The Perfect Coroprate Pedigree

My girlfriend was reading a book called The World's Greatest Resumes by Robert WM. Meier. In it he talks a lot about having the perfect corporate pedigree and how his book can help those that don't have a perfect corporate pedigree. It tells you how to emphasize certain aspects of your resume, and how to work your way around some of your weaknesses. Overall, I think she would recommend the book, as her resume looks pretty good now.

I write about this because when I asked about the book, she told me I didn't need it, because I have the perfect corporate pedigree. I laughed when she said this, except she was serious. I've never really thought of myself this way despite the fact that I've always seem to be able to find a job, and a good job, when I want one. So just what does make a perfect corporate pedigree? While not coming out and explicitly saying it, Meier seems to suggest that a great pedigree involves

• Having an Ivy League Degree


• Working for a big Fortune 500 Company


• Having a continuous work history that shows good career progression

I fit the bill because I graduated from Princeton University, I have worked for two Fortune 500 Companies, Accenture and Microsoft, and I have no large gaps in my resume. I believe I took a small step backwards with my move to Microsoft, but I can easily explain the move and to outsiders it looks like a smart career move. So having these "qualifications" supposedly makes me more desirable to potential employers. Is it true?

Hard to say. I would say there is no doubt that many doors have been opened to me because the Princeton and Microsoft name carry some clout. I have a pretty high success rate of responses to people who I sent my resume to. I would say that of all the resumes I sent out in my latest job search, I had about a 40% response rate. This is a phenomenal number. But I want to stress this. I think this allowed me to get a call back, I don't think it helped me all that much to actually get the job. But considering the fact that getting the call back might be the hardest part, then this may indeed be a key success factor.

HR and hiring managers might look through hundreds of resumes to fill an important position. Lots of times, they will only scan your resume and look at your eduction, job history, and previous titles. It is important to have something on your resume that will let you stand out from the crowd in this case, and having the above criteria certainly won't hurt you.

The point of me writing this post is that you need to understand what many employers are looking for in order to prepare for it accordingly. If you have the above pedigree, great, you are set. Just make sure your resume looks decent and that you use the advantage that you have wisely. If you don't, you need to be sure that you are showing off your qualifications in some other way to stand out. Further, if you have the opportunity to enhance your resume in some way, like going to get your MBA at a top-tier school, or to go work for a Fortune 500 company, you need to seriously consider it.

That's my admittedly bias perspective. What do you think? How important is having a good "corporate pedigree"?

When Not to take a Job Offer - Part 1

Free Money Finance wrote a post the other day about when to not take a job offer. I actually think it is a pretty interesting topic. I'm touching on it a little bit earlier than I want but when I take into account that I just accepted a job offer, it makes sense to talk about why I took this one as opposed to other job offers.

As I started writing this post, I realized it really depends on the particular situation. Therefore, I'm going to write this post in a few different parts to address each situation. The situation I think most people will find themselves in is that they still are at their current job (company A) and they are looking for a change in scenery. For this exercise, I'm going to assume you are trying get as high on the corporate ladder as you can in the shortest amount of time. So given this situation, imagine you receive a job offer from Company B, should you take it? Here are situations I would not take a job offer.

You are not 100% sure that whatever is bothering you about your current job is not going to happen at the new job - Most people fail to realize that a lot of problems they have with their job is not specific to their team, company, etc. They fail to realize that whatever they hate about their current job is going to exist at their next job and so get stuck in a vicious cycle.

You are going to take significantly less money for the same role - This is actually an extension of above. If you are going to switch companies to do the same work, why would you take a pay cut? Pay is important. It isn't strictly about what it will buy you. It's the fact that it is a signal to you how important the job is to the company. If one company is going to pay you less, you have to wonder if it really is the same job.

You are going to take a lesser role - I have actually fallen trap to this. I was eager to leave Company A and took a position where my role would be less than what it was at the time (the money was about the same). While it worked out for me, this is generally not a good idea. If you want to reach the top of the corporate ladder, it is critically important that you have steady progression upwards. If you take a lesser role, and it doesn't work out, this will impact you as you look for a new job at Company C. Here is a little secret. Changing jobs is often the BEST time to go for a promotion. That's right. Often, it is easier to get a BETTER role going to a new company than it is at your own, so you should almost never take a lesser role. Keep looking if this is the case.

You haven't mapped out what you want in your career - If you don't know what you want, hoping to find it at your next job is the wrong way to find it. Changing jobs should be a very thoughtful exercise, you need to do it for the right reason. You should not jump from job to job hoping that someone will tell you what you should be doing. Nobody cares about your career more than you do. If you think you are going to find a manager who is suddenly going to tell you what you should be doing and how you will get there, you will be looking for a long time.

You haven't really tried to make it work at your current job - The grass isn't always greener. A lot of people just move from job to job hoping to find that "perfect" job. They don't actually realize that their current situation isn't all that bad, and haven't tried to work out the issues they have. Most companies and managers want to retain good people and don't want to see you leave. If it can be worked out, you should at least explore if staying is a legitimate option.

Despite all these reasons not to take a job offer, let me give you something to think about that was said by a friend of mine just last night. If the only reason you are at your current job is inertia, you need to get out. I can't tell you the number of people I have talked to who have told me that they are "comfortable" at their current job so they don't want to look for another. They only reason they are where they are, is that it is "too hard" to find another job or they are too lazy. That is the absolute worse reason to be at a job, and a sure sign you need to be looking hard to go somewhere else.

