Let me know how you found me, where you're from, why you're here, a little about yourself, recommend a book, recommend a movie, tell me a secret, tell me something, ask me a question, etc. =)

Ad Astra,

The Bride of the First House.
bride (at) livejournal (dot) com

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		24.5°C
mood	:		...

I won the Totally Weird & Convoluted Bug Award at Work. Well, I win that all the time, but today's thing was particularly whacky. I saw a bizarre symptom of the problem that seemed to only happen to me and no one else. It took a whole day and a half to hunt down the exact conditions (very specific species of butterfly, very special sneeze).

I also crashed an ATM.

It ate my card, rebooted itself and barfed BIOS settings all over. Did you know that they're still running OS/2 Warp? =D

I've seen/heard about the ATM card scam. I'm fairly sure it wasn't that. No one tried to help me, ask for my PIN or anything shady like that. I always use the same machine at the same branch and the card slot didn't look odd or different to me.

I think I'll go back later this evening to see if it finished rebooting or what it's doing.

Anyway, I will be going to a bank branch tomorrow morning, but I wrote to the online banking support folks about the incident. I wanted to have a written record of things (branch, bank machine, date time stamp) so that I wouldn't be held responsible for usage of the card after it was eaten.

[Update - 2032h]

I went back out to check on the machine. It had finished booting up and was cycling through the "Please insert your card" screens. That worried me at first. I thought someone might have fished my card out. But I tried my credit card and it wouldn't accept it, so I think my card is still stuck inside.

I would have cancelled before I went through with that transaction because cash advances are loan sharking. I'd rather not have money than use my credit card for cash.

So, now the bank has security surveillance of me jabbing and then peering into the card slot. *sigh*

[Update - 2053h]

The Husband told me to change the PIN. Yeah, you need the card to change the PIN, Smart Guy™ XD

[Update - Friday, August 03, 2007 - 1328h]

I have a temporary card now... and cash for the weekend... and laughed at uproariously by cow-orkers for crashing a bank machine. S'all good. =)

weather	:		partially sunny
outside	:		10.5°C
mood	:		...

I momentarily felt bad because the teller girl who closed out my accounts was so nice. She said I was the third person in 15 minutes to close my accounts with her. Apparently, I'm not the only one going to greener pastures. I tried to be nice about it too, saying that I'd gladly re-open an account if they had a great rate.

One of my accounts was a USD account. So, I've been looking around for somewhere to park it. I only ever plan to deposit and withdraw USD. I'm not going to be letting the bank automatically convert it for me.

Finding a good high interest USD bank account option in Canada is not easy. Every bank has a no-interest, everyday regular-use account option, but I don't use it that often. I mostly let it sit, accumulate and earn interest. I use it on trips abroad which is only once in a while. So, an everyday regular-use account is not right for me.

Most other USD Savings accounts have pitiful rates. I was almost thinking about finding out what rates American banks would give foreigners for an account...

And in the Learn Something New Every Day Department™:

I'd heard a lot about ING Direct, so I looked into them. Generally, good products sell themselves. When something is heavily, heavily advertised, that's usually the first clue that there's something wrong with it.

ING Direct is no exception in this regard. I've never had reason to care, so I always had the impression that they were a bank that gives customers a much better deal than the other banks. They're not a bank at all, but they're very happy to mislead you into thinking that they are.

They just offer financial services that are very similar to what banks have. They blare loudly, in an obnoxious orange colour, no less, that they give better rates and they are a better way of "banking". What they don't say is that those better rates come at the price of much greater inconvenience. It's fine if you can accept the greater level of inconvenience, but there's a sliminess to how they present themselves.

You still have to have an actual bank account at an actual bank in order to use ING's services. That external account is going to have fees. I find it bizarre that this is a prerequisite requirement and nobody mentions that.

I found this out when I was looking at their 3.5% USD account. That sounded great, but you don't have the ability to write cheques or order drafts from any of their accounts, so I can't use them because I would need a USD account at a real bank that I can transfer funds to and then write a cheque from the external account.

That just defeats the whole purpose of it.

When you deposit or transfer funds into your ING account from your other bank account it's held — by their own admission — for an excessively long time before you have access it. "It's MY MON-EY", is it? Transfering money electronically or by paper doesn't take more than 2 business days. Yes, I know they're hedging and they have to make their money somehow. I just don't like that they're advertising "different" as "better" and hiding the "not better" part.

