Craiglist.org is probably the best free site to sell your unwanted items. It’s the internet version of garage sale. The next distant best site is kijiji.com which has been bought out by EBAY as http://www.ebayclassifieds.com/. Throughout Christmas & Valentine’s day, I have been posting some of my extra unwanted items for sale. It takes several postings & transactions to actually learn the art of selling on craiglist.

Here are some precious lessons that I have learned from my experiences of over 10 successful transactions:

1. Privacy issues: most people would post their emails and/or contact phone number within the posting. If you care about your own privacy, don’t do that. Potential buyers can always email your registered craiglist email by clicking on your post. Once you post your email and phone numbers, they get copied to so many other craiglist copycat sites. Your posts will expire after 45 days on craiglist, but on other copycat sites, it could be forever. This way it reduce the chance of getting phone & email spams too. If you really have to post a phone number, use a Google Voice phone number.

2. Do your market research: For every item that you sell, you should always think as the potential buyer, and search briefly on Amazon, craiglist, ebay, Walmart/Target, etc. for the same item. That is the only way to determine your best pricing. A good price will always sell itself. You obviously want to undercut others a little. And you should post a couple of your search result in your own ad too to convince the buyer that indeed they are getting a better price from you.

3. Pricing: if the absolute price of your item is high, it will really take a bigger effort to sell (unless it’s highly popular like ipad, Wii, etc). You have to know that people who browse & buy from craiglist probably don’t have much spare money to begin with. If they have money, most of them are extreme price bargainers. I didn’t understand this initially, but after awhile, I realize that ALL people who actually buy from craiglist always expect a price cut from your original posting price, even if the posted price is dirt cheap already. To optimize on between getting more interests versus finishing off the transaction, my advice is to post a low enough price to stir interests, and then reserve a 5% to 10% discount for price negotiation. The room should not be more than 10%, or else you may not even get any replies to your post. And give the buyer your final 5% to 10% discount to sweeten the deal or fatten up your profit margin, depending on how things go.

4. Taking a firm stand on your pricing: If you ever want to be successful in any negotiation, the first thing that you need to understand is that you need to position yourself to walk away from the deal anytime mentally. So unless you simply want to throw away your item for sale, then you need to have an attitude of not being able to sell your item when the price is not right. Why is this even important? Because there are so many craiglist trolls who would low-ball your price extremely to almost insult your common sense. If you get those low-ball offers, just ignore them. And if anybody asks for your lowest price, don’t give away all of your padded 5% to 10% room all at once.

5. Price negotiation techniques: Because Craiglist is like a silent invisible auction, there is no way for the buyer to know how many people are bidding and at what price. In a way, it’s like selling/buying a home with a given listed price. Therefore, what you need to do is to guess the buyer’s willingness and create the image of invisible bidding frenzy if possible. So if you have only one offer, you may still want to state to that only buyer that you cannot give more discount to this only buyer because “the other buyer” has given you this price already. You could risk losing out this only buyer, but it would preserve your little amount of price margins.

6. Art of advertisement: Photos are a must. Always emphasize the good points, and disclose any necessary defects that the buyer should know in the ad. Your advertisement must be honest (so that you don’t waste your time & buyers’ time besides all the legal issues). And during the entire sale process, never tell your buyers anything that could discourage the sale. I was selling a big CRT TV with HD-input at a cheap price. Because of the low price & the HD confusion with the LCD, I got more than 10 inquiries. I was over-confident and told all of the buyers as my disclosure that if they get hurt in moving the 150+ pounds of CRT, I cannot be responsible. Well, that did it, and scared away ALL buyers. I actually needed to repost my ad to sell the TV. At the end, I was still able to sell my 30+ inch CRT for about $30.

7. Prompt response: especially if your item is hard to sell. The buyer sometimes has a sudden compulsive urge. And if you don’t continue this purchasing process promptly along with him or her, the deal will simply not go through once the buying urge is gone. So in the email exchanges, not only you should be prompt, but also you would recreate buyer’s urge repeatedly by how much you cherish this item of yours but only selling it because of …(some “unfortunate” or inconvenient reasons).

8. A Big handshake to finish off: In whatever business negotiations, you should learn that only by making your customers happy, then it’s a good business. I had repeat business on Craiglist from a customer because I made him “happy” in terms of quality and pricing. I didn’t need to negotiate much at all for the second & third time because he knows that I had already “given” him the best possible price. Well, of course, I was still making a tiny amount of money (even though he still thinks that he is getting the best possible deal from me).

9. Post at the optimal time: Based on my personal experiences, I think posting on Friday and Sunday/Monday night or Saturday and Monday/Tuesday early morning should be the best. Monday & Tuesday internet traffics are always the heaviest for almost all sites. However, since it’s an internet garage sale, I usually prefer posting for the weekend on Friday. Quite often, the sale is all done before Monday, if you have priced your item correctly.

10. Don’t post too often too fast: this is just a special “feature” on craiglist. If you post too frequently (like more than 2 posts in an hour), your account can be suspended, and/or your posts will never appear. Stick to craiglist rules carefully, and don’t re-post the same item. Otherwise, you may need to find a new IP address and create a new account to continue selling. I actually found that it was quite easy to trip on craiglist’s watch for spammers.

11. Xmas season helps A LOT: one third or more of the total retail sales happens from Thanksgiving to New Year. Be part of it and go with the flow. Your asking prices can also be higher during this time (simply due to more buyers).

I learned so much from selling on craiglist that I sort of went from being a total nerd to a semi-savvy salesman. The lessons were worth so much more than any amount of money that I was making on craiglist. When my kids grow bigger, I also want them to learn these invaluable lessons firsthand by selling on craiglist. It really takes practices to be a good negotiator, and selling on craiglist is the best prep for that.

So what did I sell on craiglist? I sold PSP, Nintendo DS, baby crib, Legos, TV, several baby & kid’s toys such as tricycles. If the items were new, I made 3% to 15%. If the items were used, I recovered 40% to 100% of the original price that I paid (except the TV of course). I would say that it was a pretty darn good record.

I’m revising my last budget made in 2008 due to inflation and various changes in spending patterns. A household budget always needs to reflect the reality. Otherwise it loses its purpose.
A budget shows where the family finance situates and allows future financial planning to be possible. If you don’t even know where the money is going out, you cannot possibly know where your finance will be 5 or 10 years from now.

Reviewing the differences between the current budget versus my 2008 budget, there are several categories that have gone up. The income in this budget has increased by $25K, but I’m budgeting a lot taxes now to reflect the fact that my marginal bracket is basically 45% to 50% (even back in 2008). The other increases are the new $230 extra-curricular lessons for my sons and $140 extra in food & dining, and about $300 extra spending for my wife & kids on toys/clothes/electronics/etc. My charity contribution has increased by about 30% too. And traveling back home & vacation has gone up too by almost $800 a year.

Looking at this budget and the corresponding increases from 2008, I can identify that my kids are not frugal at all. They are basically getting every new lego boxes out there, and lots of Wii games too. I think it is time to put up some constraints. That is probably the only item that I can cut down because all other increases are due to inflation or are necessary. Looking forward, children’s educational cost will continue to go up as kids grow up.

From above, my total expenses (in white) are $6318, and my total taxes (in red) are $3893, and the savings (in green) are $3063. Assuming a household income of about $135K, or a monthly wage of $11250, my cashflow after deducting all the above items is negative $2024, which needs to be deducted from the above savings number. Please note that the above taxes are just the taxes that one might be paying at such income level. My marginal bracket is at about 50%, instead of just 24% from the above.

My net saving has dropped (again) from $45000 to $30400 in 2008 to now at about $16000 in 2011. This is after I account for the 15% discount in share purchases of my company ESPP plan. Unfortunately, I expect my saving levels to continue to dwindle, due to the increase in the child expenses going forward. My annual cashflow now is negative $24300 from above, and that is very observable in my bank’s balance. I need to constantly infuse more cash into my regular checking account to just pay all the expenses.

I’m drawing exactly the same conclusion as in my 2008 budget:

What’s the lesson here? I’m not becoming much less frugal, but my saving drops. Inflation accounts partially for the drop, but the main reason is as stages in life progress, your saving (if it is still positive) will be dropping to its LOWEST when your children start going to college. I’ve written an entire post (boring, but truth that you don’t want to hear) on this point to advise anyone out there to start SAVING NOW. The best time to accumulate your savings is before having any kids, especially before getting married (and after you just started working). The next best time to accumulate your savings is when your kids finish college, and before you retire. The rest of the time, one should consider oneself lucky to scrap away something left after all expenses are paid. If you have any doubts about my drawn conclusion, simply ask your parents.

I’ve always chosen cashback instead of air mileages for my credit card reward. The reason is cashback goes into your pocket directly, and unlike air mileages or point systems, it is not subject to the conversion factor change in the future.

I have arranged my spending on credit cards as follows:
1. Grocery, drugstore, and any gasoline purchases not at Costco for a flat 5% cashback on HSBC Platinum Cashback Card.
2. Restaurants for 3% cashback and travel related stuffs for 2% cashback on True Earnings American Express card.
3. Essentially 2% cashback on Citi’s Driver’s Edge Option credit card for everything else. It’s 1% + 1% via submitting mileage record. I just submit it for every oil change that I need to do for my car. On this card, it’s actually by point system. I only buy $100 Macy’s gift card using 10000 Thank You points so that I can get a conversion factor of 1 point for 1 cent. Unfortunately, this program is going away now.