Those are my reasons not to take a job offer if you are deciding between your current job and a new one, can you think of any more?

Adsense Videos

As I was looking around my Adsense site, I noticed that there was now an option for a video option courtesy of YouTube. I have thus far only done a small adsense section in the lower right corner of my blog, but was curious to see what the Adsense/YouTube add would actually look like. So I'm putting the code here to see what it looks like. I'll post it up for a while, and share my thoughts on it after I see how it really works.

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Update:

Finally got this to work, but had to do a few things to make sure Javascript works in a Wordpress Post. It was surprisingly hard to figure out how to do this. So if anyone else wants to figure out how to make an adsense Video script work in wordpress you just have to do the following

1. Read this about Javascript and Wordpress. Specifically the section about Javascript in Post.


2. Download and install the text control plugin.


3. Set it so that the post is not formatted


4. Plugin the Script that YouTube gives you. Use the "code" section of the post.


5. Do not re-save the work as soon as you paste the code. Wordpress formats this for some reason, breaking the post.

Not a huge fan of this. Not sure how one would use it to integrate it into your site. Am I supposed to have a big section to the side to host this video? I also can't control the content on it at all so how do I know my readers would be interested in it? It's kind of big and obtrusive, unlike traditional adsense ads and the adsense area is kind of small in comparison to the video so not sure how well it will be as an advertising section. I don't see how I would use it on my site, but I'll search around and see if I can find anyone who actually does something creative or useful with this new ad format.

Quick thoughts on the Market this morning

Just some quick thoughts on the market that opened this morning.  I'm watching it somewhat closely so that I can find my first trade which I will do this week.  Not quite ready to do it yet, but soon.

Two stocks I'm watching today.  The first is ETrade.  Still not interested in buying more of it at this point, just want to watch.  But it had a big announcement today that  Citadel investment has invested $2.55B.  For that money, Citadel got a lot from Etrade, including 17% of the company.  The deal looks bad from a shareholder perspective, but it's good that a large fund is taking a stake in Etrade.  These funds don't do this to lose money.  They do it to make lots of money, so it does give some hope to Etrade investors.  Still don't buy the stock here though.

Dell actually looks very interesting to me.  Again, I don't think I buy here, but there is probably going to be some action here after the bell.  Dell is going to have a conference call today, something they haven't done in a while.  Michael Dell has retaken the helm and PC sales have been strong for the last quarter.  I think Dell surprises to the upside.  It has been strong as of late, but I think with strong numbers, Dell can push through the $30 resistance which has held it down for years (much like MSFT temporarily pushed through its resistance).  I think it has $4 of upside, maybe $1 of downside.  Not bad.   Will know what you should do here in about 3 hours.

Power of Compound Interest

A quick financial lesson. While this post may not seem relevant to me telling my back story, almost everything I talk about will be based on this concept, so pay attention. If you want to be rich, one of the most important things you will ever learn is the power of compound interest. This concept is best learned through example.

Let's say you decide to invest in a Roth IRA, my favorite investment vehicle. You decide to start one today and invest the maximum $4,000 every year. You invest it wisely in an index fund that follows the total stock market which has historically returned 10% a year. In 40 years, your $4,000 a year, ($160,000 in principal payments) turns into $1,947,407.24, All of it tax free.

Now imagine if you were a good little saver and have saved the last 4 years. With a modest gain over the last few years you have $17,000 in your account. With the same investment strategy above you now have at the end of 40 years 2,716,814.59, All of it tax free. That is almost $800,000 difference for saving a little bit earlier. That $17,000 turned into $800,000!

Still not convinced? How about this? You do the above strategy from the ages of 25-35 and then stop. So for 10 years you invest $4,000 and then nothing after that. By the age of 65 you will have an account worth $1,223,633,58. Your $40K turned into $1.2 Million.

Or instead, you do nothing from the age of 25-35 and instead save from the age of 35-65 with the same strategy. Your final balance will be $723,773,70. Your $120K turned into $720K. Not bad until you consider that that's a half-million dollar difference from the previous example of $1.2 Million! And you put in 1/3 the amount in principal and saved 3x as long!

The lesson? Save early, save often. I can't stress this enough to my young friends. I know it is hard to save money now, but in the long run, it makes a BIG difference. This concept applies outside of finance as well. Doing the right things today, can pay big rewards tomorrow. You should always have an eye on the future and understand that small differences today, can have big repercussions in the future. This applies to you choosing what school to go to, what job to take, whether or not you should buy that new TV, pretty much everything you can think of. The younger you are, the more important this concept is. Understanding this at a very young age, helped me to get where I am today as I will explain shortly.

Increasing Web Traffic - Give Away Stuff!

John Chow has a post today where he is offering to give away a Microsoft USB Lanyard. It actually isn't even the main purpose of his post, it actually is only a small blurb at the end of the blog. But the number of comments he has gotten on it in a very short time is, as expected, very high as that is the way to enter the contest to win the Lanyard. I have TONS of Microsoft crap, as I of course worked there and received lots of stuff in my short time there.

