Holy cow…

According to realestateabc.com, my parent’s house is worth $724/square foot.

Parents’ move to retirement.

My parents are on their way to retiring. My father, at 57 is planning to retire in 2 years.

What they're doing now to prepare for that transition is selling their house. They plan to move into a townhome, and use the excess cash for living expenses.

I'm helping them with the move by staging the house. Rather than renting furniture at a cost of $6000/mo (and my mom has to move out while the house is on market), we decided to do it ourself.

So far, we've decided on a sofa and an entertainment console. They're both from Crate & barrel. We've also decided on the wall colors.

Why are we doing this? Because, my parents didn't want to invest in their house as we lived there. They also had this notion that if we decorated or painted our walls different colors, our house wouldn't be worth as much because they figured it would make the house look less spacious.

God, are they so wrong, and they're now realizing it.

After seeing the homes sold on our street, all of them have a unique character…they're absolutely beautiful and appraised higher than our home because of that. There was one home that we checked out over the weekend. The floor plan was nearly identical to ours…their house was staged and represented by this realtor who's been dominating our street.

The 1500square feet home is on the market for 940K. It's sure to sell for over 1mil.

I picked up the info sheets that the realtor had laid out on his desk. Info sheets included property spec sheet, property description & photos, floorplan, and a bio on the realtor.

The realtor is good because of his diverse experience & expertise. He was vice president of marketing for Ann Taylor stores, Guess Jeans, & St. John Home. He has an MBA from Columbia and is part of Prudential's Chairman's circle.

My mom has regrets not signing with him to sell her house. I can't help but think, "I told ya so…" And, it's true, I told her to go through Prudential even if they take a higher cut. We would have our house sold right away w/ a mil in my parents' pockets.

House hasn't sold yet, so we don't know…maybe, my parents' home will be up there with the others on our street.

No more savings savings.

Since I've managed to save about 3 months living cost, I feel more comfortable putting my money in other things. I plan to continue to save, by CD-laddering. I plan to invest more into my retirement account and getting more into investments.

I figure that since I don't need cash for another 3-4 years when I purchase my first home, I have more flexibility with it.

Break-down a month:

Roth IRA – 400

6 mo. CD – 500

12 mo. CD – 1000

Investments – 200

 

Wonder if this will work… 

Upgrade to Sharebuilder standard account.

I just upgraded my account because I'm planning to purchase 3 more stocks through my automatic investments program tomorrow. 3 x $4 = $12. Standard plan is $12/mo, w/ 6 free investments. It makes more sense.

I decided to purchase about 20 shares of a retail co, 15 shares of a media company, and 25 shares of another media co. All stocks are $10 or less.

From the stocks/funds I do have, my Fidelity autopilot fund is growing steadily. My alternative energy/materials stock remains the same overall. And index fund has been the same.

I'd really like to purchase other stocks, but they're not within my means. Even stock that costs $13-14/share is too much because I can only make purchases of $2-400/mo a time.

Hm…

Unrelated post: Daniel Henney

Hott.

Daniel Henney…

 

I want him to suck my finger and place that ring!

 

Hell yes Gwyn would go for him…

Family reunited.

My brother, who’s in Seattle, is moving back to LA in two weeks.

He moved to Seattle because of a job offer he couldn’t refuse. He also wanted to get away from my mom (typical nagging Asian get-up-all-in-your-biz mother). And, wanted to raise his children in a healthier environment.

Needless to say, he hated it because of the weather. I think he, like I, got a reality check that in LA, we’ve got it good. Weather does play a huge part in one’s happiness and comfort.

His move is a lateral one. He will be doing similar work at a small company w/ a slightly higher salary (but, really earning the same since he hadn’t had to pay state tax in Washington and in Cali he has to).

I don’t know how he does it. He’s gotten most every job he’s applied for and moved up so quickly over the past few years. His resume is fantastic. He’s always worked at the top companies since college moving from assistant account exec to account director by age 30 for one of the top media groups in the world.

I can’t help wonder why his situation is so different from mine…And, feeling like I’m the shorthanded one in the family.

But, the other day as I was cleaning up, I found an employee’s manual for his first full-time job. I thought I’d check it out…seemed interesting…it was on interpersonal communication. Yada yada, goes on and on – stuff you can read in the self-help & business section. I then come to the part about goals, and my brother’s actually written down some.

This was revealing:

My goals:

• become CEO at a major corporation
• travel around the world
• become a single digit handicap golfer (? I’ve no idea)
• take care of my family
• make 50 this year
• be as AAE by the end of the year
• start going to church
• take art classes
• get rid of my gut
• buy a new car

My most important values are:

• ambition
• success
• family
• trust
• friendship

My top five goals are:

• make aae
• make 50
• get rid of guy
• buy

I don’t see many people reaching out to be a president of a company. Most would be satisified in reaching the first couple levels of management. Enough to have a good salary, title, reputation, job stability, and authority.

I guess when you have higher goals, you set higher standards and push to get them done. Writing them down definitely helps. It keeps you accountable for the promises you make to yourself.

I can’t say that I want to run a company. I really don’t. I don’t want to be that accountable for anything that could end up disastrous. I guess I’m slightly cowardish. But, I’ve been wanting something larger as each day passes. Something that I thought I couldn’t attain and would give up before even trying.

I think this is a good sign. Ambition and motivation is important in life. What’s the point of existence if it’s only about breathing, consuming, and excreting?

Investments

I fully funded my Roth IRA for 2005 contribution when I bought the alternative energy/materials stock. It's been going up and down, but still steadily growing. Yay.

My sharebuilder ETF is going down.

But, I have a few other things that I'd like to buy to bring it back up. Not ETFs because they're out of my budget, but some affordable consumer retail stock.

I have to say that I regret not purchasing Kookmin Bank's stock. Each day it rises about 1.50-2 points a share. It's now at 80 something. And, Focus Media Holdings which has grown from 35 to 52 over the past three months. Oi…

More focused on career than finances these days.

Hi everyone,

For someone who keeps a log of her financial moves, I’ve only checked my savings and brokerage accounts a handful of times over the past week and a half. Maybe only about five times.

I’ve been pretty busy at work putting in longer hours each day…and, by the time I get home, I’m more focused on working and researching future potential employers.

Indeed, I’m considering moving jobs because of the commute and my company’s overall work philosophy. I’m swamped with about 10 projects at a time, and it hurts me to sacrifice my creativity and hard effort to just get them done (as my boss wants me to).

This is my schedule:

• 7:45 am – wake up, get ready, eat a lil, have coffee, catch up on reading (all your blogs)
• 9:15 am – leave for work
• 10:00 am – arrive to work (I was able to move my work schedule by one hour to help with the traffic issues)
• 2:00 pm – have lunch
• 2:20 pm – get back to work
• 7:00 pm – this is the time I should be getting off of work, but I don’t
• 9-10 pm – get off of work
• 9:40-10:40 pm – arrive home, cook, have dinner, prepare tomorrow’s lunch, clean up
• 11:30 pm – start working on applying for jobs
• 3:00 am – go to sleep

The upside to all of this is that I’m learning a lot of new things that I’ve never touched before. Also, I’ll be doing another tutoring session next Wed. & another one for my student’s friend.

Done w/ taxes.

I just sent out my tax forms.

I’ll be getting a refund of about $400.

CPA fee was $200.

=)

Market order.

I just bought 100 shares of an alternative energy/materials stock @ $0.77/share.

This is just an experiment~