10 Traits That Make You Filthy-Rich

Saving money isn’t all about whether or not you know how to score screaming bargains.

It has more to do with your attitude toward money.

Just think of those who don’t fit the filthy-rich stereotype. People like Warren Buffett.

As explained in the book The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, personal finance has as much to do with people’s traits as it does with money. Many millionaires, in fact, have frugal ways.

Understanding how personal traits can influence your finances is an essential ingredient for building wealth.

Here are 10 key traits:

10. Patience

Patience is one of the most important traits when it comes to saving money.

This means waiting until the first wave of product hype has passed, keeping a car for an extra few years before getting another one and waiting until something you want fits into your budget instead of putting it on credit.

Patience is often the difference between creating savings and being in debt. Having the patience to wait until you find a good deal is a cornerstone of good finances.

9. Satisfaction

When you’re satisfied, there is no reason to spend money on nonessentials. The sole purpose of commercials is to make you believe that buying a product or service will make you happier, wealthier, better looking or improve whatever isn’t bringing you satisfaction.

People spend because they want to capture the excitement shown in advertisements. When you are satisfied with what you have and your life (not trying to live like those on TV), your finances will be in a lot better shape.

8. Organization

Being organized can make you more productive and ensure that all the many issues pertaining to personal finances are addressed.

It means not paying late fees, not buying two of everything, knowing deadlines that can affect your finances and getting more done in less time. All these can greatly benefit your finances.

7. Discipline

You need the discipline to continue to save money for specific, long-term goals every month. Personal finance isn’t a way to get rich quick, but is a disciplined execution of your lifetime plans.

6. Reflectiveness

It’s important to be able to look at your financial decisions and reflect on their results. You’re going to make financial mistakes. Everyone does. The key is to learn from those mistakes so you don’t make them again, or recognize if you keep repeating them.

5. Creativity

The economy and our earnings don’t always match our expectations.

Unexpected developments wreak havoc to elaborate financial plans. When this happens, changes are needed to deal with the new circumstances. Creativity is essential to accomplish this.

Creativity allows you to make something last longer rather than purchasing it when you don’t have the money. It means juggling money to stay out of debt rather than simply paying with a credit card. It means finding a cheaper alternative when money is tight.

In these ways, creativity plays a large role in keeping finances in order.

4. Curiosity

Having curiosity helps you learn, study and improve yourself.

The curiosity of wanting to know more, to take the time to study and then take what is learned and put into practice is an important process that is driven by curiosity.

3. Risk-Taking

To build wealth, one needs to be willing to take risks. This doesn’t mean uncalculated risks. It means weighing all the options and taking calculated risks when appropriate.

The stock market has risks involved, but over the long term, history shows that it provides good returns on money that is invested wisely. Those who fear risk altogether end up saving money in accounts that likely lose money to inflation in the long run.

2. Goal-Oriented

The importance of setting and working toward goals is obvious. If you don’t know where you are going, it’s difficult to get there. It helps your personal finances immensely if you have money goals and are motivated to reach the goals that you have set for yourself.

Those who lack goals don’t have a road map to take them to the financial destination they want.

1. Hard- and Smart-Working

Creating wealth and staying out of debt rarely comes about without a lot of hard work.

Many people might hope that the lottery will solve all their financial problems. The true path to financial freedom, however, is to work hard to earn money while educating yourself to continue to have more value and increase your salary.

You may not possess all of the above traits. But knowing them can help you make changes so that you nourish the ones that you have and obtain the ones you’re missing.

Ultimately they will help you with your personal finances and create a plan to accumulate the wealth you desire.