This is of course a tried-and-true way to increase traffic in any arena. Give away stuff. I had one experience at Microsoft that actually scared me and made me shake my head at other Microsofties. At one of the product fairs that Microsoft has yearly for its employees, I was manning a booth. Some of the other booths were giving away SWAG like T-shirts, stress balls, etc. I made my way to the booth next to mine and tried to wait patiently in line for a T-Shirt. While waiting I was being pushed and shoved by people from all sides. People were grabbing T-Shirts out of the hands of other Employees! It was a mad house. And remember, these are Microsoft Full Time Employees. Almost all of them make close to six-figures. Yet they are willing to trample their fellow employees to get their hands on a free $5 T-shirt. Unbelievable.

I'm not sure I have the traffic yet to actually justify doing a give away. Also, I suspect that most of my readers actually work at Microsoft at the moment so not sure how effective giving away Microsoft stuff would be. Then again, given what I experienced above, maybe those employees would be the most aggressive at trying to get the SWAG. Does anybody want any SWAG?

Getting the First $20,000 - Part 2

One of the things I thought I would touch on before I actually start my mad dash for the double would be to continue on the topic of how I was able to get into the position I am in now. I started this conversation in an earlier post, but when I thought about it, realized there was much more to it than just save, save, save. Over the next several days, I will dive a little bit into my personal life and let you all in on how I've been able to get where I am today, creating a site where I just might blow $20,000.

I didn't do all of this by accident. If there is one thing my life has been, it's been deliberate. I've been relatively successful in my life, and I think it's very important that you understand just who you are getting in the car with before we all take this journey. More importantly, I think I can share some advice and insight on the one thing I have been really good at doing thus far, managing my career and saving for retirement.

My ability to start this little project of mine is a direct result of my ability to manage my career and finances. These are two things I think are vitally important to people of all ages but especially so to people like me who are in the earlier parts of their career. I might go off in some strange directions that don't make sense at first, but believe me, it will all come together in the end.

Slight Change in Direction

After doing some serious thinking (didn't I say I always think a lot after talking to my friend) I've decided to make a slight course adjustment. Like any journey, you find things on the way, and new obstacles are presented to you which will make you rethink your strategy. A little more than two weeks in, I've had both happen to me.

The first, and probably most significant thing, is that I've decided to take a new job in Los Angeles. While I'm very excited about the opportunity, it greatly affects my ability to execute on my strategy for multiple reasons. I had actually planned on taking some more time off from the working world. Partially to just take a break, partially to get this project up and running. I had been interviewing with a couple of companies without any real intention to take the job. I was doing it to keep my interviewing skills sharp. Ideally, I wouldn't have even considered jobs until after the first of the year. But when the right job comes along, you have to take it, and it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Of course, that means I have a lot less time to come up with my strategy and to execute it. Active trading is out the window as there is no way I'll be able to monitor stocks closely enough to get in and out of positions when I should while simultaneously starting a new job. That doesn't mean I'm not going to put my money to work in the market, I just can't take the same approach I would have.

There is more data to suggest this is the right course of action. Despite the appearance of inactivity with the money, I've actually been monitoring the market and testing a few of my strategies without putting my capital at risk. Most of my strategy would have been positive (which would be good considering how down the market has been in the last month) but it would not get me close to what I need to do. It was a short time frame, so that doesn't mean too much, but at the same time I know I can't do this with a full-time job on top of it.

Despite this, THE DOUBLE JOURNEY IS STILL ON. I'm not one to put out a goal and then stop before I accomplish it. I will still attempt to end up with $40,000 on Dec. 18th 2008. I'm just going to have to find a different way to do it. I'll get it partially through the market, but it is going to be a much smaller focus than it would have been otherwise. This site will have a slight change in tone. I still want to keep it up, and I still plan on blogging regularly about my progress, but in between my ideas I will focus on some other topics that hopefully you will all find more interesting. I love finance, I love talking stocks, but in the end, it can be a dry read.

The secret to a great blog, and great writing in general, is to write about what you know. If you write about something you are passionate about, and you write it well, people will come read. I'm passionate about a few things. My relationships, money, technology, basketball, and of course my job. I think I'll leave my girlfriends and friends out of it, since I'm not so sure I could tell people how I've been able to get so lucky in this department. Technology has been done in a lot of different places and I don't think I could do better than Engadget or Gizmodo. We have already been over the money idea. Tyler already has a basketball blog and will tell you it's hard to keep up. Besides, I might throw something at my screen if the Lakers keep losing and I'm writing about it. Since I just bought this computer, and I love the huge monitor I got with it, I want to avoid that situation.

That leaves me blogging about my job and my career. I actually end up talking to a lot of my friends about their job and I love to provide job advice. I've been relatively successful in this part of my life and feel I have a lot to offer in this area. Since I'm recently unemployed, and felt I had a pretty successful job search, I will start off with that and see where it goes. I think its a subject with a lot of interesting areas to explore from finding the right job, getting the offer, and dealing with headaches once you arrive. Since I and so many of my friends struggle with these issues on a daily basis, I think it would be at the very least, entertaining and informative.

Lunch at Google

Today I had lunch at what anyone with a website would consider Mecca. More appropriately, it would have to be called Mecca Northwest, since I didn't actually make it down to Mountain View. I didn't go there to learn any secrets, or to find a job, but rather to have lunch with a friend. This was the "friend" who convinced me that it was a good idea to come up to Seattle. The last few weeks, with the biting cold we have been experiencing, I've been evaluating the wisdom of this decision. More about that later.

Google seems like a pretty good place to work. Food everywhere, no doubt I would gain weight if I worked there. They even had a massage chair, which almost convinced me to hand over my resume. Too bad they don't have a place for a Microsoft Program Manager (than again who does? It's a job that seems to only exist at Microsoft).

