Relax, Life Ain't That Bad

I don’t know what I can really say now. My life has been fine. I feeling like, after going through the holiday period, everything is turning back to normal, and I am starting to really enjoy and love my job. I think what I have found is that my satisfaction at a job is mainly dependent on who I work with. My previous job was bad because the people I worked with were bad people. But things have changed now. I am in a completely different team doing different work. The people I work with now are competent and kind. I feel so happy to go to work that I don’t even feel any desire to go on a holiday. In fact, it is not just my work that I am happy with. I am happy with just about all aspects of my life now. I have a girlfriend and certainly the novelty and excitement of having a girlfriend has suddenly worn off, but I don’t mind having a girlfriend, and I don’t mind if she dumps me either, so either way I am covered. I am totally hedged! I think my experience with the girlfriend constantly complaining and putting expectation on you is an annoyance I’d rather not have. I’d be perfectly happy living a single life.

I have made it a goal in my thirties now to man up and stand up for myself. I need to have confidence in my decisions and my ability to manage my own life. I think the way my life is at the moment is fine and I don’t want to change anything. I am also now willing to defend my life to the death. I feel like I need to do this because the life I live is very different to the life everyone else thinks I should live.

I am thirty now. I live with my parents when most people think I should move out. Most people tell me that I should move out in order to gain independence, learn how to cook, get a girlfriend, and not be a burden.

If I needed to, I could simply leave the family home right now and rent a house by myself. I earn enough to live by myself. I have spoken to my mother and have told her that if she wants to I am happy to move out. But she practically begged me to stay at home and argued that I would save money rather than waste it on bills, rent, council rates, and so forth. This counters the argument that I am a burden on my parents. My mother wants me to stay with her and I certainly do not mind being with her because I can save on rent, bills, and council rates. It’s a win-win situation. Because I do have my own job, I am not dependent on her. I could rent my own place and I don’t imagine cooking is difficult.

The cooking issue, in my opinion, is stupid. People always argue that I need to move out so that I can learn how to cook. I could easily just learn how to cook at home right now but I choose not to because I could not be bothered and because I don’t need to. Many people argue that eating out is expensive and so it is necessary to learn how to cook. People usually give me this argument while I am eating out with them! My counterargument is that I don’t eat out all the time. I do go home and eat food that my mother or grandmother have prepared. Furthermore, I am able to save 90% of my income. Can they beat that? If not, who are they to give me advice on living frugal. Sure I eat out, but I don’t pay rent, mortgage interest, banking fees, credit card fees, car loan, day care costs, phone plan costs, etc. Don’t lecture me on frugality! I only really eat out during lunch at work and not only does it provide me with food but it also spares me from having to cook at home and bring in food during my commute that can turn rotten and stale and stink up the office. When I take a break at work, I feel I need to get out of the office to clear my mind and eating out and getting coffee helps me with that. Eating out is also social because I invite friends to eat with me. Most of the time I spend with my friends is during lunch at work. People who criticize me for eating out or not cooking usually do so while we are eating out and I just think to myself, if you don’t want to eat out then fine, let’s stop eating out. I will stop eating out with you.

Another argument people make is that I need to move out because I need to get a girlfriend and because girls don’t like men who live with their parents. Firstly, I currently live with my mother and I currently have a girlfriend, so that hypothesis is dead. Furthermore, even if girls don’t like men who live with their parents, I consider that to be a problem with women, not a problem with me. As I said earlier, I can survive just fine with or without a girlfriend. Back on the topic of independence, I believe I am totally independent. I am not dependent on female intimacy. If the girlfriend dumps me, I don’t care. No female can lure me to get me to do what she wants. I hate it when women think they are powerful just because they are female. They think they can lure men to do whatever they want. Most women are not even that attractive and their attractiveness diminishes fast. I am also mostly asexual and do not care about female attempts to trap men into the web of marriage.

