Category: 401k and Personal Finance

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401k and Personal Finance

Morning random thoughts: job switching and 401k vesting

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(Update 06-19-2024 note today is Juneteeth Day) In last year or so I noticed my current employer also switched to the 4 year vesting schedule. That also means in theory I can retire from my current place if I only care about the 401k matching money vesting 🙂

(Original) First thoughts: regarding the recent #layoff news from #Meta (#Facebook, my wife has a former colleague being impacted yesterday). This remind me one thing from my own experience, for those folks who are on #OPT or #H1B, compensation/money is not as important as the #greenCard (GC) (#permanentResidency). Once you have the GC, sky is your limit 🙂 #majorsCareerTip #immigrants

401k Employer Match Vesting

Just did a #401k #employermatch #vesting schedule #spreadsheet and the “employer match” number below is “made up”. Personally I think both are okay, better than the companies that have a number of years for all or nothing, e.g., 3 years. || Of course another scenario is #jumpShip (aka switching jobs) to get a #raise. This may or may not work due to the economy (tech layoffs) and age (age discrimination is illegal in this country, but in reality it’s rampant. Just like #payInEquity or gender #payGap) #personalfinancetips Below is two scenarios of vesting schedules, for the two places I work (or worked). From the employee point of view, the earlier vest schedules give more flexibility.

Refer to my Google sheet here

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401k and Personal Finance

Some potential lunch money

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 07-28-2023) Perry v. Schnuck Markets, Inc.

(Original) It seems soooooooo hard for me to earn the $100 check from google Adsense nowadays. A lot people said blogs are dead nowadays. That’s probably true, as I learn from homejianshuo (noticed his blog starting date of Sept 2002, now I recall I was probably influenced by him when I start blogging :-), and likely some other famous bloggers too. The blogging world has moved beyond, into medium.com, and now into substack?

I don’t know for sure. I think I still need to figure that one out. My general assessment is the world has moved into newer platforms, from podcast, to social media, and so on. Two people I am aware of: Daniel Vassallo (he quit Amazon/AWS job and went solo), and Ruan Yifeng (he has a popular wechat 公众号 and a good weekly journal).

Okay, back to lunch money. Here they are:

IKEA: background, file claim website, Chinese

Meta/Facebook: background, and file claim website

Now I suspect my lunch money from the above may come earlier than the $100 check from Google Adsense 🙂

PS:

Now I gave it more thought, I think Amex Gold (official link, no kickback for me here. I do have a referral link if you are interested. Please let me know via email: minjie dot xu at gmail dot com ) can give a lot more free lunch money too. With $250 annual fees, it gives $10 per month Uber Cash (can be used for car ride as well as Uber Eats), as well as $10 from GrubHub (seamless.com, I use the latter as I pick up my own food), and a few other restaurants such as Cheese Cake Factory and Shake Shack. It has many other benefits too: I usually converts the Amex membership rewards points to the HHonors points when there is a favorite conversion term. Below is copied from Amex website.

“$120 Uber Cash on Gold

Enjoy up to $120 in Uber Cash annually with your Gold Card. Just add your Card to your Uber account and you’ll automatically get $10 in Uber Cash each month for Uber Eats orders or Uber rides in the U.S.‡ Plus, you’ll earn 4X Membership Rewards® points for each Uber Eats purchase on your Card.‡

$120 Dining Credit

Satisfy your cravings, sweet or savory, with the $120 Dining Credit. Earn up to $10 in statement credits monthly when you pay with the American Express® Gold Card at Grubhub, The Cheesecake Factory, Goldbelly, Wine.com, Milk Bar and select Shake Shack locations. Enrollment required.‡”

PS 2:

From time to time, Panera Bread will send me emails re: $30 Gift Card (GC) for tasting test, this is the most recent one. I think you can try it. I have done that in the past, for a few times, and they always honor the GC. It will take some time to get there (their Fenton, MO tasting room).

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401k and Personal Finance

Tax day and turbo tax software

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Tomorrow 04/18/2023 is the tax day in the US, the usual deadline for filing federal income and state income taxes. Note in some states there is no income tax. In the old days, I mean the real good old days, the tax day is usually April 15, and the Post Office will be like the last few days approaching Christmas, because the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and the state authority that collects state income taxes usually go by the post mark.

