Seems I have finished my work today (it’s 11:26 only~!! Sorry Gothia…), I am writing this mail.

Have been talking with friends in the last few days, they showed me their interest but also telling me different reasons of having no plan.

Number one is probably not having enough money, so I am writing to share my experience. Several years ago, after I got less money from salary, I started to plan my finance myself. After having enough basic cash which I needed (30K) to sustain my Citibank account (need to be charged if there are less than 30K in CitiBank account~!!! And I borrowed money from my parents to open that account at the beginning~) then I calculated how much money I have left for investment; also how much I could save each month, and from there, how much money I could use for investment.

I remember I started with $1500 each month. Well, you could do ‘NOTHING’ with $1500, but it was part of my plan. From my ex company I got 600 share of stock at 2001May and in that summer, I put 20K in Hutchison Bond 5 years, 5% annual (mature this summer, means getting 1K each year for 5 years). So, it was like that until 2002 when I was in Italy alone, after reading a book, Gordon asked me before, 10-Days-MBA, I started planning seriously and then looked for stocks. As I have already got low risk utility stock and risk free bonds, I looked for something more risky, tech stock.

Well, I didn’t spend all my $1500 every month, because not enough money, I read until I felt comfortable to put let’s say $7800 (USD$10 x 100) for Motorola in 2003 (most tech stock I don’t hold for more than 1 year).

I have been lucky, since my 600 awarded stock (rebased $25.47 at that time), is now over $58 (CLP), even HSBC only have 51% growth from that time. Of course, with some little calculation of compound interest, you know 6 years to give you double; means each year would have 13% of growth rate. 13%?! Sounds familiar, it is also the annual norm for stocks I read somewhere (damn cannot find it where tim… maybe the very same book), and also what I have been targeting to commit each year (so far only 1 year is 12%, all are above, but I didn’t put all my investment on stock le….).

As I told May last year, I didn’t have feeling of security, as it all looked like a bubble. Hmm… I started to put my bets on some options last year, some for hedging and some for seeding for large growth, Sony was one of which I told Ken le… I want to share my failure with you guys; those are good experience, esp. for options, which I crashed some last year and I am still learning :P.

Finally, as I threatened Laura, you only work for 30 years and you have another 30-40 years to live without salary, better to plan it now, or maybe you are successful enough to shorten that 30 years working le~

Eric