JangChoe.name

My company offered a seminar on business writing. It was called ??Write to the Top??. I wanted to improve my writing, so I signed up for the seminar. What did I think of it? I thought it was awesome.

I thought reading the book On Writing Well would teach me everything about writing well. But having an instructor go through the steps and techniques really helped me to learn the material. Also, I learned a lot of new things at the seminar the book didn’t cover.

I want to write about some of the techniques the seminar covered, but I’ll save it for another post. I want to wait until I absorb all the concepts I learned.

So hopefully, the writing and structure of my future posts should slowly improve.

This video has been going around the Internet lately. It’s the last lecture of Randy Pausch. Randy is a CMU professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer.

All the comments and buzz on the Internet wrote how great and inspirational the lecture is. I didn’t really care because I’ve heard lots of inspirational stuff. So I thought I was pretty jaded. But I finally caught the first 9 minutes of it at Youtube and it’s phenomenal. I had to watch the rest after that. One interesting thing to note that was he gave props to my old Computer Animation professor who now works at CMU. That was pretty cool.

Anyway, watch it if you have the time. It’s 1.5 hours long. You can “watch it at Youtube by clicking here.”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HqdnjgkExY

First, “click here to check out this article.”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20871397/ The article talks about Chuck Feeney–some billionaire dude.

Most people–from the comments I read of him–focused on how generous Feeney was. They focused on Feeney’s philanthropy. I too think his philanthropy was great. But I noticed something else in the article that caught my attention even more.

In the article, it said,

“I try to live a normal life, the way I grew up,” Feeney said. “I set out to work hard, not to get rich.”

That part stuck out the most for me. It showed that there was something else that motivated Feeney other than status, recognition, or greed. It was something else–something that internally drove him.

Feeney never thought about becoming rich. He just worked hard. By working hard, one of the results of that was being one of the richest men in the world. He also lived a humble life all throughout his life. And he gave away billions to different charities. And these actions were all internally motivated.

When most people work hard, they’re doing it for external motivation such as status, comfort, greed, etc. They want the bling bing, Mercedes Benz, the big mansion, iPhone, trophy wife, or whatever else you see on TV.

TV, media in general, pushes these values in our faces all the time. They do a great job of it too. The advertisers are very good at exploiting our insecurities, weaknesses, and desires. So most people strive towards the stuff they see that’s being glorified in the media. I mean, I fall for it all the time.

On the other hand, there are people like Feeney that don’t care about that stuff. They just do the things that they do because of other reasons. What reasons? They are internally motivated reasons. Maybe they do it because they just want to do it, want to glorify God, or other reasons. Whatever it is, it isn’t because the media, other people, society, or any other worldly factor tells them to do it.

Well, whatever the reason Feeney had, he worked hard (maybe he did have a desire to get rich, but it probably wasn’t his primary motivator). He gave away large chunks of his fortune without drawing attention to himself. He also lived a very frugal, simple life.

Feeney, I think, is one of the people that’s great to model after. “I wrote about this issue I had briefly in my older entry about money.”:http://jangchoe.name/article/25/how-much-money-do-we-really-need So right now, I’m striving to have a life of frugality and simplicity. I’m trying to be as generous as possible. I’m also trying to be more internally motivated in everything I do. It’s a pretty slow process since I was one of the greediest, insecure, externally motivated, person for over 20 years.

Back in the old days, we had an insecure thought that having a foreign name such as “Jang Choe” was a disadvantage when finding a job. My parents were freaked out about it so much that they nagged me to change my name to something like, “John Smith.” Back then I believed my parents because they’re suppose to be wiser. Now, I found that they just way too old-school and hyper-paranoid.

Perhaps having an American name would’ve been advantageous back in the day. I wouldn’t know. Maybe it was true in some way. I should’ve experimented and figured out the results. But things apparently changed.

At my current job, we talked about diversity in the workplace. My company is pretty hardcore about diversity in the workplace. My co-workers and I joked about how foreign names have an advantage now because of more awareness of diversity. Even though we were joking, it could be true. It looks like many companies are jumping in the bandwagon of diversity. Even The Office had an episode about it. In fact, the last couple of new hires and contractors to my team have been 50% minorities.

So I guess it was my advantage to not change my name to John Smith. Although it does get tiresome when everyone mispronounces my name. It’s J-AH-NG. The “a” is pronounced “ah” like “father.” It’s not “eh” like “sang.” Phonetically it is the correct spelling. In fact, when I first came to this country, the teacher spelled it like that for me. So you guys just need to learn how to read it correctly.

