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Financial Planning, Investment, Personal Finance, Retirement Planning

Personal Capital Review – My Choice of Financial Software for Tracking and Financial Planning

I convinced my husband to use Personal Capital! In the past five months, I have both subtly and verbally tried to get my husband onboard. This past weekend, he finally gave me the ‘go’ signal. What’s even better? We have been hooked by this financial software the last several days (okay, maybe a bit obsessed). Personal Capital is amazing, beautiful and provides me everything I need (when it comes to understanding my financial life).

personal capital My Choice of Financial Software for Tracking and Financial Planning

I first learned about Personal Capital when I started reading personal finance blogs early this year. Most of my daily reads have written a review about this. Many of them used Personal Capital to track their financial numbers. My eyes were drawn to the colorful and beautiful charts and graphs these bloggers were sharing on their sites. Several of my money savvy friends also started telling me about Personal Capital. I was ready to give it a try.

When I approached my husband with this idea, he blatantly rejected it. He was concerned about the software’s security. He already doesn’t like the fact that we have to login to so many financial accounts to track and manage our finances. He didn’t want another to gain access to our financial data. What if someone would to get hold of our logins and mess with our investment holdings and transactions? What if that were to happen while we’re traveling outside of the country and might not have access to secure Internet? His concerns sounded totally legit to me. After that conversation, I was ready to move on. I accepted the fact that Personal Capital and I weren’t meant to be.

My Obsession

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Personal Finance

My Preferred Cashback Programs: Ebates and Mr. Rebates

One way to save money while shopping online is to start on a cashback site. You are going to make the purchases anyway, why not get a little something back at the same time? These types of sites develop relationships with retailers and get paid to refer customers (they earn a small commission of each purchase you make when you use their direct link to visit a merchant). The sites then share a portion of their referral revenue with you.

In some cases, you might earn a bonus (such as $5 or $10) just for signing up and making a qualifying purchase. You can also apply coupons displayed on the merchants’ websites ON TOP OF the cash back to stack your savings! If you happen to shop during the holidays, lookout for retailers that offer double or triple cash back. Sometimes the cashback amount can be up to 10%. To me, that’s a very great deal. It’s like saving on taxes and some more while shopping through these cashback sites.

How Cashback Programs Work

Rather than going directly to a retailer’s website, you would first log in to your preferred cashback site, search for the store you want to shop at (if the store is a participating merchant, you’d see the amount of cash back being displayed), click on a link that would take you to that merchant’s site (your click-through from the cashback site activates a code in the merchant’s shopping cart that will make sure that you are credited with the cash back), and then complete your shopping as usual. After the cashback site verifies your transaction, the earnings get approved (cash back typically show up in your account within few days). This earning is based on the dollar amount of your purchase and the cashback offer at the time of purchase.

cashback ebates mr rebates

My Experience with Cashback Programs

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Financial Planning, Money Psychology, Personal Finance

Don’t Like Budgeting? You Can Still Take Control of Your Finances

Budgeting is just one way of managing your money. My husband and I don’t do budgeting. In this post I shared other strategies and tools we use.

What comes to mind when you think of budgeting? If you think it’s tedious, stressful, or restrictive, then you’re not alone!

budgeting strategies to managing personal finances

Many people claim budgeting is good for your financial health. Much has been written on this topic, from why you need a budget to creating a budget to managing a budget. For a short while, I truly believed having a budget was the way to become wealthy. But my husband and I passed on it after we had a long discussion on the topic. That was in year 2010.

Six years later, my husband and I decided to give budgeting a try. Many personal finance bloggers were doing this. They must knew something, right? We wanted to see what expenses we could cut. The lower our expenses are, the earlier we can retire. We tried for three months. Our consensus? The process was painful, tedious and mentally difficult. It was not about the math. The formulas were simple and the spreadsheet took care of the calculations. It was not about our different views on money. We generally agree on how to manage our household finances. It was not a lack of patience. My husband tracks our portfolio performance almost on a daily basis, and this involves lots of number tracking and focus. So what did it come down to? We lacked commitment. We didn’t see the benefits.

Were we doomed? Continue Reading

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Financial Journey, Girlfriend to Girlfriend Money Chat, Personal Finance

When Might You Want to be Honest with Friends about Your Financial Constraints

As promised in this post (click to view), I’m now sharing an update on how I have been working to overcome my fear and making efforts talking with my friends about personal finance.

About two months ago, I found myself feeling stressed. It was around back-to-school week, and several of my stay-at-home-mom friends all wanted to get together with me around the same time. And all of them suggested going out for a meal. I felt conflicted. On the one hand, I wanted to say yes to getting together, but my social budget was limited at the time.

Early in 2016 when my husband and I decided on a FI date (financial independence), we became even more conscious about money and spending. Prior to that, like many of my peers I looked forward to every social gathering where food and drinks were involved. I’ve always been a foodie, and hanging out with friends over delicious food was my idea of a great time. However, once my husband and I decided on a FI date, I drastically changed my spending habits and my views on spending in general. And not all of my friends are aware of this new change yet.

For that same reason, I struggled. I didn’t want to make up excuses to decline the invitations. I was concerned that this drastic change in behavior might have my friends thinking I was no longer interested in spending time with them (I used to say yes to dining out almost always.). I didn’t want my friends to think I was rejecting them. And if I were to share with them my lack of desire to do social spending, would I make them feel uneasy? How would my friends feel about the changes I’ve made in my life recently (where spending is concerned)? Will my friends support me? I had all these concerns and questions in my head. I really wanted to avoid social awkwardness!

money constraints girlfriend to girlfriend money chat

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Investment, Personal Finance, Women and Financial Literacy

Women Can Participate in the Stock Market with Confidence, Too

women participate in the stock market

Polls and surveys consistently showed women tend to worry more about making investment mistakes than our male counterparts do and get bogged down in all the financial jargons and end up completely confused. We’re also more likely to think the stock market is too risky. All this boils down to women’s lack of confidence and lack of knowledge when it comes to investing. In this post, I share a simple strategy that helped me make sense of the stock market. Despite the strategy’s simplified approach, it gave me the motivation and confidence I needed to get into the stock market. I hope you’ll find my story inspiring, and I encourage you to give the stock market a(nother) chance. I also challenge you to rethink some of your misconceptions about men and women. This is especially important when many women believe that men are more knowledgeable when it comes to making investment decisions, more assertive and more risk-tolerant.

When I Shop

For years, I’ve been using the unit price comparison strategy when I shop. This was something my mother taught me when we were still living in China. During my first couple years in the U.S., navigating through the grocery market was overwhelming. However, understanding numbers and being able to do simple arithmetic helped tremendously. I had no problem figuring out how much an item costs per pound, ounce or gram, square foot or meter, etc. As my English vocabulary grew, I found myself comparing unit prices while keeping in mind the ingredients list. It made sense to me that a product has almonds listed as the first ingredient charges a higher price than another product that listed almonds as the third ingredient. Once I mastered this strategy, look-alike products (and of various sizes) on rows and rows of shelves no longer intimidate me.

Women as Shoppers

As a gender, women are being praised for being good shoppers. And for many of us, we know that’s true and we own this identity. We instinctively know that $3 off a $6 sandwich is a great deal. When the math gets a little complicated, we use the trusty calculator on our phones for assistance. The calculator also makes doing price comparisons easy when unit prices aren’t readily displayed. In general, it’s safe to say that we, women, carry an air of confidence with us while shopping for groceries, household items, clothing or services. So, why do so many women feel intimidated when it comes to shopping in the stock market? Buying stocks is just another form of purchase, right?

Making Sense of the Stock Market

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