But I have done tax using Turbo Tax since year 2001, to be more specific I used Turbo Tax online version from 2001 to 2021 (for tax year 2000 to 2020), and I used the Turbo Tax desktop for tax year 2021 and 2022 (the one that’s due tomorrow April 18). If you search this blog website, you may notice that I talked quite a bit about Turbo Tax, most talk was before 2012 or so though.

Turbo Tax Online

I still remember the 1st time I used Turbo Tax online, I was on the phone modem, not the cable or AT&T broadband. And I remember the modem dial-in noise. I think I shared quite a bit coupons, tips and tricks using the Turbo Tax online versions, and sometimes I even got some sort of query from the authority. I think since that time, I don’t always use the Turbo Tax online version for state taxes filing. In terms of discount, in recent years, I sometimes using the offers from credit card. This is applicable to the Desktop tax filing as well. The online version has one advantage compared to the desktop: there will be a copy stored at Turbo Tax website. For desktop, we need to be mindful of backup, as I made a bad mistake last year.

Turbo Tax Desktop

I usually buy the desktop software from Amazon (here is my Amazon Associate link): note I usually buy the premier version (same for the online version).

For tax filing, I usually made 2 purchases: one is the audit defense ($45) and another is the state e-filing ($20 last year, $25 this year). And I used the Chase credit card $10 off offer for both.

Again, last year I forgot to make a backup copy, and this year I made a conscious effort to make backups in a safe place. Last but not least, if one does not have the copy for tax filing, IRS does have a copy and we can get to it after doing some verifications. Note the Adjusted Gross Income is needed for e-filing, and here is how to get it How do I find last year’s AGI?

Last but not least, I know some people like to push the can down the road, personally I am thinking it’s best to get it done by deadline. Regardless, we need to make approximate payment to avoid the penalty from IRS and the state revenue department.

IRA

I mean traditional IRA. The IRS website: 50 and above catchup, and Fidelity Q&A have some good information (…..however there are income limits for tax deductible contributions……).

One tip and one story

Make sure you pay the approximate tax before tax day (or better yet, anytime before tax day) to avoid any penalty or interest charges.

I used to have a coworker, and he said he got tax refund every year. And I commented why let Uncle Sam use your money for free for a year? He said: if he got all this money over the year, his wife would spend it. With Uncle Sam saves the money for him for a year, now that he can family for the summer vacation 🙂

PS: (update 04-25-2023) I received the refund from Uncle Sam. And I just realized the show me state withdraw from my provided bank account (again) for the owed tax one more time after I paid it on 04/18/2023. I assume they will send me a check or something down the road. Note I paid online earlier for the fear of any potential penalty etc. 🙂 A side note is I received a mail from Uncle Sam for creating the online account I mentioned above.

(Update 05-16-2023) NPR: The IRS is building its own online tax filing system. Tax-prep companies aren’t happy || I agree if IRS has a program that works out, it’s a win for the US tax payers 🙂

(Update 06-09-2023) It looks like the Show Me State is refunding me the tax over-payment. I paid it twice towards the tax deadline in April: I was doing it out of caution to avoid any potential penalty. I paid online before the deadline, and they (MO Dept of Revenue0 withdrew a similar amount based on my #turbotax filing. One nice thing, they even refunded with interest 🙂

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401k and Personal Finance Edu-and-Ladue-School Life Life Tips Saint Louis

How to buy a single family house in the Ladue School District – our own experiences

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“No short cut; and I wish I could get those sleepless night back but I do understand no pain no gain in life sometimes.” -MXU April 2023

Everyone knows the prices for single-family houses (SFHs) in the US went up since the pandemic, and this is applicable to the SFHs in the Ladue School District (LSD) too. It may go up more than the national average. Luckily for us, we bought our starter home, a nice little ranch house, about 9 months before the pandemic shut down in March 2020, and we were grateful that we have the room to spread out, both for virtual school and our Work From Home (WFH) jobs. It’s not perfect, but it put us in a better position than the 2 bedroom condo we had earlier.