Back to the topic of independence. I have been told to move out of home to be more independent, but I am currently very independent. Like I said, I can move out of home right now and rent a place of my own. Cooking, cleaning, and ironing is not hard. I can easily learn through Google and YouTube. Some people laugh at this idea without giving me a solid explanation why there is anything wrong with it. I am so independent that not only am I independent of my parents but I am also independent of my employer. If I wanted to, I could retire from my job right now and live in Southeast Asia. As the retirecheap.asia website says, retiring in SE Asia allows you to live a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget. I am very happy to fly over and just retire at the age of thirty but I do like my job and I feel like maybe I can make a difference here, so I work for fun, I suppose, and if things go wrong (e.g. I get fired) then I always have Asia in the backpocket as a safety net. I am not like the average person. I have no debt. I have small expenses. I love my lifestyle. I can afford to eat out. Other people, on the other hand, have mountains of debt. They have car loans, credit card loans, mortgage, house and contents insurance, childcare fees, and private school fees. These people must work at their jobs for another 30 to 40 years just so they can clear their debts and finally retire at the ripe old age of 65.

Feb 2014 Update on New Years Resolution

I've said before that I've started a resolution for 2014 to do more weightlifting. I initially set myself the ambitious goal of 100 minutes per week (lifting 10 KG at any one time, either holding one 10 KG dumbbell or 2 x 5 KG dumbbells), which turned out to be far too ambitious. Nevertheless, I still managed to do a reasonable and regular amount. See the results below.

As you can see on the graph, there is a point when my weightlifting starts to plateau, but that is due to an injury I had when I fell over.

In addition to tracking how much weightlifting I've been doing, I've also been keeping track of how much walking and how much learning I've been doing. I have installed an app called Noom Walk on my phone. All you have to do is install this app and automatically it tracks how much walking you do per day. It is not a perfect app. There were days when I'm sure I walked around quite a bit but it didn't log any of the walking I did. But nevertheless, I like the idea of have everything measured for you without too much effort. The data can be exported from the app in a CSV file.

In terms of learning, I am using the app AnkiDroid to create flashcards for myself. In fact, I am a long-time Anki fan and have been using it since my university days (probably for about ten years now) but only in the last few years have I used it on my phone. I don't study anymore but I still like to learn about new things, so I put new, interesting, and important knowledge into Anki and get into the habit of revising this new knowledge in the morning when I am on the training coming in to work. The great thing about AnkiDroid is that it also keeps track of your progress over time. The worst thing about AnkiDroid is that the synchronization is horrible. That is to say, I get into the habit of syncing every time I start using this app and every time I stop using it, but there are still syncing errors that appear. It is not like Google Keep or Evernote that sync automatically and seamlessly in the background. 

Many people are skeptical of measuring progress like this. Just because I measure progress it doesn't mean I will actually do it, but I do believe that measuring progress is a good first step because you don't know if you've failed unless you measure your performance. Seeing yourself perform poorly can give you motivation to do better. Another idea I've been having is to impose upon myself a financial punishment if I don't get a certain result.

Sony Xperia Z2 vs Nexus 5

My Sony Xperia Z is currently in for repairs due to a faulty camera. My main gripe with the Xperia Z is the camera, which is far too slow, and the emergence of dust particles in the lenses doesn't help either. In the meantime I have been using my backup phone, the $150 Kogan Dual Core, which although it is cheap is quite poor compared to the Xperia. It is significantly slower and the display is simply bad. If you really need to buy a cheap smartphone, I recommend paying a little bit more to get the Kogan Agora HD (Quad Core) or the Motorola Moto G. I do not recommend the Kogan Agora Dual Core smartphone. The slowness of the device alone has frustrated me.

I am really tempted to simply buy a Nexus 5 right now but I have heard rumours that the Sony Xperia Z2 will come out soon. The Xperia Z2 is rumoured to have the following specifications:

• 5.2-inch Full HD display with a resolution of 2560x1440
• quad-core 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor 
• 3GB of RAM
• 20.7-megapixel main camera
• 3,700mAh battery.

A 2560x1440 resolution would make this a 2.5K phone, which is quite incredible. The screen size, at 5.2 inches, it starting to get quite large. The Z and Z1 were already large phones, but the Z2 is looking even larger. That being said, if largeness were a problem, there is always the 4.3 inch Xperia Z1 Compact, but there is something about returning to a small screen that doesn't appeal to me. If you pay a lot of money for a phone, you want to get your money's worth, so getting less screen real estate, fewer pixels, smaller battery, and so forth just doesn't sit well with me.

