HALF A MILLIONAIRE

On June 14, 2009, I challenged myself to amass $500,000 in cash. My strategy is to “eliminate debt, grow wealth, and control expenses”. I want to make it clear that it is not about money, but, instead, it is about mental toughness. One is born. One lives. One gets sick. One becomes old. And, one dies. We all follow this pattern, and what separates us is the way we choose to live our lives. Everyday, I choose to be happy. And, to be happy, I am willing to take on my earthy responsibilities. In the end, happiness is the ultimate prize in life, not money. However, money can buy me more time to enjoy my life with my loved ones. Therefore, I am going after it. 

Our expenses have remained the same in the last several months. My wife and I have managed to stay within our budget. When we go shopping, we write down what we need to buy and stick with the list. If an item is expensive, we remind each other about saving money by voting “no”. For example, she wants to buy an expensive camera because she believes that it will produce more beautiful pictures. I tell her that we can afford it, but it is not the right time because the current one is still working, and she has been capturing perfect moments of our daughter’s life with the three-year old camera. Also, because we allow our daughter to play with our camera and laptop to stimulate her learning ability, I do not want to overpay these items. However, for the right item, I will not hesitate to buy. For example, when my wife informs me that our dryer is broken, I have it delivered to our house the next day. Of course, I never pick items with the highest price because I have realized that expensive things often require higher maintenance and usually cause more problems when they break. Our goal is to focus on each other, not on materialism, and, so far, we have achieved it.

In the last several months, I have been working about 60 to 70 hours per week because I have realized that cutting expenses alone will not bring me to the finished line. I have to increase my revenues, so I do overtime. I work 12 hours on weekdays and an extra 10 hours on Saturday when I am needed. Again, in life, it is not aways about money, but it is all about time. Because I want to spend the maxium amount of time with my daughter, I go to work very early in the morning while my loved ones are still sleeping. And, because I am an early riser, the working schedule fits me very well. What is the result? I have been able to increase my revenues by 100%. Of course, I know that the overtime will not last forever, but I will take whatever given because I want to win the game. And, to win the game, I must execute my game plan.

What do I do with the extra money? I have been paying down my debts and “cautiously” putting more money in the stock market. However, I have decided to stop buying more shares because the stocks that I own have become more expensive. How do I know? The prices have gone up by 30% compared to last year. I do not have a degree in finance, but I learn from reading and analyzing data on my own. Something is just not right. On one hand, I am trying to cut expenses, grow revenues and eliminate debts. On the other hand, President Obama increases spending, kills the labor market and borrows more money. I know that I can be wrong in my opinion because I do not have all the data, but on the surface that is what I am seeing. Our national debt is $12.8 trillion. I am not interested in hearing President Obama explaining that he and his administration are not responsible for our national debt. He needs to stop blaming the past because the American people needs him to solve problems. Yes, sir, we know that you are facing with difficult challenges. However, we need you to make the right decisions for our nation.

In my humble opinion, America needs more jobs at this very moment. America does not need to show the world her compassion at this very moment. America does not need to make new friends at this very moment because she is angry and not in the mood to hang out. There is nothing wrong with that because she has to focus on taking care of her own children at this very moment. Why does she have to show her compassion to the world at this very moment? She has always done that. Her true friends should understand her. She does not have to bow to anyone to show that she is respectful. She should be herself and others will follow. Her foes will always hate her because they envy her success and compassion. These foes will die because they have to follow the same pattern of life. And, there will be new foes. In the end, America should be herself because I love her just the way she is. I don’t want the government to shackle her because she has given me opportunities to grow in ways that I truly believe I will not be able to do anywhere else on earth.

In college, I had three roommates. We shared a studio-loft apartment. We put two standard bunk beds in the upstair loft, and we used the downstair studio for studying. They often went home during weekends because their parents lived in nearby cities. Sometimes, they teased me by demanding that I should pay higher rent because I used the unit more than they did. One weekend, I had the flu. I was very tired, so I immediately went to bed after having taken some Theraflu. I woke up on Saturday and felt better symptomatically, but I knew that I was still sick. Without an appetite, I stumbled to the kitchen and filled up my stomach with a bowl of instant noodles and went back to bed. I woke up and fell back to sleep several times without eating anything because I was too weak to get out of bed. When I saw sunlight again, I knew that it was Sunday. I allowed my lifeless body to slide off the top bed and onto the floor. I began to crawl down the stairs. As I was lying on the floor of the studio, the front door opened. Vince, one of my roommates, came back to campus early because he wanted to catch up with his reading assignments. I told him that I was hungry and asked him to make a glass of milk for me by mixing condensed milk with boiled water. He did. A couple of weeks later, I recovered fully. And, a decade later, I am still talking about my friend.

The foundation of our society is individualism. Each of us has the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We have the freedom to express our own individuality. We have conservatives and liberals. We have the rich and the poor. I will never trade our system for anything because it is an accurate representation of life. Only through struggles and competition we can grow and improve. Personally, I believe that the purpose of my life is to fight and thrive because I do not want to waste the chance that America has given me. In other words, I do not want to lose. And, unfortunately, in this fight, there is no tie. Some complain that the system is unfair. Some gripe about being born at the bottom of chain. And, perhaps, there is some truth in these cries. However, life is more interesting when we accept its challenges. We shall not rely on the government to solve our problems for us because it cannot even take care of itself.

As of July 4th, 2009, our national debt is approximately $11.4 trillions (U.S. National Debt Clock). Many financial experts argue that it is not a big problem because we are still capable of paying the annual interest of about $450 billions. We scold our uninformed Americans for taking out interest-only mortgages, but we have been allowing the Federal government to do it for more than two centuries. Personally, I don’t think the politicians know how to solve the problem because it has ballooned so quickly. And, none of “the patriots” is willing to take a political risk. Tomorrow, President Obama will whisper sweet birthday-wishing words into our Mother’s ears. He will retell us the stories about how our great founding fathers defeated a powerful king 233 years ago and how we freed slaves. And, we will applaud with our wrists and ankles shackled by debts.

Tomorrow, I will celebrate the 4th of July with my family because to me it symbolizes freedom. I am free to express my individuality. I am free to take care of myself first. However, besides freedom, individualism requires compassion to flourish. I do not want to credit our founding fathers for having created one of the most compassionate country in the world, but it seems that they did everything right. They did not ask us to be compassionate. They only gave us freedom, and, somehow, when we all strive to search for our own “individuals”, and when we truly understand the meaning of individualism, we automatically become a compassionate people. Perhaps, during the fight to become who we are, we discover the tasteful fruit of compassion. Personally, I think that individualism has pushed me to become more compassionate. For example, I want to help others understand the meaning of individualism, too. It is not selfishness. It is self-improvement. When one is independent, one feels empowered. And, when one is powerful, one will offer others “a glass of hot milk”.