My perspective on investing and financial security is super vanilla

A reader asks my thoughts on financial matters,

Hi RQ. With the GME short squeeze/bubble (whichever term you prefer) making headlines, it made me curious what your perspective is on investing and financial security. Obviously one of the best ways to improve your finances is to not get married, something you have espoused all the time, but I would love to read a whole post about the subject.

Don’t have a unique view or expertise here… a lot of finance advice is pretty wasteful because there are only really two or three ways to really achieve financial freedom:

1. Spend less.
2. Earn more.
3. Invest in assets that earn more than inflation.

That’s it. Numbers 1 and 2 are both hard (if they were easy, we wouldn’t have a $10 billion finance industry trying to sell us on ways to do them).

Re: #1, I rely on Mr Money Mustache for ideas, so start there… he has a nice philosophy too, where he says, “What are you really on this planet to do?” Money is usually a way to achieve other goals, e.g. make friends, create things, etc. The advertising industry is there to convince you the way to have a better human existence is to buy shit (hint: it’s not).

Re: #2, that’s good as well, and you should develop valuable skills, but many high performers spend whatever they make, cause the hedonic treadmill is real, and it’s also not easy to make a lot of money, in most cases (if it were, more guys would do it). A lot of guys who focus on making a lot of money forget why they want to (to live a better life). I’ve not maximized earnings in my life, and have spent more of it than I should have living on the edge, partially due to some choices that, from a finance perspective, haven’t always been the best. Okay and worth it, but I’ve taken a lot of risks with sex.

Re: #3, see John Bogle’s books on index funds. See A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and other finance classics that extol index funds. Efficient markets hypothesis is mostly correct and most people don’t beat the market, sorry. The math behind lower fees and dollar cost averaging is sound, unless you are RenTech or someone like that (extremely rare).

Where do your ideas come from? Doing things, going places

A guy emails to ask, how do I write so much? Where do I get ideas? Three tiers, in descending order of importance…

* Experiences. What have I done, how did I do it, what did I learn from it. These can be negative ones, too… how did I fail, why did I fail, what did I learn from it. The best, most intersting guys are reporters. They go out, see/do things, report back on what they find. Scientists do the same, in a way… they try something, see if it works, if it works, great, if it doesn’t, why not? What can we learn about the natural world from the thing working, or not working?

Experiences generate stories, and many guys have trouble on dates or with general socializing because they don’t do much: they watch TV, play video games, scroll social media.  When someone asks, “What have you been up to?” the honest answer is “nothing much.” A better answer is “climbing a mountain” “experimenting with MDMA” “learning how to grow herb using LED lights, come over for dinner some time” “went to a concert with this chick.” A lot of guys struggle with talking to chicks because the guy has nothing interesting to say, because he doesn’t do much, or he hasn’t learn to say it in an interesting way.

* Conversations. Post enough about experiences and you might catch the attention of other interesting people. A chunk of the sex club book came from Nash questions or observations. He wanted to know about jealousy, so a comment turned into a post. XBTUSD has written a group of posts, after he left some intersting comments, and I encouraged him to start a blog of his own… instead he wrote a group of posts about his experiences. He’s asked some questions or made some observations that led me to posts. If you’re having conversations in direct messages, emails, or chat apps, keep an ear open for ideas. Breeze has also precipitated some ideas, especially around drug use (not a specialty of mine but having experimented I understand better why normal guys who get laid partake). 

Christianity, maybe an improvement on political religions

This post, like all future posts, is now on Substack.

I am slowly swinging around to the view that being genuinely religious is probably good for a lot of people, maybe most people… a big, big improvement over politics-as-religion. Without me personally wanting to be religious.

I’ve had religious-type ecstacy experiences in group sex scenarios… should be obvious from the stories… those scenarios are great in the moment, but from what I can tell and what I have observed, they don’t lead to real community. Your “value” is very much based on sex appeal, ability to bring in hot women, ability to be a hot woman, etc. There is a woman, Gwen Kansen, who did a twitter thread about how her group sex communities effectively eject or de-prioritize older women… her group sex communities are filled with middle-aged guys chasing chicks in their 20s, and I’ve seen this dynamic as well, the invisible older woman thing. I hope Kansen writes something longer and linkable, cause she’s emphasized something usually locked in the attic like a crazy aunt.