I have searched on the internet for a better deal to replace the Citi’s Driver’s Edge card, but I can’t find anything. EmigrantDirect had a 1.4% cashback on everything but it’s gone too. The best thing that I could find is the 2% cashback on Fidelity Rewards American Express card, but the credits go into your Fidelity brokerage account.

I will need to think about this deal, since I’m a little wary of opening another brokerage account just for that. I have consolidated most of my accounts at WellsFargo (where I trade free through PMA account) and InteractiveBroker (for cheap options). I definitely don’t want to have my cash simply sitting in the Fidelity brokerage account doing nothing. Based on my past spending pattern, I can get about $275 just from 2% Citi Driver’s edge card. If I move that spending to any of my existing 1% cashback card, I would throw away $125 per year. Hmm. Something to think about.

In any case, if you don’t use any of the cashback credit card, you are definitely missing out BIG time. I got $362 back on my HSBC, $276 on my Citi Driver’s Edge, $250 on my True Earning AMEX for a total spending of about $34700 on these three cards. That’s $888 that you may be missing.

At the minimum, you should get yourself the True Earning AMEX (assuming you buy stuffs at Costco) and Chase Freedom card for basic 1% cashback & 5% cashback on rotating categories. That’s just a little effort to “earn” while you spend. It really adds up!

Frugal at 1stMillionAt33.com

I think this deal may only be valid in California. Until Dec 12 at Albertson, you can get $20 coupon for grocery for every $100 spent on all gift cards (except Visa/Mastercard & Albertson, and limit of $500 in 1 transaction). The coupons must be used before 12/24/2010. Besides that, as long as you have the credit line, there should not be much problems.

Since I used my Chase Freedom card which has 5% off for all grocery purchase (upto the first $1500), and my old HSBC card which also has 5% off but no limit, I get a total of $25 back for every $100 purchased in gift cards. More people have Chase Freedom cards. So at least, you can get 25% off for your first $1500.

Also, a couple of restaurants are having gift card sales too. Souplantation (and Sweet Tomatoes) has 1 free meal pass for every $50 gift card. Since 1 dinner is about $9.50 plus tax, you are getting a little bit more than 20% off. Panda Express has a free two item entree for every $25 gift card purchased. That’s about $6.50 plus tax. For CA 9% tax, that will be a 28% off for every $25 Panda gift card.

So far I’ve bought up $500 in Shell gasoline gift cards at Albertson, $400 in Amazon gift cards which I will spend almost right away for a HD camcorder, and another $300 in various restaurants. That’s $1200 in gift cards, or $240 in free grocery at Albertson, plus $60 in cashback on Chase Freedom card. I figured that $500 gasoline will only last me 2 to 3 months, and I’m spending $200 to $300 on dining out anyway, these gift cards would go extremely quickly. In fact, if I could find more grocery to buy at Albertson, I could easily prepaid 3+ months of my expenses. The most tricky thing about the whole Albertson deal is that $20 grocery coupon cannot be combined, and so only $20 off per transaction. But you could go to a self-checkout and simply check stuffs out for every $20 that you have in the cart.

For a little inconvenience in managing to use various gift cards, you can get 25% off on almost everything. Not a bad deal at all. Certainly, for my marginal tax brackets at about 45%, a dollar saved is two dollars earned. With $300 already saved in my pocket, I’ve got myself a $600 “salary raise”. Maybe I should work on it some more.

25% off is quite a lot. I really wonder how these stores survive.

I “participated” in the Black Friday frenzy again this year, just to survey how retail sales were going. There were many pre-Black Friday sales going on, and I thought the sale this year was going to be soft. Many stores opened very early too, and Walmart even opened 24 hours. Based on my experience at Walmart which had a 3-phase sales (midnight to 5am, 5am to 11am for electronics, etc.), I think Walmart stole quite a lot of sales this year. The 3-phase worked really good, because I found that almost ALL stores couldn’t make more sales, simply because of the capacity of the cashiers, parking lot space, and moving space within the stores. Oh yeah, almost all the retail stores that I went to were that PACKED with people & cars. The 3-phase sales at Walmart spread out different types of crowd somewhat, and many people really liked being able to get their 1st part of buying done (since no other major retail stores were opened at midnight).

Regardless, I also found that most shoppers were extremely price-conscious. I didn’t notice that, until I went to Target and found my $36 Shark Steam Mop from Walmart, priced at $45 at Target, piled up and not moved at all. Looked like everyone has done their comparison already. Yeah, and all those items that were not on sale were not touched mostly. I went to the LEGO aisle that my kids loved most. Almost all legos didn’t get sold, except very few ones that were on sale.

And I’m sorry to report to all the Apple lovers that I don’t see IPads selling. They are well-stocked in all stores, and not moving. In fact, most electronics were not selling a lot. This includes TV, blu-ray players, and even game consoles. In fact, there were so many Wifi-ready players with just an ethernet port, trying to trick buyers to buy them. No, these units won’t stream Netflix wirelessly, and will need a $80 to $130 ethernet-to-wifi adapter, after you pay some $100+ for the blu-ray players.

The only exceptions to electronics are probably mobile phones and low-priced NetBooks. Yeah, I really wanted the $150 NetBook black Friday sale at BestBuy, but it’s all gone probably within minutes when the store opened. With NetBook selling at $150 with 160GB hard drive and SD card slots, it makes triply hard to buy the most basic IPad priced at $500. Oh, I forgot, Apple is not about price, but fashion, as long as our generations stay away from the new frugal reality. Actually, I should use $400 for comparison, because TJMaxx seemed to have this item in extremely limited supply for $400 on Black Friday (if you could bust the door in time).

Anyway, I managed to get the following items this week:
1. A 3-night stay at 4-star Planet Hollywood for $56 per night after tax at Las Vegas, plus 1 free buffet pass. This was just before Thanksgiving, when you can get really good prices without much traffics. During Thanksgiving and Xmas, there are no ways to enjoy yourself, because the lines for buffet are usually 3-hours long, converting your lunch meal to early dinner literally.

2. $89.99 1TB MyPassport portable hard drive, free shipping, bought with $100 BestBuy gift card from Albertson, which gave me a $20 coupon for free grocery, and charged on my ChaseFreedom credit card for 5% cashback (or $5). So I paid about $65 before tax, when the price has gone back up to $150 now. However you can still get this item at Costco for $99.99, but you won’t get any gift card/credit card bonuses.

3. Super-Mario Wii game at Target, regularly priced at $49.99, but got a $10 gift card when bought during Thanksgiving, and I got $5 off coupon, plus 5% off charged on their RedCard (Target’s credit card). So that was like $35, not counting taxes. You could get those $5 off coupon or 10% off coupons at the checkout if you bought anything at Target, just before Thanksgiving.

4. Slave I LEGO construction set, regularly priced at $79.99 everywhere. My son asked this for Christmas, and the only reason that he wants this is that it’s got a special mini-figure Hans Solo frozen in stone. I paid about $57 before tax, because Target had it temporarily on sale for $69.99, plus there is a $10 Target coupon just for LEGO sets, and I charged it on RedCard again for 5% off.

5. $60 Brother Color Inject MFC-J410W Wireless All-in-One at OfficeMax. This one is not a deal, since you can get most wireless printers easily for less than $100 these days. And I’m buying Brother, not HP nor Canon, because the ink cartridges are cheaply available on Amazon or Ebay at less than $1 per cartridge, without me going an extra mile to find out how to refill my own cartridges. Since I won’t print a lot, per page cost matters less to me than per cartridge cost. In the past, usually I spent like $8 to $30 on a cartridge, just to print less than 30 pages, and just to find out that my $30 investment on the cartridge is totally gone and dried up after many idle months. So I think Brother should work for me better.

Today Google Voice has been made publicly available to anyone. I have just been using Google Voice for about one month with my landline, thanks to my IT friend’s invitation into the program. It has been terrific.

Here are some of the highlights in my trials:
1. It will ring ALL of your (mobile) phone numbers if you list them out. This means that you could use the Google Phone number as the main permanent contact phone number for family & friends, and you could change your mobile plans/phone numbers in whatever ways you want, and it won’t change even after you move out of the area. And Google Voice will further block any spam callings & mobile texting messages automatically.

2. It will TRANSCRIBE any voicemail messages into text. That accuracy of the transcription is simply amazing. I tested it a little bit, and it’s 100% accurate so far. Creative usage of this would be that you could use it yourself for any typing needs for blogging, writings, etc.

3. Obviously not many people write these days, but because the messages are transcribed, it becomes a searchable database, which Google excels in doing. If you receive many voicemails for your business, this will be an excellent way of handling your high volume of voicemail messages (although I’m not sure if business are allowed for using Google Voice).

4. The best of all you get everything for free, AND a free US-registered phone number. I know many of those “free-for-ever” IP phone services (like Ooma), which still require you to pay $5 to $10 every year for a valid US phone number registration (to government I believe). Guess what! Insanely profitable Google pays that for you, and you get to pick your own phone number!

