Archive for the ‘Finance’ Category

My Wowing Cruise Vacation & Lessons Learned

April 11th, 2008 Vijaianand

I was soaking under the sun in the western Caribbean beach last week same time but now I am working hard to make some money. I know its back to reality time. This post is to brag about my 5 day cruise vacation and few lessons I learned.







If anybody like to know, How was the cruise? My answer – “What a WOWING experience to be on the Fun Ship?”


Life Mantra

As many of you know, my life Mantra, “Earn IT, Manage IT, Enjoy IT and Help IT” which I pretty much tend to follow. I truly believe enjoyment should be a part of your life and last of your life. If you only earn and forget or postpone to enjoy at the last min or last years. You have lost so many good years in your life to enjoy and have fun. I strongly disagree with people who say, you are in your prime years. So its time to make money now when you are good and you shouldn’t think about enjoying. That’s truly bad idea.


You can only enjoy certain things on certain age. When you are old, you might not have the guts to enjoy and adventure exciting things. Time is precious and you can’t never earn it back. So I strongly recommend, spice up your life with enjoyment and fun activities now and then. It will sure to recharge your batteries which helps to start back fresh.



Snapshot of Cruise Experience


I just assumed, I had short term memory loss and forgot all about my work, money and all other worries comes with it as soon I jumped on the new mini-world. The Ship in itself is like a own world out on the Sea. I would say “FUN WORLD ON THE SEA“. It has everything, I mean everything including people who just want to have fun and be happy. I also could literally see people from all over the world who can be categorized into 2 classes. One class working hard round the clock to make the other class happy. You name a third world country and I can a see a person mostly likely the cruise worker on the ship.


This is my first ever cruise in my life. We had so much fun on the ship and as well as on the shore excursions we did ourself. It was my first ever real vacation since so many year. It’s been long due and just get to do it.

I left for 5 days cruise from Galveston with my wife and 2 year old son Ashwin. We had good time together both in the cruise and visit to islands Cozumel and Progresso. We did some risky and adventures rides like jet skiing, kayaking with my 2 year old son. Days on the ship were fun with fun filled activities like playing Bingo(I even won $150 tasting the essence of my luck), doing my DRUMS in the Talent show in front of 1000 people and getting standing ovation and much more..



We felt 5 days is right period not too short and not too long. Except some toddler acts by my son now and then, we all some good family time together.



I strongly recommend everyone of you to consider going on a cruise at least once in your lifetime. I know I have seen people cruising for 10th times but that’s crazy. Like me, many think it’s expensive. For 5 days lodging, boarding, fun packed events, we only paid $400. Is that expensive when you think of going on 5 day vacation of Disney land? Not at all. Dec – April is a good time with less heat and less money on the cruise. During summer time it gets expensive. I have lot to talk about my cruise which I am planning to put another site for it.

One more thing, I don’t want to leave an impression that I did this cruise suddenly. No, It’s all well planned in advance. I put money aside for this trip in a short term savings. When I was financially ready, I made my plans. I shopped around for good deals. I made advance bookings to save money and made my plans for things to do. If you plan ahead, you can save money at same time have great fun.


Lesson Learned



During this short fun packed period, life did teach me some good lessons.



1. Don’t plan for full pledged Romantic/Family Cruise with a Toddler. It’s adds little more stress. But you can still have fun, just a little less if you take it slow and go with the flow.


2. In the cruise, when I first tried BINGO I never had intension to win but I won $150. I just played for the sake of playing it. But after that, I always wanted to win but never own once. What does it taught me? BINGO is a another type of gambling. It all depends on your luck. So if you are having fun, just have fun. If the luck shows up, just welcome and embrace it. Never try to force your luck to work for you. It never works.



3. When I see the cruise works on the ship, they work pretty hard to make us happy when we are in our vacation. Don’t ever think, you are working too hard. There are other people out there who work very hard then any one of us. What we have in our life are so much better so we shouldn’t crib about it. It also teaches me to push hard to work more.



I know these are simple ones but valuable.To conclude, plan for a break and venture out your inner dreams to have some fun with your family. At same time, look out for valuable lessons life can teach you..

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Tax Refund – What did you do?

March 28th, 2008 Vijaianand

“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” – Benjamin Franklin



I hope many of you by this time filed your taxes some might have gotten your tax refunds. Unfortunately some of you might not be in the receiving end and owed to Uncle Sam. According to me, almost all the time you should be able to get a refund if you plan and file properly. I never paid Uncle sam, always got refund atmost break even. Anyways, that’s a different topic altogether.

