Smells Like Updawg

- I think Chinese people have an inborn gene that makes us hurt when money gets wasted. Personally, I don't think of myself as an especially stingy person (I hope none of my friends thinks so either), but that doesn't mean I don't care about my money.

Last year, when I was getting ready to buy a house, I started planning a serious budget. I tried to take every possible factor into account, from the big stuff like work income, mortgage payments, property taxes, down to little things like cell phone bills, gym membership, and Laguna Beach DVD's. I tried to have everything planned out so I'd be able to not only afford all my payments, but still have some savings and extra cash to spend here and there.

Well, saving up some money in the past year has been somewhat of an uphill battle, to say the least. Still, about a month ago, I was going through my bank accounts and 401K, and feeling kind of upbeat about how I was doing. Finally my bills were under control, some interest was piling up, my account balances were going up noticeably, and I could see myself being able to spend some extra money on the side. Maybe take a little vacation, get into some side hobbies, or just go out a little more often.

That didn't last long, though. In the last month, all these unexpected expenses have been popping up left and right. I got yet another flat on my car (4th in 2 years) and ended up having to replace 2 tires at once. Gasoline prices jumped again for a few weeks, the hot weather sent my power bill way up, and there's been an unending stream of stupid charges here and there, ranging from the Schaumburg vehicle sticker to paying $20 cover at Y-bar (just because I was not a woman and happened to get there past 11pm).

By far the worst, though, was when my property tax bill arrived about 30% higher than expected. I was hoping this was a mistake, but I called up the assessor and they said it was because I moved in during the past year and that reduced my "Homeowner's Exemption" by about $1K. As he put it, a little "welcome to the neighborhood". No small chunk of change though.

I'm not sure if it's Schaumburg thing or a Cook County thing, but if you get a house around here, watch out for your property taxes the year after you move in. Kind of surprised it hasn't happened to anyone else I know yet.

- Took a mini road trip with some boys to the Sconz this weekend, for some rafting and other assorted troublemaking. Road trips are always fun, although I think the older we get, the shorter time it takes before people start getting on each others' nerves. Still, a fun time was had by all.

The best part was when we didn't die. We rented one of those 15 person vans to drive up, which according to Ryan, has such a high accident rate that his company refuses to insure it at all. Then on the way there, we were flipping through the newspaper and came across this big picture of a crash. Pretty much the same exact van we were in, all flipped over in a ditch and mangled, with the caption "15 die in van accident". An ominous sign if there ever was one.

- To go along with being one of the few people who doesn't think Family Guy is that funny, I'm thinking I might be the only guy who doesn't think the lead girl from PCD is that hot. She aiiiight, but kinda weird looking if you ask me. Oh, and the part in their video where she dances with the chair is a blatant ripoff of Britney Spears' "Stronger" video. Again, I am possibly the only person who would ever notice that.

Japan Loves Dudo509

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog on how my name was so generic that I didn't have to worry about getting "googled". Well, it turns out that if you go to the Japanese Yahoo! search and type in "Joe Chen", my first blog is the first result that returns. Pretty wild isn't it? Try it if you'd like:

Yahoo! Japan - type in "Joe Chen" and click Search

In regular Yahoo (U.S), I'm only the 3rd result. Not as impressive, but still way higher than I would have guessed. Looks like Google still does not recognize me within its first couple pages, which I consider a good thing.

Anyways, I guess that's one thing I have in common with Uncle Jesse from Full House. Underappreciated in his home country, but a superstar in the Land of the Rising Sun.

For loyal American readers of this blog, don't worry. I won't sell out to my Japanese demographic and turn this page into a bunch of weird obstacle course game shows, or hidden camera shows where they rig Port-o-Potties with hydraulics.

If you're curious to what I'm talking about though, here are a couple links (c/o Brian and Grace):

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/false-wall-prank.html

http://www.noob.us/humor/japanese-game-show-public-bathroom-prank/

1 Down, 29 To Go

This month marks 1 year since I closed on my townhouse. Which, of course, also means that I have now completed my first full year of mortgage payments - out of 30.

There's about a 0% chance that I will end up living here through the entire course of my 30-year loan. And I would like to think that I will be able to progress career and salary-wise to the point that I can pay off the mortgage earlier than that. But it's still a demoralizing thought that after all the work saving up for a down payment, and then the last 12 months of paying mortgage bills, I'm still so far from being able to say I truly "own" my house.

I used to think of a year as a long time. Now it's just a small step in a long climb back up to a debt-free life. Worse yet, if I look at how it breaks down in the amortization table, only about 20% of what I paid to the bank in the last year went to the house - the rest was just to pay off interest. Technically, the title of this blog shouldn't be "1 down, 29 to go", it should be more like "1.4% down, 98.6% to go".



On the plus side, I love home-ownership and I have no regrets whatsoever about signing my life away last year. It was scary at first, and sometimes still is. But overall, I do feel a good sense of accomplishment to get this far in my life. I can't recommend it enough to friends who are still deciding whether or not to take the plunge themselves, as long as you feel like you will be stable for a few years.

And for those of you who recently bought your first place, congratulations and welcome to the club!

*****

Edit: Link to article from DLo about what to consider when deciding between renting/buying

http://www.investorgeeks.com/articles/2006/05/23/renting-is-for-suckers/

Tools

I think my brain was a little fried at work today, but I was staring at my Internet Explorer browser, and noticed for the first time that one of the menus was called "Tools".

Well I mean, I always knew there was the "Tools" menu, but for the first time it amused me. I imagined clicking on the menu, and it opening up a list of names of people who are tools. Maybe it would look something like:

Job Fair Stuff

Don't really have a point to this entry, but I noticed that I still have a lot of the stuff I got at those college job fairs we used to go to.

I've got a deck of playing cards from Motorola, a bunch of t-shirts from Compaq and AMD, and a whole bunch of pens or highlighters from small companies I don't even remember talking to.

Raytheon gave me this cool little digital (as in electronic) clock/calendar thing, while Honda gave me a stopwatch, which I actually still use. Kinda impressive that these electronic things still work, 6 years later.

I wonder what happened to those little rubber balls that flash when you bounce them though, those were the coolest.