A Brief History of Personal Fianance
Here I am going to summarize my personal history of financial matters. For first independent financial decision for me in the United States was to get a loan. I had only $100 when I arrived at the San Francisco International Airport. In order to rent a room, I had to pay a deposit. I borrowed $400 from Peter in order to rent a room in Oakland far from the campus. After a few weeks, I got my scholarship money from Hong Kong. I paid Peter back the $400. He was surprised that I did that. He thanked for by inviting me to a local Chinese Restaurant.
After several months, I saved a few dollars. One day I saw a new bank (American Savings Bank) opened a branch at the Telegraph Avenue next to Little Hunan, a small Chinese restaurant I went often to get my lunches. The bank had a promotion to new CD accounts. I got $20 bonus for opening a CD account. I told the new to several friends like Wang Huanchao and Liu Yong. They also have a few dollars. Wang Huanchao opened a CD account also at the same bank.
When I started working at Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco at one summer. My colleagues told me mutual funds had better returns than returns than CD. Jie and I went to a Dreyfus office not far from the Bechtel office to open a mutual fund account. I kept that Dreyfus account for many years until 2004 when I closed that accounts and move the money to Fidelity and Vanguard.
A friend of mine moved from New York to Alameda around 1988. He told me stocks were better than mutual funds. I did not believe him immediately. I jointed one collective action sponsored by a professor of USF where Jie went for her MBA. The collective action was each one contributed $500 to buy LTV stock. The stock was supposedly very low in price and was near or close to bankruptcy. The professor thought LTV would come out of the bankruptcy when Bush became the President. Bush did become the president. But LTV did not come back. Later the professor sold the stock and gave back to each of the partners a few dollars. However, I became very interested in stocks since this experience. During the Tiananmen Square event in Berkeley, I met a new friend Greg. He is an attorney working on helping retirees to get Medicare or Medicaid benefits. I learned the Half-a-loaf approach from him. This becomes one of the main principles later in my investment.
In 1991 Jie and I started working. So we started saving money to buy stocks. Since I like stocks so much, I cashed out all CD accounts (some CD accounts were sold to friends) and moved the money to PCFN (Personal Control Financial Network), one of the first online brokerage services offered through Prodigy Internet Service. Very soon our account value grew to $50,000. One bad investment in Kendall Square Research set us back to $40,000 in one year. Since then, all my investments in stocks had been limited to the top-five companies in their respective industries. I followed the same principle until I sold all my stocks in April 2000.
Around the time, I learned about hedge funds from a friend of Tony. He invested his money at various hedge funds. I did not do that. I started to learn about the investment methodology of hedge funds. So I did a few year hedge-style investing.
In June 2002 I sold my home in California and moved to Plano, Texas to look for a better environment for George to grow up. I met Tom through Pete. I learned how institutions manage their money. Tom works for the Texas Public Employee Retirement fund as one of the investment committee members (worked as Chairman for one period). So I paid more attentions to other pension funds or retirement funds. CalPer (California Public Employees Retirement Fund) is one of such funds. I started to see how these institutions allocate their money. Soon after, I started to manage personal money using this asset allocation methodology.
After several months, I saved a few dollars. One day I saw a new bank (American Savings Bank) opened a branch at the Telegraph Avenue next to Little Hunan, a small Chinese restaurant I went often to get my lunches. The bank had a promotion to new CD accounts. I got $20 bonus for opening a CD account. I told the new to several friends like Wang Huanchao and Liu Yong. They also have a few dollars. Wang Huanchao opened a CD account also at the same bank.
When I started working at Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco at one summer. My colleagues told me mutual funds had better returns than returns than CD. Jie and I went to a Dreyfus office not far from the Bechtel office to open a mutual fund account. I kept that Dreyfus account for many years until 2004 when I closed that accounts and move the money to Fidelity and Vanguard.
A friend of mine moved from New York to Alameda around 1988. He told me stocks were better than mutual funds. I did not believe him immediately. I jointed one collective action sponsored by a professor of USF where Jie went for her MBA. The collective action was each one contributed $500 to buy LTV stock. The stock was supposedly very low in price and was near or close to bankruptcy. The professor thought LTV would come out of the bankruptcy when Bush became the President. Bush did become the president. But LTV did not come back. Later the professor sold the stock and gave back to each of the partners a few dollars. However, I became very interested in stocks since this experience. During the Tiananmen Square event in Berkeley, I met a new friend Greg. He is an attorney working on helping retirees to get Medicare or Medicaid benefits. I learned the Half-a-loaf approach from him. This becomes one of the main principles later in my investment.
In 1991 Jie and I started working. So we started saving money to buy stocks. Since I like stocks so much, I cashed out all CD accounts (some CD accounts were sold to friends) and moved the money to PCFN (Personal Control Financial Network), one of the first online brokerage services offered through Prodigy Internet Service. Very soon our account value grew to $50,000. One bad investment in Kendall Square Research set us back to $40,000 in one year. Since then, all my investments in stocks had been limited to the top-five companies in their respective industries. I followed the same principle until I sold all my stocks in April 2000.
Around the time, I learned about hedge funds from a friend of Tony. He invested his money at various hedge funds. I did not do that. I started to learn about the investment methodology of hedge funds. So I did a few year hedge-style investing.
In June 2002 I sold my home in California and moved to Plano, Texas to look for a better environment for George to grow up. I met Tom through Pete. I learned how institutions manage their money. Tom works for the Texas Public Employee Retirement fund as one of the investment committee members (worked as Chairman for one period). So I paid more attentions to other pension funds or retirement funds. CalPer (California Public Employees Retirement Fund) is one of such funds. I started to see how these institutions allocate their money. Soon after, I started to manage personal money using this asset allocation methodology.
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