Business is Personal (Finance)

• ESOP fees

  Feb 26, 2010
  A few weeks ago, I wrote about Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) as a possible exit strategy for a privately held company. My company is in the initial stages of researching this option. To that end, I some researching and... 0

• Vacation Plans

  Feb 25, 2010
  In my last post about the plethora of languages in China, I ended with a mention of practicing Mandarin for my upcoming trip to Hainan. In addition, I want to travel to the following places during this coming year: Beijing... 0

• Language skills for the 21st century

  Feb 24, 2010
  Ask people for a generic skill to have to further job prospects and foreign language proficiency often comes up pretty high. And with more than a billion Chinese speakers and an economy growing in leaps-and-bounds, Chinese is right at the... 0

• Expectations versus reality

  Feb 23, 2010
  In my last entry, I wrote about the expected returns for my portfolio. How has it played out during my limited investing career?Annualized ReturnsAfter pulling my numbers together, I have: Nominal Real CPI Return Return --------------------------------------- 1996 2.93% 22.70% 19.77%... 0

• Expected real return

  Feb 18, 2010
  In this thread at the Get Rich Slowly forum, a question was asked about everybody's expected rate of real (inflation-adjusted) return. My brain first started working on the answer like so:6% stocks (5% overall, I overweight in risker equity allocations)2%... 0

• Work Overdrive Trivia

  Feb 14, 2010
  The last 4 days, I have been working in overdrive. We have a "product" demo this coming Wednesday where knocking their socks off is important. We've previously demo'd this product to other customers but in those cases, we had the... 0

• Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)

  Feb 11, 2010
  As a small company with continual day-to-day involvement from the founders, exit strategies are hard to come by. Finding a buyer willing to pay a large amount of money upfront for an operation that might stop being profitable after management... 0

• Valentine's Day

  Feb 10, 2010
  Anybody in a consumption-oriented society knows Valentine's day is coming up on February 14. The stores have been packed with V-Day decorations and advertising is everywhere to buy diamonds, chocolates, handbags, etc. for the love of your life. So in... 0

• Sleeping in a closet

  Feb 9, 2010
  There's a common saying -- it's the journey and not the destination. Sometimes arriving at your destination too fast can be a detriment as you might end up losing out on the opportunity to practice the necessary habits and skills... 0

• Money for chores

  Feb 8, 2010
  My two kids are age 2 and 4. Tonight, to have some fun, I cut up some paper and draw some money symbols on them so they could pretend they had money. They immediately started cleaning up to say they... 0

• Housing in China

  Feb 6, 2010
  House Hunting After arriving in China, we spent the first week holed up in my brother-in-law's condo. A lot of time was spent sleeping trying to adjust to the jet lag and time zone differences. In addition, the Chinese people... 1

• Chinese New Year Lucky Money

  Feb 6, 2010
  I previously wrote our Christmas spending was low but didn't think we'd get off so easy for Chinese New Year. Well that day is one week away now (February 14 for this year) so we've been busy getting ready. One... 0

• A look back on asset allocation mix

  Feb 5, 2010
  As I start typing (February 4, 12:37PM PST), the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 256 points (2.49%) for the day. Year to date, it is down 3.97% and financial pundits everywhere are making gloomy noises about the economy and... 0

• Wedding Costs ... as Guests

  Feb 4, 2010
  Chinese New Year will soon be here and among the traditions is a top-to-bottom clean up at home. In the local dialect (Taishanese), the phrase translates to roughly "hit dust". The local merchants all have long, colorful brooms displayed for... 0

• Making sense of Vanguard funds

  Feb 2, 2010
  For investing, I prefer Vanguard funds for their low expense and low taxable turnover. However, the array of funds can be dizzying. As a quick primer, we can group most funds together as many funds are slices of other funds.... 0