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Credit Score Building your credit score is important. As stupid and boring as this sounds, it is sort of an important score you get that will determine how you will be treated in the financial sector. There are usually four things they consider in determining your score: Payment history Average account history Credit utilization Recent hard inquiries Payment history This is quite intuitive. Don’t miss paymen..
Credit cards - 2 For using credit cards, here’s my strategy. I have a basic spending card that reflects the majority of my spending. For example, the one card that I carry with me gives me rewards on restaurants and coffee, because that’s really all I spend my card for. In my car, I have a credit card for gas and groceries. I have another card for Amazon purchases, registered on my Amazon account, and that’s it...
Credit Cards - 1 There are only two scenes in movies where they show credit cards - a scene where a shopaholic goes ham, and where the distressed shopaholic cuts them with scissors to show resolve. It’s treated like it’s crack or something - well, it kinda is. We were always taught of the dangers of credit cards, and are warned that they will ruin your life. It will, if you don’t use it right. I think the first ..
Network - 1 Networking / Getting that Job One thing I was surprised to learn is that networking is a huge, huge part of one’s career. Being from Korea, the concept of `networking’, or `knowing people and contacting them for your benefit’ sounded too corrupt, and I was very reluctant to do it. I mean, they do it in Korea, but they’re mostly under the table and illegal. Also, I’m sort of an antisocial person...
H1b H1b - Work visa The H1b visa is for graduate level employees (at least undergraduate) that have expertise in `cool fields’ (e.g. IT, finance, law, math, science, etc.). This `cool’ part is completely up to interpretation. Unlike the F1 visa, you do not need a financial statement, because hopefully you’ll make money off of this. It lasts for 3 years per petition (incidence), with an option to do ..
Immigration - F1 F1 Visa - Student Visa This is the student visa. This means that you’re a student, and you need a school to sponsor you. A special thing about this visa is that you have to prove that you’re financially taken care of. For me, I had to show my dad’s bank statements, translated to english. In graduate school, I was paid for by the school so I was good. The process of an f1 is basically this: Gets ..
Immigration - 1 Oh immigration. I hate it. If you’re a U.S. citizen, feel free to skip this part. If you want to read my rant and what your fellow international students / foreign coworkers go through, feel free to read this section. Again, I am not an expert and this is not legal advice in any way. In the United States, foreigners are required to have this thing called a `visa’. This is not the one with your c..
Budgeting - 2 Tax Withheld (23%) This is somewhat high, and I think you can adjust this with your employer so that less of it is withheld. I tried doing 0%, and getting all my money, but come tax time, I would have to pay taxes rather than getting refunds. So I use this tax withheld thing as a built-in robustness factor, where I overpay taxes, and get some returns come tax time. I know one can say that I’m mi..
Budgeting - 1 Live below your means. If you are to run a mile, what do you do? You give it all you got, you budget for a mile run pace, and you sprint your last quarter lap or something. But if you were in a weird race where they can unexpectedly say `well you gotta run another lap’, ask you to do push ups, or if you’re just generally running for an unknown distance, you should never go 100%. You strategicall..
Purchase Decision - 2 In short, I believe that the reason why we live materialistically is because we don’t know how else. We don’t know how to flex in non-material ways, nor do we know what other virtues are desirable. We simply do not know, or know, but do not know how to obtain them. To be basic, I’m going to blame the marketing companies on this. Material things don’t really have intrinsic functionalities other t..
Purchase Decision - 1 How we buy things have radically changed over the years. I was watching a show on Hulu one day, and since I’m cheap, there were these ads. I don’t perfectly recall, but it was some sort of a generic commercial. But there was a humidifier in it, and I thought, hmm, I need a humidifier. So I pulled out my phone, went to my Amazon app, typed in humidifier, clicked the best selling one, and bought i..
Investing -2 Taxes on Gains Obviously, taxes are fucking inevitable. So taxes are a large part of the consideration when finding a place to invest. For some bizarre reason, different types of income are taxed differently. That is why, allegedly, Warren Buffet has a lower tax rate than his secretary. I won’t go into the details, but generally capital gains (money earned from investing) tax rates are lower tha..
Investing - 1 Alright, now you understand all these accounts and taxes and things, it’s time for you to make your money to good use. There are a million different ways to invest. The definition of investing may be different for everybody but for this book we’ll say it’s anything to do with money to generate money’ - so this includes savings account, stock / bond investing, real estate, and so on. Where do you..