Treating a Shallow Flesh Wound

I am a clumsy person. Over the weekend I fell outdoors and scratched my elbow. Flesh tore off, creating a shallow wound. I was fortunate that there were no deep cuts. See below for a picture taken on the day I fell (sorry image is poor).

To treat the wound, I washed it with Dettol and Betadeine before applying gauze and then sticking it there with surgical tape. I took off the gauze every day but what I found was that, when taking the gauze off, I would peel off the scab and as a result the wound did not heal and I'd be back where I started.

This has been going on for a week now and the wound has not healed. I went to the pharmacist today who recommend that I put on a Smith & Nephew clear barrier film and, instead of taking it off every day, leave it on for as long as possible before taking it off gently and applying the same film again.

Smith & Nephew Clear Barrier Film

Flesh wound with clear barrier film attached

 

Gauze

 

 

 

Five Rules of Wealth Accumulation

Is there more to life than money? Of course there is, but money is still important. For society, money (or currency) provides a medium for exchange that eliminates the need for barter and therefore avoids the inefficiencies of barter. For the individual, money gives you the means to buy essentials for life, that is, food, clothing, and shelter. Of course, if you have enough money to provide you with food, clothing, and shelter for the rest of your life, money is a luxury rather than a necessity. Regardless, below are important rules for accumulating wealth. Although some of these rules may be repeated in other posts, I think if an idea is important, it needs to be repeated.

1. Pay yourself first, automatically

I was made aware of this piece of advice from the book The Automatic Millionaire. The basic idea is that, rather than spending your income and investing what remains, it is better to invest a fixed amount as soon as you receive your pay and then spending whatever remains.

There are two ways to achieve this. One involves simply talking to someone in HR to put a specific amount from your pay into a separate savings account or fund. If you are a salaried worker who received a fixed amount every fortnight, another way to pay yourself first involves having two different bank accounts. You set your bank accounts up so that your pay goes into one bank account and then automatically, a few days after, a fixed amount goes into another bank account. You carry around a card for access to only the bank account you use for spending.

Regardless of the details on how you achieve this, you are fundamentally trying to make saving automatic. Life throws things at you. You don't want to have to think too much or bother with transferring money here and there in order to reach your savings goals. By making savings automatic, you don't have to do anything other than keeping yourself employed.

How much do you save? That is going to be different for different people, but I suggest that you start with an amount that is challenging and sticking to it. When I started working full-time out of university, I was only earning $40,000 a year before tax ($1538 a fortnight), and I automatically saved $1000 per fortnight simply because it was a nice-looking number. After a few years, I increased this to $1300 per fortnight.


2. Diversify

"Divide your investments among many places, for you do not know what risks might lie ahead."

~Ecclesiastes 11:2 NLT

It's one thing to automatically save your money but it's another thing entirely to make sure your money is safe. Personal finance experts often tell people to minimise risk by researching and doing your due diligence, but investments can be incredibly complex. Warren Buffet, the world's greatest investor, advises people to only invest in what you know. However, I believe that even if you think you know an investment, you may not. For example, if you buy shares in a company, you may know the business model, the products being sold, and so forth, but will you know every decision the managers make or what strategies they have to make the company profitable. You cannot possibly know all the conversations that go on behind closed door among the directors and executives. The problem of asymmetric information that exists between investors and managers is to an extent fixed with financial reporting and accountancy but there are limits to the accuracy and usefulness of this information.

In my opinion, when choosing investments, it is wise to research your investments but don't be afraid to go with your gut and, most importantly, regardless of what your gut says, you must diversify. In other words, do not keep your money in one place. Spread it across different types of investments in different financial institutions.

