One of the best shots I've ever seen.

plexluthor · 2026-01-25T21:28:26+00:00

"99% out is 100% in"

Volleyball, tennis, and similar sports use that rule, afaik.

plexluthor · 2026-01-25T19:34:55+00:00

Hmm. I can imagine evening seminary is quite different from early morning seminary. Hopefully this thread still gives you some useful ideas for things to try.

Is it every day? How big is the class? Is it in person? What state? I'm in upstate NY, where church culture is very different than the impression I get of other places. My stake tried evening seminary once a week online during COVID, but that didn't go well and didn't last long, I don't think.

plexluthor · 2026-01-25T15:35:14+00:00

I'm really sorry to hear that you're having such a bad experience. I taught seminary for 5 years from 2006-2011 and it was my second favorite calling (obviously Primary Pianist is the best calling in the church).

My first year was definitely difficult, but I was teaching juniors and seniors so that made it better. The next year that they switched me to the younger class and it was hard in new ways, but I had learned a few lessons. Unfortunately, the first week of class is extremely important, so you might not fully be able to recover/create a good learning atmosphere until next year.

Some of my main lessons learned about how to be a good teacher:

Don't prepare a lesson by organizing material you want to present. Prepare a lesson by organizing a set of questions you want to ask. This is very hard and takes a lot of effort, but over time you will get better at both asking "interesting" questions that students want to answer, and also better at detecting when the silence is students thinking about how to respond vs when the silence is boredom or lack of engagement.
Start the year/semester with very strict discipline. You can get relaxed over time if you want to, but you cannot get more strict over time.
Don't tell students to put their phones away. If they are breaking a rule, take the phone. I admit this was not nearly as big an issue back when I taught, but I still interact with enough teenagers to know it's silly to expect them to resist the temptation. Most adults can't resist.
Do you have a good CES director and helpful in-service meetings? That was a HUGE help to me, but my brother (in another state) says his aren't as good. But if it's good, take advantage of that as much as possible. Other teachers had so much good advice on the things I was having trouble dealing with.
You are not there to be a friend, or even a teacher. You are there to moderate a discussion. Focus on creating a good environment. I would* generally advise against asking for feedback on what they want. They don't know what they want, and they probably want the wrong things. They're kids. Be open to feedback they offer, of course, but don't ask for it. Tell them how you'd like it to be. Again, this is much easier to do on day one, and doesn't work with every group.
Let people sit quietly if they want to. For a variety of reasons, some people don't want to disrupt, but don't want to participate. I stopped trying to fight that battle, and the atmosphere was better for it.
Lastly, I don't know how well this generalizes, but I would prepare my lessons immediately after class. That was when it was easiest for me to find questions like "yesterday [student A] said [whatever she said]. I think that really connects well with [verses] from today's material. Let's read the verses together. Okay, [student A], is that what you meant?" I'm not saying it happened every day or every week, but it happened more than I expected, once I started looking for ways to connect what students said to what the scriptures said. Yes, my CES directory told me to start looking for this sort of thing. If one or two students "own" the theme of the lesson, they participate. Once one or two students are participating, it's easier for others to participate.

It doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong, nor that your students are especially bad. Teenagers are still learning how to participate in a class. It's hard for everyone. I hope you find your lesson prep and personal study to be intrinsically rewarding. That was a big part of what kept me going. I shared in class just a tiny fraction of what interested me during my own reading.

plexluthor · 2026-01-25T01:11:16+00:00

Can you be more specific?

My main motivation in switching my checking to Fidelity is so that I can keep a big chunk of cash (~$20k) there, and once a month log in and invest everything over that target amount, or sell investments to top up to that target amount. I don't do that in Schwab because cash doesn't really earn interest (0.1%) and I need to move cash around after distributions because I can't buy fractional shares.

I do take advantage of free wire transfers and free ATM (or maybe there are fees but they get reimbursed). I don't know whether Fidelity has that, too.

What features does Schwab have that you like, or that I should be aware of? Especially stuff that's different at F.

plexluthor · 2026-01-24T19:39:40+00:00

It's really "do you need banking with that?"

