In 2007, I wrote a post about buying a new laptop. In that post, I weighed the pros and cons of getting a cheaper home user type laptop versus a more expensive heavier duty business laptop. Well it is over 4 years now and the laptop is still functioning well.

A few things to note:-

• The laptop had a malfunctioning CD/DVD combo writer. It could read and write to a DVD but not write to a CD Rom. That was taken care of under warranty but I had to reinstall everything. I discovered the problem 2 months into ownership. I have not used the DVD or CD much
• I changed the battery after about 3 years of use. It cost around US$125 for an original battery.
• I upgraded the hard drive that cost around US$60

Two of my relative also bought 2 different Benq laptops at different times but faced problems with graphic and sound cards. Guess I was lucky.

So at 4 years going into the 5th year, the laptop is still quite snappy. I don’t need to upgrade since it can handle most of the things I do regularly. Except of a bit of (half) HD video editing I’m editing on the rare occasion, it does my work pretty well.

A few things I learned with this laptop:-

• Lithium batteries should not be kept fully charged
• Prices of laptop and other electronic gadgets really dip fast
• Be gentle with your gear

I found out rechargeable lithium ion battery age whether you use it or not. It ages fastest when fully charged and temperatures are high. That is what probably kill my first battery.

I can now get a pretty decent laptop for around US$800. The present laptop cost me US$1,140.

About 2 months ago,I got my self a smart phone for US$400. A Galaxy S Plus. It is one of my more expensive expenditure on gadgets lately. You’ll notice I don’t get the top of the range gadgets.

I could afford it and wanted an Android experience. The smart phone is great. It functions as my mobile phone (naturally), a copier (I use it to make copy of documents), a handy video cam (I’m experimenting with video to promote my work), an ebook reader (not too good for the eyes), a mp3 player, plus several other things. I can get my email, go on Twitter and Facebook with the phone as well.

For almost exactly the the same amount of money, I got a pda without the phone functions 4 years back!

Though I sort of broke my own rule of not paying over US$300 for a phone, I really enjoyed owning the phone thus far. The Nokia it replaces was with me for 3 years, cost US$240.

In 2009, I got my first digital camera and used it for over a year. Then I sort of eyed some dslr, those big cameras that are a potential black hole for your money. Yes, photography is an expensive hobby both financially as well as time wise. The thing with photography is that if you cross a certain thresh hold, it can earn some money out of it too.

Anyway, my brother passed me his under utilized dslr to use and a few months after that, I sold my camera, for half of what I paid for it. The reason was two fold. First my eyes are getting old and a small view finder doesn’t do it for me anymore.

Second, since I’m not using it all that much, rather than have it sit in the drawer, I sold it with the intention of getting a tripod or a lens for the dslr.

Finally, from the experience with my laptop battery, I knew that the battery in the camera will have a certain lifespan. These proprietary battery can be expensive to replace.

I haven’t spent any money on the dslr yet except for a second set of rechargeable AA batteries. That’s because the dlsr uses older type of batteries that functions best with full charge-discharge cycle. I missed some photo opportunity because of that.

Like I said, photography can be an expensive hobby especially if you like the gear more than the output.

What about you? Do you spend too much on your gadgets?

Original article from Personal Money Tips

I’m sure many of us have bought into the idea of passive income. After all, who wants to exchange their limited time for money? I’d rather travel the world, see places, relax with lemon tea by the beach than answer phones calls or bang away at the laptop.

Granted that there are a small minority that managed to do that after building up a lump of assets and then hiring someone to managed the money conservatively. Many are dot comers who worked their tails off, took significant financial risk, hit the market right and then sold off their companies for a ton of money. If you are this type of personality, you probably won’t be satisfied just sitting around. With money in the bank, quite a few now want to make the world a better place. Kudos to you. That too, you still need to over see that person. For the rest of us trying to build up passive income, is the destination just a myth?

I know of someone who bought a fair bit of assets and also teaches about personal finance & financial freedom etc. Lately due to changes beyond his control, he decided to liquidate. Although he will end up ahead compared to when he started, he said and I quote “even with passive income, you’ll need to monitor changes that happen in the marketplace”. Yep, the market does not remain stagnant. I sure as a property investor, you’ll need to be on top of the market, new property coming into market, movement of renters, changes in interest rate etc. All this reading and keeping tabs with the market don’t sound all that passive to me. Granted it is leveraged effort.

Let’s take a look at creating online passive income. In the online world, changes happen even faster. There are quite a few ways to get online income. Very few, if any are as passive as you would like it to be. If you are selling stuff online, you have to have customer service. If you go the affiliate or advertisement supported way, changes to affiliate program or ad rates will effect your income. You will need people to manage and maintain your sites although this can be outsourced, this means hiring and managing people to a certain extent. Again is leveraged but hardly passive.