Diversification is hard work. It's not easy opening multiple funds or accounts in multiple financial institutions. The paperwork can get overwhelming and during tax time it can be difficult to account for the different tax treatments that different investments require (if this is the case be sure to use a qualified accounting at tax time). However, diversification is important, and if you have any doubts about this, do some research into Bernard Madoff. No matter what your research tells you, no matter what your gut tells you, and no matter what the financial statements say, all investments have risk, and the only way to mitigate risk is to diversify.



3. Invest for income

Whenever I invest, I like to invest in assets that produce income. The main appeal of these investments come from the idea that I can have money automatically dropped into my bank account without me doing any work at all. We all have expenses. We need to eat, buy clothes, and put a roof over our heads. If the income from your investments can cover the cost of these necessities, you do not need to work ever in your life and you may find that you enjoy your work a lot more because the pressure is off. You can take risks and be yourself rather than kowtowing to your manager. If your employer won't pay you, your investments will.

Positive cashflow is freedom and negative cashflow is slavery. It's as simple as that.

Of course, when investing for income, don't forget to diversify because high-income investments are risky. The higher the yield from an investment, the riskier it is. Some companies have high yields because their prices are going down because investors foresee future problems. Sometimes dividends are paid not from earning but from borrowings, which puts into question the sustainability of these dividends. You should invest for income but also remember to diversify.



4. Avoid debt, obligations, or commitment as much as possible

"The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender."

~Proverbs 22:7

Debt is slavery. Try to stay out of debt as much as possible. Debt occurs when you borrow money from someone and have an obligation to pay back at a later date. The problem lies in the uncertainty of the future. Can you know for sure that you will earn the money to pay the money back?

But I will go so far as to say that it is not just debt you should avoid but all future obligations or commitment. This means, for example, avoiding phone plans that obligate you to pay a fixed amount (say $60 per month for 24 months) and getting a cheap but good phone and using a pre-paid SIM card.

Don't get a car loan. Save up money and pay cash for a second-hand car. Some people think a new car must be more reliable and that, when you buy a second-hand car, you are buying someone else's problems. Before you buy a second-hand car, you can easily get it independently checked for defects. Buying second-hand means you avoid the massive depreciation associated with new cars. When you drive a new $30,000 car from the dealer, automatically about $5,000 in value is wiped away. If you buy a $7,000 second-hand car, there will still be depreciation, but not as much.

You should also be extremely careful with intimate relationships with others as this creates commitment or obligation. One of the weirdest observations I have made is how society labels men who are cautious with commitment as "commitment phobes" who need to "man up" quickly. They talk about commitment phobia as if it were negative. If anyone tries to manshame me by labelling me a "commitment phobe" I will simply tell them that yes I am cautious about signing up to something that would bind me and that I am proud of it. If a car salesman tried to sell you a Ferrari and wanted you to go on a car loan and you hesitate, that is commitment phobia. You're expressing reluctance to commit to a long-term arrangement. It is a prudent thing to look before you leap. 

If you sign a marriage contract, you are entering into a serious commitment of your time and cash and there are extreme risks associated. Everyone needs intimacy but too many people rush into securing themselves what they believe is an infinite supply of intimacy without fully considering cost and risk. As a man, how I handle this issue involves treating female intimacy as a product that you buy. You pay a female money in the form of gifts, dinner, lunch, and events and in return she provides you with the intimacy, and you can alter how much you spend on her depending on the quantity and quality of the intimacy she supplies. Do not have the mindset that your girlfriend is the monopoly supplier of female intimacy because otherwise she will charge monopoly prices. Always have the attitude that whatever your girlfriend is supplying, you can get it somewhere else, and this will keep prices competitive.

Of course, there are some obligations you cannot avoid, for example, you need to eat, so you are obligated to spend money to buy food to eat in order to keep yourself alive (unless you grow your own food, but then you are obligated to harvest that food). There are also those necessities that you just must have that only come in contracts that involve future payments, e.g. broadband internet, private health insurance, utility bills, rent, and so forth.



5. Play the pauper

Once I have a fixed amount of my pay automatically invested in multiple investments, I don't keep track of how much money I have saved up. Many people track their net worth every month and proudly boast about it to the world. I don't because I know that I already have enough money saved up to fly off to Asia and retire if I need to. If I save up more than what I need to save up, why do I need to bother keeping track of how much I have? Being ignorant of my wealth helps because, if someone asks me how much money I have, I can, with all honesty, tell them I have no idea. It is genuine and plausible ignorance.

