How To Create a Frugal Budget - Erin Huffstetler (Frugal Living Expert)

Assess your monthly expenses
Make a list of all of your regular monthly expenses, including any money that you spend on fun things like eating out, entertainment and hobbies; and any minimum payments that you have to make towards your debts. You can use a budget form for this purpose if it makes the job easier.

Total your earnings.
Calculate how much you make per month, including any money that you receive from investments and other forms of residual income.

Subtract expenses from earnings.
Test out the effectiveness of your budget by subtracting your monthly expenses from your earnings. This will show you how much you can expect to have left at the end of the month.

Rework your budget.
If your budget comes out on the negative side, rework it until your numbers crunch. To do this, go back over each expense, and look for places to make cuts.

Build in money for debt reduction.
If you have debts, your budget should already include the minimum payments that you have to make each month. Now you need to find the money to pay down those debts. Look at your numbers again, and determine where you are willing to make sacrifices to get out of debt.

Build in your savings and investments.
Now it’s time to budget money for your financial goals. Do you want to have an emergency fund? Retirement investments? Vacation savings? Make a list of what you hope to achieve, and then survey your budget once more to find the money that you need to reach those goals. If you have a lot of debt, you may need to skip this step for a while, and that’s okay – debt reduction should be priority one.

Put your budget to work.
Once you’ve created a budget that covers all of your monthly expenses and financial goals, it’s time to put your budget to the test. Try to live within your budget, and see how it feels.

Assess your budget.
At the end of each month, look over your expenditures to see if they are matching up to your budget. If they aren’t, determine if you need to work harder to stick to your spending plan; or if you need to rework your budget to reflect your actual spending.

Assess and assess again.
A frugal budget is never finished. Continue to look over your budget every month to catch areas of overspending. Then, crunch the numbers again until you’ve made it right.

Tips:

• Be honest about your spending habits, and you’ll end up with a much more realistic budget.
• Don’t forget to budget for fun; budgeting isn’t about total deprivation.
• Don’t be afraid to change your budget; a good budget is always evolving.

Original source: http://frugalliving.about.com/od/frugalliving101/ht/Frugal_Budget.htm

My Poem: The Rebel's Path to Truth

The birth of rebels, is not an accident, at a time where people who are lost and in dire need for truth.

People are turning their back against the truth, because of fear transformed into Hope. So, they can't see past the flaw of the system.

Like a white lie, false hope is much more devastating than pure lie. False hope is the self-imposed oppression to the honest confrontation of your fear. Just like how the Architect put it, "Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.", now it rings some resounding truths.

Rebellious, because you have a clear mind that is capable of critical independent thinking. Birds of the same feather flock together, therefore you can be alone, but you won't be lonely.

Ultimately, those who stand for nothing fall for anything. At the end of the tunnel, you shall see liberation, emancipation and enlightenment.

Max, the Rebel.

Truth Searching

I know some realization once I have attained them, I'll no longer be the same anymore, it can't be unlearn because they are facts, each fact has a constant pattern and symbol. If we follow the sign, we can find the source of everything. My ideas are very unstructured now, I know if I could put them into one piece, and make it easy to understand for people, I know this is what I wish for, I know this is the new norm, I'm nothing unique nor weird here, you will see it if many people before us also could have seen too.

Market has no rule, it's a free market left for people to make their own rules. That's why you've seen people signing agreements with the other parties. Its either you play by my rules, or I play by your rules. We have mainstream media constantly propagates the rules, constantly reminding people of these rules, why? Because the authority are afraid, therefore they transferred their fear to you. Now, who owns the fear? Those who refuse to think critically about the whole bare truth behind the mechanism. You can really choose not to comply by the rule, because the market/world has no rule.

The market has no morality, BUT human has morality and values. Take for example, certain countries are slowly legalizing drugs which were forbidden before that, because of profits. If has (morally righteous or immorally wrong) demand, then has supply.

There are still a lot of things to observe.

Random Curiosity

My question is, can any two person share the same fingerprint?

Answer that I found: Francis Galton, a British fingerprint scientist, has pointed out that the possibility for existence of same fingerprint is 1/64,000,000,000, while another fingerprint scientist Edward Richard Henry has held the opinion that such possibility should be 1/1,000,0007. The complicated fingerprint of human beings on one hand indicates the complexity of human genes and on another hand proves the well evolved human brain, i.e. intelligence.

Source: http://www.zdzw.com/html/yulw.htm

My question: Who invented Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test?
Answer that I found: IQ test was developed by French psychologist Alfred Binet in 1905, and became popular worldwide after improvement made by USA and Britain. It is also known as Binet’s IQ test, WAIS IQ test or Raven’s IQ test.

