Now if you want to increase my taxes, which we have already established I pay a disproportionate amount of (47% on total percentage, 34.6% on wealth – which isnt even taxed) to fund what? Another government intervention in social welfare, or even worse social justice, that will cause a new created asset bubble and tank the economy in 20 years for my children?
   
   No thanks.
   
   
   

Congrats!!

Tips and suggestions... you're going to get nausea... I kept peppermints, gum, and crackers in my purse for at least the first 8-10 weeks. You never know when it's going to strike! Oh, and ginger ale was my bff for a while!

What to Expect is a fantastic book! If your husband is looking for one, I would recommend The Expectant Father. My fiance is reading it at the recommendation of my brother (who has two kiddos) and they love it!

If you're wondering about the studies of drinking/no drinking, chances for birth defects or miscarriage, and all the crazy polar stuff you see on the web... I recommend picking up Expecting Better written by an economist who analyzes all these studies, just in laymen's terms! It's comforting to know what's what, etc.

Other than that, welcome to baby bumps! There's SO much info that gets passed around here that I have found so incredibly helpful. If you have questions, ask. If you have fun things to share, share it!

Instead of paying to talk to a financial advisor, why not spend a little time and becoming your own?

I'm not talking about making a living of being one or doing it for others, but don't automatically assume that a financial advisor is what you need to go about investing your money. I highly recommend you read The Bogleheads Guide to Investing. It's an excellent book that'll discuss how you can go about investing your money without spending a lot of money in an easy to understand way.

Beyond that? Take a trip, indulge a bit in that new video game or watch that you've always wanted. Keep it frugal, but enjoy things in life. As I tell my penny-pincher grandfather... you can't take it with you. Congratulations and enjoy!

Congrats on cleaning out that debt! I know the great feeling I had when we finished off my wife's student loans, you really can't beat it.

Just putting in my two cents here. The book "The Millionaire Teacher" has a great section on things to watch out for in Financial Advisers (link). They also list typical things Financial Advisers will say and how to respond to them. Great ammo for any meeting with one.

That being said, if you are confident in your principles of investing (indexing, expense ratios, stocks/bonds mix) AND you understand HOW the Edward Jones guy is being compensated, then you may consider the meeting.

Even with all that, I wouldn't allocate any significant portion of my stash with anybody from Edward Jones.

Personally I like to meet with people like this. I like to bust their balls and see how well they know investments, early retirement, tax law, picking stocks, what their personal investments look like, insurance (for early retirees), education level, trading experience, net worth, etc. It's like being a black belt in personal finance and checking out a rival school to see what they have to offer (or not offer).

wow thanks for the response! I've always liked books which helped to define strengths. I also find books that wrap thse ideas in a very creative and illustrative fashion better to retain. This reminds me of The Richest Man of Babylon.

Nevertheless thanks Wordslinger1919, I'll have to give your suggestion a good read =)

First off, investing in individual stocks in the stock market is essentially gambling and I don't recommend it. The stock market isn't a way to get rich quick and the vast majority of people who trade individual stocks will do much much worse than someone who just purchases shares in a diverse passive index fund. However, if you want to try your hand at gambling in the stock market, it's not difficult to actually do it...

1. Open a brokerage account at a discount broker like Fidelity
   
2. Deposit some money into said account
   
3. Purchase shares of stocks with said money
   
   Be aware that there is a fee every time you purchase or sell a "lot" (one or more shares) of the same stock. This fee eats into your profit so it's not normally a good idea to purchase small amounts of shares at a time.
   
   Also be aware that buying and selling stock creates a taxable event. So filing taxes in the following year WILL be more complicated (and expensive) if you pay someone to do them for you or if you purchase software to do them yourself. No more 1040EZ forms.
   
   You should get a few "investing in stocks for dummies" type books and gain a basic understanding of things like market/limit/stop orders, cost basis, long/short term capital gains, capital losses, qualified/non-qualified dividends, splits, reverse-splits, and the wash sale rule.
   
   You should also learn what "penny stocks" are and why you should avoid them as well as what a Master Limited Partnership (MLP) stock is and why it can be a tax nightmare.
   
   As a final bit of advice, I highly recommend picking up a copy of A Random Walk down Wall Street: The Time-tested Strategy for Successful Investing and reading it cover to cover.
   
   Good luck.

I love reading these because it's so off base. No it is nothing like Mad Men. Chances are unless you are upper management you won't be making the industry average in salaries. If you want to take something away from it, watch how defeated they get when a client bitches about something not being right... then amplify that 10 fold, throw in a few "can we make the logos bigger", and put in a little working overtime to meet deadlines and going crazy. Another thing, if you aren't in college yet, you aren't "very good" with psychology or design... you may have gotten a good grade in AP classes and messed around in photoshop in your lab class, but there is much more to learn.

I'm not trying to be belittling, you just need to change your mindset completely on this as it seems pretty obvious you only have a media view of the field. Check out some ad work down by big companies. Check out the CLIO winners for the last few years. Read books on the subject like Ogilvy on Advertising or Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Also, you aren't going to be doing all of these things, firms are done mostly in groups. You have your Accounts team (Pete Campbell, schmoozing and coordinating with the client), Design Team (Salvatore and Peggy, less copywriting now though) and sometimes Media and Project teams... depending on the agency. Each has their skills and contributions, so in all likelyhood if you want to work in an actual agency setting you will likely have to specialize. Like writing and planning? Take marketing. Like design and web-structure? Take Graphic Design and/or Computer Science. Psychology is not a particularly useful field in itself, as many of the psychological aspects are covered in their usefulness in the aforementioned majors.

Lastly, you won't know for sure what you want to do until a few years in, and that's fine. If you really like the idea of agency work though, DO INTERNSHIPS. There is no other way to get into the field and learn about the ins and outs. There are a lot of great things about the industry, but it's not all rainbows and panache.

i'm not quite a CFO but i do work in tech / at a startup / in finance. i can give a quick list of stuff I'd recommend to someone making the jump:

• Kind of a no brainer (and judging from your analysis on #1, this probably won't be an issue) but you should be familiar with the VC/ funding/legal side of things. You can be the most valuable person in the room if you like slicing through a term sheet. i'd recommend Brad Feld's Venture Deals to get your feet wet. From a more macro/ company building level, Bussgangs Mastering the VC Game is a nice, light read.
  
  
• Again, probably why they're hiring you, but strong financial modeling skills are important. Being able to do the historical accounting/ cash analysis and then quickly turn that into a forecast grounded in some business logic is essential. You're going to be making shit up sometimes, but I think everyone is to some degree in early stage tech.
  
  
• I'm not sure the size of this company, but it's probably small and you'll probably end up dealing with/managing a lot of unsexy stuff. Running payroll, administering benefits, getting a 401k set up is all very painful but part of building yourself into a real company that can hire top notch talent. of course you can hire some/most of this stuff out, but it will probably be your problem at the end of day.
  
  
• again, not sure what kind of team you're leading, but dealing with the accounting side. judging on the 2 year timeline, you'll probably be due for your first Audit and have to lead a few 409a valuations. deal with taxes/whatever else comes up.
  
  i think great CFOs for early stage can run the finance side but also kick in with the Ops stuff and have a good handle on product. You're more of the grease, and your job is to keep things humming and get out of the way to let people build.

> You mentioned our GDP. 2/3 of our GDP comes from consumer spending.

Consumer spending and the output of the economy is impacted by how much people have to pay for gas, heat, oil, etc ENORMOUSLY(think about how much the average citizen spends on gas throughout a year and then think about them spending that on other things). Like I said you are uneducated in subject matters that are essential to comment on these matters and you are going to go on as if you aren't. All while arguing a position no analyst in the world would(hyperbole).

https://www.amazon.com/Ascent-Money-Financial-History-World/dp/0143116177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453148&sr=8-1&keywords=Ascent+of+money

https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466453203&sr=8-1&keywords=The+prize

Read these two books and you will have a clearer picture of this macro picture I was referring to and you will understand how absurd your position is. The ascent of money was made into a pbs documentary, albeit a 4 hour one. It doesn't do the book justice though.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ascentofmoney/

The Prize was a Pulitzer Prize, non fiction book that will educate you on oil and why the middle east is important.

https://careers.state.gov/work/foreign-service/suggested-reading
Click on the suggested reading list on that page.

To get the whole macro picture I was referring to, read these books. You may want to start with their recommended International Relations textbook. These are books the State Department recommends you read if you are going to negotiate and do diplomacy on behalf of United States government(pretty hardcore stuff).


Best of luck with your studies/investigations and enjoy the rabbit hole, it really is an eye opener into another world that is not really discussed in the media.

My OB said that listeria is just an odds thing and that according to the CDC the same year soft cheeses had a listeria outbreak there was one in ICE CREAM - and you don't hear a single pregnant woman being denied their precious ice cream haha. So basically the moral of the story is that people latch onto some of these more than others for no particular reason. There have also been recent outbreaks in other foods that pregnant women aren't advised to never touch ever again. All of that to say listeria is very serious and we have to be vigilant but it's also important to educate yourself on what should truly be avoided. I recommend the book Expecting Better by Emily Oster who does a great job outlining what you really should or shouldn't do according to science and data - but makes it crazy easy to understand and you'll feel 1000x better and more comfortable navigating the world as a pregnant person after reading it.

I'm finishing up my BS in Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. I've completed 3 internships at Microsoft (Office, Windows, and Visual Studio) in the summers of '10, '11, and '12, and I will be returning to the Visual Studio group in January as a full time employee.

I nonchalantly gave my resume to someone at the Microsoft booth at a job fair for science majors at my school. Got a call and had a short interview at the UT campus. The questions weren't very technical or difficult: "how do you test software?" and "write a function to shuffle a deck of cards." Long story short, I was invited to Redmond to continue the interview process (they do this for all interns). I had 4 different 50-minute interviews in Redmond. The questions were more difficult, but nothing too terrible. After all, these questions were intended for interns.

