Originally posted to Twitter on 4/1/18 by @cdjarrell

1/ Book highlights from "Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them: Lessons from the Life-Changing Science of Behavioral Economics" by Belsky and Gilovich

2/ Minimize losses by diversifying: stocks (or stock mutual funds), bonds (or bond mutual funds), money market funds, even real estate (if you don’t own a house, then ideally through real estate investment trusts)

3/ Nobody wants losses however they do have a few advantages. Losses on investments that you’ve held for less than twelve months can be written off against capital gains; losses on investments held longer than twelve months can be deducted from ordinary income.

4/ Professional investors (and people in general) suffer from overconfidence. Problem with overconfidence isn't optimism; the real problem is the inability to temper optimism as a result of prior experience. Frankly, we don’t learn well enough from our mistakes.

5/ Invest-in-what-you-know approach is risky (employees have >1/3 retirement in their company stock) since your job is already tied to the fortunes of your workplace. Most recommend you keep no more than 10 percent of your 401k assets in your own company’s shares.

6/ General rule of investing (besides diversify): “100 minus your age rule”, or the percentage of 100 minus the age you're at should be in stocks (preferably index mutual funds) and any money you’ll need in next 5 years should be cash or cash equivalents like government bonds.

7/ Mutual funds are preferable to individual stocks as there's diversification built in, index funds are even better as they're even more diversified and reflect the overall market. Over periods of a decade or more, roughly 75 percent of all stock funds underperform the market.

8/ Other adv of index funds are that their expense ratios and tax bills are the lowest bc they don't require a lot of buying and selling and have much lower fee structures than mutual funds. A half a pct point over a long time will add up

9/ Stocks, remember, represent ownership interest in businesses. Stock movements in the short term are about emotions and rumors. In the long run, they’re about facts and profits.

10/ One of the best ways to evaluate individual stocks is price-to-earnings ratios, or P/Es. P/Es reflect how much of a premium other investors are willing to pay to own that stock. The higher the P/ E, the higher the premium— and, therefore, the more popular that stock is.

11/ Stocks with low P/Es might not be flashy but are often safer, even with their diminished investor enthusiasm.

12/ General individual stock advice: Put no more than 10 percent of your nest egg into stocks of individual corporations. The rest should be spread out over other kinds of investments.

END/ That's about it. Invest early and often, as the compounding effects are powerful over a long time frame, thus the advice of stocks (index funds) as primary investment. Pay off debts. Have high deductibles on insurance plans, as chances are small making of a claim.

Originally posted to Twitter by @cdjarrell on 4/1/18:

1/ Book highlights from "The Happiness Hypothesis" by @JonHaidt

Happiness come from within and without. Within: cannot be found by making the world conform to your desires. Without: Buddhism and Stoicism teach to break attachments to external things and cultivate attitude of acceptance

H=S+C+V. H(appiness) = S(etpoint) + C(onditions) + V(oluntary activities). This is the basic formula.

Everyone has a happiness setpoint—your brain’s default level of happiness—which was determined largely by your genes. Some people have a positive outlook no matter what, others have chemical imbalances that make sustained happiness hard

Conditions include facts about your life that you can’t change (race, age, disability, etc) as well as things that you can (wealth, marital status, where you live, etc). Biggest part is love, second biggest is having and pursuing the right goals

Voluntary activities are the things that you choose to do, such as meditation, exercise, learning a new skill, or taking a vacation. Martin Seligman proposes that V is largely a matter of arranging your day and your environment to increase both pleasures and gratifications

Pleasures are sensory and emotional delights that may be derived from food, sex, backrubs, etc -- they must be spaced out to maintain their potency. Gratifications are activities that engage you fully, draw on your strengths, and allow you to find a state of flow

(This is how new I am to threading, I stopped the numbering after 1. Will pick up in next tweet)

9/ Voluntary activities could also include volunteering: long-term studies found when a person increased volunteer work, all measures of happiness and well-being increased (on average) afterwards, for as long as the volunteer work was a part of the person’s life

10/ Seligman also suggests that the key to finding your own gratifications is to know your own strengths. One of the big accomplishments of positive psychology has been the development of a catalog of strengths

11/ On building character: ought to be a lifelong struggle to develop one's moral potential. As Paul said in his Letter to the Romans (5:3-4): “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

12/ On living virtuously: 6 broad virtues found in nearly all cultures. Wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. These expand to 24 character strengths in Seligman's research

13/ On reflecting inward: we are fairly accurate in our perceptions of others but it’s our self-perceptions that are distorted because we look at ourselves in a rose-colored mirror. AKA “naive realism”: Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is

14/ It is easy to spot a cheater when our eyes are looking outward, but hard when looking inward. Japanese proverb: Though you see the seven defects of others, we do not see our own ten defects. Nigerian proverb: A he-goat doesn’t realize that he smells.

