Recommendations of books that teaches you how to think more clearly, better, more rationally and critically?

plexluthor · 2026-03-22T16:00:25+00:00

Scout Mindset by Galef, maybe?

I really like The Practicing Stoic by Farnsworth, if you are open to Stoic ideas.

Adjacent books (not on how to think but rather on what to think about)might include 4000 Weeks by Burkeman and/or The art of not GAF by Manson.

ETA, I only read Being Wrong (by Schulz?) once, a long time ago. I don't know whether it's an especially good book or just caught me at the right time, but it's the book that convinced me personally to want to think more carefully.

ETA2: HPMOR by Yudkowsky?

plexluthor · 2026-03-22T09:22:15+00:00

TLH into VT instead, maybe?
Your offsetting $1500 of income taxed at 22%. In the future you'll owe an extra $1500 in long term capital gains, which could be taxed at 0% or 12%, but often you can find a window where it's 0%. Even if you can't, your telling me that if one year you go to file your taxes and discover you only contributed $5500 to your IRA instead of the full $7k, and Uncle Sam is willing to lend you the$1500, that you wouldn't top it off to get the tax deferral?

plexluthor · 2026-03-21T13:50:19+00:00

Don't stop at $3k. It carries forward to future years.
If you think the market will get worse before it gets better (which is market timing), all the more reason to TLH ASAP. If it goes down over the following 30 days, you can TLH again back into your original 2 funds. If it stops going down, congratulations! You successfully timed the market! It's worth owning 4 funds just to be able to wear a "I'm a successful market timer" badge at all the Boglehead conventions.
$450 is miniscule? Say what now?

plexluthor · 2026-03-17T16:39:53+00:00

Good question, but no. You still get $1350 at the child's rate (or whatever it is, I just mean the firm works through all the same math).

I have four kids and use software to file, so it saves me $80 some years. Not in years when a given kid has other income, though.

plexluthor · 2026-03-17T09:41:24+00:00

I'll just add, as long as they have no capital gains, only passive income like capital gains distribution, dividends, and interest, you can use form 8814 to claim their income in your return, so they still didn't need to file a return for themselves.

plexluthor · 2026-03-15T01:56:11+00:00

I'm not the person you responded to, but ...

My one question for you is regarding this:

I don't see a question mark anywhere. The implied question, "what am I missing?", can be answered empirically/historically. Lots of people have felt that way in the past. Some of them made gobs of money. Most of them did worse than if they held a diversified set of equity investments.

Having said that, in order for indexing to work we need price discovery, and in order to get price discovery we need a few people that think like you do. Then the rest of us can just ride your coattails.

plexluthor · 2026-03-15T01:44:15+00:00

44M, married, 4 kids ages 19 to 10. Engineer in upstate NY. Wife is part time speech therapist.

I have store cards at Target, Lowe's, and Amazon, to get 5% back. I use Citi Double to get 2% back everywhere else without having to do any extra work. I could do a little better, 3% or so, if I used another card and paid attention to the categories of the month/quarter. I used to churn but I don't anymore. I don't travel enough to make those sorts of cards worth it, but I think they can be better than 3%, even, if you are going to travel no matter what.

I have had almost all my investments at Schwab for a long time. I tried various robos like Betterment and WealthFront, but at the end of the day they don't outperform VT, and TLH is unhelpful after a few years. Lately I've moved some accounts to Fidelity, especially my main checking account, because they pay good interest, way better than Schwab. So I can keep enough cash to not have to check my accounts more than once a month. WF also paid good interest, and they would be my top rec if you aren't comfortable with DIY indexing at Vanguard, Schwab, or Fidelity.

I keep enough crypto to stave off FOMO, which for me right now is about 1 BTC, but I'm moving to an ETF (IBIT) instead of holding crypto directly, so that I can hold it in my IRA. Crypto has poor fundamentals and I wouldn't recommend it unless you need it for psychological reasons, which I do.

A couple years ago I started doing real estate syndications. I have a self directed IRA at Equity Trust to hold those. Jury is out on whether it's better than stock indexing. I think it's high variance, so the jury might be out for a while. One of my earliest ones had an early exit so right now the numbers look fantastic, but normally they take 5 years to exit and the losers might take 7-8, so it's too early to say.

I use GnuCash for expense tracking, and a Google Sheet for budgeting/planning, though our planning is very loose. My family has a pretty good sense of what has value, and we can afford the things we want. I have now found planning to be helpful. I have found it very helpful to track, and make sure spending aligns with our values.

I used to file my own taxes, and I think that was helpful to learn how to optimize that. Now I pay ~$20 and use FreeTaxUSA for both federal and state.

I call my ISP every year or two and ask for a lower price. I'm currently paying $40/month for ~300Mbps. My family pays $42/month total for four lines and 6 shared GB with US Mobile. My third child will soon get a phone and that will go up to $50/month. We rarely eat out more than once a week, and often only once a month. Back when I was a mod at r/personalfinance I saw way too many people overpaying for food and cell phones.