I lived in the LSD since the year 2005: I bought a condo across the street from the Schnucks/Monsanto in April 2005, at a price which is the market top at the time. Note that condo prices topped before the actual housing/financial crisis in 2007/2008. At the time I have basically two choices, and I think I still made the right choice looking back. The other choice was a 1st-floor condo near Creve Coeur Mills Road and Olive Road (Parkway School District, PSD): the condo was facing north which is not the best direction in terms of facing (it will be cold in winter and hot in summer). Plus the LSD is considered a notch above PSD (this is probably subjective opinion).

Since our 2nd daughter was born in the Summer of 2014, our 2 bedroom condo basically needs one more room, not in a hurry but in a time ticker bomb – as we believe eventually our younger daughter needs her own room. We didn’t put her in a separate room when she was an infant (same for our old daughter). When we hired a nanny when Sophia was a newborn, note it was customary to have some external helper in Chinese culture when there is a newborn in a family, the nanny had to sleep in the living room. My wife, myself, and Sophia were in one bedroom, Serenity the big sister took the other bedroom.

Fast forward a few years, I changed jobs in June 2015 and started working for the credit card co., hoping to make a few more bucks for the new house down payment. I recall probably in the summer of 2017 I joked with a few friends that the SFH is out of reach. Also, I don’t miss the sleep deprived nights and on calls while I worked for the credit card co: it’s basically a “sweatshop” that pays better than a normal sweatshop 🙁

In the Summer of 2018, we almost bought an SFH (Zillow link), and my wife had a second thoughts after realizing the house didn’t have a dishwasher. So we backed out after inspection while it was still in the cooling period. I really liked the backyard, but over the years I learned to listen to my wife. East or west, listening to the boss is the most important 🙂

Fast forward one more year, Sophia is also about to start attending Kindergarten at Spoede Elementary, and we were looking at houses more seriously: we even got a buyer agent who is grew up in/familiar with the area, and has a good supporting team. For us, Luckily everything worked out for our current house in June 2019. We saw the house listed, and my wife liked it, we did not really negotiate the price – we paid the asking price. Another small break for us is we had built a bit more savings in one year for down payment etc, since the summer of 2018. Now I think about it, we made decision pretty quick, I did not even do my neighborhood check: basically come at one morning, and come at one afternoon to make sure the neighbors are nice 🙂

I understand with the Pandemic and the SFHs price went up a lot. But we have zero control over things such as the pandemic, the economy, interest rates, mortgage rates, and so on. We do have control over ourselves, in terms of saving money, and being proactive. I heard a friend bought the house directly from a lady by knocking on the door, I have not confirmed but seems like a variable approach to me, as long as he/she asked it nicely. In another case, I heard friends did the SFH transaction privately. Both were done before pandemic, and the houses are not brand new. In recent years I did see more new houses come to market, after the investor buy/tear down/build much bigger 2 stories home etc. Another trend is the developers’ activities, such as I wrote it here earlier. Overall though, the supply is not catching up with the demand. One reason is sometimes the seller can afford to hold on to it, e.g., this century old house at the entrance of our neighborhood. I did a little research on the St. Louis county real estate website, and found out the owner likely lives in a mansion in Florida. The reason for my research was: I was thinking about investment property, and this one is close to where we live, and I walk by that house every day.

Last but not least, I want to add merely complaining (or self-pity) is not useful, and here is Charlie Munger’s quick talk on the topic.

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401k and Personal Finance Fun Life

Probability and compounding

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I came across an interesting probability problem yesterday. It was in Chinese, but I will translate it into English below.

The defensive missile can shoot down the offensive missile successfully 70% of the time. If the defense shoot 3 missiles toward the offensive missile, what’s the probability that they are successful? Think about it for a minute. My approach is shown below:

There is another way. Note in math and many other fields, it’s good to have a second approach for verification purpose. So the second approach goes like this: 0.7 + (1-0.7) x 0.7 + (1-0.7) x (1-0.7) x 0.7 = 0.7+0.21+0.063 = 0.973 = 97.3% (it matches the number above, hurray). Courtesy of my classmate in college (who is likely a math genius in high school).