15/ On knowledge: both explicit and tacit. Explicit knowledge is all the facts you know and can consciously report, is taught directly in schools. Tacit knowledge is procedural and is acquired without direct help from others, and it is related to goals that a person values

16/ Wisdom, says Sternberg, is the tacit knowledge that lets a person balance two sets of things. First, to balance their own needs and the needs of others, to see things from all sides. Second, to balance three responses to situations: adapting, shaping, and selecting

17/ This second balance is similar to the “serenity prayer”: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

18/ Simple point about adapting and happiness: live close to where you work, as people adapt to many things but traffic isn't one of them (since it's so variable and chaotic). Less commute = less stress = happier.

19/ Simple point on selecting a career: When you have occupational self-direction, work is often satisfying. Make the work challenging but have freedom to approach it how you want. When doing good matches up with doing well, a career is healthy

20/ Simple point on selecting love: find a balance of passionate love (love you fall into) and companionate love (love that grows over time). Strong marriages have strong companionate love with added passion between people firmly committed to each other

21/ On striving for goals: goals fall in 4 categories. Work/achievement, relationships/intimacy, religion/spirituality, and generativity (legacy and contribution). Focus on the latter three categories for long-term happiness

22/ Happy people have "vertical coherence" among goals where the short-term goals advance the pursuit of long-term goals. It's the journey that counts, not the destination. “Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing" (Shakespeare)

23/ On treating others well: golden rule (treat others how you wanted to be treated). "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; this, in a few words, is the entire Torah; all the rest is but an elaboration of this one, central point." (Rabbi Hillel)

24/ On reciprocity: the most important tool for getting along with people. Mimicry is a kind of social glue, a way of saying “We are one.” Humans are social creatures and reciprocity, like love, reconnects us with others.

25/ On controlling your reactions: Events in the world affect us only through our interpretations of them, so if we can control our interpretations, we can control our world. Echoed by Boethius, Buddha, Aurelius: Nothing is miserable unless you think it so

26/ On limiting your choices: Barry Schwartz calls it "paradox of choice" in that we value choice but too many choices undercuts our happiness. Don't try to be a "maximizer" and find best possible, as "satisficers" are happier with their decisions

END/ The book also dives into various topics such as evil, evolution, language, how the brain works, and many more. "The Happiness Hypothesis" is a fantastic book and I recommend reading it to understand a lot more

[Post begun in June 2016; finally published on the last day of May 2018]

Here is a list of jobs/careers I've been interested in, amongst others, chronologically over the last 18 years or so. The ones in bold I've actually held:

2000-04

Doctor 

Pharmacist

Political scientist/Politician

2005-09

Architectural Engineer

Professor

2010-14

Solar engineer

Product/Project Manager

Business Analyst

2015-?

HS Math Teacher

Volleyball Coach

In 2016 when I started an outline of what became this post I wrote:

And I'd be fine if that list ended and the question mark wasn't for 20+ years. Teaching and now coaching is really, really great overall. The job is intellectually challenging, the relationships are strong, the students are inspiring but the pay sucks. Right now that doesn't bother me much but it could in the future.

The present is the future. 

I've recently finished my third and final year (for now) in the classroom where I taught the possibly completely unique combination of ELL/Regular Algebra 2, AP/IB Calculus and 8th Grade Science. I have now become what I joked about last year to friends leaving the profession -- another young teacher leaving the classroom. Teaching was intellectually, emotionally, and physically challenging, the relationships were very strong, the students were endlessly inspiring, and the pay sucked for the work you do but was manageable without saving a lot. There's not one big reason I won't be in the classroom, just a lot of little ones. Death by (grading) paper cuts you could say.

