Thinking

I Haven’t Solved the Financial Stress, But I Have Reduced It!

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Financial hardship occurs when expenses exceed income. Remember, expenses exceed income.

If your monthly expenses are 20 units and your income is 15 units, you’ll face financial hardship. That’s because you’re 5 units short. If you stress out every month trying to make up for that 5-unit shortfall…

From time to time, I went through things like this, too. Every now and then, I looked for a solution. This time, instead of trying to solve it, I thought of reducing the stress load. Reducing the stress load!

I found the solution while thinking about the “phantom traffic jam” concept.

Let’s assume my monthly expenses are 20 units and my income is 15 units.

If we’d had an additional 20 units in our pocket, we’d have had 20 + 15 = 35 units that month. If I paid 20 of them, I’d have 15 units left in my pocket.

The following month, we had 15 units of income left over from the previous month. We also earned 15 units this month. Right now, we have 30 units in our pocket. But we don’t have a 5-unit shortfall.

15 + 15 = 30

30 – 20 = 10

We haven’t experienced any financial stress for two months.

The following month (that is, the third month), we had 10 units left over from the previous month.

15 + 10 = 25

25 – 20 = 5

We didn’t experience any financial stress in the third month either.

In the fourth month, we repeated the same process with the remaining amount from the third month.

15 + 5 = 20

We no longer have any extra money left. However, we didn’t experience any financial stress for four months. But life is full of entropy. So let’s calculate based on three months instead of four. Let’s count the additional month as an expense for emergencies.

If you generate side income equivalent to one month’s expenses over three months, you’ll face financial hardship once every three months instead of every month. The advantage of this is that instead of dealing with sales stress every month, you spread the stress of generating side income over three months.

What I’m really focusing on here isn’t the formula itself. It’s how I approach the formula.

That’s the solution I’ve developed. What do you think? Don’t hesitate to tell me.

AI Taking Our Jobs Away Might Be a Good Thing

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If we look at the history of human progress, when did the great leaps happen?

  1. A rupture occurred in the Ancient Greek world, and science was born.
  2. With the Age of Exploration, science accelerated once again.

In the first case, as wars in Ancient Greece became stagnant, a certain segment of society found itself with nothing to do, which pushed them purely into thinking. This gave birth to philosophy, and from there, to science.

In the second case, the abundance brought about by geographic discoveries led people to think beyond basic needs once again, which in turn drove a leap forward in science, ultimately progressing to the point of extending human lifespan.

There are likely many other examples like these.

When people can’t find something to occupy themselves with, it pushes them toward something else. And from that, innovation emerges. Innovations, in turn, can become one of the forces that drive human civilization forward.

Looking at it from this perspective… AI taking away most jobs from us might actually be a good thing for humanity at the level of civilization.

It might be difficult, even bad, on an individual level, but at the scale of civilization, it might be a facilitator, and therefore good.

Leaving Something for My Children

Ugur KILCI Blog
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Leaving something behind for my children. This has been on my mind in recent years. I’m not married and I don’t have children. 🙂 But I would like to have them, and when I pass away one day, I may not even be able to leave my passwords to my children.

So, after a sudden heart attack, no one will know the passwords to my accounts. Literally, they won’t have any memories of me. Because in the past, there were physical family diaries. Now everything is digital, and if they can’t unlock the phone, they won’t be able to access any memories!

That’s why the idea of keeping a physical diary makes sense to me. But I don’t have the discipline to keep a diary. Writing feels like torture to me. Ahem! Writing with a pen feels like torture to me.

On the other hand, typing is enjoyable. In fact, I’m writing three articles right now, including this one. My nights are very productive.

Still, I can’t help but wonder. When I go to the spirit world one day, what will remain of me in this world? What did I give to this world? Will my memories live on?

A few years ago, a follower of mine created a website. And that site was successful. Many people used it—over two million people. Would you believe it’s still being used? And it’s still making money. Right now, that money goes to charities because…

My follower developed a brain tumor and passed away. Everything happened so fast. And when that happened, I met his brother. At first, I thought he was joking and trying to scam me. But he wasn’t.

He left me a will. Before he died, he said, “If anything happens to me, send my website to Ugur KILCI. He’ll take care of it”i I took care of it. Finding the passwords was difficult. I remember we couldn’t even find his social media passwords.

Who did he write to? What were his dreams? We’ll never know. The digital world is beautiful, but at that moment, I realized that there needs to be something physical too.

That’s why it comes to mind from time to time. To do something I can leave to my children. Or to somehow easily make the digital physical. I’m not sure. Maybe they’re empty thoughts. But I still think about it. I’ll keep thinking about it.