Are you ok?

Yes, I’ve got a detailed plan and I’m sticking to it. In 12 years from now, my youngest will be 15 and I can start winding down. I can’t imagine doing nothing, but with some part time work I think my wife and I can stretch to make it work. Requires that the oldest self-fund through university, which I had to do, so I’m ok with that.

Currently 47, which is probably substantially older than most people here. The concept of “retirement” (winding down) seemed so far away (didn’t start saving for it until late twenties) but compounding interest really is the most powerful force in the universe.

Of course if the stock crashes, plans may have to change. I’m slowly moving towards a stronger bond mix but that lowers return and pushes dates out. It’s a hard balance.

I think I’ve accounted for everything that one can plan for; late life care costs, risk of both my wife and I living to 100 (in a financial sense, we should all be so lucky), higher spend until 75, then lowered. There’s a risk that the UK removes universal state pensions, which would drastically alter my plans.

https://imgur.com/a/MAWe4eq

Crucially though, for a very long time they forced you to choose a server instead of just set you up on the default on.

I’m not saying don’t federate. I’m saying don’t talk about that as the primary feature when you’re enticing people to sign up to it.

Agreed. There should have been a default place to sign up from the beginning. Leaning on federation as a feature is something very few people care about until they really care about it. The mass adopter just looks at where their favourite celebrity or talking head is and then move there.

For anyone finding this later. Unfortunately I’ve had to come off Actual :-(

While the gocardless syncing works really well, Actuals code for merging transactions is just too flaky for the banks I use. I end up having multiple similar transactions, done on the same day for the same amount, collapse into one and while you’re meant to be able to just set a starting date and an account value, Actual kept on syncing transactions from before the starting date.

I appreciate it’s open source and given I’ve paid nothing I should expect nothing. All good. But there wasn’t any engagement in the discord support section nor any response to bugs filed. It’s clearly under active development but the QA side doesn’t get enough attention that I could get it to work for me.

While I understand they don’t want to accept bugs without repro steps, there’s not enough scaffolding for capturing data and submitting issues inside the app.

I know I could get on that and fix it. I’m not complaining. I’m glad Actual works for many. But the transaction syncing totally did not work for the banks I used and so I’ve had to stop using it.

Been on PhotoPrism+ for a few years (90000 photos, 9000 videos). I use PhotoSync and it’s rock solid (although I go through an FTPS server for sync) - I’ve never ever had an issue with it. Yes, it’s third party, but for me it has just WORKED. Can also highly recommend PhotoPrism although I don’t edit many tags.

Looks great. Will definitely try out.

Day to day I just use LunaSea. Added convenience of being able to add a film from a phone.

Speaking as a Dane, where Halloween has invaded in the last 20 years, basically to replace Fastelavn, the traditional spring-based festival of trick or treating, just another excuse for selling stuff.

I’ve literally just switched to Actual (3 days in) after living out of a homemade Excel YNAB clone for years and years. Overall it’s great and the bank syncing really works (except with a weird issue around starting date and starting balance).

I love that it’s open source, E2E encrypted, self-hostable and the data lives in a SQLite database.

If I haven’t found any major snags, I’ll of course become a supporter in a couple of weeks.

I am well aware this won’t a popular answer.

I am also well aware of all the negative aspects of what I’m about to talk about. I believe these negative aspects to be real and I’m not disputing them.

I am also well aware of the follow on hard-sell-to-vulnerable-people problems that happens here. I myself felt under immense pressure to “buy more” when I did it, resisted and never heard back from them again.

But…

Attending the Landmark Forum was absolutely the biggest, long-term, positive thing I’ve ever done.

So many positive things followed on from that. In a long weekend, I genuinely changed who I was, towards something that was much more fulfilled, much more true to myself and with much greater self-worth. 25+ years later I still use the learnings, especially around taking accountability for everything that happens in my life and the realisation that every memory I have is flavoured by my interpretation of it too (since I own the interpretation, and I have made an active choice on how to interpret, I can change the interpretation and thus change the meaning the memory has for me; since my memories shape who I am, I can change who I am by changing my interpretation of my past).

I would not recommend it to anyone else. I learnt this the hard way, because I DID recommend it to someone else and they decided to leave their wife after doing the Landmark Forum course. I know that this is likely to have happened without my involvement but I still feel immensely awful about it. I should have kept my mouth shut.

Don’t do the Landmark Forum. You will be under difficult pressure, in a vulnerable spot, to attend more courses and to bring your nearest and dearest in as prospects. The view of the Landmark Forum is “we know it works, we know it transforms people’s lives for the better - you do too; why don’t you want your friends and family to experience the same transformation?”. It’s hard to argue against, both because you’re surrounded by happy, transformed people when they pitch you, and also because, for me at least, it was actually true. It really did change me for the better, hugely so. I was intent on not “joining anything” but just take the upsides away. I saw many who immediately went out to become a “convert” and probably annoy and worry the f*** out of their friends and family. I really don’t like this technique and I can’t understand why they don’t take the pressure off, which would remove a lot of the accusations that’s fielded against them.

Having said all that, for me, it was the most positive thing I’ve ever done.

The one I’ve got is built in Slovenia I believe.

But it’s not really SEAT that’s the problem, but the dreadful iteration of VW’s MQB platform. The same issues affect all VW group cars in this generation.

The one I’ve got at the minute, a Seat Leon (mark 4); it’s built on top of VWs MQB platform and honestly it’s a piece of shit.

The list of issues is as long as my arm: The reversing beeper gets stuck, the graphics don’t draw on top of the reversing camera, plugging a phone in stops playback, the shitty entertainment system crashes, keyless entry gets shy when it rains, the emergency alerting system throws a fit if it loses mobile signal, there’s no light on critical controls in the dark, the interior light sometimes can’t be switched off, the cruise control gets confused about which side of the road it’s driving on and doesn’t want to overtake another car (it thinks it’s undertaking), the speed limiter is hiding behind UI 4 steps, the clutch jumps when cold etc etc.

Every month I discover a new niggle. This is the third Seat I’ve owned (having previously loved my two Seat Leons) and will most definitely be my last VW group car ever. What a piece of trash.

Be rich. Makes everything so much easier.

Budget. Don’t need to be fancy. But build a view on the things that you’ll need to pay for over the year (Christmas, birthdays, holidays, car service, boiler service etc) and actually put money aside every month to pay for those things. Nothing beats the adult feeling of “yes, I’ll just pay for this thing here from this envelope and done”.

Once you’ve lathered up in the shower, throw some of that lather on the chrome in the shower then rinse it off just before you get out. Clean chrome, every day, without doing much.

We give 300 million a year to the RHS! Those money should go to bri’ish chargers running on bri’ish phones!

Dead Cells. Factorio. Mini Metro. FTL.

Same for Denmark. Except instead of warming up the sauna, it creates time for another Tuborg.

The Road. Still think about it a lot.