I wanted to get some experience with a different team for the summer of '11, so I re-applied and re-interviewed. I had 4 more interviews with folks on the Windows team. I got similar questions. I think it's important to say that you don't have to blow all of your interviews out of the park; I certainly didn't. I was very nervous during the first one and didn't connect with the interviewer. I screwed up writing a factorial function, if you can believe that.

I prepared for the second round of interviews by reading this book, and I found it to be fairly helpful. Although it can't possibly have every interview question, it prepares you for the types of questions you can be asked.

After my internship with Windows, I wanted to return to Microsoft, but on the East Coast, where Microsoft has some Visual Studio development. I did a phone interview and was offered the position based on positive feedback from former interviewers.

The link you gave is for research interns, which as far as I know are for Ph.D students. If you're interested in a non-research internship, you should visit http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/us/internships.aspx.

Hope that helps! Cheers.

First, I recommend buying and reading this book if you haven't. It's more geared towards raising funding, but the discussion on the term sheet and earnouts alone is worth it:

http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369064433&sr=1-1&keywords=venture+deals

Second, it really sucks that there's almost no cash in the deal. From what I understand, the company will sell for $Z in total, $X in cash and $Y in earn out tied to staying with the company and meeting performance goals. Obviously it's in the buyers best interest to have $Y be the largest it can, and it's in the sellers best interest to have $X be as large as it can. But from what it seems there's almost no cash in the deal, which would make me wary from the start.

Personally I don't know if I would ever entertain an offer of <30% the offer price is in cash. Obviously the terms of the earn out matter, but I'm assuming this is an asset deal, not a stock deal - in which case you're still saddled with the liability of the original business in the future and the acquiring company gets tax breaks on the larger the 'earnout' portion - both reasons to argue for a larger cash portion.

Have you thought about seeing if there are any other large players interested in buying your company? From my chair the quickest way to a favorable offer would be to pit two competing companies against each other for yours.

Where do you plan on working in an ideal world?


VC Law is something you can really teach yourself in terms of understanding Term Sheets, which is primarily what that class covers.

Securities Regulation ties into the most important part of VC Law IMO, and you won't learn a lot of the major stuff in a VC course. IE you may discuss Sarbanes-Oxley and 10b5 in marginal detail, but not much more.



edit: If you're interested in VC Law, I would just check this book out and save a few grand:

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

If you really like this stuff and can take both courses, great. If not, Securities FTW

If I may - I humbly recommend to read a proper book on bitcoin, not some fluff piece.. Just assuming from the way that you chose your post title that you might be interested in a more substantial bitcoin reading :) Please ignore if that's not the case, don't wanna ruin your reading pleasure or anything.

Economic perspective: The Bitcoin Standard - The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

Not technical at all, very beginner friendly, but also not a lot of practical information: The Internet Of Money

Gently technical, beginner friendly: Inventing Bitcoin: The Technology Behind the First Truly Scarce and Decentralized Money Explained

Technical deep dives:

• Mastering Bitcoin (also available for free online, as it's an open source book)
  
  
• Programming Bitcoin
  
  
• Grokking Bitcoin

> I'm thinking of calling our parents out of safety (and excitement) but asking no one to come until my husband and I give the OK.

Just because you ask them not to come does not mean they will honor that. If I had family in the area, I personally would not call until after baby was born.

> What if I go into labor at work? Can you drive yourself to the hospital?!

It is very unlikely that you will go into labor and then be right around the corner from having a baby. It's more likely that you'll start noticing signs of labor and then not need to be at the hospital for several hours -- or even days. You will probably have a fine time driving yourself to the hospital.

> How soon after birth did you let people visit?

Totally personal preference. I didn't want people around me for a few days, some people want half their family in the delivery room with them while they're pushing. It all comes down to what you are comfortable with (and probably also what your hospital's policies are).

> Did you really sneak snacks into your bag?

I didn't. You should also try and do a tour of your hospital or birthing center to ask about their food policies -- not all places have a ban on food while in labor. I was actually aloud anything "clear" and was brought jello, lots of hot broth, etc.

> Did you have to be naked for the birth or did they let you keep a gown (planning on bringing my own light gown) or t-shirt on?!

I don't know of any place that requires you to be naked for birth... There is a good chance that they will prefer you to change into a hospital gown, as they are designed to have access to the back (for something like an epidural placement) and usually open at the shoulders so that once baby is born you can have an easier time with skin to skin and nursing (if you chose to do those things).

> I hate the idea of my tits hanging out, hah.

You will find that a lot of your sense of modesty sort of flies out the window when you're in labor. Once my son was born there were probably 12 people in the room and most of them had clear site of not only my tits but my vulva and everything else. They're medical professionals though, so you should be able to get over it.

I would recommend lurking around here for a while and reading as much as you can. The book Expecting Better will also do a lot for clearing up many of the outdated or confusing information that surrounds pregnancy as well as labor. I highly recommend reading it.

There is a book called Expecting Better that is precisely about this. It does not tell you what to do or what not to do. It tells you just HOW SAFE (or to put it another way, how risky) certain behaviors are during pregnancy, so that YOU can decide where your personal line comes in. It's written by a woman who works with statistics and analysis who was basically stunned by how unfounded all the advice she got during her pregnancy was - like how nobody could quantify or even elaborate on the risks they were asserting, etc, so she examined basically all the studies on all these things from all the freaking countries in the world that have ever done studies, and analyzed them as she would other statistical data, and she shares her findings. Sometimes she also shares her personal conclusions - what she does with those findings - but she always emphasizes that her conclusions are personal and that yours, even working with the exact same data, may vary and that's okay.

Fuck "better safe than sorry." I ate pretty much anything I wanted when pregnant - deli meat, sushi, etc. I had some beer here and there as well. I drank coffee and slept in whatever position I wanted to sleep in and I gained as much weight as my body seemed to want to without ever giving a fuck, whether it was a week where I was told I gained "too little" or a week where I was told I gained "too much." These were my personal decisions and they may not be the right decisions for everybody. But they were mine and I felt confident making them because I had 100000% more knowledge of the actual research and facts on any of these topics than any random fuck who gasped, "Don't eat that deli sandwich!!! You're pregnant!"

By far the most controversial part of the book is her analysis of drinking studies. It gets crazy down votes and bad reviews for that and I understand why. But even if you disagree with her personal conclusions on the topic, the rest of the book is pretty good - definitely a solid read for a rare injection of sanity.

Of course you should know the ins and outs and whys. Is anything stopping you from doing your own research? You shouldn’t trust your medical professional blindly, nor should you write off his/her advice without doing your own research. This book is great for that: Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong-and What You Really Need to Know https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143125702/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XeC8Ab45EKKE1 written by a data analyst who had the same questions you do.

Some risk assessment is valid to protect mom, some is to protect the baby, some is overblown, and some is to protect the care provider. None of it is intended to “police your fun” which was my main point in responding. The job of the midwife has zero concern about your fun, changing your attitude about that could help your outlook on the whole pregnancy.

You have a few things going for you:

1. you acknowledge you made a mistake
   
   
2. you asked for help
   
   
3. your ready willing and able to learn.
   
   Give some poor advice (like buying whole life insurance :p ) and you will see just how unpolite this sub can be!
   
   It isnt just about finding a low cost option but a fundamentally different investment approach called indexed investing. The average canadian who pays 2.5% MER is invested in an actively managed approach (they try and beat the market average, but after fees a vast majority are unable to). The indexed approach can range in cost from 1.07%mer to as low as 0.15% mer depending on how hands on you want to get (and there is nothing wrong with paying a slightly higher mer to keep things simple). The indexed approach: own every stock in the market and guarantee the average return of the stock market. No expensive research into which stock will outperform = low fees. After fees, over a 10 year period, indexed investing consistantly beat 85% of investors. So for 1/7 people, paying the high fee pays off. Obviously there is no way of picking the fund that will do this in advance, otherwise everyone would.
   
   I recommend you start reading the wealthy barber returns. Tangerine bank was giving it away for free until december 31st 2016 but it looks like it isnstill free on their website. It is a book more on basics of personal finance.
   
   https://www.tangerine.ca/en/landing-page/wealthybarberreturns/index.html
   
   
   The canadian couch potato blog is like the bible of this subreddit.
   
   http://canadiancouchpotato.com/
   
   If your looking for another more advanced book (more on the investing side), try the millionaire teacher
   
   https://www.amazon.ca/Millionaire-Teacher-Wealth-Should-Learned/dp/0470830069
   
   
   Highly recommended books.

From what ive seen there is no silver bullet. Books like slicing pie helped me learn how to value peoples contributions but a dynamic equity split wasn't the answer.

In my opinion the best book to read is Venture Deals, Be smarter than your lawyer and venture capitalist. Its going to teach you a ton about how to structure your cap table, what terms/concepts you should be aware of, and what investors are looking for.

https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

Another great thing to read is the founders dilemma. It talks about the trade-off entrepreneurs make. Do you want to be rich or king because you cant be both?

https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma

In the end you're going to have to make a judgement call.

Sorry, got busy for the holidays.

It seems like you're falling victim to the same cycle that a lot of us have. You can't get a job without experience, but you can't get experience without a job. It doesn't make a ton of sense.

Google/Amazon/Uber rely heavily on data structure and algorithm knowledge in their interviews. I have the first edition of this book for JS data structures. I went through it and coded all of them out. It helps to understand them.

In my master's program, I had a class on algorithm design that in hindsight, I wish I had paid more attention to. We used this book but I think there are better ones available now.

I have this book as a general interview reference which may summarize the above two suggestions better for the interviews.