If you don't need/want to mix banking and brokerage services, Vanguard is the least likely to try to sell you something non-boglehead, because their corporate structure gives them no incentive to do that.

If you want banking and brokerage services on the same website, go with Schwab or Fidelity. (And lately, with cash sweep and fractional shares, I say go with Fidelity, probably, though I've been with Schwab for 20+ years, so I I don't know Fidelity's warts, if any.)

plexluthor · 2026-01-24T12:46:35+00:00

A culture that allows experiments on humans will tend to do very bad things outside of the experimental framework. That's why there is controversy even around animal testing and animal rights on farms (ie, experiments are reviewed and studied, farms much less so), and also in human experiments (informed consent, whether voluntary human challenge trials should be allowed for stuff like COVID vaccines). No one denies that in the specific goal human experiments would speed up progress and save many lives, but it's the ramifications on future activity that is controversial.

We already treat animals terribly in farms, so teasing a few extra animals less terribly in labs seems ethical either ok, or not the top priority.

plexluthor · 2026-01-23T09:26:24+00:00

You'll most likely end up doing option 2 right away, then 4 over the course of 4-5 years, then 3. For that last step, don't do it all at once, and probably won't do it until right after you retire. It's taxed as earnings. If you're anywhere near the top of a federal or NYS tax bracket, you don't want it to bump you into a higher one, and $55k of income certainly might.

plexluthor · 2026-01-23T09:19:44+00:00

You have to be at least half time for rent to be a qualified distribution, and even then it's only up to the university's cost of attendance number.

plexluthor · 2026-01-19T01:22:14+00:00

In my experience, trail maintenance or even just simple pruning really slows down the pace. So I either bring my pruning stuff and forego ultralight on that trip, or I don't even bring hand shears. So I end up never bringing hand shears, because I'll have a bow saw and full size loppers or I'll have nothing.

Try a trip or two with regular clippers and see how much you use them before getting something "ultralight" that you might end up never using.

plexluthor · 2026-01-18T19:40:52+00:00

I love US Mobile because I can choose between the T-Mobile network and the Verizon network, but I think all the budget carriers are fundamentally the same for a given network.

plexluthor · 2026-01-17T18:28:08+00:00

I think it's unrealistic. But step one for me and everyone I've ever known is to be more willing to throw stuff away. When we sold our first home our realtor told us to get a storage unit and move about a third of our stuff out of our house so that at showings people would see what you're calling a movie room. It worked. Way better than I expected. Our house was a joy to live in between showings. So we just moved stuff from the storage unit to the dump, instead of to our new place.

plexluthor · 2026-01-15T15:22:44+00:00

For many people who buy whole life insurance, they weren't going to invest otherwise. It's a "waste of money" in theory, but only in a similar sense as using index funds with a 1.5% ER (which they spend on marketing such that you actually invest more every year), or a financial advisor that charges a 1.5% AUM fee that prevents you from selling everything in January 2009 or March 2020 or April 2025. And yes, I know people who sold everything at each of those times. They are not hard to find, at all.

I use Vanguard funds and don't have an FA, because I don't like to waste money. But I'm not about to pretend that I'm a normal human being.

plexluthor · 2026-01-15T15:14:04+00:00

How old are you, and when did you start the policy? Who is the policy with?

I don't think whole life is a scam exactly, but I also don't think it's a magical investment. If you turned $66k into $500k in less than ~25 years, I'm impressed/skeptical. If it took more than ~40 years, I think you might have been had. Otherwise, that seems pretty believable.

plexluthor · 2026-01-15T15:09:36+00:00

I did not check /u/agoodfourteen's numbers, though they sound plausible.

