Chicky Finance

I feel much better this month. My car loan under 20K and CC balance is under 19K. I reached both of my financial goals for August.

Here is the ugly truth;

CC#1: PaidOff
CC#2: Paid Off
CC#3: Paid Off
CC#4:$4,000 interest %0 until November. In the beginning of this month this card had $5,000 balance.

Loan: $14,400 interest %8.9 Same as the last month
Total: $18,400 Under 19K . I managed to decrease the balance for $1,000. If I continue make same progress until end of this year, I possibly can reach my 2008 goal. Especially If I get a better paying job, I'll probably have less than 15K debt. Keep your fingers cross for me!

If you want to purchase can you beat dealer quality steering racks & boxes, lowest prices anywhere, free shipping on all orders and rock solid warranty on all parts? This is exactly what Power Steering Pros DOT com is offering. They also claim that they have Top-notch customer service with Live Toll Free Phone Support. I think if you are looking into a new power steering rack or Power steering box, you should check them out.

I need to write Thank you letters. I know it is not a problem and expected when you go to any interview. However, do I need to send thank you letter every single person I interviewed? VP of HR, CEO, and CFO? And should I personalize each email so that they don’t put my emails next to each other and laugh hard? I guess when I go home tonight, I will spend an hour or so writing nice thank you letters for every one of them. Also I need to complete INS documents and send them to the immigration office tomorrow. That way they don’t kick me out the country.

The interview is done! How did I do? First I had an interview with CEO of the company, very nice man. It was only 10-15 min I dont know if that means good or bad but it was really only 10 or 15 min max. Second, I had an interview with CFO. She is also CPA. Well, I think it went very well. The interview was about an hour. She asked about my experience etc. This was my very first interview experience with accounting experience under my belt. I felt very confident and I realized that I do a quite bit at my current work so it is not totally waste of my time. They told me that I am in top 3. They will either call me for 3rd interview or just make an offer. At this point I will wait and see. The office is super nice and it is located in financial district in OC. Sounds like if I get the position I will have a nice room and nice salary. I dont know about benefits or things in that nature. They didnt discuss that with me , perhaps that means I am not getting the job...Well, no more speculation..We shall see by next Monday..

Tonight Mr.Finance and I will be going a rock concert in Hollywood House of Blues. It should be really fun. I hope I get enough sleep for tomorrow's crazy schedule though..

Once you get your domain name, what is the next step? The next step is to find a place to host your website of course. There are some fellow bloggers who suffer from poor service everyday. I came across http://www.webhostingrating.com/. They have a unique web host rating system that provides ratings to different website hosting services based on customer satisfaction, affordability, reliability, server uptime and technical support. Since it is extremely hard to tell if web hosting service is any good, this website might be the way to go. The website also contains many informational articles to make easier for you to make right decision.

This weekend I was full of emotion. Poor Mr.Finance had to deal with me. On Sunday things got a lot better, Mr. Finance and I had fun playing tennis together. We both have interesting fun hobbies but some reason we don’t have many hobbies we do together. I will try to focus on hobbies we both love, I think this will bring us much closer.

Tomorrow I have an interview. I don’t really know if I want the position. We will see how things will play out tomorrow. This will be the second interview so I am hoping I will know the outcome by the end of the week. I plan to take half day off by acting sick. I hope I can act. I am not really good at lying. I have tons of stuff to do at work; I will probably stay here until at least 9:00pm to finish things up. BTW, I put some $700 worth of stuff on craigslist, I hope I can sell.

What a week! Since I came from SF, it’s been hectic here. Not only it’s been crazy, but also I haven’t been feeling good..Not good at all..I was feeling so desperate at work I even called in sick on Tuesday even though I was not sick. I’ve never done that before in my life..It is time to move on to a new place…SF was great, seeing family always the best feeling. And leaving them behind, coming back was sad.

Some good news; today I went to an interview for a staff accountant position. They want to schedule second interview, the salary range 50-55K. I will probably push for $55K which is 15K higher than what I am making right now. I don’t have so much details right this moment. I guess after second interview (next Tuesday), I will have a better idea. I am officially on the job market. It is so hard to schedule while working though…I don’t know what to do. I can not say I am sick all the time and come to work with an interview suit, right?