I remember my mortgage advisor saying that their mortgages were crap too. They really don't have the best products, their advertising is just very very calculated. Famous Dutch actors with cool accents, who are largely unknown in North America, are exceptionally effective Marketing tools.

weather	:		cloudy
outside	:		8.7°C
mood	:		contemplative

I feel like I'm a lazy slob who can't be arsed to do it until the last minute. That isn't me, that isn't my nature. I totally prefer to get things done early. But in reality, I simply cannot file until nearly the last minute. My little bits and pieces of paper won't finish floating through my mail slot until then.

The RRSP deadline was March 1. They won't have the final receipts that I need, for a while yet. And now I get e-mail from my Financial Advisor Dude that some of my thingies will be MAILED by the end of March. They, legally, have until March 31, 2006 to send it off, so the calendar will actually read "April" when they arrive.

In the last few years, I've filed too early and had to send in Amendments. I had to do that TWICE one year. I thought, for sure, I'd be audited. I thank whatever cosmic occurrences that I didn't. But the CCRA are not the type of people I want to try poking with an increasingly sharp stick.

*GUH* >KP

At least I've started piecing it all together and that made me feel better. I'm doing it myself this year sans Accountant. My fluffy tiered marketing self-employment stuff is pretty straight forward. It was just scary to me last year because I had no clue.

Although, I'm not entirely sure how I should do my USD income. The Accountant Lady didn't put it under Foreign Income for 2004, she just converted it to CAD and put it in my Canadian Income section. Then she did the same thing with my USD charity donation (which I wouldn't normally be eligible to deduct).

I don't know if I can just do it the way she did it last year or if I should put it as USD in the Foreign section. It's not very much. Even if it's taxed at a different rate, it's not enough that CCRA would really want to squabble with me over, I don't think. The thought of having to sit on hold for hours makes me want to just do what she did last year. She IS an Accountant afterall and her business/contact info is on my return as the Preparer.

Note to Self:

Self,

E-mail the Tax Support Folks or give H&R Block a call to see what they say.

weather	:		gloriously sunny
outside	:		20.1°C
mood	:		snarky

Crackheads.

weather	:		light rain
outside	:		14.3°C
mood	:		bleh
music	:	Lee Bartel/Daniel May - Cascading Comfort

I don't know if we can do that yet though. You would think this is a nice windfall and I'm in a sweet position, but because I found a job again so soon after being laid off, I'm essentially "double-dipping" right now and I'm terrified of the tax implications for 2005.

My salary plus the severance pay might put me over some kind of watermark for taxes. I'm talking to my Financial Advisor Guy about it tomorrow. But whatever I do with it, I think I'd like to keep it fairly liquid until I figure out exactly what I owe next year. Or if I tie it up in something, I want it to mature by January 2006 or shortly thereafter.

My first thought was to stuff as much as I can into our RRSPs right away because that's where any extra money of mine would go first anyway. It's the best idea if I wanted to bring my net income down. But if I don't know how much I owe, I don't want to put it all somewhere where I can't get it back.

I'd thought of just sticking it in my 2.5% savings account for now. 2.5% is pretty sad, but at least it's a notch better than the Between-The-Mattress-And-The-Box-Spring method of saving.

[Update - Wednesday, May 11, 2005]

The Financial Advisor Guy laughed at me =) "You've got TAX PROBLEMS!" he exclaims. "You're REALLY movin' up in the world!"

HAHA. XD XD Ben's great. He has a few ideas on what I can do to for Legal Tax Evasion. =)

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		15°C
mood	:		okay

Saver mentality; spender by necessity. *sigh*

2. What are your financial goals?

To always have exact change.

It's a very simple and modest goal, but to actually manage properly is insanely difficult. =)

3. Do you consider going to the movies and having a vacation every year a necessity or a luxury?

Luxury.

We don't pay for movies. We use the free double-pass-plus-popcorn-and-drinks from my VISA reward points. And Work gives me free stuff once in a while from their hillion-jillion company credit card reward points.

We're not really the travelling types. My parents didn't go anywhere for over 20 years. Our first "family vacation" was a 4-day Canadian Rockies Tour when I was 21.

