3rd Quarter Dividend Update

My portfolio is not much when compared to a lot of the other bloggers I read.  Sometimes I get depressed thinking about how in the same amount of time people have made much greater strides than I have.  But my stache is my stache and I'm going to keep building it up.  If it takes me twice as long as the next guy so be it.  I'll still be ahead of 99% of people.

Almost all of my holdings pay out at the end of the quarter so rather than doing monthly updates (of nothing) I've been doing quarterly updates.  Here is how I finished the 3rd quarter.

AAPL:  $5.30
INTC:  $8.55
JNJ:  $9.32
MCD:  $16.18
PEP:  $8.23
KO:  $7.67
VNQ:  $7.41
VFINX:  $15.77
VBINX:  $14.76
VGSIX:  $22.01

Total:  $115.20

And my dividends for the 1st and 2nd quarter:

1st Quarter:  $44.17
2nd Quarter:  $71.90

1st-3rd Quarter Total:  $231.27

What I can brag about is the percentage increase in quarter over quarter growth!  My 2nd quarter dividends where 63% higher than my 1st quarter, and 3rd quarter was 60% higher than my 2nd quarter (thanks for checking my math fifighter).  That's quite a jump!  Sure this kind of growth won't be sustainable forever (oh if only!) but it keeps me motivated.

It's All Down Hill From Here

When I first came to Japan I was pretty heavily in debt.  I don't think I was any worse off than any of the other teachers around me were, but I I was the only person I know who treated my debt like an emergency.  I was probably about $40,000ish in debt and making about $2,500 a month.  The exchange rate wasn't so kind back then as the yen was trading about 117 yen to the dollar.  Not nice.

I did my best however saving up about 1/3 or each paycheck to send back when the exchange rate seemed to move my way.  It was tough but slowly the stars came into alignment.  2008 hit the US economy hard and the exchange rate opened up like a flood gate.  I continued to send back money and use it to pay off my debts.  I wasn't fully dedicated to the mustachian lifestyle yet so I was also spending on vacations, and gadgets.

One day in late December however I made my last payment on my student loans and that cleared all of my debt.  If felt really good.  The journey of climbing out of a pit of debt was not fun.

So what then?  Well actually the really fun part started.  Instead of using my money to pay interest and loans I now get to use my money to make me more money!

"But you still don't have that money!  It's locked away in some company!  It's just like when you were paying down your debts!"  Say the spenders.

I don't agree with that.  Sure the money that I put into investments every month is somewhat locked away but psychologically it is so much easier for me to put $2,000 a month into in investment that pays me dividends and will possibly go up 10%, 20%, or even 1000%.  I'd come to the top of the mountain and the ride is all down hill from here.  

My goal for this year is to invest $24,000.  I'm at about $17,000 so far and should be able to hit my goal by December.

The other part about investing is that it seems so much easier than paying down debt.  Although the processes are somewhat similar:  make some capital, transfer it to another entity.  But with my investments I really WANT to put my money in.  Of course with debt you HAVE to put your money in (or you don't pay it and well...)

I'm surprised it took me 4 years to pay off $40,000 when in less than a year I have built up almost half of that.  It's all about motivation and it's much easier to have on the down hill part of the journey.

Quick Bike and Blog update

I've been busy with work lately, but we all got Monday off in lieu of having to work on Saturday and Sunday for the school festival.  I had a great time and can't wait till next year when we move to a brand new school.

Okay, let's take care of some business.  Of the 21 days that I worked last month I biked 17 of them.  The other days I took my GF's train pass, which is paid for by her company, so I could take some rest days.  I put over 400km on my bike already and I feel great.  As I stated before I feel tired at night and get good sleep.  When I wake up biking is not exactly the first thing I want to do, but when I get to school I feel awake and ready to attack the day.  The weather is also starting to cool down which is nice.