My oldest sister lives in the Bay Area which is super expensive; I believe she's paid around $1M for her tiny house. One little detail though, her household income is around $300K. Anyways, my mom came from Europe last week. She plans to stay here for 3 months which makes me so excited that you cannot even imagine. As I write this post, I am sitting at the airport waiting for my flight. I’m going to stay Friday through Sunday with them. I don’t plan to spend any money because whenever I go there my sister pays for everything “voluntarily”. Having said that I paid $177 for the roundtrip ticket and I will probably pay around $50 for airport parking. My mom will be staying with me for a week at the end of August. I already planned what we are going to each every day, so exciting. To clarify I already paid for the plane ticket last month so there is no additional debt.
This weekend I need to complete immigration paper work and get ready to pay $600 to INS!!! Rip off! Mr.Finance is going to pay this fee because I simply cannot afford by myself. He works overtime last two months which has a huge effect on our combined income. While I was going through our income taxes I noticed since we got married our income has been increasing steadily. We got married in 2006 therefore our income goes like this; 2006: $112K, 2007: $138K and this year my guess is $170K. Perhaps you are wondering why he is not contributing to pay any of the CC debt and the car loan. It is because he has around $60K student loan debt and he is paying $3K-$4K to pay off the whole thing asap. Our guess by the time I will be done with our consumer debt, he will be done with the student loan and we will be debt free!
Ooops I’d better run, my flight is leaving and Southwest hostess is announcing Ms. Chicky Finance’s name!

Both Mr.Finance and I have cars. Honestly we don’t have any plans to buy another car for a long time. Having said that, there is no harm to see what is out there, right? I came across Auto123.com. You can learn about all about new model cars on their site. What really differentiate their site from other car portals is you can actually watch videos and read official reviews by journalists and by visitors to the site. Besides that they have used cars for sale they can find in your area or in their classifieds. I encourage you to check out their website and enter the drive, fly, rate contest to win a free vacation!

Do you want to get organized? Then I strongly recommend dymo label makers. I have one at work, two at home (for different purposes). At work when I want to mail out something I never use handwriting, I always use the label maker because it looks more professional and neat. At home I usually use for labeling File folders and sometimes even boxes. This way I know where Christmas ornaments and Halloween costumes are. I came across Dymo website that gives many tips how you can use labeling machines effectively. They have a whole section about organizing kitchen clutter which I thought useful. Also there is a section all about how you can use DYMO for back to school projects. I am not going back to school for a while so I will pass on that however, I will definitely check out more thoroughly what they have in kitchen organizing section. What about labeling and crafts? They have some awesome ideas in this section. For example, you can get laminated world map and create your own small flags with time stamps labels to point out where you have traveled. Overall I love my DYMO label makers and I recommend it for anyone who wants to be more organized.

Do you know the magazine named Psychology Today? I love that magazine because it covers interesting subjects and the way it is written is simple yet satisfactory. I was thinking about subscribing but then I decided not to because they have an awesome website you can read articles not only that but they also have bloggers who are Phd holders and doctors. I plan to print out as many as articles I want to read this weekend and educate myself in some areas where I need improvement. Here is their website http://psychologytoday.com/ BTW, it is not PPP just you know..:)

As you might know, I love playing tennis. I started playing when I was 10 or so and never stopped until I came to the States I when I was 23. I could not afford playing any kind of tennis until now. Last month I took 5 weeks lessons for ~$80 through city. It is basically it was a class with 4 people. I loved it. My passion for tennis is stronger than ever these days. During those 5 weeks I made some friends and we start playing every Thursdays from 8-9pm. It approximately costs me $3 for my share of court fee. On Friday nights there is a tennis club they have mix matches for $4 and it sometimes last more than 2 hrs to finish.
In other words, playing tennis weekly basis costs me:
· $15 private lesson,
· $3 court fee Thursday
· $4 court fee Fridays
Total: $22 per week. Therefore, $88 per month is out of my pocket. Do I have that much money? I try to live on $600 per month. My paycheck is around $2,600. In “an ideal world” I put $2,000 towards the debt including car payment and CC. No wonder lately it is not happening! Besides being summer, I do play tennis too much.. Yet should I play less? NO..I will try cut down my other fix expenses and try lowering them. Or bump up my budget $700. One’s health is just too important to give up from exercise to save pennies. At least that what I truly believe…

This month I will try something different. I will list my goals under Personal finance, Health, Career and Personal Growth. Also I will be more specific about how I plan to accomplish some of the things.

Here you go;

This weekend I need to sit down and plan August, also I need to reevaluate July goals. Lately I've mix feelings about my career. Serious doubts about if I want to become CPA or not. Perhaps completely change my field....Before I hurry I will consult with people who I know want my best interest.

Update on wedding anniversary and X-games? Our wedding anniversary went as we planned. We celebrated at home and when I got home from work I found out Mr. Finance got me this beautiful flower which made my day.. :) X-games was crazzy! I never thought ramps were so steep and high. There was one guy who broke his several bones during his first jump and still continued competition and got the silver. I thought it was very impressing. In fact, when he was asked if he continued because of reward, he responded by saying that he continued only because he wanted see how far human being can be pushed. Reaching your potential. Since then I've been thinking about his words..Where is my limits? Am I playing the game much less than my potential? I think soo...