Case study: Personal finance education

June 25, 2019

Introduction

I felt so frustrated in Nov. 2018, and I did not know what to do. So I decide to move my research from algorithm and data structure to personal finance research. I like to grow rich and build wealth. I could not believe that I like to study personal finance in the age of 52 years old, first time in my life, I do not want any relatives, friends, I just like to figure out what is going on.  I know that I am running out of time to advance my career, I had two onsite from Amazon in 2016 and 2018. I have to figure out how to grow rich and build wealth.

How to overcome the difficulty?

I live like a teenager, I did not take any risk to purchase a condo when I came to Vancouver in 2010. I had a lot of tears and went over my own personal finance research starting from Dec. 2018 to March 2019; I went over those credit card statements, and then disputed with my siblings from Dec. 2018 to March 2019.

Emotions are biggest enemy for me to build wealth and grow rich.

I wasted net income over $100,000 US dollars back from 1998 to 2001. Because I want all, I want wealth, I want to have relatives in my life, my mom, and friends, I wanted a brand new car Ford Explorer SUV, I wanted so many clothes, travel, stocks, and vacations.

In March 2019, the first time I noticed that I missed 10 year stock market bull market, all more retirement funds and saving are earning less than 2% interest rate.  I found out that I am not financial responsible person from 2010 to 2019. I was so ashamed that I do not study personal finance, I even do not do any book keeping. I was too emotional to live a normal life, fight for opportunity to grow rich and build wealth, no matter how small income I have, no matter if I have permanent residentship in USA or not.

I learn that I was so stubborn and did not take any risk to learn personal finance, learn how to invest on US stock market. All those savings are still the same amount after over two decades.

I invested on stock market, but I did not spend time on the research. I had time from 1998 to 2009 9 years on stock market, but I did not spend 10 hours a month to study stock market, economy, and get into detail, show curiosity in building wealth. And in 2009, I decided to sell every thing and closed stock account and IRA account from Ameritrade.com, since I failed my Canada permanent residentship application.