I always enjoy talking to this friend. Whenever we talk, I walk away having learned something or having something to think about. Today, we discussed this site a little bit, but mostly in the context of trying to do something outside of work. It's obviously something I think about a lot, thus the reason for this site. I realize that it would certainly be possible to get rich doing what I do for my day job, but I'm not sure it would happen as fast as I would like or be as fun as building up something on my own. He of course commented that he would never do what I was doing (I didn't think I would either) it was certainly good that I was doing something.

Of course, I don't want to do this strictly through trading, but it is where I'm starting for now. If I can somehow make money in some other capacity, whether it being developing a widget or selling lemonade on the side of the road, I'm certainly open to do it. I'm just not sure how successful I will be selling lemonade on the side of the road in Seattle when it is 30 degrees outside.

The Markets are Not Bad!

I'm really tired of the media trying to make it out as if the market is in horrible shape. Every time I turn on CNBC, there is some expert talking about doom and gloom in the markets. Now there is no doubt that certain parts of the market are bad, particularly the financial sector. My own long-term portfolio has taken a beating since I own ETFC as well as some energy stocks which have done poorly as of late, but please stop trying to paint the market as bad. The S&P 500 is positive for the year by a few percentage points. Come talk to me when we are negative for the year. Despite what the "chicken" is saying above, the sky is not falling. The way my portfolio is structured, I've been waiting for the sky to fall, but thus far, it is still up there.

HD DVD vs. BluRay - Which will win?

This blog post is completely off topic, but I'm going to do that every once in a while just to keep things interesting.

I talk a lot about this subject with Rick, who always is raving about how great these next generation disc look on his awesome TV. I of course have stayed out of the fray because I still have my ten year old TV so it won't really matter if I pick up a next-generation player. But I follow the war with some interest only because I find these types of battles to be interesting.

As I shopped around this Black Weekend, one of the things I did look for was to see what types of deals were available for either type of player. I saw multiple places with a Toshiba HD DVD player for $199. Amazon has it for even less. I didn't see a Blu-Ray player for less than $399. There were a few of those, along with of course the PS3, which can act as a Blu Ray player itself, and at this point is the best value if you are going to go down this path.

Despite the fact that I'm a bonafide geek, I am also extremely careful with my money (wouldn't know it from what I'm doing here would you?). I am a "mainstream" consumer in the sense that I prefer to let technology come way down in price before I buy it. I generally don't see a reason to be on the cutting-edge, because the premium you pay is so much greater than the actual benefit you receive from the new technology. No doubt that these next-generation formats look great, but when I can buy a DVD player for $20, and the quality look absolutely fine, am I really going to pay 8x or 16x more money? Am I really going to repurchase an entire DVD collection I spent years building? Doubtful.

Many tout that the Blu-Ray technology is better. It might also have the better stable of movies with all the Sony and Disney pictures exclusively on Blu-Ray. But in the end, it's about price, it's always about price. I've stated my position. The first format to break the $100 mark for a widely-available player wins. At the price, people stop trying to save up for the purchase, and just go buy it. It becomes a mainstream purchase. If I have a choice between a traditional DVD player at $70 (which is what I spent on my player) or a newer technology at $100, then I would likely choose the newer one, just to future proof myself.

Anecdotally, the Circuit City I went to was sold out of their Toshiba HD DVD players, but had plenty of the Blu Ray players. Best Buy had plenty of both.

So what do you think? Have you picked sides in the war yet and why? Or are you like me, just waiting it out until someone makes it cheap enough to be worthwhile?

Black Friday - The Busiest Shopping Day of the Year?

I went out this weekend to some of the stores that really should have a lot of traffic, specifically Circuit City and Best Buy. To my surprise, it really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I usually avoid shopping this weekend if I can, but decided to at least drop by and see how bad it was. I was not going to go in if I couldn't find parking. When I got there, it was relatively easy to find parking spaces that were pretty close to the store.

I traveled to Circuit City on Friday, and while there were a number of people in the store, it wasn't the madhouse that I imagined it would be. I got there around 11:00, so I may have just avoided the crowd. I went to Best Buy today expecting a large crowd. Certainly there were a lot of people in the store, but again, parking was easy. I was going to buy a few things, they had a great deal of $25 each for Bio-Shock, and The Orange Box, but hesitated because I didn't want to wait in the line. But when I looked at where the queue should have been forming, it was pretty empty of people.

That can only mean a couple of things.

• People just aren't shopping all that much. Definitely could be the case since I believe the economy is heading in the wrong direction with housing and gas prices where they are


• People are doing more shopping online - This is true for people like myself, but I still would think people would go and look at what bargains are out there


• They are getting really good at moving people through the line.

I kind of doubt the last one. I'll be interested what they say about the weekend and how successful it was for retailers. Early results indicate that it may have been a success but I'll wait to see what they say about it Monday. I post about this because this could have significant impact on my trading strategy. If numbers look weak, the whole market is in for a downward spike and I want to be on the right side of the trade. Trick is getting in ahead of any announcement, which is going to be hard to do.

rssHugger - A review

So one of the things you have to do to make a blog popular is advertise and get other people to come visit your blog. To do that, you have to try things to raise awareness of your blog. That's where services like rssHugger come in. rssHugger describes itself as:



"rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader."