5. Free conference calling capability which you don’t need to pay extra.

6. Google intended the Google Voice for mobile phones (and by the way, it doesn’t work with prepaid T-mobile phones). However, you can use it for landline too. I have been using my Google Voice number to dial around from my landline phone for FREE US domestic calls, and very competitive international calls. Calling quality is most of the time BETTER than any IP phones that you can get (Yeah, I tried and quited on Ooma already). Here is the detailed dialing instructions which you need to follow exactly once you get your Google Voice phone number:

• You MUST set up your voice mail password from your Google Voice account http://www.google.com/voice/ (after you log into your gmail obviously).
• Dial your Google Voice number (from your landline) which hopefully is a free local call if you have chosen your number wisely.
• Don’t let it ring any of your phones, and then you can press * (star) to enter into your voice mail. Punch in your voice mail password.
• Voila! You can press 2 to dial out, possibly after listening to or skipping all of your recorded messages.

Get your free & favorite phone number before they get taken now at www.google.com/voice!

I just received this email from Bing cashback program:

Dear valued cashback customer:

We are writing to notify you that the Bing cashback program will be discontinued, and the last day to earn cash back on your Bing Shopping purchases will be July 30, 2010.

Until July 30, 2010 9:00 pm PST, it’s business as usual so continue to take advantage of great offers from your favorite merchants. You can redeem all of your earned cashback savings consistent with the cashback terms and conditions and access the Bing cashback customer support system through July 30, 2011. We encourage you to redeem your cashback savings and to further support redemption, we are waiving the $5 minimum payout effective July 31, 2010….

It’s a pity to see it goes. I guess good things just don’t last forever. I have definitely enjoyed the total savings of $29 cashback on already discounted online goodies that I was able to find.

Make sure you redeem your remaining cashback in your own account before the end of July.

I have just a few best friends. I only told my IT friend about my blog because I needed several helps on the repeated hackers’ attack on my site. On mother’s day, my buddy and I talked almost 3 hours about his personal finance, answering every conceivable questions that he had (not that this is the first time). Kind of reminded me that I should not tell anyone else, .

My IT friend is basically at the same age as I am. But in terms of accumulated assets, he is quite behind me (not that I’m trying to brag, my friend). He is one of the few people who I would call innately smart. And I have always encouraged him to go further beyond what he can achieve because he really can. He started out inherently behind me because he helped paying his brother’s college education. This is probably unheard of in a western American society, but we Asians would do that for our family members. Sometimes, an entire family would work together (financially) towards one goal, sending just a person for higher education, and then in term, this person would give back once he is able to lift up his financial and professional status.

In any case, my IT friend is buying a house, and has been asking me lots of questions even before our 3-hour talk. I directed him to my rent-vs-buy financial calculator. We worked through all the numbers together. Besides the tax benefit that was not very clear initially, I think everything else was straightforward. On the “tax benefit average rate on property tax+interest”, one needs to account for the standard tax deduction (now at $11400 for federal tax) to calculate the tax benefits from itemized deduction of property tax and mortgage interest. It’s often A LOT less than one’s marginal tax bracket, on the contrary to the realtors’ claims. At his particular city and state, buying a home makes good sense because using conservative assumptions such as 0% appreciation rate for home, he can still break even in about 4 to 6 years. But that is with an implicit assumption of upgrading his lifestyle (for his anticipated family need) to a bigger home, paying a higher equivalent rent of $1900 instead of his current $1500. Most people buy home, thinking that house is an asset. But no, the home is only an asset, unless buying is better than renting. Otherwise, it’s a liability that bleeds your pocket. And buying a bigger home than what you need is NOT investment. Do not justify your ego’s need with the illicit logic of making a good investment. One way or the other you will ALWAYS pay for the expanded space with your own pocket.

Besides the home, I also advised him to read through “My Advice” page. Summarizing for him, to get to millionaire status, it’s basically
1. Acquiring skills/network (for an income source).
2. Relentless savings for accumulation.
3. Proper investing for preservation.

I tried to emphasize to him that the 3 best time to save (in the right order) is
1. Right out-of-school, and before getting married.
2. Before having kids.
3. After kids finish college.

Unfortunately, most of the American young generation either take up too much college debt, or frivol through their best years to save. Those early years obviously make a huge difference in the long run.

Then I also strongly encouraged him that it’s never too late to save, and he still has a real chance of making into millionaire club. Why? His current household income is even higher than my 2007 base salary (or my household income for that matter since my wife doesn’t work). On my job(s), I’ve “slaved” through almost 7 years at a way-below average household in my area, accepting a 35% salary cut, and yet I was able to make into the club. If I could do it, then he or anybody CAN do it too. The key is obviously to somehow maintain your (hopefully significant amount of) saving within your own acceptable living style. I advised him multiple times to go through his own credit statements. Pulled out the last 3 months. Have a monthly budget and compare to what really happens. Re-visit after 6 or 12 months. Monitor spending until it’s within budgeted expectation. The budget needs to be realistic to reflect the spending. It’s the guide of how far your saving effort would go. Budgeting is a personal experience, and it’s where your emotionally material desires fight with your goal-oriented mind.

He has not got into many needed investing side of personal finance yet. But again, it’s very important, since the only way to get into the club is
1. First, you must have it (through earning & saving).
2. Second, you must preserve it (through investing).

I encouraged him that after 15 years to come back to my blog to write about his becoming millionaire experience. As the second part of the title of my site states, “Yes, you can do it too”. That is REALLY true for MANY of the people out there. But if you just started saving at 50, then I’m sorry that I’m not going to be like all those authors writing “feel-good” personal finance books out there, and tell you that “yes, you can do it too”. But the whole point is not to become just another millionaire. What your financial security (whether it’s $400K or $700K) gives you is a peace of mind. It’s when you walk into a car dealership to buy a car, pay cash to buy the car, and you don’t even need to fidget about whether you can make the next month mortgage or car payment. It’s if your family member gets terribly sick, and requires $100K medical treatment beyond insurance, and you don’t even need to worry about sky collapsing on you, or selling the house to pay for it. It’s when your kid goes to college, and you don’t need to say to him or her, that “sorry, you really have to pay for yourself”, or that “sorry, you can only go to state universities.”

Striving towards wealth is truly about personal financial responsibility, and not about millionaire bragging rights. It’s about taking care of oneself, one’s family, and hopefully extending the helping hands to so many needy people out there. That’s what my site wants to convey to everyone of you out there (even when I just get to sleep 4 or 5 hours a day). “My 1st million, and YES, you can do it too”. In fact, “YES, you should try to do it too.”

Here is one of my favorite quote from my favorite books, “Karma Yoga” by Swami/Yogi Vivekanada (p.27):

A householder (as opposed to a monk) who does not struggle to get wealth is immoral. If he is lazy and content to lead an idle life, he is immoral, because upon him depend hundreds. If he gets riches, hundreds of others will be thereby supported.

For those who are not aware of eye-fi, it’s an SD memory card that has built-in wi-fi, allowing automatic uploads of your photos to your PC & designated websites. I have held off buying eye-fi for the longest time since this great product first came out. Finally I yielded to my necessity of just saving 15 to 20 minutes per picture download. What I was doing for all of my pictures were simply not working. I kept buying another cheap 4GB or 8GB SD memory card when it got full (after some 1000 or 2000 pictures at 4MB per photo). But my pictures stay on SD card “forever”.

Right now you can get 4GB Eye-Fi for $44.99 – 7% off via Bing Cashback + local taxes or about $41.85 + local taxes, assuming you choose store pickup option at OfficeDepot.com (2nd link in the Bing search result). The smallest eye-fi is 2GB and it costs about $40 also. So this 4GB is a pretty good deal. I never really love anything from Microsoft, except its Bing cashback. Anything that I buy online now, I always search it through Bing cashback first, and see if I could shave off additional 5% to 10% on an already cheap price.

This price is only valid until May 1st, 2010. There is a temporary price reduction of $5, which is not even reflected in Bing search. If you want to get your hands on this, act now. But do make sure that you check the camera compatibility list at eye-fi site, so that you don’t run into any problems.

Very infrequently I come across some articles that are so well written that I feel obliged to recommend them to people. And I found it at Irvine Housing Blog. IrvineRenter, the owner of the blog has written a couple of excellent articles that should be must-read for every home buyer.

On “Valuation of Lots and Raw Land”, IrvineRenter explained in details how the valuation of an investment in raw land would work out. To sum it up, land investment works like a call option on the housing market.

On “Loan Assumption is the Appreciation of the Twenty-Teens“, IrvineRenter gave his best advice (and I concur too) that the best bet in building your home equity is probably by buying with an assumable AND fixed-rate loan. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the only assumable loans these days are FHA loans, which have higher fees in general. Why is that? A good deal to the borrowers is always a bad deal to the lenders. The scarcity of such loans automatically tells you that assumable loans are not good for lenders.

And at last, on “Fundamental Valuation of Houses – Part 1“, IrvineRenter explained in details about the math of home ownership cost. His article almost acts like a companion manual to my online java housing cost calculator. All of the factors that he has mentioned, I have included them in my online housing calculator, plus commute cost difference. But just one caveat, garbage in, garbage out. My calculator is only as good as the validity of your input assumption. If your assumption on the housing parameters such as rent/housing inflation or tax rate, are inaccurate, then the results will be inaccurate as well.

