Piggy’s Blog - Journey of Success

Welcome back, hope you all had a wonderful memorial weekend. I myself enjoyed a BBQ with good company while I mostly recovered from a bad case of cold since last week. Yeah, weird time of the year to be sick. Just glad to be healthy and dandy again. Moving on…

With a looming recession and the mundane chanting of economic apocalypse, I am sure you are sick of hearing and reading about buckling up and saving all-you-can by now. This begs the question why I am writing this, which may drive most of you away, but I am writing it anyways. Just because I want to and the brilliant(?) thoughts in my precious(?) little brain may never show up again. And please laugh because even I laugh at myself for saying that.

So before you move that cursor to the back button on your browser, or before you start typing youtube.com or facebook.com or pigslaughter.com or i-hate-kin.com into the address field… give me a few minutes to share one quick thought on saving.

Look beyond the physical materials to see what you want or need to save for.

You may leave now…

For those of you remained, doing the above can help to set your sight straight on your saving plans and goals by identifying the values that drive you to save.

Say you need to save for food, this one is for survival. As important as survival is, do what it takes! Work more. Sell things. Cut expense. Be miserly. Because this means survival. You are no good to you being dead.

Say you want to save for a house. The need part of this one is for shelter, security, and partly survival. The want part of this one is the luxury of a large front porch, lots of space, satisfaction to your aesthetic sense, and whatever else. This means you should definitely do what you can to save for the need part of a house. And then consider the want part base on your budget and situation. Be honest with yourself.

Last one. Say you want to save for a sports car. This is definitely a want. No argument there. However in this case, you shall examine what that want is. Is this a want where you enjoy the excitement of speed and awesome manuver? Or is this a want where you just want the glamor and a chance to brag and show off? I like the idea of the first want, but not so much the latter. My two cents. All to his own.

The two top things I am saving for are security and freedom.

Now is your turn to decide why you save.

This is a guest post contributed by Heather Johnson, who is an industry critic on the subject of entrepreneurial finance. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

I graduated from college four years ago and bounced from job to job. I’m not here to complain about the past four years; they were a blast. But I wasn’t making any money. I worked in sports media behind the camera. Waiting for my break to come, I saw all my friends landing great-paying jobs and moving out of their parents’ houses. I wanted to find where I belonged.

I decided to go back to school to get certified to teach high school English. The prospects of going back to school scared the shit out of me. In my undergrad years I did enough work to satisfy my parents and got a 3.0 GPA, but that was as a full-time student with nothing to do but drink beers and have fun. I’m now going to back to school full-time while working full-time. How am I coping? Let’s say the struggle is rejuvenating, if not scary as hell.

First of all, I was nervous about actually going back to a classroom. This fear was erased when I found out I could take my classes online. This made my life so easy. I never had to make my way to campus at a certain time. I could do my work at any time of the night during the week. This presented a new problem: discipline. While going to campus everyday would have been a drag and made me make adjustments with my job, I would have known what to expect from attending class on a regular basis. Online courses, while providing a major convenience, demanded that I make my own schedule.

This proved to be a grueling proposition. It became so easy to slough off work and only tend to it when it seemed absolutely necessary. This worked fine for the first couple weeks of the semester as the assignments for my four courses were spread out. However, as mid-terms arrived I was in a world of hurt. All of a sudden, I had to get caught up on everything I had avoided. This would never have happened if I had to attend class regularly and participate to a satisfactory level.

But I kept my eyes on the prize: salvation. That’s right. I know I want to be a teacher and I had to look deep within myself to remind me of why. I’ve had wonderful and horrendous experiences with teachers over the years. I want to take all the good I’ve experienced and deliver that to my students. I know what a difference it made when I had a teacher that I could approach and talk about school work and life. This only happened when I respected my teachers. I want to be this teacher.

So I plodded along and got through mid-terms relatively unscathed. I took the spring break vacation to get completely caught up and even got a little bit ahead. I set a strict schedule that I’ve adhered to ever since. I come home from work at three in the afternoon and do my schoolwork until seven. This still gives me my nights to go out and spend time with my girlfriend and friends and to just relax.

I’m well on my way to becoming a teacher in the fall. Soon, I will be standing in front of my own classroom and talking with my students. I’m ecstatic. I know I’m making the right decision because it feels right. I don’t need other people to approve of my decision. Sure, it helps to get reinforcement, but there’s no better reinforcement than my own positive feedback.

First of all, thank you for the story, Heather.

I found it a nice twist when Heather said she decided to become a teacher after “seeing all my friends landing great-paying jobs.” I believe teachers play an important role for the youth and ultimately, (future) society. Today, they are simply taken too lightly (and underpaid). That is why it is amazing to hear Heather made the choice to change and is going through the hurdle and challenges to get there. Let’s cheer for her. And don’t forget to leave her your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

I just watched the film Into the Wild by Sean Penn upon a friend’s recommendation. If you have not seen the movie, make sure you have 2.5 hours to spare and not in a bad mood already because it may leave you more depressed afteward.

Don’t misunderstand me. Into the Wild is an excellent movie with a thought provoking plot and tops that with beautiful captures of natural scenery and well-depicted interactions and emotional scenes between Chris McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) and the characters he encounters. Through the well-performed compassionate nature of the characters, there are parts that are real tear jerkers.