However, I don't think my time as a teacher has ultimately ended; it's just been postponed. I still envision being in a classroom in the future, as I've always wanted to teach in college and I like teaching the older grades in high school. When and where that happens, I don't know at this time.

The 2016 version of this post continued: 

Judging by past performance that won't be the end however. Maybe in 4 years [2018 edit: 2] or so I'll do something that combines my Business Analytics and Education masters. Maybe I'll be into something completely different. Humans are bad at predicting how their future selves will feel so I'm not closing any doors.

Growing up everyone always said that I could be anything I wanted if I was bright and worked hard.  Why would you be surprised when I actually tried to be anything I wanted?  

People talk about how the Millennial generation is indecisive, that we lack loyalty, and that we switch jobs too often.  But aren't we just following the advice of those that raised us? Why would you not try to maximize career utility with whatever you want to dedicate yourself to as that changes? As long as you feel strongly about it after considerable thought and you don't hurt anybody in the process, why not?

It's comforting seeing these words in 2018, as leaving the classroom -- more importantly the students that came through that classroom -- was a very hard decision, as you've read before from countless others. And like they've said before, I'll miss the students the most, the coworkers second, the work towards the mission third, and the grind behind the work towards the mission last. Everybody should be incentivized to teach some sort of class (education/career/sport/etc.) in their early careers, as then everybody will be appreciative of all the work that goes on behind the scenes to create an engaged, successful, and welcoming classroom. I know I now am.

I always make the argument that getting more people into classrooms, even for short periods of time (2-3 years, ideally it's 5+), is a huge net positive. While they and the training invested in them may leave, many go into other areas related to supporting or improving education and, even if not, you have lifelong experienced education advocates. Maybe then we'd finally vote for people that would pay all teachers more, without the 20 years of in-district experience you need to work up to it.

Anyways, I want to be one of those that still impacts the students but maybe I could create that impact outside of the classroom, in a way that could leverage technology to reach many more students. I think there's currently -- and always been -- a market inefficiency in the college admissions process, particularly with low income and first generation students. I'd like to work on closing that information disparity gap and making a college degree more accessible to all.

I also feel that it's possible to create an impact at scale, which could maximize my expected Personal Impact Utility (PIU). 

Expected PIU = (% chance of creating impact) x (personal impact on scale 0-1) x (# of students impacted)

Helping to make the process of getting a college degree much more accessible at a mass scale has a much lower chance of succeeding as being in the classroom day in and day out and it definitely doesn't have as high of a personal impact rating; however the third variable is potentially so many times greater than the 500 students and players I've had that it becomes a worthwhile multiplier overall.

For now, I'll end with how I originally ended that post three years ago:

Something I try to tell my students whenever the conversation arises is that they don't have to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives when they're a teenager. Life changes and you too will change so be as versatile as you can. Get that STEM degree but take classes in the humanities. Get that psych degree but know how to look at statistics and technical information. Don't pigeonhole your future self because you might not know how he or she will feel.

Be whatever you want to be. Then be all that you can be.

Disclosure:  I worked at SolarCity from July 2010 until December 2014 and still hold and am long $SCTY (or $TSLA in the future)

Let me start by saying as a $SCTY shareholder I'm not thrilled about the price I'm getting ($25 or so) but ultimately I think it will be better for the world in the long run and I hope the Tesla-SolarCity merger goes through.  I also don't think I could give as good of a bullish case on the merger as Jigar Shah just did.

It is the belief of most of the major decision makers involved that these ideas could be mutually beneficial when packaged together.  That combined with (IMO) the deep discount SCTY can be bought for right now, the decision was better to make sooner rather than later.  Elon has said that it's easier to create a single product and that's true, but David Crane's analysis that SC needs a reboot and couldn't survive this reboot in the public market is probably also true.  

So let's look at an optimist's view on the combined final product:

I think I've read that SolarCity will take on the Tesla name, I only assume as the Tesla Energy (TE) brand.  There should immediately be sales installations at Tesla stores in the states SC currently operates in, hopefully accompanied by an initial boost in leases/loans/sales in those areas as this is business as usual for SC/TE once the sale is made.  

