Personal Experience

What to Carry and not to Carry in your Wallet

April 10, 2012
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What to Carry and not to Carry in your Wallet

We haven’t thought about this before untill we came across an article on Yahoo finance which listed things to carry and not to carry in the wallet. I don’t belive in some of the things they mentioned, like carrying a blank paper to note down few essential things when out on the road. We carry smart phones and that come with notepad utility to take notes and obviously the phone numbers. I carry a medium-sized wallet which is not too uncomfortable when I tuck it into pant pocket. Here are the things I carry. Driver’s License $2 in change $40 in cash Insurance ID card Name Card with emergency contact Credit Cards Library Card Postal Stamps Store Cards (not credit) My lucky cent coin! Driver’ License - You should always carry an identity in your wallet. Ideally, your license could be the best option. From buying liquor, cigarettes to entering in to a secured area, an identification is must. Also, state law requires you to have licence while driving. For me this is the number-one item in must haves. Money – I carry $2 in change (quarters). They come in handy for the toll booth and for the metered parking space. I also

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Does Blogging Affect Your Work? I Think So

February 20, 2012
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Does Blogging Affect Your Work? I Think So

Does blogging affect work? Last year, when I started blogging, I didn’t know the answer, or at least, I didn’t want to find out. I got caught up in the intricate world of blogging, to an extent I was never fascinated with anything else. Not even my day job. The reality was, there were no blog income, where as the salary was more than satisfactory. First week of February was a wake up call for me. The appraisals for 2011 came in. It was a rude shock to me How blogging affected my work For past two years I was assessed as “Exceeding the expectation”, or rated 1. This year I was assessed as “Meeting the expectation”, or rated 2. My manager saw my performance degrading compared to last two years. On a later one-on-one with my manager (a director), I was pointed to my behavioral changes. 1. My work hours got reduced by an average 1:30 hours a day, it is a right observation, instead of spending 11+ hours, I was spending only 10 or even less. This might sound ridiculous to you but, I am fine with that number of hours. I feel hard work is necessary to grow in career or

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The Complete Yodlee Money Center Review

January 30, 2012
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The Complete Yodlee Money Center Review

Across many posts I have written about Yodlee being my favorite personal finance tool. I track my net worth using Yodlee, I track my budget and spending through Yodlee money center. Way more than what mint.com offers. I have also experimented with a few other financial accounting tools like quicken online. My main problem with them is I can’t fully trust them.  I covered this suspicion in detail with my Credit Sesame review post. Why I use Yodlee Money Center? There are many reasons, for the sake of keeping this post to a readable length, I will just stick to a few. 1. Money Center has been around for over 10 years. Thus, you can definitely count on the products and services they offer. In fact, it’s a lot older than Mint.com, which has just been released around 2009. With old age comes wisdom and we generally tend to trust the old guy.  Because of its long history, they have developed a fine collection of tools for tracking your personal finance information. 2. Big financial institutions use Yodlee money center tool for giving value added service to their customers in terms of portfolio management. Bank Of America, Fidelity and American Express are customers of

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How I Track My Net Worth, What I Look In It

January 13, 2012
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How I Track My Net Worth, What I Look In It

Since I blog about personal finance, naturally you would be interested in my financial progress. In this post I’ll mention about this progress and the growth rate of my net-worth value over the last 12 months. I never talk about my income publicly and probably will never do it, so I am not revealing the absolute number. I will only be limited to the growth of my net worth in percentage term. Let me clarify first that I am not wealthy by any means,  am rather, a common man. As I said often, I am not a financial expert; I am just a ‘guy next door’. I blog and give friendly advises because that helps in my education and blogging let me manage my own finances better. This blog is my way of learning personal finance effectively with a hope that you learn a thing or two in the process as well. Probably this is first time I am going to reveal a few things on my own finance. Net-Worth  to me, is a number which indicates my financial health, a sort of “financial scorecard”. I track all my financial accounts in one place, Yodlee Money Center. Although net worth is useful, I don’t spend

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Year End Personal Financial Checklist

November 23, 2011
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Year End Personal Financial Checklist

Before I start writing my wisdom on financial planning here, let me explain that, until now, I didn’t do anything as fancy as checking off a year-end personal finance checklist – a list of what I didn’t do and can still do before the tax year ends. Suddenly the idea crossed my mind and I decided to do some research. As I made multiple lists, I realized I’m definitely not financially perfect and have my own fair share of mistakes, and that this blog is a way to become more self aware and make informed decisions. A lot of good things have happened since I started blogging. I opened a second checking account and reallocated my portfolio. While the reallocation part is definitely positive, it took some time to analyze the rate of return on my stock and bond funds as well as individual stocks. Whether the reallocation is going to benefit me is not yet known. The biggest gain I received by blogging is the inflow of knowledge. I can advise friends and family on the pros and cons of every type of investment. I know the intricacies of IRAs, Roth IRAs, the Roth IRA rules and 401(k)s. Let’s hope this exercise of year-end