Time/space complexity was also helpful information to know. Big O notation is a useful thing to have in your arsenal to begin with.

These are just suggestions for notorious interviews for infamous tech companies. Not every company is going to grill you about these concepts. But having been someone who has failed several intense programming interviews, and now conducts them for our company, I think all of this information is applicable, and a true tech company likely won't grill you about job experience if you can apply these concepts on a whiteboard without thinking about it.

Data Science is a great spot to be in right now. Spend a little time every day applying some programming principles to big datasets. It should be enough to land you a job at a solid company if even at an entry-level position.

Also, get out of AngularJS and learn Angular 2+. React/React Native also seem to be in high demand. They have become commonplace at most large companies trying to stay on the edge of technology for their users.

I had this moment back in 2006/07 when it became incredibly clear to me something was seriously out of whack and i needed to at least try to make sense of it all. It has been quite a journey but in the end i ended up basically changing my entire outlook on life, the economy and politics. I will come with some suggestions for reading and watching material but i just want to give one piece of advice: Every book you read, every article, every blog, every youtube lecture you see. You have do think, decode and analyze as best as you can. They will provide you with "lenses" that you can see the world through. The more you learn about a subject the sharper your lense will be able to focus information before it enters your mind. When you obtain new knowledge you might have to substitute a lens because this new one provides a better way of interpreting the world. When you have read so much that you have accumulated a good set of lenses about economy, history, philosophy, physics etc you can stack them and filter the information you perceive through all lenses at the same time, effectively they work like binoculars at this time. It is then that you will understand that you can maybe not grasp everything, but at least you will see a lot clearer than people only using simple and crude lenses. In addition you will be able to recognize, through their actions or words, the lenses that people around you use to understand reality. Im sorry if this was abstract.

1.
History, most undervalued subject when it comes to economics:
Read, watch listen to everything from Niall Fergusson. This man has a grasp of history that is very rare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson

2.
Do not be afraid to listen to fund managers, they are the most brutally honest, no nonsense people you will ever hear from. Their only goal in life is to obtain what they refer to as 'alpha', the truth. If you know the truth and everyone around has a clouded judgement or preconceptions about the economy you will win.
Of the most outspoken and knowledgeable managers:

• Ray Dalio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio)
  
• Hugh Hendry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hendry)
  
• James Grant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Grant_%28finance%29)
  
• Bill Gross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gross)
  
• Mohamed El-Erian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_A._El-Erian)
  
• Kyle Bass
  I would watch all videos on youtube that any of these people are involved in, twice. Any term they use i would google and research thoroughly.
  
  3.
  Other notable economic/political figures:
  
  
• Robert Prechter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Prechter) You can choose to believe or ignore his wave theory, but his observations on human emotions and how they run our lives are incredible informative and mind opening.
  
  4.
  You also have to learn a lot of new words and what they mean. Everything your read or watch will refer to a lot of strange terms, people and philosophy, if you want any deeper understanding you have to read books on some of these specific terms. I would advice to learn in detail about:
  
  
• The bond market (http://www.amazon.com/Bond-Book-Everything-Treasuries-Municipals/dp/0071358625)
  
• The history of precious metals
  
• Keynesianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes)
  
• Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian School of economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises)
  
• Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Collectivism and Corporatism. These are extremely important to learn as much as you can about with as much depth as possible. Incredibly enough this is the topic most of the population struggles most with but at the same time have very strong opinions on. Correctly identifying objectively what kind of "ism" that is the current dominant one and what was the dominant one at different stages in history. This is an extremely difficult topic because people get so emotional so fast, its difficult to find rational conversation partners.
  
  5.
  I would be careful putting too much faith in these notable people:
  
  
• Peter Schiff (He is blind to the real possibility of a deflationary shock)
  Even if he is blind to this he has the most perfect introductory book to economics:
  http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322700761&sr=8-1
  
• Paul Kruegman (He has blind faith that governments can allocate resources adequately good during a crises - a money printer)
  
• Max Kaiser (I dont know what to say, he is both a genius and a moron, you just dont know which one at which time)
  
• Gerald Celente (He seems very observant, but he always says the same thing, stagnant)
  
• Jim Rogers (He provides no real insight)
  
• Warren Buffet
  
• George Soros
  
  6.
  Be very weary of people who have a very binary view of economics or politics, they often only see the world through one lens. This gives them a very polarized outlook.
  
  7.
  Stay away from very technical blogs (like zerohedge) in the beginning. If you don't have a very clear and deep understanding of what you are reading it will just confuse. You need to know all the terms used and what they really mean, and not on a superficial level.
  
  I spent the last 5 years basically reading any book on any relevant subject, now i'm pretty content with my overview now. I have taken a somewhat negative short term view (the next 4-6 years) on behalf of the developed economies but an incredibly positive view on the long term outlook for the human race, the developing economies in particular. It is too late here now, i must sleep, i have probably forgotten a great deal of good names.

Read

Here are three books to get you started:

• Predatory Thinking
  
• Creative Mischief
  
• Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This
  
  Get noticed
  
  Advertising is mostly about making sure that people see your product in the mess of crap that people have to deal with. If you want to break into advertising, it's the same principle.
  
  The trick is to treat your submission like a brief. How can I grab their attention? How can I prove myself quickly?
  
  Alec Brownstein is a good example. As The Guardian says:
  >He bought Google Adwords spots next to the names of six ad executives he wanted to work with, and waited for the job offers to come in.
  
  >And they did.
  
  Build your portfolio
  
  Find your best stuff. Make some new stuff (just make sure you put that it was for your own pleasure, and wasn't used).
  
  Make your portfolio an example in itself.
  
  Make a kickass covering letter
  
  Letters of note has a great one for inspiration. It starts off:
  >I like words.
  
  Don't confuse the kinds of copywriting
  
  Not all kinds of writing are advertising. Copywriters will also do business letters. They'll help clients with their brand's tone. They'll write copy for webpages.
  
  Ad agencies might be interested in that. But they're going to be more interested in your headlines. That you can grab someone's attention and make them cry and laugh.
  
  Don't fucking give up
  
  It's going to be tough. But you can do it.

I had the same problem in business school. I'm went back mid-career and sometimes it felt like I was taking classes from the 90's.

If you're interested in a more recent approach to business models, check out Business Model Generation. It provides a canvas that helps you visualize how different components of a business model interact and influence each other. It's also filled with great examples of how businesses you know would be modeled through their framework.

Can you be more specific about your advertising ask? Google & Facebook are both anchored in ads to generate revenue. Many "freemium" products supplement subscriptions with ad revenue. If a digital experience feels like you're "getting it for free" it's likely either supported by ads or IS an ad for something else.

While it's not digital business model exclusive, I'm a big fan of Andrew Chen. His once a week newsletter is a must read for me (I'm a consultant in digital strategy/digital product). He talks a lot about the underlying economics of companies and why certain technologies win in certain circumstances and other don't. https://andrewchen.co

Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

It isn't meant for the average Bitcoin enthusiast, but is more aimed at the technically minded/coders/cryptographically minded user. Many security researchers may well (IMO) have to deal with blockchain related security in the future, so having a decent knowledge of how Bitcoin (the tech) and bitcoin (the currency) works can only be advantageous as this field develops. Even if you don't think that your current role in security won't have to deal with this field, I would still advise you read the book as it is a fascinating read. There is also another version called The Internet of Money that is aimed at those who may not be so technically minded, but still have a genuine interest.

Glassdoor.com is an incredible asset.

Microsoft has a ton of resources available for helping people to do well in interviews(they want you to succeed!), so search their website for info.

This is more for dev but this book http://www.amazon.ca/Programming-Interviews-Exposed-Secrets-Landing/dp/047012167X is really good and they will often pull questions right from it.

You're probably a cs student so I would go over your notes for whatever algorithms/data structures course you've had. Just because you are interviewing for a test position doesn't mean they won't ask you dev or pm questions.

They won't ask you any of those "How do you move mount fiji" questions so don't bother/worry about those.

Most of all though, relax. You'll probably ace it and Microsoft internships are a lot of fun. Good luck!

Economics is combination of math, finance, and psychology. Most economic-math is just linear regression and whatnot, and even then it is incredibly inaccurate. ModularToil is right in that most Econometric problems are ones with too few constraints, so a talented mathematician can make the numbers do what he wants. If you only read one book, get Economics in One Lesson. It's a slow read, but it is a great reference book. Really, you only need the first chapter. If you get a second, get How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. It is written cleverly as a children's book that furthers the points made in Economics in One Lesson, as well as giving a good explanation of why the economy is in the shape that it is right now. If you are still interested after that, find topics that pique your interest here.

I'd start by looking at this webpage:
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics
This breaks down the steps of that flow chart for you. The simple flowchart is amazing for beginners.

I would then look into this blog. it has many useful topics but this post in general is a simple intro to see if you are interested in it:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/

If these topics interest you I recommend this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Path-Wealth-financial-independence/dp/1533667926

Best of Luck.

Awesome! It is a wonderful wiki :) If you desire even more bitcoin knowledge, I recommend the book "Mastering Bitcoin" by Andreas Antonopoulos You can purchase it on Amazon.

If you can't afford it, or just want to give it a peak, Andreas has been awesome and made it available for free on his github page here: https://github.com/aantonop/bitcoinbook (just start at ch01.asciidoc and keep reading!)

If you want to get the basics in an easily readable and fun way, I highly recommend How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes by Peter Schiff

If you had limited time and wanted it to be a fun leisure read, that's the one. It's a great intro and great to loan out to your friends who haven't been exposed to these ideas, but have an open mind.

Other great books are referenced here to help to give you a more technical understanding. I personally like Economics for Real People

Finally, consider listening to the Tom Woods Show Podcast. Commute sized interviews with experts in different areas. I learn a ton listening to this.

