I rent, as most of you had figured out by now, and had been renting for about 3 years now. While I fully enjoy the convenient location, decent neighborhood, and reasonble cost of my rental, the biggest gripe for me is its lack of insulation. It can sometimes be hotter and colder than the outside in summer and winter, respectively. A side effect of that is then a very costly energy bill for me during the few months when bay area gets quite cold.

Well, I decided I have had enough of the coldness and wallet-sucking energy bill in winter, so I stopped by Home Depot on the weekend and bought myself some caulk, a caulking gun, and some high-density self-adhesive foam strip.

After that, I went through and check all the windows, the sliding door to balcony, and the front door. How did I do that, you may ask? And I will answer, “Very primitively! Using my naked eyes and feeling with my bare hands!”

Because autumn is approaching and bay area cools down a lot in the evening, I waited until the evening to perform the inspection. Using my hand, I went through and check every cracks and corners for wind draft and cool air flowing in. One thing that helped tremendously is to wet your hand, which makes it much easier to feel the cool air. Another thing you can do, that I knew but didn’t do, is if you have the help of another person, ask him to use a blow driver, portable fan, etc. to blow at the cracks and connecting points to make it really obvious where the outside air is leaking in.

In the end, I used mostly the foam strip to block off the non-insulated areas and had to use very little caulk. I taped them where the bedroom windows hit their frame, around the front door on the inside, and at top and bottom of the sliding door.

Now is 2 nights after my insulation effort, and I can already tell the difference in temperature before and after. The self-adhesive foam strip is about $3 for a 17′ roll, rendering them very cost-effective and me in love with them right now. If they can lower my energy bill drastically this winter, I am going to love them even more!

I hate to say it, work has gone crazy lately and taken over much of my time, leaving me little to no time for piano, gym, reading, and many other things I enjoy doing outside of work. This is not desirable but one has to do what he has to do to make it and bring bread to the table. I’m sure you can relate.

Then it makes me think, is it really worth it to take on a job for the monetary compensation that will consume all your time and add insurmountable stress to your life? (i.e. investment banking…)

I guess it all depends on one’s preferences and priorities. For me, I like maintaining a balance beteween work and life because if I only know work and career, it’s like throwing away myself because there are many things that are important to me, and only if they’re together makes up the entire me. If I am 100% work, I am no longer myself and I’m throwing myself away for money.

What about you?

On the other hand, I caught a glimpse of a new NBC series called Life, which has a very intriguing character, Charlie Crews. All his dialogues contain very deep zen philosophy and messages, like “being in the moment” and “you don’t have to understand here to be here”. It is also because of his zen understanding that he has this imperturbable calmness, in most cases. Remember how many times I have made reference to calmness in my posts and when I talked about having a calm, compsoed, and still mind. Now you know why I’m interested :)

So if anyone is interested in or is studying zen, I encourage you to watch Life and pay attention to the dialogues. The show is on during “off-time” from 10:00-11:00pm, unfortunately. I contemplate the main reason being that the general audience will not watch Life due to its “confusing” and “boring” dialogues. My 2 cents. You can look up the background and details of the show online.

One of the thing that I am indeed saving up for is to purchase a place to call my own eventually, as most of us are and most of us did. Just today, the condo unit right across from my rental is doing an open house. Out of curiosity I stepped in to check it out. What I saw is a completely remodeled unit with new carpet, crowned ceiling, granite kitchen-top with extended length *drool*, custom-built cabinets *drool*, and also a renovated bathroom with granite top that matches the kitchen *DROOL*.

Just from looking at all those, I am extremely tempted to jump on the ship. However, my gut feeling tells me this is not the time yet for me, and I AM going to listen because the place is a small 1 bed room condo. Despite great location, I imagine the reselling will be difficult. I could rent it out later but another reason for me saying “not the time yet” is that I will stretch myself out too thin if I do buy now. On a side note, this arises a bit of jealousy inside me toward my similar-aged peers who are receiving help from their family. However, I am already doing my best and am moving along pretty well, so that feeling is quickly subdued :)

Besides stretching my finance too thin by buying now, there is also the market factor that tells me to be patient. First, the mortgage crisis will probably top out in the next or 2 years, so the housing price COULD adjust to my advantage. Second, there is still chance for the Fed to cut rate further after this initial cut, which can affect the mortage loan rate. We will just have to wait and see.

I will just keep chugging along like I do for awhile.

It is safe to say that almost everyone knows, has heard of, or has read the book “Rich Dad and Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. I myself read the book about 2 years ago. Before I introduce what other people have said about Robert Kiyosaki and his book, let me briefly mention my opinion.

The Good Stuff

• Encouragement for people to change their mentality and to a paradigm shift in financial thinking — This is a big plus because not being trapped in a narrow perspective and having the right mentality is the first step to do anything right.
• The importance of passive income — It is necessary to set yourself up with passive income to become financially secure and get rich faster.
• The mentioning of various financial concepts — I classify this as good stuff because this introduces people to new concepts and therefore, motivates and intrigues people to go out and learn about them. I became more apt to go study how the market and personal finance works. Financial knowledge and literacy is essential for financial security.