Let me explain: 0.7 is the probability of hitting target the first time, (1-0.7)x0.7 is for the scenario of first time missing and second time hitting, vice versa for the last one (both first and second times missing) and last time hitting.

So there’s that. 97.3% is pretty high in terms of an outcome actually happening. What if the probability of hitting the target is 50% (roughly the odds of coin flipping, get head or tail). The answer is 1 – 0.5×0.5×0.5 = 87.5%. That’s still pretty decent odds. Extrapolate this to basketball, let’s say a player’s free throw hitting rate is 50%, he or she can be fairly certain (with 87.5%) that 1 point will be scored in 3 attempts. But note everything has a cost, hidden or not. Missile has a cost, free throw has a cost of earning it. I recall 15 years ago, when the NBA player Shaquille O’Neal was at his prime, he has a weakness of free throw. In his career he hits 52.7 percent from the free-throw line in his career (I googled it). And the opponents sometimes would use the “hack Shaq” strategy when he got the ball in the front court. Let’s calculate the probable points he would have made from two free throw attempts, note free throw is 1 point, so 0.527 + 0.527 = 1.054 is the possible score he can get from 2 free throws. I also looked at his career field goal percentage: 2 x 0.582 (2 pointers percentage, I am ignoring his 3 pointers for now, because he was not known for that) = 1.164, so in other words, it seems “hacking Shaq” strategy has some stats to back it for the opponents.

Lottery

If anything, I would like to remind people lottery is a sure way to lose money if we know a bit probability. Use the popular Show Me Cash game as an example, the odds of winning are shown in the web page. Note the ticket cost 1 dollar. If any return below $1 means the player is losing. 1 x 9.6% + 10 x 1 / 102.6 + 250 x 1 / 3386.8 + 50,000* x 1 / 575,757 (the prize is at least 50,000 for this category, I would use 50,000 for simplicity) = 0.096 + 0.0975 + 0.0738 + 0.0868 = 0.3541 so let’s just say 35 cents for simplicity. Other games are similar, with possibility of even lower return (compared to 35% for Show Me Cash). Btw, every time I saw people use a stash of cash to buy lottery tickets at Schnucks or lottery machine, I am shaking my head internally. I understand sometimes people want to try luck, or believe their luck is better than the others, but in math this is not the way to get ahead in life. In my opinion the government should ban the lottery. Below is another tweet on the topic on probability and lottery n Chinese. Use google translate (with some editing from me): when we met with people last weekend and introduced each other, some people said that he had made software for casinos, and that no matter how good the gamblers were, you couldn’t play mathematics… When everyone did with eating, they started to talk about how to achieve financial freedom. My classmate who made casino software said that he is buying lottery tickets every day. I said, didn’t you say that a gambler couldn’t play math against casinos? He said he only buy a little… This tells me that no matter how educated and rational a person is, he can’t resist himself. The fluke mentality…(my comment: talk about psychology and discipline. One thing great about Warren Buffett is he would not bet on small things even if he knows it’s a good bet, again we are talking about discipline: He’s playing golf with a bunch of people and they all bet a dollar on a particular hole. Buffett won’t bet. “Why not, Warren?” they ask him, “you’re worth a gazillion.”He said, “I never break my discipline.”)

Compounding or compound effect

Sometimes called snowball effect. In investing there are a lot of talk on this. It’s applicable to other aspects of life as well, for example, exercise, eat / drink healthy, work, relationships and so on.

There is a reverse side of this effect too, for example, if a person does not eat healthy food, or have healthy life style, for example, drink a lot of sugar water, no exercise, he / she could gain weight pretty quickly too. And the detrimental effect to one’s body and mind will be growing fast as well. I will probably write a separate post on “compounding” in the near future.

PS: the story above on Buffett was a bit different from what I heard earlier. My version says someone offers Buffett a bet that Buffett will likely win. But his answer was similar: he said if I cannot resist the temptation of making $100 quick money, I cannot manage large sums of money.

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401k and Personal Finance

YTD thoughts: first half of 2022

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This is the worst stock market I experienced for last few years. As shown below.