> That's just not true.

well, obviously you're always going to have some. but the gov't was too new at that time for business influences to infiltrate it deeply. Esp relative to the situation today.

> It would tend to be professionals who are trained in that speciality voting on how to go about their tasks

how is that any different from having politician running things? who decides who gets to vote? doesn't direct democracy require that all citizens vote on all policy initiatives? what's to stop this small group of voters from colluding?

> No because it's a system designed for self-sufficiency.

i don't give a fuck if i can survive on potatoes and a hut I grow and build myself. I want a plasma TV and to fly from New York to Seattle in 4 hours and a nice house and medical care. I think you're making a LOOOOT of assumptions about people's willingness to accept self-sufficiency for a horrible quality of life.

> You could just as well say that we're currently sacrificing our planet for more wealth.

that's veeeery subjective opinion. i agree global warming is real, but it's a huge step to say it threatens life on Earth.

> For one, money isn't the only incentive.

true, but it's the strongest one.

> America didn't just become rich because people 'busted their asses'

we'll have to disagree on this.

> if you look at what happened after the crash, the biggest losers were actually people in the middle class

this was not due to capitalism though, it was entirely the gov't bailouts, bank deposit insurance, and low interest rates.

> Basically, you seem to have a very romanticized vision of capitalism in your head that simply doesn't reflect historical facts.

I would say the same of you and communism.

It seems our debate ends here. We seems to disagree on points that would take a lot of effort to explain to each other. And I'v got boards in a week. Take it easy. If you have time and interest to learn about Austrian Econ, I'd recommend http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/047052670X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1370971957&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+schiff

It's short and explains things from scratch.

Interesting.

The issue for you here is that BI is really just expected to know SQL, Excel, and Tableau. Maybe some very light programming in R or SAS; but honestly if you knew python reasonably well you would probably have a major advantage over everyone else in most BI departments. I imagine your company changed titles for this exact reason when they realized they didn't need the full skillset of a data scientist/analyst (or didn't want to pay for it). Anyway, most of this stuff is not directly applicable to blockchain so even though you would hypothetically have more credibility simply by the fact you are working with technology, I don't know if it would necessarily give you enough to make the jump to blockchain. An equal concern would be you getting the experience necessary to do so which as I mentioned is not likely.

Of course if you really feel this is your best way to move into tech then by all means go for it. But if I were in your shoes, I would take a second look at cloud. Building cloud based applications will give you experience that is very directly applicable to what you are trying to do. There's also more ways into cloud than data. You can come in through a lower end web/frontend role or even a devops/admin role. There's a lot of resources and employers are more willing to hire 'unconventional' candidates because they need more bodies coding. You can get by with self-learning and then build something eye catching.

I'm not sure if you have seen this already but you might look into this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527055715&sr=8-1&keywords=blockchain+python

I have read parts of it and it seems very good. It approaches the topic from a programming perspective though, but after you learn python it could be useful to you to align your knowledge of coding with blockchain.

We joke in my company that we have 200 5-person teams... which sort of gets at your point. Each team understands what it does but we have varying degrees of understanding of the whole. (But that's okay, there's a 5-person team whose job is to understand the whole.)

Most corporations borrow heavily from standard corporate culture, and that's how you most easily make such a large mass of people useful; you use what has worked before. I can look up job descriptions of my job at other companies.

If you really want to know more I recommend the book The Goal. It's a business management book, but it's written as a story so it's an easy, enjoyable read.

Agreed, rich dad blows. It's a complete joke along with most of the parents' book recs.

Edit: OP, in the spirit of being constructive I'm going to link you to one of my favorite investing books. It's written by one of the best contemporary value investors, Seth Klarman. Klarman, through his investment organization--The Baupost Group, has returned upwards of 20% annually for years. His 1991 book, "Margin of Safety", sells on Amazon and the like for $1500+.

Link to the Margin of Safety PDF

For a book about mutual funds you can do no better than "The Bogleheads Guide to Investing"

There's 3 kinds of incomes: A, B, and C income:

C - A job, the worst way to make a living. Working for another man trading dollars for hours. Slogan: "I'll learn to love (tolerate) what I do and live with what it gives me, at least until I save up enough money to strike out on my own."

B - Contracting work, a business you work. Trading dollars for hours still, but you work for yourself and set your own price. Example, creating and selling products or providing a service. Slogan: "I get paid what I'm worth because I work hard, make my own hours and prices"

A - Passive income streams, AKA residual income, a business that runs itself. Acquire a system of assets. Assets vary greatly and are generally built over time. Examples: Owning a rental unit, owning rental boats, owning a storage facility, really anything you can rent out is an asset, owning an online business that generates enough money for you to pay a manager to run it for you, investments in an institution that pays off high-yields, a copyright that leads to royalty payments, Or setting something up so others can make money, and take a small percentage (Facebook & twitter). Slogan: "Key word: Ownership. I've worked hard, sacrificed for the future, and made tough decisions most people don't. So now I don't have to work for money anymore... my money works for me now!"

Some books on how to get to Level A: 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad', 'The Richest Man in Babylon' Good luck out there :)

I've found that I gained most of my best experience on the job, and that staying at a job where I wasn't learning anything was a huge mistake and detriment to my career.

That said... I don't think I'm a super genius either. I did well in college and my GPA helped with my first few jobs. But I have lots of hobbies outside of work, and rarely spend my time at home thinking about the office. A lot of times companies aren't looking for the super genius type either... if they were they'd have a hard time filling staffing requirements. I think the keys are learning how to interview well, focusing on letting the interviewer know that you're willing and good at learning and having the basics of OOO down to a T. Come off as confident, even if you don't feel it. It never hurts.

As far as books go, here are some of my favorites:


Programming Interviews Exposed


Programming Pearls


Refactoring



I'm mostly a java programmer, so here are three absolutely necessary java books:


Head First Design Patterns


Core Java 1


Core Java 2 - Advanced

I don't know what the source you linked to is thinking, but reducing inventory does not decrease risk, it increases it. Just think, I keep 100 widgets of inventory, and use 20 every day. That means that if something happens in the supply chain, and I don't receive any shipments of that product, the production line can continue running for 5 days. On the other hand, if I keep 20 units in inventory, I am relying on a shipment every single day, or else my entire production shuts down. There are several videos on Youtube with Elon talking about the the production line shutting down because of random supply chain issues. Most of those happened a couple of years ago, but it is a concern when you run a very lean operation. That is extremely risky. Reducing inventory does reduce costs, which is probably why they do it.

Also, I wouldn't trust any source that tries to sell you a product at the end.

> TradeGecko makes world class inventory, order, and supply chain management software for SMEs to help them grow their business. In fact, we support multi warehouse and multi currency functions because we know that many SMEs run global businesses. Our software helps businesses manage their inventory in a way that best suits their practices and objectives - whether it’s Tesla’s lean inventory management model or otherwise.

If you haven't read The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, I highly recommend it.

For more Tesla specific things to look into, Elon has mentioned bringing in the capability to produce the majority of the components in the car, even if they continue to typically buy the components from outside vendors, it will give them the capacity to get over a supply chain issue.

My suggestions:

1. Check out pro.coinbase.com and learn how to use it. You'll use the same credentials that you do on coinbase, but save a lot on fees.
   
2. Don't bother with all the alt-coins.
   
3. Start purchasing Bitcoin with each paycheck.
   
4. Read "The Bitcoin Standard" (https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Alternative-Central/dp/1119473861)
   
5. Get a hardware wallet (I recommend Trezor) and start storing your Bitcoin on it.
   
6. Research the benefits of decentralized exchanges, learn how to use one (I recommend Bisq), and if it meets your needs, start using it as soon as possible.
   
7. Read "Mastering Bitcoin" (https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042)
   
8. Develop a long term outlook, don't worry too much about price swings.
   
   From your post, it sounds like you might be interested in just trading. In that case, my suggestions won't help a lot. I think that the majority that try trading end up losing. If you do decide to buy/sell/trade, be sure to spend some time learning about trading, limits, stops, strategies, etc. Start small, win some, lose some, learn some, before going in big.

I’ll give you my favorite: The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

It’s a must read in my opinion. Long, but well worth it. Don’t waste your time with other books on the subject like “End the Fed” by Ron Paul. This book blows it out and is very comprehensive. It’s read like a story also, which makes it easy to read.

Also, take your pick from Mark Levin. I’d recommend picking any single one of his books that interest you.

Investing without prior knowledge of the industry is inherently risky. It is important that you are not placing "bets" on these companies, but rather you are speculating. Speculating requires research and in finance provides a premium for taking on extra risk. Gamblers take on risk without the potential for extra reward. I have a solid (but in no way am I an expert) knowledge of the energy industry, so here are my tips:

1. Avoid oil sands companies (COS, SU) like the plague. There are a large amount of oil sands companies located in Canada, but the production and refining is not profitable in the current market. I believe the break-even point for oil sands is approximately $50 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude is currently floating around $35, with low expectations for the future. As well as this, producing synthetic crude is notoriously bad for the environment if you are concerned with socially responsible investing.
   
   
2. Invest $1,000 in a combination of PWT, IMO, HSE, CVE, ECA, and CNQ. Do your research and figure out what companies have competitive advantages in their operations and decide why you believe they will be successful in the future. Most of the above are integrated O&G companies, so you will need to understand the upstream, midstream, and downstream segments. I am confident that a majority of O&G companies can be bought for cheap in the current market and will provide growth in the long run.
   
   
3. To hedge the risk from your exposure to solely the oil industry, invest $1,000 in a diversified ETF. See this list for examples. Again, you will have to do your research here to figure out what you want to be exposed to and what kind of returns you want.
   