The main theme of the movie is to urge people to seek the truth for themselves, beyond the societal facade, beyond the superficial materials, beyond the complicated and dramatic modern lifestyle. And aren’t all of us searching for the truth one way or another? On the right track or not?

Alex, as he preferred people calling him, was on a quest to search for the truth — and as I would call it, awareness. He did so by following an action path of “less is more” and by going into the nature, as his way to try to live in the moment, away from it all. This process, where one strips away all the excess in life, shall offer the chance to see what matters most in life, in theory.

However, I think he overdid it with too much obsession over physical and materialistic detachment which leads him to his consequence and failure to find truth and ultimately, awareness, which is also the ability to live in the moment. He overlooked the key point of the conceding of mental chains we impose upon ourselves through thoughts, emotions, and ego. Moreover, I think the movie over-emphasized the strained relationship betwen him and his parents, so much so that at different parts of the movie, the story seems more like he is running away than searching for truth.

Still, I do recommend the movie.

Most people into personal finance will enjoy this movie because the chacracter advocates a simple and minimalistic lifestyle that echoes frugality, as opposed to obsession over things (consumerism). In fact, they should get a kick out of the part where Alex said argumentatively to his parents, “A new car? Why would I want a new car? Datswan runs great. I mean, do you think I want some fancy boat? Are you worried, what the neighbor might think? … … I don’t need a new car. I don’t want a new car. I don’t want any thing, these things, things, things, things.”

My favorite quote from the movie is when Alex paraphrased Thoreau, “Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… give me truth.”

He made me feel like running away like a Supertramp.

In the latest issue of BusinessWeek, there is an article about students taking the extra effort to be competitive by participating in financial/investing clubs AFTER getting into prestigious school, Meet Your New Recruits, They Want to Eat Your Lunch. Here is an excerpt:

Once, merely graduating from an Ivy League college or similarly prestigious rival like Stanford or Swarthmore qualified students for a choice entry-level perch on Wall Stree. No longer. “The whole idea of smart people just falling into banking is becoming rarer,” says Lance LaVergne, a vice-president and global head of diversity recruiting at Goldman Sachs. “Clubs are essential to preparation, especially for students who are not majoring in traditional discipline like finance or accounting.”

Also in the article, a girl is described to gain admission to three prestigious clubs at Stanford, and it is AMAZING.

I understand the world is getting tougher out there. Therefore, it is great to be driven. It is great to prepare for the future. It is great to kick-start learning about investing because that’s what I am doing now. But despite all that, I can’t help but contemplate if these students are getting too mixed up in the money-means-success culture at a very young age. I can’t help but worry that these students would grow up with the only ability to handle money, finance, and investing and narrow vision due to being a money-purist. Is that what life is all about?

I am not saying one should not focus on academic work because I did that and graduated with a 3.8+ GPA majoring in Computer Science and Japanse, and here I am working in the computer industry. One must need pragmatism to survive in this society.

However, from when I was an undergraduate, a huge part of what makes me the person today is being a part of the fencing team for 4 years, where focus, discipline, hard-work, comradeship, travelling, and fun happened, and then other things like social dancing, Japanese cultural events, a few music classes, misc. physical exercise, or just having some plain(dumb) fun with my friends. Perhaps that is why I am not rich, in today’s commen sense at least, but I am perfectly content with how I am and what I have, which are not just things and money.

On top of that, these investment clubs may have an unintended consequence of promoting short-term trading because the students are driven for immediate results to show recruiters and they have an investment time horizon of at most 4 years.

I only wish the students can still take their sweet time, in spite of those clubs, and participate in other cultural, character cultivating, or simply fun events. Because I would hate to see a bunch of physically-dwarfed, money-mongering, rich, yet utterly unhappy people to be grown out of this generation.

Your thoughts?

I like to theorize, although I may only have the vision of a donkey filled up on a dozen beer. My theory today is that human beings are merely irrational beings with rationale. Below are a few examples to support this theory.

Banks, real estates brokers, and home buyers who fearlessly bet on the real estate market to go up forever. Haven’t they heard what goes up must comes down? And how can anything grow forever?

A president and politicians who think a $600~ per person tax rebate will save people from losing their home and cover the losses in their retirement/pension plan.

People who are easily swayed and hastily change the opinion on a person due completely to rumors and stories about someone else who is remotely associated with him.

Someone in a dire or unfavorable somehow think, hope, or pray that the situation will somehow change without themselves changing.

Those are my few examples… What do you think about my theory? Do you have any examples from your experience? Why don’t you leave a comment and let me know?

Of course, my theory can be disproved as easily by counter examples. Hence, it is just a theory.

There is a reason for me to say this. I believe people make decisions irrationally more often than not, where they are mostly influenced by ego and emotions. I am not judging or saying it is bad per se, but if we can base our decisions and expectations on this understanding as we observe such is the case, we will come across less disappointment and misunderstanding in everyday life.

On the other hand, it is also useful to be self-conscious when you are trying to rationalize an irrational decision. This should help mitigate some of the bad situations we tend to get ourselves into. Some food for thought.