Author: dkyo

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Finances

On Money Part 1

I was just sitting here thinking about how many people seem to have credit and money issues.  At the base level it seems pretty simple.  Don’t spend more than you make and save the rest.  Right?  Ok don’t jump down my throat.  I know it’s not always that easy or that simple as life is complicated and I can fully appreciate that.

Specifically, my issue lies with our obsession with buying stuff with money we don’t have (this means CREDIT)…I mean why dig the hole?  Again I understand the idea of leveraging for really big stuff.  But for everything else what makes us do this and how do we fool ourselves into thinking that it’ll be fine?  Why can’t you wait another 2 months when you have the money?  Who actually spends the time to read the terms and conditions that CC’s set forth.  For those that pay on time and in full you could care less right?  But the one time you miss or decide to finance that big purchase you’ll notice pretty fast on that statement.

I’m no financial planner, but I feel that I’m pretty good about living within my means (though it’s barely sometimes).  It made me think…why?  Why are some people smart about their money and why do others live on the wild side?  I think it breaks down into 3 main parts.

1. Education

As strange as it sounds I think there needs to be more emphasis on teaching the basics of how money and credit works.  What’s a credit card vs a debit card?  What does it mean to balance my checking account (I don’t feel the actual task is necessary with the advent of online banking)?  In my experience, we don’t really grow up being taught these life lessons then we get to college not understanding credit cards, how they affect our personal credit, and sign up for student cards for some free schwag.  Sometimes it ends there and other times we add to our already large college debt.  The good news is I believe this is covered much better nowadays.

2. Habit a.k.a Where are my piggy banks?

Growing up I had a piggy bank.  Maybe I dated myself, but I don’t see piggy banks anymore.  I think this may be a downside of this digital age.  I like to think of the piggy bank as the antithesis to the credit card.  CC’s teach spending cause it’s easy.  You swipe and the item is yours.  The loss of money just happened in the future where you can’t see it yet.  With the piggy bank you get to give your mental decision to save a physical attribute.  I believe in muscle memory.  When my brother and I were kids we each had a plastic piggy bank.  He had a blue one and I had a red one they had these green hats…anyways I digress.  I can remember putting money into that piggy bank.  I wasn’t even saving for anything and I’m not sure why I started doing it so I’m going to chalk this up to my parents slamming yet another value into me.  But there was something exciting about feeling it get heavier and even opening it up once in a while to see how much you actually had saved (free math lesson!).  Where did I get my money?  We didn’t get chore money =(  But my grandfather would always give us each a dollar when we went to go see him at the restaurant plus you find random stuff on the floor and change from lunch.  Having that piggy bank there and seeing it means you have to make a decision every time you see it.  Bring the piggy banks back!

3. Culture

Americans are consumers compared to other cultures.  I remember in my High School economics class my teacher mentioned the savings rate of Singapore was something, but what struck me is that America’s saving rate was negative.  There actually seems to be a recent swing with America saving more and other places spending more, but I think the culture still deserves a category on its own.  It’s that powerful.  There’s not much you can do, except be aware of it and make your individual change.  Knowledge is power.

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Extra arm room

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This is the seat next to me on my Southwest flight.

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2011 Goals January Update

I wasn’t tracking a lot of these stats until almost mid January, so think of these numbers as a half month’s update/starting point (though that’s a bit unfair to me because I was technically way worse before Jan).

Diet:
I’ve maintained a decent diet the past month only cheating about once a week. I’m not sure I feel suddenly way better like many proponents of Paleo diet say they do. No sudden increase in energy or lack thereof, but I have read that the body takes about 3 weeks to adjust so we’ll see.  Also note that I am not strict Paleo as I will have soy milk on occasion or eat things with butter or dairy in them (though I do try to avoid it).

Sleep:
Average Sleep for Jan: 6.39 hours W00t!

Workout:
Worked out 17 times in 22 days. Looking good.

Body:
I only got the BI meter on the 17th, so this is about half a month’s worth of data. They’re pretty spastic as far as numbers go, but the trend is down from mid 15% to mid 13%-14%.

Stretch:
Stretched 14 days. I’ll consider this to be something to work on.

Social:
Still no meals upstairs this month. That said there are other ways to be social and it happened 6 times. Another area to work on.