At first, they were going to charge $20 for you to be added to their network. This fee could be reduced to $10 if you were to blog about them and provide a link like I am right now. After getting some feedback from people, they decided to drop the fee if you provide a link to them. I have to admit, this is a much better idea than the original one. If they were to keep even the $10 fee, I wouldn't be writing about them now, because small up-and-coming sites like myself really have to watch where we spend our money and how we try to promote our sites. With services like Technorati and Facebook, there are many free alternatives to try out. Given that this is a new service, I'm willing to see how well it does. Since it's free, I have very little risk involved as it only will cost me a link.

Overall I think it's a decent idea. This space is kind of crowded, but now that they have dropped their fee, they at least have a chance to get some viral marketing. I tend to be the suspicious type, but if they can convince me to do it, they have a shot to convince others as well. The site is relatively well designed and I was able to find answers to my questions. The only thing I couldn't easily find was a picture I could use of theirs that I could add to my post.

Do I think this site has a chance to be successful? I'm not so sure. This is a pretty crowded space. There are lots and lots of sites right now where people go to find other interesting sites. Most of them don't focus on RSS feeds though so rssHugger might be able to carve out a niche of its own. Some problems I can see early on is that it will probably be tough to constantly send traffic to my rsshugger page (or it will be as soon as I get added) which means I likely won't be able to crack the top 100 too often. To make matters worse, if I'm up against the likes of John Chow and other large players, my site will definitely get buried. I'm interested to see how the proprietor of the website, Collin LaHay, addresses this issue. Other than that, it will be a wait-and-see approach for me. I'm not sure how much traffic a link from this site will provide to me, but if it does any good, I'm more than willing to discuss it and promote the site.

I commend him for starting something. Like Rick always likes to point out to me, it's better to do something, anything, rather than to do nothing. His goal of funding his college education is admirable, and hopefully this website will help him on that journey. We all have our Journeys, and I hope he is able to fulfill his.

New - Top Commenters

I added a new plugin to track who was commenting on this blog. I want to thank everyone who has thus far left a comment for me. Only two weeks into this little adventure, I have done better in terms of comments than I would have originally thought. Comments are like crack to bloggers. It makes it worth coming in and spending some time, often a lot of time, to come up with something interesting and worthwhile. I enjoy interacting with other people on this blog, and so I encourage everyone to try and get to the top in terms of "Top Commenters"

So to all those who have commented thus far, thanks. For all those of you who haven't commented yet, why haven't you? :)

Why This is So Hard - Some Perspective

It dawned on me that not everyone has a perspective about how hard what I'm trying to do actually is so I thought I would give some perspective to my situation.

I am aiming for a 100% return on my money in one year. If I were to do this strictly through the market, it will take a small miracle or some plain dumb luck.  In a good year, the overall market might return anywhere from 12% to 20%.  On $20,000, a GREAT return would be $4,000, leaving me $16,000 short of my goal.  Over several years, it is next to impossible to average a return this high, so in reality it would take anywhere between seven or eight years for most good stock pickers to double their money.  I'm aiming to do it in one year.  To make the situation worse, I believe the market is in for a correction.  It has been very volatile as of late, and I think it has more to go on the downside than on the upside.  This means I have to be very shrewed when it comes to picking stocks, or I have to take a lot of risk by shorting stocks, which I'm not inclined to do.

Now, I'm going to try other methods as well.  I'm hoping that somehow I can find creative ways to make money other than picking great stocks but it is going to be very hard.   That's why I started this site, to kind of get me some ideas and follow my own thoughts on what it will take to create a viable model for making money.   It's easy to do research and come up with ideas, it is much harder to actually go and do something about it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Have to do the obligatory Thanksgiving post. This one is particularly tough, because in my current situation, I have plenty to be thankful for. In no particular order.

• I have great friends who support me and read this blog


• I have a wonderful girlfriend who supports me in everything I do


• I don't have to keep a job I hate


• I have a cat that doesn't care what day it is, he always wants turkey!


• I live in a world where what I'm trying to do on this blog is even possible

Hopefully the next few weeks will give me even more to be thankful for. I have thus far not really tried to make any progress on my doubling journey. This has been on purpose because It has taken me some time to set this site up and to learn all the things I need to learn to even have a chance at doing this. The amount of information available on setting up a website and generating traffic is enormous. The only topic on the internet that might have more information is how to succeed in short-term trading! Trying to do both has been daunting but fun.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Get some turkey, watch some football, and think of ideas for me.

How to Get the First $20,000

Admittedly, I have a distinct advantage over most people when it comes to this particular challenge. Most people, probably don't have $20,000 just sitting around waiting to be doubled. So how did I come up with this money?

I did it the old-fashion way. Actually, inheriting the money is the old-fashion way. I did it the second-to-oldest-fashion way. I saved. I saved every cent I could and didn't buy things that I didn't need. My obsession with saving almost borders on the ridiculous. There were times I literally had to develop a SPENDING PLAN, so that I would loosen up the purse strings and actually spend some of my money. I earn a very good living, and I live very modestly. This has allowed me to save a tremendous amount of money over the past few years. Enough so that I could probably take five years off of work, and still be in OK shape. I wouldn't do that, because I actually like working, but it is feasible.

As Rick points out in his post about this site, I love to talk about money. I especially like to help my friends realize how important it is to save money, and not get into a cycle of constantly buying what you want whenever you want it. Through hard work and discipline you can get to a point where you can either quit your job or start a crazy idea like trying to double your money. If you are lucky, you can do both :) I have gotten to the point where I have zero debt of any sort. I don't have any credit card debt, student loans, or car payments. Since I don't own a home, I don't have a mortgage. It is times like this, when I don't have any income, that it really pays off.