As for the blog I was informed by a very nice reader (Mr. Collins of http://jlcollinsnh.wordpress.com/ fame) that when he tried to leave a comment on my blog he had to deal with some Japanese.  The Japanese language is a puzzle to me that I am constantly trying to untangle and the best way I have found is to surround myself with the pieces of that puzzle.  So my iPhone, computer, video games, TV, etc. are all set to Japanese language.  I did the same with this blog as well.  I see now that it might be creating some difficulty for my readers who might not be trying to put together the same puzzle as I am.  For that reason I changed the language of this blog to English.  It makes sense to me that if I were writing in Japanese I should have the blog in Japanese, and if I'm writing it in English it should be in English.  Don't know why I never thought of that.

All for now.

Bike Update

Great friend!

School started back up on September 3rd, and it’s now the 14^th.  That means I’ve been riding my bike for two weeks now.  According to my Runkeeper activity I’ve put down over 210KM already!  That’s not too bad and it actually doesn’t include today’s activity which would put it over 230KM.

Not too bad for only two weeks.

My body is getting used to the ride now.  My general climb is about 144 meters but about 24 of those meters come in the form of a huge hill at the end.  My legs burn after the climb but so far I have never had to get off the bike and walk up.  Thank goodness for lots of gears!

I few things that I need to do something about.  My hands really hurt at first but it turns out that I was gripping the handlebar really tightly so I have loosened up on that.  Some of it I think was just a break in period for my body.  However to shift my front derailleur is quite difficult and has been straining my left hand.  This might also be a break in period for my body but I’ve noticed my fingers will ache if I have to shift a lot.  I need to look into this and adjust my front derailleur.

Perhaps the most important thing is how much is this bike saving me?  After all the whole point of importing this thing was of course health, but also to free up extra capital.  Well so far I’m in the red.  The bike was about $1,000 US and I probably spent another $400 between lock, pedals, tools, lights, mini bike pump, bike stand, and new breaks (I killed the Avid 6 breaks in a crash).  I’m also budgeting about ¥10,000 (about $130 ) a month for bike necessities as they come up.  I still need to get a proper pump that will measure PSI, a light bag for the front to hold all of my tools, flight tire repair kit, proper eye protection (sunglasses at night aren’t working), and further down the line racks and panniers.  I’m guessing when all is said and done I’ll probably be in hole about $1,800~$2,000.

Where I am at so far

 But my first windfall should be coming next month.  October will mark the half way point in the school year and be the next payout of my transportation expense.  It generally runs about ¥30,000 which at today’s exchange rate is about $350 US.  That’s about a 20% return on my investment so far!  It will get better next April when I move schools and my transportation expense will go up to about ¥80,000 or about $1,000.  That should not only pay for the bike and accessories but any money after that will be mine all mine!

Yes it is!

So in short a good year or so of biking should net me a free Kona Jake the Snake plus all of the goodies I need to keep it in repair.  It has also given me health, and a new energy that I didn’t know I still had.  I am tired at night and actually sleep.  I don’t worry so much about what I eat anymore as I am burning an extra 700 calories a day so those two beers at night are guilt free.  If I skip the beers I get the pleasure of knowing I am leading a better life than 95% of people (well 95% of people in the states anyway.  Maybe only 80% of people in Japan).  I’ve seen more of Yokohama in the last two weeks than I did in the last year.  If another earthquake occurs and I am at school I know how to get home (the trains will stop in an earthquake).  The benefits of my bike truly knows no bounds.

Selling My Childhood

Not my collection but very similar

Like most children in America in the 80’s I was born into a culture of collecting and hording.  My brother and I had countless He-Man, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Gi-Joe action figures (they aren’t dolls!).  Of course we took them out of the box and played with them but never the less the idea of having more characters and more playsets was deeply ingrained.  After I got a bit older it become about videogames, and then I added comic books, and eventually I even went back to action figures, in particular Spawn figures, but this time I kept them all in the box.  I figured one day my collection would be worth millions of dollars and that I would be able to retire on it alone.

