My Passive Income (Month of Oct 11)

CPF(OA): $246 (from interest and dividends)
Cash: $1844 (from dividends and other passive incomes)
Total: $2090
Target: $3200
Achievement: 65.3%

There are no changes in my passive income 1, 2 and 3.

For passive income 4, there is an increase of $7. However since it is still in the building stage, I will be expecting it to go up and down. In my post "Forget about achieving Financial Freedom if you do not have perseverance or refuse to learn.", I have mentioned that it will take time and effort to build up passive income.

Importance of Warranty

Today, I have sent my HP notebook for servicing as some of the keys suddenly cannot be used. Luckily that the notebook is still under warranty and I will not need to pay for the repair cost.

For expensive electronics device, I always make it a point to buy new one that comes with standard warranty. It is to ensure that I am “insurance” from any servicing costs. Warranty gives me peace mind after buying the device.

Buying a second hand item without warranty seems to be a "gamble" to me. Though such item can be much cheaper, the repair cost may not come cheap when something suddenly goes wrong.

Bought Xbox360 console with Kinect

I will start with some gaming history about myself. I have been a console gamer since I was in primary school. Atari was the very first console that I had played in one of my friend place and since then I am very interested in console games. The first console that I owned was NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) which was bought by my father. Other consoles that I owned were Sega Mega Drive, Playstation 1 and Playstation 2, and hand-held Nintendo DS lite.

I am seeing great improvement in term of graphics, music and videos from one generation to next generation console. However there are not many changes in the game play until Nintendo Wii was introduced. I quite like the idea of motion controllers in Nintendo Wii and I had enjoyed playing with it in one of my relative house. With the introduction of Xbox 360 Kinect, motion control is now more advance whereby the game play can be controlled by your own body movement. I am amazed with this technology and hence decided to buy one to try out.

Currently I have five Kinect games and I feel that they are fairly easy to play with easy instruction to follow. Even my toddler is able to enjoy playing them straight away without much problem. The only problem that I have so far is to consistently tell my toddler to move back in order for the Kinect sensor to track her movement.

One good thing about Xbox 360 is that you can download trial demo for certain new games for testing. This will prevent the gamers from wasting money to buy the game in case they do not like the game play.

My Butterfly Effect

Recently I had watched an old movie with title “The Butterfly Effect”. It is about a young man who has the ability to go back in time through his lost memory. By doing that, he is able to make small changes for events in the past which will greatly alter the life of people around him which include him. If you have not watched the, I will encourage you to do so. The movie will somehow change your prospective when dealing with changes.

So why am I talking about “The Butterfly Effect” in this post? In August 2009, before the creation of this blog, I have been thinking about my current life and my future. Well it is very easy to project my life linearly since I am having a normal job. However is that what I want? Going through my life working till retirement age and having barely enough for my retirement?

I began to look at myself and think what can I do to improve that? At that time I remembered that I had read the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki when I was seventeen. I recalled from the book that one has to look into cash flow in order to improve personal finance. Also I discovered that collecting rental income and dividends from stock investment are two ways for me to create passive incomes. I decided to take both approaches at the same time. In addition to that, I have created this blog in September 2009 to share out my approaches and my results.

So what is my "Butterfly Effect” after two years? Firstly, I have collected more than $50,000 extra incomes without too much effort. Secondly, with these additional incomes, my wife now is also able to become a home-maker to take care of my kid full times at home. Thirdly my kid will not feel lonely as there is always a parent around her all the time. Some time I wonder if I did not do anything two years ago, what will happen to me? I believe that I will still be someone who keeps complaining about having not enough money. And also I am not able to share my posts in this blog.

Lastly a message to all, “Though we are not able to make changes in the past, however we are able to make changes at the present which will affect our future. “

My Passive Income (Month of Sep 11)

CPF(OA): $245 (from interest and dividends)
Cash: $1837 (from dividends and other passive incomes)
Total: $2082
Target: $3200
Achievement: 65%

There are no changes in my passive income 1 and 2.

For passive income 3, there is an increase as I have adjusted part of my investment portfolio this month.

For passive income 4, there is an decrease of $30. However since it is still in the building stage, I will be expecting it to go up and down. In my post "Forget about achieving Financial Freedom if you do not have perseverance or refuse to learn.", I have mentioned that it will take time and effort to build up passive income.