4. Who is going to be responsible for making sure that bills are paid on time?

The process goes:

• all the bills are in his name with me as a secondary contact
• I pay the bills online out of the joint account
• I put it on his desk
• when there's a big enough pile on the desk, he will take it all and calculate how much the Brother-in-Law Dude owes us
• then all the paid and squared away bills get filed

That's with ours and Mother-In-Law's stuff. She pays us back all at once when she gets back into town. We don't really have to worry about them being paid on time because I log in and fire off the payment online right away. If I waited any longer than that, we'd have no ceiling left.

We pay our own personal cell phone and credit card bills.

5. How do you decide as a couple how much and what to spend your money on?

Do we need it? If we do, then we pay for it. Skippy needed the ER overnight care. Sid needed to be hospitalized for a week. We needed to fix that tile that the stupid raccoon tugged off our roof.

But if we don't really need it, then the question is, did we plan for this and put away extra for it? Do we have enough for it? Do we both want it? We'd been together for almost a decade before we actually merged finances, so we handle most of it like roommates. It works.

Bonus Question: How much money from your family finances should you or your partner be able to spend without the other's permission? How did you arrive at this?

None. Neither of us spends anything out of the joint account without telling the other. And this wasn't a rule that resulted from a bad incident, we naturally fell into this behaviour from the beginning. It just made sense to us. Person A will pay for things with A's own money first and then Person B will reimburse half if it's a larger amount or pay for something else to even it out if it's a smaller amount. And if B doesn't want to share it, then that's just A's tough beans. A is stuck paying for all of it. We either ask first or be prepared to foot the whole cost.

We'll mention significant spending out of our individual accounts to each other as well. Not because of any disclosure requirement in the marriage, but out of concern for each other. It helps us both guard against emotional, impulsive spending. Maybe there's another way to do things or there might be a cheaper alternative. For example, wedding expenses were best run by the both of us. It's a well-known fact that the wedding industry will play on a bride's emotional state and make her feel like her marriage depends on spending ten times as much for something. And there was an instance of what amounted to extortion from one of his family members. He didn't think much of paying that fabricated fee because it was his family. I, however, shat a donkey.

weather	:		partially sunny
outside	:		18°C
mood	:		pensive

fridayfiver

I'm going to go against the grain here and say Financial Success* is more important than Personal Happiness, at this point in my life. What can I say? This question caught me at time when I'm willing to sacrifice personal happiness to build wealth. Ask me again in 30 years and the answer might be different =)

It's a matter of 先苦後甜; "bitter first; sweet later".

In the grand scheme of things, choosing one over the other is not really the point. It's more important to not let either of them take a disproportional precedence over the other. Ideally, over the long term you'd want both to increase in tandem, but there will be times when one of them needs to be sacrificed for the sake of the other.

Financial success without personal happiness is miserable. People I trust tell me it's true, but I've never known this kind of misery. I'd always thought that if money weren't a concern, I would damned well find it in myself to be happy.

Personal happiness without some degree of financial success/independence is not possible for me. It may work for others, but not me. I'd go stark raving bananas before long if I weren't financially independent or at least on my way towards it. In that way, my happiness is tied to my financial success.

* I define "financial success" as financial independence which is to be self-sufficient in being able to meet basic needs: clothing, shelter, food, health, even though those needs can be met without the exchange of funds. For me, it has very little to do with the actual numbers in anyone's bank account or cashflow. However someone else decides is best for them to meet their basic needs, and beyond, is not really for me to judge.

weather	:		mainly clear
outside	:		3°C
mood	:		thinkie

I wanted my Mom to have one as well. She buses around a lot and she likes working late shifts so she can take care of things in the morning before she goes to work.

My brother... not sure what to do about my brother. See "Usage Analysis" below.

Husband Guy is thinking about a new cell phone plan because Fido sucks. Walk into a restaurant, a mall or under a tree and the phone will go dead.

He may or may not want to be in on this because he's kind of picky about the phone model (he's using a very ancient Nokia right now, so I can understand him wanting a spiffy new thing). My Mom really doesn't care as long as it works. My Dad and I already have our phones.

