PF#50: Different Interest Rates for Different Loans

Interest rates are different for different kinds of loans. Different kinds of loans have a higher or lower rate based upon different factors. I am going to talk about four different kinds of loans. Home loans, car loans, student loans, and credit loans (credit cards).

The loans for all interest rates are affected by a few things. The first of these things is your credit score. Your credit score is determined based upon your past interactions with borrowing money, as well as other things, like your employment history. If the company loaning you money doesn’t think you will be able to pay them back, then you will have a higher interest rate because the risk is higher for the company loaning you money. It is also affected by how long the loan will last, and they also have to account for inflation. They don’t want to lose money by letting you borrow it because of inflation.

Home loans are probably the longest loans on this list, as in, it takes the longest for you to pay back the money. This is because it is the largest purchase. Right now, rates range anywhere from 8.265% (according to google.com). Because this loan lasts the longest, there is a higher chance you won’t be able to pay it off, because there is a longer period of time for something to occur (losing your job, dying, etc.). They also have to adjust more for inflation because inflation grows over time.

Car loans are a lot like home loans, but they generally don’t last as long. Hence there is a lower risk of inflation and a lower risk of catastrophic events. Right now, rates are between 5.07% and 14.18% (according to nerdwallet.com).

Student loans seem to have a similar term time to car loans, meaning that they will probably last about the same amount of time. According to bankrate.com, the rate for a federal student loan (a student loan provided by the government) is 5.5%, but if you don’t get a federal loan, the loan rates can be higher.

A credit loan is the type of loan that a credit card pulls from. They generally have a fixed rate, meaning that the rate doesn’t change with the market. These kinds of loans are for your small purchases. Credit loans have an average rate of about 20-30%, as there is a lot more risk involved because the purchases are always different.

Loans have different rates base upon what item you are purchasing, how much you are borrowing, and also your credit score and inflation. Every single loan one applies for will have a different rate, and you have to come to terms with that. You also have to make sure you pick a reliable lender to borrow from.

PF#45: Getting In Shape for Less

Getting in shape can be really expensive. You need to try to avoid all the unnecessary parts of fitness so that you don’t have to spend as much money. In this paper, I talk about ways you can save money, gym memberships, as well as how to do workouts at home for cheap.

There are some basic tactics you can use to get in shape while not spending as much money. Here is the first tip: don’t use team sports as a way to get in shape. Team sports are expensive. Typically it is a large time commitment, and sometimes there isn’t much variety if you only do one sport (for example, soccer has you do a lot of running, but next to no arm movements). Outside of the time it takes to participate, there is also gear that you need to purchase, and, if you are on travel team, you also have to think about the gas that it takes to travel to your away games.

The best way to get in shape without spending money is probably doing workouts at home. Especially if you can do body weight exercises that you don’t need equipment for. If you are going to purchase equipment, try to avoid buying it new. Buy it used from a thrift store or from eBay. Lessons to do exercises also cost money, but you can purchase one month of exercises from an online exercise program and then end the membership because you will have already had one month of training.

Gym memberships are a scam. You pay a monthly fee to use exercise equipment. Say you want to go to the gym to ride an exercise bike. You are better off simply riding your own bike. For treadmill, drive to a park and go for walk or run there. Weights can be purchased for relatively cheap used. If you want to ride the stair machine, walk up and down stairs in your house, or, if you don’t have stairs, then go somewhere where they do have them. Driving somewhere to walk up and down stairs is better than a monthly fee.

There are many ways to get in shape, but some are more costly than others. Avoid team sports as a way of getting into shape, and also avoid gym memberships. Do workouts at home and buy used equipment to complete these workouts. As always, you must compere the prices of the equipment you do buy to get the best deal for your dollar. If you follow all of these strategies, you should succeed in spending less money on your fitness, and your health in general.

S8#115: Black Holes

Today I’m going talk about black holes. I know very little about black holes, but I’m going to try and do my best for this essay. I’m going to talk about (how we think) black holes form, the “singularity” at the center of black holes, the event horizon, and the size of black holes.

Nobody has actually seen a black hole form. That means anything we know about the formation of black holes is just a theory. The most popular theory for the formation of black holes is that, when a star runs out of fuel, a Supernova explosion takes place, and then the remnants of the star become a black hole. Because we’ve never seen black holes form before, we don’t know for sure, but this is the most popular theory.

