You Can Now Buy/Sell StreetWise Fund Online From ING

I have been an ING Direct customer since year 2006. The service from ING Direct is very professional and helpful. The only complain from me will be the lack of the ability to buy their mutual funds online. Each time when you want to buy into their StreetWise funds, you have to call them. The whole process is somewhat inconvenient. Today, when I was checking my ING accounts, I noticed that there is a new feature from ING Direct Canada. You can buy/sell their StreetWise funds directly through their website now! Moreover, if you want to setup a monthly contribution, you can do it online too! I am glad that ING is making such a good improvement on their online services. That just makes my life a little bit easier

Update On The Interview

I have been doing interviews for the past couples of weeks. That is the main reason why I have not been posting for a while. I got a call from one of the recruiters last week and was asked to fly over to Alberta to talk about the job a little bit further. They said I am going to talk to the senior manager who had interview with me and also the director of the department. I think this is a good sign and hopefully I can score the job eventually. Let's keep my fingers crossed. :)

Salary Review

I have finished my salary review for my current year. Not surprisingly, I got the average 5% increase as others. After tax, I will probably get $50 more each pay cheque. I have decided to put all of them into my mutual fund purchase. From now, I will be contributing about $500 each month to my mutual funds.

Hilton Head South Carolina

I love traveling and hope I am able to go to a place which I have never been to before every year. Based on my own tracking on Facebook, I have been to fifty cities in eight countries. As I am searching for my next travel destination, it seems that hilton head south carolina is a fun place to go. There are variety of fun and safe activites offered all over hilton head island such as tennis, golf, kayaking and even surfing. I have never surf before. It will be great if I can try and pick up that cool sport. If you have friends who love shopping, hilton head is also a great place to go as it has two huge outlet malls offering over 100 stores! The climate looks nice on hilton head as well. Summers are warm, but the ocean breezes help to cool things down. Winters are generally mild and tend to be short. Spring and Fall are temperate and gorgeous. It seems to be a great travel destination for everybody. I think I will look into this place more.

Review Time

August is the start of the new fiscal year for my current company. It is also the time of the salary review. Some of my friends has just finished theirs today. It looks like most of them have got a 5% raise this year. I have not got my review scheduled yet. Hopefully, it will come soon. As for the percentage raise, I think it should be at 5% level as well. We will see.

How often is your salary review? What is the usual percentage of raise?

Going SixFlags!!

I am leaving this afternoon to SixFlags New England. It has been a long time that I want to visit this amusement park. Here I go! As a big roller coaster fan, I am so excited. We will be staying at the Sheraton in Springfield for two nights and then heading to the Wrentham Village Outlet mall on Sunday.

Originally we would like to stay in Springfield for one night and then two nights in Boston. But due to the big conference in Boston, the hotel is so expensive in Boston for this Saturday. Therefore, we twisted our plan a little bit. We paid $60 per night for Sheraton in Springfield and $88 per night for Omni Parker House in downtown Boston.

Also, there is a big promotion for SixFlags currently, everybody pay kids price! The admission is reduced to $29.99 if you buy online. I think it is a good time to visit SixFlags if you like coasters!

GCR Check Received!

I have finally got my GCR rebate check in the mail yesterday in the total amount of $65.05. It took me about 45 days to receive my check from the date I requested. I just had the worst timing. They process checks on the 15th of each month. I submitted my request on June 16th,one day after the dead line!
So if you would like to pay by checks, you should pay attention to when you should submit your request. Of course, the best date will be the 14th. Or you can simply choose to pay by paypal.

Interview coming up

I have an interview scheduled on Aug 12 from a financial institution in Alberta. The job is exactly what I am looking for in an industry I want to work for. I hope I can score it on Aug 12. To prepare for the interview, I have searched on the internet for how to answer those questions usually pop up during the process. The particular useful one I have found is Interview Questions on About.com. If you are interested, you can follow this link.

Good luck to all the job seekers! :)

Passive Income Report

I have decided to do a passive income report each month. Right now, most of my passive income come from blogging and investment income such as interests and dividends. In the month of June, I have been able to generate about $285 dollars. It has been pretty good. I hope the trend can continue into the future.

Update on GCR checks

I logged into my GCR account today. My account shows that the check has been cut and mailed. My total rebate is $65. Until today, I have not seen the mail coming yet. I will wait until Friday before I send them an e-mail. Hopefully, I will be receiving it soon.

Scotiabank and Etrade Canada

Scotiabank Reaches Agreement To Buy E*TRADE Canada. The announcement has been made yesterday although the deal has not been finalized yet. It looks like there is going to be less and less competition for the discount brokerage firms in Canada.

For more on this, please follow this link

iPhone 3G comes to the market

Today is a big day for iPhone lovers as it is the time the iPhone 3G comes to the market. For Canadians, Rogers is the wireless provider who will offer this phone in Canada. If you would like to get one from Rogers, here is the list of plans they are offering now:

New iphone black 16G $299

1st 2 month is free
1st 3 month is unlimted call time
each month $35 with NO data plan
250 day time min, free after 6pm.
free call display, call waiting

$60/month - 150 anytime minutes, 75 outgoing SMS, and 400 MB data
$75/months - 300 anytime minutes, 100 outgoing SMS, and 750 MB data
$100/month - 600 anytime minutes, 200 outgoing SMS, and 1 GB data
$115/month - 800 anytime minutes, 300 outgoing SMS, and 2 GB data

Basically, we are looking at, at least, $45 per month with NO data plan or $75 for a plan with 400 MB data. For me, that price is just too high. $900 per year is enough to pay for a small nice trip. I would rather go traveling instead of having an iPhone. How long will I feel it is a fun gadget? Probably 6 months maybe? After 6 months, I will be stuck for another two and a half year of it. I don't think I will be getting one.

