Archive of posts from May 2024


  • May 25, 2024

    Wisdom From Farm Owners

    After having decided not to buy a managed farm and also not to buy farm as a group, we finally settled on what we want. Next we thought it would be a good idea to talk to a few owners of farms to get an idea of what we are going to deal with once we own a farm. We know a couple of folks who are unschoolers and also own a farm. We asked them if we could visit their farm and gain some wisdom. Both families graciously agreed and we visited their farms on two separate occasions and spent a lot of time understanding their philosophy, why they were doing farming, what they learned and what difficulties they faced and how they overcame them. We learned a ton, but in this post I summarize some of our learnings.

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  • May 18, 2024

    Don't Be Fully Invested

    While I encourage everyone to invest as much as possible, I’d also like to advice you to not be fully invested. I know this sounds a bit contradictory, but it actually makes sense if you analyze it. Some of us are excellent savers and investors to that point that any amount that we can save, we immediately think of investing. This is as much of a problem as people having trouble controlling their spending. If you optimize your investments to the point that you no longer have any buffer or flexibility left for unexpected expenses, you are in trouble. I have seen this happen to a couple of friends in the recent past and thought I’d pass on the advice so you can avoid similar mistakes.

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  • May 11, 2024

    Changes To Solar Controller Setup

    A few days ago, we got the exterior of our house painted. I had to move a lot of things out of the way for the painters so they can paint in every nook and corner. During that time I had to disconnect my solar controller electronics setup. What that means is that the solar charge controller takes over the responsibility of deciding when to charge my battery and when to disconnect the grid and let the load run from the battery + solar etc. Unfortunately the way it handles switching between battery, solar and grid is not as optimal as I’d like. Don’t get me wrong, it does a good job, but I always want something better which is why I built my own electronics and software intelligence to go with it to optimize the hell out of the solar panel output.

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  • May 7, 2024

    Should You Prepay Loan Or Invest?

    When you have some savings you might wonder whether to invest the savings or prepay your loan. I have always suggested a simple thumb rule, which is that if you anticipate your investments to give you better returns than the loan interest rate then invest, otherwise prepay your loan instead. Generally, for almost all kinds of loans the return on investment is usually lower than the loan interest. One exception is home loan which has a much lower effective interest rate because you get tax benefits. For most other loans it is better to prepay. That is a very simplistic rule, but does it really work? Let’s find out.

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