Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Road to personal finance excellence

April 17, 2019

Introduction



I like to learn how to get on the road to personal finance excellence. I did build my 401K and IRA account with balance over $10,000 in 2002 and over $20,000 in 2007, but I did not connect dots from 2007 to 2019. I got lost and completely avoid stock market and forget to get back in stock market. I did not stay in the course of equity market, I missed last 10 year bull stock market run.


Why I am lucky one?


I start to learn personal finance by myself, and then I start to learn how to invest and learn from morningstar.com videos on youtube.com. I keep learning every day, weekends I spend whole day to work on learning.

I have strong math foundation and I can understand the concept pretty quickly. Through six months learning, I start to find mistakes I made on my 401K account and IRA CD account. It is slow but I have confidence that I learn something new about economy and how I should embrace the economy as an individual.

Keep a journal


It is hard for me to grow up as a person with financial wisdom. I have to keep a journal what I read and what  I watch last six months. I start last two months to focus on morningstar videos a lot.

First three months I worked on frugal study, minimalism, cheap vs frugal, Warren Buffet's investment, and all other books and strategies talk etc.



Why I think I am lucky? 


I still remembered the day I played tennis against wall in Nov. 2018, central park in the city of Burnaby, Canada. I found out that it was so depressing in my personal finance, I have no clue what I should do. I chose Christian belief after my first laidoff in 2001, and then I experience another laidoff in 2007; I changed the country to immigrant to Canada, and work on an ordinary job and push myself hard to advance to next level. After three years from 2016 to 2018, two onsite from Amazon, I understand that the ultimate goal is to build wealth and grow rich. Why I am ashamed of talking about it, blogging about, expressing anxiety and painful experience on it.

I decide to move on personal finance research. I know that I can not reinvent myself just being a Christian. I could not reinvent myself being just a hard working algorithm and data structure specialist. My college classmate in SJTU talked to me to say that I should not try to apply Amazon anymore. She mentioned once that she worked on her retirement fund in stock market. That is also a reminder for me to go back to the stock market.

I have a young sister who invested on stock market and then she bought an expensive car using the profit. But she could not explain what she learns and how she learns clearly. She talked about the feeling about an individual stock and how she feels the price should go up etc.

I have science education and good at math. I have near 10 year experience to learn how a business works in Canada. I like to push myself to learn something and make judgement based on my understanding.

I have to learn how to make passive income, put trust on whole economy, and whole young generation. My time is limited. I cannot go out weekend to pick up a minimum wage job to make extra cash since I need to have a good rest after the whole week full time job.

I also work a lot of hours on programming, contest, and blogging etc.

So I learn how to step out my depression finance situation, and learn how to work on next step, and what to look into.

Here are highlights:
1. Work on daily on personal finance study
2. Try to get as many as possible ideas related to personal finance
3. Move to frugal life style
4. Move to minimalism study
5. Learn how to manage the rental property very well.
6. Learn how to get back to stock market
7. Understand hedge, dollar cost average, growth stock fund, emerging ...
8. Keep learning and play a small step every time
9. Come out the portfolio for my retirement USA fund $26,000 dollars - rebalance ...
10. Expand my personal finance research into more areas.


To summarize, I am lucky for the following facts:

I have time to learn the personal finance.
I find very good study material from Morningstar.com videos on youtube.com.
I have retirement fund $26,000 dollars for me to play, this is really challenging part.
I have a full paid-off condo in USA near Florida Atlantic university for me to learn marketing, sales, and small business.
I also have $50,000 Canada dollar cash for me to learn how to invest as well. 

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