So what’s the buying strategy for the housing market? In case you missed it, it’s using assumable fixed rate loan. On a longer term, I believe that the mortgage rates will be going up. Contrary to all the unscrupulous realtors, the best time to buy real estate is when the mortgage rates are at the highest, not when they’re at the lowest. Lower mortgage rates always cause the housing valuation to expand, while higher mortgage rates will rein in the price. Assuming a forward picture of higher than normal inflation, and mortgage rates trending higher, the inflation force may arrest and balance out the decline caused by higher mortgage rates. Nominal housing prices may stagnate for a decade or even two decades, but inflation-adjusted price will continue to decline. Such picture does not bode well for many participants. The renters will see their rents going up due to general inflation. The new home buyers may still see price declining if the nominal prices have not reached bottom. Worse yet, if the equivalent ownership cost of their home is higher than prevailing rent, then they’re effectively speaking draining any potential savings that they could have built without buying a home. In such picture, the only potential remedy would be to have an assumable fixed-rate loan, so that one could recover the price benefits between future higher mortgage rates and the current lower mortgage rates.

And if you cannot find such loan, make sure you put the least amount of down payment, and borrow as much as you can for 30 years fixed. Forget about adjustable ARM. The only way to short the bond markets and US dollar simultaneously and safely without margin calls is to borrow against your real estate holding.

This is the first time that I’ve ever tried to “bust the door” for black Friday sale. I went to Toys R us to get legos for my kids. The sale started at midnight, and I was 30 minutes late since I was going through global stock market news due to Dubai debt panic. Stocks are down 3% to 6% around the globe, and US will open with hefty losses too. Gold has already sold off in Asia by $50.

Anyway. At 12:35am, I arrived at ToysRus, and parked my car at a really far away location since the entire parking lot was basically full. Starting from the door, I kept walking to get to the end of line. It took me about 5 to 10 minutes of walking to get to the end of line, which is about 500 feet away. The store itself was full of people already, as I could see thru the window, and there are probably some 200 people outside waiting to just get into the store. I asked the person who was at the end of line, and confirmed that the line was indeed for Toys R us. Man, I couldn’t help but laughed. This is just crazy! Thirty minutes after the sale begun, and I probably won’t get into the store for another 40 minutes.

Realizing that the lego items that was on sale was most likely sold out already, I decided to go home instead. As I drove away from the full parking lot which was designed & allocated for 3 other big chain stores like Toys R us, I also noticed that all other stores are still closed. Boy, all the cars there were mostly for Toys R us, except for a few early campers at other stores.

I’m not sure where the recession is. Looks like the Thanksgiving & Christmas sales may not be too bad. If you want to look for bargains, you will have to find a way to beat others to store. I think I’m going to try online. Bing search engine is providing cashback for various stores. At Walmart.com thru Bing, you can get 15% off. Maybe that’s an easier way to get to your bargains.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I have noticed that Ameriprise, the auto insurance company thru Costco has been raising its price. I just have recently changed to GEICO, because when calling their sales agent, he was willing to not only match the prices from Ameriprise, but also lower the price by a little bit more.

A solid proof again that NOT everything at Costco is cheaper.

After my previous minor car accident, which cost GEICO about $500, they still did NOT raise my price as promised by their customer representative. I’m amazed, and a little guilty, since this is the first time ever that I take money out of the insurance system. GEICO was extremely unlucky in the sense that I have never had an auto claim in my life so far, which is about some 20-year driving history. For all of their great customer experiences, and my “under-water” account (a negative $130 return for the first six months), I’m giving them a thumb-up.

I’m 95% sure that you cannot beat this deal from all major insurance companies. I only pay for $370 every 6 months for two cars having

$100K/$300K body injury liability,
$100K property liability,
$1000 deductible for comprehensive on both cars
rejecting uninsured/under-insured motorists coverage
and $1000 deductible for collision coverage only on my 2-year old Honda Odyssey. My other car is a 10 year old Toyota Camry.

I believe GEICO is quite aggressive in acquiring new customers. So you should be able to negotiate with the sales agent for a little better price if you call them up.

I have blogged about “different ways for a busted refinancing plan” back in 2006 at the height of housing market. I argued that once the housing markets fall, most of the real estate “investors” will NOT be able to refinance out of their payment troubles. It was very clear to me that a housing Ponzi scheme simply cannot last forever, and was destined to pop. Of course, according to Greenspan, Bernanke, Wallstreet, and traditional news media, nobody could have seen the financial crisis coming.

I definitely thought that things would be worse in the housing markets. Due to various factors that I didn’t forsee, including Obama’s home affordability programs, delays in foreclosure processes by banks, and a dramatic drop in the interest rate curve, things are not terrible as of now. In fact, in 2009, housing markets actually went up (at least in California), sucking in the last bunch of ever-hopeful real estate “investors”. Regardless, numbers won’t lie, and let’s see how the negative amortization or option ARM homebuyers are doing.

Below is a summary from the monthly payment history based on a hypothetical case that I’ve made up for a California home ($500K, 20% down). I think it is pretty representative. You can get the original complete Excel spreadsheet here. All the interest rate data are from X-mortgage. I’m listing both MTA and COFI indexes which are the two most common indexes for option ARM:

Needless to say, an increase of 71% in 5 years will be huge for anyone. Very few family will be able to make it thru a combination of salary increase, second job, and/or having non-working spouse going back to workforce. Unfortunately, refinancing to 30-years loan at today’s 4.75% will not be an option either, since the monthly payment for 30-years is about $2200, the same as the recast option ARM loan, if not more. I originally thought that these people probably would have problems with LTV or loan-to-value ratio. But Obama’s home affordability program has “solved” the LTV problems for these most of these homeowners. The monthly payment issue is still there. One cannot make an unaffordable home in the first place to be affordable.

Looking forward next year, once the home affordability program expires in mid-2010, we will probably get more defaults and walkaways from homes. Due to Bernanke’s cutting of interest rate, and a huge buying program in both treasury and mortgage market, current interest rates are temporarily held down. If the option ARM indexes like MTA and COFI rise up to 3% for example, the monthly adjustable payment will go up by another 25% to 30%. I don’t think the housing markets will recover anytime soon due to this impending supply of homes (from defaults of the option ARM loans).

So what should you do if you are one of the option ARM homeowners? There are many sites & articles that talks about foreclosure options. In my opinion, short sale would be the best choice (if you have this choice), since you won’t be liable for the deficiency judgment, and it will hurt your credit report the least. The second best choice is loan modification, although not many can negotiate a good deal with banks. The rest of the choices such as foreclosures are not ideal, but it’s probably earlier the better under the assumption that it does not affect your job prospects based on a much worse credit report.

Here is some of good sites & articles that I’ve found on foreclosure-related options. Some of the site owners are very helpful, and may be able to provide you with needed advice or services:

• Foreclosure option networtk. Hanna was particularly helpful to me on a couple of nasty legal questions.
• Foreclosure options from MSN
• More info on various foreclosure options from foreclosure university.

Not sure if any of you catch this story from NPR (national public radio). A homeless person gave $400,000 to NPR, and several other nonprofit organization.

Richard Leroy Walters was a retired engineer from AlliedSignal Corp, but who gave up all the materialism of this world, and what could be afforded to him. Didn’t have a car (but a bike), nor a home, but looks like he did own several stock-related investment, trading over the phone at the senior center. He was an “avowed atheist” but converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. It’s amazing that someone who owned so much, and yet didn’t take any enjoyment of any materialism, while mostly remained atheistic in that process. I have always thought that if someone is atheistic, he or she must take comfort in material things. I guess there are different higher souls.

There are some readers’ comments in NPR website, a few criticizing Walters using resources for homeless people. I must say that after all, Walters gave more than he had received (whether it was given before or after his death). For many, we don’t remember that whether we own a lot of money or owe a lot of debt, when it comes to living in this world, we are consuming resources and relying on others constantly. Our debt to this world is our consumption, whether we pay it fully or not. What would be better served besides paying in full with our hard-earned money is a grateful attitude towards everything that we received.

My wife is currently on vacation with my kids, and these days, I just cook my own simple meals, and bag my own lunchbox: rice plus tofu most of the time. I barely spend any money besides gasoline. I’m perfectly content without many unnecessary stuffs. When I wash the uncooked rice, I am always reminded a Chinese saying: “every grain of rice doesn’t come easy but with sweats of the farmers”. That was of course from the ancient days when many farming was not done through modern day machinery. Regardless, I’m grateful for the abundance of food that I can eat, for there are still too many hungry people in the world.

Oh, yeah, one of my few consumption besides meals is that I did buy a new book from local bookstore, knowingly over-paying $10 for it relative to Amazon.com. Since I frequent that bookstore, I hope that extra $10 goes to their pocket so that they won’t go out of business one day.

I admire what Richard Leroy Walters did. For his gifts, the world was made better.

Being the second bank after Citibank, HSBC has cut my credit card line from $7200 to $3000.

I don’t know how they evaluated this, but it is for certain that they don’t care that I have paid down all of the balance every month, and that my credit FICO score is at about 800 (well, if that means anything at all). And the speed that they do it is amazingly fast. Right after the monthly statement is cutoff, the credit line is changed immediately. I’m guessing that there must be increasing numbers of people who are behind and going delinquent.

Under normal circumstances, I would never advise people to get lots of credit cards. However, you should really get extra credits while you still can (and still holding a good job), before both banks and economy go tumbling down again. You should apply credits to different bank/companies, so that you could reduce the impact of credit card issuers cutting your credit lines after the fact. Especially for people who don’t have a lot of emergency reserve, I strongly advise you to load up your credit availability.