I’m older now.  Not so much wiser, but maybe more realistic.  After discovering MMM, and truly realizing that material possessions are not what brings me happiness I made a big decision.  I was going to liquidate my collection during my trip to the states.

Selling this stuff was so serious that I actually didn’t tell any of my friends that I was coming back to visit.  I wanted to have total focus on completing this task as I knew it was going to be a huge undertaking.

This was actually somewhat of a bone of contention with my family.  When I told them I was going to sell all of my old videogames, old consoles, old action figures, and just some of the junk I had taking up space at my parent’s place they were taken aback.  “You spent so much time and money collecting those!”  “They are part of your childhood memories!”  I was told.  But the truth of the matter is my collections weren’t memories.  They were things.  The memories of my childhood are mine forever.  I cannot sell them nor would I ever want to.  But the plastic things taking up space, well, that is real money sitting on the table.  It could be making me 6-10% per year instead of sitting there gathering dust.  I later realized too that several of my family members had similar collections and that by me selling mine it was in a roundabout way taken as criticism when I told them my collection itself had no meaning.  

I had changed my view on collecting things and wanted to take this opportunity to re-coup what I could and put it towards something more meaningful.  Either by investing the capital I received or purchasing a new bike that would make me thousands of dollars per year.

So how did I do it?  I basically followed these steps.

1.  Inventory.  I had to take a look at everything that I had held onto over the years and write it down.  This meant breaking into every box that had been sitting in my parent’s garage for almost 5 years.  I had to unpack all my Spawn figures.  I had to gather all the cables for my old Sega Genesis, SegaCD, 32X behemoth and make sure all the games still worked.  It meant keeping a spreadsheet of all the things that I wanted to get rid of.  This was a lengthy, dusty, dirty, time consuming process that took me about two days of full time work to do accurately.  Depending on how much stuff you have it could take more or less.

Taking inventory

2.  Choose.  After I had everything inventoried I had to choose what really is going and what really is staying.  I did hold onto a few things that I knew were rare and have gone up in value.  I own a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn.  Cost me about $50 new and now goes on ebay for about $200 (and because Sega lost the source code there is a good chance this game will never be re-released as a virtual console or downloadable title).  I kept my old Lunar games as they really did have a special place and again had actually gained value.  I kept most of my comic collection as I really do enjoy reading them.  In the end out of the twenty or thirty boxes I went through only about three boxes worth of stuff was special enough for me to keep.  

Worth quite a bit on eBay

3.  Separate.  For a lot of people I think this is where they start to have a problem.  I had so much stuff that if I tried to sell it all separately it would have taken me six months of full time work.  So instead I had to make sets.  I sold all of the Sega games with the consoles as a set.  All the Dreamcast games went as a set.  I managed to get in contact with the comic book store I bought most of my comics from and sold them ALL eight five of my Spawn figures as one big set.  It felt great to separate all of my stuff into about 15 different piles and know that it was all or nothing.  Either you were buying all four seasons of Futurama or none at all.

4.  Where.  Now that I knew what I was going to sell I had to choose where.  Originally I wanted to do everything on Craigslist but I quickly discovered that my market was too small.  I shifted over to eBay.  I wanted to avoid fees by using Craigslist but almost more important than the money was just getting rid of this stuff.  And as it turns out I got more than I thought I would going to eBay.

5.  Assign a price.  This took some research and actually I was surprised that a lot of my stuff when sold in big sets I could get quite a bit of money.  The Sega consoles and games I was going to sell for $40 I ended up getting almost three times that on eBay.  My Gameboy Advance games sold for a lot more than I had thought I could get for them on Craigslist.  I put together a set of Final Fantasy stuff including games, art books, models, etc. and got almost four times on eBay than what I thought I could get on Craiglist.

My beloved Sega Genesis/CD/32X combo

6.  Profit!  I was surprised how quickly a lot of my stuff sold.  I downloaded an eBay app for my iPhone and it seemed every day it would ding two or three times with more stuff I had sold.  The adventure didn’t end there.  I still had to package up and ship everything.