How do you determine your networth?

I have been regularly posting my net worth on this blog. But, actually, how do you determine your net worth? What is the standard for rich and poor? Is a person with $40,000 in assets and $1000 monthly expenses richer than the one who only has $30,000 but $500 monthly expenses?

Obviously, there are many ways to measure your net worth. Besides the numbers, I typically like this one: how many months you can live on without having a pay cheque? Using the example above, Person A would be able to go without having a pay cheque for 40 months while Person B will be able to do so for 60 months. Although Person A has higher net worth in numbers, Person B is actually has more net freedom.

This method not only measures wealth, but it measures wealth against lifestyle costs as well. It gives higher score to those who live below their means since they are truly more flexible than those who just live larger than life.

So, what is your score in terms of your pay cheque free month?

Do you check your pay stub?

I think most of the people got their pay directly deposit into their bank account. Therefore, many just do not bother to walk to the admin's cubical to get their pay stub. If you are on fixed salary each month, there should be no problem. I, however, am on the two weeks' on-call rotation. Therefore, once in a while, I will get the extra on-call pay. Surprisingly, my on-call pay for last month was not processed. I immediately noticed that when I got my pay stub from the admin. It turned out to be a error from the pay roll team and they assured me the pay will be processed next time and show up on my next pay stub. So, if you are like me and will sometimes get additional OT or other extra payment, it might be a good idea to check your pay stub because errors do happen.

I Hit My Target for Side Income This Month!

If there is an equation to rich, I would put it this way: Spend Less+Make More+Invest Intelligently= Wealth. I am living within my means. In fact, I could not find any more ways to stretch the dollar, not until I am ready to be starving anyways. In the meantime, I am investing. Hopefully, I am doing it intelligently. Having said that, I think I can be working towards making a little bit more.

Early this month, I have set a goal for myself to generate $80 additional income. Up till now, I am proud to say that not only I hit my target, but I am actually making additional $102 for the month of June, more than 120% mission accomplished.The money mostly comes from blog sponsorship and the sponsored posts I have been writing. Here I really want to thank SocialSpark and PayPerPost for all the wonder opportunities. I hope that it is sustainable for me to bring in about $80-$120 each month by continuing doing this. Considering the money is after tax, it would be equivalent to about $1370~$2057 annual pay increase to me. (My marginal tax rate is around 30%) Not bad at all!

Still No Cheque from GCR

I still have not received the cash back cheque from GCR yet. I submitted the cheque request around June 12th. After the submission, they did send an acknowledgment e-mail to me about the request. I just shot them another e-mail asking the estimated date when I can receive the money. Hopefully, it will be sometime next week. :)

Crazy Gas Price

This is the first time when I filled up the tank of my car and the total bill came to more than $40. The gas price is going crazy at 1.40/l here and well above $1/l over the border. I am not driving a fancy car with 6 or 8 cylinders. But the gas price has actually started to hurt.....

Prepaid is the Way to Go

Early this year, at the end of January, I switched my cell phone plan to the prepaid service. Now, five months have passed. What is my cell phone bill each month? $4.2!! Yes, you read it right. Now I am paying only $4.2 each month for using my cell phone. Compared with the monthly plan I used to have and pay $37 per month, I am saving $32.8 more each month which adds up to $393.6 per year(about half of my auto insurance annual cost). Not only I am saving tons on my cell phone bill, I am actually getting more features with prepaid service as well, such as caller ID which I have to pay extra to get with the monthly plan.

Although some of you might say why not just get rid of your cell phone completely, it is not an option to me since I need it once a while especially when driving.

If you do not talk a lot on your cell phone, you might want to consider to switch to the prepaid service as well. Keep your cell phone for emergency and occasional use only. If you feel that you really want to talk, pick up your land line or chat using Skype.

Guiding People to A Correct Direction

Do you feel good when you can provide some good advice and suggestions to other people? I think most people do. Since I am so obsessive about personal finance, I talk about it quite a lot when I am hanging out with my friends. Last couples of months, I have seen some of them actually changing their spending habit and behavior towards money issues. Two of my friends have finished reading The Wealthy Barber and one of them have finished The Automatic Millionaire. Moreover, many of them have started to ASP(automatic saving plan) to pay themselves first. I think it is a good start. It does feel good when you can guide people to a correct direction. :)

Every Little Steps Make a Difference

As many of you have noticed, I have been doing some sponsored posts quite a lot recently. First of all, I am sorry for that many sponsored posts if it annoys you. To be honest, I hope I can generate some income while doing post on this blog. I agree with Brown Eyed Girl and Money. Sometimes you need more than one motivation to get you going. And the possibility to make some money out of it is one of them.
I have set up a goal to make around $80 this month from doing sponsored posts. Currently, I am half way through($45 right now). I think $80 a month is a quite realistic and achievable goal. At the end of the month, I will be doing another update on this and see how I have been doing.