Sunday, December 27, 2009

Year ending... So 10 random thoughts to summarize my year..

1) Had been working very hard for the 1st 9 months. Had 5 different sources of income- Relief, tuition, property, clinical trial and trading. Been slacking from Oct to Dec.

2) I've read more books than my 17 years of education. Who says that trading is easy? Everyone thinks that the stock market is a "get rich easy" place. Those who thot of it this way r usually gamblers. You have to read and read and read. U have to understand how the market works, how the human mind works. Learn a lot from those legendary traders.

3) Seems like everyone is getting married.

4) Selling my car.. and still selling at this point of time... I find that I can save up a lot without a car.. An atrocious amount of money. Just trade time with money. And with public transport, I can read my books. When driving, I can't.

5) Clientele base building up very slowly. As I'm doing more of rental, it's recurring every year. So the number of cases just adds up.

6) Sometimes when we hold a thing too tight, it'll slip away. If we hold it too loosely, it'll also slip away. There's always an optimum.

7) Still very money orientated

8) Not all cheap things are good. Must weigh and see how much and how often u use it. I've bought 3 mouse consecutively this year. Bougt the 1st one at a cheap price, but it's not very responsive. Bought the 2nd one 2nd hand at only $1. But very energy exhaustive-battery used up in a week. So in the end spend more money to buy the 3rd one.

9) I still haven really been eating healthily.

10) I failed my IPPT.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

Bought a new netbook as my laptop is starting to give me some problems. Happily bought it at $498, plus 2 yrs extended warranty at Harvey Norman at additional $52 (which makes a total of 3 yrs warranty) with a installment of 3 years. I think many will frown at me. It's just a few hundred dollars and why pay by installment? I dun like installment previously, cos I dun like to owe people things. But the fact that it's a 0% interest installment, which change the ball game. Yes, I have 2 choices. First is to pay full and call it a day. I pay $550 (498 +$52) and take it home. Second, I pay by installment for 36 months. The first month I pay abt $15, which means that the remaining $535 is helping me to earn interest. Another month I pay another $15, and the remaining $520 is still working hard for me and earning interest and so on and so forth. So end of the day, I pay less than $550.

Those without financial management and knowledge should steer clear of installments. Installment is like a slow acting poison, slowly killing u without u knowing, if u dunno how to manage them. It can be something big and dangerous, disguising as something harmless and slowly draining u away. It is a double edged sword. U use it well, it helps u save money. U use it wrongly, it'll cause ur downfall.

There's good debts and bad debts. Not all debts are bad.