The wrong way to use your credit cards is to think that they are your money. Credit is not cash. Credit is for your extra financial buffer. Frankly, I think people need to be prepared for being out-of-job and without any income for 2 years at the minimum. Assume that you will go into “early retirement” for 2 years, and make sure you have enough credit/money to come out from the other end of tunnel.

So far, it appears that American Express still has very high credit limit. I have more than $15000 on that card thru Costco. If you need lots of credit, maybe you could try that.

It goes without saying that you should not get a card that has annual fee, build up more debts, etc. Better yet, you should get those cards that pay you back. Between the two cashback cards of HSBC & American Express last year, I had $500 max cashback from HSBC, and over $200 from American Express. That’s a total of $700 cashback. Not too bad at all. For some more details, here is my old post on this.

Here is just some decision flowchart on what I think you should do for your home/mortgages in many circumstances. It’s based on my personal opinion, and you should always consult professionals & legals when it applies. There aren’t many solutions for you besides out-right sale, short sale, refinancing, loan modification, foreclosures, and walkaways. But you should choose carefully on each option. Anytime you choose short sale, foreclosure, and walkways, it’s implicit that you will lose all the amount of any down payment that you have put into the home when you first bought it.

1. Case #1: if you are “underwater”, meaning that your loan amount is greater than your home market value, your decisions should be dependent on your loan type.
   1. Case #1A: if your loan was a PURCHASE loan, meaning that you have never refinanced your loan since your home purchase, in many states such as California, where there are laws protecting home buyers from loss of incomes or jobs, you should probably walk away from your home. In such cases, you should be protected by state laws, and you should not be responsible for lenders’ loss. The laws however cannot protect you if you have lied about your income and assets on your loan application. Please make sure that you consult lawyers for specific details, because I cannot be responsible for your legal troubles. Please NOTE that if you have a second loan, but the second loan was a purchase loan which you’ve probably paid PMI insurance on, you should still be okay. However, the same does NOT apply to home equity or piggy-back loan. Home equity loans are recourse loans, and it means that banks can theoretically or legally hunt you down, extract all of your current assets and future salaries, until you file bankruptcy.
   2. Case #1B: if you have more than one loan, and the second loan is home equity loan, you should probably try a short sale first, and then try doing a loan modification. The short sale is better in the sense that your credit is just partially ruined. The banks need to take their deserved losses. If you cannot do a short sale, you should try to modify your loan thru Obama’s home affordability program. With this method, I believe that your credit profile stays the same. However, you’re stuck with your own losses, banks get off the hook, and taxpayers may be stuck with your losses if later down the road, you walk away.

   For both of Case #1A or #1B, you may want to stop or slow down on paying your first loan or the purchase loan, so that you can force bank to come to the negotiation table with you. However, you will be risking a real foreclosure. Also, in case #1B, you should continue paying down your home equity loan regularly because it’s a recourse loan.

   3. Case #1C: if you have refinanced your home loans, then you’re out of luck. Legally, you’re 100% responsible for your loans. Nevertheless, you should try contacting banks for short sales, and doing loan modifications, like in Case #1B. Both will be to your advantages, if they go through.
2. Case #2: if you are at about the same the “water level”, meaning that your loan amount is about the same as your home market value, you should in general try to refinance, and/or short sale if you decide that you don’t want to keep your home.
   1. Case #2A: If the prevailing rent is still higher than your home cost: mortgage payment after tax benefits, plus any property tax, or potential interest credits, then you could try wait out the downturn (although I think the downturn will be much longer than anyone expects). You should at least try refinancing and see if you can lower your monthly cost. The Obama’s home affordability program will allow refinancing of up to 105% of your home value, if your mortgages are owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. You can check that at the home affordability page.
   2. Case #2B: If the prevailing rent is lower than your home cost, I think you should try to do a short sale, and forget about doing any refinance. Your short sale will be easier to go through bankers. And this way, it will prevent you from suffering further home losses down the road.
3. Case #3: if you still have substantial equities in your home, meaning that your loan amount is smaller than your home value, you are financially sound. I would advise to do refinancing through the normal channels, cash out any equities that you can, and hold on to your cash in 5-year US treasury for another two to three years for better opportunities. The best refinancing time is either now or possibly in Oct/Nov if stock markets take a dive at that time.

Here is the Obama’s home affordability page, in case you don’t know about it. If you follow thru the links, you can find out how to verify that your loans are owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

And for potential new home buyers, my advice stay the same: just stay put and wait for year 2012. Your patience should be rewarded (in my opinion). That $10,000 home buying tax credit cannot come close to the amount that you may gain through further home value erosion.

Labor day weekend is here. Are you travelling less due to the higher gas prices?

I used not to think about the cost of gasoline. But nowadays, I am a lot more conscious about where I travel. Indeed, I find myself travelling shorter distances to everywhere. It just makes more dollar sense. I’m increasingly opting for local restaurants than places far away, and same for travel destinations. More and more people are doing staycation (staying at home), rather than vacation.

What are some good and cheap alternatives for not travelling? Probably renting DVDs to catch up the movies that you missed is one of the cheapest way to spend your hours. The next on the list would be going to a movie. Or simply have a good barbecue or picnic with friends is good. Dining out at a more expensive restaurant that you don’t usually go to is pretty cheap, relative to the cost of a long travel. Hiking or biking in a nearby regional park is pretty good too if you haven’t done it for awhile. Probably the single most important thing about vacation is simply having a relaxed mind-set.

Anyway, I will see you all next Tuesday. I need this break, since I have been just too busy working day and night for almost last month already.

I have always thought that Honda has pretty good mpg. But I’m getting about 16 mpg combined on city/highway on my Honda Odyssey. That is quite different from the statements on invoice: 18 in city, and 25 on highway. That just seems awfully low.

I have always driven Toyota, and this is my first Honda car. My mpg experiences with Toyota is much better. The actual mpg comes out to be so much closer to the invoice sticker. My next car will definitely go back to Toyota.

That brings my attention to Toyota’s Prius. According to a UK AutoExpress report, the next Prius will offer 94 mpg!! That is double of the current 45 mpg. At 94 mpg, even if it costs $10 a gallon, you will only spend 11 cents every mile. That is CHEAP. Okay, even at 45 mpg, it is 3 times better than my Odyssey. At $5 a gallon, the difference between 45 mpg and 15 mpg for 7500 miles is about $1700 every year. In 3 years, you can save $5K on gas, and in 6 years, you can save $10K on gas. That’s about 40% to 50% of the cost of a car.

It’s slightly harder to justify between a 25 mpg on my camry and 45 mpg on a Prius, when you have made your investment in the car already. But if Prius does come out with 94 mpg, I’m just going to grab one if I can, and dump my old car. Unfortunately, I think the waiting list will be really long, given a high gasoline price and long commute distance in California.

Mortgage rates have gone up quite a lot along with the fall in bonds. The rates have been rising across the board (by almost 0.75% now).

I cannot understand who is selling the bonds, along with $US rising (just a little bit). This is truly a weird combination. Where is the money going?

The only sensible scenario that I can come up with is that Fed is lending all the financial institutions treasury bonds on its book in exchange of toxic mortgage bonds. The financial institutions are selling the treasury bonds in exchange for cash right away to resolve their credit crunch to satisfy cash demands from customers or depositors. Since all the transactions are domestic, $US exchange rate is not affected much. In effect, Fed is indirectly creating these new cash through these financial institutions, and supporting the solvency and liquidity of the financial institutions.

Still, eventually (or immediately) these new cash will find a new home. Apparently, they have blown up the commodity prices.

Fed is obviously trying to prevent housing deflation. Apparently, they have opted to save the greedy bankers and brokerage houses, and dumped the homeowners. To bring down the mortgage rates, Fed should actually buy up treasury bonds and/or mortgage bonds. Reducing the supply of bonds will increase its price, and therefore reduce the yields. Of course, such monetization effort will result in the immediate increase of cash circulation.

I guess Mish’s deflationary thesis has been right on. Cash is in demand. Not bonds, not stocks, not gold (yet) either. Before cash becomes trash, cash is still king. But I don’t think Fed has any ways out of this mess, besides trashing US dollar (or cash).

I recently got a MP3 player, which I’m using mainly for voice recorder rather than the music player.

I wanted to use the voice recording function in my Samsung cell phone, even though fully featured, but less well-deisigned than Nokia’s phone. Using Samsung’s phone, I can’t voice record a new message without navigating thru menu items and rename the previously created voice file.

Since a simple voice recording function is important to me, I decided to get a dedicated MP3 player/voice recorder. After lots of shopping around, I finally found this MP3 player from Nextar. You can use it also to listen to FM radio. And the 2GB version is only $15 from tribeca tech solutions. The shipping was $7 for one or two MP3 players. The similar model but only 1GB sells for $25 at Walmart.

I think one of the frequent problems that people have with MP3 player is that the rechargeable battery eventually goes dead sooner or later. This model MA566-200 uses an AAA battery. You end up with a more bulky case to enclose it, but at least your unit should never runs out of batteries (even though the battery life is only 12 hours of playing music). In any case, you can choose to use rechargeable AAA battery, so that you don’t need to buy a special $20 rechargeable NiMH battery for a $15 MP3 player.

