Ten Bucks a Week

Thoughts on Working Remotely

IMG_20160718_214028 I am in Taiwan for the summer and that means my new desk is wherever I place my laptop. This is my first experience working remotely and I’ll share my thoughts.

Positives

I do not need to dress up for work. It is nice to be able to wake up and go to my computer and start working. I don’t need to put on a collared shirt or shave and there is no commute.
I have been able to build my own schedule. I have a gap in the middle of my day to learn Chinese. I have an automated task that takes several hours, so it has been great letting it run while I’m in class. With a normal schedule, it would be a bit of a hassle to have it running while doing other tasks.
I got to work from a different office recently. Since I am in Asia I got to see our office in Singapore and connect with the team there. This scenario would have been unlikely if I was still at my desktop.
I have a much lower cost of living. Taiwan is much cheaper than Orange County. I will post in the future about just how much cheaper. If you can choose where to work you can spend less and save more.

Negatives

Working remotely means I need to remotely connect to the work network which makes sending and receiving server files slower than at the office. This means being patient and coming up with clever tricks like saving copies locally. Once I have the files I can work at normal speed.
I can no longer stand up and chat over the cubicle walls. I have messenger which is very useful but our day only overlaps if I stay up really late.
For others, it may be hard to keep your motivation. I have not found that too difficult because I have daily, weekly, and monthly tasks to stay on top of.

Abroad bonuses

I realize how little I need. I brought a suitcase and a carry-on and have been great.
I get to practice language every day because I need to use it to buy food, ask for direction, or do anything.

Who can do it?

Like I said before, working remotely was a big ask. You could try to ask for something smaller like working from home while you are sick or maybe a day each month. If you can function fine without being in the office then working remotely may be for you. However, you need to be motivated to work otherwise it could turn into a disaster.

I imagine working remotely is a taste of what it would be like to run your own business. However, running a business could be much more than an 8 hour a day endeavor, so sticking with my job sounds good for now.

Conclusion

If you are fortunate enough to have a chance or create a chance to work remotely I’d try it out. I am happy to be working remotely for a summer, but I do look forward to returning to my coworkers. After three weeks I already feel that they are forgetting me, but the reports are still getting sent and the files aren’t magically appearing, so I’m sure they know I’m still being useful.

Technology Buyer’s Guide

My MacBook Technology plays a big part of our lives. It makes it convenient to find information and access entertainment. So it is understandable that we would want to have phones, TVs, and computers. People have told me that gadgets are really cheap in Taiwan, but I’m not in the market for anything so it doesn’t matter to me. Yet there are so many choices no matter where we are so how should we go about choosing?

Phone

Except for two years in college when my parents thought it was absolutely necessary to have a smart phone I have always had to pay for my own plan and phone. I have always chosen prepaid which meant purchasing an unsubsidized phone. This has lead me to shun the newest phones with prices over $500 in favor of getting someone’s old phone from Craigslist because they want an upgrade. I have found myself usually two generations behind the current phone model. For years I had a dumb phone and then moved up to an S2 when the S4 came out, then an S3 for a while and then an S4. I get them for around $75-$150 so I’m not even worried if it breaks. More recently I got a brand new Amazon Fire phone because they were practically giving it away at $125 which included a year of Amazon Prime. I still have that and am using it in Taiwan. Just last month I purchased a refurbished Galaxy Note II (4.5 generations behind) to use on Freedompop because you need a special phone for their plan, but that was only $90. I’ve probably had a dozen phones in as many years, but the total depreciation of them has been less than $1000, so my cost hasn’t been too high.

So now you are thinking, yes, Android phones are cheap, but I want an iPhone. Well, maybe it is my wife who is reading because she likes having an iPhone too. She was on her parents’ plan before we got married and got to upgrade iPhones starting with 4. She had a 5 which we sold and used the same idea of getting an older generation phone to switch to a 5C. As luck would have it she currently uses a 6 because of a crazy Discover Card promotion that gave 10% back on Apple Pay purchases which required an iPhone 6. Even so, I got that one used!

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Do You Really Need Insurance?

Car Insurance Recently my wife turned 26 which you wouldn’t think is a special birthday. However, it is the birthday which you are no longer allowed to be on your parent’s insurance. So naturally we started to discuss health insurance options. This is considered a qualifying event so she will be able to purchase insurance.

