hummmmmmm

Wow, I haven't been here for ages. Thinking of creating another blog to sell used baby items locally. So I have to come back here to get familiar with this site.

Still alive and well (I think)

I have not been able to update my blog but I am alive. More posts to come soon.

Suze Orman

In my entire life, well the past 10-15 years or so, I have read a number of financial books. There were books that I found very difficult to understand and some requires a bit of digging (research) before I knew what I was reading. Actually, there were books that I do not understand today.

Recently, I stumble upon Suze Orman's show on Channel 13 and then decided to get some of her books from the library. One of the books I got from the library is "The money book for the young, fabulous & broke".

In the “don’t do it” section of her book, she mentioned:

“People first. Then money. Then things. So what’s it mean? The nature of money is that it will come and go in your life. And the last time I checked, there’s no way you can take a penny of it with you when you finally exit this world. I can also promise you that when you are on your deathbed, you are not going to be thinking about how great your life would have been if only you had bought that latest and greatest car, plasma TV, or fabulous outfit you always wanted.”

Had I known what I know today, I would've done somethings differently when I was younger.

Busy?

Wow, I am busy. With a new born and a 2 years old at home. I am running between the 2 of them and sometimes both of them crying for me at the same time. It's absolutely heaven when both of them takes a nap at the same time...which rarely happens because the 2 years old one doesn't really take naps anymore. My quiet time is at night when they both asleep. I catch up with my showers, my reading, cleaning, paperworks, emails etc...or simply just sit down and do nothing.

New addition to my family

I haven't been able to keep up with this blog the past few months. We have a new member in our family this month and she is keeping all of us busy. And oh the older child is very much jealous and missed me a lot while I was in the hospital. Among temper tamtrums of terrible 2s, dealing with constant feeding of a new born and my postpartum swelling and pain - I think we all need sometime to adjust and for me to get back to normal self again.

I will visit this blog more often as things get a little better.

Additions to my kitchen

I’ve been adding items to my kitchen, cookwares, serve wares and food storage. I had been watching the 14 cup food processor on Amazon and finally when it dropped to a lowest price, I took the chance and bought it. However, after using it 3 times within 10 days, the motor wouldn’t stop. I had to send it back to Amazon for a replacement. The replacement came quickly (within 2 days). When I got the replacement, I quickly tested it before I washing all the parts to be used. I’ve been using it to make pizza dough and bread dough. I also used it to puree some vegetables but so far no one likes the puree but myself. I will use it more often to do other stuff…shredding, slicing.

I purchased a few pieces of cast iron cookware as well. I got a 12 inch skillet, a 5 quart dutch over and a reversible grill/griddle from Amazon. They are all Lodge Logic brand. My first piece of cast iron was the reversible grill/griddle and I had no idea how to take care of it. Only after grilling some chicken breasts with some lemon marinate did I realized that I should not cook anything acidic the first few times such as lemon and tomato sauce. Anyhow, I learned all that from reading all the reviews. And I also learned to re-season it from reading from all the reviews. I think it’s working much better now. I love grilling vegetables and chicken breasts (for chicken sandwich) on the grill. I cook eggs and pancakes on the griddle side. And the 12 inch skillet, I use it for stir fry mostly. And I use the dutch oven to bake bread so far but there are a lot of uses for the dutch oven which I can’t wait to try. I’ll try the beef stew in the dutch oven next time.

I ordered 3 4-cups Pyrex glasses to store food. It was the cheapest that I could find comparing prices from Amazon and other place. They are great because I was so tired of store my food in plastic containers (which can leech chemicals) and when I have to heat them up, I have to pour them to plates to heat them up and then I have to wash the containers and the plates. Pyrex are very durable glasses so you can see what you store inside them and it can go from refrigerator microwave to serving table.

Corningware simplylite bakewares: 1.5 quart, 2, 2.5 and 3 quarts from Amazon buy 4 for the price of 3. Amazon takes off the lowest price item. They are also great for storage as well as baking. So far I have used them for storage in the refrigerator and use to transport food for my grandma’s potluck birthday party. The lids are a bit difficult to open but I found a way to open from the other three angles rather than from the angle where they intended you to.

I sure have a lot to explore with the food processor and the cast iron cookwares. I am also looking into investing into a bento box. I’ve been reading on that topic and check out what you can put into the bento boxes. There are so many different types of bento boxes out there but one particular one that really grabbed my attention is the Mr. Bento box. It’s not a cheap investment so I have to read more on what I can put in there before investing in it.

New year resolutions, financial wake up calls, keeping track of expenses

As the new year rolls in, I looked over last year’s new year resolutions and to check off the ones I have accomplished. I am not sure if it is accomplished if I have looked into something but it was better than not doing anything at all. The only one that I can check off is getting pregnant.

As this year starts, I have another list (only 5 this year). And I have started on 4 of the 5 on the list.

Selling the property is one of our resolutions this year. We had a low offer on the second week after we listed our property on the MLS. After many considerations, I have decided not to go through with it because the buyer did not qualify for a conventional loan. They wanted a FHA loan which I thought it was a hassle and it might take longer than necessary to complete the transaction.

And then came the snow storms. We practically have one every few days. We hire a landscape guy who looks after the property when it snows. We send him a money order and a little extra fee to cover the fee when he cashes the money order or check. So far it’s going well. I hope the storm stops soon and we’ll sell the house as soon as possible to cut our costs. Even thought it’s an investment property and all expenses are tax deductible but they are still out of pocket money for now.

When I started looking into our financials, I looked into my 401-k which I left at one of the companies that I worked. I no longer work there for 4 years but my 401-k is still there. I didn’t touch it at all. When the recession came in 2008, my portfolio lost half of it’s value and now it finally caught up to what it once was. That’s when I got a wake up call and realized I should’ve looked into my financials more closely. I rolled over my 401-k to an IRA last month.

One of the few things that I have been procrastinating to do is setup Quickbooks (an accounting software) and keep track of our expenses. I spent most the day yesterday putting in our expenses for the month of January. First I jot down all the expenses in a piece of accounting paper as the days go by. After I setup the chart of account in Quickbooks, I entered those charges into Quickbooks. There are some looking and digging but I finally did it in one day. And January is one of our bigger expense months. It has Chinese New Year expenses, property taxes, and some after Christmas shopping. I used to keep some of our expenses in a spreadsheet but it is much better to use an accounting software to keep track of expenses. You can see all the details that make up the amount with just one click. It’s not a complete functional company profile with assets, liabilities and income. The main purpose for us right now is keeping track of expenses. Does it count every penny we spent? No, I think I have about 95% of all the expenses. There are times when my husband buys lunch at work and he does not like to keep track of every penny he spends (which drives me crazy at times).

I think it’s a good start for now.