Anyway. I’m glad that I’ve got this. I almost always have a million things to do, such that I often forget about what I needed to do. With my new voice recorder, I can simply carry it around for recording without the earphones, but only going over my list of things-to-do at office or at home.

I just heard this from my friend. There is a 10% discount (or bonus rather) on any gift cards purchased at the store.

This news has been out there for awhile, because this deal last from May 2nd through July 31st. But being late better than never. The maximum amount of gift card for 10% bonus is $1200 per household. I believe Ralphs stores are only present in Southern California because I can’t seem to locate a store outside of that area. In any case, IF you can find a Ralphs store, 10% is a lot of savings. And if you have one of those HSBC credit card, you get 5% extra savings thru cash rebate on top of that.

And if ever you cannot spend $1200 worth of grocery, you can always purchase the gift cards for other stores at Ralphs (I believe), so that you don’t have $1200 sitting in the bank for Ralphs.

Bill Cara recently opined that maybe he had missed the first part of the trade of generation, which is to short the bond. I myself have also been a little surprised too.

The recent bond market actions have not been good at all. Whenever stock market falls, bonds tend to rise. But NOT this time. Stocks fell, and bonds fell too. While it is still too early to tell based on just a few days of trading, the trends seemed to be broken already.

Here is the chart for the 30-year treasury bond:

As you can see above, long term interest rates have risen. And with the recent tumbling of stock markets, the yields break new high instead of falling back down. Whatever it is I think for the intermediate term, the yields are probably going up. And that probably means more selling in the bond markets, which probably means that $US will continue to face pressure in the future.

If you want to refinance, probably you should look to lock your interest rates whenever the rates dip again (if it dips at all). I am also referring people to my own mortgage broker, so that you can get $100 cash back in addition to matching the really good rates at www.absolutemortgageco.com. If you are interested in getting a loan, you can email me, and I can forward you the details on the broker.

Certainly I think the best time to refi or getting a loan may be behind us. The implication from the rising interest rates for housing markets is obviously negative.

People are shopping more frugally as they should at Costco and Walmart, when the gasoline prices keep going up, and you can’t no longer charge everything on a maxed-out credit card.

But I must warn you that Walmart is really a better store to shop if your family is small, and doesn’t consume volume of (the same) goods. One of the things about shopping at Costco is that you can seldom walk out of Costco without spending $50 or more often $100. I mean, how many $100 bills can you spend without hurting your own budget? Anything that you buy will be packaged into a volume deal. Therefore, even if you just buy a few items, your pocket will be bleeding out with cash. That’s all good if you do need to spend that much. But that’s not so good if you don’t gather up a good plan on your own consumption. When you buy A LOT of anything, and you don’t have a good plan for it, usually you either over-consume, or have the items rotten and wasted, or you need to stock them up somewhere. Therefore, have a good plan for the consumption of the perishable goods before you start to buy. Splitting with friends and families is an excellent idea if it’s not too much trouble.

The second thing about buying at Costco is that they carry mostly above average quality goods at about the same prices at other stores. It means that you do pay for quality. If you can find items on sale outside of Costco, it’s possible that you will get a cheaper price on an absolute basis, although the quality may be slightly inferior. Shopping at Costco is really all about buying quality and saving time on finding good deals. That works out well if you’re middle or upper middle class. But if you don’t need the quality, and if your extra time cannot be converted into wage/money easily, then you could consider buying elsewhere. By the way, electronics items (especially computers and cameras) are NOT cheap at Costco most of the time. Don’t fall into their trap. Do always shop around a little.

Since people tend to over-spend when walking into stores, the best way is always to keep a buy list when you walk in, and try to stick to the list only. The list of the items should be based on what you need and what you have budgeted. That way, besides saving yourself from unnecessary buying, will also save yourself from forgetting to buy certain needed items. Save yourself from the second trip will save you both gasonline money and time.

And if you buy clothing, both Walmart and Costco have good prices, but very often, you can get good prices at Macy’s too for better styles. My wife seldom buys clothing at discount stores because she watches out for deals at the department stores.

My family has always shopped at Walmart frequently. And I can attest to the fact that every items is almost always cheaper at Walmart. We love Walmart better than Costco, only because the package size of Costco’s goods is too big for us very often.

In any case, if you don’t watch out for your own pocket, no one else will. Shop and make less shopping trips, so that you can leave more of the spare money for your own good.

Economic stimulus is coming. And many retailers are looking for you to spend your check. In the recession, it’s a good time to spend money if you have it.

Of course, the amount of my rebate check is $0. I’m not getting any. But it’s not like I’m making a lot more. The tax rebate calculation and tax system was unfair to places with a very high living cost structure. Even though you are supposed to have a “high” income on a national basis, your high income simply doesn’t go far enough after all the needed expenses.

So what’s my advice on your rebate check? You guess it. You should SAVE it. The current economic slowdown is not going away yet. You will have plenty of chances to spend it on good purposes later.

But if you have to spend, make sure you spend it wisely. Find good deals. Pay down your credit card debts. Pay down your college loans. Build your emergency savings. These are just basics. I hate to repeat what Suze Orman would say, because what she says is obviously boring. But the truth is often boring, and not pleasing to your ears or heart. There is never a get-rich-quick scheme (or if there is, it won’t last very long at all). To accumulate more net worth, you simply have to save/earn more and spend less. I know every reader here would like to earn more instead of to save more. But saving more is actually a whole lot easier than earning more.

Anyway, if you still don’t know how much you may be getting, here is a calculator from IRS for you to figure it out. Hopefully, it’s something non-zero for you.

While doing this new budget, I was extremely impressed by the tools provided by the credit card companies. They have made the budgeting process so much easier that you no longer need to spend hours and hours trying to figure out where your money has gone. All of them provide spending by categories and dates, so that you can easily figure out your own spending style. Although the tools will never be perfect in categorizing every bill, at least it’s a very good start.

Here are some reflections on the increase of my expenses from 2 years ago:
My gasoline cost increased from $160 to $260, mostly to due crude oil price increase and longer commute distance.

The other major increase in the total of food+dining is from dining out, even though the most (if not all) of the dining bill is less than $35 per family. This category has gone up by almost 50%. The main reason is that my kid is no longer 0 to 1.5 year old, and I can finally dine out.

My cell phone usage has gone up too from $7 monthly to about $9, due to the increase in my other side activities besides the blog. But the absolute amount is tiny in comparison to any other items. And yes, I’m still using T-mobile prepaid.

And I have also decided to simply budget for my charity spending, instead of deluding myself. It has been pretty consistent for past 5 years, and the amount of money going towards charity purpose will only go up instead of down. I have under-budgeted the charity amount somewhat, just to give myself a little financial breathing room. I think putting it at $290 monthly should be a good compromise.

My “vacation” expenses have gone up a lot because of the cost increase in international travels going back home, and also now I’m forced to take these travels ONLY during school recess.

In case you wonder, I also zero out Spousal IRA item since that is simply a “theoretical” contribution instead of a real one. My tax brackets have disallowed this contribution almost every year.

I also up $200 on miscellaneous category, which appears to be the right amount from my past 12 months of spending.

Looking forward, I expect that I will be spending more and more on children on educational purposes as they grow up.

From above, my total expenses (in white) are $5238, and my total taxes (in red) are $1661, and the savings (in green) are $2792. Assuming a household income of about $110K, or a monthly wage of $9167, my cashflow after deducting all the above items is negative $524, which needs to be deducted from savings. Please note that the above taxes are just the taxes that one might be paying at such income level, but I actually pay A LOT more (3X or more). This is mainly due to a very progressive tax system that extract a lot more taxes from any additional income beyond this level. My marginal bracket is at about 40%, instead of 20% from the above. The only problem is that it just doesn’t take much more income to quickly go to 40% marginal bracket.

The bottomline is that my net saving has dropped to $30400 from the previous $45000, after I account for the 15% discount in share purchases of my company ESPP plan. Some of the drop is due to the differences in what I’m accounting for budget, but nevertheless, the drop is significant enough to be observable from bank account balances. Unfortunately, I expect my saving levels to continue to dwindle, due to the increase in the child expenses going forward.

What’s the lesson here? I’m not becoming much less frugal, but my saving drops. Inflation accounts partially for the drop, but the main reason is as stages in life progress, your saving (if it is still positive) will be dropping to its LOWEST when your children start going to college. I’ve written an entire post (boring, but truth that you don’t want to hear) on this point to advise anyone out there to start SAVING NOW. The best time to accumulate your savings is before having any kids, especially before getting married (and after you just started working). The next best time to accumulate your savings is when your kids finish college, and before you retire. The rest of the time, one should consider oneself lucky to scrap away something left after all expenses are paid. If you have any doubts about my drawn conclusion, simply ask your parents.

The gasoline cost has been going up along with the crude oil prices. $4 seems to start to change the consumer’s behaviors from my personal observation.

From my own budget made back in 2006, more than 2 years ago, I was only spending $160 a month for gasoline. Now, for the last 4 months, on the average, I’m spending about $260 a month for gasoline. That is 62.5% increase. Certainly, part of the increase is due to some lifestyle changes including longer commute distance and I’m taking kids out more often to farther places. But majority of the increases probably come from the increase in the crude oil prices.