Health insurance

In the past, you could take a gamble and go without health insurance. Today you still can but you will have to pay a penalty to the government. The penalty to go without coverage is the greater of $695 per adult or 2.5% of your household income. There is an exemption to the penalty if you did not have coverage for up to two months. You can see it is kind of costly to go without insurance, but still cheaper than an unsubsidized $150 a month minimum coverage plan.

In our situation, my wife will only need coverage for four months until I turn 26 and can get a family policy through my employer. Even if we were eligible for an exemption to the penalty I would still purchase insurance because health issues can pop up unexpectedly and can be a huge financial burden with and especially without insurance. Three years ago I broke a finger and needed surgery, instead of paying $7,000 for all visits and surgery my total was closer to $1,000. That was just a finger, imagine the cost for a vital organ.

To reduce the cost of your insurance, choose something with a high deductible. Even though you will have to spend more up front on medical expense you will pay less if you don’t need frequent medical attention. Your care can also be paid with a flexible spending account.

Car insurance

As I am risk-averse and want to protect myself from financial trouble, car insurance is a no brainer. I am doing a little bit of gamble by paying per mile for my insurance, but being in Taiwan means no miles added to the car and therefore a low premium. In California and a majority of states, it is required to carry car insurance. Here the minimum is $15k/$30k/$5k which is the max the insurer will pay for injury to one person/multiple people/property. I carry more than ten times those limits because it wasn’t too much more expensive and stuff these days is so expensive to fix, I don’t want to worry about it.

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Moving to Taiwan, A Big Ask

My New Home I am currently in Taiwan where I am studying Chinese for four hours a day. Did I quit my job? No. That’s not possible some would say, but you won’t know until you ask. Others would say that it is not fair, but what in the workplace is totally fair. Some people get paid lots to do a little work poorly and others get paid far less outperforming everyone in a very stressful position. Check out Dilbert. I am going to make sure it is as fair as possible by working remotely and fulfilling my normal obligations.

Language background

Growing up I only spoke English like so many Americans. I took Spanish starting in 7th grade to the end of high school and two more semesters in college. I enjoyed learning, but speaking was never easy and that was probably because it wasn’t practiced as much as my book knowledge. In college, I also took Korean, Chinese, Catalan, and Portuguese. I am most confident in Portuguese despite only taking one semester because after college I took a trip to Brazil for two weeks and got to practice all the time. It is still my desire to learn Chinese and the community college course I just finished helped, but it seemed like it would take forever to get comfortable with the language and use it effectively. So in order to best learn Chinese, I thought it was best if I could study in a Chinese speaking country.

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Banking Should Be Easy and Free

Banking I hope you have a bank account, because with all my ideas you are going to need a place to stash your money. I have lots of bank accounts because banks love to pay me to try them out. It isn’t just because I write this blog with 300 views a month, it is available to everyone.¹

Checking or savings

You could be fine with just a checking account, but I recommend having one savings account as well. The reason is that the savings account can earn interest and everything else can be done from the checking account. I use Discover Bank for my savings account which earns .95% and has great service but shop around, I’ve seen some as high as 1.05%. I don’t buy the idea that a savings account is just for saving for a rainy day or a big expense because I could transfer the money to my checking account or use it to pay for anything anytime.

I was recently reminded why you can not just have a savings account. As you can imagine, I have quite a few credit cards, ten in fact. They are all on auto-pay and connected to various checking accounts. I saw the card balances getting quite high and decided to transfer money to the various checking accounts from my savings account so I wouldn’t get an overdraft fee. Well, I successfully avoided that fee but stumbled into the excessive activity fee. Banking regulations only allow six transactions per month on a savings account and there is a fee for each additional one. My lesson was learned and I worked to consolidate my automatic payments to be collected from one checking account so I wouldn’t have to guess how much to put in each account.

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Thoughts on Cars, Hint They’re Expensive

Car Money Wow, cars must be great money making machines because we just earned $3,000 with Lyft. While the end of that sentence is true, you probably realized that cars have a lot of costs that go along with ownership. In the last article I estimated the cost of ownership at 30 cents a mile, but that may have been too low. According to KBB 5-Year Cost To Own tool my car costs 54 cents a mile which it estimates the cost to me of $33,669 over five years ($561 a month). We have a 2014 Toyota Camry SE which is not the cheapest vehicle, but definitely on the lower end of the pricing spectrum. The cheapest was a Chevy Spark which comes to $26,760, still $445 a month. The point is it’s expensive, check out the details here.