I am not disheartened though. Because I think long term is always good to get rid of the extreme speculations, just like the subprime mortgage last time around (2007 to 2009), this time it seems the speculation in cryptos is equivalent, if not more. China, on the other hand, they successfully cracked down the cryptos (Bitcoin ₿ etc). But China’s economy was very much dependent on the real estate industry in last few decade. In other words, there were lots of speculation and bubbles there. So there is some reckoning of that due to the recent zero covid / shutdown policy: or put it another way, it’s the the straw that broke the camel’s back （压死骆驼的最后一根草）。

Back to last 6 months, the bottom started to fall out during Jay Powell congress hearing (I think it was this one, or this one. I felt the google video search functionality can use some improvements). I recall the market reaction when he said that.

There is an old saying in the wall street: don’t fight the fed. In similar tone, I think we don’t want to fight the market either.

Cyclical stocks and econ cycles

We all know the real estate and commodities (oil, gas, metal, etc) tend to be cyclical: boom bust and so on. To some extent, the internet and software stocks too. If one bought the $AMZN or $MSFT at the high in year 2000, it would take many years (maybe 15) to get back even. For $CSCO (Cisco), it never reached its high (about $77 on March 31, 2000), more than 22 years later. This is due to the “irrational exuberance” as Allen Greenspan said. And comparing that to $AAPL (Apple). Is Apple at the Cisco moment in March 2000 now? I recall I got my 1st job in March 18, 2000 and Nasdaq hit its dot com high on March 20, 2000 (over 5,000). I don’t know. We don’t know. We only know after 22 years 🙂

Btw, I listen to this amazing background music (FLYING OVER JAPAN (4K UHD) Amazing Beautiful Nature Scenery with Relaxing Music | 4K VIDEO ULTRA HD) on Youtube when write this.

Last but not least, listen to this word from the Oracle of Omaha.

Last but not least, the YTD performance of S&P 500 individual companies stocks. Interestingly I have the best performer of last year $DVN #Devon Energy and this year $OXY #Occidental Petroleum. Guess who is the worst performer in S&P YTD? Hint: it’s a familiar name and a former high flyer.

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401k and Personal Finance

Alternative investments to cash

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Inflation adjusted bond
Series I Savings Bonds (wiki)

S&P 500 index funds
How to Invest in the S&P 500.

There are many, below is one from Vanguard. I know fidelity has one too. There should be others.

Some of the stocks I think it’s safe to own for long time
BAC (bank of America)
KO (Coca Cola)
BRK.A or BRK.B (Berkshire Hathaway)

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401k and Personal Finance Business Fun Investing Master Series

Weekend thoughts 05-07-2022: Berkshire Hathaway 2022 shareholder meeting

Reading Time: 5 minutes

I went to Omaha last weekend, left STL on April 29 Friday, attended meeting on April 30 Saturday, and left Omaha back to STL on May 1st Sunday. The full comment and Q&A session (including the actual shareholder meeting) is broadcasted by CNBC and available at YouTube.

Note when I drove to Omaha on Friday 4/29, the market was in a tail spin, and so did the market perform poorly this week. But at the Berkshire church, we are value investors, and we don’t care about the daily (weekly, monthly) fluctuations. I think with the modern technology (don’t recall exactly at which year Berkshire starts to broadcast its annual shareholder meeting), the technical side of things can be learned at the comfort of home. On YouTube there are a lot of materials on Warren / Charlie spoke at past shareholder meetings, such as this YAPSS channel, note there are others too including Warren and Charlie’s other talks especially to college students. The whole #BRK2022 meeting video is about 6 hours long, with the last hour being the official shareholder meeting, with questions related to shareholder proposal (somewhat politics related). One thing surprised me a bit is the tone of some of the shareholder proposal, and Buffett’s patience on answering some of those, such as this one at 5 hour 18 minutes mark of the video. My sense is very few CEO would have that kind of patience. This is shown in the Q&A part of the meeting as well, I imagine some of the questions have been asked again and again because they have done this probably for 20 years. But Charlie and Warren answered those regardless.