The prices to fill up the pump definitely are more shocking every time. However, I consider myself fortunate enough not to be affected much by the energy costs. After all, it’s $100 monthly increase, or $1200 annual increase. It’s some money, but much better than the horror stories on TV where the increase is $200 to $300 a month. Americans tend to travel and commute quite a lot. And spending time on the road is pretty much meaningless, aside the thrill from the speed.

Besides my gasoline, most of the items in my 2006 budget don’t apply anymore. My water bill has gone up by $1.5 to $26.50, and my combined bill for gas and electricity has gone up from $100 to $120. These are not a lot of increases, but they are increases nevertheless.

Next time, I’m going to re-do my budget and take a look at food from grocery bills and dining outs. There have been definitely quite a lot of increases, due to inflation and kids growing up. I’m fairly certain that the monthly increase in food is more than $100.

I guess the only upside from all the increases is my base salary increase. Unfortunately for many families out there, the increase in income barely covers the inflation cost.

Watching how Teri shops is just amazing. I thought it’s hard to find someone like my wife who really can get grocery deals thru usage of coupons. But Teri is a couple of steps beyond.

I saw the TV program for TheGroceryGame.Com. She walked out of the grocery store, paying only about $80 for some $280 worth of grocery. The numbers are amazing. But the image of her walking away with an entire shopping cart FULL, but paying only $80, is just awesome. I’m sure that you and I know how much grocery you can buy with just $80 these days. Maybe half of the shopping cart of grocery at best.

She keeps tracks of on-sale items and also her coupons. I just can’t imagine that someone would go into so many details for grocery shopping. But hey, her results are just unbeatable.

My only regret is that you need to sign up & pay at her website for specific grocery information. While I have not personally tried it, I suspect that you probably will net a positive sum by using her service.

Can you buy boxes of cereals for $1 or less in the recent month? If you can, I suppose you’re on the right track. They have been on-sale, plus that if you have the corresponding manufacturer’s or store coupon, you can get them at $1 or less. My wife just stocked up many boxes.

I guess grocery shopping can really be a game that you can win. It’s even more important with the food cost going up these days.

If you have any experiences with Teri’s website/service, please do let me know by leaving some comments. Thanks.

Frugal at 1stMillionAt33.com

P.S. I’m not affliated with TheGroceryGame.Com in any ways. I will never write paid articles. All articles are my personal opinions.

There are an increase in bankruptcy filing by corporations. It’s very important for every consumer to protect themselves in every possible way. The most important thing is don’t pay cash. Cash given to corporations is only good as long as the corporation exists.

If you buy gift cards, be sure to use them as quickly as possible. Gift cards are like loans given to the companies. The only commitment from the companies is that they will honor their gift cards before they go bankrupt. An example is the recent Sharper Image bankruptcy. They stopped honoring the gift cards.

If you pay by cash/check, it’s the same story. Aloha airline going bankrupt will not be honoring their sold tickets if they were paid by cash or check.

I know it sounds outrageous. But that’s just the way it works. Once a corporation files bankruptcy, the shareholders or the owners no longer have the control over the company. Rather, the corporation is “owned” by the bondholders, who will need to divide up the remaining assets in the bankruptcy court. If you have any cash left in the company’s control, you are just another lien holder.

To avoid these heartache, the only way is to pay by credit card. A payment by credit card is only a commitment to pay the amount of cash through credit card company. Since credit card companies don’t give these money to the companies immediately, but only extend credits to the company, there is no money exchanged (yet). Therefore, it’s a much safer way to pay. And that is the reason that credit card company has the bargaining power to allow you to dispute your payment when the service/products are not received.

With global liquidity drying, I expect that both big and small companies are going to go through a rough time for quite a while (years, I mean). Those that don’t have enough cash on hand for daily operation will need to file bankruptcy. And you don’t want to become a victim of such happening.

Best luck shopping.

Frugal at http://www.1stMillionAt33.com/2008/03/i-will-take-the-new-3-cashback-credit-card-from-chase/

For those who have missed the HSBC 5% cashback credit card offer, I must say that it’s a great pity. Like the previous citibank dividend platinum card which eventually had its 5% reduced to 2%, I’m a little afraid that the 5% cashback on my HSBC credit card will eventually go away. Quite often, good things just don’t last very long.

Therefore, I decided to apply for this 3% cashback card not only as a backup, but to also increase cashback in my other spending area. What’s good about this “Freedom” card is that you don’t need to be mindful about where you are spending your money. By default, it’s going to give you 3% cashback on the 3 categories where you are spending most of your money. Some of the categories include grocery, gasoline, drugstore, pet supplies, utilities, etc. I’m actually getting $100 cashback instead of the $50 after the first purchase. My offer was in the mail. If you apply from this link, you just get $50.

In any case, 3% is not too shabby. Especially considering that the cashback is tax-free, I’m much more motivated in getting them. A dollar saved is two dollars earned. The statement pretty much applies to my personal situation since my marginal tax bracket is at 40%.

Why is it important to get a cashback or a good deal on your credit card? You can read more about my arguments in this post on Two Must-Do Money Saving Tips.

Good luck on your savings,

Frugal at My 1st Million At 33 .com

Actually it’s a little too late, but better late than never.

I will be doing a refinance. My previous loan is a zero-cost loan, meaning that it’s a no-point no-fee nothing-out-of-my-pocket and nothing-added-to-my-loan-balance loan. I paid a slightly higher interest rate, but I think it was worth it.

Anybody who wants to refinance or get a loan along with me, just send me an email at 1stMillionAt33#gmail.com (replace # by @). I think I can collectively bargain a cashback of about $50 to $100 for everyone with the mortgage brokers.

If you are interested, please MAKE SURE you put the subject in your email as “home loan for XXX state”, where xxx is the state that you live in. In the email, please put your first name, a phone number, the loan amount, and the loan terms that you are interested in. If your credit is not that good, please state so. If you know your loan-to-value (LTV) ratio is more than 70%, please state your LTV also. Obviously, I will only give this information to one single mortgage broker/company, and not anyone else. Your privacy will be guarded to my best effort. For the state of California, I already have several mortgage companies in mind. But I can’t promise anything yet for people outside of California.

I think stock markets may go for another dive in March, which means that the mortgage interest rates will be low again. You should be in time to catch and lock in that rate.

Regards.

Frugal at My 1st Million At 33 .com

It’s near the end of year. Time to sanity check your finances.

I just pulled my free credit reports from annualcreditreport.com which is a site mandated by government to provide annual free credit reports for consumers. Since there are 3 reporting agencies, I normally just check my credit reports twice or three times a year by spacing out the check every four months. This way you can catch the credit fraud in about four months before the identity theft becomes totally out of control. And if you worry about remembering which credit agency you used last time, it’s not a problem. The site will deny your access if you have checked your credit report from the same agency within the same year.

And yeah, mine and my wife’s have all checked out clean. I even closed a couple of accounts that I was not using at all.

Of course, you can buy any of those monthly credit guard services, so that you don’t need to review your own credit reports once in awhile. I opt for these free reports. This is just another inconvenience and precaution needed caused by rampant frauds in our society.

Last night my wireless router is down. I had to connect my laptop directly thru ethernet physically to the wireless router, in order to get onto the internet and blog. Today’s post is therefore late than usual.

I spend some time shopping for wireless routers, and found a really good deal at target.com for the latest and greatest 802.11n router. It’s a D-link 802.11n router, and it’s only $40. If anyone is thinking of getting a new router, this N router is as cheap as other G/A/B router.

For those who are not familiar with 802.11 wireless technologies, 802.11b is the slowest. 802.11g is faster than 802.11b and the most common choice now. 802.11a is the least compatible and rare. And the new 802.11n is about 5X faster than 802.11g, and will be the next generation wireless technology for everyone’s home. Using 802.11n, one can probably transfer big files wirelessly at a very fast speed. More importantly, I believe in the next 2 to 3 years, you can watch HD TV wireless “everywhere” in your home. The speed of 802.11n is sufficiently to support multiple MPEG2 HD quality channels (not to mention that if you use MPEG4, you get more than double of that). There are still difficulties for wireless TV due to potential intermittent transmission quality. However, I think those problems can easily be solved, if you simply buffer a lot of video by combining the storage capacity of the hard disk from your PVR (personal video recording) system with 802.11n.

Anyway. It’s probably too much tech talk for someone simply looking for a cheap router. And in case if you are interested in the main companies who provide these wireless technologies, they are ATHR, BRCM, MRVL, listed in alphabetical order. I don’t advise buying any of those high-tech stocks however. But if you think of buying them, you may choose ATHR which is a very focused and strong player. Their design seems to be some 40% better in terms of cost than the competitors.

By the way, I wouldn’t worry so much about the “draft” N. 802.11n has been around for at least 1.5 years now, that I think any shipping products should be like 98% compatible with the final approved standard, if not 100%.

The Hope Now Alliance is going to freeze the rates on ARM loans instead of letting them reset. That is absolutely unfair to anyone who doesn’t benefit from such deals. Why don’t I get some free points to buy down the interest rate, paid by the alliance too? Of course, if they can get all the investors in different trenches to agree, then I have nothing to say.

In any case, the banks are desperately trying to keep the mortgage losses under cover by whatever means. This freeze of ARM rates will definitely postpone the reckoning day. I originally expect a heavy down year in 2008/2009 for real estate prices. Now I am less sure of such. However, home prices definitely won’t be going up in 2008/2009. Lending standards for new loans are still tight.

