Time is on your side....

A lot of my university students are studying English to:

Get a job
Get a job promotion
Study abroad, so it's easier to get a job

Investing your time and effort to improve your foreign language skills is wise.
However, are you investing your money? If not, you're making a BIG mistake.

Right now, time is on your side. If you just invest $100 (100,000 won) a month, from 18-28 (10 years), you'll end up with around $164,000 (164,000,000 won).

Take a look at the chart below. This is based on an average return of 6% a year.

If you'll notice, someone that starts to invest $100 a month at age 40 only has $69,787.

Now, a 6% annual return is too low. Here's the average U.S. stock market return since 1900.

Decade	Average Return Per Year
1900s	9.96%
1910s	4.20%
1920s	14.95%
1930s	-0.63%
1940s	8.72%
1950s	19.28%
1960s	7.78%
1970s	5.82%
1980s	17.57%
1990s	18.17%

The average return is 10.4% a year.

So, let's say you start investing at 18 and add $200 a month into a U.S. index fund.
The index fund returns an average of 10.4% a year. You continue to add $200 month until you're 58 (when you want to retire). You will end up with....

$1,072,701.95

Remember, this is based on only $200 a month. If you invest more, you end up with more.

What if you invest $400 a month until age 58?

$2,620,768.98

If you wait until your age 30, and invest $200 a month until you're 58, you'll end up with...

$382,825.87

When you're 30, you have to invest $600 a month until your 58 to end up with...

$1,049,977.50

Stop wasting time and money, go out there, and start saving. What's the moral of the story? Start when you're young because time is on your side.

The Woori Bank AMA Account (Edited)

I assume AMA stands for Asset Management Account (or Andy's Money Account).

On Tuesday, I made a trip to my local Woori Bank and opened an AMA account. This account is automatically linked to a money market fund.
So, in essence, it's two accounts in one.

Here are the details:

1. Either 500,000 won minimum in the account or monthly (paycheck) direct deposit to avoid any monthly fees.

2. Anything over 1,000,000 won accrues interest at a rate of 4%-4.8% (APY) The interest depends on the length of time the money is in the account.

90 days - 4%
90-364 days - 4.3%
365+ days - 5.3%

So, if I have 1,500,000 won, then 500,000 won will accrue interest. The interest is compounded monthly, every 3rd Saturday.

Every evening at 10:00PM, the kind workers at Woori Bank will transfer anything over 1,000,000 won into a money market fund.

3. No more Woori Bank ATM fees. It doesn't matter what time of day or night you withdraw money. You don't have to pay 600 won or 800 won or 1,500 won when you're drunk and want to buy more beer at midnight.

4. The maximum single day withdrawal is 10,000,000 won. This can be increased after some negotiation, interrogation, and mast...

5. If you currently have a Woori Bank account, you can convert it into this AMA account and use the same ATM card and pin number.

6. You'll need to bring your alien ID card to the bank if you want to open this account.

7. If you want to view the balance of your money market fund, you'll need to set up Internet banking, which is available in English.

8. Is this account secure? Well, the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp. (KDIC) guarantees 50,000,000 won in deposits per person. This is the Korean version of the FDIC.

If you have any questions, send me an e-mail or hunt me down in the hallway.

* A special thanks to Chris, Jenny, and Piper.

Something Fishy

That's a catfish, if you can believe it. lol
The Mekong Catfish to be exact. It's the largest freshwater fish in the world. Can you imagine swimming in a river next to that thing?

Responsibility?

Responsibility has become a thing of the past. Most people can recall the McDonald's lawsuit over hot coffee. The lady won about $500,000 from that case because she spilled hot coffee on her lap. She was opening the coffee while she was driving. That's why when you buy a cup of coffee from McDonald's now you'll see this: "Warning Contents Are Hot" Not surprisingly, other chains such as Starbucks have also been sued.

In Korea, a man sued the owner of a bar because he was drunk and fell down a flight of stairs. He won his case because the bar owner should not have let him walk up the stairs.

Most countries in the world require drivers to wear seat belts and motorcyclists to wear helmets.






















Now, we have warning signs for warning signs.

The U.S. government has decided to bail out Bear Stearns and subprime lenders and borrowers for making making poor investments.

People are blaming fast food and snack companies for making them fat (transfat). I thought I could lose weight eating chips and cookies. =)

People are blaming car companies because seat belts need to open underwater?

In 1992, 23-year old Karen Norman accidentally backed her car into Galveston Bay after a night of drinking. Norman couldn’t operate her seat belt and drowned. Her passenger managed to disengage herself and make it to shore. Norman ’s parents sued Honda for making a seat belt their drunken daughter (her blood alcohol level was .17 – nearly twice the legal limit) couldn’t open underwater. A jury found Honda seventy-five percent responsible for Karen’s death and awarded the Norman family $65 million. An appeals court threw out the case.