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16 Ways to Show Your Wife You Care

October 17, 2011
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16 Ways to Show Your Wife You Care

Everyone needs pampering, and everyone likes to feel appreciated. After 7 years of marriage, every once in awhile I take my wife for granted (especially since I started blogging). I thought she accepted me putting numerous evening and weekend hours into blogging. Also, my frugal ways don’t really match with hers. We were raised in contrasting lifestyles – I never had plenty of things in my life, whereas she got whatever she wanted. We both know that marriage is a bond of love with mutual compromise keeping the bond intact. Lately I’ve doing my part of the compromising a little less. Although I have amended this in the last month, I still have so many things to catch up on compared to other husbands! I have read a few articles on relationships and marriage in preparation for writing this article. Here is what I learned – I hope the list will add spark to your life as well. Let me start by asking, do you know your wife/girlfriend’s birthday? 16 Tips to make your wife happy Don’t forget special occasions. I track important days with Birthday Alarm. I set it up some 10 years ago. Since then, the website has

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It Is That Time Of The Year, A Personal Talk

October 12, 2011
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It Is That Time Of The Year, A Personal Talk

 If you have read my articles for past few months or weeks you might have noticed that I have been posting more guest posts lately. The reason behind this is the obvious, the pressure of day job! I work for a financial company, developing their software applications. Every year we undertake slew of projects involving existing application enhancements along with occasional system overhauling projects. Typically projects which requires a system overhaul runs throughout the year and comes to completion by October/November time frame. As the rollout day nears our work pressure increases in terms of testing and release activities. Since in my capacity as subject matter expert I get involved in many such large projects, every year around this time my phone rings round the clock with co workers and developers asking for advice and communicating the status reports. The saga this year started during last week of September and is expected to continue till mid November. I don’t get enough time to write these days. I am grateful to all those who have submitted their guest posts and it is because of them that I still am a good boy in my leader’s eyes (after all that is most

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Make Saving A Fun, Be A Motivated Saver

September 12, 2011
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Make Saving A Fun, Be A Motivated Saver

We spend money in an attempt to gain happiness. Big vacations, dream homes, and happy kids make us happy. Then why do personal finance experts advise us to save money in order to feel happy? We can just spend money and buy happiness to remain happy always, can’t we? I know you will start counting the benefits of investing and making money grow. You will tell me that the same money can bring more happiness tomorrow (compared to today) if I let it grow and earn interest. Last evening my wife wanted to go watch a movie at the theater, and I, being frugal, tried convincing her how costly a theater ticket is as compared to overnight DVD rental. She asked me, “Why are you working so hard?” I said, “To earn more, and to have more money so we can have a better life.” Her: “When?” Me: “A few years from now.” Her: “Exactly how many?” Me: “I don’t know, but pretty soon. Let me save enough to have a home and blah blah blah…” (my usual wish list) Her: “Then, what exactly will we do with those things?” Me: “We will have a happy life and lots of

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A Chit Chat With My Readers

July 22, 2011
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Now I have a side business if you call that a  business, I am talking about blogging, and, you know what, I like this one more than my main business which is sitting in front of my laptop 10 hours a day. After having started as a software engineer my career took its own turns and now I find myself talking over phone for 8 of those 10 hours at work. Sometimes I feel like I am a call center support personal, nothing against the call centre job, but I don’t find it suitable for my skills. When I turned in to a part-time writer for my own blog I didn’t think of producing 4-5 posts per week, which I am doing for past 3 weeks almost and amazingly I don’t feel exhausted. Definitely my time towards SMB has been reduced, but she keeps herself busy with books, shes big! book fan, so it doesn’t hurt we sit next to each other and I share some of the things from my blog and blog forum at yakezie. although she complained a few times about my obsessiveness, but it’s fine now, as I do share more stories with her. Talking about Yakezie

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It Is Difficult To Live Frugal But Not Hard

July 11, 2011
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It Is Difficult To Live Frugal But Not Hard

Few days back my car was serviced, after dropping it in, we headed for a festival we planned to attend. It was just a regular servicing with oil change and tire rotation and inspection. The guy from the service center called me an hour later to let me know that the wiper blades need replacement. It was nothing I didn’t know, it was long pending, I always wanted to do it myself. Don’t know what happen in that exact moment, I agreed that they should replace my blades. Problem here is, after reading on many blogs, and myself pitching for fixing your small problems with car or home yourself. I did agree for them to put a new wiper. When I returned to pickup my car in the evening, it was a hefty $25 charge on the invoice! Two years back when I did replace wipers on my own, it costed me $8 for the pair at Wal-Mart. How did I miss on this occasion? If I think, problem is broader, it is difficult to stay frugal. It is comparatively easy to stay frugal when you are living frugal to survive, than when you choose to be frugal to be rich. If

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