Franchise? Which ever end of the franchise whether you are a franchisor or franchisee, you’ll need to be rather active I think. While the passive income idea is a great, the idea that most people are sold, that they never need to lift a finger ever again, is a fallacy. It is great to have people work for you, if they produce more than the headache they bring. Finding, training and retaining such employees or outsourced staff is work too. The work is just different.

Have you been bitten by the passive income bug too? What did you realize when you woke up? Share your story here.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

2011 started with a bang and we are almost into the end of January. How time flies. While it is sort of a tradition that many personal financial blog writers will review their goals & talk about the present year goal, I know I have in the past, this year, I’ll not get into the boring, long winded stuff. Last year, around this time, I wrote about 80 20 Principle For Money And Life.

As time goes by and you get older (hopefully wiser), your perspective changes. Mine did & I hope yours will change too. If it doesn’t change, then, that’s alright as well. What is important to you, is the most important thing. Don’t let me or anyone else tell you what is important. After all, it is your life.

This doesn’t mean you don’t listen & hear others out. It merely means that you listen, process and decide for yourself and not blindly follow what others are doing.

What I have learned in the past year is to challenge some long standing beliefs. Stuff like stuff i.e. possession, work not forgetting money. Challenging the status quo has its rewards. Seeing things also opens the eyes and mind. Recently, we went for a longish (by our standards) holiday. Only 16 days actually. Our friends missed us & wondered where we disappeared to.

While on the road, we met people who travelled between 3 to 6 months. Gives you some perspective what is a long time. While travelling, we met people from the West working in Asia or looking to settle somewhere in an Asian country. Back home here, we have friends who wants to migrate to the West! From what we hear, the economy isn’t too great at the moment in the US and yet, people here want to migrate there! Makes you wonder. By the way, I’ll do a write up on the travel a bit later to share more of what we experience on our trip.

What have you learned in 2010? What do you want to learn and apply in 2011? What you feed your brain sure make a difference. In society, we are programmed to be compliant. Seth Godin, the author, marketeer, thinker writes that our “tribe” people we belong to want us to comply to their way of thinking and living. Otherwise, you don’t belong and they kick you out of the tribe. Back in the days of dinosaurs and saber tooth animals, without the protection of the tribe, it means almost certain death. Read more in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Oh, remember, don’t take my word for it, check it our for yourself.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

If time is money, you ought to spend or invest it carefully. Most people spend too much time wasted doing not really important stuff. When you track your time, you’ll be surprised where it goes.

Here are five applications you can check out. http://lifehacker.com/5362829/five-best-time+tracking-applications

Original article from Personal Money Tips

I got distracted this last few days. If you don’t know, I have my hands in quite a few cookie jars. I know I have wrote about it before, about getting focused. I guess that people do that from time to time. I’m not perfect. Far from it.

I got distracted from using my new camera and web surfing looking for software to do editing etc. I guess that can’t be helped to a certain extent. If I don’t know what I can or cannot produce form my tools, then I’ll eventually hit the wall. The thing is, is that I have a habit of collecting tools and information too early without being productive immediately. Then also along the way, I found myself browsing sites with nice photographs. Sigh.

Anyhow, that’s sort of behind me. Time to get back to the path. The lesson I learned here is to know a bit of yourself. Time yourself when you planned on getting “distracted”. Any new thing in your life will distract you from what you must do. Sometimes, you can’t plan it. Like when there is an accident or a new child arrives to your family.

I guess, that what Seth Godin will call “The Dip”. Any changes you do will first take you lower than where you are before it takes you higher. If at all possible, don’t take too long a dip.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

In the last few years, credit card companies and banks have been tripping over themselves, sending easily approved cards to many customers. I’ve been target of such marketing but lately, it seems this has reduced quite a fair bit perhaps due to banks finally waking up to the fear they might not get their money back from bad customers. I remember those days when applying for a card, you need to show much higher income and they ask all kind of questions before they issue you one.

Just the other day, I received my card statement with the yearly annual subscription. Although the amount they charge is not that big, around $20, money is still money especially in this economy. (That’s also why I never bothered with a gold card, higher fees just to impress someone? No thanks)

So I picked up the phone to call the customer service to have that waived. It seems like a lot of hassle having to do that every year. In the past, it is quite easy to just hint that I’ll, “cancel the card” to have the annual fee waived but banks are also hungry for cash flow these days, and they know the “cancel the card” trick.

It got me looking for alternatives since in my country, there are some credit cards that do not charge an annual fee provided I make 2 or 3 purchases with the card each month. This is quite easy for me since I pay all the utilities and fuel using the credit. It got me on the hunt. It seems the credit sales person have all gone missing. Where are they when you need them?