TE needs to stop with the pushy door to door tactics that made the leases popular and instead rely on referrals and word of mouth sales.  Think of how many ads you saw Tesla run for their Model 3 launch that saw 400,000+ pre-orders (mine included)... oh wait, you didn't.  We've already seen evidence that solar is contagious and SC's referral business has been a success.  An emphasis on distributing the work needed to acquiring new customers to others (thoughts on that shared here) should drastically reduce the cost of marketing and sales overhead, a painful but necessary step to rein in costs.

SC as a company created a TON of jobs but some jobs inevitably become unnecessary when the organization becomes more efficient.  SC's operations department has become a machine when they're stocked full of scheduled jobs but during seasonal down times they become another unnecessary cost.  Their operations department is a huge success story in the field of construction management, the efficient gains they've made are remarkable but are getting harder to come by.  

What I'd like to see TE do is the same thing they did with their sales & marketing streamlining and distribute the work of their operations department.  You decentralize your installation work.  You'd be bolstering the independent contractor installer network by distributing not only your workers but also your knowledge by creating an industry-wide standard of installation excellence.  This will be hard for Elon and SC management to agree to as they like to have their finger on the quality from top to bottom and it may seem like you're losing that high standard of installation quality.  However it is simply being transferred via your industry-leading training and certification program to locally-owned and operated installation companies.  

Publicly it would look like TE is getting rid of A LOT of SC construction jobs and officially they are but overall those jobs are still being filled by the independent installers that are installing up to your standard (and even inspection) but are locally-owned and operated.  So you're actually creating a lot of small business owners, something that is always well-received.

Behind the scenes, I'd expect the Tesla and SC HR departments to see which roles are now duplicated, which are necessary independently, and which are mutually beneficial.  Then you decrease the positions that are duplicated and increase the mutually beneficial ones.  I think these are the main synergies Elon and Co. talked about initially.  I expect their battery and solar panel gigafactories to learn from each other and both benefit as well.

By distributing a lot of SC's work (both in creating the sale and installing the solar panels) they can streamline their costs and become more profitable.  Elon's always been a huge proponent of economies of scale and I think you can still have this with a distributed sales and installation force by controlling the standards instead of the workforce.  You'd lose a couple process efficiency points in the process but you gain that and more by not having to control everything.

I believe such changes can be beneficial to a combined company and I'm hopeful for the Tesla and SolarCity merger to finally go through, as it seems like it has been a long time coming.

Like I've mentioned previously, ultimately I'm in KC because this was the recommendation of the algorithm Teach For America uses to determine placements.  That much is out of my hands.  But how KC was rated in my top 5 placement preferences was a conscious decision.  This is that story, 4chan style for simplicity.

>Be me

>March 2015

>Looking for jobs while finishing up my Master's

>Denver hasn't provided any good hits

>My other top 2 choices Austin and Raleigh haven't provided any good hits

>Need to decide where else I'd look for jobs

>Read U.S. News Best Places to Live 2015 article on web

>See how they ranked them based off stats

>Decide to make my own personalized rankings

>Copy down the stats for 25 cities I wouldn't be opposed to

>Stats like median income, high tech job %, and job growth go into the Job category

>Because I want to find somewhere with good jobs

>Stats like cost of living and median home price go into the Cost category

>Because I want to find somewhere that isn't too expensive

>Stats like % that graduated high school, college, and graduate programs go into the Education category

>Because I don't want to be surrounded by too many idiots

>Rank each category from most desirable to least and award more points to higher rankings

>Remove any cities that have too many unreasonably hot or cold days

>Remove any cities that are not on this list of best places to find love

>Rank cities now based on a (40% Job) + (40% Cost) + (20% Education) weighted point average

>Kansas City comes in 3rd behind Raleigh and Austin and above other cities I was intrigued by like Dallas, Charlotte, Nashville, etc.

>Go "huh, KC?" and just throw it in my top 5 placement preferences

>End up in KC

Most people think of KC as a "flyover city" that you would literally fly over and not even think about.  And in some ways, it is:  it's the closest city to the geographical center of the continental U.S. (aka it's in the middle of the map) and there's nothing distinguishable about its landscape.  But I've grown to love KC and I'm happy to live here as it has an up and coming vibe, has a great sense of community, and because the people are amazing.

The city data without my personalizations can be found here if you're interested