Why is it important to be ignorant of your wealth and be very vague about how much money you have? One word: theft. If other people think you're a pauper, they will leave you alone. If other people think you are rich, you have a target on your back. People will come up with all sorts of manipulations and cons to get to your money. This is especially true of people who are close to you, for example, relatives, parents, children, and spouses.

I would even go so far as to say that you should both conceal your wealth and also play the pauper. In other words, pretend to be poor. This goes against human instinct. Normally people purchase status symbols in order to show off wealth, but I do the opposite because the pride I would get from showing off wealth is nothing compared to the fear and anxiety I get from thinking about theft. This means you should dress modestly (but nearly, not like a bum) and avoid prestigious brand-name products. Constantly talking about how little money you have because of rising costs and try to convince others that you don't earn much money.

By playing the ignorant pauper, you avoid yourself a lot of heartache. Gone are the begging relatives or friends who want to borrow money off you or get you to invest in their coffee shop venture. People will leave you alone and theft risk is greatly reduced.

One potential problem with looking poor is that people who think they are richer than you may put you down. Class warfare is as old as human history. It will never go away, and if someone thinks he or she is richer than you then it is likely they will ridicule you. You can fix this problem by not looking too poor. You can also fix this problem by trying to ignore the bully. If that is not possible, my strategy is to act like a psycho mobster. When someone ridicules you, simply shout back at them and make vague allusions to your connections with organized crime. Constantly read true crime fiction and constantly talk about death and killing and murder. Your friends should become wary and scared of you over time and will be fearful of provoking you. You need to be careful that you act psycho only and that you don't actually kill someone or even threaten to kill someone, as these acts are likely illegal. I only go crazy this when it is clear that someone is a snob and continues to ridicule me and I cannot ignore them or distance myself from them easily.

Specsavers Extrathin vs Ultrathin lenses

 

A word of warning about Specsavers. I went in to a Specsavers and told them that I had extras cover with a private health fund and so I heard rumours that I could be able to get glasses with nothing to pay out of pocket because the health fund would pay for everything. The salesperson there told me that this is true but only for standard lenses. If I wanted thin lenses then I would need to pay some money out of pocket. There are different grades of thinness according to the Specsavers phamplet (above). I told told to get the "super thin and light" but I asked further about whether there was much different between "super thin and light" and "extra thin and light." The salesperson showed me samples of the two and based on me touching and feeling them, there wasn't much difference at all, so I opted for the cheaper option. In hindsight I probably could have opted for the $60 "thinner aspheric lenses." Next time I get glasses from Specsavers I will ask about whether I can touch and feel the "thinner aspheric lenses" to see if they are too heavy or not.

Bottom line is, the salesperson may try to upsell you to get you to spend more. Keep asking to touch and feel samples of the cheaper options to see if there really is any noticeable difference. If not, opt for the cheaper option. If you push the price down enough, you may be in a position where the health fund covers everything and you will not be out of pocket at all (or by much).

Also be aware that in order for you to be better off with a health fund, the premiums you pay need to be less than the amount you take out of the health fund. You should do an annual review of cashflow to see whether or not you are better off with the health fund or not.

New Year's Resolution 2014: 100 Minutes of Exercise per Week

A month or so ago, I told everyone that, as a New Year's resolution for 2014, I would join a gym. Then I told myself that I would get heavier dumbbells so I can workout at home. I realised that if I wanted to be fit, I needed to define a goal and measure my progress. So here it is: 100 minutes per week. Why one hundred? It's a nice number, and many experts recommend exercising three times a week, each time for 30 minutes, so that comes to about 90 minutes, rounded up to 100 minutes. The exercise can be any exercise, but my focus will be on weights because I would like to develop more muscles. As they say, a bad measure is better than no measure, so I will stick with this and see how it goes. My plan is to track how I am tracking with my goal in a spreadsheet in Google Docs and to report on my progress every month.