Anyway, if you are looking to get the most out of credit card companies like I did, you might be able to find one here at credit card deals. I’ve been a strong advocate for being “smart” when using your credit cards. If you are having trouble controlling your spending, I suggest you think twice before getting another one.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

Owning pets is a good thing. Pets give enjoyment and fulfillment plus there are studies done that pets do quite a bit of good for the elderly and children as well. We had pets at home when we was younger including a string of dogs, cats and pet fish. Once I got married and moved out, I don’t keep pets anymore because of time and the added hassle of taking care of them.

Since this site is about money, we will look at the cost of maintaining them. I surfed over to SPCA site to take a look at the cost of maintaining different types of pets and the associated cost. While I think cost can vary depending on what you feed your pets, especially dogs or cats which can eat a variety of food, the SPCA gives a ball park figure what to expect if you intend to keep pets.

The annual cost is around for:-

• medium size female dog $1,000 a year
• cat – $900
• rabbit – $500
• guinea pig – $500
• hamster – $240

The above cost does not include cost in case your pet gets sick or injure or other cost that might throw your budget  way off. I know since we had pets that got sick, got hit by a car and other interesting happenings, when you have pets.

What does all this mean? Pets are expensive. If you want to keep them, make sure you have the necessary funds to maintain them. If you are in the midst of reducing debt, then pets might not make economic sense.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

Ok, that one of the longest title if not the title I’ve ever used for a post on this site. But the question is important to ask one self. You might detect from the tone where this post is coming from. One of my zen moment, or rather a bit stoned from the onset of flu perhaps.

Anyway, I like to bring attention to this. You see, several years back, I got online because making money online seem to be the in thing. Still is if you are new. I got exposed to all sorts of new stuff including blogs, social media, facebook, auto responders, podcasting, video casting, blogging clients, css, wordpress, content management systems, twitter, friendfeed ….. you can see that this is a long list that can keep going for a long time.

Looking back, doing all this while it did improve my knowledge about the web and bring in a few dollars to fund the hosting of several website, this one included, it did consume a lot of my time. I won’t say waste of time but it did consume it. And today, I got a blog post about life streaming. The thing you do with a mobile phone to update your site or any social media site to let people know, what you are doing. just

I found that doing all this got me so hooked to the internet that I must go check out either my email, or facebook, or my stats that is I found it is distracting me from the most important thing in life. Living life!

Sure, I made some online friends, connected with old friends, learn a few tips and tricks and in fact I got a site set-up that brings customers to my offline work. That sure helped. But with the amount of new stuff online, I’m forced to examine whether I want to do something or not. Not only does using something new involved a learning curve, it take time to set up and to do regularly. And in these economic times, getting more productive is more important than learning the next cool thing on the web. Sure it is interesting to see what your friends are doing but living life yourself must be better than just reading about it online, right?

Take care, live life, Your life!

Original article from Personal Money Tips

Is the the dawn of a new beginning? This is my crystal ball look into the future. Crisis almost always produce change in a good way, eventually. The credit crunch sparked a financial fire storm that swept across, and is still sweeping the world over. Some call it a financial tsunami. Whatever it is called, 2 to 3 years from now, things will look very different.

Although this fire storm is blamed on greed by Wall Street through real estate subprime loans, other factors like rising demand for fuel, energy, food and raw materials are contributing factors. We have been taking things for granted like low cost of energy and what we thought of as abundant of raw materials. Would the crisis change demand?

Probably not. Producers will find ways to meet that demand through game changing discovery. Let’s that the past for example. Before the invention of refrigeration, wars were fought over salt. Nations which has salt mines control the economy. Once refrigeration became cheap enough for the masses, it no longer mattered.

Another example is the automobile. In the 80s, fuel crunch caused a scramble by manufacturers to produce and market fuel efficient cars. In came things like fuel injection, aerodynamics and other technology that was accelerated to the market. After some time, people forgot the era of fuel shortages, so you see bigger and badder SUV, MPV and almost all cars in general. With the crunch, cars sizes will get smaller and again, an acceleration in technology to increase fuel economy.

Although oil prices are heading south at the moment, people woke up to the fact of high fuel prices and not likely to go back. No at least for the next decade or two.

This crisis will bring about changes in the way we do business, work, play, travel etc. Those who can foresee the needs of a changed environment will cash in on opportunities that was never there before.

My question is what and where do you think these opportunities lie? By the way, the red symbol is the Greek letter delta which is used in mathematics to denote change or difference.

Original article from Personal Money Tips

I did another theme change for personalmoneytips.com. I hpe that it will help you navigate better to find the best contents buried in here. Let me know what you think.

Original article from Personal Money Tips