I can't talk about saving money without posting my all-time favorite SNL skit on the subject, Don't Buy Stuff You Can Not Afford. I laugh every time I see it. The sad thing is, there are lots of people just like this couple.

Steve Martin says it best when he ask, "I think I got it. I buy something I want, and then hope I can pay for it, right?" You would be surprised how many times I have had a conversation with someone just like this.

Link Love

I had someone ask me if it was OK to link to my site. The simple answer is Yes!

I could use all the link love I can get right now. It's hard when you are first starting out a website because you can feel kind of alone out here sometimes. That's why the comments are always appreciated, and the links back to my site are always welcome. If I really wanted to keep this a secret, I wouldn't put it out on the web for the world to see. In fact, the very point of me starting up a website and blogging about it is to solicit others feedback, and get ideas on what to do next. The more ideas and comments that come my way the better. So please, publicize my website. Talk and link all you want. And of course, please keep the comments coming :)

As I wrote this post, I started thinking about how I could encourage people to link to this site and to leave comments behind. One easy way would be to run a contest. I need to think about this a little bit more and fully develop the idea, but you can be sure it will be coming soon. If you want to get a head start though, please link to my site, or leave some comments. I'll count any link or comment now toward that contest :)

Anyone else have any bright ideas on how best to increase traffic and participation?

Etrade - Take 2

Etrade is back down another 20%. It is now where it was when it originally did it's swoon. Back then, I said I would have gotten in because the stock would bounce? Would I get back on now? Not a chance.

There were technical reasons to get in before. the chances for a quick rebound were pretty high. But at this point, you should probably stay away from this stock. The volatility is unbelievable, and nobody knows where it will be going. The original bounce was predictable, as many shorts were going to run for cover and people were going to think it was overdone. Tim Sykes, who coincidentally is doing something similar to myself, named Etrade one of his "unpicks". Right here, I absolutely agree with him. If you think the mortgage problems are overblown and Etrade will stay in business, I still would wait at this point until the stock finds a base and trades much more normally. Right now, as a trade, Etrade is scary and everybody should stay away from it.

Save the Kitty!

If it so inclines you, feel free to donate any money toward my cause. I'm not sure how effective it will be to try and raise money this way, but I suppose every little bit counts.

I'm not opposed to either begging or manipulation. Like I said, anything that is legal is fair game. To that end, if it helps persuade you, here is a picture of my cat. Your donations will help pay for his very expensive food (he is on a strict diet because he has some health conditions). Remember, I'm out of work, so your donation can help put food pellets in this poor cat's bowl. You can see just how hungry he is because he is searching in my shoe, which believe me doesn't smell all that great, for some food.





Do you really want this cat to go hungry? Do you realize by not giving money, you are killing this cat? You can help save this cat by clicking the "donate" button in the right column. or by clicking this button:

Made My First $0.01 with Adsense Today

So one of the things I definitely plan on doing to help me double this money is to put advertising on this blog. Hopefully that will help close the gap between what I can realistically make and my goals.  Some people, like John Chow, are able to make several thousand dollars a month just in advertising.  I'm not so ambitious as that, but I do hope I can somehow make a little bit of money in this manner.

So to test some stuff out, and because I have more traffic there, I put up my first ad today using Google's Adsense on my other blog .   I won't give a day to day account about what happens, but today I earned my very first cent, and it was exactly one cent.  So if I can just put together a few more days like this, I will be about $4.00 closer to my goal of $20,000 by the end of this journey next year.  Hey that's 0.02%.  Just need to find out how to make the other 99.98% now.

Ugly Day in the Markets

Wow, the last few days in the market have not been kind.  Today my regular portfolio took a hit of about 2%.  Over the last month, I've lost several dollars in the market.  Lucky for me, I haven't quite jumped into the market yet with this money, but that should soon change as I plan to start trading sometime late next week or the week after that.  With as ugly as the markets have been doing, I may have to do something I normally don't do, which is short stocks.

When you short a stock, you basically are betting that the price will go lower.  However, there is unlimited loss potential.  When you buy a stock, it can only go to zero.  When you short a stock, it could in theory go to infinity.  When you short, you have to watch the stock closely, and be ready to close your position at any time.  I'm not in front of my computer at all times (although at times it feels like I am), nor do I plan to be.  There are other strategies I could employ in a bear market, and I may just have to do that, but I'll have to be a little creative.

About Me

Most of the people reading this blog right now know who I am. But over time, that will probably change. So to those who don't know me let me tell you a little something about myself.

I'm a twenty-nine year old, Asian-American, male. I live in Seattle but was born and raised in sunny Southern California. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in Valencia, home of the orange and of course Magic Mountain. I ended up going to an Ivy League school, where I spent four years studying about supply-and-demand and how to traverse a binary tree. I ended up in NYC after college, working for a consulting firm, but decided it wasn't for me (the city and the job) . So I packed it up and went back to Southern California.

I took a job as a programmer for a small little outfit. It was some of the best times of my life and I met lots of friends who I still have today (and are probably reading this blog). Unfortunately, that little project failed, and they laid off most of the company. I however remained behind, and even got a significant promotion to boot. I stayed on for several more years, and even though I was one of the last people hired on that original project, I was the very last person to leave (the second to last person beat me out by a couple of days).