Source: http://www.zdzw.com/html/yulw.htm

与弟之对话

心血来潮跟弟弟又玩了一个simulation:

我：如果你有100亿，你会怎样用？

弟：亿是？

【上了数学班一下。一会儿他就明白了。】继续…

弟：我会用20亿买很多屋子，10亿银行存款、投资生意etc >¥~}%*><#^€*€ （说了一大堆，挺有道理）

我：很好。可是，你就不要做慈善吗？

弟：等赚钱先啦

我：单单银行存款就有利息了，10亿的3%叻（随口编了一个号码，不大记得）…

【又上另一个数学班学小数点乘法，一会儿他弄明白了3%利息是多少钱了】

当他搞懂银行这回事之后，好奇心似乎加强许多，问了一些很有趣的问题，结果我也分享了global conspiracy theory，让他听得津津有味。

弟：为什么银行有这么多钱？

我：A放2千在银行，B去跟银行借2千。一年后，B还回4千给银行，然后银行回馈3千给A。银行赚多少钱？

弟：1千 ^_^

过了一会儿…

弟：这样借钱的人嘛是吃亏？！

我：是咯。但是，可能B那这2千去做生意/投资，成功赚回400千，那么跟银行借的钱就不算什么一回事了。

他似乎领悟了。

我：可是……万一B失败呢？！！

弟：（惊讶的表情！）这样子，谁来还A钱呢？

我：（静静，不知道要回答他我接触到的阴谋论吗）

弟：（他努力瞎猜）银行印钱？

我：银行跟另外一家银行借钱，这个银行叫world central bank，在美国，私人公司来。（我就只差没提Rothschild）

弟：噢，就好像我们跟银行借钱一样

我：是

弟：可是，那个很厉害的bank怎样赚钱？

我：这个world bank很早发现最棒的生意就是国家战争。国家战争需要很多钱，比如要买武器、子弹、兵的薪水、药物，没钱怎么办？

弟：跟银行借钱

我：对。不是跟Maybank，CIMB借钱，而是跟world bank借。条规里面说明赢的国家也需要承担输的国家的国债。

弟：那么，赢的国家嘛很吃亏？

我：不会啊。赢的国家占领了输的国家的资源，人力和一切，过后就会赚回来。

弟：噢

我：很多战争都由这个world bank幕后人操纵。Ok，去冲凉啦。

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Polish Your Oxidized Headlight at very Cheap Cost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEJbKLZ7RmM

http://www.wikihow.com/Repair-Oxidized-Cloudy-Headlights-with-a-Headlight-Cleaner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QwzHOO-3lk

24岁就是要Keep My Dream Simple

新的一年已迈入第9天，我想撇开矛盾（虽然也知道矛盾其实也有好处），想回到基础，back to basic。

去年有许多甜美的回忆和胜利，也有不顺利的，失败的，脾气变坏的。

2013/2014之顺利：
- 开始操作第一门生意food delivery service
- 参与Frost & Sullivan Iskandar Malaysia Case Challenge，并赢取季军，奖金和job offer （最后，我没接受）
- Thesis顺利完成，拿到A-，和supervisor的感情很好，变成了朋友
- 参与MIT GSL 2014，学到超多东西（真的很多）。而且，我组最终赢得了"The Most Promising Project”和奖金
- 继续追这个企业梦，首次登记自己的生意
- 普及入final回合DiGi Challenge for Change，感到荣幸可以在此分享我会改革马来西亚的public transport industry的方法
- 参加Money & You的课程。虽然当时已经没什么有钱了，不过为了学习，不可吝啬，固然登记费是4个数目，我坚持参与。感谢有Zen这位兄弟的帮忙。
- 参与Entrepreneur Organization的Global Student Entrepreneur Award 之比赛，并幸运普及下一回合。还有两个礼拜就要去菲律宾比赛了。心情非常澎湃。我是用Deli-Deli这生意去竞赛。
- 与妈妈和弟弟有个非常美好的Christmas回忆

2013/2014之不顺（多得很，就列几个比较“ouch”的）
- Deli-Deli的回应不好，导致uncle无法继续和我合作，我暂时把它给关闭
- 毕业后，很迷茫，钱非常有限。有一次被人“利用”，但我也学聪明去了。
- technical co-founders最终放弃和我一起改革交通系统的梦想，我花了一段时间反省自己的错，错误的决定，和自己的脾气。庆幸最终找到新的一位资深的developer。
- 情绪波动，自言自语，孤僻的时刻
- 选错工作，老板XXXX，薪水不满，工作环境不满。来临的三月份，我即将离开。
- 曾有一度失去方向和希望的时候（没有希望的感觉非常难受）

新年的第九天，让我想了些些，我明白，我要活得简单。

非常感恩家人和朋友们的支持，You all mean the world to me! =)

电话突然响，打开讯息竟然是我的父亲发给我的生日祝福短讯，我顿时鼻酸了。活到24年，这是我的第一次收到他的SMS，祝福我生日快乐，和忠告我出外打工要提防小人。非常感动。

正式24岁了，我就只想keep my dream simple，那就是【永不放弃一直做到成功】。

祝我生日快乐 =)