Expenses

This category looks at stuff that we spend money on!

Confession Time: What is my biggest failing when it comes to money?

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Ah! I have to share with you my biggest failing… it has to be ‘carelessness’… And I’ll share with you why I think so…

When I bought my little portable PC, the Aspire One in the UK, I was very careful to make sure that I had all the documentation for a tax refund. The ACER Aspire One was purchased in John Lewis in Welwyn Garden City for GBP299.00 of which I was entitled to a tax refund of approximately GBP20.00 (it’s not a lot, granted, but anything to reduce that credit card bill that is staring at me!).

Well, I lost the paper work, I also lost several other sets of paperwork, after carefully keeping them for three weeks on numerous flights and in lots of different places. Last weekend, I reminded myself that I had to go to the post office, and promptly didn’t go. After that, the paperwork just vanished without a trace. Of course, I could have just filed the paperwork in the UK, as I intended to do, but I procrastinated going to the post office, made all sorts of excuses, and finally I lost the paperwork.

Were this the first time, I would’ve been more forgiving of myself but it’s not? I’ve lost items and documents frequently, including…

  • 1. leaving my bag with money OUTSIDE all night;
  • 2. throwing my passport in the toilet;
  • 3. losing my bankbook(s) more than twice;
  • 4. losing my ATM cards more than three times;
  • 5. lost several wallets; and much more…

I’ve tried all manner of ways to compensate for my own carelessness, including making a much bigger effort to organize myself, file papers and documents properly, and keep money properly… but the systems usually breakdown when I don’t follow it properly for whatever moment of inattention I am prone to. It’s at that point that things go awry. I’m much better organized than before, but still the effort I put into organising my bag hasn’t been successful, so…

When you know your weaknesses, it’s best to work out ways to compensate for them before they become a problem, especially if you can’t fix them!

Have you a ‘financial weakness’? How does it affect your life? What did you learn about yourself because of it?

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Current Holdings: October 13th, 2008 – Another Piece of the Puzzle

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Well, the market is back up today (but with the poor performance of the economy, it’s going to be a couple of months before we know the after effects), and in the interests of ‘coming clean’, I’ve decided to reveal what my current stock holdings are. And when it was done, I was staggered how much the portfolio had gone down.

current position

To view the entire sheet, just click on the image. What isn’t obvious from this chart, though, is the regular dividends that get paid into this account.

In 2007, they totalled $1031.53 and in 2008, they totalled $1078.24 with the prospect of another couple of months. In fact, the last couple of stock purchases had been made from the proceeds accumulating in the account. However, with the markets in turmoil, it’s likely that several or more of these dividends may be cut or axed altogether. Bank of America has already announced changes to its dividend as of this month. We also hold several thousand dollars in Mutual Funds via one of our insurance policies, but the details are quite old.

Since, 2001 I’ve focused more on investing for dividends as I believed that dividends do pay back some cash to the investor. Since purchasing my first dividend stocks, I’ve actually earned quite a lot over the years and managed to claw my stocks back to more than just par with 2001. But the last few weeks have eaten away approximately 45~50% of my portfolio’s nominal value. I had been underwater for a while (not including dividends).

The next few months are going to highlight how successful this process of choosing dividends has been, what volatility these dividends have, and whether dividends can actually bring some relief to the current mania. This is the next part of my gradual revelation of my personal assets, and once each part is out there, I will bring it together on a regular basis!

First Net Worth Statement – September 1995

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Yes, after all the turmoil in the markets, I reached a decision. I have decided to blog about my finances in more detail. While the exact extent is uncertain at the moment, I have decided that I need to track the performance of my investments more regularly.

A step back in time!

In truth, I’ve been keeping (initially monthly but now quarterly) updates for more than 10 years anyway. I can trace the finances all the way back to about 1995 when I had just got married. In those days, the record keeping was pretty unsophisticated, but I did use Microsoft Works 3.0 to tote up my assets.

September 1995

I think it was around the time of the 1996 Taiwan Straits missile crisis that focused my mind on how much money we didn’t have. While things were pretty tense here, it made me realize how important having some cash in the bank was. Shortly after that, I set aside nearly HK$10,000 in a bank account that earned a pitiful amount of interest for quite some time, but at least the money was there, for an emergency.

High or Low? Which figure?

Let’s take a look shall we! We had $66,000 or thereabouts actually in the bank, I also held about NT$7000 in HK$, an outstanding (but never repaid) loan of NT$25000 which I subsequently wrote off, and NT$75,000 from a hui (read more about a Taiwanese ‘hui’). Overall, I would say that this was a pretty optimistic statement because it counted approximately NT$100K of assets that weren’t in my control! This was about US$6300 (at US$:NT$ 27.43167 – an average for that month) or about US$2670 at the more conservative ‘unkind’ evaluation!

Any guesses on what the current figures are? When did you start doing your Net Worth Statements?

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