I've been crazily busy. The pay for the side gig is pitiful, but I'm learning a whole lot and I can use down time during regular work day to work on it with full support of the boss, so it's like I'm getting a bonus for a bit more work load.

Anyway, I don't keep track of monthly finance anymore, only an annual estimate of my expenses. So here's an estimate for 2018, with zero bonus and a 2% raise.

Or in my case, do nothing...? Today, I managed to land a side gig in the oddest situation, have my boss offered it to me.

Turned out owner's daughter is starting a business and since daddy already has a fully staffed business with all the necessary departments, she thought to make use of it. There are just a few problems. First, we follow a different set of rules where all expenses are heavily scrutinized regardless of how immaterial they are. So no help there.

Second, after consulting with our VP and a couple of managers she threw up her hands and do not want to talk to them any longer because the subject just went right over her head.

The owner ended up recommending me to set up her books for her, on the side, with pay, and left it up to the VP to persuade me to do it by pushing the idea of how it would be a great jump start to having my own business someday.

So yeah, a very, very odd day.

For the financial voyeurs out there I was comparing year to year returns and thought this looks interesting.

2012 - Salary was 34k at the time and contribution was about 10%. I bought my house around July, so it was a stretch to save this much. For all that effort, the return was pathetic.



2013 - Getting a little better




2014 - Ouch



2015 - OMG WTF.....



2016 - Recovery, whewww!



2017 - So far so good



And that's that. Nothing really exciting, but the final numbers are nice to look at.

So this networking thing is a lot trickier than I expected. In order to not burn some very important bridges as well as secure good references, I'm going to have to stay put until the axe falls. So for now, I'm focusing on more volunteer work, sprucing up my resume and possibly getting a second part time job.

I overhead HR talking the other day and while no name was mentioned, there was plenty of work description as well as she's untouchable thrown in. The work description happened to match what I'm doing. Business has been going down and it doesn't look like it'll improve so I've been thinking about looking around. This is certainly an incentive. Btw, I'm supposed to be the most vulnerable being a Junior with only 3 years of experience. However, I've made myself indispensable by not only doing the work of the Senior, but also exceeded the work of my Supervisor as well as taking over crucial areas of other departments. Still, if the cuts are coming, it's bound to happen sooner or later.

Went flower viewing.







It was an extremely long walk.

No matter how much we prepared for it, it will always be painful to say goodbye. This last month has showed me that regardless of our station in life or how much we have, we are all in the same position at the end. In fact, having money may prolong the suffering due to attempts at keeping the body alive. I hope when it's my time, I will go quickly and painlessly.

Theoretically I have several options this year for filing taxes, either fully fund a traditional IRA and get back around $1,700, fund half and get back around $750, or do nothing and get back around $100. However, realistically I only have one; the one that keep the most cash on hand. Last year last minute contribution to 2013 Roth IRA seriously depleted my cash reserve. Plus the 3k I'm currently floating on CC with 0% interest means the cash situation is a bit risky. So yeah, bummer.

On another note, I can't believe I wasted half a night of precious sleep to read up on the petty back and forth between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift.

I finally got around to take a personality test and found out that I belong to the rarest of the rare group, female INTJ. I went to look it up at this site

http://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality

and had a bit of a laugh at the end. My first reaction was that it was spooky how accurate it was, only to see this "wow, this is so accurate it's a little creepy" on the conclusion page. Haha. I can see why my mom often told other relatives that I'm naturally "unintentional callous."

I actually only edge out INFJ by 1% on the T, but while the woo-woo, touchy, feeling portion came pretty close, the part about reaching out and connect with others is way off.

As I grow older, I feel like I have more compassion for fellow human being, but as a whole and not individually. On day, I hope to be able to care for every single person in this world at the same level I care for my parent. In the mean time though, I'm highly critical of whininess, especially when it came from people who are already so blessed compare to millions and millions who are suffering.

Went out, spent over 30 minutes navigating around 2 stuck school buses, slid right through an intersection, went back in.

It's only 1-2 inches of snow, but on untreated and unprepared roads, this happened.

