Case study: 1999 citi credit card statement analysis

Jan. 12, 2019

Introduction

It is my personal finance research. I like to figure out what my thought process in 1999, twenty years younger. What are my major problems and what I should learn from those mistakes, things I did correct.

Case study

First I like to review the expense by store, and also the graph of amount of purchase.

The graph is the following.

Actionable Items

I worked for a startup company called Bank Atlantic Entertainment, later called online gaming. 

I spent vacation to San Diego, airline ticket $450.00 dollars for 5 days. I spent vacation to New York as well, I visited word trade center in New York. 

The clothing over $1900 dollar is not necessary. I should limit to $200 dollars for a year. 

One of ideas is to argue to myself, how to save $5,000 dollars from those $10,000 dollars. How to entertain myself without spending money. I have 750 square foot home and I worked full time, most of time I did not have time to stay at home. 

Every week I went to Ross store, and also I made purchase every week almost. 

I also talked to my relatives and my mom every week, the long distance call expense is more than $360.00 US dollars. I remembered one month I spent over $250 US dollars for long distance call, every minutes is over 60 cents in US dollars. 

I need to study my own behavior, the activities I enjoy, and the ability I can learn and what are the most weakness in my finance knowledge. 

I spent over 300 times purchases. Right now I did not have any receipt. I cannot identify the items and the price. But that is a lot of time to visit store and go shopping. 

How to coach younger myself in 1999?

I had a brand new  Ford Explorer, I purchased in March 1999. I can get any cloth in less than one hour. 

First of all, I should not purchase a brand new car since my saving is less than $10,000 dollars. 

I made a brand new Ford Explorer in March, 1999. And I purchase a condo in August in 1999. 

Here is my purchase of car documented in my blog. Here is the condo purchased documented in my blog. 

After I purchased the home in August, 1999, my saving was less than $3000 us dollars. I should cut down my expenses immediately.