Also, it seems like people–especially the younger generations in major cities–are opening up to new cultures. It’s probably because U.S. has become a true melting pot. In schools, you can see a lot of different ethnicities around. Maybe now my parents will start nagging me to become an African,lesbian woman.

My friends, family, and even my enemies think I’m crazy and stupid for not working towards buying a home. They keep telling me that I’m an idiot throwing my money away by paying rent. Not only that, I’m probably making someone else (landlord) richer by giving them money. That’s a pretty convincing argument.

What they don’t realize is that they have been blinded by old-fashioned thinking. I think that society has pounded the idea of house buying into our heads that it became over-important. Some people think buying a house is a great accomplishment and something to be proud of–so they jump in too early. Some people just do it because they think it’s the right thing to do without much planning and research.

I think that some people don’t look at all the angles and long term impact of buying a house. They forget or don’t know about all the extra costs and negatives of buying a house. Most importantly, they don’t look at their current situation.

I think it’s awesome to own a house. I know a lot of people that bought their house after much research and planning. On the other hand I know some people that jumped into buying a house just because they think it’s the correct thing to do. Or they think it’s just another purchase. For example, I know someone that is looking to buy a $300,000 house. Not only that, that person’s salary is a lot lower than mine.

Here are some great benefits of owning a house that I could think of:
* You gain equity.
* If you get a fixed rate mortgage, your monthly payments never go up unlike rent which goes up every year.
* You can deduct your mortgage interest and property taxes.
* Your house appreciates.
* After 20-30 years, you won’t need to pay “rent” ever again if you choose to live in the same house.
* You can do anything you want with your house. It’s your house.
* You can get roommates to pay for your mortgage. Those suckers.

Those are pretty sweet benefits. But here are some benefits of renting that I could think of.
* No “hidden” costs such as insurace, taxes, home owner’s fees, maintenance fees, closing costs, etc.,
* You can gain other types of equity by using the money you save from fees above to investments like mutual funds, money market, stocks, CDs, bonds, etc. Sometimes, the returns can be greater than the house’s appreciation.
* Renting is a lot simpler and stress free because of not needing to maintain your home. That’s the landlord’s job.
* You can move around freely instead of being locked down. So if I were to get a job that’s an hour drive away, I can always move closer. Or if I get a job that’s in a different state, I can just pack up and move instead of selling the house desperately for a massive loss–so much for it being an investment.
* Right now the market is not so good. The housing prices increased exponentially compared to people’s salary. I would have to live in the ghetto or boonies to get a place that’s in my price range. The recommend price range for a house is 2.5x your salary. So if you make $50,000 a year, you should look for a house that’s $125,000… Yeah, exactly. Like I said, where would anyone find a place that cheap unless you live in the boonies or the ghetto.

Like I mentioned, you have to look at the situation carefully. When you buy a house, you’re “throwing” away your money on interest, maintenance, home-owner’s association fees, etc. Even if I get a house that’s the same value as the apt I’m staying, my monthly expenses will jump up nearly 80% with all the extra fees. Also, I won’t have a second job as a landlord for my roommates. House roommates are a bit different than apt roommates because they expect you to fix and maintain everything. Besides, why would I want roommates anyway? I hate them. I can just get a nice, simple efficiency apt for cheap and I’ll be content.

Also, I have a ridiculously low rent. For the rent I’m paying, I would need to buy a $150,000 house and live there for 30 years to get the same value. For $150,000, it would probably be a condo or somewhere in the boonies. When I need to upgrade or move, I would need to go through the hassle of selling the place and paying closing costs–which are added work and stress to the moving and cleaning. If I were to move out and upgrade in 5 years, who knows how much the property has appreciated? Perhaps I’ll be selling for a loss instead of a profit because of the closing costs.

So I’m renting because I’m trying to simplify my life. I’m just too lazy to worry about the maintenance of the house. But I’ll definitely look at buying later in life. When? When my rent is comparable to the costs of buying a house. When I have enough money. When I find a lovely place. And I have other reasons too.

I “wrote briefly”:http://jangchoe.name/article/25/how-much-money-do-we-really-need about my dating philosophy. Back then when I was poor, one thing I did was force girls to go Dutch on all my dates. Here were some strategies:
# I hung with the girl with a group of friends. That way we all split the check including her.
# I just point blank told her to pay for her half.
# When she said, “oh you don’t have to pay for me.” I said, “cool.” Then I asked the server to split the check.