It's only 11 months since I lost all the old data.



This is a lot less than I expected.



Hair and teeth. The high cost of vanity.



As expected



Cash in only. Next year will probably be more, but the aim is to reduce this number.



Much less than I expected, due to numerous free activities and a whole lot of laziness. Most of the lottery money was due to not reading the instruction on the machine, which stated "No change." Will aim to increase this a lot next year, especially for outdoor activities.



Now I remember why December felt a bit lacking. Forgot about the charities.



Less than expected, but then I'm still experimenting with various silhouettes and only managed to buy 2 good piece of clothing.



The last contribution to ROTH.



Could definitely do without the ticket.



Electricity and water are higher than expected. Then again, I wasn't setting the temp at 72 year round before.



If I take out the optional saving, it's not bad.

It has been a blast living in this rapidly evolving time and seeing so many disruptive technologies come and go. But even then I still didn't think we would progress this fast. Last time I heard, we were depleting minerals needed to manufacture chips and also starting to reach the limit of how small we could reduce those chips. So it is very exciting to see these new developments:

Hoverboard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSheVhmcYLA

Transparent car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDk5HdGfuVI

The beginning of portable hologram (imaging all the ads)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNoOiXkXmYQ

There was also the recent successful Orion launch. Now all we need is molecular transfer and we can turn Star Trek into reality.

I got the estimate for some dental work today, to the tune of $11k. Ouch! This totally throws my saving plan out the window. The only consolation is that it will be spread out between 2 years and 45% will be tax deductible. I can’t even complain about price gouging consider that it’s at the low end of the market price for top of the line service.

Best Case Scenario



Worst Case Scenario



Most Likely - Low Expectation



Regardless of how it turns out, the result is still the same. No Spending Money.

Meet my latest time vacuum machine.

Time keeps zooming by too quickly for my taste. A few updates:

1. Big change in living arrangement which resulted in zero food bill but increased utility bill.

2. Working on cutting down my wardrobe to around 30 pieces or so and replacing synthetic fabric with natural ones. I've increase the price point to around $80 for now and will increase it to around $200 once I can stabilize my weight. This year budget is $2,000 for replacing wardrobe.

3. Got a hefty raise and decent bonus, but no promotion. I suppose 2 promotions in less than 2 years with zero initial experience is a bit too much to ask for.

4. Spent a lot of time crunching the numbers to see if I can retire by 60 with 600k in the banks and 3 paid off townhouses. It's do able with steady employment and a 3% annual raise, but then what? Would I have enough time and energy left to take things easy and simply enjoy? So the numbers have been revised to retire at 45 to 50 with 1 paid off townhouse and 450k to 700k in the bank.

5. Embracing the minimalist movement.

With the migration of all things financial to the net, I've come to realize the danger of using a free email account. So it's time to pay up for an obscure domain and a monthly website hosting fee for that extra layer of protection.

I'm growing extremely frustrated at my dad's insistent at last minute trip planning. Normally, I would be quite understanding that air fare would be high for these type of trips, but when one already has a time frame, destination, airport, and type of flight in mind, there really isn't any reason to delay it.

My dad keeps saying that his health may turn for the worst and we might end up canceling the flight anyway, so booking later at a higher price is still the same loss of money. But I would rather lose the $100 canceling fee for a $300 flight rather paying $800 for the last available seat.

Diving head first into a 4am to 8pm schedule has been a really bad idea, especially since I'm a natural night owl. Got to learn to take things slow and ease into it.

It won't kill me if I need to take several months before I can start on the goals, much less accomplish them consistently.

Just found out that year end bonus is heavily dependent on special assignments performed throughout the year, on top of regular workload.

The problem is I can't differentiate between regular and special assignments. Everything my boss had asked me to do is within the scope of my job and my ability. On top of that, my workload get re-balanced once in a while resulting in my taking on new responsibilities and letting go of some old ones. What is once considered not part of my daily work is now part of it.

I really like it because I get to learn new things, but it makes writing this list really difficult now. To me, they're all regular assignments.