One thing that I’m most curious of on the details of the freezing plan is that on all these ARMs, there are both payment and interest rates. When the payment rate is less than the interest rate, the loan is negatively amortized. I really wonder whether they plan to freeze both payment and interest rates, or just the payment rate. My initial guess would be that it would simply the payment rate that will be frozen. In that case, no one involved will take an actual accounting loss. The interest money will continue to pile up, despite the fact that those interest money may never get paid by the subprime homeowners. Obviously, if given long enough time (and a good amount of inflation), eventually home value will exceed and allow the paid off of these interest money. However, for these mortgage investors, they are still at the losing end of the stick. The inflation will eat away any of their recovery of the interest money.

If anyone knows somebody who get into such plan, please ask him and let me know that whether both interest and payment rates are frozen. Thanks in advance.

I assume that such modified loans will still be un-transactionable, or illiquid. No one in their right mind will buy such products. But keeping these loans away from foreclosure will prevent the banks to liquidate the homes and assigned the final value to the loan at loss. And so the fairy tales will go on, and the losses can be slowly written off. Banks can then “properly” meet the capital requirement ratio from FDIC.

Did anybody who read my blog got into this world-record breaking hedge fund which returned 10X in 1 year? I got the performance number from Minyanville’s article on 1000% Subprime contained. Boy, I only wish I had more cash/money to be brave enough to take a piece of that action. If I did, I would have almost doubled my net worth (since minimum investment was $100K). Unfortunately, I didn’t. But did you?

Certainly, somebody inquired him from reading my blog. Because I was asked by the fund manager Andrew Lahde to removed the proprietary PDF file, even though I had every good intention of promoting his business.

Well, I’m sure he and his clients made out like a bandit. 10X return in one year. That’s probably good enough for the next 10 year.

Were you that lucky? I guess rich does get richer, and I just needed to be a little richer to be in the league to participate and play.

This is a long weekend. Hope you all had fun.

I’m buying Canon SD1000 for $150, and Panasonic Palmcorder SDR-H18 Hard Disk/SD Card Camcorder for $350, both from circuitcity.com. I’ve shopped at many places, that seems to be the best deals around, better than Costco and BestBuy, or even Fry’s electronics. You can get better prices online, but not much better.

I’ve compared the prices on electronics many times. Costco quite often disappoints me. I really expect better pricing from Costco.

Here are some examples:
1. JVC GZ-MG155US HDD 30GB camcorder at my local Costco is selling for $489.99, but the cheapest price from the internet is $329. That is $170 price difference, or some 35% of the total.
2. Sony DCR-SR82 HDD 60GB camcorder at my local Costco is selling for $599.99, but the cheapest price from the internet is $295. That is about $300 price difference, or some 50% of the total.

This is not to mention all those SD memory cards, DVD-R/+R media which are constantly over-priced by a tremendous amount. It’s really hard to imagine who are buying those over-priced products, but I guess there are simply people with more money or less time to price-shop than I do.

Certainly Costco has a very good return policy. But for such a steep price difference, I really need to think twice. There is probably a very good reason why the stock price of Costco is near its all time high at $66.80. Don’t you think that it could be due to all the shoppers paying for Costco’s bottomline?

Most people probably expect a deal when walking into Costco. I’m afraid that maybe the reverse is true.

Government has been pushing lenders to work out terms with the homeowners by modifying the loan terms. However, only 1% or less of the loans were modified. It is not happening for several reasons:

1. Work load on modifying the loan term is additional on a shrinking workforce in mortgage industry.
2. Most of the loans have been sold to different investors, and to modify one loan, you must get all the investors to agree to a loss on the mortgage bond (while homeowners get the gain).
3. Who is going to want to take the loss?

Congress has also passed a law to help out these “poor” homeowners (not sure if all the renters want to cry out FOUL). The forgiven debt by lenders to the homeowners from the “short sale” of the home, normally counts as a taxable ordinary income, will no longer be counted as income, and therefore, tax will not need to be paid.

However, I don’t think Wallstreet and Congress understand the magnitude of the credit crunch. In one sentence, the biggest credit and housing bubble in the human history has BURSTED. It just can’t be reversed anymore. In the capitalism (which tends to generate BIG up and BIG down), the mortgage bond market went crazily up, and now it is simply imploding. Many of the loan products can no longer exist, or at least exist in the same prevalence as before, simply because such loans cannot be sold to investors anymore, who are sitting on a huge loss, and are the main losers in this credit/housing implosion. Definitely homeowners are not the biggest losers. Mortgage bond investors are.

The following quote from FDIC head shows the ignorance of our government officials:

…most likely affect loans that have a low starter rate for two or three years and reset to much higher rates. Many of those loans are adjusting now and have helped push a record number of homeowners into the foreclosure process.

“Keep it at the starter rate,” Ms. Bair said at the Clayton Annual Investor Conference. “Convert it into a fixed rate. Make it permanent. And get on with it.”

Ms. Bair and other federal regulators likely couldn’t force servicers to make these changes, but her message might be interpreted as a warning to loan servicers about potential legislation, said Howard Glaser, an industry consultant based in Washington.

[Boldface, my emphasis]

Now, tell me, if the loan is kept at the starter rate, who is going to keep that loan on their book, since obviously such loans cannot be sold anymore most likely. Ms. Bair, do you want to volunteer and put up your own money to invest in these speculating homeowners?

At the end of the day, it is still about money. Only those loans that make sense to be modified with a minimal loss will be modified. And if the government make laws to force loan term conversion, expect more capital flight out of this increasingly capital-unfriendly country. If I were the investors, I will sell everything when the government force me to eat a substantial losses on my mortgage bond investment and hand it over to the homeowners.

But given the precedence in the oil industry where government repeatedly threaten big oil companies for additional taxes, I suppose that such scenario is definitely a possibility.

I have been thinking of getting a new minivan because my old camry is getting really old, and things are starting to break down. With my friend’s help, we both each bought a new 2007 Honda Odyssey. Before tax and fees, we paid roughly $23,900 for the car, which has a price of $24,584 from carsdirect.com, an invoice price of $25,846 from Yahoo, and a MSRP of $29,330.

Why did I choose this car? I have been extremely busy at work, so I simply relied on my friends’ advice for the choice of car. In fact, I only spent part of the last 3 days shopping for the car. Because my friend told me that both Toyota and Honda have a promotion going on, with manufacturer rebating the dealer about $2000 if a sale is made before the end of September, dealers have more rooms to go down in price. And with Honda, you can easily request price quotes via internet at the honda.com website. So it made the price comparison much easier. At the end, my friend was able to solicit 3 different quotes all within $100 of each other. With the housing market slowdown, the inventory at dealers is definitely significant. Price concession is certainly easier, especially for 2007 models.

Certainly car prices have been going down after adjusting by inflation. I’ve paid almost the same amount for my old camry, some 10 to 15 years ago. And now I’m paying about the same price for a minivan. The power of technology brings deflation, and improves life quality. Relative to housing price, cars are getting quite insignificant these days.

P.S. I will adjust my net worth by the amount that I’ve spent on the new car through a period of a month or two. I will be putting a value of $0 for my cars, since I consider that is money spent already.

Less than a year ago, I applied for this credit card to replace the old Citi Dividend Platinum Select card. This is the only credit card that I know that still gives 5% cashback on any things bought in grocery, drug stores, and gas stations. For more details, you can see my post from last year.

With some $200 saved from cashback, it’s equivalent to earning $400 pre-tax (at least in my case). Certainly easy money, since you don’t even need to make any efforts (besides applying for the card). And if you buy those gift cards for Circuit Cities or any other restaurants in a supermarket, by default, you get 5% off too.

If you know another better cashback card, please let me know. I’ve stopped using my Citi Dividend cards, since their cashback is only 2%.

At this time of home prices falling, and possibly not being able to roll over/refinance the home loan, it is important to revisit this older post of mine: Deficiency Judgment: Think Again Before You Walk Away from last year

To the current homeowners: think again before you send the keys to the bank and walk away from the house. Do you think that when the housing prices fall, you can simply walk away from all the loans? Well, if you didn’t know, I am going to explain it to you. There are loans that you can walk away, and there are loans that you cannot. It’s called a recourse or a non-recourse loan.

A non-recourse loan means that there is no other recourse available to the lenders besides taking back the home. A typical non-recourse loan is a home loan for purchase. If the house falls below the balance of the purchase loan, the buyer can walk away from the house without any serious consequences (maybe except a big blemish on the credit report). On the other hand, a recourse loan means that the homeowner is personally liable for any “deficiency” when the lenders cannot recover the loan amount by selling off the house. A typical recourse loan is a home equity loan or a line of credit from home equity. As far as I could research, I don’t think a refinanced home loan is definitely a recourse loan. But I’m almost certain that a cash-out refinanced loan is recourse loan. As far as the legal language is concerned, a refinanced loan obviously is not a loan made for purchase.

…Click to read more….

Again chances of judicial foreclosures are “usually” small. But you just don’t know what a badly hurt banker will do with a mounting losses on his back, especially with more and more home loan defaults. If it means that it will reduce his losses, he might as well create an off-the-book company to specially deal with lengthy foreclosure process with more money recovered.