Kelly Huang

  • Why do I see money the way I do?

    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.

  • The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

    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”.

  • New Router: Should have replaced it sooner

    ASUS RT-AX3000

    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.

    Before
    After

  • Benefit of saving allowance as an adult

    unit in New Taiwan Dollar

    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.

    1. 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.
    2. Financial stress is significantly lower.
    3. Proud feeling of paying cash. Saving for 3 months is very different from buying with credit card and paying off in 3 months.

  • 31/32

    RICOH GR II f/16 1/80 @ Jiufen, New Taipei City

    Takeaways from 31 years old.

    On health

    Invest in a good chair
    Good chair doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. After a decade of horrible office posture, my body is relearning and it’s not confy. The good thing is, it forces me take a walk every hour and my back is no longer in pain after work.

    Exercise is about being functional
    I probably spent way too much time in the gym in my 20s, it was fun pushing weights and I learned the valuable lesson of persistence. But it didn’t always made me feel great physically. In the past year, I started to incorporate cardio and yoga. Overall, It gave me consistent energy throughout the day.

    202020212022
    cardio8.7%9.52%38.30%
    flexibility24.76%35.11%
    strength91.30%65.71%26.60%

    A good sleep is not easy
    Good sleep is a challenge on preparation and self-control. I don’t bring my phone into my bedroom anymore because I realize it’s impossible for me to not touch it and only use it as an alarm. Instead, my Casio F91-W wakes me up now.

    On time management

    60 minutes is surprising enough for exercise, shower, and lunch.
    – 35 minute exercise, 10 minute shower, and 15 minute lunch. The best way to maximize exercise time is to use a meeting room, it literally takes only few seconds to start.

    Don’t go to Costco on weekends or holidays
    Purchase grocery is not the most important thing at Costco, it’s burning the energy of my one year old. Therefore, it’s best to avoid the weekend traffic. Besides, it’s a less frustration wait at the cashier.

    Get things done with an actual pen and paper
    This has removed all distractions and the constant edit on a computer. It’s something I do when I work on marketing content or trying to sort out my thoughts. Tip: buy a pen that writes wonders.

    Just one cloud storage
    I have a problem with decentralization of my cloud storage. My photos are in iCloud, my documents are in Dropbox (the evolution: OneDrive -> iCloud -> Dropbox), and it’s dumb to waste both money and space on multiple cloud services. Yeah, I know I can have everything on iCloud, but I have a Windows laptop at work and iCloud Windows is a terrifying experience. Since a few months ago, I’ve been migrating everything to Dropbox, and photo organization is now dumber than ever. Unlike Google Photo or Apple Photo, Dropbox photo comes with barely any photo organization, but that simplifies the distraction and I’m more aware of the pictures I upload nowadays.

    On what I haven’t figured out

    Ukulele
    I tried to pick up an instrument during the lockdown and I can play a few chords, but it’s a struggle this year to find time for it. I’m hesitant, whether I adjust my schedule for this or drop this? What drives my judgement?

    Annual workout time still max at half of what it was when I’m single
    Since Millie’s birth on December 2020, the annual workout time has just been axed. It looks like 2022 will be similar to 2021. The math is simple: longer average exercise time or higher exercise frequency. Day-to-day implementation is the challenging part.
    – 2020 – 4,629 minutes
    – 2021 – 2,349 minutes
    – 2022 YTD – 1,582 minutes