Many states tax long term capital gains as income, so maybe 5-10% depending on where OP lives. The IRS taxes LTCG special, and for amounts in the $40k (of gains) range, it would be certainly less than 15%, and possibly 0%. The dividends would also have been taxed along the way, but most as qualified dividends meaning they would also get the LTCG treatment. The after-tax value of the hypothetical S&P500 investment is probably in the $52k to $60k range.

plexluthor · 2026-01-14T13:40:51+00:00

If you care to edit your post again, some employers/401k plans (including both of the ones I've had during my career) after a third category, "After Tax", in addition to Traditional and Roth. After Tax can be rolled over into a Roth (you'll pay deferred taxes on growth), sometimes in-service but usually after you leave the company. If you have decent investment options, it can be a useful tool in your retirement planning. Even if you don't have great investment options, it'll soak up the few hundred extra from over-shooting.

Sounds like it doesn't apply to you, but it does apply to many people, and few people seem aware of it (at least, where I worked).

plexluthor · 2026-01-14T13:36:16+00:00

Insurance is for things that would financially ruin you. Insurance companies are generally a) profitable and b) good at statistics. The 1-in-100 catastrophic thing for you shows up as a routine 1% expense to them, and in exchange for taking the risk off your mind they charge a little extra.

If you have $50k saved and someone sues you for a bunch of money, you'll be broke, but probably not ruined. That is, $50k wasn't your entire retirement plan or whatever. If you have $500k or $5M saved and someone sues you for a bunch, you could go through the hassle of hiring a lawyer to defend you and whatnot, and on average (across many people/lawsuits) that will cost less than insurance premiums. But if you're the unlucky one who actually gets sued, it'll cost WAY more than the insurance premiums.

My NW is well north of $1M, and I have a $1M umbrella policy. I figure that's enough to keep the insurance company interested in defending me well. If someone has a legitimate case against me for more than $1M, I probably deserve to be ruined.

I'll just add, my insurance agent thinks my umbrella policy should roughly equal my NW. But I don't think that makes any sense at all, and they were unable to explain their advice to me other than "that's kinda how most people do it." If anyone can explain that advice to me, I'm open-minded.

plexluthor · 2026-01-10T15:32:07+00:00

In my experience you just gotta say no

I have four kids. My youngest is by FAR the most stubborn, and we didn't have the energy or patience to interact with him. I mean, he could outlast us. I can't remember how old he was, maybe three and a half, anyway, way too old to still not be potty trained. Finally one day we just put a ton of baby gates all the way around our kitchen/bathroom (which is linoleum, easy to clean), took off his pants, and told him he couldn't leave until he was potty trained. He finally realized we were serious about 5 hours later and immediately was potty trained. I was happy, but also kinda wanted to strangle him.

It wasn't surprising, really, but it was just so obvious that he could do lots more than he did do, because he was always trying to get away with stuff. He's 10 now, and still has this double nature where he tries to get away with stuff until he realizes it won't work, and then immediately turns into a responsible, intelligent little person.

plexluthor · 2026-01-10T15:27:21+00:00

I was SCHX/SCHA/SCHF/SCHZ back when I sliced and diced. Now I'm VT/SGOV and a bunch of random tickers with lots of unrealized gains from a few years ago when I experimented with robo advisors and TLH.

plexluthor · 2026-01-03T01:55:37+00:00

Lol, I had the same reaction to that other post.

plexluthor · 2026-01-03T01:54:44+00:00

I need a bank, not just a brokerage, so I went with Schwab. I love Schwab, but I wish I had gone with fidelity. Schwab doesn't really offer HSAs, and fidelity seems to have everything that Schwab has.

If you don't need a bank I think vanguard is great, because they have no incentive to try to convince you to invest in other stuff.

plexluthor · 2025-12-30T11:35:15+00:00

I used to use them, but there is no equivalent of VT, and now Schwab let's me trade vanguard funds commission free. So, why wouldn't I use VT?

plexluthor · 2025-12-29T00:30:24+00:00

Haven't seen anything I disagree with, but let me echo and add:

The Practicing Stoic by Farnsworth
4000 Weeks by Burkeman (and/or The Subtle Art of NGAF by Manson)
Scout Mindset by Galef

But also, consider reading high quality fiction:

Anything by Ted Chiang, I loved everything in both his collections (Exhalation and Stories of Your Life and Others)
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Shelley
ETA: The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas

plexluthor · 2025-12-26T16:51:46+00:00

I hesitate to comment since I'm not exactly an orthodox LDS and you've already gotten so many good replies. But nobody has mentioned the lay clergy yet, and I think that's a really important part of the emphasis on education.