 

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10401897/1/ten-traits-that-make-you-filthy-rich.html

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 58 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 114 posts. There were 197 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 437mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was May 27th with 155 views. The most popular post that day was The final product .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, seriously-jessica.blogspot.com, numero-uno-ain.blogspot.com, stayaway-areureading.blogspot.com, and feverblister.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for avatar 3d glasses, natalie portman short hair, dress for success, human body systems, and natalie portman hair.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

The final product May 2010

2

one helluva sexy lady! January 2010

3

avatar 3D January 2010
1 comment

4

career fair @ NTU January 2010
1 comment

5

crazy chinese beliefs January 2010
2 comments

Freddie Mercury

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I’m just a poor boy (Poor boy)
I need no sympathy
Because I’m easy come, easy go
Little high, little low
Any way the wind blows
Doesn’t really matter to me, to me

Mama just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead
Mama, life has just begun
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooh
Didn’t mean to make you cry
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters

Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body’s aching all the time
Goodbye, everybody
I’ve got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, oooooooh (Anyway the wind blows)
I don’t want to die
Sometimes wish I’d never been born at all

I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the Fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me
(Galileo) Galileo (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o-o
I’m just a poor boy nobody loves me
He’s just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity

Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go
Let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go
Let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go
Let me go (Will not let you go)
Let me go (Will not let you go) (Never, never, never, never)
Let me go, o, o, o, o
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
(Oh mama mia, mama mia) Mama Mia, let me go
Beelzebub has the devil put aside for me, for me, for me!

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die
Oh, baby, can’t do this to me, baby
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here

(Oooh yeah, Oooh yeah)

Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me

Any way the wind blows…

Bohemian Rhapsody

Queen

Sydney, NSW, Australia

Here are some pictures of my trip to sydney.

St Andrews Cathedral

Sydney Harbor Bridge at Port Jackson

And of course, the Sydney Opera House. Up close it actually doesn’t really look that awesome though. It only looks really good from a distance.

My colleagues

After we were done with the opera house, we walked over to Darling Harbor where we had lunch.

 

Darling Harbor

My favourite shot of the day

seafood platter

All smiles after a hearty lunch

I’d rather be smart than wholly ‘street-smart’

Ever had someone come up to you and ask you if you were a graduate? And when you tell them that you are, what is their reaction? Some people ask simply out of curiosity, but there are other who ask to satisfy their assumption that all graduates do not have ‘street-smarts’.

However, what is this ‘street-smart’ in the first place? How can anyone assume that you are not street smart upon the first meeting and knowing that you are a graduate? “oh you graduate ah, no wonder la. Cannot like that one, you must do this to survive”.

First of all, I feel that having street smart isn’t really a quality. It is just something that people need to have because of the situation they have gone through. If someone threw you to the sharks, you got to learn to evade them, because you need to survive.

Being a graduate does not mean that one is stupid. We are not just book readers, or memorizers of facts. We all have some street-smarts in us, just that we were all too busy studying to acquire ‘that much’ of street smart. And to go further into the point, the whole question of whether a graduate is streetsmart or not can only arise when he/she steps into an arena that is not in his/her element.

Of course then, he or she will have no experience, but does that mean he/she does not have streetsmarts?

There is nothing wrong with being a graduate, or not being one. These are just fanciful terms. There is something wrong however, when people make inane assumptions ‘just because’ someone else is a graduate.

At the end of the day, I’d rather be smart than just wholly streetsmart. At least a ‘smart’ person can learn street smarts

Can a street smart person learn to be ‘smart’? Perhaps not.

So stay humble, and others will stay humble. Being ‘streetsmart’ is seriously not a big fucking deal.

25 A/K

I am beginning to enjoy my job a lot.

And I love the fact that I will always have a window seat to the wonders of the world.

Work hard play hard

I believe that we all should work hard and play hard. If you are going to work without enjoying your life, then you’ll most likely be stuck in that rut for a very long time.

Don’t assume that you always have time on your side. Sometimes we put off things till tomorrow or next year, only to realize that when that time comes, we become bogged down with commitments or old age.

Live life now.

The curse

My new toy has been giving me quite a bit of sleepless nights

More photos taken with my new camera

Here are some more photos taken with my new camera outdoors.

Camera: Olympus PEN E-PL 1

Night Landscape Function

The Sky

Pin Hole effect (Longkang)

Pussy Cat

Random flower

Taxi!