The singularity is an unfathomably small point at the center of a black hole. It has the unfathomably large amounts of mass pulled together into an unfathomably small space. We’re talking a mountain being compressed into the space of an atom small. This point is so dense and has so much gravity that it pulls everything toward it. The gravity is so strong that nothing can escape it, not even light itself, hence why black holes are black.

The event horizon is an invisible boundary between the inside and outside of the black hole. Once you pass the event horizon, there is no going back. Because light cannot escape black holes, when something passes through the event horizon into the black hole, it looks like it freezes in time for a moment, before fading away.

There is another phenomenon about black holes that is interesting. Because gravity gets stronger the closer you are to the source, the gravity at the part of a thing closer to the center would be pulled faster, and the thing would get stretched in a phenomenon known as “spaghettification”.

Overall black holes are quite interesting. They are the only thing in our universe (that we know of) that light cannot escape. They are incomprehensibly large, strong, and mysterious.

S8#95: Astronomy Week 1

I am to write about what I learned this week. Most of this stuff I already knew from 4th and 5th grade History, but I will still relate some of it.

According to Ptolemy, the Earth is the center of the universe. It was a long time before Copernicus challenged Ptolemy by saying that the sun is the center of the universe. Copernicus also popularized the belief that the Earth and the other planets rotated, rather than being fixed, and he also broke the convention of circles being considered the divine shape that everything was built upon. Johannes Kepler also backed up Copernicus, as did Tycho Brahe.

I didn’t really like this week of astronomy; I could talk about other things I was taught like astrophotography and how telescopes and binoculars work, but I didn’t really enjoy learning about those things, so I don’t want to dwell on them for very long.

E8#46: Caring About Tasks

I think that one must care about anything they are doing in order to do it well. I know that I have to be passionate about what I am doing if I want to do anything like a good job; however, I think that this is very subjective. Depending on people’s personalities, the answer will change. Some people work better if they really care about their work and love it, while for others it doesn’t make much of a difference at all whether they care or not. They just do the work because it needs done. I really need to be passionate about what I am doing, otherwise I feel indifferent, and so I do mediocre work. I see this in my day-to-day life, and not just with my free time. I can tell that, when I’m not passionate about a chore that needs to be done, I don’t want to do it, and I procrastinate, and I find excuses not to do it. If I am passionate, I am working on that thing as often as I can, as fast as I can, and as well as I can. For example, I am really good at writing essays, and, because I’m good at it, it brings me pleasure to write an essay (generally speaking). I have a passion for writing. I care deeply about my essays; if my essay doesn’t meet my standards, then I don’t say, “Oh, whatever. It didn’t matter in the first place”. I say, “I am really disappointed. This work is sloppy and I am ashamed of myself”. In the essay prompt it says that caring deeply about something can cloud one’s judgment. I disagree. If I care deeply about a task and I want it to be done properly, I will do it properly, and use my judgment to its best effect to complete the task. In conclusion, I think that it makes the most sense to care deeply about your tasks when you can. Sometimes you really hate something you have to do and you aren’t passionate about it, but that’s okay. There’s no one answer for everybody.

E8#45: Characters of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea has some very dynamic character relationships. There are four main characters across the entirety of the book. They are Professor Aronnax, Conseil his servant, Ned Land the harpooner, and Captain Nemo of the submarine Nautilus. The Professor is the protagonist to the story, and Captain Nemo is the antagonist. Conseil and Ned Land are side characters in this story.

Professor Aronnax is the protagonist of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. He, along with Conseil and Ned Land, are taken aboard the Nautilus by Captian Nemo, shortly after being attacked. The Professor is a smart and well-learned naturalist, and is fascinated by the wildlife that he is shown underneath the waves. He is also very reluctant to leave the Nautilus when Ned Land decides the time is ripe to attempt to escape. Over the course of the book Professor Aronnax has a lot of character development, and his heart softens towards Captain Nemo.