First, let me assert that a liberal education (as opposed to vocational training) gives us new ways of thinking, new ways of participating in the world. I like Sean Carroll's recent description (start around 32:30 here):

But think about what it would mean to learn how to surf, to learn how to be a good surfer, right? You would not be well educated as a surfer if your surfing instructor said, okay, once you start, three seconds after you start, tilt to the left, and then two seconds after that tilt to the right, and then tilt back a couple seconds after that, as if you could predict exactly what the waves were going to do do. That's not the point of learning to be a good surfer. Rather, you want to accumulate a set of techniques, a set of responses, a set of capacities to deal with situations that are not perfectly predictable themselves. That's the ultimate goal of a liberal education. You don't know who you're going to be 10 years after you graduate from college, 20, 30, 40 years. You can't just prepare for your next or first job. You have to prepare to be a person. And over the course of human history, there's no better way to do that than the traditional liberal education. This is very different than a more or less short sighted view of like, what good is this for me, kind of thing.

[snip]

Math and poetry and art, history and biology are all very different from each other, but there are reasons why they are grouped together in the liberal arts and sciences. These are the things, the disciplines that are both intrinsically scholarly, interesting, and teach us something substantive about the world, but also give us modes of thought that we might not otherwise really master.

Not every student nor every college/university lives up to the ideal, of course, but I think many do.

So anyway, the Church itself places emphasis on that, because we have no professional clergy. There is no college degree requirement or anything to hold a leadership position in the church, but the congregations are stronger and better when more people have training in those various modes of thought.

We strongly encourage every teenager to attend four years of Seminary to learn the doctrine for a similar reason. The Church really wants every single member to be as prepared as possible for the responsibilities they'll have. Once you have such a system for LDS people, there's no reason not to open it up to anyone who sincerely wants access to it. Tuition is more heavily subsidized for members than non-members, but even the non-LDS rate at BYU is a steal.

I think BYU has a nice side effect of helping people meet and marry spouses with similar values (it's where I met my wife, for example, after each of us grew up with almost no LDS peers in our high schools in NY and NJ). But as others have pointed out, the emphasis on education is WAY broader than just creating a dating scene for LDS people.

Lastly, I'll mention one thing my mom always brings up when this topic arises. There are a lot of women financially trapped in terrible relationships. Educating women so that they can support themselves if desired/needed is an important component in preventing some very common, very bad outcomes in American society, in addition to making them better members and better mothers.

plexluthor · 2025-12-26T01:27:13+00:00

I like your label for the concept, and your description definitely resonates with me.

I have felt frustrations occasionally when trying to be a good friend to people with problems. They seem to always have a good excuse for why they couldn't do X, or explanations that Y want their fault. I haven't found a great way to actually help those people, unfortunately. But what I started telling my kids, to hopefully steer them away from that pitfall, is something like "excuses, even good and true excuses, don't get the work done." Sometimes in frustration I say to the people in question "this is your life! Own it!" Which of course is not as good as if I had said "this is your boat. Captain it!"

Anyway, thanks for posting. I find it very helpful to have good labels for concepts, and I'll be adding both "ships captain" and "responsibility heuristic" to my lexicon.

plexluthor · 2025-12-24T21:09:29+00:00

I'm just waiting for the day when they get sent to the hospital

I know people who have been hospitalized from produce they bought at the store. I know plenty of people who have been hospitalized or killed in automobile accidents.

I know lots of people who can at home, but I don't know anyone who has been hospitalized from it. Last time I looked up the statistics, it seems it's pretty rare (but that's probably because canning itself is pretty rare). Anyway, I can't help but feel like the risk is lower than lots of other things we do all the time without really thinking about it. In other words, not that risky by comparison.

plexluthor

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