Hoegarden

Soft Focus (B & J entrance)

Food

Stylo Milo night shot

Sexy Back

Overall I feel that the camera makes for a great daytime shooter. Night shots still leave some room for improvement although the photos do turn out quite well.

The next test would be taking the scenery overseas, hopefully I would be able to capture spectacular images of the architecture found in the places that I’ll be visiting very soon.

My New Toy

Bought this today, an Olympus PEN E-PL1.

S$888 at the IT Fair. Go get yours now!

Pinhole Art Filter

Diorama Art Filter (Pseudo Tilt Shift effect)

Gentle Sepia

So far, I’m pretty satisfied with the results, though I have to admit that I’ve have not gotten used to the relatively slow autofocus. Taking long exposure shots also results in the camera taking excessively long to record onto the SDHC card. Perhaps I should invest in a Ultra High Speed SD card.

Sure, there are pros and some cons, but for producing images from a camera that’s so compact, I think it’s good enough.

Convocation 2010: The Final Chapter

We have graduated!

In the auditorium

We spent quite a long time sitting in the auditorium. The wait was worth it though. Once you receive, touch and feel your degree in your hands, you realise the difficulties you faced for the past 4 years was worth it.

Photo-taking session at the quad

Throwing of our mortar boards. Such a standard all graduates carry out, but it feels oh so good and nice to be able to throw it high up into the air.

My Alma Mater

Convocation’s done. Back to work tomorrow.

some people will do anything to earn a buck

I boarded bus 154 from my house today to Lakeside station, along the way, a lady boarded and sat down beside me.

Lady: Ni shi xin jia po ren ma? (Are you Singaporean)

Me: Er… Yes?

Lady: Have you upgraded your medishield?

Me: Er.. not really.

Lady: You finish NS? Still studying?

Me: No, i’ve graduated. Working already

Lady: Oh where?

Me: At S**

Lady: Oh as an engineer?

Me: No as a f*ight s*ewa*d

Lady: What is your name? May I have your number?

I gave her my name and number

Lady: Here is my card.

I took one look and just cursed in my heart. Another one of those financial planners again. They seem to try all sorts of means to expand their customer base don’t they. They have begun to solicit business on buses with strangers. I thought only street-walkers solicit strangers in exchange for some ‘business’?

That lady has just succeeded in really turning me off. I will await her call and proceed to waste her time.

PS: In case you are wondering if I gave her my real number, well yes, I did. I don’t normally give my real number out, but as she was sitting beside me, and I wasn’t sure if she was of sound mind. I decided to give her my real number in case she decided there and then to give me a ‘miss call’.

life’s journey

When you were young, you looked and saw your friends getting new shoes, bags, wallets and clothes.

When you get a little older, you see your friends getting pagers, hand-phones and mp3 players.

When you’ve graduated, you see your friends getting motorbikes, cars, investing in stocks or even buying flats.

When you become much much older, you start seeing your friends in the obituaries.

stored-value cards

Stored-value cards (SVCs) amaze me, not because of the convenience they provide to the user or their near-universal application(pay for taxi, printing etc), but because of the benefit it provides to the issuing company.

Take for example SVCs issued by a transportation company or a foodcourt chain. What the public user usually does is to top up the card with a certain amount. For the sake of convenience, let the amount be 10 dollars. The cost of transport or a meal is usually not a nice round number like 2 dollars. Instead, fares can cost some weird absurd number and meals can cost $3.20.

What this means is this, you will never be able to finish completely the stored value in your card. You will always have some residual, and un-usable value in the card. This amount would often be insufficient to pay for the transport fare(coupled with a certain minimum sum) or a meal. You will always need to constantly top up your card. If you top up 10 dollars, you might only be able to use up to 7 dollars or so before the remainder becomes insufficient for the next transaction.

Isn’t this amazing? Since the SVCs becomes such an essential part of our daily lives, people would continue to use it. Think about it. If the residual stored value in a card is $3, and you multiply that with the number of cards issued. The company would have a lot of money to put into investments. And since the users would not suddenly and cooperatively seek a full refund for the full value of their cards, the companies are assured of a certain amount of usable money for their investments.