Personal Guide to US Taxpayer -2 Strategies to pay less tax By strategies, I mean various methods we can reduce the `taxable income’ part, meaning that we’d just pay less taxes. Rich people are good at this, so they keep more and pay less. Most of us commoners may not have room or leverage for tax strategies, but the older you get, you can make different strategies. The most common, and approachable `strategy’ is retirement con..
Personal Guide to US Taxpayer - 1 Only two things in certain are death and taxes. When you make money, a sizable chunk gets taxed. And as bizarre as it is, you’re not taxed right away, it all happens once a year. Tax law is quite complicated, and always, always consult a professional on this, read this for a brief, lacking overview. One thing to note before we go on the details - tax is different maybe for different people, so m..
YOLO A long time ago, Siddartha decided to leave all his belongings and ‘find the way’, after seeing the following four sights: an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and an ascetic. Dialing it back, Siddartha is the person who later became the first enlightened one, to ‘start’ buddhism. He was a prince who lived in a castle all his life, surrounded by luxury and pleasure. On his first journey outside a..
밈 -조심해서 다루시오 이 섹션이 한국에서 얼마나 큰 의미가 있을지는 모르겠지만, 일단 적어본다. 일단 미국에서는 밈이 대 유행이다. 모든 광고나 많은 소통들이 밈으로 이루어져 있고, 이 딱히 정하기 애매한 `밈’ 이라는 소통 방법은 우리의 문화를 완전히 바꾸고 있다. 재미있게도, 우리가 온라인 상으로 전달할수 있는 양 (인터넷 기술의 향상으로 ‘다운로드’ 할수있는 정보의 양)은 급격히 늘었지만, 그와 반대로 우리의 표현의 형태는 점점 단순화 되어가고 있다. 예전에는 장문의 글이나 오랜시간 공들인 사진이나 영상으로 의견이나 개념을 표현했다면, 요즘에는 밈이라는 짧고 많은 의미를 포함한 소통의 매체를 사용한다. 소통의 효율성이 올랐다고 판단할지, 소통능력이 저하되었다고 판단할지는 독자에게 맡긴다. 밈이 가져다주는 효율성의 향상은..
읽기전 나의 글을 읽기 전에 내가 살아 온 과정을 소개하는 것이 좋겠다. 도움이 될 것 같다. 난 한국에서 태어나, 엄격하고, 기대치가 높은 부모님 아래서 자랐다. 공부를 딱히 잘하는 편은 아니였고, 여느 청소년처럼, 교육 시스템을 탓했다. 변화를 위해 미국에서 학교를 다니고 싶었고, 운이 좋아 유학의 기회를 가지게 되었다. 14살이였을때, 가족을 남기고 혼자 미국을 가서, 다양한 미국인들의 집에 하숙하며 학교를 다녔다. 대부분 해리포터에 나오는 삼촌의 집같은 대우를 받았고, 대부분 보수적인 기독교 집안 이었다. 고등학교 졸업 후, 대학을 가서 원자력 공학을 전공했다. 원자력 공학을 전공한 이유는 이름이 간지나서 였다 (물론 지금도 다소 그렇지만 이때는 진짜 아무 계획이 없었다). 하다보니 전공이 마음에 들었다..
인트로 삶은 존나 엉망진창이다.살아간다는 건 참으로 가시밭길 이다. 할일도 많고, 신경쓸 일도 많다. 나이가 들면서, 시간은 더더욱 없고, 책임져야 할일은 급격하게 늘어난다. 하지만 우리의 교육기관들은 우리에게 직각삼각형의 빗면의 길이 따위를 계산하는 방법이나, 소금의 화학이름 따위를 가르치느라 너무 바빠 우리에게 어떻게 사는지 살아가야 할 지를가르치지 않는다. 게다가 우리 부모님은 어떤가. 그대는 당신은 어떤 경험을 했는지 모르지만, 나의 부모님들은 나를 `공부’ 시키는데 바빠, 삶에 대해 - 예를들어 돈이라던가, 섹스 등 - 에 대해 많이 가르쳐주지 못했다. 일반적인 기관에서의 가르침의 부재에 따라, 정규 기관에서 이런 교육이 없었기에, 우리는 인터넷이라는 날것의, 다소 차가운 지식의 출처에 의지한다. 이 ..
Quotes from Alain de Botton: The School of Life an Emotional Education """ [consolation over solution] There can wisely be no "solutions", no self-help, of a kind that removes problems altogether. What we. can aim for, at best, is consolation - a word tellingly lacking in glamour. To believe in consolation means giving up on cures; it means accepting that life is a hospice rather than a hospital, but one we'd like to render as comfortable, as interesting and as kin..

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