2023 intentions

[liv]

I don't really do new year resolutions, partly because the behavioural change evidence is against them, partly because I don't really consider January 1^st to be the new year. (For people who are complaining that it's hypocritical to celebrate new year, which is Pagan, if you reject celebrating Christmas, which is Christian, yes, you are in fact correct: I don't celebrate Christmas and I also don't celebrate the Gregorian New Year. But I don't have a problem with other people celebrating these things or giving appropriate seasonal greetings or living with a consensus calendar which happens to have months named after Pagan gods.)

However, somewhat before the end of this year I am hoping to be living a completely different life from now. (No, not pregnant. Different big life change.)

This means that on a fairly short timescale, I need to:

• Learn to drive
• Learn modern Hebrew
• Get my finances in order
• A certain amount of sorting out my house
• Sort out my social media presence

Driving I really really don't want to do this; a lot of my identity is bound up with being a non-driver and the more I learn about it the more I think that private cars are extremely bad for the local as well as the global environment. Also we have a problem that the pandemic has led to a massive backlog of people needing driving lessons, including all the kids who turned 18 in 2020, 2021 or most of 2022. Several friends have had bad experiences such as being fired by their instructor for taking longer than average to reach the required standard, all the way up to being outright robbed by an instructor who took money for a whole course of lessons up front, never arranged any lessons and eventually vanished. So my biggest problem is not the mechanics of how to drive – that's what I need an instructor for – but making myself go through a lot of bureaucracy and faff for something that I don't want to do anyway.

Hebrew I kiiiiinda don't want to learn modern Hebrew either. I mean I enjoy and am reasonably good at languages. And I have decent classical Hebrew which helps a lot, I am certainly not starting from scratch. But Israeli Hebrew is so far down my list of languages that I'm excited about, it's hard to motivate myself to do the work, even though I mostly know what needs to be done and how to find resources.

The standard required is 'ulpan gimmel' which translates to 'level 3'; I think this is somewhere between a good GCSE and the first module or so of A Level. Last time I tested I easily passed bet (level 2) but was a little below gimmel. Which means I don't have a big gap to bridge; the thing that's largely beyond me at the moment is writing, because funnily enough I don't have much occasion to write Hebrew prose. The test I failed involved writing an argumentative essay; I mostly just didn't have the vocabulary to express my opinions about a random unseen topic, and also somewhat lack the general vocabulary for formal-ish persuasive writing, though the second is easy enough to remedy.

Finances This is the very definition of a problem of privilege, but I haven't really got used to having more than enough income for my needs, which means I haven't been saving / investing properly, just simply not spending all my salary. But I have also forgotten the skills of living on a tight budget, and honestly with food and energy inflation and housing costs I think the sort of thing I used to do as an underpaid junior academic just isn't workable any more. So I need to do... something... with my savings that doesn't involve just eating the capital for the next N years while I change my life around. Ideally turn the random pile of money into something shaped somewhat like retirement income. Not that I completely believe in retirement with climate / infectious disease disasters raging all around us, but probably it's still better to make some kind of plan than just assume I won't live that long.

Also I need to make a will. I tried to do this years ago and got stalled for stupid reasons, and I am really bad at getting restarted on projects that have run into giant unexpected obstacles.

House This is mostly just, we've been living here for 8 years and haven't really got round to (or, mercifully, needed) any kind of major update work. Again, there is a pandemic-related backlog and labour shortage, (this one is amplified by Brexit as many people working in the trades were European immigrants who have fucked off back home as requested) so even if I decide what I want to do I am overwhelmed by trying to find anyone to employ. Nothing is imminently failing as far as I can tell but I suspect the roof, boiler and bathroom probably need some attention to stave off failing catastrophically. We probably need to upgrade our storage arrangement (possibly to include every geek's dream of more bookshelves), or else declutter significantly, or some combination of both. I would quite like, both for financial reasons and for environmental ones, to improve our energy efficiency situation. The house isn't bad at all but it's gas-dependent, and even aside from that could be better.

Social media New!Life is going to be much more public-facing than current life. And the social media landscape isn't what it was in the early 2000s however much I might be nostalgic for the golden age of blogging and LiveJournal. I do not even slightly want to monetize my social media, but I do want a combination of reach and findability on the one hand, and privacy on the other. This may be difficult to achieve since the aims kind of contradict each other, and I think the answer is probably to have completely separate accounts for public facing professional presence versus chatting to my friends somewhere I won't be discovered by hostiles. Though of course there's always a risk of algorithms or motivated people making unwanted connections. (Google basically broke my previous professional identity / personal presence distinction 20 years ago, and I'm still sore about it.)