Conseil is Professor Aronnax’s faithful servant. He has been serving the Professor for at least fifteen years, and is a grown man, despite being referred to as “boy” a lot of the time. Conseil is very loyal to his master, and, when Professor Aronnax was knocked off of the ship, he dived in after his master. Conseil stays by the Professor’s side throughout the book, and finds no more satisfaction than in serving him to the very end.

Ned Land was a harpooner that had embarked on the same whaler as the Professor and Conseil. He was also thrown off the ship at the same time, and was admitted into the Nautilus with the others as prisoners. Over the course of the book, Ned develops claustrophobia, as well as a burning hate for Captian Nemo. Several times over the course of the book, Ned attempts to plot an escape. At the climax of the book, Ned finally succeeds in escaping the Nautilus, bringing Professor Aronnax and Conseil with him.

Captain Nemo is the man who built the Nautilus, and the antagonist in the book. He is an Indian who had endured the tortures that the Europeans had placed on his people in India. He is a great scientist, and designed the Nautilus with the sole intention of quarentining himself from the world. He has a crew of men from around the world, and has taught them all to speak only a special language that he either created or is not very well known. Captian Nemo has decided to keep the professor, Ned Land, and Conseil prisoners on board the Nautilus so that he will never be tracked by people in Europe. He is also writing a book about his travels under the sea. He doesn’t mistreat his passengers, but rather provides for their needs and everything they could possibly want for their comfort. The Nautilus is very self-sustaining, and so Nemo never needs to go to inhabited land (he does visit islands occasionally) to procure anything.

Overall, these characters share a very interesting dynamic. The protagonist and antagonist aren’t as clear-cut as some other books. Captain Nemo is actually quite kind and generous to his prisoners, the only problem is that he won’t let them leave. The professor also respects Captain Nemo, and doesn’t take his trip under the seas for granted.

E8#41: Cooperation

Cooperation can lead to successes; however, it also leads to a lack of your own creativity and willingness to stand out from the crowd. Often, this is not a good thing, and can lead to problems, but just as often it is a good thing.

Cooperation is the act of working with other people, particularly on a larger project than one can handle on their own with a high chance of success. On large projects, it is generally good to attempt to cooperate with someone else; otherwise you can quickly become overwhelmed and that can cause the project to fail miserably. You should probably cooperate with others whenever you can on large scale projects, and sometimes small scale projects.

There are also times where it is better to act as an individual instead of cooperating with others on certain projects, particularly creative projects and very small scale projects. If you do choose to cooperate with others on those types of projects, it should probably only be one or two other people at most. Too many people can quickly make it harder for you to express your creativity, or it becomes harder to manage all those people that don’t necessarily need to be there. It can really make a mountain our of a molehill.

Sometimes it is good to cooperate with others. These times generally occur on large scale projects. In these cases a better result can be achieved by working with others. That said, there are still times where having extra people is a hindrance to you, especially if it is something creative (like art for example).

E8#37: Responding to a Crisis

Acting quickly is not always the best way to respond to a crisis. Sometimes it is better to take a little time and think about what you are going to do to respond. That being said, there are times when you should make your decision upon instinct, but those times aren’t during crises.

A crisis is, by definition, “a time when a difficult or important decision must be made”1 Typically, when you are making a difficult or important decision, you want to take a relatively long amount of time (compared to an instant) to decide what you are going to do to either avert the crisis or make the best of it.

1Definition courtesy of Oxford English Dictionary

There are some circumstances where you don’t want to make decisions quickly; however, these circumstances are never crises. The example given in the writing prompt for this essay was tennis. You want to go on instinct so that you actually make the plays. It doesn’t take an educated decision to play tennis. You may want to train your instincts what to do, so that you hit the ball in the right direction or with proper stroke.

Overall, during most crises, you want to think before you act. If you go purely off of instinct, there is a high chance you will make the situation worse. If your house is burning down, and you rush to the nearest door, put your hand on the knob, and run through, you may:

1). Burn your hand on the knob

2). Rush into a burning room

3). Be running away from the exit instead of towards it

You need to be careful when you encounter a situation where you have to deal with a crisis. Think before you act.

E8#36: Learning From Mistakes

It is my belief that we learn more from mistakes than from successful actions. I know most people will probably give the same answer, but that makes sense. One learns more from their mistakes than their success because they remember them more.

