JVC 43K 43-inch TV, purchased for NTD$7778 on credit in August, accounted for 12% of total expense.
iPad peripherals including a screen glass replacement, a secondhand Smart Keyboard, and a secondhand Apple Pencil; total 6500. Accounted for 10% of the expense.
Linda’s emergency clothing from coffee spill, purchased for NTD$3,480 on cash this month, accounted for 5% of total expense.
Apple Watch SE2 for father’s day gift, split the cost with my sister, spend 3,200 and accounts for 5% of total expense.
HM in front of the new TV.A second try for iPad
Lessons Learned
– I was wrong about TV, I thought it would throw away the few family time, but it gave us more things to talk about. Plus, it gave me a bit more time for myself.
– My second try on iPad went well so far. Don’t treat it as a computer, treat it as a messy notebook. It’s not a device for organization.
After reading the first chapter of Psychology of Money, I flash backed on the event of my life that shaped the way I see money today.
Questions and attempted answers I had with myself.
Why do I keep track of my expense and income? I started to receive allowance since the second grade, but my mom has a rule to play by. Before I knew how multiplication works, mom would ask me to list down all the date and the amount that I receive allowance, then add it up, have it checked by her (making sure addition weren’t wrong) before I receive the money. It looks something like this.
May 1, Bht$1 May 2, Bht$1 May 3, Bht$1 …… Total Bht$30
This tradition continued to 12th grade. By the time I entered college, I have been budgeting for a decade. This stuck with me ever since, from analog notebook to excel file to google sheet, from being single to a father.
Why does it take me forever time to make a purchase decision? There’s a formula that my mom used to adjust my allowance. Bht$2 per day in second grade, Bht$3 per day in third grade, all the way until 11th grade when it flattened at Bht$20 per day. There’s an additional Bht$1000 for Lunar New Year and birthday. So even when I max out, it’d Bht$9300 a year and that’s all the money I have for going out with friends. A set of McDonald’s is 15% of the monthly budget, a taxi ride is 10%, so I need to save for months for a purchase.
Some purchase turned out to be a bad decision and I think that shaped followed me until this day. I remember saving $5000 in middle school to get a branded basketball shoes. I spent $3500 on a pair of NIKE, just to find out in the week after, that the shoes gain traction on the outdoor court I play in.
Why am I lazy, passive, and risk aversive when it comes to investing? A good thing about budgeting for 2 decades is precise understanding and forecast for my expense. I rarely overspend my salary so there’s no urgency to make big money since I don’t ran out of them. Consequently, there’s really no urgency to get rich through risky investments.
Page 2 Premise of this book is that doing well with money has a little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.
Page 7 History never repeats itself; man always does.
Page 12 Your personal experience with money make up maybe 0.000000001% of what’s happened in the work, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.
Page 14 If you grew up when inflation was high, you invested less of your money in bonds later in life compared to those who grew up when inflation was low. If you happen to grow up when the stock market was strong, you invested more of your money in stocks later in life compared to those who grew up when stocks were weak.
Page 18 Every financial decision a person makes, makes sense to them in that moment and checks the boxes they need to check.
Page 20 Before World War II most Americans worked until they died.
Page 34 When things are going extremely well, realize it’s not as good as you think. You are not invincible, and if you acknowledge that luck brought you success then you have to believe in luck’s cousin, risk, which can turn your story around just as quickly.
But the same is true in the other direction.
Failure can be a lousy teacher, because it seduces smart people into thinking their decisions were terrible when sometimes they just reflect the unforgiving realities of risk. The trick when dealing with failure is arranging your financial life in a way that a bad investment here and a missed financial goal there won’t wipe you out so you can keep playing until the odds fall in your favor.
Page 62 “Charlie and I always knew that we would become incredibly wealthy. We were not in a hurry to get wealthy; we know it would happen. Rick was just as smart as us, but he was in a hurry.” – Warren Buffett.
Page 84 More than your salary. More than the size of your house. More than the prestige of your job. Control over doing what you wan, when you want to, with the people you want to, is the broadest lifestyle variable that makes people happy.
Page 85 On my first day I realized why investment bankers make a lot of money: They work longer and more controlled hours than I knew humans could handle. Actually, most can’t handle it. Going home before midnight was considered a luxury, and there was a saying in the office: “If you don’t come to work on Saturday, don’t bother coming back on Sunday.” The job was intellectually stimulating, paid well, and made me feel important. But every waking second of my time became a slave to my boss’s demands, which was enough to turn it into one of the most miserable experiences of my life. It was a four-month internship. I lasted a month.
Page 106 One of the most effective way to increase your saving isn’t to raise your income. It’s to raise your humility.
Page 186 Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time. Destruction is driven by single points of failure, which can happen in seconds, and loss of confidence, which can happen in an instant.
Page 208 Become OK with a lot of things going wrong. You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune.
Page 217 The independent feeling I get from owning our house outright far exceeds the known financial gain I’d get from leveraging our assets with a cheap mortgage.
Page 217 Good decisions aren’t always rational. At some point you have to choose between being happy or being “right”.
I replaced my old ASUS RT-N12 with a new ASUS RT-AX3000 last week and it 10x my bandwidth!
The previous router was purchased in 2017. It was a time when I was still single, no kid, and still renting a one-room apartment. All I needed at the time was something functional to keep my laptop and phone connected to the internet. But that’s far from the case right now.
Things are different 5 years later. With a family and a few smart gadgets, the number of devices has tripled. The web experience is sluggish; pages takes longer to load, video played at lower resolution, unexpected disconnection, and router RAM usage constantly occupied at 90%. This is an upgrade that’s going to happen sooner or later.
It got me thinking, what’s the line between “still works” and “need to be replaced”? Obviously, the old router still functions and I could live with it most of the time. But it exhausts me, I feel anxious when having to do a webinar at home, I knew the signal risks degrading so I carried a ethernet cable. These tiny incidents, although not often, breaks the purpose of a router. It’s a tool, and a tool needs to be functional and needs to be trusted. It’s functional, but it can’t be trusted, I think that’s what drove me to replace it.
Plus, the old one’s been running for 5 years, so it’s also about time.
Over the past 2 years, it’s becoming a family habit to use these old red envelopes to save up money for things we’re indecisive.
Through the process, I realize there are some benefits.
Time, at least a month, to think and discuss if this item will bring quality time for us. These discussions circling around improving our life is meaningful. Hey, if not, we can just scrap the idea.
Financial stress is significantly lower.
Proud feeling of paying cash. Saving for 3 months is very different from buying with credit card and paying off in 3 months.