The Bad Stuff

• The mentioning of various financial concepts — I also classify this as bad stuff because I believe he either exaggerates in his stories or provides misleading information. In a few places, he seems to be nearly promoting illegal behaviors.
• Strong opposition to formal education — I believe formal insitutions still have their practical values and useful knowledges depending on how much individuals make use of the experience. It is detrimental to discourage and turn people away from academia.
• Negligence to mention or explain the risk in the entrepreneur endeavors that he advocates readers to do — From what I read in news, this has led people to take reckless financial actions leading to financial disasters. I am not holding him responsible because people should think for themselves, but as an author of a “financial book”, he should provide the full picture and cover the topic of risk somewhere… especially in the high-risk financial maneuver he tells people to do.
• Many vague areas in his stories — This makes me wonder how many of his “successful business” stories are true, and that he created them just to boaster himself and to help sell the book.

In short, I think the book is good in that it incurs people to think about their own finance and to do something about it. It is bad because of possibly misleading, false, and incomplete information, which can lead to dangerous and disastrous consequence if read incorrectly. That’s all from me. Below is what other people have said.

John T. Reed’s analysis of Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad – I read this VERY detail research and analysis on Robert Kiyosaki and his book recently. Together with the vagueness that I personally noticed in his book, we need to remain skeptical of this man and his words.

Let’s Read Some of Robert Kiyosaki’s Drivel – Silly words spoken by Robert Kiyosaki. This teaches us to do our own research and be cautious and skeptical about advice from “financial advisor”.

Kiyosaki is a Liar? – More “interesting things” said by Robert Kiyosaki!

Rich Dad, Poor Dad :: review – Brian and I agree on the positive points in Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Book Review: Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Concise review on the book stating the good and the bad.

Cautions on “Rich Dad” Robert Kiyosaki – Frugal talks more about things we need to be careful about the author and his book. He then talks about his view on how to obtain wealth and the importance of formal education.

Robert Kiyosaki, A Smart Investor? – Once again, you probably should not take Robert Kiyosaki seriously when he advises you how to invest. Let’s just keep him as someone who may inspire people to think differently.

Deconstructing Robert Kiyosaki – Trent provides insights into the kind of man who he thinks Robert Kiyosaki is.

Review: Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Full book review by Trent.

It seems that people generally agree on the few ideas Robert Kiyosaki has done correctly on his book, and they also agree on the same skeptical things. It’s probably enough Robert Kiyosaki for one day.

Today marks the second day after the Fed decides to cut the rate by half a point. And today, also marks the day after many weeks that my 401k gets out of the red. I know you are not supposed to have emotional swing with the market because if you do, you will lose many nights’ sleep and have numerous heart attakcs, but nonetheless, this is a bit exciting. Moving on.

In the news and especially lately, we hear people talking about the Fed. We also hear people talking about “the rate”. But what exactly are they?

The Fed
Fed stands for the Federal Reserve System that is the central banking system of the United States that has members ranging from goverment officials, regional banks, some private banks, economists and what have you. Slightly irrelevant. The important thins is that the current chairman of the Fed is Ben Bernanke and with the famous Alan Greenspan as the predecessor, so pay attention to them in the news if you care about the financial market.

“The Rate”
“The rate” stands for the federal funds rate, which is the interest rate banks charge each other. Banks are required to keep certain level of federal funds at the Federal Reserve. They want to keep their federal funds as small as possible because money in federal funds is just sitting there and does not make them MORE money. A bank with an excessive level of funds will charge another bank with a deficient level of fund to borrow money at “the rate”. Also, when the rate is low, banks can borrow more money to generate more business at a lower cost. You see how much the banks are affected by the rate. This is why the stock market is affected when the rate changes.

Now, how does that relate to us?
Because the federal funds rate affects the cost of the banks, it makes the interest rate on loans offered to consumers goes up or down (i.e. auto loan, credit cards…). This means the cost of the banks got partly transferred to us consumers, so the rate also affects the spending power of consumers. When consumers can spend more, all business will do well. When they can’t spend as much, business will grow slower or stop growing. This is another reason why the rate affects the stock market.

In short, rate increase leads to higher cost for business (bad news).
Rate decrease helps in stimulating business growth (good news).

These are my basic understanding of the fed and the rate and quickly explained.
As you can read, it is quite straight-forward.

However, there are many other factors and market conditions also involved. For example, too much growth will cause inflation to go up dramatically, which is bad for the long term. In that case, the rate will be increased to curb growth to allow sustainability of the economy. Additionally, as far as now is concerned, the rate cut may lead the people who made the mistakes that lead to the current credit/subprime crisis to overlook their flaws. Then history will repeat itself, with a worse occurrence possibly…

Hear what Greenspan explains some of this on Daily Show!

I enjoy how Jon Stewart rasied the critical questions with Greenspan about how the economy favors investing in the market , hedge funds, short bettings over work and simple savings and also the illusion of a free market.