Any advice on any of these welcome, especially if it's UK-specific when that matters. And especially if you can help me with getting past those mostly psychological blocks preventing me even getting started. I hope that writing down some goals will help me feel accountable for actually making progress. Sorry for boring post.

Comments

[ambyr]

If having an accountability buddy is a technique that’s useful to you, I too stalled out on a will eight years ago and need to resume the process.

[rmc28]

Oh hey I also need to get my will (& spouse's) updated. In our case I'm pretty clear on what needs to happen, I "just" need to book time with a solicitor to make it legally so.

[princessofgeeks]

Wishing you all the best!

The only advice I would have is: break big tasks down into tiny ones. Try to avoid perfectionism and all-or-nothing thinking. "Good enough" is often good enough! And small victories are actually great victories!

[sfred]

Good luck with all the things!

[blue_mai]

Excellent and non-boring post - I (perhaps surprisingly) am with you on many of these points:
- I don't want to learn to drive either, unlike you I have no immediate motivation but I feel it's one of those "eventually I'll have to" things.
- Finances also - although I decided to open a Triodos savings account last year, it's not doing much but I feel there probably doing something better with it than eg Barclays. Also I've been meaning to *start* doing a will for a few years, I haven't even begun.
- House - 9 years for me and all similar. Got a plumber in last week so now have a functioning thermostat for the first time in years! But haven't really got anywhere beyond thinking and headache when it comes to insulation etc.

Good luck and sympathies. Power to you to get that list done!

[liv]

Thank you for the solidarity! I imagined you might be naturally good at house maintenance stuff but of course that's not how it works. I am quite reassured to know that I'm not the only one who's fallen a bit behind on this type of long-range adulting.

[rmc28]

some actual advice:

Decluttering will probably be useful no matter what you decide to do about storage - I have found the unclutter community helpful and the current most-recent post is from me, linking to a collection of different approaches to decluttering/household management, from which I found one that I think will work well for me (testing so far suggests yes).

In mid-December I was saying to my counsellor that I felt overwhelmed by things I should be doing, and frustrated I didn't seem to be actually doing any of it, and trying to be self-compassionate about it, but still actually very frustrated because the work had to be done. Naming the problem seems to have worked its magic, in that I spent a bunch of time between then and now thinking seriously about how much time I actually have, what I want to do with it, what my priorities are, and setting up structures and scaffolding to make it easier for me to get my priorities done. I can go into more detail about that (probably not here, maybe a locked post you can read) if you'd find that helpful.

I don't think I can help on finances or social media at all, sorry. I am a driver and can be an experienced driver buddy once you're confident enough to drive a bit but haven't yet got your licence. I might even come up with useful errands you could help me run with a car to give you driving practice. I'm also up for sympathetic venting and conversation about driving and not wanting to.

I do have a bunch of things that need sorting out in my house. I have a Which? approved local contractor list, and among the things I want to get on with (in my revamped weekly schedule and steady approach to getting things done) is systematically applying the list of contractors and the list of tasks to one another. So maybe if I find good people I can also refer you to them.

Very specifically for house things: we joined the SolarTogether group-purchase scheme run by Cambridgeshire last year, and I can vouch for it having been very low organisational effort for me (and I think reasonable value-for-money) to get solar panels installed, so I guess keep an eye out for them running it again this year.

[liv]

Thank you so much, this is super-extra helpful. You are right that even if I only declutter and don't do the next step, that will be a positive and will effectively reclaim storage space. Part of it is that our stuff situation isn't unbearable, largely because we have a decent amount of space and we don't have kids or extremely stressful jobs, so we're mostly on top of the essentials. In consequence it's easy enough to go, ok, we can just live with this, or, fine, we should sort out X storage dump, but actually the day-to-day cleaning is more urgent. But we have just a bit too much in the way of books we're probably never rereading, clothes we don't wear much, old electronics that might be useful one day, ornaments that we like but don't love, that sort of thing. Very little that's obviously just junk, which means that the barrier is mainly decision-making and getting rid of things that definitely do have positive value, just in theory having more space for more valued things would be better.

Your December paragraph is really insightful, though. I have a lot of shoulds and a bit of overwhelm and frustration, and lots of these tasks are difficult to even get started. So I find the idea of starting b making structures and systems really appealing.

Combining driving practice with useful-to-you errands sounds like a genius idea, thank you, I might well take you up on that once I get to that point. Part of the problem is the initial steps are daunting, and part is that I have slightly contradictory aims: I need to drive as many short journeys as possible to get the practice in to be confident, but I also want to start habits where I minimize how much I rely on the car especially for short journeys. However an actual errand with a purpose that needs a car neatly cuts that Gordian knot.