( Our usage analysis... )

Rogers is waiving activation fees, phone costs and adding some bonus stuff, making it free to call each other, so I priced out a few Family packages. The cheapest one is 100 Weekday/Evening; Unlimited Weekend which is $35 for 2 lines. The next one up is 300 Weekday; Unlimited Evening/Weekend. Each extra line beyond the first two is $20 each. There is also the System Access Fee of $6.95 per line, a 911 Emergency Fee of $0.25 per line, GST is 7% and PST is 7.5%.

This is approximately what we're looking at.

( If it's just my Mom, Dad and me... )

( If we add the Brother Boy... )

( If it's all five of us... )

So, it still doesn't look like the Family Plans are that great a deal unless the people you're sharing with don't really use up many minutes and you all squish yourselves into a small plan. We'll see what happens. I still have to talk to The Husband about it. My Dad would be all for it if it will cost less.

[Update]

Ooo, ooo... so it looks like the Pay-As-You-Go phones are the best for my brother's situation.

weather	:		raining
outside	:		15°C
mood	:		jaded/cynical

Speaking of malls, some time ago, I heard about a "Guy's Daycare" where your guy can go while you shop. It's based on the setup for children, there are video games and things to keep the dudes occupied. I find the cranium density of some humans just boggling. It's called EB and the Food Court.

Anyway, there's just a lot of stuff I just have to accomplish this weekend because there are only two more weekends in October before Work throws me a huge ass deadline on the 31st. But then, I take a week off for holidays in the first week of November.

*          *          *

I get extra money starting this pay period, which is half a happy thing. It was a whole happy thing, up until I realized that it was really entirely my money to begin with. I've finally contributed up to the maximum allowable for all the deduction things. Like the "GOVT PEN", wherein I give my Government $50 every month as long as I still have a brain wave pattern and when I turn 65, they give me a pen.

Yes, yes, I know it's my stupid pension plan. But the way the legislation is heading, I'll be lucky to get a writing stick of any kind from them. And that's only if they haven't pushed out the Retirement Age to 100 by then.

Nonetheless, they upped the maximum contribution this year... <bitterness>at least for ME because, y'know, they have to support the Welfare Scammers somehow</bitterness>. So, instead of hitting the cap back in mid-July like I used to, I've been contributing up until the end of September.

*          *          *

I still haven't figured out why my bank balance keeps creeping upwards. I'm not double-counting credit card charges. If I were, I think the difference would be much more pronounced. I thought it might be an annual expense that I did the monthly calculation for and my account balance would creep upwards over the year until I paid it. But that thing has been paid and my balance is still higher than I expect.

Yeah, here's me having the opposite problem as everyone else again. Everyone else is trying to figure out why their bank balances are lower than they expect and I have too much money. Not that that's an issue in and of itself. It just makes me think that there's something I've totally forgotten about and, now, don't have enough to cover.

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		21°C
mood	:		amused

incognita

Note: you are not allowed to pay bills, put it in a bank account (which I guess includes investment accounts), or give/donate the money to anyone.

1. You're given $10 and 15 minutes in which to spend it all, ( what do you buy? )

2. $100 and 1 hour; ( what do you buy? )

3. $1000 and 2 hours; ( what do you buy? )

4. $10,000 and 48 hours; ( what do you buy? )

5. Two tickets and transportation to anywhere in the US to see a currently touring music group/performer. ( Who do you see? Whom do you take as your guest? )

6. An invitation to high tea with 3 high profile women (politicians, celebrities, etc.). ( Who will join you? )

7. The opportunity to perform as an extra in a movie sequel. ( Which movie do you choose, and what will you do? )

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		1°C
mood	:		incoherent

Y'know what confuses me?

I keep a very good record of my spending. My personal bookkeeping system is something of a cashflow analysis. I review every single expense I make and categorize it (the only time I don't is if I get reimbursed). I total up each category and calculate the percentage of my net income. I could do a pie chart, but I like looking at numbers better.

I'm taking everything into account - cash purchases, credit card, debit card, cheques, service charges, auto-transfers, I don't do auto-payments because I feel that I need to actually see the billing amounts myself and actually pay it myself.

It's all fine and dandy. It's helped me immensely in seeing where I need to cut back, I'm happy with my saving progress and everything.

But.

Every month, my total expenses is greater than my two paycheques. Which is not a good thing and I'm workin' on it...

