My generation (so called Gen X in the USA, people born between from 1965 to 1980) was usually told to “work hard” when we grew up – I found this is true both in the China and in the USA. I think in addition to parents, quite a few teachers emphasized this too – for me personally my middle school teacher 周国夫老师 emphasized it quite a bit.
But over the years I realized this is not necessarily true or the best way to handle work. I recall my project lead at Unigraphics Solutions (UGS Corp.) said once on this topic:
Don’t just work hard, work smarter too. The latter is probably more important.
By that time, I was already over 30 years old.
About 20 years ago I recall my golf instructor (or should I call him coach? He is a pro btw) said: hold the club about 70% tight, don’t hold it 100% tight.
Maybe we should apply the same logic to school, study and work too? And investing in equities (stocks) and bonds as well?
My Zhenhai middle school exp: with all the craziness going on, we had some fun time such as the ad-hoc co-ed basketball – I remember it was during my math teacher and counselor Zhou Guofu 周国夫 老师 🙂
Btw, I recall my best teacher – Chen Bing (高一数学老师). I think he made me to appreciate the beauty of math 数学之美，and encouraged me to learn as much as practical, and participate the math competition. Again we don’t just work hard on it – because math competitions have problems outside of the normal textbooks. The most important here is be passionate about harder math problems – “working harder” won’t do much about it, btw.
“We don’t know if we will die from overworking but why take chance” – probably said by Ronald Reagan (per Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett). Update: it seems Edgar Bergen talked about this first – “Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?” — Edgar Bergen (source: reddit).
Last but not least, probably one of the hardest working place I worked
It seems that place is quite transactional(people mostly work for money). But I did gain some experience on production support and operation. Also communicate as precisely as possible. Once again: work smarter is more relevant there. In fact I worked pretty hard, and I was still laid off in early 2019 – and I knew the main reason of layoff – the managers didn’t like me 🙁
Btw, I don’t believe in pleasing everyone helps one’s job security, or pleasing every manager one has. At the same time, that place has a tradition of laying off about 5 to 10% people every year (usually at the beginning of a calendar year). And in early 2019 I was somewhat caught off guard, probably because I was getting somewhat complacent. But that’s okay, as I explained in the “layoffs” blog post: one door closes and another door will open. Also it gives me a new opportunity at a new place. So there is that.
Reading Time: 2minutesSource: TrungTPhan on X (I think there are some valuable lessons that’s applicable to trading / investing here)
I used Robinhood App since year 2015, when they just got started. To be honest, I was drawn to them initially by the zero commission feature.
My experience with Robinhood over the years
I think Robinhood has some features I like, in addition to the zero comission feature that it pioneered in the industry. It also helped me to gain more confidence on trading stocks, especially between 2015 and 2019. Note in the early days Robinhood is probably the only brokerage firm to offer zero commission. Over the time, other brokerage forms followed suit too.
Other features I like:
They try to make the app fun to use, so in a way lighten things a bit such as doing some sort of confetti when a trade is submitted or executed, because trading stock actually has some pressure comes with it, believe it or not;
Once a stock is sold, the money is available to trade on the same day, as long as one does not sold it again on the same day. Day trading is somewhat complex and confusing in the US stock market. They do have a 3 strike rule: basically one cannot do more than 3 day trades over a week (5 days period). I got myself into this small trouble a few times, and I wait patiently until all 3 blocks expire.
Their app’s stability improved significantly over the years. For example, in today’s morning session, many bigger traditional brokerages had encountered issues on either website or apps, but Robinhood App did fine.
Referral
Sign up for Robinhood with my link and we’ll both pick our own gift stock 🎁
Update (01-20-2025) Amid recent Robinhood’s push into the Crypto etc., and also their gimmicks to sign up people or stir the interest (the new year promotion for example), I plan to gradually getting away from them. As some of my readers may know, I am not a believer of Crypto.
I understand business is for profit, but at the same time I do believe higher standards especially on ethics side. I believe in 君子爱财，取之有道.
(Update 12-08-2024) 我今天录了一个油管视频：I created a YT video today and it’s in Mandarin Chinese. I can create an English version later, if there is interest.
My street credentials (qualification) for writing this: besides as the consumer of US healthcare system (employer sponsored plans most of the time) since fall 2000. I also worked for 2 large healthcare systems (hospital chains) in the USA, Mercy Health and Ascension Health. Here is my LinkedIn profile.