I would definitely welcome recommendations of contractors. My general problem thus far has been that bods are either good or available. And also that if I have no information and just look through some kind of web directory I don't have the first idea where to start.

Group purchase for solar panels sounds brilliant, I didn't even know that was a thing, so thank you! I think the roof needs work though, and I think I probably need to do that first. Or at least get it inspected by an expert.

[watersword]

I too need to learn to drive this year and I am dreading the process and don't actually want to acquire the skill but my life really would be easier if it were a thing I could do occasionally. Ugh.

[liv]

Glad it's not just me! I was starting to believe the world is divided into people who are happy confident drivers and people who are perfectly capable of a lifestyle that never needs a car.

[lomedet]

Hi! I have a semi-public social media presence that is separate enough from my fannish/pseudonomous one that a professional internet privacy person couldn't find a connection when they did an internet security check for my new job last year. And the answer is, yes, completely separate accounts (and often browsers). Also, keeping the really spicy professional-adjacent stuff to the groupchat as opposed to public posts.
Happy to talk any of this through if it would be helpful

signed,
So, So Overdue on Writing a Will

[liv]

Thank you so much for offering! I have a feeling your experience might be directly relevant to me, so I might well have some questions. It's impressive you were able to firewall your identities enough to survive that kind of pen test, and knowing that you've succeeded there gives me hope.

[melannen]

On driving: I've had this discussion with people several times (and had it used on me when I came of age and didn't want to learn) : being liscenced to drive doesn't mean you rely on cars, or believe we should rely on cars, any more than knowing how to read music means you think everyone should own a piano, or knowing how to row a boat means you think our society should be rowboat-based, or being CPR certified means you're planning to do CPR every day the rest of your life.

Driving is a useful skill, and even if you make sure to always live in places where it's not needed, and you never own a car, it's likely you will find situations where being able to drive is important. If it helps, put it in terms of "This is emergency prep, if there's an evacuation situation or a medical emergency, I can volunteer to help drive now" or something like that. (And then put your foot down on *owning* one for as long as you can.)

As for actually learning - I don't know your local laws in detail, but do you know any car-owners who would be willing to teach you the basics, informally? If the law doesn't allow it on private roads you can usually ask to borrow an empty parking lot or someone's field. The private driving schools here are so notoriously bad that nearly everyone learns the basics from a friend or relative and only uses the "professionals" to get a rubber stamp.

Finances: I am in your same boat but recently finally actually opened a retirement account. Unless you want to make a hobby of it, it's really not scary, beyond all the paperwork of just setting it up - the advice as far as I can tell always summarizes to dump as much as you can, as soon as you can, in conservatively-managed long-term mutual funds from someone with a long history of reliability. Unless you're working with like, eight figures (in which case, pay someone to manage it for you) that works on average as well as anything else, and if it ever stops working the whole system is so fucked that where you specifically invested won't matter.

[shewhostaples]

It's worth noting that over here simply having a licence isn't enough to allow you to drive in the event of an emergency: you also need to be insured to drive the vehicle in question. (Often this is as straightforward as phoning the insurance company, but it's one more thing to consider.)

[lannamichaels]

If you want to swallow a dictionary, I did Memrise for a couple years. It was helpful. But it's just dictionary words, it's not sentences, but the dictionary bit was the thing I wanted anyway.

My biggest problem with modern Hebrew is all the English words. I find the podcast Streetwise Hebrew pretty good. They also post their word lists on the internet, so you don't need to listen if you don't want. I've been slowly scraping their word lists and putting it into Excel for reference.


EDIT: Just opened Memrise for the first time in a while, found out there's now unskippable ads with sound in the middle of review sessions. I no longer recommend it.

[liv]

I'm a little frustrated with Memrise because, ewwww, change. In particular they took away the option to create your own "mems" and use other peoples', and for me that was the main advantage of Memrise over other flashcard apps. But you're right, part of what I need to do is create my own resources and then use them to drill vocabulary, and a little gamification here and there can't hurt.

I have subscribed to Streetwise Hebrew; he's very good, and I should get back into the habit of listening, especially the subscriber-only Hebrew language posts.

[kass]

Wow do I hear you on social media difficulties.

Also, good luck with all of these changes. This sounds big but hopefully ultimately exciting.

*kicks DW petulantly*

[liv]

I was absolutely sure you were in the filter with the locked-as-yet for reasons announcement. You should be able to see the context if you navigate back to 'previous entry' from here? Big and exciting is about where I'm at currently.

[ewx]

If you do (or are willing to try) Reddit then https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/ is worth a look on the finances question, starting with their Wiki https://ukpersonal.finance/.