And yet, my main bank account balance keeps increasing. It goes up and down with the pay cycles, but in general, it's slowly creeping upwards...

I must be doing something wrong, counting expenses twice or something. In the last two years that I've started scrutinizing my spending like this, I haven't figured it out. My biggest suspicion is that it's something to do with the credit card, but I'm not sure what. I treat the credit card expenses very carefully because it's easy to double count stuff there. I count the expense at the time of bill payment only. Not at transaction time. It should be okay as long as I'm only counting it in one place, not both.

I guess it's not a problem per se that the bank account keeps increasing. I'm just afraid that there's something huge that I've forgotten and I'll suddenly discover that I don't have enough to cover it. =P

I don't like personal financial software because I can't always see the calculations they're making. At least with Excel, it's my numbers, my formulae, my functions.

[	weather	|		slushy rain	]
[	mood	|		miffed	]

It peeves me when people hang on to my cheques for-bloody-ever without depositing/cashing it - not naming any names here ... *cough*BC*cough*Government*cough*. The longer the money goes untouched, the more likely I'm going to forget about it and use it for some other big, fat, emergency-ass thing that comes up (like car insurance for example). Then when the person finally gets around to depositing it, it bounces. MIL Woman used to do this, but I'd rib her that if she doesn't deposit it, she won't get her money because I'll spend it all. She got the idea after a few times. =}

I know some people back date their cheques so that there's only a week or two for the person to deposit before the bank considers it a stale cheque. I thought it was 6 months before a cheque is considered stale, but someone also told me it was 12 months. And someone else said that they'll make an exception around New Year because people tend to be confused over what year we're currently in.

I also have to figure out how I'd need to do the record keeping for it. I'd need an extra column for "Actual" versus "Effective" date of the cheque.

[	weather	|		sunny with a bit of cloud	]
[	mood	|		lucky	]

I found a dime on my way back to the office from Subway. This is the second dime I've found on the street this month. I also found a $2 coin in the change slot of a parking ticket machine last week. It's so uber it almost scares me. I hope this is a good omen =)

I have insanely little money left in my bank account. I wouldn't be in this mess if I didn't spend everything on the big huge Horse'N'Pony Show that was my wedding. I still have the Baby's money, but it's not mine, I'm not touching that. It's the gift cash we got from the wedding. Husband Guy and I decided that it would go towards our first child... whenever that might be. =P

Actually _I_ decided that. Husband Guy said I should just keep it for myself because I spent the most on the wedding and I did most of the work. The only reason the Baby's money is in my account is because Husband Guy hasn't had time to come with me to open a joint bank account yet. I wasn't going to have a big wad of cash laying around the house, especially with untrustworthy people around. I'm just going to keep the balance above the amount that belongs to the Baby. And if I find I can't do that, I'll open another account for it. Huh, kidlet's not even conceived and it has more money than I do.

I took some time today to do up some bank account usage stats today, just to see if I could bump myself into a less expensive service package with my bank. On average, I really don't do much in the way of debit transactions. But the last few months haven't really been representative of my financial activities though.

I have to write a cheque for my half of the Husband Guy/Wife Girl monthly household contribution. There's also my RRSP, gas, our parking fees, my cell phone, my parents' cell phone that I'm paying for - because I offered back when I was employed and I won't re-neg on my promise, that's why...

Oh yeah, and there are those annual things like car insurance, maintenance and stupid surprises that cars like to spring on you - Champagne (yes, my car has a name) hasn't been too bad so far, but she's 11 years old already. Starting February, we're taking on half of the house's Property Tax - and to quote Wil Wheaton, that's hella money. Hella. Hella. Hella. And I'm supposed to start saving up my half now.

But, I was thinking about all this because I'm very close to the upper limits of one of the lower priced service packages. It's quite a bit less than my current one - of course, mine is a better deal, but the cost is still higher. If all goes well and I don't spend too much, that would be all I need. I'm just afraid that if, for any reason, I have a few more debit transactions one month, the cost of debits beyond your limit is hideous.

Update 1: Okay, I just fired off the request to my bank's Online Staffers to switch my service package to the one just below my current one. This means I can't spend as much money. And, y'know, that's just fine with me right now.