I received 5 bills total, one paper bill didn’t come because I turned on paperless billing inside MyChart
We had two visits at Shriner’s hospital near the BJC at central west end: the initial encounter (encounter as in medical billing) and the followup encounter (to make sure her ankle is good). She was not seriously injured per Shriner Hospital but I am still glad that we had professional to check her out to make sure.
There were 5 bills or 5 payments from my side. Two bills for the X ray which although it says the doctor’s name in the insurance company website’s benefit explanation section. For those two bills I paid on the Shriner’s hospital MyChart website. Talking about MyChart, personally I liked it very much as it’s electronic. And recently I switched my primary doctor to Mercy partially due to this. I can see the appointments, messages and test results, as well as billing info in one spot. I didn’t realize or recall until very recently, all the insurance and billing information are in the MyUHC website. More on this in the next section.
More paper bills and that’s the confusing part
Later on there are two bills for the nurse practitioner who looked at S. And one bill for therapist’s work who came for the 2nd visit. Because I don’t see the bills inside MyChart, and initially I didn’t go to MyUHC website (the benefit explanation website) I only see one paper bill came after another, and I didn’t know what’s going on.
Eventually I paid off all 3 bills online by following the website address on the letter (the paper bill), because I prefer to get refund check instead of get the collection letter.
I still didn’t fully understand is why those bills don’t show up in the MyChart website. Last but not least, after I paid all the bills, I found out I can pay all those bills from the MyUHC website too. There is some integration between UnitedHealth (insurance side) and its subsidiary Optum (HSA account, payment side). Now I recall I used that functionality a few years ago when I had the United Health insurance from my previous employer Mastercard.
Out of pocket cost
The total out of pocket for Shriner’s hospital is about $450 for us: which seems okay for me at least. The UnitedHealth plan do have some decent discount from the initial charge.
Reading Time: 5minutesA tweet I saw yesterday 02-20-2024 regarding the $COF $DFS merger
Writing from my experience on credit card both from consumer (outside) and business (inside) perspective: meaning encourage more usage of the card via loyalty and rewards, make sure the card is on the top of the deck etc. I also understand Americans are addicted to the credit card to a large extent. Full disclosure: between 2015 and 2019 yours truly worked for the Mastercard loyalty and rewards department on Biz Ops (production support, Site Reliability Engineering, and product support), and Application Development (software engineering).
Note I call them merger instead of outright acquisition, because it’s essentially a 60/40 all stock transaction. Meaning the Capital One shareholders will get 60% of the combined company, the Discover shareholder will get 40%. While it’s not 50% to 50%, I think it’s close enough for merger.
CNBC (Hugh Son) – Here’s why Capital One is buying Discover in the biggest proposed merger of 2024
The deal, if approved, enables Capital One to leapfrog JPMorgan as the biggest credit card company by loans, and solidifies its position as the third largest by purchase volume. — Personally I am not ready to give up my CSP card for the Capital One Venture card.
‘Holy Grail’ But it’s Discover’s payments network — the “rails” that shuffle digital dollars between consumers and merchants, collecting tolls along the way — that Fairbank repeatedly praised Tuesday when analysts queried him on the strategic merits of the deal. There are only four major card networks: giants Visa and Mastercard , then American Express and finally the smallest of the group, Discover. (I agree 100%. Credit card network is just like a financial highway. Not toll free. Most everyone has to pay. 信用卡网络就像一个收费的金融高速公路。)
NBCNews – Capital One-Discover merger could put a bigger squeeze on credit card users, experts warn – Many of the largest credit card issuers already charge steeper rates than smaller ones.
The average credit card interest rate in the U.S. is 24.61%, according to LendingTree, the highest since the credit marketplace began tracking monthly rates in 2019. I felt for those cardholders who pay 24.61% or more 🙁 I don’t think even Warren Buffett can easily earn this kind of return in his investments (even with a smaller sum).
USAToday – Discover’s merger with Capital One may mean luxe lounges, better service, plus more perks
The acquisition would give Capital One access to Discover’s high-credit-quality customers and its network of payment processing services, an area dominated by Visa and Mastercard. (Both are not very accurate in my opinion. I will explain them below.)
The deal will create the largest U.S. card issuer with around $250 billion in card balances and a market share of 22%, according to TD Cowen. (This may be true)
FAQs on credit card
What is credit card network?How does it work?
I just saw Stripe has a good text explanation. A picture is worth a thousand words sometimes. For that in ByteByteGo (my friend Alex Xu) I trust. See below. Discover is similar to Visa, Mastercard and American Express when we talk about credit card network (card swiping in the old days, now it’s tapping or digital wallet pay).