They can sometimes be a trifle gung-ho on 'invest rather than pay down low-interest debt' for my taste, so consider risks and your own situation rather then uncritically following advice.

[liv]

Thank you, that is a really helpful pointer. And Reddit likely appeals to people who are a bit geeky rather than deep into finance wonkery, which is a good starting place.

I, uh, don't actually carry any debt. Which obviously puts me in a very good starting place for saving and investing, but it doesn't matter too much what their attitude is to paying down.

[cosmolinguist]

I am very new to sorting out my finances too and have a nice person doing it (it's someone I know personally and she's a trainee financial advisor). Happy to pass along details or just offer sympathy at this weird time of suddenly thinking about new longer-term things.

Also sympathy about how difficult it is to get a tradie. We've suffered from that a lot in the last year or so.

Also I'm pretty good at admin stuff so if I can help from a distance, by listening or checking up on you or offering sympathy in any amount, I'm happy to do that.

[liv]

Oh wow, you found someone you know who is a trainee financial advisor, that's so cool! I guess you have suddenly acquired a pile of money and a decent job, so I'm glad you're getting some support with that transition. I'm sort of moving in the opposite direction, most of my wealth is house and I am about to take a big cut in salary, but even so.

Thank you for offering help with admin! I really like sympathy / accountability, so I might yet ask for a bit of support in that direction.

[anais_pf]

Good luck with all of that! It sounds exciting, whatever the change is going to be!

As someone else commented, breaking the big tasks down into little bite-sized tasks should help. Anyone can do 15 minutes worth of something unpleasant, right?

[slashmarks]

For language learning, if you're mostly okay on grammar, and vocabulary and prose writing are your main problems, setting aside reading time with a dictionary handy may be your best bet. (Possibly with limited vocabulary drilling if that's not enough for new words to stick.) I have no idea what the Modern Hebrew internet situation is like, but I might go for something like alternating days of an hour reading books vs. an hour reading blogs/news/snooping on internet forums as available, with occasional podcasts or video news to make sure you can follow audio at about the same complication level, and practicing producing prose with a journal or your own blog. There are language learning sites where you can blog in a second language without fear of judgment and solicit corrections, although you could probably also just use dreamwidth. If you pick topics you're interested in or books you genuinely want to read, that should help with a lack of of motivation for the language itself.

(From a linguistics background people pick up language much better if they're actually communicating or receiving information with it anyway - a big problem of second language teaching is figuring out how to replicate that experience in language classrooms.)

ETA: Depending on your level, this may feel really frustrating and slow at first, I should add, but you *will* improve if you're patient. That's why I suggest setting a goal to spend a certain amount of time doing it, not get through x pages per day - you have more direct control over the time you spend and as you get better and need more of a challenge you'll get through more pages in that much time anyway.

[liv]

Yay language learning advice from someone who actually knows this stuff, thank you so much. I agree, I need both vocabulary drilling and and actually absorbing information from Hebrew language materials. Actively looking up words I don't know rather than guessing them from context is sure to be helpful. I have the typical problem of people who learn classical languages that my receptive Hebrew is way way way better than my productive Hebrew, and the only way to improve this is practice.

[mair_in_grenderich]

I learnt to drive in a ten-day intensive course in Kings Lynn. I deliberately picked somewhere away from home where I would be in a B&B and just concentrate on driving (having done the theory test some time before). It worked out well for me; got the job done. I don't know how the pandemic has affected this option. The instructor was excellent, but it was ten years ago... (I think this might be him now: https://www.hensondrivingschool.com/ )

[liv]

Thank you, I might have to resort to an intensive course though I don't really have that many consecutive days to spare, so I'd been hoping to do it the slower way. And having a specific recommendation at least gives me a place to start. Kings Lynn is far enough away that I'd be out of my normal life, but near enough to be reasonably convenient to get to without a car. I also love your icon, BTW!

[lovingboth]

For the driving side, you may want to specify that you're only interested in driving an automatic.

That's easier (hence cheaper) and probably all you will ever need: looking at electric / hybrid vehicles, I think all but the most specialist are automatics.

[liv]

That's an interesting thought. I had assumed I'd need to learn manual because most of my immediate family have old cars with manual gears, but there might be something to be said for simplifying the learning process. I am also seriously considering buying an electric or hybrid car with the capital I currently have so that the ongoing running costs when I have no income are cheaper.

[hatam_soferet]

One thing about the "good or available" thing with tradies is that you don't have urgent problems now, so you can get in line. Getting officially In Line moves you forward.

When we finish buying New House, we will likely have a few of the same things to Do, and I will be very happy to sweep you along with those.

