Five Cats Blog
~ The life and antics of 5 cats and their human family
TechBot
~ Killer apps, cool widgets, sweet gadgets, hot fixes, must-gets, everything on the web
HELP: BECAUSE YOU CAN
Saturday, March 24, 2007
The Quest for Financial Freedom
Here is my dream. And a nice one it is. Not to have to worry about money anymore. This takes into account critical illnesses, Jack's education, and retirement till I am 100.
Lest you think this is an advertorial for insurance, let me assure you that it is not. Nor do I believe in the benefits of insurance except in the case of medical and for the provision of a missing breadwinner.
For financial freedom, this is what we need to set in place: passive income.
Examples are dividends from blue chip stocks, royalties, affiliate referrals, anything that does not require you to do anything.
So here is my plan:
Write a book.
Create characters to licence.
Buy blue chip stocks during the next crash.
When all of the above is in place, cash in on affiliate programs.
I have been neglecting my stocks for too long. With an all-consuming creative job and a new baby to care for, just checking the trades to make sure I am still in the black sufficed.
Now as full-time motherhood beckons, I am tempted to become a part-time trader again. Don't get me wrong. I still adhere to Buffet's rules of investing and have focused on buying companies that I know, love, and understand.
One of them is Marvel. I have held Marvel since it last split and bought it at $19.48. A tad too high I was told then but I held on. On paper I have made 20% but I believe the company will make even more money in the long term so I have decided to hold.
Today I was pointed to my first Stock Market Blog. There are a lot of great articles and annoucements on US stocks (which is fine as I buy more US stocks than anywhere else) and one good one on ETFs, which I plan to buy soon.
Two stocks I had wanted to buy before but had lacked funds then have since soared: Google and Ebay. It is heartening to know my judgement is sound and I can rely on it for future investments. Keep an eye on this blog for more posts as I delve back into this area. For now, visit the Stock Market Blog.
This post was kindly sponsored by The Stock Market Blog.
It will be a busy weekend for us. First off, we have my farewell dinner at the office. Tomorrow we have another dinner with a couple of friends we have been meaning to catch up with. Sunday we'll be celebrating my Dad's birthday. I bought him a stylish Parker pen with a nice grip that he generally likes. Like me, he loses his pens all the time.
I still hope to have time to play with Wordpress. Probably sleep will have to take a hit. :p
The aspiration of everyone (well, virtually everyone) is to be rich. Before you jump on my back, let me add an addendum. To be rich and happy.
Yes, I believe that is what the paradigm of The Secret is. To manipulate the laws of attraction and create wealth. At the core of it, practical sociology and psychology.
I have to say I am fascinated. As a skeptic, I consider it my sacred duty to examine any claim that I come across, subject it to rigorous testing, and then decide if it is truly the genuine article. To this, hubby and I have agreed that self-help programs like this one do help and change lives if you are in search of it. What greater lure than that of financial security. Between us, we have read almost every book on the subject and the website of this one is enticing me to reach for my credit card and buy a copy of the book.
What I like is they say they will tell you how to (of course, no spoilers on the website), rather than other famous "getting rich" books that are just anecdotal and offer few practical tips (that said, many do help, as might this one, with a paradigm shift).
The nice thing about NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is that you only pay for the bandwidth you use and they give a full refund for the bandwidth you don't use. Pretty nifty. Will keep you posted on the progress.
Another great find and this one with a reseller program run from Data Deposit Box™ itself, which you can join to make some money for your extra external hard drive you really should be buying (okay, that *I* really should be buying).
For $2/GB a month, Data Deposit Box™ offers backup for unlimited users, unlimited computers, and you can try out their service for a 14-day trial. A suitable time to test run this is when you're switching data from one computer to another.
Already I find my 40GB Cutie portable hard drive severely lacking. It's really all my cat and baby photos taking up all the space in my computer. Some time early April I will have to copy over all my stuff to my Lenovo v100 laptop. I managed to carry it with one hand without any trouble today. It sure gives weight (no pun intended) to the term "ultraportable".
LoudLaunch - Compensating bloggers for their unbiased opinions, reviews, and analysis. View the LoudLaunch campaign release this post was based on.
Played with Wordpress tonight. There's not much on my blog there now but I like the bells and whistles and the pretty templates I wish Blogger has.