How credit card works, from Alex Xu/ByteByteGo
How does credit card companies make money?
In simple words, they collect network usage fees from the user of the credit card, initially from the merchant (via the merchant bank). For example, a consumer paid $100 at grocery store using a Chase Visa credit card. Typically the grocery store will eventually get about $97 from the merchant bank. Visa (the credit card network) will receive about 20 to 30 cents. The Chase bank will receive about $2.00 and the rest may go to the people (companies) who setup the payment terminal, merchant bank and so on. One may wonder why Chase bank (the credit card) issuer gets $2.00 which seems like a lot: note that money is not risk free. For example, if the consumer (the Chase credit card customer) didn’t pay her/his credit card bill, in theory Chase will take the loss. But banks usually are not that nice: they will pursue collection, hike interest rate etc. If someone is living on credit cards, basically he/she will be the “slaves” of the bank. 这里是一个具体的例子，下面是引用。
Visa accounted for just over half of the purchase volume on general purpose credit cards in 2022: Visa credit: 52%, $2.84 trillion. Mastercard credit: 24%, $1.32 trillion. American Express credit: 20%, $1.08 trillion. Discover credit: 4%, $211 billion.
Credit card issuers are the banks, or credit unions. Note American Express and Discover Financial are also credit card issuers, in addition to providing their respective credit card network.
Trivia Questionor bonus question: do you know the history of Discover Financial?
They actually started as a credit card division of the now defunct Sears corp., at one time the powerful department store that is based in Chicago (have you ever heard the Sears tower).
Will regulators approve the deal?
This is mostly a US only deal. Both companies mainly operate in the US. Not a lot of International exposure. I think the regulators will likely approve it, because together they are still not the most dominant credit card issuer or network. Here is a Bloomberg report on the deal (YouTube).
A word on digital wallet
I noticed digital wallet such as Paypal can automatically update the expiration date of the card on the file. This is a neat feature.
中文简译
Translate those two companies into Chinese. They don’t have heavy presence in China, Discover was there, in my vague memory.
Capital One Financial Corp. – 美国第一资本投资国际集团: 美国第一资本投资国际集团（Capital One Financial Corp.，下“Capital One公司”）是一家以投融资及基金管理为基础,集国际贸易、项目开发、投资银行业务为一体的多元化国际企业集团，总部位于美国特拉华州。
Discover Financial Service – 发现金融服务公司: 发现卡（Discover Card）是一种在美国广泛使用的信用卡。1985年到2007年，由美国金融寡头摩根士丹利等金融机构控股，零售商公司Sears推广发行。(Wikipedia)
Amtrak is enticing me with a new credit card offer
Copied from mitbbs, link here. ====== 木女神注定超越索罗斯和巴菲特，成为本世纪最大的投资传奇 Note, by Omaha aka yours truly, I disagree and I would be a bit cautious here. Warren Buffett is the best investor in the record in 20th century 1900 to 1999, no doubt about it.As to 21st century, the jury is still out, as we only had record for 20% of the century year 2000 to 2020
This IRA account was a bit unusual, as I took some meaningful losses earlier on. Then from 2017 (maybe a little bit more earlier, but I only have the balance history since Jan 3, 2017), things started to look up. In last 3.5 years, the CAGR is about 54.54%. My bigger winner during this time was $HUN, and more importantly $OKTA. This is the chart.
And the formula to do it via Google chart. Basically I imported the CSV (downloaded form broker website) into google sheet, and used the default chart, and added the formula for CAGR compound annual growth rate. Last but not least, one may adjust the formula a bit (maybe retype it), in my case, I used this formula: power (end value / beginning value, 1.0 / number of periods) . The ^ symbol (at least as I copied and pasted) seems have some issues, so I used the math power function, which is same as the ticker ^ symbol here. The period is year here, as I was looking for the annualized return.
Last but not least, this does not depict the full picture of my personal investments. I made some dumb mistakes here or there, and also, I put most of my 401k money in stock mutual funds (some in S&P 500 funds).
(Update 07-21-2020) The annual return is 13.34%, as shown in the chart. There was two meaningful drops in last 12 months. For comparison, the S&P 500 was up 9.25 % in last 12 months and Berkshire Hathaway was down -6.65% in the same period (yahoo Finance chart here).