Driving: have you got a provisional license and a theory test slot yet? If not, would you like to come over tmw evening and we'll all three of us have a signing-up-at-the-DVLA-party?

[shewhostaples]

I also need to make a will!

[vyvyanx]

I've no idea what your overarching goal is with all this, but I hope it goes well! I decided to change virtually every aspect of my life in 2007, and although it seemed daunting, I'm enormously glad I went through with it.

I was more or less compelled to learn to drive when I turned 17, by my father, who was (and still is) intensely into cars. I started out with a local instructor, but got on very badly with him and packed it in after half a dozen lessons. I failed my first test, and then was taught much more successfully by my father, and passed my second test shortly afterwards. (I haven't driven for more than two decades now, though, for various reasons, of which the best one is that my eyesight isn't up to it any more!) Is there maybe a friend or relative who could teach you to drive, thereby avoiding the risk of dodgy instructors?

[nameandnature]

Finances: partner J and I did the Rebel Finance School videos. I initially thought anyone offering advice for free is selling something, but unless they're lying about being not sponsored by Vanguard investments, they seem legit. To my mind they should qualify "the market goes up in the long term" with be observation J made from the further reading she's done, namely that there have been periods where the market change over a decade, say, wouldn't have enabled them to do what they did (they're financially independent and are basically telling people to do it how they did it).

Their advice is summarised as:

Pay off expensive debt, put enough money in an accessible high interest savings account or similar (mine's in Premium Bonds) to tide you over for "long enough" if you lost your job or had another emergency. Then put everything else in index funds, including transferring existing pensions over if they're not final salary ones and have high management fees (as mine did when compared to unmanaged funds), as the effect of those fees compounds over time. Usually employers only pay into one scheme so your choice of funds there is somewhat limited if you get contribution matching as an employee benefit, so you're trading off free money from your employer against a worse management fee. But anyone my age who's had a few jobs probably has old ones floating around earning fees for the fund managers, so I transferred those.

You can hold funds through a variety of "wrappers", such as a stocks and shares ISA or a pension, which are more tax efficient but limit how much you can put in or take out and when, but a key thing for me was the realisation that it's potentially just the same fund held in a different wrapper.

Apologies if this is basic stuff to you, previously I was at the stage of "I should pay into a pension" so I was doing that via whatever employer I had at the time and keeping the rest in the highest interest savings account I could find. I hadn't really worked out what the pension was doing with it other than vaguely knowing they were investing it in various shares and bonds. Interest rates have been low for such a long time that I really should have done something else with it.

[kht]

Re driving, as others have said being able to drive doesn't mean you have to own a car (I don't), and owning a car doesn't mean you have to drive when there are feasible alternatives (I didn't). Car clubs and car sharing apps (e.g. https://www.hiyacar.co.uk/) are becoming more of a thing now. And if you do buy a car you don't have to continue owning a car for ever and ever.

Re finances, putting more into a pension is probably a good idea assuming you're confident you won't need it before the age of 55. Your pension allowance (the max amount you can put in a pension before paying tax) is 40k and resets each tax year, so if you have more than that it's worth sorting out before April. I have opinions re ethical investing, so please let me know if you want more information about that.

[ofearthandstars]

I also need to make a will, and advanced directive, as well as figure out what to do with our savings. I feel similarly about retirement as you do - like, we should plan, but also, we shouldn't be surprised if we're living out of backpacks and foraging off-grid in the next 20 years (which is a sad thing to say as someone who works in climate-related regulation). But we also had an influx of income in the last few years and other than doing necessary home improvements, I've had most of it in a minimally-growing savings account. Of course now the house is vexing me with needs, but I'd like to figure out a way to keep/use it wisely for tough-times ahead.

[finding_helena]

Best of luck with everything. I don't think I'm able to see the post about the underlying change, but it definitely sounds like a big shift.

[superborb]

I see from the comments above that it is lawful to learn driving from a friend so as a piece of anecdata: I learned driving around a parking lot from my dad, and went off on a few errands with a friend, and that was sufficient to learn the mechanics of how to drive. Also, I vaguely recall that you bike? If so, that hugely helps the navigation and reading the road parts of driving. (I technically got my license as a teen, but didn't drive until a decade later, after I spent time biking around cities -- the difference was huge.)

On finances, I am a fan of the Bogleheads philosophy (https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_philosophy_for_non-US_investors).

[(Anonymous)]

What’s happen?

[liv]

This is as much detail as I'm comfortable discussing on a public post. If you actually know me could you contact me offline and I can fill you in? I am not being deliberately cryptic here, it's just that this relates to something that isn't public knowledge.