Checking my financial course

Posted on January 2nd, 2007 by Sacha Chua

I must be doing something right if my mom’s financial advisor is
impressed by my planning. ;)

We visited Tina at the bank today. After my mom finished a little
business, I took advantage of the free financial advice. I told Tina
about the money I’d earmarked for various expenses, the emergency fund
I’d set up, and the savings I set aside. She was glad to hear that I’m
already thinking about all of these things at 23 years of age.

Tina recommended a split between a diversified balance fund and a
high-risk, high-growth equity fund. Asian equities are doing pretty
well, although the foreign currency hit and the fees for transferring
money probably mean that I should keep Canadian money in Canada for
now.

It’s good to know that I’m on course, and to get an idea of what’s
coming up ahead. I’ll keep money in a liquid high-interest savings
account first because I don’t know how much I’ll need when I
transition into the working world. I will probably want to furnish a
place, update my wardrobe, get used to a new lifestyle, etc. I know
I’ll feel satisfied if I can cover all of my startup costs and restore
my emergency fund without taking stuff out of my investment fund.

When the dust settles, I’ll look into the investment options. My next
milestone would be three to five years out, when I decide whether to
stay in Toronto or move on. I like what my mom did with our place on
Bautista: rent the house until she decided to buy it. It seems like a
good way to get a feel for a place. We’ll see. But I should be able to
diversify into really-long-term (retirement or 10+ years), medium (3-5
years), and liquid assets.

I pay attention to stuff like this because I would hate to waste these
great opportunities through mismanagement. Besides, sorting this out
early takes less effort than dealing with the consequences of bad
planning. =) And it’s fun! I like seeing my books balance. I like
knowing that the basics are taken care of and that there’s some room
to take crazy chances and follow my intuition. I like abundance and
growth…

Random Emacs symbol: pop-tag-mark – Command: Pop back to where M-. was last invoked.

More posts about: Uncategorized // Add Comment »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/4107

On This Day...

2013: Visual book review: Blue Ocean Strategy–W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne — Most business books focus on beating the competition. Blue Ocean Strategy (Harvard Business School Press, 2005) focuses on breaking out [...]
2012: Quantified Awesome: Community-supported agriculture with Plan B Organic Farms, fall 2011 — After a good summer season with Plan B Organic Farms, we decided to sign up for their fall season as [...]
2011: Sick days — Still sick. Flush with a fever, congested with a cough and a cold, voiceless, and all around under the weather. [...]
2010: Book: Rules for Revolutionaries — Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and ServicesGuy Kawasaki, 2000 The most relevant [...]
2009: Craftsmanship — One of the interesting things that came up during the dinner party conversation with Pete Forde’s friends was the lack [...]
2009: “What are you planning to do in 2009?”, or thoughts about #lifecamptoronto — I’d been meaning to hold a lifehacking-oriented BarCamp since early last year. Timing is particularly good over the next two [...]
2009: Sleeping Cats — Being a geek means you can let sleeping cats lie. Thanks to W- for being so awesome!
2008: More progress — Yay, I finished my writing goal for the day! Tomorrow’s a busy day. I have two conference calls, a client meeting, [...]
2008: Projects in Emacs Org — Introduction Organizing your tasks into projects can help you plan ahead, track your progress, and stay motivated. Working from a project list [...]
2007: Ay, my dad… Fireworks! — My dad sounded *so* disappointed earlier! He trudged up the stairs and said, “Sacha, I’m so sad…” I looked up from my [...]
2007: You only live once! — … and each night is as important as every other night, and each day is as important as every other day. I’m [...]
2007: Still getting horrible packet loss for international sites — 0% packet loss to www.pldt.com.ph, 71% packet loss to www.google.com. The international links are still broken. ARGH. Good thing my dad has [...]
2007: My alma mater is t3h c00l — I heard from Gabby Dizon that Ateneo de Manila University will use the popular cross-platform roleplaying game Neverwinter Nights to [...]
2007: The secret to waking up early — Woke up at 6 today. It’s getting easier and easier. I discovered the secret to waking up early! Sleep in the same [...]
2007: No ACM! — Oh no! I tried using the ACM Digital Library through my library access earlier, and I couldn’t get full-text access. I’ve sent [...]
2005: Luxury — The onsen had a wine bath. Wine! With that and the different kinds of saunas, my head feels finda fuzzy… But [...]
2004: Family businesses — My parents both work in advertising photography. My father is one of the most famous commercial photographers in the country. My [...]
2004: Reading exercises — Another major hack for this month would be the collection of at least 25 code-reading exercises covering basic Java syntax. This [...]
2004: Monthly hacks: vc-arch.el — I will finish at least one major hack per month. This month’s special is vc-arch.el, which for some reason does not [...]
2004: emacs-wiki-id.el — ../emacs/emacs-wiki/emacs-wiki-id.el contains a first attempt at an ID system for emacs-wiki and indeed is quite nice. Following IDs works. I’ll figure out [...]
2004: Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective — Playing on my strengths as all-around puzzler-out of weird software, perhaps I should explore software archaeology and code reading a bit more. [...]
2004: emacs-wiki sites — In fit of insanity, searched for sites that used emacs-wiki. Quite a list. - http://www.self-core.org/~kaoru-k/wiki/EmacsWiki.html - http://larve.net/people/hugo/2003/scratchpad/EmacsWiki.html (has RSS) - http://www.oranda.demon.co.uk/planner/EmacsWiki.html (uses planner) - [...]
2004: Emacs-wiki community wiki — http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/community/SiteMap Didn’t know there was something like this – or that we now enjoy near links in oddmuse. What a cute feature!
2004: Blogging is alive and well under Emacs — in reaction to http://www.sfu.ca/~gswamina/BlogsAreDead.html I’ve had a blog for roughly a year and a half now, and I think I’m pretty much [...]
2004: Emacs-wiki and RSS feeds — http://www.sfu.ca/~gswamina/EmacsWikiPatches.html . Check this out sometime and steal all the cool ideas (with appropriate credit, of course). ;)
2004: Places to visit — AU: Basser Department of Computer Science, The University of Sydney - Problem-Based Learning for Foundation Computer Science Courses - Mike Barg, Alan [...]

sacha chua living an awesome life