Today is a great day. I got a break off work. It is a great opportunity to re-launch my blog. This is inspired by www.milliondollarjourney.com. The blogger there has done a great job reaching his goal. He has already reach $500k mark. I think he should be able to reach the 1 million dollar mark 3 years from now.
And today, I will restart my blog, to talk about my journey to million dollars and how I get there.
There is only one cause that brings the bull market to its knee, which is when companies doing bad or the entire economy is doing bad.
That was easy, we can tell when we reached the peak and get out before the big crash (down 40%) but what takes the stock market out of the bear market? To make investing life simple, I want to get the clear clue. The simple answer is when economy starts to turn around. That’s true, but we will be way above the bottom. So it isn’t that useful.
If I look back at the peak of the bull market, people ignore all the fundamental and buy whatever the media suggest. So, same scenario for the bear market is the capitulation point where people sell regardless the fundamental. The bottom should be at the maximum fear. That’s when the economy seem like it will never recover, we will never get any job, business revenue will keep losing.
How could we miss all the signals that were telling us the bear market(credit crunch) is coming?
I have already been hit by the worst financial turmoil in my first year of investment career. But, as long as I have a full time job providing me cash flow to invest, this bear market driven by credit crunch is probably the best lesson. It also prepares me for the future bear markets to come. Oh I am learning from the best-worst bear market.
We better learn from the our past and benefit it for our future. Here is a graph that pretty much telling us all the signs of pre-bear market and pre-bull market. Catch the bull and avoid the bear:
There is risk if invest in stock market. It also brings up your worry-ness level.
To be truly retired without worry, the best way to do that is make sure the post-retirement income is risk free.
I would suggest to use your projected annual income divided by 5%, that’s should be how much money you will need to retire without worry.
For example:
I need $30000 annually. so i need 30000/0.04=600k to retire comfortably with most of my money invested in 4% bond and a bit money in stock market. Even my stocks investment falls; I still get the money from the fixed income.
Here is a quick calculation for people who needs to know how much they need to retire:
Have you ever purchase something and forgot that you could have saved 10-25% percent but you forgot to bring your coupons? What about forgetting to bring your Air Mile Card? Well, I certainly have forgotten many times.
Here is a good advice for the forgetful and busy ones, so next time when you go shopping you won't forget them:
1) Put your coupons in your car's cabinet.
2) Put your Point cards (air miles, petro point, department store point card, home depot, pc card ect...) in your car's cabinet.
3) for people who don't drive, you can keep some point cards/coupons in your wallet just in case, but try avoid overstuff the wallet, or you end up with a George Costanza Wallet.
Final Word:Keep your life simple, make things easily accessible.
This is the tool I've been looking for ages. If you are like me who loves to cook; I bet you know how tedious to chop garlic into small pieces or how stupid the garlic press was designed. I have been trying invent a new way to chop garlic. Today I found two similar product: Garlic Twist or Garlic Pro E-Zee-Dice, they can quickly turn peeled garlic into a fine dice and easy to clean with a quick slosh of hot water and soap.
Life should be simple, the new garlic twist fits our core belief perfect. Throw away your garlic press and welcome the garlic twist.
I want to be able to blog and surf the net anywhere I go. Yes, there are laptops, but who wants to carry these bulky laptops on the road? It wouldn't be safe to carry all your important information on the road.
So the solution is to get a very cheap laptop that you wouldn't care if you lose it. Here come the netbooks, they are cheap, lightweight and best of all, they are easy to use! They can be turned on in 30 seconds; they run on Linux hence you don't need to worry about viruses, hardware drivers and buying software ect....
They cost between $299 - $400. The most populous netbook is the Asus Eee pc 901, DELL Mini 9 and IBM U10 are also releasing their flavor of netbooks in sept 2008.
complete list of netbooks
Today is the first day my own blog. Like everything we do for the first time; I have done many things unnecessary such as finding best blog provider and finding the most beautiful templates.
I could have saved myself a lot of headache and 4 hours of my life. These flashy template and blog providers are like your friends' beautiful blond girlfriends, they are high maintenance. We don't have time, energy and attention for that. We want our lives to be simple.
At the end of the day, I chosen the default template supplied by this blog's service provider, I avoided to change the color or picking on every detail.
Now I have a simple blog that require minimal maintenance time which allows me to blog the things that matter.
Last Word: Keep it simple, use default setting
Last night I was swamped with tremendous amount of worries. I worry about keeping my job, worry about starting a family of my own. Such event leads me to realize how complicated my life have become. I rather live a simple worry-free life, and I start this blog to pursue my dream of a simple life.
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