   I understand that you want to experiment with investing, but this strategy will give you the opportunity to learn about investing while reducing your exposure to industry risk. Your single picks may lose money, but as long as you learn where you went wrong you are provided a net benefit. As short-term to medium-term investing requires finance savvy, I would recommend always holding over a long-term.
   
   Also, if you are interested in learning about the oil industry, I would recommend reading Oil 101, The Prize, and The Frackers.
   
   Good luck!

> Where is free banking and how was it implemented?

Free banking is simply treating the enterprise of banking like other free enterprises. Private banknotes drawn on reliable, credible banks can circulate freely, with transparent clearinghouse activity. Fractional reserve may be practiced, or not, so long as there is transparency and competition. George Selgin is probably the most well-known, modern proponent. It has been practiced successfully in England and Scotland in the 19th century. The temptation to legislate bank privilege tends to confound free banking.

> I don't understand what banking cartels were present during the instituting of the federal reserve system. Care to tell me

Mostly the House of J.P. Morgan, but there are British connections. The Federal Reserve Act succeeded where a previous, similar, and competing Aldrich Plan failed.

Rothbard has written some very dry but very thorough compendiums of activity by the major players. He certainly has other polemics against the Fed, but I would not recommend them to you. I have not read The Creature from Jekyll Island, but it is on my list.

I have read Secrets of the Federal Reserve, and I would certainly recommend it. It is more thorough than I cared for, and while it certainly indulges in speculation at times -- a necessary evil when journaling closed-door events -- such occurrences are not misleading. I cannot attest to the veracity of the facts presented, but they are quite specific and thorough and presumably verifiable.

Definitely look into bussiness management books as well. if you are going down this road, there is a chance you will want to start doing it on your own and having proper business skills will help tremendously in securing work, and balancing costs, and making money doing it! I am sure some people on this sub can recommend some great books on this topic as well.

Here are a couple books,

https://www.amazon.ca/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=Cj0KCQjw5MLrBRClARIsAPG0WGxuwhyo-18J3-xPOVP8bXeTJ4zbGZHkpO4GqIGKlz-WCRxt3aUroqQaApECEALw_wcB&hvadid=229992601126&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9000745&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=4412519744533501821&hvtargid=aud-748919244907%3Akwd-297504215686&hydadcr=16960_10238137&keywords=business+model+generation&qid=1567691052&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.ca/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3/141-1005106-2495725?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0307887898&pd_rd_r=3ef234c3-168a-4156-bb6b-32f1e4f1ecca&pd_rd_w=PEqJa&pd_rd_wg=P882W&pf_rd_p=a62e2918-d998-4bbb-8337-35aac776e851&pf_rd_r=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H&psc=1&refRID=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H

https://www.amazon.ca/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/0984999302/ref=pd_sbs_14_3/141-1005106-2495725?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0984999302&pd_rd_r=3ef234c3-168a-4156-bb6b-32f1e4f1ecca&pd_rd_w=Oruqz&pd_rd_wg=P882W&pf_rd_p=f7748194-d8e0-4460-84c0-2789668108bc&pf_rd_r=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H&psc=1&refRID=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H

https://www.amazon.ca/Business-Model-You-One-Page-Reinventing/dp/1118156315/ref=pd_sbs_14_4/141-1005106-2495725?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1118156315&pd_rd_r=3ef234c3-168a-4156-bb6b-32f1e4f1ecca&pd_rd_w=Oruqz&pd_rd_wg=P882W&pf_rd_p=f7748194-d8e0-4460-84c0-2789668108bc&pf_rd_r=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H&psc=1&refRID=RMAX7VQZE9TKPTQ2SM8H

"MTIV ..." by Hillman Curtis is a great read, and is packed with wisdom and inspiration.

"Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!" by Luke Sullivan is about advertising. So it's not exactly a design book, but it's all about thinking outside the box and making it in the real world as a professional creative, which totally applies to us. Plus, Sullivan is a really fun writer.

Finally, "Make it Bigger" by Paula Scher is an excellent memoir by a living legend.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0735711658?pc_redir=1398499744&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1118101332?pc_redir=1398472389&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1568985487?pc_redir=1398526939&robot_redir=1

Wow. Ok, two things:

1. The article you are referencing is from 1996. This amazing review of exchange rate predictability by the leading scholar on the subject was published in 2013; and one of its key findings is that the success of different predictors in the FX markets changes over time, without any ability to forecast which one will be most (or at all) successful at any time. FX is literally the hardest thing in economics to forecast.
   
   
2. You clear haven’t read or have willfully forgotten A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which does a beautiful deep dive into the meaninglessness of “technical analysis”.

Had this list together from a blog post I wrote a few months ago. Not sure what exactly you're looking for, but these are my favorite books and I'd recommend everybody read them all. There are other great books out there, but this is a pretty well rounded list that touches everything a company needs.

The Lean Startup https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898

Business Model Generation https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788

Talking to Humans https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Humans-Success-understanding-customers-ebook/dp/B00NSUEUL4

Predictable Revenue https://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213

To Sell is Human https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Human-Surprising-Moving-Others/dp/1594631905

Rework https://www.amazon.com/Rework-Jason-Fried/dp/0307463745

Delivering Happiness https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220

A deck is a PowerPoint presentation (generally in PDF format) where you present your startup and the problem you are solving. If you're creating someone new and innovative it may be difficult for others to understand. So in a deck you essentially try to explain everything in a clear and concise way. Sometimes you have a short and long version. The short version you attach to emails while the long version is what you present to VCs during in - person meetings. There are many decks from successful startups available online. Just Google "startup decks." Mint's deck is one of the best I've seen. Very clear and concise.

How finished should something be? I don't know but it should be free of typos, clear and straight to the point. On AngelList you can look at other startups, so look there for examples of what to do.

Once a VC decides to invest in your idea or company, they will send you a term sheet. You'll need to know how to understand it. I recommend reading Venture Deals. Very informative.

Here's a list, off the top of my head - I know all these are on my bookshelf, but I'm probably missing a few more:

Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club by Sonny Barger

Freedom: Credos from the Road by Sonny Barger

Ridin' High, Livin' Free: Hell-Raising Motorcycle Stories by Ralph Sonny Barger

Dead in 5 Heartbeats by Sonny Barger

Under and Alone by William Queen

No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns

Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library) by Hunter S. Thompson

Street Justice by Chuck Zito

The Original Wild Ones: Tales of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club by Bill Hayes

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart

The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa by Neil Peart

Against the Wind: A Rider's Account of the Incredible Iron Butt Rally by Ron Ayres

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford

Honda CB750: The Complete Story by Mark Haycoc

Shovelhead Red The Drifter's Way by Roy Yelverton

Shovelhead Red-Ridin' Out by Roy Yelverton

A Twist of the Wrist 2: The Basics of High-Performan​ce Motorcycle Riding by Keith Code

Total Control: High Performance Street Riding Techniques by Lee Parks


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig - Still my favorite. A high school english teacher bought it for me when he found out I had just passed my motorcycle road test. I've read it at least 15 times, and get something new from it each time.


But the best recommendation - Buy the FACTORY SERVICE MANUAL for your bike and read it. Read it often, until you can almost turn to the exact page for each procedure.

One of the best things to do is read what other programmers have to say. It opens yourself up to things that you might not normally come across. Schedule a time of the day where you will go on Stackoverflow to answer questions or read answers. Also in that time, read some blogs and any new articles. A few of the websites that I really like:

• Stackoverflow
  
  
• Coding Horror
  
  
• Joel on Software
  
  
• Wolfire Games (especially since you are into game development)
  
  
  Have you caught up reading the classics when it comes to software development? A great list of them can be found here. A few that I have found totally eye opening:
  
  
• The Pragmatic Programmer
  
  
• Programming Interviews Exposed
  
  
• The C Programming Language
  
  Also, have you used any new technology lately to make something cool? Schedule a time everyday (similar to when you read new things) to work on a project no matter what. Close Reddit, close your email, and get programming! Here a few things I had on the top of my head:
  
  
• Try making a web chat using SocketIO for the messaging and Node.js for the backend
  
  
• Ever used a MVC style framework for web development? Try out something simple like Flask then move onto something more complicated with Django.
  
  
• Learn Haskell
  
  
• Learn a dialect of Lisp
  
  Hopefully all of these can give you an idea of how to improve.

1/2 in Vanguard S&P 500 and the rest in an equivalent fund focused on international companies. Diversity among the largest companies around the world. Vanguard funds have very lost fees so more of your money keeps working for you.

I have been reading this book. I think you would identify with it and like it. I don't necessarily follow all his advice, but a good principle.

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1533667926/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Well, on the extreme side, "The Professional Chef" textbook I believe is the one used by the culinary institute of America. I picked one up off Amazon for $36 just for the hell of it. It's really interesting and reads more like an academic text than a cook book. It can be quite intense though.

A much more popular choice and a much easier read would be "The Food Lab" by Kenji Lopez-Alt who is a writer for serious eats. The book has plenty of recipes but does an unbelievably amazing job explaining the science and reasoning behind the choices that are made as well as various "experiments" that kenji does to answer cooking questions. It definitely teaches technique and really helps put you in the right "mindset" for cooking without a recipe.

Here are links to both.

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0393081087

Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan

The Advertising Concept Book by Pete Barry

Those are two English books I have been exposed too when I was learning advertising as a sidetrack on design school. I'd say next to these search something good about storytelling commercially and how to think lateral.

Good luck and my best tip would be, fall in love with the to market product/service/person and have fun!

> How easy/difficult is it to get a hold of stocks like Apple, Amazon and Walmart?

Very easy, perhaps too easy. You can start with Robinhood, but it's not an app for serious investors IMHO (E-Trade is, however).

What I've done so far is reading "The Simple Path to Wealth" by J.L. Collins. The book basically details how low-cost broad-based Index Funds (VTSAX in particular) are a safe bet and how they can help you get moderately wealthy over the course of several years. It's not exciting or "sexy" but the thing is, just like most things in life worth doing, there are no shortcuts.