If I fail at something, oftentimes, I will remember it better than if I succeeded at it on the first try. I remember many of my failures more than I do my successes. I think we learn more from mistakes because we can build on our mistakes, and eventually we will build up to successes. Most of the time, we also have more mistakes than we do successes, which means that, in terms of overall quantity of knowledge gained, mistakes will provide a greater amount of knowledge than successes. That being said, you still learn a great deal from succeeding. Let me give a personal example. I was 3D designing a part for my uncle. It was a fairly complicated part, and I had never made anything like it before. I printed at least fifteen iterations before I arrived at the final product. Over all those mistakes, I learned a lot about 3D modeling. If I had nailed it on my first try, I should not have learned as much as I did during the process. You should also never be ashamed to admit that you have made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, and there is nothing to be ashamed of.

We all make mistakes, and we learn a lot from them. I would say that we learn more from making mistakes than we do from succeeding. We make more mistakes than we do successes most of the time, therefore we are learning more. Sometimes, it’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey.

E8#35: The Pursuit of Happiness

I am to discuss whether the pursuit of happiness or the attainment of it provides more pleasure. I think there are two very different ways to look at this, and that, in different circumstances, one or the other is true. It really depends on what your vision of “happiness” is, and also what your starting point is. In general, I would say that the pursuit of happiness provides more pleasure than the attainment, but there are many, many exceptions to this rule. I am going to go over several scenarios where there would be different outcomes.

Getting out of poverty is one good example of the attainment of happiness being less enjoyable than having achieved it. If someone is really poor and they have to work a really hard, grueling job for a long period of time to attain a lifestyle that they can enjoy, then the pursuit is very painful and is probably not very satisfactory, and certainly does not make one feel pleasure. In this case, the attainment of happiness provides more pleasure and satisfaction than the pursuit of it.

Say you enjoy hunting and the thrill of the chase. There is a high probability that you enjoy hunting the animal more than cutting the meat, lugging it home, preparing it, and then storing or eating it. This would be an example of the process of achieving your goal (killing the animal) providing more pleasure than having achieved said goal.

A great example of the process being more enjoyable than after having attained the end goal would be a video game. Say I beat a video game (one that doesn’t have a post-game). I am going to enjoy the game more before I beat it rather than after I have.

If one is saving up money to purchase an item that they really want, this is a scenario where it depends on the person (and sometimes the item that they want to purchase as well). Sometimes you are in eager anticipation of being able to buy that item, and sometimes you are weary of waiting to purchase it.

Reading a book is a good example of enjoying the pursuit of happiness when your goal is to complete the book. You enjoy reading the book for the first time more than any other time you read it.

If I am building a house, I am going to be more satisfied when I complete the house than at almost any point during its construction.

Earning your driver’s license (or almost any license for that matter) is another great example of enjoying the attainment of your desires over the pursuit of them. Sitting through the classes is likely boring, and practicing is less enjoyable than being able to use your license for practical purposes.

Not only do you have desires where you can attain the end goal; there are also times where the reason you do it is for the journey. I might buy a remote controlled car to build the car, instead of wanting it for the finished product. In that case, the process of attaining the goal is the reason the goal is there in the first place. To go to the other end of the spectrum, I might buy a broken go-kart, not for the process of repairing it, but so that I can enjoy it when I have succeeded in repairing it. In this scenario, fixing the go-kart does not provide as much pleasure and satisfaction as does achieving the goal.

Not having some of the things you want also causes you to improvise and get creative sometimes. I am currently in the process of completely refurbishing a video game controller to save money, but also because I think it is fun to fix the broken controllers I am starting with. This scenario falls into neither category; I enjoy both, but for different reasons. I will derive satisfaction and pleasure from both the act of fixing it, but also when I use the controllers I have successfully repaired to play my games.

Creating art is a gray area. Generally one creates art for the purpose of creating art, but it also provides pleasure when you have completed it, although they are not the same pleasure. It is the same with almost any type of art, but I believe it applies most to drawing and painting.

The pursuit of happiness often provides more pleasure and satisfaction than does the attainment of that goal, but it is the other way just as often. Always try to enjoy the process as much as you can, but know that there will be times where the attainment of your goal is more satisfactory.