One of the people I met at that company convinced me it was a good idea to go work at another small software company. I had some good experiences there and learned a lot. One of the things I learned was that I didn't want to work there, and so I quit. I am now unemployed and working on this blog. I went from a six-figure salary, to this. Earning exactly ZERO. I have no real expertise to do what I'm trying to do here. I am nothing more than an amateur stock picker and a tech geek, so this is as new to me as it is to you.

That's me in a nutshell. But if you want some more random information here it is:

• I have one brother and one sister, I'm the youngest.


• I am in a relationship of over two years with a girl I met on E-harmony (it works!)


• I love eating Sushi, even though I hated the thought of it until I was 24 years old.


• I have a cat which I found on my porch one night. I am very allergic to him.


• I love playing basketball, and am I devout Laker fan.


• I'm right handed, but can only palm a basketball with my left hand.

Opportunity to Learn

One of the things I like most about this little project of mine, is that it has given me a really good opportunity to learn a host of new things. It's something I am realizing I don't get a chance to do a whole lot in my life. That may sound odd coming from someone who is a knowledge worker. But ever since I stopped being a developer, and switched to a program manager, the need to actually learn something academic doesn't usually come by. As a programmer, you have to learn a new language, programming technique, or algorithm every so often. A program manager on the other hand deals predominantly in soft skills. You learn things, but you don't study things out of a book.

I have been surprisingly busy since I have started this. Much more than someone who is unemployed really should be. I can't find much free time between looking for a new job and starting up this project. Most of that time, has been spent learning two things, how to make a successful website, and how to actually trade when your time horizon is one year. I'm learning things like how people try to set up their websites to try and earn money off of advertising, to how to read a candlestick chart. Not everything I come across is useful, but it is usually interesting.

What I hope to get out of this, besides another $20,000 in my bank account, is to learn something I wouldn't have otherwise. I find that this project is really stretching me in ways I would have never done on my own. I would have never bothered to learn how to try and best position for a trade that might last a day rather than years. I would never had tried to learn what's the best way to drive traffic to a website. So at worse, I'll lose it all, but will hopefully learn something pretty valuable along the way.

Patience

So one of the things that this project has done for me is make me really eager to go do something, anything. I feel like rushing head first into the fray and doing all sorts of crazy things just to get started. This is in direct contrast to my normal style of taking things slow and to really get a lay of the land before doing anything. Not sure if this eagerness is either a good thing yet or a bad thing yet.

I'll be quiet for the day. It's 4:30 a.m. and I'm headed to L.A. for the day. Going to fly down and head right back up to go look into having a day job to support this crazy plan. One of the nice things about it is that I should have plenty of time to catch up on some reading. Mostly reading about some trading strategies that are unfamiliar to me since what I'll be doing is unlike anything I've attempted to do in the past. Wish me luck!

Buffet Buys Stake in Carmax

This is somewhat off-topic because I believe this to be a good long-term investment, and not appropriate for the goals of this blog.

It was disclosed yesterday that Buffet took a stake in the used car dealer Car Max. It's funny that he would do this, because I've thought long and hard about investing in them myself and I consider myself to be more of the Warren Buffet school of investing, slow and steady wins the race. The stock was near its 52 week low after a pretty decent run up in 2006. I liked their business model, and even told my friend Mona to check them out when she was in the market for a used car. However, the stock was punished after they announced they reduced their forecast.

Used cars have generally been the domain of sketchy used-car lots and individual sales. Carmax is changing that and making a business of having a national brand. I believe they can succeed because it's a niche I believe somebody needs to fill. People feel safe when they buy a known brand. That's why McDonald's and Starbucks is so successful, despite the fact that there is almost always a better local alternative. For a business that people distrust as much as used-car sales, having a recognizable brand will help to alleviate some of those fears. With only 86 stores in 39 markets, they still have lots of room to grow.

Again, I am not going to invest in them for this blog, but I may take a position in my long-term portfolio. This is a multi-year play. I don't buy everything Buffet does, but when he and I have the same idea, I use it as an additional data point. I might hold out a little bit longer. I've avoided almost all things consumer related, as I have believed for quite some time that we would hit a recession soon. Car purchases, even used-car purchases, will be affected if this happens. However, this is still a bearish call on the economy, which I have, so I might look into buying in soon.

The Hardest Part of the Journey

So I think I discovered what the hardest part of this journey will be. If I plan to trade my way to this double (which is only partially true), I have to get up with the market. Since the market in the U.S. starts at 6:30 a.m PST, I have decided to drag my lazy self out of bed at the same time. Do I honestly think I can consistently do this. Doubtful.

Remember, I come from the software engineering world. In that world, the day starts at 9:00 a.m. and that's if you are an early-bird. I use to show up at my job at MS at 8:45 most days, and I would easily be the first in the office. I was lucky to see most developers by 10:00.

So I attempted to get up at 6:30 today. But as if the fates were conspiring against me, the electricty for my block, and only my block, was out this morning. No lights, no alarm clock, no internet access. I'm actually writing this post from the local library. Now that's dedication.

Missed Opportunity - E*Trade

So one of the things I was thinking about doing was to buy some shares of E*Trade. I actually own shares in my regular portfolio, and have been getting KILLED lately. The stock has probably lost about 80% of it's value over the last year or so. So why the heck would I want to continue with the pain?