Advertising is a great way to look at a bunch of jobs in the creative field. I think no matter what, you should consider yourself a freelancer, even if you do get a fulltime. In the creative world, you are your brand, and your work is just part of it. Your personality, work ethic, personal style, people who you know, is all part of it. Still interested? Firms big and small are always looking for interns, even now while you're in high school. Do you know anyone in the field who might be interested in having you hang around?
Also I'd recommend this book to perk your interest in advertising: http://www.amazon.com/Hey-Whipple-Squeeze-This-Creating/dp/1118101332/ref=asap_B000APJCEA?ie=UTF8

I havn't watched this doc yet, but if you're curious to read in depth into this topic, and it's truly fascinating. I can't recommend the book The Prize enough. It's a great read and you'll see how modern power was shaped well into the 20th century.

Woah, man. I don't know where you received your economics education, but everything you said in there is dead wrong. That is not how capitalism works.


>Impossible. For anyone to amass that much wealth, someone else has to suffer for it, there isn't enough to go around for everyone, so for someone to go with so much, someone else has to go without.

The economy grows when entrepreneurs take risk, hire more people, and offer superior products that enrich all our lives. The ability to utilize the savings of others to expand business is the source of wealth creation, not government programs. Individuals looking after their own self-interest, through the powers of supply and demand, benefit society. As someone else already pointed out, that is the zero-sum fallacy.



>It is inconceivable that someone could make that much money while running an honest business.

An overwhelming majority of businesses do make their money honestly. And those that don't are utilizing government power, which as I've already said, needs to be reduced.


>It is inconceivable that someone could make that much money while running an honest business. Someone, somewhere down the totem pole, is getting exploited and shit on. It might be 100% legal, but it sure as hell isn't "earning their money honestly".

This couldn't be more wrong. When an entrepreneur expands his business and needs help, he hires people. Maybe this is someone who had a job, or maybe it's someone who was previously unemployed. Either way, it's an improvement in his or her situation. Otherwise, they don't have to work for them. What happens if that entrepreneur or any other businessmen decided to stop seeking additional profits? Nobody expands their businesses, and nobody gets hired.

Check out Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson

Or maybe Peter Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

Jim Collins just published a book called The Simple Path to Wealth, based on his excellent series of blog posts. It's an easy read and I highly recommend that you check it out.

But until you have a good understanding of how investing works, don't worry too much about it. Put your savings in an online savings account like Ally so you can at least earn some interest. Keep saving, do some reading about investing, and you'll eventually know what to do with your money. You're already ahead of the game just by virtue of thinking about this stuff.

I found the advice in Expecting Better is super helpful, basically most of the medical literature indicates that you shouldn't stress about it! It's better to gain a little more than the recommended than not gain enough. Plus 90% of women return to their normal weight by 24 months postpartum. As long as your eating mostly nutritious, whole foods, and staying active, you're doing good!

Hey Whipple Squeeze This is a really phenomenal overview of creating ads. It is a very engaging and informative read and is perfect for those looking to break into the industry.

Ogilvy on Advertising delves a bit more into the overall experience of working at an agency like what the account team does vs. media teams and so on in addition to actually making ads. It's a bit dated but I think it holds up pretty well. Sure a few of his predictions about the industry didn't come to fruition and the book primarily focuses on TV spots and longform magazine ads (you can't write about banner ads or Facebook ads in 1985) but I'd say a lot of the concepts Ogilvy touches on are pretty timeless.

Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs is a good starting point. It's not really about hidden cabals, but instead elucidates the existence and workings on known secretive groups. For example the CFR, Trilaterals, and Bilderbergers are quite real and any intellectual discussing forgein policy, such as Chomsky, will bring them up. They are the shot callers including Queens, US presidents, and the stupid crazy rich. Marrs can be a little out there as far as aliens and stuff, but this book is mostly a research about these organizations that call the shots. Everything is indexed and footnoted, as Marrs is an investigative journalist by education and career.

Next I would recommend The Creature from Jekyll Island. The federal reserve is the most important institution involved in our economy and every American should know about it, love it or hate it.

Thats all I can think of off the top of my head. My books are packed for a move but I'm sure you'll get some good comments.

• Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
  
  
• Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence
  
  
• Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
  
  
• The Richest Man in Babylon: The Success Secrets of the Ancients--the Most Inspiring Book on Wealth Ever Written
  
  
• The Wealthy Barber, Updated 3rd Edition: Everyone's Commonsense Guide to Becoming Financially Independent
  
  
• The Automatic Millionaire, Expanded and Updated: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich
  
  
• Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy
  
  
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
  
  
• The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
  
  Ich habe jedes dieser Bücher gelesen und kann es empfehlen. Ich würde jedes davon wieder kaufen und wieder lesen.
  
  
• The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing <-- Steht noch auf meiner Lese-Liste

Read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0471730335

STAY OUT OF DEBT.
Do not fall into the stupid consumerist mind set by buying lots of shit you don't need on credit just to impress other people. LIVE BELOW YOUR MEANS. This is hard given all the bullshit in the media but it can be done. Think for yourself and become a saver not a debtor.


DON'T GO INTO DEBT FOR AN EXPENSIVE CAR.
Get a good used car and hold onto it. Car payments are sucky and will devour your money, and so will high insurance costs.


BEWARE STUDENT LOANS, THEY ARE EVIL AND CANNOT BE DISCHARGED IN BANKRUPTCY COURT. DO NOT GO INTO DEBT FOR FOR A SHITTY BASKET WEAVING DEGREE THAT WON'T GET YOU A JOB.
Also, beware of college altogether unless you are sure it can help you get ahead financially. Many people have stupidly gone into debt for useless degrees, don't be one of them. The government, banks and the colleges want you in debt for an education at all costs. It's good for their bottom line but it may not be for yours. Find a trade instead that will give you a dependable income and continued employment. If you want additional education then make sure you can pay for it without taking out loans. Beware of the "invest in yourself" bullshit that gets young people into HUGE amounts of student loan debt. Think carefully BEFORE you decide to go to college.

EMERGENCY FUND
Build an emergency fund of 1 - 2 years worth of expenses.

MUTUAL FUND INVESTING
Begin dollar cost averaging into low cost mutual funds (I prefer Vanguard's funds). Set up a Roth and/or SEP IRA as soon as you can. If you have a 401K only contribute up to the match your company gives you then max out the Roth since Roth IRAs aren't taxed at withdrawal.

Vanguard Personal Investing Site:
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/home?fromPage=portal

A simple portfolio should work well for you:

Vanguard Total Bond

Vanguard Total Stock

Vanguard Total International Stock

Keep your age in bonds (as you age you increase bonds and decrease stocks to lower risk) and the rest in stocks. Have 20 - 30 percent maximum in the foreign stocks fund.

Two other good funds that are balanced funds with a different investing approach are:

Vanguard Wellington

Vanguard Wellesely

INVESTING PORTFOLIO STATEMENT
Sit down and write an Investing Portfolio Statement that clearly outlines what you are invested in, what your goals are and why you are investing. Refer back to it when the market crashes and follow the instructions in the next paragraph when everybody is telling you to cash out of the market.

DON'T TRY TO TIME THE MARKET
Remember that time is on your side. DO NOT LISTEN TO EXPERTS WHO TELL YOU TO TAKE YOUR MONEY OUT OF THE MARKET. EVER. Bear markets are perfect for young people to get shares cheap. As the market crashes, you should be buying and cheering.

DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THE FINANCIAL PORN IN THE MEDIA.
Ignore the "experts" in the media who tell you to do this or that. Nobody knows anything. Remember that.

REINVEST DIVIDENDS AND CAPITAL GAINS
Your reinvested dividends and capital gains will continue to buy shares as the years go by, so every market crash is a great opportunity for you. Don't pass it up.

BOGLEHEADS FORUM
You will find a great, supportive investing community here: http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

GET A PRENUP IF YOU GET MARRIED
If you get married, GET A PRENUP. Know the divorce laws in your state and understand what will happen if you get divorced.

GOLD AND SILVER
It's not a bad idea to have 10% of your portfolio in gold and silver bullion, kept in a safe place (never tell anyone you have it) in your home. You can buy from Apmex.com. DO NOT PUT MONEY INTO GOLD AND SILVER ETFS. Buy gold and silver coins that you can tuck aside and keep as part of your larger portfolio.

Good news! Very few people code well in interviews, from what I've heard. Boneheaded mistakes are practically expected. Ask lots of questions about the problem--it'll give you more time to think and it'll make it clear that you're trying to figure out exactly what they're asking.

Amazon interviews are just like most technical interviews, in my experience. A FANTASTIC book to prep for interviews with is Programming Interviews Exposed. It goes over a lot of the data structures and common types of problems you'll get in interviews. It's great for day-of refreshers, or for going through more in-depth. HIGHLY recommend it!

So a few off the top of my head:

1. The Professional Chef. Geared towards professional chefs but a great resource.
   
   
2. On Food and Cooking. A classic. Not really a 'cookbook' per se but rather a book that discusses history and food science.
   
   
3. The now out-of-print Williams and Sonoma Mastering Series. Specifically, their book on sauces - the others are solid but not quite as good. Those books were how I personally learned to cook. (still can find used)
   
   
4. The Flavor Bible. Obligatory. Eventually you grow out of it a bit, but it's still a great resource to have around.
   
   
5. Flour Water Salt Yeast. I just got this book recently this last Christmas, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit.

Central banks would be the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, etc. These are the banks that "create" money into existence by loaning it to banks such as BoA, HSBC, etc.

