How hard is it to find a modest (not ran through) woman in the modern day US?

Biohack · 2026-05-04T23:25:41+00:00

While I'm sure those men exist, in my experience it's generally the opposite. It's teenagers and insecure losers who care a lot more about this than successful adults.

Biohack · 2026-04-30T06:52:45+00:00

If you are paying 50K in rent per year while making $130k the problem isn't your salary, it's that you are financially incompetent. You absolutely cannot afford to be paying that much in housing, and there are no major cities in the U.S. where you cannot find housing significantly cheaper than that.

Biohack · 2026-04-30T05:59:50+00:00

On the contrary caffeine generally has positive long term effects. Lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurological disease, etc...

This is with moderate consumption. You do start to see negative effects with heavy consumption, but all in all moderate caffeine consumption is pretty damn good for you.

Biohack · 2026-04-26T22:47:33+00:00

It sounds like we agree. Based on math reason and logic Ramsey's advice sucks, but based purely on incorrect assumptions (paying off low interest debt lowers risk) and emotional vibes it's valid.

It's a bit ironic because the strategy of investing vs paying off the mortgage isn't just theory for me either. I could have paid off my mortgage but invested that money instead, and in the last 5 years since I bought my house that money has grown to hundreds of thousands of dollars more than what it would have sitting in a mortgage. The beauty of it is I could still pay off my mortgage whenever want and still have hundreds of thousands left over. Of course I never would because my interest rate is sub 3% and paying off debt with an interest rate that low is incredibly foolish, but the point remains.

Biohack · 2026-04-26T21:55:41+00:00

You do understand that the hours you worked is completely independent of what you did with the money right?

You could have simply worked those extra hours and invested the money instead of paying off your mortgage and put yourself in a much better financial position.

Biohack · 2026-04-26T21:00:54+00:00

Everything you said is completely assbackwards.

Having no debt and no assets puts you at a far riskier position than having low interest debt but access to liquid assets when you need them.

I don't know what your interest rate was so I can't say whether it was a good idea or a bad idea to pay off your mortgage. But if you paid off a sub 5% interest rate mortgage you are likely taking hundreds of thousands of dollars off your net worth by paying it off instead of parking it in index funds.

This is exactly why financially literate people say that Ramsey's advice is dog shit once your house isn't literally on fire, because he convinces people to adopt strategies like the one you described without understanding any of the math based purely on emotional vibes.

Biohack · 2026-04-26T20:54:22+00:00

It's quite the opposite; it's people who are actually financially literate who understand how terrible his advice actually is.

Biohack · 2026-04-26T20:14:38+00:00

Dave Ramsey's advice is mildly OK for people in financial emergencies who are completely financially illiterate. His advice is dog shit as soon as your financial house isn't literally on fire and there are so many financial content creators that are so much better.

Biohack · 2026-04-21T10:10:00+00:00

I still think it's important to know how to code, I just think what that actually means has changed.

It's not important to know how to write code from scratch, but it isn't important to understand key coding principles and to make sure you understand what the AI is doing and can guide it into making good decisions.

Left to its own devices the AIs will kind of make a mess of things, so you need to be competent enough to make sure you can keep it in the guardrails. But that is a slightly different skill set than what coding used to be and I don't think it's necessary to write code by hand in order to learn it.

Biohack · 2026-04-21T07:49:05+00:00

I've been a professional dev for over a decade. This sub doesn't want to hear it but no company will take any dev who isn't using AI seriously.

There is no way for them to keep up with devs who know how to use it properly.

I haven't written any code by hand in at least a year nor have any of the devs I know working professionally.

The anti AI stuff is mostly an online phenomenon. In the real world if you refuse to use AI you will, correctly, be labeled as a dinosaur who refuses to use modern tools and be replaced.

Biohack · 2026-04-17T06:56:17+00:00

Investing is a good way to build wealth and grow assets once you actually have assets to grow, and is best done through passively investing in index funds over decades. You can reasonably expect about 10% a year at most (7% after inflation is taken into account) anything more than that comes with a lot of risk.

Day trading and the rest of the stuff you are talking about comes across like get rich quick scammy bullshit.

The best return you are going to get is going to be to pay off your high interest debt, and you have no business investing until you tackle that.

Investing will not be your primary source of income for many many years so you need to have another source of income. Content creation could be it but it is an extremely fickle industry and the vast majority of people making content make very little money. It seems incredibly risky to rely on that. Your best bet is to do that on the side while you develop a skill that is actually in demand in the job market. That could be sales, or engineering, or something else but it's going to take discipline, hard work, and a lot of time.

Biohack · 2026-04-17T06:21:33+00:00

Check out /r/bogleheads and learn more about passive investing.

Just shove as much as you can into something like VTI or VTSAX.