If anyone wants to start up a small business utilizing stored value cards, or membership cards etc. You should make it easy for people to top up, say using multiples of $10. Your product on the other hand, should be priced such that it is not a round number like $3.50, instead it should be like $0.78/$1.35/$3.99 etc. That way, there will always be a residual value left in the card. And if you have a large enough membership, this would translate to a huge sum of money for you to play with.

Amazing isn’t it. You think it is for your convenience, but it seems to benefit the companies much more.

rusti

Got a little bored, decided to take a few photos of my dog Rusti.

grrrrrrrrrr!

the craving that was not satisfied

I was looking through some photos my friends have posted from their vacation recently and got really hungry looking at the pictures with food in them. I don’t know why but I just had a craving for McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I haven’t tried it yet ever since it got on the menu, and now that McDonald’s is giving out the glass mug with any meal upsize, I decided to order.

So it came and it sure did look good (for a fast food restaurant, it looks not bad already).

Here are a few pictures I took of the burger and the fries: 

Doesn't look like it weighs half a pound....

the double quarter pounder

Upsized big mac

 

shaker fries

 

The burger didn’t taste as good as I’d thought it would be. It was kind of dry and very much like a big mac without the special sauce. It was an anti-climatic moment for me. The shaker fries was quite bad too. I still prefer the seaweed shaker fries, not so sure about the hot and spicy.

That’s all. Just wanted to blog about something since I haven’t blog-ed in a long time.

The final product

Tonight will be one of those nights that will forever be etched in my mind. 1 hour ago, 30000 NTU students stood by their laptops waiting to click on the examination link that would show them their examination results.

I was one of them. I clicked on the link, saw my grade, and realised, “Yes, I’ve done it and it is really over”

I got the grade I wanted (or at least the miminum grade I wanted), and I got the honours I wanted.

Looking back, it had been really tough. I didn’t do well for the first few years. Ironically though, my grades improved only in year 3, when I started getting busy with giving tuition everyday, 7 days a week. Imagine going for tuition after school each day, and after tuition, I will go back and go for my run. I get off my bed at 7am in the morning and get back on at midnight. Where was the time to do tutorials or laboratory reports?

Exams are one dimensional things, there is no need to study your ass off for it. In the end, you lose out on the many opportunities to make friends or to strengthen existing relationships. I’m glad I didn’t waste my days away in the library everyday, mugging my eyes out or staying at home during the weekends to ‘study’. I’m glad I made many friends who would constantly ask me out for food, drinks, party or just to have fun (the collage of collages at the top of my blog will attest to the fun i’ve had over the short 4 years of university life).

I never regretted my actions. Like I’ve always said, life is really really short. It would be a waste to waste your youth. There is no point exchanging your time and happiness for “good grades” so that you can get that “good job”.

In the end, you get that “good job” yes, but you exchange your life for money. And soon, you’ll be exchanging your money for your life when you get older. Do the things that make you happy. Take life easy.

I can’t wish for more. I’ve got the results I needed, and I got the job I wanted, albeit through persistance. Life is good.

the wait is finally over

Today I got the call. I cleared my medical check-up and will commence training on the 23rd of June.

Prior to this, I was waiting anxiously for the phone call. Most of my friends who have gone for their medical have already got called up and have been informed of their training dates. The thing that made me worry even more during this time was the fact that I had to go for a 2nd medical, because I was told that I had scoliosis, or a curved spine.

I never knew I had this problem, no doctor ever told me this, and this did not affect me in army. I carried heavy loads for extended periods of time and encountered no difficulty. When I was told that I had to go back for a 2nd x-ray though, it made me extremely worried.

The days passed, and most of my friends got called up. I was vacation-ing in Phuket at that time too, but I could not bring myself to enjoy the trip wholeheartedly. The bloody phone call was all I could think of throughout.

I’m glad that I got the call today. At least I know I have something to do for the time being.

So for now, I can’t wait to start training and see the world.