Reducing the cost of ownership

Purchasing or leasing

The average American spends 14% of their budget on transportation, so let’s do better and make it 10% or less. If you make $60,000 then you have $500 a month for transportation. As you can see my Camry would not fit in this budget, so I’d have to go with a used car. I am a big fan of used vehicles as new cars depreciate tremendously in the first few years.

I think there are some occasions when leasing may work out, but they are few and getting out of a lease is no fun. Sometimes there are great deals like $99 a month for a electric Fiat which sounds worth it if you can handle only driving a pretty limited range. In most cases buying will work out better especially since you will be less likely to fall into the trap of continually upgrading your vehicle.

Insurance

Shop around. Call Geico and see if they can really can save you 15%. We drive around 1,000 miles a month combined, but are going to try to do less in the future because we just switched to Metromile which charges us per mile. Our previous policy was $90 a month and our new one is $40 plus 6 cents a mile. This means we are saving money if we drive less than 833 miles. They give you a dongle to plug into your car and an app allows you to see all sorts of information.

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And We Have LyftOFF

Lyft emblem I spoke too soon regarding Lyft in the first article because within a few days my wife was complaining about it and stressed that she wasn’t going to be able to complete it. Three weeks after she started the $750 bonus returned and I signed up with her referral. New data are in and now I will share my thoughts.

I gave 75 rides in 57 hours and covered 1,195 miles. I included miles I drove to pick people up and return home because you have to return home. For this work I earned $665 after Lyft’s 20% cut. This means I made $11.67 an hour before expenses or taxes. At the 54 cents per mile deduction it looks like I only have to pay tax on $20 of earnings.

Cost of operation

Many people may neglect the cost of maintenance because it is an infrequent expense whereas gas is regularly needed, has a display on your dashboard, and has prices displayed at stations every few blocks. Coincidentally during my month doing Lyft I got an oil change, tires, and new air filters. Assuming a 30 cents a mile cost of operation for gas and depreciation my earnings would be $306 or $5.37 an hour.

Bonus time

Who are we kidding, I’m not going to drive around for 57 hours if I’m only making $5.37, I signed up to complete the bonus and quit, so let’s see the numbers. Anyone can get a bonus, just sign up with this link and meet the requirements listed here. However, my wife was a driver so she referred me so I will show you the earnings with both bonuses as well. Our bonus was $750 after 75 rides which is a good value at $10 a ride. LA currently has a bonus of $2,000 after 500 rides, but that is only $4 a ride.

$18.52 an hour with the driver bonus.
$31.69 an hour with the driver bonus and my wife’s referral bonus.

Pretty good for some extra income, but by no means a get rich quick scheme. Continue reading “And We Have LyftOFF”

Introduction to Credit Card Rewards Part 3

More Credit Cards I don’t want these series to drag on forever, so I’ll try to include a lot of my knowledge and some of my stories. If you want to learn a lot more there are blogs dedicated to this, here is a good start.

Combos

The game of credit card collecting is like Super Smash Brothers. You can get several credit cards and you’ll be earning points and money. This strategy is like only punching and kicking with Ness, it works, but did you know he has a bat and yo-yo! Continue reading “Introduction to Credit Card Rewards Part 3”

Introduction to Credit Card Rewards Part 2

Travel Cards Now we should be familiar with the evils of credit cards as well as the tidy sums we can earn with a cashback card, but we want to be like those travel bloggers and see the world!

In order to do that we need to look into credit cards that offer more rewards that go toward travel. Aside from the bonus and fee calculations it only makes sense to get a travel card which earns more than you could get in cashback. For example, if you get a card which gives one point per dollar which can only be redeemed for travel at one cent per point you are earning a restricted 1%. You would be better off with a 1.5% cashback card and even a 1% card would be better because you could buy stuff without restrictions.

Strategies

Travel cards offer great sign up bonuses that vary greatly, so it is important to research what the amounts have been offered in the past to make sure you are getting a great bonus because in the best case scenario you will not be able to get this bonus again for two years. The bonuses are the key component in this round because they can be amounts like 50,000, 80,000, and even 140,000. It is much easier to spend $3,000 to meet the requirements and get a sign up bonus than spending $50,000 to get this many points, this is why it is so important to wait for the higher bonuses.