For the long answer, I'd suggest you check out James Corbett's Century of Enslavement: The History of The Federal Reserve. For the more digestible version, see The American Dream Film (edit: just watched it again. I would say it makes some important errors, but on the whole is a good primer if you don't take it as gospel.) For the in-depth history of the creation of the US Fed, see G Edward Griffin's excellent The Creature from Jekyll Island (available in pdf in many places on the net, but please support the author if you have the ability).

You're going to be getting a lot of counter-Austrian perspectives in your macroeconomics classes. Basically the majority of macroeconomics is oriented towards Keynesian/Monetarist economic philosophy. Honestly just pick up a macroeconomic book and go through the history of economic though in the 20th century and you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm not bitter about this, it's just simply oriented towards those avenues.

If you want to watch some videos: here is the Austrian perspective in a modern sense.. I especially like this one for its informative value. And if you want something for entertainment anything by Bob Murphy is great because he's just so entertaining but his bit on the Great Depression is probably my favorite.

As for books:

Principles of Economics

How the Economy Grows and Why it Crashes

Also for foundations of liberty you can go with Mises or Rothbard.

One of the best things I heard when going to college for advertising was to think "What is the one thing that will get the audience you want to buy your product? Make that the focus." You're not going to come to that conclusion without researching. Find out the purpose of the product, the objective of the ad, the benefits the product has, the point of difference it has against competitors, the tone of the brand, the target audience, the target concern of that audience and then use all of that to solve a barrier that the audience or brand has. And if you really want to get creative read some of the many amazing advertising books out there when you are out of ideas. Good luck!

>Literally nothing you have said is a factual statement. You’re just regurgitating the exact same talking points the OP mentioned. All bluster, zero substance.

“men should stop raping women” - Sarah Hanson Young. For a party who prides itself on gender equality, they sure know how to conflate all men into the rapey category. Replace "men" with another noun in public and see how it sounds, you'd probably be dragged into the human rights court.

>You “read some books” did you? Which ones exactly did you read, and which parts of them are you citing to support your tirade?

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465002609

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Anniversary-Milton-Friedman/dp/0226264211

Give them a read, maybe you'll grow up.

>Also, you can fuck right off with your jingoistic “traditional Australian values” bullshit. Unless you’re an indigenous Australian, you have no more claim to what constitutes traditional Australian values than anyone else living here. We are an egalitarian nation, a nation that believes in fairness and a “fair go”. That sounds a lot closer to Socialism than the capitalist welfare state you’re batting for.

Didn't take long to go from "Indigenous Australians" to "Socialism" - so I won't take you seriously from here on in. Also, don't pretend like Australia is the only country that has been conquered and had it's culture changed by the conquers, it's pretty much happened to every piece of dirt on the planet...

>On the subject of “capitalism and markets”, no one in Australia hates fair competition more than the LNP. Government grants with no tender process? That’s not capitalism. Massive tax breaks and government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry? That’s not capitalism. The Greens would welcome a level playing field, where neither fossil fuels or the renewables industry got any government money. Would you?

Assuming I support the LNP. Assuming I support croney capitalism > free markets. Assuming I support subsidies at all. Assuming I don't support a level playing field that comes with free market capitalism. Pretending like the Greens even support a level playing field, because they don't support the idea of letting the market decide between renewable and fossil fuels naturally (even when renewables are winning the race, naturally, no thanks to big government, rather individuals and big tech).

https://greens.org.au/platform/renewables

"Under our plan, a set percentage of electric vehicle sales by car manufacturers will be mandated so that fossil fuel cars are transitioned off the road, and the cost of electric vehicles will be significantly reduced so more people can buy them sooner. "

https://greens.org.au/platform/public-ownership

"The Greens believe electricity, banking and the internet should be run as essential services, putting public good before corporate profit."

Totally a level playing field /s

Hitler, Marx, Lennin, Napoleon (totally not tyrants) loved Nationalizing things too and history shows it worked wonders /s

I better Venezuela to that list, nationalising everything there went exactly to plan /s

>I’m predicting you have nothing coherent to say and crawl back under your rock after some pathetic insults and a half-arsed assertion of victory. Surprise me.

Speak for yourself. Go take a long hard look in the mirror.

I second the book Hooked by Nir Eyal–it has great insight into building sticky products.

Couple of others off the top of my head:

• The Startup Life by Brad and Amy Feld - Great if you're building your company and are in some sort of serious relationship.
  
  
• Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson — One of the best books on how to think about fundraising when you're going through it for the first time. Super entrepreneur focused.
  

It is more like a high school final exam, not too difficult. Depends how much you know about bitcoin though. Funny thing is, the exam requires payment in bitcoin only, and that is a test on its own. If you used bitcoin wallets to transact you are probably half way through.

Here is the study guide

https://cryptoconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/CBPStudyGuide.pdf

You can just use this to research the internet to clarify those aspects you don't know. The generic questions such as what is money etc are easy. Concentrate on cryptography, mining and wallets, i.e. the technical stuff specific to bitcoin.

The exam is mostly true/false choices, but pace is very fast. You have to answer questions within 16 seconds on average (20 minutes for 75 questions).

If you use bitcoin on a regular basis you are probably a bitcoin professional without the exam.

Andreas Antonopoulos, who is on board of this exam, can answer almost all your questions. Just google topics, and if you see one of his videos definitely watch it. Last but not least, if you read through his book Mastering Bitcoin you are good to go.

Free book here https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook

Buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

Don't ever let someone tell you that you can't do something. I'm a dyslexic copywriter but I still generate great work. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. I PROMISE you that it will help you in your quest to make the switch.

THE book to read about changing how you view optimization problems in general is actually a novel called The Goal. I read it about every other year. It's really easy to look at a problem and point at a symptom as the cause, and that's what the book really talks about. Again, it's a novel, not a text book, but it's so good, and a really easy read. It focuses on optimization in manufacturing, but the lessons can be applied to any field.

The math of optimization is actually probability and statistics. The formula you're building for a system includes variables that align with some sort of probability curve, and so the "answer" is what results in the best result over time, not at any given moment. What really describes all of this is called Stochastic Processes. Unfortunately, I don't really have a good book for you to just buy and learn that, but there appear to be quite a few on Amazon that cover the subject.

So, the first will change your brain, the second will get you down the path of nitty gritty. In my opinion, everyone in the world should read The Goal, though.

Great job on picking Vanguard, they have the lowest fees for index funds in the market!

First you need to figure out if you are more hands on and would want to pick and rebalance your funds manually, or you can do a target date fund (this would do all the work for you, you just pick the general target year you want to retire).

I want to refer you to the Bogglehead's wiki on "Lazy Portfolios", it has some great ones using all Vanguard funds since they are the low cost leader. http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_Portfolios However, I strongly recommend that you read the whole Boglehead's book on investing: http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0471730335

I didn't know much, just like you, not too long ago, and this book and there reasoning certainly opened my eyes on what it truly means to invest. Good luck and keep it simple. Trying to get to fancy is not worth the hassle, hence the term "Lazy Portfolio".

If you really want to learn to cook i would suggest getting the text book than many professional chefs use while in school, something like this:
The Professional Chef https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470421355

You dont have to read it cover to cover but you should use it ad a reference to learn the fundamentals and establish a basic set of skills that you can use as you continue to learn and try new things. Like many endeavors you can save a lot of time by learning the tricks of the trade in the beginning.

Also like others said youtube is an awesome way to learn, also check out Americas Test Kitchen on PBS.

TIL Employer-provided health benefits are a scam... lol.

>the stock market and retirement funds have lost a lot of value in the last 4 years. full stop.

And yet they're on pace to recover and more... Also why are you talking like a telegram?

>why you oppose this notion so strongly? are you richer than warren? do you think you will ever be?

No and No, but I like to respect what people earn, as opposed to thieving it via the government.

>i thought u were in high school or college because statements like 80% of people can save 10% of their income. are u fuckin insane?

No, not insane. It's the truth. It's the premise behind best-seller books such as this one and this one.

>most people just cant save a penny, actually they are crazy indebted, go google some graphic about debt.

All that is saying is that there's a lot of people out there with poor money management skills. That I do not deny. All I've said is that 80% of the people are capable of saving 10%. Whether they actually do it or not is another story.

>go on. keep defending the interests of the rich. are you one of them?

Once again, no. But you said you were, so why are you arguing against what's in your best interest?

A cast-iron skillet. Soon, your awesome searing skills will be no match for your puny kitchen fan. Just make sure you look into how to care properly for the thing.

As for cookbooks, like other people in the thread mentioned, Joy of Cooking and Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything are great tomes of quality recipes. I would also recommend something along the lines of a culinary school textbook. I'm a big fan of The Professional Chef. This cookbook focuses a lot on technique and theory, but it's very thorough and still has plenty of recipes and delicious looking pictures.

Nice! I have added both to my reading list! The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power sounds really interesting, I have been looking for an older book on the Oil Industry... those greedy bastards always make for a good read! I have found it hard to find books on Oil (or many renewables for that matter) that don't have a little slant.

[Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite For Energy ] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393931536/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_R02xCbQ1V4B98) looks like a really good in-depth read as well. I think the title of the book sums up an uncomfortable truth about humans in general. I also find that books that take a more general overview of energy have less of that "rah rah" in one direction or the other.

I linked them so others could find them easily!

B6! Someone else already said it, but I have to concur - it totally changed my life. It doesn't work for everyone (nothing does), but it's worth a shot. I'd start with 25 mg of B6 before bed (I had to cut up a larger tablet) and see if that does anything for you. My midwife said I could take 25 mg up to 3x per day (which I think would be helpful for the all-day morning sickness).

If that doesn't help, then jump to B6 and unisom before bed. The recommended dose I've seen is 10mg B6 and 1/2 tablet of unisom (source: Expecting Better by Emily Oster), taken before bed.

Good luck! It will get better eventually!