Still, I think I will stick with Blogdrive as my main blog because:
1. Blog for money
Although I have sort of decided to retire from blog marketing, I can still do the odd paid post if I choose to on Blogdrive and Blogger. Wordpress does not allow you to sell stuff on their blogs and they're very strict about it.
2. Control
I am so used to Blogdrive that I can almost edit my main template upside down and with my eyes closed. Naw... not really but I feel more comfortable here with every bit of code (almost) within my control.
3. Community
A big part of it is my recent invitation to join Blogdrive's cool Help Forum Blog. I'm a bit new and shy around the members but am sure as time goes by, we'll be fine and familiar.
4. History
Strange Machines and I go back a long way. We have history. I can't imagine starting a new personal blog all over again and deleting this one. What would I write about if I started a 4th blog? I doubt I could tempt Tux to start his own blog at Wordpress.
At the end of the day, Wordpress is what I wish Blogger would become. Less commercial (ironic, isn't it?) and faster to load! <- Actually that's all I ask.
* Apparel Store * Photo Retouching * Start a blog * Answer Questions * Ebay Business * Web Design * Podcast * Make Videos * Affiliate Marketer * Sell your own service
Here's an example of a man whose upbringing I hope to emulate for Jack. He is Richard J. Roberts who won The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993.
Here are excerpts from his bio.
* Mom was a homemaker. Read to him and tutored him from an early age.
I am a passionate reader, having been tutored very early by my mother. I avidly devoured all books on chemistry that I could find.
* Received interesting present as a child.
This changed quickly when I received a chemistry set as a present. I soon exhausted the experiments that came with the set and started reading about less mundane ones. More interesting apparatus like Bunsen burners, retorts, flasks and beakers were purchased.
* Father encouraged and supported his interest in chemistry.
My father, ever supportive of my endeavors, arranged for the construction of a large chemistry cabinet complete with a formica top, drawers, cupboards and shelves. This was to be my pride and joy for many years.
* Father introduced mentor to further encourage his passion.
Through my father, I met a local pharmacist who became a source of chemicals that were not in the toy stores. I soon discovered fireworks and other concoctions. Luckily, I survived those years with no serious injuries or burns. I knew I had to be a chemist.
* Mentor in headmaster.
At St. Stephen's I encountered my first real mentor, the headmaster Mr. Broakes. He must have spotted something unusual in me for he spent lots of time encouraging my interest in mathematics. He would produce problems and puzzles for me to solve and I still enjoy the challenge of crossword and logical puzzles. Most importantly, I learned that logic and mathematics are fun!
* Found school boring. :p
Formal chemistry at school seemed boring by comparison and my performance was routine. In contrast, I did spectacularly well in mathematics and sailed through classes and exams with ease.
From age 16 on I found school boring and failed A-level Physics at my first attempt. This was necessary for University entrance and so I stayed an extra year to repeat it. This time I did splendidly and was admitted to Sheffield University, my first choice because of their excellent Chemistry Department. After Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics in the first year, I opted for Biochemistry as a subsidiary subject in the second year. I loathed it. The lectures merely required rote learning and the laboratory consisted of the most dull experiments imaginable. I was grateful when that year was over and could concentrate wholly on Chemistry. I graduated in 1965 with an upper second class honours degree.
If you read the book Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph, he mentions specifically the criticality of a mother's attachment to her son, his father's involvement and encouragement, and the need for parents to introduce good male mentors to a boy. In Richard J. Roberts's case, it certainly worked out well.
Lately Jack has been content to read by himself. He would flip the pages his favourite books patting the characters in them cooing to himself. His favourite books are Little Fish, One to Three, and Just Like Daddy.
He has a sound for everyone and we each identify our own sound. :) I am eh-eh or Mom-Mom (or food). Grandma is ahhhh. Let me memorise the rest and I will write them down too.
His new game is using a piece of paper to slide himself along.
For me, I found new use for PDA. Penning notes and letters.
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison (Harper's Magazine, 1890)
A woman's romance with motherhood, green living, finance, and this heady thing called life.
by Steve Biddulph, he mentions specifically the criticality of a mother's attachment to her son, his father's involvement and encouragement, and the need for parents to introduce good male mentors to a boy. In Richard J. Roberts's case, it certainly worked out well.