Update 2: I forgot. I called the Employment Insurance tards at Human Resources Canada this morning and asked about my dumb claim. They're in a labour dispute (like, when are they NOT?) and they're boycotting overtime. Like they worked any overtime to begin with and even if they did, they get paid triple their hourly rate. So, everything is taking ten times as long. At least I've done everything right, all my papers are in, I've coloured in all the right boxes, inside the lines. >={

Okay, I won $10 on a $2 Mini-Dip. So, no, I can't throw the job hunt out the window and go "Fuck It!". But now, I won't have to worry about coffee money for a week. =)

I tried to look for things to help me with the financial planning part of a wedding. Most of the advice out there is aimed at Caucasian weddings and were really of no use to me. The first thing I noticed was that they'd ask you what your budget is. "How much do you want to spend in total? This number will dictate what kind of wedding you will have."

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. All bloody wrong.

I've organized Career Fairs and Conferences, but I've never been involved in organizing a wedding. Let alone MY wedding, using MY own money. I had no farging clue how much I want to spend in total.

A Chinese wedding is NOT about how much I want to spend and then fitting everything within that figure. A Chinese wedding is about what you have to do and THEN figuring out how you're going to do it. Especially if he's the eldest son of the family. And DOUBLY especially if he is his Grandfather's eldest Grandson.

My wedding is also a show of my worth in my husband's family. I still do feel that the big production wedding commands respect. In Chinese culture, to marry into a family quietly without a banquet, without people knowing, means there's something to hide — like the woman is a concubine (second, third, etc. wife). I am a First Wife proper; I am a Bride of the First House. I can't and won't have a "lesser" wedding.

It may be very "dynastic Chinese" and backward of me. But I am Chinese and so is my future in-law family. There are some things that I haven't lost to my Western upbringing.

Caucasian weddings seem to be a lot smaller scale than a the typical Chinese wedding. People were telling me that 100 guests was a "huge" wedding. Chinese weddings average 300 easily.

Typically, when you think of a wedding, you think of the one day. Everything happens on The Wedding Day. Like a firecracker or an explosion, you think of it as "happening in one burst".

For your audience, yes, that's true. But for me, it's more like a bell curve. In my 20/20 retrospect, if I had planned my wedding properly, it would have lasted me three years. One year to squirrel away as much as I could; one year to do the preparations (The Big Spending Spree); and one year to recouperate from destitution.

Expect the worst, but hope for the best and life will turn out somewhere in between.

I have a typical Chinese wedding. 300 Guests. The huge Chinese restaurant banquet at $50/head totalling about $15,000.00. $900 church. $3000 engagement photography session. $3000 event photography on The Day. $3000 videography work. 6 bouquets and 60 corsages and boutennieres.

I'm spending about $30K or so in total. We're paying for all of it ourselves. That sounds scary, but I'm spending that over the course of about a year, so it really isn't too bad. As long as you have between $5-10K at the starting blocks and spend as you go along, you'll be fine. You'll be putting down deposits at first, so $5-10K will cover most of that.

$30K is purely what you would spend. This is not counting on any gifts or red envelope gift money that Chinese usually give - when you're doing the budgeting, you cannot count on people to give you gifts, cash or otherwise, no matter WHAT anyone tells you. People were telling me that they could count on red envelopes back. Statistically, you may recouperate half of your expenses through gift red envelope money, but the exact figure could be anything, including nothing. So I'm not setting myself up to be disappointed.

A recent custom in my hometown, Shun-de, China, is to hand the host an empty red envelope upon entrance to the banquet. The host tears off a corner and gives it back as a sign of receipt.

I've included a 3-4 week trip in that $30K. We went to Japan/Taiwan/Hong Kong for 3.5 weeks over Christmas holidays.

I had to make decisions like:

• stopping my RRSP contributions altogether for a while
• cancelling my gym membership
• stop eating out as much
• stop clubbing/partying as much
• switching my cell phone plan to a lower rate plan

I didn't want to stop my RRSP payments because I know that the Big Spending Sprees don't end with a Wedding. We'll have children; we'll be buying a house... and on and on.

I was also considering not renewing my car insurance and just sharing the Acura, but then Fiance Guy pointed out that I'll probably need my car the most as the wedding date draws nearer. He also pointed out that the freedom and ability to physically "get away" was important to my sanity.

*sigh* That's why I love him.