7.  Shipping.  I learned a lot about shipping.  Don’t ship GameBoy Advance games in bubble mailers.  Don’t wrap big boxes in paper and then just write the shipping info (if the paper gets torn then the post office suddenly just has a box).  I shipped most of my auction parcel post to cut down on shipping.

8.  Stay in contact.  Thanking and keeping contact with my customers was very important.  Some people bought two or even three of my auctions.  I did have some grumpy customers which was just as much my fault as it was theirs.  

That was the basic path that I followed and ended up with about $1400 dollars in my pocket.  I mentioned earlier that I was going to use it either to invest or buy a bike and I went with the latter.  I am now the owner of a brand new Kona Jake the Snake.  It’s light, strong, and hella fast.  I really enjoy coming into work on it!  I keep track of all my progress on RunKeeper.  Join my street team!

My new ride!

In the end I never once felt like by selling the toys of my youth was I betraying my childhood self.  To do so would be silly.  The toys I had didn’t make the memories I hold now.  It was me myself that made them.  Perhaps a toy could trigger a long lost memory and I think that many people hold onto their collections just for that reason.  They revisit it every year or so and remember the “good ole times.”  But for me those times don’t end.  In fact by selling this stuff I am looking forward to a new set of good ole times where I get to be a kid again.  I think the child in any of us would agree that that’s a good thing.

Bike Beats Car

Looking at my expenses for the last few months I've noticed a steady and scary rise in what I've been spending. Some of this is was somewhat unavoidable. For example I was on vacation to the USA and although I spent most nights with family or friends a stay at a hotel was sometimes necessary. I also had major car problems that ended up costing an arm and a leg. Another great reason to not own a car and just another time that I have been let down by and completely embarrassed by a car.

So I should do something about it and I have. While at home I bought a new bike and have brought it back with me to Japan. I picked up a Kona "Jake the Snake" This model and brand came very highly recommended from a friend who was using the same bike for years in Japan. It's light, good looking, and exactly what I want. I can, and have, been learning how to adjust everything on it from the brakes and shifters, to the positioning of the handle bars and seat.

I like this because now I am in control. WIth a car and it's various parts you really have to know what your doing. I understand the basic concept of how a car works but when it comes to actually digging in an fixing it I'm at the mercy of a mechanic. My mechanic is my family which you might think would make me favor a car, but it doesn't. Although my family are huge car nuts they can't be with me all the time and are especially not with me when I have a break down. So far every year that I have traveled back to the states I have had one major break down with my car. In fact I actually have anxiety over driving as it's no longer a matter of "if" just "when" I am going to have car problems.

In Japan, as I've stated before, I don't need a car. I absolutely love that fact. It's such a weight off of your shoulders to not have to worry about if your car will make it. The train runs 99% on time and can take me wherever I want to go. In fact I am typing this now from a location in rural Japan that I arrived at via bus and train. It's great and in the long run costs me less than gas, insurance, parking, upkeep, and the stress of wondering which highway I'll be broken down on.

So where does the bike come in? Well, although I'm a pretty healthy guy, eating right and getting exercise, I think I can do more. And in doing more I can make save and invest more money. As I've mentioned here in Japan most employers will pay for your train pass for you to come to work. This is a great benefit but at the end of the day I still end up at zero. They pay me $600 for a six month train pass and then I spend $600 on a six month train pass. I suppose I do end up a bit on top as I don't have the stress of a car. But what if instead I rode my bike to work? Now I can pocket the $600 and get more exercise. This will increase my health and hopefully decrease my health care costs in the future.

Other benefits and money saving effects would be on taking trips. My girlfriend also bought a bike and we plan on using them on the weekends to go to the beach and on long weekends to take extended tours. My dream is next summer to not travel outside of Japan at all and instead take at two to three week tour around Japan. I've lived here for almost five years and leave almost every summer. So the bikes get us out more (health, exercise) and we don't have to pay for the transport (saving money). This bike thing is starting to look good from almost every angle!