Image:
Have been pretty good, my hair may still look wild sometimes, but it’s by choice…kinda

Physical Exam:
So I did it, but I need to sign up for some online thing to get my actual numbers. That being said the doc said everything looked good.

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Philz Coffee

With Philz Coffee opening up next door.  The man himself showed up to give us a sample last week.

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 Thanks Huey for the photo.

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Lol!

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Gotta have a sense of humor at work at 2 a.m.

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Health

Injinjis (the most expensive socks in the world)

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Oh yes I did.

Categories
Health

On Cold Showers

So looking at the title a lot of you are probably thinking I’ll pass.  I’ve found that my recent foray back into working out has left me rather sore at times.  Looking around online I noticed people sometimes mentioning contrast bathing as a way to help with the soreness.

This reminded me of something I read when I was skimming the 4 Hour Body. Tim Ferriss mentions that taking a cold shower can help stimulate weight loss via bat thermogenesis. The technique he uses actually seems relatively close to taking a Scottish Shower. After searching around some more it seems that people tout cold showers for a lot of random stuff like a stronger immune system, clearing of allergies, etc.

I figure…why not.  If anything I’m saving on heating and probably wasting less water as I’m much more motivated to finish my showers now.  So for the past week or so I’ve been trying out this cold shower technique.  I start off with hot water and at least let myself enjoy it for the shampoo.  It’s during the soap portion where I hit cold water.  I’ve come up with a few techniques that make it bearable.

  1. Hide from the water and wash yourself off piece by piece (arm first, then other arm, etc)  Soon it’s not quite as bad and you can jump in and finish it off
  2. Slowly turn the water from hot to cold.  This does work, but I think the first technique works better for me.
  3. Just do it.  Worth trying at least once for the shock value haha.

I can’t really say whether or not it’s had any effect other than the obvious ones of saving on heating, making me shower fast, and waking me up.  Whether it helps me avoid colds, alleviate muscles soreness, live allergy free, live longer, burn fat, etc…I’m not sure I’ll ever know as I have no good way of measuring.  But in the interim I think I’ll stick to it for a while longer.  While I know many of you enjoy your hot shower, it’s actually not all that bad and I’d say give it a try.  If you’re a morning shower person I guarantee I’ll wake you right up so there’s an added bonus.  It’s less useful if you shower at night and want to sleep early though =)

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Tiger Mother? Mom…You were right (mostly)

I’m sure many of you have heard of Amy Chua…no?  What about the online Wall Street Journal article “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”?  Now maybe that rings a bell or piqued your interest.  The piece is an excerpt from her new book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and it’s pretty controversial regarding her opinions on child rearing.  I can see why people are getting all riled up as raising children (I have no experience) is a touchy subject and everyone’s experience will be different.  Mostly, no one likes to be told you’re raising your kid wrong.

That being said I read the article last week, heard the NPR interview this morning, and thought that maybe everyone should just chill out a bit.  Sure in the WSJ piece she sounded pretty rough, but parts of the article did strike chords that resonated with my own experience growing up.  I don’t know why Asian parents love string instruments so much (I played violin primarily).  In the NPR interview one of the callers mentioned he was locked in the bathroom until he could get his times tables in Chinese right.  Me too!  Except I was in the backyard (it was during the day).  Anyways I digress, hearing all the criticism heaped on Amy Chua just made me think of my parents (especially my mom), and how I wouldn’t think it fair to judge how they raised me (even though I judged them at the time…”I’ll never do that to my kids”…classic).  And while I can say that I’m glad I won some battles with them, I wish I had lost some of the others.  Overall, I look back and am amazed by how they raised the 3 of us the way they did with what they had.  

So to my parents: Thanks for all you’ve done.  I think you did a pretty good job if I don’t say so myself =Þ  You guys always said I’d understand when I was older, and you were right (mostly).

Mom, I know you’re on the Facebook now and can see my status and as such will probably probe into this page.  So here’s a special thanks to you for believing in me and pushing me to always be at my best.  One more note Mom, Vibrams can be used for running so stop worrying.

Categories
Diet Health

On Dieting

This post may be a bit long, but I just wanted to write a bit about my experiences in changing around how I eat and maybe someone else can gain something from it as well.