Friday, a Citibank analyst came out and declared that there was a chance that E*Trade would have to file for bankruptcy because it had several bad loans, many tied to the subprime mess. The stock instantly went down 60% from its already low price. Now, It's not that I don't believe they are in a mess, but I thought the selling was a bit overdone. This blogger seems to agree with me. I was contemplating taking another, short-term position in the company, and wait for a dead-cat bounce. For those that aren't that involved with stocks, you should think of this phenomenon as something that happens when a stock gets pummeled in a very short time. It tends to "bounce" back as people cover their short position (they sold the stock without owning it, and have to buy back shares, hopefully at a much lower price, to pay it back). I wanted to get a few percentage points and then get out, and I would have sold if the stock dipped another 7% or the very next day, whichever came first.

But I'm not quite set up to do this yet. I'm holding off trading stocks for another week or two. If I had taken a position in E*trade at $3.70, which I was planning on doing, and held on to it until right now (which I would sell) I would have made a tidy profit of almost 50%. I would have taken a position of $5,000, so that would have given me $2500 toward my goal. Oh well, it could have easily gone the other way.

How I Got This Idea

Feeling kind of nauseous all day yesterday and today. Not sure why, perhaps a stomach flu, perhaps the thought of losing $20,000 is getting to me. So this post isn't going to be too long.

Really quick, wanted to touch on what gave me this crazy idea. I have a friend, his name is Rick, and we worked together when I was employed by the Evil Empire. He produces a Free Photoshop alternative called Paint.NET. If you know Rick, you know he talks about it all the time. And one of the things he loves to talk about is how he can actually make money off a program he gives away for free or how he can actually increase the amount of money he can make by doing X, Y, or Z. Thanks to people like Google and Ad Sense, this has become a real viable alternative. And then there are people like John Chow, and a host of other people who make money off of just blogging. It's crazy but it's true.

So Rick likes to bug me to go start up my own website. I had been reluctant to go do it because I honestly did not have a lot of free time to work on it. But all that changed about a month ago when I decided to quit my job. Now I have too much free time so needed some sort of creative outlet. So about two weeks ago, I said what the hell. I didn't want to just start some random blog, I wanted it to have a purpose and something that people might actually want to read about. So I came up with DoubleJourney. A nice simple idea that is easy to understand and hopefully interesting to follow.

Got to go rest right now. I've been trying to start some books I have on trading stocks, but haven't felt up to actually reading any of them yet. Hopefully, with a little more rest, I can make some progress.

The Goal

So what is this crazy thing I'm going to do? Like I have said, I'm going to take $20,000 and try and make it $40,000. I'm going to do this all in the span of one year. For the sake of total accuracy, I plan on doing this over 400 days. Why 400 days and not exactly one year? I'm doing this for two reasons. First, I need about a month to set some stuff up anyway and collect my thoughts. Also 400 days means I have to average a nice round $50 a day to meet my goal.

That gives me a deadline of December 18, 2008.

At this point, I'm not sure how I'm going to go about this. That is part of the fun of writing this blog. My initial idea is to venture into something I know about, and that's the stock market. Getting a double in the market in only one year is hard, very hard. It means I'm probably going to have to take some risk that I normally wouldn't. Then again, I haven't been doing so great in the market lately so maybe having a completely different strategy will do me some good. Hopefully, if this blog ever becomes popular enough, I'll be able to monetize it somehow. So if you want to help me, make sure you come back and read often.

Now to lay down some ground rules.

1. Everything I do must be legal - kind of a no-brainer, but worth calling out explicitly


2. If it's legal and ethical, it's fair game - No matter how crazy or stupid something might sound, if it will get me closer to my goal, I'll look into it


3. To count toward the goal, it must be the money doing the work, not me directly - That is, I can't count anything I do at my day job toward my goal. It wouldn't be any fun if I went out and "earned" the money.


4. I have to count any and all expenses I incur along the way against my goal - For example, I had to pay for my domain name and web space for this site. That means I'm already almost $100 in the hole.


5. My living expenses don't count - If I had to count paying my rent against my goal, I'm not sure I would ever make it out of the hole. So for this experiment, living expenses are not deducted.

If anyone has a brilliant idea, I'm all ears.  At this point, I'm prepared to lose the entire $20,000, so if you have any idea, no matter how crazy, feel free to suggest it.

The Beginning

The answer is $20,000.

It is the question that is more interesting.

One of the things I constantly found myself talking about with my friends is “that idea”. You know what I’m talking about. It's the idea that is going to make it big for you. It's that idea that is going to eventually free you from your 9-5 job. But the problem for me was that most of it was always just talking. Even the talking wasn't all that useful, because in the end, my friends and I would come to conclusion that we had no ideas. So rather than sit and just talk about it, I decided to do something about it. This site is dedicated to that journey.

Over the course of the next year, I’m going to take $20,000 and try to make it into $40,000. At this point, you and I are in the exact same boat.  I have no idea how I'm going to do it.  So why blog about it?  For one thing, I need to start somewhere and this is it.  I hope that by sharing my journey, we can all learn a little something and have some fun along the way.  By making this a very public activity, I hope it brings some accountability to it and to myself.  I encourage everyone to participate, whether it be giving me ideas, commenting how crazy I am, or just silently coming along for the ride.

So if you have ever felt like you should be doing something else other than what you are doing now, or are just curious how I do, I invite you along for the ride as I try to answer the question, "Just how did Terrence get started?"