We did buy pretty expensive bikes (mine was about $1000 new and my GF bought a nice used bike for about $740) but I want these to be the last bikes we have to buy. Sure it's a lot up front but if I can bike to work everyday for two years not only does the bike pay for itself but it also nets me a nice little bonus! That's money I'll put towards investing and hopefully buying my freedom just that much sooner.

I'd like to keep track of how far I've traveled via "Run Keeper" but it will depend on another project I'm working on to reduce my cell phone bill.

Happy biking everyone!

At The Airport In Korea

My four week vacation to the states has come to an end and that means back to Japan and life as usual. Which includes time for blogging.

This was my first experience in North America with my new found mustachian ways. My trip opened my eyes (or rather brought back from memory) the strong current of consumerism the runs so rampantly through North America (yep I'm looking at you too Vancouver BC). Transportation, shelter, health, entertainment is all ingrained in spending money. It's not an easy stream to cross once you've been caught up in it.

But that doesn't mean I didn't try. For example the last few years when I came back to visit I always reactivated my cell phone so that I would have it to contact my buddies, family, and of course emergencies. On this trip however I decided to go without. I did this for a few reasons. The first, obviously, was money. To reactivate and use my cellphone costs me capital which I would rather invest. Also my girlfriend and I often travel between the US and Canada and have used the phone while roaming. This can really jack up the bill. Previous years saw me shelling out about $100 plus for just a voice plan and roaming.

Another reason was I wanted to see just how difficult it would be to rely on things like free wi-fi at shops, restaurants, and hotels. I have an iPhone 4 in Japan and can still use it in the states when I can find wi-fi. Free wi-fi hotspots are more prevalent in the USA and Canada than Japan. With email, Facebook, and iMessage, and Skype I'm just about covered for all my friends that I need to contact (not just in the USA but ALL my friends ALL over the world). I just let them know ahead of time that I don't have a phone but would contact them in one of those previously listed ways.

So how did it work? Well at my parents place where I spent most of my days I was able to contact my friends, family, and my girlfriend in Canada for absolutely no money. Even when I ventured into my little town I quickly found the shops or restaurants that offered free wi-fi. I would generally just connect send out my message and be on my way. I didn't really feel guilty about this one bit. Their huge bill boards and shop signs expose me to the advertising so I figure I'd expose my phone to their free wi-fi. If I really had to make a call I would use Skype which cost about 2 cents a minute. I'll admit the Skype was iffy at times but I wasn't relaying life or death medical procedures I was usually scheduling a meeting with someone (which is content for a different blog post).

Even in emergencies this worked out. For example, on our way out of Canada to the US the alternator on my sweet ass right hand drive Honda Prelude went out. I know, I know. Not so sweet. But we were just a block from a Holiday Inn and the nice guy manning the counter there let me connect to the hotels wi-fi to contact my parents and strategize a plan of action (THANKS JASON!)

Now the car was a whole other emergency (and a topic for a whole other blog post) but my point is is that I was able to find communication with just a little bit of leg work. I'm not saying people should absolutely go without cell phones. But do you really need that bloated voice and data plan?

In the service of full disclosure I did keep my cellphone with me and charged so I could dial 911, or if I really needed it I could dial 611 and reactivate it. So it's not like I was totally out on a ledge without a twig to stand on. But my point is is if you learn where the free wi-fi spots are (libraries, coffee shops, hotels, your friends house, etc.) you could probably make it without a plan at all (assuming you have a smartphone that connects to wi-fi). It's also not all that bad as I couldn't text and drive or talk on the phone in the car. Plus it felt good to put some distance between me and the internet.

This is the kind of unconventional thinking that can save you thousands of dollars over the years and I didn't really feel a drop in security or ability to connect with my friends. Maybe it won't work for everybody but I'm now challenging myself to find situations like this in my life and find a more unconventional solution. What about you?