I received my first statement on my E-LOAN saving account that I opened 2 weeks ago, which has the highest APY of 5.50% for a online saving account . A few comments about what I like, based on my experience switching from HSBC (and ING preveriously):

• The opening process is quick and clean, and unlike HSBC, no need to wait couple weeks for confirmations.
• The login process is easier. You create your own username, as opposed to HSBC’s use of account number, which means you most likely save it in a file somewhere and then copy and paste, which doesn’t make it any safer in my humble opinion.
• The interface is cleaner, more please to the eyes :) From a web design perspective.
• Transaction from external checking account is quicker, unlike HSBC that takes 3+ days.
• And of course, 5.50% vs. 5.05% APY

So far, I’m pleased with E-LOAN. However, we’ll have to pay attention if they will change the rate in the near future.

Other choices for online savings account, besides E-LOAN, HSBC, and ING with decent rate are:

• 5.05% at Emigrant
• 5.00% saving account at Washington Mutual together with a free checking account
• 5.00% E-saving with Citi

Having saving!

Many points in life we just arrive at situation where there are so many things going on and you don’t know which to deal with. Stress, frustration, exhaustion… that make us very uncomfortable. Do you choose to deal with it or simply find an easy way out. In the end, it comes down to the question of whether you are willing to do things that you are uncomfortable with. I ask myself that…

Aye, yes, I’m willing.

I may have this lazy side of me, but I will not settle for less.

(I’m self-hypnotizing myself with this: to hang on for a little bit, with work, school, and a whole bunch of interviews these days, while keeping up w/ my weight training and piano practice.)

I struggled if I want to start this category here, feeling it will get too cluttered up with too many topics going on at the same time. However, I came to the conclusion that it is important to share about this part of my life also, just as important as joy, thoughts, singing… Well, I do not intend to blog so much about it like the guys doing at My Money Blog or PF Blog, nor do I have the knowledge and experience as many other people already blogging about their finance for a long time but I have to start somewhere :P I intend to share whatever I find interesting and useful from stuffs I read, and here’s a start.

As intro…

At the age of 23, I realized how important it is these days to know how to manage our own finance. Thanks to encouragement from a family member, I have started to monitor, control, and learn more and more about the topic since around when I graduate from undergrad. My interest is definitely enhanced by my situation of having to afford school and living independently. Now closer to my graduation, with the haunt of student loan and car loan, and seeing the insecure retirement future from a normal corporate career and a financially struggling goverment, it is ever more important to take control, learn how to take care of my money, how to spend less of it, and make more of it. To do so, I am learning from other people blogging about it, from other online resources, and from books on personal finance and investment. Piggy needs financial freedom to have a good life :)

As a reminder to myself, my current goal is to rid myself of those pesty loans and to accumulate enough to buy a place called my own in recent future.

To start out with, here are two reward cards that I use frequently these days. Neither of them has annual fees:

• Citi mtvU Platinum Select Visa Card for College Students – This is probably the best card for a college student. Earn 5 points from restaurants, bookstores (and guess what, Amazon is considered bookstore), record/rental stores, and theathers. This equates to 5% cash back if you get their $100 giftcards or even a higher % if you wait for promotions. It also earn points for paying on time each month and having good GPA twice a year .
• Citi Dividend Card – Earn 2% cash back at gas station, grocery, and pharmacy. Earn 1% on all other purchases.

For more details on the cards, click on the links. You can combine the mtvU card with a Citi checking and e-saving accounts that earns Thank You points for using services, like direct deposits, online bill pay, etc.

I had an urge to write this entry much earlier, but between hectic schedule and laziness… I’ve been putting off writing it. I’ve also thought, “dude, maybe I’m too young to write about this, but hey, what the heck, I’ll go for it”. Perhaps you’ll see why I said that. Here goes.

It’s actually a good thing I delayed as I came across this reading from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey:

…My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don’t love her anymore and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?”
“The feeling isn’t there anymore?” I asked.
“That’s right,” he reaffirmed. “And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?”
“Love her,” I replied.
“I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore.”
“Love her.”
“You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there.”
“Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.”
“But how do you love when you don’t love?”
“My friend, love is a verb. Love — the feeling — is a fruit of love the verb. So love her. Sacrifice.
Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?”

As such, love becomes a word with two meanings depending on the context we speak in, IMHO. A verb and a noun. Currently, pretty much in everyday-scenario when we use or run across the word “love,” it’s being used as a noun. When people say “love”, it is referred to as a feeling. We’re told everyday on TV and Hollywood movies that such is so. That, when we love, it is this feeling within us about a special person, and that we are driving by this feeling. Because we say that we are “driven,” we are implying that there is no decision/responsibility involved. “My feeling is making me do so~~~ Love is telling me to do so~~~ I love this person so~~~” In other words, we shed the burden of “making decision” when it comes to love, but in a way, we allow ourselves to become puppets of our feelings.

Frequently when we claim that we are in love, I think we have somehow confused ourselves. That we may just be “in love” with the strong, passionate feeling itself. We enjoy the feeling that is stimulated by a particular person. The feeling clouds our visions, giving us this imagination/ideal image of the person that causes us to overlook reality… as time goes on, reality starts to catch up and lucky would be a result that this special person isn’t too far off from our imagination but otherwise, unfortunate it would be.

Whether that is true or not, I believe that there comes a time when you have to make a decision in relationship. The decision to love. This is an action, succeeding the initial feeling. The action to love, where love becomes a verb. This is where we will choose to perform the act of love or walk away because either situations do not allow or we deem not worth it.

Well, any action we take in life requires certain abilities. Then love, involves some of our abilities… and what abilities are we talking about? This is something we all have to think about. In my mind, they include… ability to be independent, ability to make the decision and commit, ability to sacrifice, ability to share, ability to observe, ability to appreciate, ability to think clearly, ability to change/improve ourselves (even in the most drastic ways), ability to respect, ability to be patient, ability to endure loneliness, ability to support each other even though the most dire time… Basically, love is such an important action that it entails so much and the list goes on and on.

In conclusion, I would say that love is more than the feeling of liking, of passion. We have to materialize it through our actions, an action that involves all our abilities. As such, love is easy to say, but can we really do it?

So next time when we use the word, why don’t we give it some thought? Can we really go one step above the feeling, to accomplish the act of love? I think that when we’re ready, when we can do it… happiness won’t be too far away. It is not love, the feeling, but love, the action, that once we hone our abilities for the act of love… at that point, we may just have the answer to all the problems to everything.

Alright, I could well be a bad guy myself. But gosh, I really cannot stand how guys act, and how they treat people and, more importanly, their ladies these days. They make me ashamed to be one! I swear they don’t know how or they don’t think about it…

I am not saying you have to be a gentleman every single moment. I am not saying you have to be nice to everyone you meet. AND I am not saying guys shouldn’t have some badness to them. But guys! From what I see these days, what happened to the roles they should be playing!?!? The ladies are acting tougher than you! Okay, I am not saying guys should be aggressive and go swear at everyone either. But if you are a guy, please be able to make up your mind. Face with an issue? Identify your options and decide what to do and make up you mind to do it! Of course you should listen to others’ ideas and advice, but don’t get swayed so easily, geez. You have your own mind. I seriously can’t see where the guts went with so many guys. Or is it just my luck to see all these bad apples at once???

This is inter-dependent to what I just said, that guys also need to their priorities straightened out… THINK and do the right thing! AND not half-assedly. Only then, you will be able to treat your girls and other important people around you right.

I probably shouldn’t go crazy and be attacking my own race, but I have to be fair and also I really need to get this out of myself. Peace~