In Christianity, your core value is you, and being alive, and your immortal soul; you have an inviolate soul regardless of your external views and features. Of course we all know that, in the real world, that’s often not how it works… the hot Christian gal isn’t into you because of your beautiful soul in the eyes of god, your boss doesn’t hire you for that reason, etc.: there are still real value judgments involved. But there is some latent brutality in the competitive world, that the Christian world tries to de-elevate… and I’m not complaining here: I’ve done fine a lot of the time, competitively, I’m not complaining about the competition, and competition has a lot of merits. Adam Smith wrote about how the competition of capitalism encourages kindness and courtesy, because those things make good business sense. The average American or European store clerk is 100x more useful than the average Soviet government “worker.” The more advanced the market economy, the better the service, and the better the range of products. Capitalism and its competitive features are great. Christianity encourages people to have kids, to be fruitful and multiple, so it isn’t as narcissistic as secular life usually is.

Competition is good but it creates its own challenges (that is not a criticism of capitalism, it is a statement about how not all dimensions can be maximized at once), and the way competition affects and infects people who always want to do better than the guy next to them.

The most stridently asserted opinions will disappear down the memory hole (Pat Stedman example)

The most stridently asserted opinions will disappear down the memory hole.

Remember all the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) truthers from a few months ago? The ones who no longer exist, or seem to exist? The ones who had all the answers six months ago?

I know, I barely remember them either, and probably none of the people who were confidently pitching it do. But I wonder and you should too, “What are they stridently asserting today?” Should we believe it? Why?

What should we take from this episode? I haven’t seen any of the voices who were confidently and wrongly asserting that HCQ or this thing or that thing (vitamin c! no, d!) is a magic bullet, talk about how they were wrong, why they were wrong, and most importantly what will change in the future.

Women having affairs never make you use a condom

This post, like all others, is now on Substack. Please read there.

Women having affairs never make you use a condom.

I met “Carol” in a coffeeshop, where she was reading uncommonly cerebral things for a hot chick. I think I have a pavlovian response to coffeeshops, because I’ve done well in them with picking up chicks. And if I don’t, there’s still the sublime reward of coffee or tea. I’ve never been a mass cold-approach daygamer, although I admire them. Friendly chitchat about her work morphed to a tenuous connection between my girlfriend and similar work. We traded numbers. The four of us had dinner a bunch of times. Normal dinners. Like friends. Except it’s noticed that I like to be friends with the prettier girls… it’s true, but I deny it. Coincidence.

The easiest and most straightforward way to start an affair is to already have a girlfriend, wife, or partner. When you first meet the other woman, she knows you are taken (“taken”). You are not a serious threat, at first, but if you exude sexuality and sexual energy, you will not be a boring herbivore either. Red Pill Dad recently wrote about how, as a young man, he hid his dick and consistently failed to escalate. He had all the makings of a chad thundercock, except the ability to execute and the killer instinct most players have. He wasn’t an herbivore grass-eater, I’d judge, but he made critical mistakes… and those mistakes explain why older guys have a decent shot with many hot young chicks, cause guys their own age lack edge and the ability to escalate into her p***y. I’m not going to write out how to exude sexuality, read the rest of the totality of The Red Quest if you wish to find answers. Sometimes, if you merely keep escalating, you will escalate a compliant but distant girl into bed. Many girls have bad game and make their own mistakes.

The woman knows that bringing around a new single man will make trouble with her man. She usually won’t do that, although if she has a “work husband” or something, she may be willing to consummate that relationship. But another couple… that is a safe, stable arrangement. In chemistry, nature prefers stable arrangements of elements and electrons. In human relationships, single people tend to gravitate together, as do people in relationships, as do people with kids, etc. Many single people in their 30s feel lonely because their friend group has escalated into another phase of life, while they’re still trying to get laid. The mechanics of their relationship change. Their friends’s apartments/houses are child proof, and their friends don’t have the energy. The best way to hang out with those friends is to bring over substantial dinner and don’t demand extensive energy expenditure, because people with kids don’t have it. They have other things, like a fundamentally meaningful life… but not the energy to relentlessly hit the bars. Even a seemingly committed player like Paul Janka can quit the game to pursue fundamental interests.