Even growing up as a teenager, I told myself that I would never pay for a girl on dates. I don’t know why I thought like that. I must of had some sort of childhood trauma with a gold digger.

Well during my young adult years, I was lonely and single. Since I was a heterosexual, single male; girls were pretty important. But not _that_ important. I only made $7500/year, and impressing a chick with money was low on the radar.

Once I started getting dates, I took girls to cheap places. I didn’t take her to Emeril’s, Ruth Chris’s, Bones, Bluepointe, Fogo, etc. I took her to cheap Chinese dumps, fast food places (Chick Fil-A), Pho restaurants, etc. Basically any place that didn’t cost more than $10 per person.

That was completely different from the usual wine and dine her type dates. And you know what? I didn’t do that bad with women. I wasn’t a Casanova or anything, but I wasn’t a total chump either.

When I asked my female friends on the types of dates they went to, they usually reply along the lines of, “He took me to Bluepointe and spent $500 on me.” Even in TV and movies, that’s what guys did. So I was slowly beginning to wonder if that was the correct thing to do. I mean we know that movies and TV don’t lie. That’s how guys scored with chicks on TV and movies. I wanted to score too. But I learned something. You didn’t have to do that. There was no reason to impress a chick. In fact, impressing chicks was stupid.

The focus shouldn’t be on impressing chicks. The focus should be going to places you want to go, doing things you want to do, having fun, and getting her to have fun. That doesn’t mean not doing things that the girl wants to do either. But most times, since you’re the guy you will _have_ to decide where to go and what to do. The girls are usually in on for the ride. But If your date suggests something, you can do it. You shouldn’t do it because she said so. Or because you want to bend to her will. But do it because you’re open to new experience and want to try it out.

If I was single now, would I do the same thing? Yes, I would do the exact same thing as I did before–even though I make 9 times more money. I wouldn’t make any effort to impress a chick–especially with my money. I would just take her to places I enjoy going. And back then I enjoyed going to Chick Fil-A, Pho places, cheap Chinese places, and so on.

There are some benefits for women too. They don’t have to worry about “putting out” or doing anything to reciprocate if a guy blows a ton of money on her.

There are some objections to this idea. Here are some of them:
*If a guy doesn’t put up an effort to impress a girl, he’s not really interested in her*–Actually if a guy calls a girl to hang out with her, he’s already interested in her. Why else would he call the girl to a date?

*For some girls you have to pay no matter what. That’s just their rule*–I dated chicks like this. You know what? They paid for their half and still hung out with me at later times. They even picked up my phone call. Sometimes they even called me. They didn’t diss me completely.

*You should always treat girls like a princess*–Why? They’re just normal girls with issues and problems just like you. I’m not treating anyone that special, especially if you barely know the girl.

*No really, girls want to be treated like a princess, she told me*–They only want to be treated like a princess from a guy they like. If you’re a loser and creepy, you can ravish her with gifts and compliments and worship the ground she walks on, but she still won’t like you.

*So how do I get her to like me then if I can’t show off my bling? Pheromones? Viagra?*–I think for men to be attracted to women, 80% deals with the women’s looks and 20% with their personality. For women, it’s the other way around. So all you have to do to attract her is convey your personality. You know, that whole “be yourself” advice you’ve been hearing from your mom.

*What if the girl don’t like my personality?*– Maybe she didn’t like your personality. Go find a girl that does. There’s a lot chicks out there. Maybe your personality sucks. Are you needy, clingy, insecure about everything, arrogant, too serious, unfunny, lame, etc.? Maybe that’s your problem so you should fix it. Or maybe you just smell bad.

*It’s the rules. Man has to pay for dates. It’s etched in stone. There’s no way around that*–There are no rules in dating. Just because everyone does it, do you mean you have to do it too?

*I’m a girl and I want the guy to pay all the time. I don’t put out or reciprocate in anyway either. Besides, I can get a free meal and entertainment and while checking out the guy’s personality (and his bod).*–So if you really like some guy you won’t hang out with him again just because he won’t pay for you? If that’s true, I guess I lose here.