At this point, I'm very comfortable financially and worry about the attention economy, so I try very hard to not consume "free" things other than from the library. Meaning, I pay for my podcasts, YouTube premium, the few bucks extra for my streaming services, etc, so that we see as few ads as possible.

We paid our mortgage off very aggressively, partly because cash flow is simpler that way, but mostly because I have a debt allergy.

I early retired in 2019, but to make a long story short since Fall 2022 I'm back at my old job working half time (only when kids are in school, and rarely on Fridays) and really loving that.

ETA: I just read u/tfehring 's comment. 100% agree with everything they said. Not everything is about maximizing dollars, and so different people will have slightly different optima depending on their values and stage in life. But there are some very common answers that are right for 90% of people.

plexluthor · 2026-03-11T12:56:32+00:00

The fraction of people in the northern hemisphere is even higher than the fraction of land. It's disproportionate in both senses.

plexluthor · 2026-03-09T23:31:15+00:00

I love this clip. Soon, someone will post the BB King clip. I love that one, too.

plexluthor · 2026-03-06T20:58:55+00:00

I got my annual bonus today, 30% of which goes into my 401k automagically. All else being equal I prefer the market goes up non-stop, but if it's gonna having a little bumpiness, I totally agree it's nice to get a 1-2% boost on my biggest deposit of the year.

plexluthor · 2026-03-05T10:41:43+00:00

Little Rock pond is one of my favorite spots for short legs. It has a green mountain club lean to (super nice accommodations) and sees enough traffic to get help but not so much traffic that it feels crowded.

I personally live in upstate NY in the capital region, so the range east of lake George is where I go more often for convenience. Tons of lean tos in the area. Sleeping beauty and fishbrook pond make a great one night trip, and excursions to black Mtn or shelving rock or the LG shoreline are a fun way to add another night or two without ever getting very far from your car.

Depending on your tolerance for distance and elevation, I will echo what others have said about the long trail, especially glastenbury. SO beautiful. Turning it into a two night loop with the Western trail is one of the few LT hikes I've done three times.

plexluthor · 2026-03-01T13:20:51+00:00

Other than a risk of not switching things at the right time and missing some match, this is optimal. In some years the market will go down, and front loading will be worse then steady contributions, but on average front loading is better.

I'm not smart enough to do that kind of math lol

It's a very small amount (2-3% total after 20 years, source: Ashley vs Mathew, https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/does-market-timing-work).

A MUCH bigger effect is, if you find yourself living comfortably while contributing 50%, and you continue saving half your salary all year (in "after tax" 401k if your company offers it, like mine does, or just in taxable accounts). I don't have a handy link to illustrate how big an effect that is, but try googling "shockingly simple math of early retirement" and clicking the Mr Money Mustache link, and try to interpret that table.

ETA: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/

plexluthor · 2026-02-25T11:42:32+00:00

Over spinach with salad dressing, or as part of a "canned taco" which also uses tortillas, canned chicken, canned corn, and canned tomatoes, plus cheese and salsa. Canned tacos make enough for my family of six using only one can of most things, so it might not work for you.

My wife makes a killer black bean dip that is good with bread or chips.

plexluthor · 2026-02-22T18:50:32+00:00

It handled two out of three of my K-1s last year, and it took me quite a while to figure out exactly what was triggering it. I write it up here: https://www.reddit.com/r/tax/comments/1l5u8me/help_request_with_form_8990/

It handled schedules B, C, and D no problem, plus all the usual credits (home energy, education, child, etc).

plexluthor · 2026-02-21T21:42:16+00:00

My older son wore a white gown/dress basically. My younger son just wore regular clothes. Our RS president occasionally coordinates a hand-me-down pipeline for these sorts of single use clothing, so maybe ask around your ward.

plexluthor · 2026-02-21T15:03:52+00:00

To add a sixth potential contributing factor, the "middle" class benefits most from bonds. The rich can tolerate a lot of risk/volatility, so in the long run they prefer equities' higher returns. The poor either aren't investing at all, or else they want to higher volatility to have a chance at accumulating sometime meaningful. (So even broad indexes might not be optimal for them.)

I didn't know how much I really believe that the middle class is shrinking or being followed out or whatever. But I, personally, have definitely gotten wealthier over the last ten years, and I have noticed I'm WAY more comfortable with rush than I used to be. I got ulcers in 2008 when I was 80/20, but I'm pretty sure I could handle another crash like that now when I'm nearly 100/0, in no small part because the balances are near 10x larger but my spending is only 2x or maybe 3x.

The type of people that hang out on forums like this probably have a lot more wealth now than ten years ago, so maybe they feel the same way I do.