As I mentioned in my 2011 Goals post in the past few years I’ve gotten more interested in trying out various changes to my diet to see if they make a difference and also just because.  Who knows why, just to try maybe.  I tend to avoid fad diets that give you little nutrition and prefer to focus more on the more holistic lifestyle change type things as they seem more sustainable and healthier.  I tend to go on and off these diet changes as I feel like it and maybe that’s why I keep changing it around.  Just to keep things new.

This started out with just recording what I was eating and guesstimating the caloric content.  This actually worked pretty in making me watch what I ate because well…I would hate to drink that soda then have to write down the 160 calories I wasted on it.  I’m actually pretty sure it drove some people crazy because I can get a bit OCD sometimes about these kinds of things.  I believe this was a good exercise to start with because more than anything it made me more aware of the “cost” of eating certain foods and since I tend to eat certain foods more I got pretty good at guesstimating without looking stuff up all the time.  Sure I may be off by 500 calories at the end of the day…but isn’t that better than not knowing at all?

The next diet that actually piqued my interest was after hearing about how a New York Times food columnist lost weight.  Mark Bittman’s Vegan before 6 approach was interesting to me for two reasons:

  1. I’ve never tried being vegan before.
  2. I can eat whatever I want for dinner which is actually generally my largest meal (I know I know, but sue me it’s how I grew up)

I tried it for about 3 months and found that it’s amazingly hard to be a true vegan.  My breakfasts always consisted of oatmeal with agave with maybe fruit.  Lunches were always salad of some sort or cooked veggies and maybe some sort of starch like rice or potatoes.  To be honest, I like meat and was pretty hungry by 3 or 4.  There aren’t many pastries or breads to eat because they tend to contain butter, eggs, or honey.  Then I found hummus and pita.  Apples and peanut butter were also great.  After the initial adapting phase I got used to it.  Near the end of my experiment I happen to have a blood panel done.  The results were pretty good.  BP good, fasting glucose levels good, cholesterol awesome (I had more HDLs than LDLs and an overall low score), but considering I’ve never done a blood test before (at least that I can remember) I couldn’t say it was directly related to my diet.  But I wouldn’t discount the diet completely either.  Either way it’s not a bad way to eat since you have dinner to curb your cravings, but still a bit difficult if you’re not prepping your own breakfast and lunches.  Again milk, egg, honey…they show up everywhere.

Finally to my most recent venture inspired by the very popular Paleo Diet trend right now.  I remember hearing about this maybe a year ago and thinking that it was interesting…but alas I am Asian and love my rice, and so was not ready to embark on the experiment.  Now that it’s gained a bit more traction and there’s a bit more study around it I’m ready to give it a shot.  At the very least I can have my beloved meats (sorry animal lovers…I like my meat).  Paleo itself is a pretty strict diet, but I’ve found many people do paleo spirited diets.  I say in the spirit of paleo because they allow small cheats like the occasional milk product or legume.  In the interests of being flexible, which ultimately leads me to stay sane and stick to it more, you’ll find me eating in the spirit of paleo with the occasional total cheat meal/day as I come from a family of carb eaters.  We loves our man tou and butter.  I’ll be posting my daily intake so as to be honest to myself on my eats page and just for record keeping.  There is no greater motivation than to see your track record and to aim to do better than you did the day before.

Categories
Fitness Health

VFF Longest Run Yet

Looks like posting the 2011 goals have been useful as I’ve hit the gym more often than not as of late.  Recording stats is also probably helping.  It must be the RPG nerd in me.

So today’s run has been the longest run in the VFF’s so far.  Ran a 10k split at 2 paces.  First 5k@10 min/mile and 2nd 5k@~9 min/mile.  I say approx because I tried to push a faster pace and then ended up having to slow it down a bit.  So I just did the math and found it averaged to just about 9.  To protect the rubbing areas I turned to bandaids which actually worked really really well.  Unfortunately I think I’m feeling what may be a new callous forming around the ball of my feet.  Maybe this is just part of what’s needed to push distance in the VFFs?

Finally, the Bio Impedance fat meter came today.  After trying it a few times I think I can get pretty wild readings.  So I think in the interest of keeping things consistent I’m going with an average right after waking and an average right before bed.  More than anything I’ll be tracking the trend over time since the actual % can vary depending when you use it, how hydrated you are, and even how you hold it.