Guys don’t go overboard with this rule. It doesn’t mean NEVER pay for the girl EVER. I would probably pay on dates sometimes because it’s more convenient to pay instead of having the hassle of splitting the check. And sometimes I probably wouldn’t care if I paid or not. But just don’t do it to impress her, to get something from the girl, to do your manly duties, or other superficial reasons.

“Look at these new iPods.”:http://www.apple.com/ I got a iPod nano early this year, and they had to come out with these cool new ones. It’s okay since I got the nano for free. Maybe they can give us these new ones this coming

Not only that, the iPod touch looks sweet. WiFi capabilities? This means that all iPhone applications can work on the new iPod. I really want one now. But like all Apple products, a few months after you get their devices, it becomes obsolete because they’re constantly updating and improving on their designs.

Once I was making about $7500/year. That was a really rough time. I usually went hungry, and I would bum food off of people as much as possible. I was single at that time too. On dates, I forced the chicks to pay for their part of the meal. Our dates usually included cheap food, no fancy-smancy places (this resulted in me learning a bit more about dating that’s different than society’s current views on dating. But that’s a different post). I also lived in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apt with 2 other people. I think that’s when I learned that I don’t like roommates anymore.

Back then I always thought making $30,000/year would be awesome. Of course that wasn’t true. I actually found a job that gave me around $30,000/year. But as my salary rose, my expenses rose too. I got rid of a roommate so I had one roommate for my 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apt. Naturally, my rent went up. I also ate food–no, I gorged myself with food. So my food bill went up. I was living comfortably. But it still wasn’t enough because I wasn’t able to save.

Later, I got a job where I made about $50,000/year. I was excited, but it still wasn’t enough. I kicked out my roommate and lived alone. That, of course, raised my rent. I ate out more too. Not only that, I needed to start saving and tithing. I was very rigorous in my savings and tithing. I was saving for a house at that time, and I put away a large chunk of money to my ING savings account. I still wasn’t comfortable.

Now, I have a job making more than $65,000/year. I’m still not comfortable. I tithe more. I also save a lot more. I probably save and invest about 25% of my salary–some before tax some after tax. My new co-workers also love to go to _high end_ restaurants. I’ve already ate at Fogo De Chao three times this year. I also pay for Hannah’s food bill. And that could get expensive especially if she likes to order Cowboy Ribeye steaks.

It’s weird. I live very simply. I live in a small ass apartment, I don’t have cable, and I don’t have much expensive hobbies. In fact, do you know what my current hobbies are? It’s reading and writing. Now those are cheap hobbies especially if you read only 1 used paperback a month (I re-read books too). When I go to clubs, I still pay less than $20 for the whole night (unless I go see a special DJ).

My only indulgence is food, but I’m learning to cut down on that (no more Fogo for me). But I’m still feeling the crunch. It just feels like no matter how much I make, it’s never enough. I can’t imagine how I lived with only $7500/year. It wasn’t that long ago either. It was about 5 years ago. I lived like that for 2 years.

I was watching ??Hogan Knows Best?? one day at Hannah’s house. Hulk Hogan has a mansion in Miami, a private jet, two kids, a high-maintenance wife, bunch of pets, and so on. And I can see he’s not comfortable with how much he’s making. Even though his knees are completely useless, he still has to wrestle to cover his expenses. He’s over 50 years old too. Maybe he should’ve opened his own restaurant called Hogan’s House of Ribs and Chinese Food. Although that doesn’t sound as cool as Abdullah the Butcher’s House of Ribs and Chinese Food. But the fact is, he wants to retire but can’t. He still needs to work to maintain his family’s lifestyle.

So I began thinking, how much money should I be making until I’m completely satisfied and comfortable? I’m gonna just guess and say $85,000/year. But just like that $30,000 I thought back when I made $7500, I doubt $85k would do me any good. I think once you make more money, your human tendency is to over-indulge in whatever your indulgences are.

If you’re disciplined, however; you can probably predict how much you really need to live on–especially if you’re single. It becomes different when other factors come in like a house, marriage, kids, pets, etc. But you know what? I don’t like this feeling of needing more money. Especially since I live a pretty minimalist life. So I decided I’ll force myself to become comfortable once I reach that magic $85,000/year salary… unless I get a wife, kids, house, pets, etc.

I’m not bitter about it, I’m actually very thankful that I’m able to make this much money today. I’m just not happy with my level of greed now.

“Now I know”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2007/08/30/scimozzie130.xml why mosquitoes bite me more compared to my friends. I just smell too good to them!