Continue reading “Introduction to Credit Card Rewards Part 2”

Introduction to Credit Card Rewards Part 1

Cashback Cards You may have read about travel bloggers who claim they go on first-class flights and stay in awesome hotels for free. Well I bet they do because I have managed to get many free flights and hotel stays (plus some fees). It was only after 3 ½ years of using credit that I discovered how I could earn free travel. However, for part 1 of the series we will look at the simplest strategy, earning cash.

If you have credit card debt, then this is a game you can not afford to play. Work on paying off your debt with the highest rate first and consider consolidating with one of these services.

Spending cash versus credit

When making a purchase you can pay with cash, debit, or credit assuming you are not using Craigslist. The benefit to using credit over other means is that the issuer often provides an incentive to using your credit card. One example would be cashback. If you are buying a laptop for $600 you could pay cash, or maybe use a 1% cashback card and earn $6 back. In addition to the instant monetary benefit there are other perks such as:

Return protection: credit card will accept a return if the store refuses.
Extended warranty: free warranty extension on your product.
Price protection: if the price drops within a certain period you can get a check for the difference.

The benefits are pretty nice and worth it if you have the money to pay your bill in full. A “benefit” of credit is that you don’t need the money now, you can pay over time. However, let’s say you paid $100 each month on your 19.99% interest rate card. You would end up spending $638, negating the $6 cashback.

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Consolidating Debts, Good or Bad?

If you are a younger American, you likely have student debt. You may have done a great job choosing the right education but it still cost a lot. Others may have credit card debt or an auto loan. If you have a mortgage that is a type of debt that I think is a good tool, so we won’t cover it here, but you can apply the same principles from this article to it to see if you should refinance.

Maybe you pay a few hundred dollars a month on your loans which you will banish after 15 years if you keep paying at the current rate(s). The idea behind consolidating debt is that you could tidy your debt up and hopefully pay less (more important part).

Let’s make up an example. Bill has three loans each with 10 years left, a car loan of $10,000 at 6%, a student loan of $30,000 at 8%, and a credit card with a balance of $15,000 at 18%. Bill’s monthly payments are $111, $364, and $270. You can see that credit card balance is half the student loan amount but since it has such a high interest rate its payment is more than half the amount of the other. Bill has been paying diligently and has noticed his credit score increase 100 points so he decides to check if he can get better rates. The best offer he receives is up to $25,000 at a 12% rate over 15 years for a payment of $358. With this he could consolidate the two smaller loans, however it would be better to just get rid of his credit card debt since that is at a higher rate. He decides to take $15,000 from the lender and pays off his credit card in full. Now his payment for went from $270 to $215, but if he pays the $270 he is used to he would finish in under 7 years.

So lower payments are better when the time period is the same. However, there was another lender who said he could offer even better terms to Bill with a $200 a month plan. This “better” plan was 14% over 15 years, however Bill saw through this plan since it would add 5 years and $3,600 over the life of the loan. Unless you really need a lower monthly payment, try to get the best rate.

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Choosing the Right Education

College Degree I recently saw a Forbes article on the best value colleges. I think there is a discussion about college that every parent should have with their kids. In my area it is an assumption that every kid will go to college and often the best college that will take them regardless of the cost. I think you should only educate yourself to the point where you will benefit from it.

Financial versus personal benefits

What I mean by benefit is this: you will gain a financial return from your investment in education or you will gain a personal return. I made $8/hr at DQ, but after college I made more than twice on my first full-time job with prospects of future increases which happened when I got my second job; this is a financial return. Right now I am in a Chinese course for personal development. This is a personal benefit, but if I become fluent then it could open up career opportunities making it a financial benefit.

When making decisions about education you need to treat financial and personal decisions separately, although it is likely hard to separate them since you want to do what you love. If going to college is going to put you in debt with a low salary that only permits you to eat rice and beans from your only bowl in your room that is shared with three others then you shouldn’t choose that choice. If however you believe that that job is so thrilling it can make up for all the financial shortcomings then you could pursue that, but I’m guessing it won’t. When weighing a personal benefit then think of it as a hobby. Are you willing to pay to learn Chinese, pottery, or get a degree that will have no financial benefit and if so how much?

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