Did you get a tax refund?!

Don’t think its a free money, its your money and you own it. I know its pretty exciting to get a big chunk of change at this time of year. Many already have plans for it. Whatever plans you have please make a wise decision and use it properly.

What did I do?

Let me tell you what I did. I got my refund 2 weeks ago and planned to pay part of my 0% balance transfer credit card debt. You might wonder how come I have a debt? Everybody has debt and its a good thing if you manage it well. My debt on 0% balance transfer card is about getting free money for a year and leverage it to invest on real estate or Cd’s to get a good gain from it. If you are smart, you can do the same. Don’t throw away your free 0% balance transfers offer. You won’t find them these days because of credit problem.

If you do get those deals, select a good card with $0 balance transfer and put the money either in Cd’s or invest on good vehicle like Real estate. That’s one way of getting free money without no interest. No body lend money for free these days. So I plan to use that refund to pay off my debt but I am not doing it immediately.

I opened a WAMU CD account which is going to pay 4% interest on 6 months CD until 2 days ago(not anymore). Then take it out and payoff the debt. Why did I do that? I know I still have time to payoff my credit card debt till Nov. What is the benefit I am going to get by paying it off now? SO I leveraging the time and money in my favor to gain every penny of it. Hope you got the point.

What you can do?

I would suggest you to think twice before you make a decision. Jot down your current situation and list the options you have and take the right step. These are my suggestions:

1. If you have a high credit card debt, just pay it off or reduce the amount by paying it off.

2. If you don’t have any CC debt, paying off your Auto Loan or any personal loan which might have interest rate higher than CD can yield. Don’t payoff your Home loan unless its closes off your loan.

3. If you don’t have any debts, think about short term needs. If you don’t have short term emergency savings.

Start one right now with part of the amount as CD. Then use the other part to either add to your IRA account or kids education account. If a vacation is long due, plan for it but put this money as CD for that time being.If you planning to jump to any investment vehicle and test the water. Don’t dump all the amount into it. First test the waters with small amount and once comfortable start adding it in slowly.



To conclude, Money doesn’t find us easily. If it finds its way, don’t let it go easily.

Posted in Financial Planning, Saving, Tax Planning, Taxes Tags: , No Comments »
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Savings made simple and easy…

March 20th, 2008 Vijaianand

Saving is a habit and not a hobby. Let me start with that note. You might have read lot on “How to Savings?” over the Internet. They always suggest some hard to follow strategies that doesn’t fit to all type of people. I am share my simple, realistic, and ideal plan which sure won’t turn you down on your thoughts about savings. So go and read on… Whether you are looking to save small for your IPOD or little bit more for a new car or bigger amount for your first home. Let me tell you first thing you should know.

Savings is hard and never comes off the cuff. Not many of you like to hear that but Sorry that’s the truth. You should first and foremost realize that fact. I always like to expose the truth/fact first so one can understand before diving deep in it. When I was kid(6th grade), my mom showed the value of real money. She taught me about how to save every paise(Indian currency equivalent of penny). I started my first savings bank account when

I was doing my 7th grade and started putting every rupee(Indian currency equivalent to dollar) I earned. That’s the foundation for my savings and spending habit. If you don’t have that Saving habit built into you, its going to be hard to start with but it was never tough act. Anything is possible under Sun and above earth if you ask me. It’s just needs your determination and to make it habitual by constant practice.

A quote by Frank Outlaw goes very well at this point.
“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

You need to first cultivate the thought about Savings. Then talk about it to your spouse or friends anytime you talk about money or expenses. Then act on it by following any or all of 3 methods.

Prerequisite: Open a savings account either with Internet banks or local banks with just minimum deposit of $1. Credit unions are best for small saving accounts.
1. Start putting your change(pennies or dimes) which you gather every day or week in a piggy bank or a simple container. Every month, take the change to near by bank and deposit it to your bank account.

2. On every ATM withdrawal, take $10 out of it and put it away in the secret compartment in your wallet. Don’t ever touch that whatever comes. At the end of the month, take it all out and deposit in your savings account.

3. I call this one it Blind savings – Put away a small amount from your paycheck automatically as a Payroll deduction or auto deduction from your checking account to your CD or Savings account.

Once you start taking actions. Everything falls into picture automatically transforming yourself and the savings habit gets built slowly into you. Once you got the habit, it comes off the cuff without even thinking about like your second nature.

Don’t think its not possible. You already took your first step thinking about it on the path towards making savings a habit. So start working your next step by talking and taking action.

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