In retrospect, I did not do well when I trade too much. One reason for more trading is since last last year, TDAmeritrade stopped the trading fees. Rohinhood was free since its beginning (2015?) and I did decently well in its early days. Then I got into sort of slump. This is similar to my main trading account (IRA at TDAmeritrade), I did well in 2017 and 2018, perhaps early half of 2019 too. But was just so-so in last 12 months (again refer to my chart). Update: actually I did not do very well in 2017 (+25%), but I did exceptional in 2018 (up 100%), then followed by 50% in year 2019. Overall still decent.
Today I started to look at other 401k accounts I have and evaluate whether I need to make any adjustments. This is a continuation of my earlier post.
In the past I do looked at them from time to time, but was not on a fixed schedule or anything. But I did start making some adjustments in last year or so, to my couple portfolios. For example, I got rid of the international funds in my Siemens 401k plan, I believe those will continue to underperform over the US equities in next 10 years or so. Most US companies are international companies too: I looked at the US large cap fund, the top 5 holdings are Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Facebook. And its performance in last 1, 3, 5 and 10 years (10.5% vs 10.5% annualized) is fairly comparable to S&P index. Note in my earlier post I mentioned I am mostly keen on 10 years performance. Because we were mostly in a bull market in last 10 years (2010 to 2020). I recall Sept 2008 and March 2009 were two market lows last time around during financial crisis / great recession. So this is a bit confirmation of the market effect.
For this Siemens 401k account, I actually don’t plan to do anything today. I did update the address, since I moved from condo to current single family house in last August. I will still have a few more portfolio to look, as you can see from my linkedin profile, I changed job a bit in last 10 years or so. And I mainly used two choices when I deal with the 401k: leave them alone (for the most part); or move them to IRA (applicable to my 401k when I was in contractor position, as they usually will not let me leave the money there). I end up with 2 IRAs over the years, and a few more 401ks. Maybe at some point, I will consolidate, as management of those can become more tedious. As a minimum I need to have user name / password for them. The only place they have single sign on is the credit card company I worked for. A bit off topic, I recall a gentleman who used to work for Disney, and he said Disney has at least three SSOs. Then my colleague commented then it’s MSSOs 🙂
Move some money from the two vanguard funds to the higher return funds. I usually looked at the 10 year return. I understand past return does not guarantee future success, but still…
current allocation: moving from vanguard small cap index and real estate index to Hartford and Janus, refer to below for the performances (two the large number columns, left is 10 year annualized return, the right is the annual return since inception)Fund info
(Update 04-14-2024) I may have written this on Twitter/X, or here in my blog, that once at Sam’s Club (Manchester road), I saw a lady who is probably laid off from the media industry. And she was doing samples there. We all praised her for her cooking skills for salmon samples. She said she had degrees in journalism but it’s hard to find jobs in that area 🙁 If I find the tweet or the blog post, I will put a link here.
I found out I wrote it on my FB. I copied the content and put it in my blog post (scroll to the end).
(Original 05-2020, during pandemic) The recent pandemic hit some industries particularly hard, for example, airlines, hotels, cruises, casinos, car rental (enterprise layoff), car dealer and other hospitality and sport venues. The impact will be more wide spreading when we saw even the healthcare industry (for the lack of good word) is doing layoffs (BJC; SSM, Mercy), because one of the revenue stream elective surgery were cancelled in the COVID-19 world. Many laid off workers were hoping for a quick come back though, I sympathize with their thinking, but I also believe “hope” is not a strategy.
Over the time US industries go through a lot of changes, some grow, some shrink. A good example is Uber / Lyft are taking a lot of market share from the taxi because of lower price / smart phone integration. I worked for Arch Coal and Mercy between 2011 and 2015, and I can see both industries were not on a solid footing due to various reasons (both internal and external, mostly external forces). For example, Coal is replaced by natural gas in many power plant. For healthcare, government regulations is not helping providers financially. Because I work in IT / software world, I can switch between industries: I feel lucky in that sense.
Another industry is shrinking in recently years is the media esp. the newspaper. They were disrupted by Google News, Facebook news feed and twitter. People get news in new and different ways from the traditional newspaper. I think both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger said similar things about that. Traditional cable TVs were on that trend too, as streaming and other over the tv top devices are getting more popular. So think about working for Netflix, Disney+, Roku instead of the local news paper or local tv station. It’s a trend and it usually take sometime for the complete or big shift, but we are getting there.
One thing I am interested to see, is how the grocery store, and Costco plays out. In the near term, I felt people are going to Costco less. And going to local grocery store (Schnucks or Aldi here), or using Instacart more. I am the former group.
