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Recent content by zrail

  1. Z

    how to handle your financial situation

    Exactly. What's the better use of time, particularly for someone who has just started trying to understand their own finances: reading and understanding 73,954 pages of tax code, or just understanding the basics and punting on the rest for now? Tax is an expense to be optimized, along with all...
  2. Z

    Business Model Canvas

    Interesting, thanks. I wouldn't worry about posting this particular thing, it has a CC-SA license (look at the bottom of the page).
  3. Z

    how to handle your financial situation

    Ah, you haven't read the book. Well, to give you a preview: MJ's message is to live below your means while simultaneously expanding your means. He never says to "fake it til you make it" with regards to finances, unless I missed that part. He also explicitly states to set aside 40% of income for...
  4. Z

    how to handle your financial situation

    To be extra-pedantic, this is the Sidewalk subforum, where we discuss Sidewalk things. I'm not sure what you're saying with your rules. How do I get someone else to pay my expenses, and how do I control how much tax I owe? Because ultimately everybody owes income tax, it's just a matter of...
  5. Z

    how to handle your financial situation

    Hedonistic adaptation is absolutely a real thing, and for many people, when their income goes up their spending goes up. Living within or below their means doesn't come naturally to everyone. Many people don't have a good intuitive sense of how much money they have available, or how much they...
  6. Z

    Fiction (techno-thriller) recommendation ...

    OFF-TOPIC 
    If you like technothrillers involving AI, you can't go wrong with The Turing Option by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky (one of the pioneers of strong AI research). I haven't read it in a few years, but I don't remember any extremely dated concepts.
  7. Z

    Exercise: What's Holding You Back?

    MINDSET 
    The fear is running out of money, and it's guided my business decisions since I started two years ago. Thus, I have three months of runway in the business and another six in our personal accounts. I think it's going to be awhile before I stop worrying about it, no matter what. "Action" in my...
  8. Z

    how to handle your financial situation

    For what it's worth, this is exactly what YNAB is all about, and what the software helps you do. Every little green soldier that comes in the door gets a job, even if that job is "hang out for a month while I decide what you should do."
  9. Z

    how to handle your financial situation

    I was like you for awhile, just out of college. I got this high paying software development job, bought a new car, rented a fancy apartment, flew home five times that first year after moving to the other side of the country... and then bounced a rent check AND a student loan payment. That event...
  10. Z

    Pay What You Want Performance Hosting For Entrepreneurs - Idea Feedback Request

    IDEA 
    I think the consensus so far is that the only way to know is to try, and it sounds like a cheap experiment. If I were in your shoes I think I would set an upper bound on it. For example, if you're spending $X per month 3-6 months in (including the cost of your support time) and not making it up...
  11. Z

    Pay What You Want Performance Hosting For Entrepreneurs - Idea Feedback Request

    IDEA 
    So, if you think the money is actually going to be in custom services, why not just offer the custom services without the loss leader? It sounds like you've already got a customer base, why not sell custom consulting into that audience?
  12. Z

    Pay What You Want Performance Hosting For Entrepreneurs - Idea Feedback Request

    IDEA 
    Based on the numbers you posted before your edit, I would want more in reserve, at least enough to keep the lights on for more than two months. Also, I think you're underestimating how much support for a free service costs. In my experience, the people who don't pay anything need the most...
  13. Z

    Pay What You Want Performance Hosting For Entrepreneurs - Idea Feedback Request

    IDEA 
    Questions that come to mind immediately: What's your cost structure? How will you account for the freeloaders who eventually are actually using their allotment but haven't chosen to pay anything for it? How much do you think people will pay for this service? Your landing page seems to imply...
  14. Z

    Exercise: What's Holding You Back?

    MINDSET 
    Did the exercise. Boiling it down to what my beliefs have cost us in terms of dollars really helped. And yeah, it boils down to a particular fear, but the consequences of that fear actually happening are so minor that I don't really know why I'm so worried about it.
  15. Z

    Hi there! From an author and software developer

    INTRO 
    Thanks for the warm welcome, folks!
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