The movie at the beginning of the meeting: I noticed Susan Buffett (Warren’s daughter) is the executive producer, and it was fun to watch overall. It has some ads, as well as some old video clips such as Warren’s testimony during Salomon Brother crisis. Other notable things are the exhibits, which has things from Brooks Running, to Clayton homes (manufactured home), DQ, Netjets, See’s candies. The movie also showed all Berkshire managers including Ted and Todd (investing managers). Warren’s skit with Bill Murray was a bit interesting too (confuse Warren Buffett with Jimmy Buffett, the singer). I noticed Bill Murray is a BRK shareholder and recently he got into hot water. I was not 100% sure that Susan Buffett (or Warren Buffett) was taking a side here. Also I am not positive the movie is available online: this seems like one benefit that’s only available for shareholders attending in person. Overall I liked the movie especially on the side of “don’t take oneself too seriously”, “poke fun at self” (again Warren vs Jimmy Buffett) and so on. It’s a strength of American culture, as poking fun at politicians are allowed, sometimes I felt bad for Bill Clinton as I saw comedians and talk show hosts pounced on him all the time, but hey, why would he looked at Aliana Grande (who could be his grand daughter’s age) in such a creepy way. Okay I will back to the topic.

International audience: there are many international audience in person, as some may have see from the questions being asked, also I noticed in the hotel I stayed, there are quite a few private jet pilots. Maybe next time I will fly the private jet, instead of driving back and forth. Talking about driving, I was a bit tired on the way home, both due to the 5k I ran in the morning (the invest in yourself 5k), and also because of I was a bit sick coming in, plus I had a small incident on Saturday.

The incident was I messed up my only long pant in the morning when I was waiting outside CHI health center. The line was long at about 7:30 am, so I decided to go to the nearby hotel to see if I can use the restroom. It was a bit too late… thus on the rest of the day I only had a swimming trunk as my bottom. The temperature was in 50s that day, and people may think I am a runner or something. Yes I do run, but I would probably wear a long pant in that kind of weather. The lesson here is always have some margin of safety (room for error or unexpected), so I will bring an extra pants next time when traveling. Another lesson is try to look out for restroom in a new area, just in case, in this scenario it seems the nearest one is Marriott hotel across the street.

Some other odds and ends: I noticed there are a few homeless people near the downtown hotel I stayed. I stayed at the Hyatt Inn near old market in downtown Omaha. I also found a bit authentic Chinese restaurant (Blue and Fly) eventually, after eating ramens at two Japanese restaurants near downtown. I found and walked near the Berkshire HQ office as well. CHI Health center: it’s a big place, noticed they did not charge sales tax for See’s candies etc, don’t know why. But they don’t allow outside snacks or food, drinks in (to protect their concession sales). I did not bring much, but they threw away a few small snacks I bring in the case I don’t know where to get lunch. Warren said “midwestern time” instead of “US central time”. I noticed Gerald Ford, the former US president, was born in Omaha (saw a sign on highway on Ford). I think “midwestern value” can be seen in both in Omaha, and in Berkshire (Warren and Charlie). In addition to international audience, there are lots of domestic audience including US, midwest and Omaha residents too.

PS: this is my dream 16 years in the making. Back in 2006 I thought about going, but didn’t due to various reasons (maybe mostly financial). I am glad I am in a better position now 🙂 All in all, I like what I saw in this trip, and hope to visit sometime in the future too. If my kids and my wife can join, that will be even better.

Photos and video

Slideshow for 04-30-2022

Berkshire Hathaway HQ outside view

Tweets thread (Mine, Thomas Chua, The Rational Walk)

Planning trip

Past BRK Shareholder meetings (full sessions)

2020

2012

2011 (before 48 mins mark, there are quite a bit coverage on David Sokol. Tom Murphy: you can always tell a man go to hell if this is such a good idea. -Charlie Munger summed it well)

2005 (TIMESAVER EDIT – FULL Q&A) (Fun momemnts: at 43 minutes mark, a kid asked about See’s Candies and Petro China) (One hour 30 minutes: public school systems in Omaha) (2 hours mark: the comments on AIG and Hank Greenberg are interesting, as we know AIG blew up about 3.5 years later, amid 2008 financial crisis)