While it's a good idea to know a basic idea of what data structures there are, Programming Interviews Exposed was super helpful in reviewing important concepts as well as prepare me for my interviews. Honestly, I didn't learn my data structures properly the first time around for interviews, and that book and Cracking the Coding Interview were immensely useful for both algorithms and data structures.

You mentioned that you're married. My wife & I read Smart Couples Finish Rich when we were first married and found it very helpful. It's a good overview of all the major financial topics for a couple (financial planning, retirement, insurance, buying a home, etc). It doesn't go too deeply into any of them, so it's a pretty easy read. We read that book first then a couple of books that go into more detail on individual topics where we felt we needed more detail.

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing was one of those other books and it was very helpful when setting up our retirement savings, investing, and planning for the future.

Finally, I found that I Will Teach You Too Be Rich by Ramit Sethi was also very good. It's aimed at people in their 20's & 30's so the style & tone of the book is very different from other finance books. It focuses on money management skills & systems. It also covers topics like negotiation that most other books don't mention very much.

If you enjoyed this short movie, and you'd like more detail, I'd recommend checking out this book as well. I read this 608-page book in 2005 and I loved it. This movie is very impressive because it condenses 608 pages of information into a 30-minute movie.

imho "they" are the super wealthy of the world.

Is this a vast, dark conspiracy? No. They know that for them to continue gaining and holding power they need control a currency. The inevitable outcome is a concentration of those currencies. It's as simple as you and your neighbors all getting jobs because you know that it will pay your rent. Did you all "conspire" to get those jobs? No. You just all knew it was in your best interest. It was the logical next step for you.

If you want to get an idea of how they operate then read this book that details the creation of the US Federal Reserve. It's not boring, and is actually a fun read kind of like a spy novel since so much of what they did was covert.

1. Reddit is not a substitute for attorney who can prepare shareholder agreement which would cover your unique situation.
   
   
2. Having partners and shareholders is more serious then marriage. You can't take someone's equity away for non-performance. You may enter decision making paralysis because you can't reach consensus etc. LLC might not work for all cases and you might need C-corp which is more complicated, and so on. Consider whether your website has that much potential to cover for all that administrative burden.
   
   
3. If you can avoid having equity partners - do so at that stage. Structure commercial agreement for services and commission, performance based compensation. Make sure IP is always transferred to your LLC. If this is not enough for your friends - make option plan which are conditionally vested based on performance.
   
   Giving away equity is easy. Restructuring later when you understand each one true individual contribution is complicated and is a major stress.
   
   If you believe you're really on to something with your website, spend a weekend reading some book on how corporate law works and find a reasonable corporate attorney to help you structure your shareholder agreement.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616 you may skip all chapters related to VC deals

There's a pretty awesome documentary mini-series [1] that TechCrunch created based on Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. I ended up picking up the book last week after watching that mini-series. Heard nothing but good things about the book. Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies was pretty good as well... Always enjoyed watching/listening to Andreas M. Antonopoulos who wrote the book.

• [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHRxVckaE8daSH4OEReWshCKWu3iIOIS-
  
• [2] https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042/

You are not crazy at all. I teeter between extreme elation and anxiety. A few things trigger my anxiety about this pregnancy:

• Coming on here/internet in general, reading about "awful" labor, various tragedies and losses.
  
  
• Talking in depth with people about it. "What will you do for childcare, what happens when XYZ, you know they're super expensive right?" People are Debbie Downers. My friend tried to tell me a child costs $1300 a month (no daycare). Yah okay.
  
  Things that help:
  
  
• Doctor's appointments. I am relieved every time I see her and hear her heart beat.
  
  
• This book helps to debunk a lot of pregnancy myths.
  
  
• This chart allows you to see the probability of loss by week. As you progress in time, the odds decrease.

I wish I could have done double degree/major at my university. I could have taken CS courses but curriculum structure between CE/CS was too big of a difference... Needing a ton of pre-requisitions that I did not have in CS. And department wasn't willing to give me an override (yay overpopulation).

And my CE is mostly hardware focused albeit it is being advertised as CS+EE. And hardware as in... mostly non-computer related. Quantum physics in circuits, microelectronics, etc etc. I'd consider those as more of EE with electrophysics concentration. And you'd be surprised how many low-level embedded programming classes we have.... three. Two of those three aren't scheduled to be offered in the next five years, including previous 3 years, due to budget cuts. So basically one. Every semester we were promised more CE courses would be offered.... except more CE courses were cancelled instead.

Any particular book you would recommend? I'm currently reading through this book and it is helping me a lot.

And congrats on your offers!

That entire fiishing analogy and the whole Irwin 'The Tax Dodger' Schiff and Peter 'The Gold Shill' Schiff book: How and economy grows and why it crashes is aimed squarely at shallow thinkers. It appeals very well to those who would like to believe everything is just so simple.

That said I do actually like the book from a stylistic point of view, it really does present Austrian Economics spam in a interesting and easy to understand format, the style is brilliant I think.

But unfortunately dunning krugerand libertarians read it and subsequently think they are experts at socio-economic policies because herp derp everything in society is just like two men on an island fishing.

Private ownership of natural resources, discrimination, historical oppression all doesn't real and doesn't matter even if they were.

Our complex society can just easily be hyper reduced to two men fishing in the sea. (Two men who started off on equal footing btw)

As you said once you change the scenario to where one man owns the entire island and everything on it and the second man only has the option to either pay rent by working as a chattel slave or rely on mother nature and hope he can evolve into an aquatic mammal before he runs out of energy and drowns in the ocean., the fairy tale doesn't sound as great any more does it.

Firstly, have a read of the investment order for new investors.

Then, if you have an emergency fund and no debts (besides HECS/HELP), then

• If you will be using it for something specific in the next 5-7 years (car, holiday, house deposit, etc), put it in something safe such as a term deposit or HISA. The stock market is not a bank account, you need to be able to allow time for your investment to recover from the ups and downs (well, the downs anyway).
  
• If you can leave it in there for at least 5-7 years, you should educate yourself on investing and create a plan.
  
  These are where a lot of the info in the above site came from, minus the Australian-ised part. I'd recommend them too, they're excellent.
  
  JL Collins Stock Series
  Road Map for Investing Success
  Passive investing guide - Monevator
  Bogleheads
  
  If you prefer books to sites (often laid out better), then
  
  The Simple Path to Wealth - JL Collins
  The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio

I'm a big fan of Expecting Better, as the author looks at the actual scientific evidence behind most common pregnancy do's and don'ts.

The summary of her section on fish says:

> Mercury is bad for your baby. Omega-3 fatty acids are good for your baby. Fish contain both. Your best option is to try to pick fish with a lot of omega-3s and not a lot of mercury.

> The worst thing you can take from the mercury advice is the idea that you should avoid fish. Fish are great! People who eat a lot of fish have smarter kids on average, even with the greater mercury exposure. Try to pick smart, and learn to love sardines!

With this chart on fish choices.

You're off to a great start! Congrats!

Even though you're planning for long-term, I'd suggest a minimum of 10% in government bond funds (and 20% is likely better for starting out since it will help you avoid the temptation to flee the market when Bad Things inevitably happen.). Once you're comfortable with the rebalancing process in a year or so, you can reduce that down to 10% if you want.

One of the best things you can do is learn more. Here are some book suggestions for starting out with investing and asset allocation:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1576603660/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071362363/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471730335/

These books describe the way to get a return higher than 60-70% of all investors out there, simply by not trying to beat everyone else... You'll never impress anyone at cocktail parties, but you will make an excellent return over time.

How is this:

$1 /u/changetip

...not revolutionary? I just sent you real money through an online message board! I don't know who you are, you don't know who I am, and I didn't have to get permission from anyone.

Mr. Nandkeolyar, I know that bitcoin people can sound like a broken record saying this, but consider doing some more in-depth research into the tech and it's uses beyond just payments (I think bitcoin solving "smart contracts" may eventually be more important than it's ability to act as a seamless international payment method.)

Here's a good book to get started with.

also in IT, checking in. Just finished re-reading this book which does a pretty great job of explaining why us IT types are drawn to physical creation in our free time. also available in audio book if you like to listen to stuff in the shop. really worth a read. it will change the way you think about business today.

http://smile.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/0143117467?sa-no-redirect=1

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power

"[...] The Prize, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, is a comprehensive history of one of the commodities that powers the world--oil. Founded in the 19th century, the oil industry began producing kerosene for lamps and progressed to gasoline. Huge personal fortunes arose from it, and whole nations sprung out of the power politics of the oil wells. Yergin's fascinating account sweeps from early robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, to the oil crisis of the 1970s, through to the Gulf War."

Sometimes it makes a huge amount of difference to go through a proper exercise in understanding the business model. Use this: http://6w2x.com/mm-devel/mmc-canvasv01explained.html to fill out all the sections so you understand your business model. Ideally, you should get your hands on the book itself: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417

Traffic, fan base, etc come later, once you've decided on things like your value proposition, customer segments, distribution channels, etc. Then you execute on the plan, targeting the segments and measuring the responses. Be data orientated from day 1 so learn about customer acquisition and retention. It may be that assumptions that have gone into the model are not correct and you have to make changes. Investing your time now on this will pay dividends later.

Good luck.

This guest post on Forbes should be helpful: What's The Secret To A Successful Coffee Shop?

Don't forget to build a well thought-out Business Model before starting up.

Best of luck

Kind of unrelated, but I've been around a lot of entrepreneurs and they all swear by this book. Apparently, it's the importance important thing you can read before raising venture capital. No idea. I've never read it since I've never had to raise money. : https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1118443616

​

Also, I really suggest you look at things like Wefunder or Seedinvest. They are basically like Kickstarter but instead most normal people can invest. I think this is a wonderful strategy. Imagine having the collective experiences, word of mouth, and ownership of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who are invested in your success.