Personal Life - One Cent At A Time

How Blog Income Helped me Completing Education

April 17, 2019 3 Comments

About this Post: The following post is from guest poster Rishit Shah, who completed his Chartered Accounting degree (equivalent to CPA in the USA) entire with his blog income. Enjoy the post, it has some good lessons for all of us.

In my final level of Chartered Accountancy (CA), I was interning at a CA firm and that is where I learned Tally.

I learned Tally from a Chartered Accountant. When I talked to my friends about it, they were surprised because they didn’t know anything about it.

Happy New Year Readers!

January 5, 2015 3 Comments

Happy new year readers! This is my first published post in 2015. Hope you had a wonderful start to this new year. May this be your most successful and productive year. As they say, you start with an empty 365 pages book, so make sure the start-up or the preface is good for the entire book to be a good read.

Happy new year 2015

I had one of the laziest last few days since Christmas. We went to India just after thanks-giving. Attended a gala family marriage ceremony. Came back tired with few extra pounds. Still trying to lose that excess. This was supposed to be a vacation, but ended up more tiring than regular work weeks.

Advantages of Living in a Small Home

January 13, 2014 9 Comments

Here I am again with another personal story. This is about our small 2 BHK apartment. Over the last couple of months an urge to buy our first home started to develop in me. All my friends, even the ones who came to this country from India are now home owners. Even my sister-in-law is a home owner too, in Houston. Lately were questioned by many about it. They even started making guesses about our financial situation, or the lack of money.

This is a strange situation to be in. It becomes very difficult to explain people who ask the same question multiple times. They simply think paying rent is waste of money. Some even calculated the amount of rent we paid in last 8 years and thus the money we wasted. Yes, we paid rent without building equity on a property of our own. but we did save on things we would otherwise would have spent money on.

The Year in Travel 2013

December 31, 2013 10 Comments

This post is inspired by JD Roth’s post, who indirectly (and unknowingly) inspired me to start this blog. Even the name of this blog was inspired by JD’s earlier blog “Get Rich Slowly”. Coming to the point,since we love to travel, I thought ending the year with a note on our travel performance would be a good move. And doing so, I can be somewhat more personal to you. In summary, 2013 was a good year for us with respect to travelling. We went to as many as 5 places in last 12 months!

Amazing view on New Orléans Swamp tour

I get 28 days of paid leave in a year, so managing 5 destinations to travel to is not a bad performance, right? Usually we travel to our home country, India, every two years, and when we take an India trip, most of those 28 days are used up. We are planning our next India trip in Oct-Nov 2014 so, 2014 is unlikely to be a good year for travel.

Weekend Chit Chat and Some Pure Personal Talk

September 16, 2012 4 Comments

Somehow I don’t feel like writing another personal finance topic today, also in weekend edition I talk only on personal matter. On weekends, OCAAT becomes a white board of my state of mind. If you follow my blog for only my financial advices, you may not get anything out from today’s article. If you follow my life, a bloggers life, you may get some insight in to my inner self. I know some of you do follow my weekend’s life snippets. At least the emails I receive indicate that fact.

On financial and money management matters, although, I am strict and disciplined, as a person I am very easy, flexible and weak. A somewhat do-as-you-like kind of guy. I am nostalgic and way more emotional than average men. I get hurt easily and am extremely fragile. In my personal life I often feel insecure.

Mother I Owe my Success to You – Happy Mother’s Day!

May 13, 2012 9 Comments

This is a small tribute to my mother on occasion of mother’s day. The lady whom I recall spending entire day to look after us. She never worked to earn a living, she was a housewife, a home maker. Someone who loved to control everything home related and did so efficiently and passionately.

She had the final say at every decision we took as family, be it choosing the next vacation destination or deciding if we needed new dresses. She maintained family budget and spending. She kept track of household inventory, she maintained supply needs. She prepared the grocery list.

She was on top of everybody’s need, amazingly she knew our needs much before we realized them as our needs. My father is a lucky man to have him as wife.

Be A Better Person in 15 Days, 15 Ways

February 24, 2012 31 Comments

In January I did a little experiment with my life. I started doing one good thing a day to become a better person than I am now. Not that I hate who I am still, no harm in getting better.

Bet a Better Person in 15 Days and 15 Ways

How To Feel Good and Increase Productivity

December 22, 2011 30 Comments

The purpose of our lives is to be happy. – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

I blog here at OCAAT not only to make myself and yourself monetarily richer. I also want you and I to feel richness in every aspect of our lives. An important part of this is emotional richness. Emotional richness is a state of mind when you feel happy about being you. It is a state when you love and cherish your existence.

When I am happy, I finish a lot of tasks, I complete long pending assignments and I do my things faster. In other words my productivity increases when I am happy and I feel good.

OCAAT Weekly Roundup and A taste of India : Diwali Edition

October 29, 2011 4 Comments

Welcome Readers to the Deewali edition of my weekly roundup. As many of you know I am an immigrant to USA from India where I spent 28 years of my life.

India’s population consists of 80% Hindus. Diwali is the biggest Hindu festival of the year except few corners of the country where one or two local festivals have more acceptance over Diwali.

Last week on 26th October people in India celebrated Diwali. Here in US, we celebrate over week end as its more convenient for the people at work. Needless to say back in India its a national holiday. Each year the date varies in accordance with ancient Indian lunar calendar.

It Is That Time Of The Year, A Personal Talk

October 12, 2011 13 Comments

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.

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