2001 (3 hours 54 mins mark: don’t go short. At 4:12 mark, Warren talked about California utility does not have incentive to produce more electricity due to new regulation. This sounds like what the US oil industry is doing in recent years. Note I am not taking sides on politics / climate change)

1999 (At one hour 4 minutes mark, shareholder asked about a question on Chinese stocks, Charlie commented “I don’t know much about China”. This is interesting, as Charlie grew closer to Li Lu in last 20 years or so, and Berkshire bought $BYD shares too. Also at one hour 8 minutes mark, “rich vs wealthy” is interesting.) (Books Charlie and Warren recommended: The Warren Buffett Portfolio, Titan the biography of the original John D. Rockefeller, Guns, Germs, and Steel,” which was a physiologist’s view of the economic history of man, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.” And the guy’s name is [David] Landes; “Common Sense on Mutual Funds,” by Jack Bogle)

1998 (TIMESAVER EDIT – FULL Q&A, I just noticed all the TIMESAVER EDIT video have all the notes)

1997 (At 3 hours 28 minutes mark, an audience asked a Disney question which is relatable to today’s political environment. Buffett’s answer: I’m delighted to have my grand children expose to full range of #Disney products, and I love to take them to #DisneyLand #DisneyWorld, Disney movie and videos…I don’t have problem gays being employed (clap). Ditto here for me taking my kids to Disney. At 4 hours 19 minutes mark, the comments about McDonald’s are interesting.) || I just noticed the video has all the notes too, such as the McDonald’s vs Coca-Cola… this is excellent.

1996

1994

Last but not least, below is a tweet thread of interviews of “becoming Warren Buffett”, total 11 videos. I noticed YouTube (HBO) has a condensed version too (a documentary movie).

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401k and Personal Finance Fun Investing Life Tips Stocks

Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting 2022

Reading Time: < 1 minute

PDFs

Genenal info; Omaha visitor guide

Hotel (below is copied from the general info PDF above)

TRAVEL & HOTEL ASSISTANCE
If you need assistance in arranging lodging, we recommend contacting Travelink, American Express:
Travelink, American Express
Hotline: (866) 301-3011
(615) 277-5179 (Outside the U.S.)
Email: to teampearl@travelink.com


Hotels fill up fast, especially in the downtown area. There are many options outside of the downtown area that offer more competitive rates and conditions. Berkshire provides shuttles to many of these
locations and they might serve as a nice option to the higher priced downtown hotels.


VISIT OMAHA – Find hotels and view rates

Health info; note the Clear app and website (for health / vaccination pass)

Please note proxy material varies by broker: e.g., TD Ameritrade website, it’s under “My Account” => “History and Statements” => “Shareholder Library”, this is the direct link just in case. If you have multiple accounts with TD Ameritrade, please make sure you select the account that has $BRK.A or $BRK.B . Vanguard sends an email, and I have’t tried, but I believe if click on it. It will lead me to the proxy materials after I log into Vanguard website. This leads to the meeting credentials.

Meeting credentials: one shareholder can request at least 4 meeting credentials. And it can only be obtained by following the instructions laid out in the ami.pdf file (again it’s bundled in the proxy material above), and get it in mail.

Last but not the least, investinyourself5k

PS: I made the trip and wrote this blog post.

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401k and Personal Finance

Competition

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My old daughter Serenity is a sweet girl. She is so sweet so that she doesn’t like competition. I get it I don’t like competition either but if I don’t compete I probably won’t be here. Lots of smart kids in my class of probably 40 in the village elementary school in China in late 70s/early 80s: only two attended college (I was one of the two). Another two attended technical / vacacional school, one became nurse, another eventually became entrepreneur and I heard he is quite successful.

Back to Serenity. She played basketballs in last few years, but again competition is not really her thing. I explained to coach that she is not afraid of competition, or game but it’s not really her nature. So here is the spelling bee competition, I asked her to participate, and she said she already did it when she was 4th grade. Anyway, she is 6th grader now, and I offered rewards for her participation, she said she only need to watch the “home economics” at Hulu (ABC 🙂