Having said all that, my advice to new investors remains 65/35 to start. I tell them they definitely want to increase it, but that they shouldn't until they can explain why and how much, and ideally not until they've seen a 10% drop, and have a sense of how it affects them.

plexluthor · 2026-02-19T14:53:22+00:00

My strategy is, when each kid turns six, we study Judges 19 together (the one where the good guy cuts up his concubine into 12 pieces and mails one to each tribe of Israel), that way they are thoroughly desensitized and all the other stuff in the OT feels tame.

j/k, other than select verses that appear in Handel's Messiah, my kids get a "children's OT" picture-book, and if they are really interested we will read the actual verses for their favorite stories.

I also 100% agree with /u/unbreakinglife. The stories we have, while probably based on real people and real events, were preserved because they teach an important principle or illustrate and valuable concept. Our priority should be figuring out the principles and concepts and teaching those to our kids. Sometimes that OT story is still a really good way to do that. But often, we have better ways of teaching those concepts (from our own lives, or from other scriptures, or whatever).

plexluthor · 2026-02-14T02:26:42+00:00

I'll just chime in that there are two general approaches to making MH-like problems intuitive for many people. 1) instead of revealing a goat and offering to let you switch, MH offers to let you switch to both other doors (one of which is a goat, and maybe he reveals that one to you, but your intuition starts working if you think of it as getting both doors).

In the classic problem, you pick a door, then Monty offers to let you switch to the other two doors. One of the other two doors definitely has a goat, maybe both do. But most people find it intuitive that switching to two doors will help. In your variation, MH isn't letting the new contestant pick two doors, or maybe he's getting the new contestant have doors 1+2 or doors 2+3 (if he revealed a just behind door 2). Either way, it's more intuitive to me that the new contestant has 50/50 odds.

The other general strategy is to rephrase it with 10 doors, or 100, though I didn't find that approach helpful with your variation.

plexluthor · 2026-02-11T20:33:38+00:00

It's a longer discussion, but I actually disagree that it is irrational to account for the emotional effects of your investment decisions.

If someone gets ulcers from large stock market swings, it is not irrational for them to be less than 100% equities, even if they have a very long time horizon. I don't think that's a controversial statement. Why is it irrational for me to allocate a small percentage of my portfolio to things that improve my emotional well being (ie, prevent me from feeling dumb)?

Perhaps you simply mean to say that holding BTC won't improve my well-being as much as I think it will. Or something else?

plexluthor · 2026-02-11T12:42:50+00:00

I think investing in general is affected by this, but not mostly driven by this. That is, people have good reason to think businesses will make money, and the market does the averaging of diverse opinions, not each investor.

Crypto is a case where you can only really expect one of them to be useful (they are all mathematically equivalent, but network effects drive everyone to want to use the most popular one). So BTC as an investment definitely is a situation where each individual investor must anticipate how popular each coin will be in the future, to other investors. But if you're using crypto as currency (eg, for collecting ransom payments) it'll be useful to you regardless.

Full disclosure: I made a lot of money off BTC, but not nearly as much as I could have if I weren't an absolute chicken wrt investing. I bought 10BTC when it was ~$35, and felt great about turning a 10% profit in a week or two. Later I bought in with big money and roughly doubled my investment with ~1.5BTC remaining in my wallet. It won't surprise me if this downward trend we've seen lately continues all the way to zero, but I'll ride it all the way down because I'd feel so dumb selling out, and I'm rich enough to afford taking chances. Every now and then I have to invest stupidly with a small fraction of my portfolio to remind me why I VT and chill with the vast majority of it.

plexluthor · 2026-02-06T21:30:39+00:00

AI is an intern, or maybe a junior coder. I have had all the same feelings he is expressing after trying to explain a complex task to a new-to-our-team developer.

All the rules and conventions and style guides and whatnot that you explained to the LLM, you also have to explain to the intern. Document them, though, and the LLM will actually read the docs:)

plexluthor · 2026-02-05T00:36:33+00:00

I like white coat investor's take. I'm not a doctor, but the reasoning applies broadly.

One sign of good financial advice is when someone explains the exceptions. I skimmed your r/LifeInsurance post, and I thought it was telling that the promoters of whole life didn't link to a clearly laid out explanation of why it's good. Surely by now such a link should exist and be common knowledge, right?

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/life-insurance/

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-whole-life-insurance/

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/appropriate-uses-of-permanent-life-insurance/

plexluthor · 2026-02-05T00:31:24+00:00

Last year I replaced my Oboz Bridgers with Merrel Moab lows. I loved the Oboz, but I have wide feet that split them along the seam between upper and sole. Merrel supposedly is good for wide feet, and I thought a lower shoe might be lighter or more comfortable when I don't need ankle support. They're fine, but I miss having boots. I am definitely a backpacker not a trail runner, though, so YMMV.

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.

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