You know every beer commercial uses hot girls. I guess if they don't come to you when you drink beer, you can blame the beer company.

In 1991, Richard Harris sued Anheiser-Busch for $10,000 for false advertising. Harris claimed to suffer from emotional distress in addition to mental and physical injury. Why? Because when he drank beer, he didn’t have any luck with the ladies, as promised in the TV ads.

People blame the president because they don't have a job.

The poor blame the rich.

The rich blame the poor.

Students blame teachers.

Teachers blame students.

Everyone blames the U.S.

The U.S. blames everyone else.

Children blame their parents.

Parents blame their children.

Here's a rarely used expression: "It's my fault."

More On Government Spending

Here are some interesting statistics on spending:

Total 2008 U.S. Government spending/budget: $3 trillion
Total 2008 Korean Government spending/budget: $280 billion

Total government spending on education:
U.S. Government: $56 billion (1.8% of total)
Korean Government: $36 billion (12.8% of total)

(Wow. I'm surprised I can read and write. I'd likes to aks u a pew kestions.)

Defense/Military spending:

U.S.: $805 billion (Defense Department + Global War on Terror + Dept. of Homeland Security + Iraq and Afghanistan) LOL!
Korea: $25 billion

Iraq's GDP for 2007 was $100 billion. (5% growth rate)
Afghanistan's GDP for 2007 was $10 billion. (7.5% growth rate)

Now, if Iraq and Afghanistan were companies with stocks that could be purchased...
Based on growth: Iraq's P/E(PER) 5 Afghanistan's P/E(PER) 8
Market value of: Iraq $500 billion Afghanistan $80 billion

So, $580 billion could've purchased the two countries, I mean companies. This is actually pretty reasonable as Google trades at around 8.45 times sales.

Need for Speed?

Was your computer a lot faster when you first bought it?

If you're using Windows XP, you might find this useful. I've tuned a few computers now and thought it would be helpful to post a "How-to" article. (If you run into any problems, just send me an e-mail.) Let's speed up your PC (Windows XP only).

1. You need to download and install the following programs:

Crap Cleaner
This cleans up your hard drive. Deletes useless files and can clean your registry as well. Most of the time when you uninstall a program, there will be remaining "crap" to clean. When installing, do not install the "Yahoo Toolbar."

Disk Defragmenter by Auslogics.

2. After installing the above programs, let's see what's slowing down your computer.
Click the "Start" button and then click "Run." In the run box type: msconfig
and "enter." Next, click on "Startup" and see what programs are automatically starting with Windows. If your computer takes a long time to start up, then disable some or all of these programs. I've disabled everything except my antivirus program and firewall. If you want to find out if the program is necessary or a virus, you can check at the windows process library.

3. Now it's time to tinker with Windows XP. Click the "Start" button and then click "Run." In the run box type: services.msc You will see a list of all Windows processes. You can find which processes can be disabled here. I would go with the "Recommended" list in the middle, just to be safe. By disabling processes, Windows will start faster and run faster.

4. Click the "Start" button and click "My Computer." You will see your hard drives listed there. Left click on your hard drive and go to "Properties." Now, uncheck the box that states "Allow Indexing Service...." and then click "Apply." A lot will be happening here, just click "Ignore All."

5. Run CCleaner and clean out all of your useless files. Also, run the registry cleaner as well.

6. Run the Disk Defragmenter program and your finished.

The next time you start Windows a box may appear. Just click "Don't show me..." and "Okay."

Are you a Republican or a Democrat?

Here are some interesting statistics from Slate (2002) :

Democratic presidents average an annual 12.7% return for the S&P 500.

Republicans averaged only 8% annually for the S&P 500.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was even better for the Dems. Democrats 13.4% Republicans 8.1%

How about Congress and the S&P 500?

The Senate (when controlled by either party) : Democrats 10.5% Republicans: 9.4%
The House : Democrats 10.9% vs. Republicans 8.1%

How about GDP growth rates? Democratic presidents averaged 5.4% Republicans 1.6%

How about spending?

Here's a graph of the U.S. budget since 1961.
It looks like Nixon and Ford really got the debt snowball rolling. Reagan really took it to new depths. That bastard!

This may surprise you. In 2007 the U.S. government had to pay $243.7 billion in interest payments on debt. Why so much interest? Because the U.S. national debt is over $9 trillion. At least they got a good non-subprime rate of only 2.7%

Our debt runs around 36% of GDP which places the U.S. 65th among all countries. This is right below Cuba's (64th) 37%. lol

How does this affect me?

Well, like most Americans, my money is in stocks. =)
Also, since I am an American, my share of U.S. government debt is $30,694.83
(That's $9 trillion divided among 300 million Americans. What the hell?)

Am I a Republican or a Democrat?

I'm neither, but you can probably guess how a stock investor would vote.