And colleges too. I am not sure how fall semester will play out.
Last but not least, I am interested to help out any one (IT, software) who were impacted by the pandemic and I can do job referral or mock interview. Just let me know. My twitter handle is @stlplace
The handling of #pandemic in the USA is unthinkable a few years ago. But at the same time, it’s not totally uncharted territory as in my last 20+ years here in the US, I have seen at least 3 major incidents or economy crisis following it.
One is the dot com bust, then followed by 9-11-2001, those two are not directly related, but it’s a transition between Clinton administration to Bush administration, things fell through crack. I recall the 16% layoff at my company on 10-11-2001 (a month after 9-11), and the cry from my coworker that being laid off that day. Again the bigger layoff was due to the fact our company acquired a competitor, thus the redundancy. Note the air travel become much more strict since 9-11, before that I can go to airport terminal to send off or to greet family or friends. Now we need to take out laptop, iPad, take off coat, belt, and shoes. Basically the implicit trust between people were lost.
Anyway, Bush administration handled the initial crisis fairly decent, until it started invading Iraq, which has huge legal, moral, economy and human cost. But the US economy largely recovered and grew under Bush with a few glitches such as the handling of Hurricane Katrina, etc. Then in 2007, 2008, the housing crisis started to unravel, as shown in the documentary / movie: too big to fail starred by Hank Paulson. I watched it again recently and it reminded me of the days when CNBC does this crisis show in the evenings, and some weekends / Sunday were mostly working sessions for big guys in Wall Streets, and Fed / Treasury dept, and then some banks either went under or got bought. The most recent event reminds me some of that too.
But the #pandemic mismanagement is another level. Basically the US has about 2 months to prepare, and the federal government lost all this due to poor judgement and shear stupidity. Also unfortunately some people in the US has similar IQ as the guy in the WH. So basically politics got in the way, and the society suddenly stopped schools, and office work in mid March. And the unemployment, and pain to people in hospitality and small business is unimaginable (36 million people unemployed). The only thing that alleviate the pain a bit is the government (esp fed) realized the issue and basically started flood the money to the system, and the stimulus from congress esp. on PPP (payroll protection plan), bail out of airlines (similar to PPP, basically pay airline employees through the end of Sept).
Now, back to us, things we can control. No. 1 is still social distancing, good hygiene (hand washing, hand sanitizer, mask, social distancing). On personal finance side, if we don’t have a lot of spare cash, we need to manage our cash flow carefully, and be creative. The goal is get fed, be healthy (mind and body). Don’t raid the 401k or IRAs, if possible. Apply unemployment or PPP (small business owners). Contact the food banks if needed. Sell unused items on eBay or other sites. Cut cable TVs if applicable. There are still jobs at Amazon, or Walmart, just make sure you have enough PPE (mask, hand sanitizer) etc. Also, it’s never too old to learn about personal finance. My sense of people lack of saving is two fold: 1) The income is low, paycheck to paycheck; 2) The math can be improved. So focus on that, see if one can save $10, or $20 a month. If it’s $30 a month, it will be $360 a year, and there was a report saying 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in bank. So basically one can beat almost 40% of the people by saving $33 a month.
For me personally, this is the first financial crisis since I have two kids. I am older, and have a little more savings (due to the sale of condo recently). I am earning a bit more from work too (that part is not given). And personally I felt more confident on stock market (this is not given either, as I usually only long stocks. I have some winners such as $OKTA, and losers such as $DIS). Surprisingly I am not overly worried. Probably due to the fact I had been through layoffs and etc. Probably because I am older and wiser 🙂
Control things we can control
This is actually from my former CIO at arch coal, Dave Hartley. Arch Coal was in a pretty bad financial situation when I was there, 2011 to 2012. The company was cutting cost and our CIO was using that motto to encourage us. And I think it’s very much applicable today. I also recall Warren Buffett famously said “don’t bet against American”. My takeaway is majority of Americans are fair minded, decent, willing to work hard given opportunity, some have good entrepreneurship, and so on. I don’t want to put an cliche here: together we can win. But the reality is we are dealt with the cards we were dealt with. We can make the most / best out of it. We cannot change the cards.
Bonus read: so in summary, for 9-11, I think both President Clinton and president Bush bear responsibility. For 2008 financial crisis, President Bush. Pandemic, we know who to blame (hint: not China or Bill Gates 🙂