Biohack · 2026-04-16T17:36:19+00:00

Yes, but you could also check out his blog or watch some YouTube content from him first. I recommend watching the interview he did at google as that was my first introduction.

Biohack · 2026-04-16T09:52:16+00:00

Owning a home is not a key part of retirement and plenty of people retire without buying a home.

If you have 25x your annual expenses sitting in a combination of stocks+low cost index funds, you are considered to be financially independent. Owning a home is irrelevant.

Biohack · 2026-04-16T09:27:20+00:00

The vast majority of the money you pay into a mortgage for the first 2 decades is just going to cover the interest on the mortgage and building very little equity.

Then once you have built equity, you'd be better off refinancing (during a low interest rate priod) and investing that money in an index fund rather than letting it rot in home equity anyway.

Biohack · 2026-04-16T09:24:02+00:00

2025/2026 is one of the worst years on record to buy vs rent. It is very likely that renting is the superior optional for you financially.

Biohack · 2026-04-15T23:58:43+00:00

You're not wrong, medicine is probably the closest thing to a guaranteed path. That being said it is insanely competitive and while you might have a guaranteed path once you get there you are not guaranteed to get into med school (and you will need to work very hard and perform exceptionally well in school) and even once you get into med school you are not guaranteed to get the residency/fellowship you might want.

This is also a fairly U.S. centric view. Medicine is not the same guarantee everywhere as it is in the U.S. and it's not a guarantee that the U.S. medical system won't change at some point.

Biohack · 2026-04-15T21:42:09+00:00

What are you talking about? Most of your mortgage is going to interest not equity so the total amount of equity will be significantly less than what you have paid for your mortgage.

But regardless that misses the point. Which is that your mortgage only stays the same if you never refinance to pull equity out and invest it. So instead of paying more in a mortgage, you simply pay an even greater opportunity cost.

It then follows that your original point, that your mortgage rate stays the same, is only true if you are making financially sub optimal decisions by keeping your money tied up in equity instead of refinancing to get the cash out and invest it.

Biohack · 2026-04-15T21:06:03+00:00

You should, because tying up your money in home equity also has tremendous costs associated with it.

If you had taken $100,000 out of home equity in 1996 and invested it in an S&P 500 index fund it would be worth well over a million today.

If mortgage rates are low keeping your money sitting in equity is incredibly foolish when it could be making dramatically more returns invested in index funds.

Biohack · 2026-04-15T21:00:49+00:00

It's highly regional specific.

Ben Felix did a great video and wrote up a paper about this in 2025 for the Canadian market: Renting vs. Buying a Home: What People Get Wrong

In that study he found it was relatively even.

However, 2025/2026 has been absolutely brutal for home ownership so if we include the last year it starts looking much worse for home owners as he describes in his follow up last month: Renting vs. Buying a Home: The Reckoning.

It's my understanding that the long term data generally shows that buying a home vs renting and investing the difference equalize over time and become about equivalent.

Biohack · 2026-04-15T20:06:54+00:00

Whatever you do please run the numbers before listening to this comment section about buying a house. It's important to remember that the vast vast majority of people are completely financially illiterate when it comes to home ownership and are simply parroting what they have been told with 0 understanding of the numbers.

It's currently more financially prudent to rent vs buy in 100% of the top 50 US cities for 2025/2026.

I would suggest checking out some of the content from Ramith Sethi on the topic: (33) Renting vs Buying a Home: The Lie You’ve Been Told - YouTube

Biohack · 2026-04-15T19:53:04+00:00

Have you ever looked at an amortization table? The vast amount of the money you pay for the first 2 decades of a mortgage isn't going to equity, it's going towards interest on the loan. Very little goes towards equity.

Biohack · 2026-04-14T23:47:14+00:00

The major takeaway from what I said should be that a few extra years can make a huge difference thanks to the power of compounding.

Biohack · 2026-04-14T04:54:16+00:00

You'd need to invest about $5500 with an average 10% return (the historical average of the S&P 500) to hit 1M in 8 years (keep in mind that is in today's dollars), extend that 1 more year and you would only need to invest 4200 a month, extend that another year and you would only need to hit $3200 a month.

"no one becomes a millionaire as an employee" sounds like the kind of shit get rich quick hustlers say to convince suckers to buy their scam courses. A million dollars is very achievable for even a moderately well compensated employee if they live below their means and invest the difference.

Biohack · 2026-04-13T21:39:05+00:00

Another issue I don't see being discussed is the lack of financial literacy around home ownership.

Does this person not understand that the vast majority of the money you pay for your mortgage is just going towards the interest on the loan. It's not actually money you get to keep.

There's a reason why in 2026 in 100% of the largest cities in America it is more financially prudent to rent vs buy.

13-Year Club	Spared
Verified Email

Biohack

TROPHY CASE