Lilia Beta

I'd like to share a picture I saw on Pixdaus a while ago, which I thought was really fascinating. Basically, it shows how much families around the world eat and spend on food every week (click to enlarge).

From Lilia Beta

If I were back in high school and told to "analyze the exhibit", I could go on and on about pre-packaging, food groups, family size, cultural/geographic significance, etc. Instead, I did my own experiment.

I took photos of what I ate for 4 weeks. This was before I left California, so what I eat is a bit different now. Each week's groceries usually run from $20-40. However, I ended up not eating everything in the photo in that week, due to laziness or overestimation of my appetite.

Week 1
Breakfast: Soymilk, quail eggs, cresents (to bake)
Lunch: Salad (not pictured), corn, garbanzo beans, soybeans
Dinner: Pork/ napa/ tofu soup,
Other: Roasted seaweed, coconut ice cream, tomato juice, fruit, tofu dessert


Week 2
Breakfast: Soymilk, eggs, yogurt, bread
Lunch: Salad, chicken wings, beans (did not eat), corn, soybeans
Dinner: Napa/ game hen/ mushroom soup
Other: Fruit


Week 3
Breakfast: Soymilk, custard buns
Lunch: Salad, yam
Dinner: Broccoli, mussels, noodles
Other: Mochi, tofu dessert, fruit

Week 4
Breakfast: Soymilk, custard buns
Lunch: Salad, roasted pork loin (not pictured)
Dinner: Tacos (tomato, avocado, cheese), spinach, bok choy, zucchini
Other: Fruit


What do we see here? I am clearly getting more lazy in weeks 3-4. I don't eat a lot of carbs, because I find it makes me sleepy during the day, and I don't eat a lot of meat since it is somewhat more difficult to prepare. Also, due to my new paranoia that my food is covered with pesticides, I am now addicted to buying pre-packaged organic salads (which sell for $8/lb since those small bags are only 4 oz!)

I think overall, my week's rations seems fairly healthy. I think taking the picture is helpful in getting an "overall picture" of your own diet, for both health or budget reasons :)

Lilia

Sorry, I've been busy and haven't been posting. For those of you who are reading this and have not talked to me recently, I am currently living and working on the Peninsula.

Next fall, I will be attending the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University! I am very grateful to Ohio State and all my letter writers, counselors, and supporters :) .

More later...

Growing up, the library was probably my favorite place, as I was a complete bookworm. During high school and college, I basically stopped reading for fun except for the few books I managed finish while commuting on BART.

Perhaps I have reverted to a childlike state, and have resumed my bookworm ways! I choose book to read more or less by randomly picking them off the shelf... this has lead to some incredible finds as well as books that are probably a waste of my time. Anyways, here are two books that I've read this past month that were delightful surprises (I have never heard of the author or the book) :

The Nightingale by Morgana Gallaway

A very surprising find, especially since this is Gallaway's first book. And that she is an English lady writing about a modern Iraqi girl. Leila al-Ghani aspires to become a doctor in post-Hussein Iraq, and begins to work at a hospital at an American military base. Even though the book is still fiction, it's still an incredible story ( a bildungsroman, if you will) of a girl trying to make sense of family, tradition, ambition, and wartime atrocities. Although some westerners' biases are obvious ( simple example : Leila, Fatima, as names... really?) I think Gallaway has still done a great job.

Who's Afraid of Beowulf by Tom Holt

I should probably be a little ashamed I don't know who Tom Holt is ( or didn't pay attention), but this book has made up for that! This book was published in 1988 (when I was one!) when Holt was only 27. It is the hilarious and delightful story anthropologist Hildy Frederiksen, who discovers a Viking burial ship- along with 12 Viking heroes awake and ready to save the world again. Funny, and a short read as well :) .

Some books I've read this month that I've also enjoyed:

Persepolis / Persepolis II by Marjane Satrapi (Satrapi's memoirs of growing up in Iran- in comic book form. If you haven't read these, you must.)
In Your Dreams by Tom Holt (Seriously, Tom Holt is now one of my favorite authors)
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides (So well written I keep thinking its a memoir instead of a novel. Also a Pulitzer Prize winner)

Some books I've read this month that I did not enjoy:

Madeline is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynam (maybe I just don't like postmodern stuff :(. I feel like authors have more fun writing this than I did reading it)
Moving Lila by Julie Fleming (Meh)
The Changling of Finnistuath by Kate Horsley (Slow, a bit disappointing)


Enjoy reading :)

Lilia

Wednesday was my last day of my old job at UC Berkeley. So officially concludes my college days. Thanks to everyone at TSC for the fun times! Here are some photos..

The Parsimonious Days

At school, I think I managed to survive month-to-month on $800, which was more or less the income from my part-time job.

"How?" you ask, "especially in an expensive place such as Berkeley?" Listen up! Here are my tips for living cheaply in college:

1. Do not live in the dorms. Find an apartment with some friends. In the dorms, I was paying something ridiculous like $2000+ a month for sharing a room and eating bland food. Apartments in Berkeley are expensive, but if you find one a few blocks from campus they are cheaper. Also, Berkeley has rent control, so when you find a good apartment, keep it, because you could never get another for the same price next year.

2. Try to control how much you eat out. In college, it's tempting to not want to cook, and go out with friends. You should go out with your friends, but create a budget, and stick to it.

3. Make your own food! On average I spent about $30 a week on groceries. Every few weeks I'd buy staples to stock up on, but most weeks I'd go to Berkeley Bowl for fresh and yummy fruits and veggies. Of course, I didn't eat much meat, but I'd imagine if you're a big meat eater, you really wouldn't spend more than $50 a week. Eating out every day (assuming a rock-bottom cost of $15 a day x 28 days) = $400 a month, versus $200 a month( generous $50/wk x 4) if you buy groceries! Also, fresh grocery food is much healthier.

4. Recognize your "time value of money". Sometimes it's more efficient to eat out, like during finals time, or when you have a job and are really busy. Senior year, I was buying food about 3x a week, because I was working and didn't have as much time to cook. ( Sample calculation: if you make $15/hr, or approx $12 after taxes, it is better to buy a cheap dinner for $8 and save the hour of cooking). Even more efficient, is to buy pre-prepared food from grocery stores ( like those rotisserie chickens that last for 3 days) which will save you time and money.

5. Last and final point- recognize what you really need, I need food, but I don't need to go mall shopping every weekend. I read somewhere that most Americans have enough clothes to live comfortably for 2 years. Ladies, I know this is true for many of you! I bought a lot of clothes my freshman and sophomore year, but cut the habit my junior year. Between then and this summer, I have bought:

- One pair of jeans
- One sweater (which I forgot about and never wore until I found it still in the bag when I moved out)
- One pair of sheepskin boots when Shoe Pavilion went out of business
- Socks and underwear

... and I still had enough clothes to wear, even if I didn't do laundry for 3 weeks!

Which brings me to my next part of my post---

Much Deserved Shopping Trip to the Great Mall!

In celebration, on Thursday, I took myself to the Great Mall in Milpitas for an entire day of bargain shopping. The Great Mall is an outlet mall, and has outlets for stores like Neiman Marcus, Sears, Guess, BCBG, bebe, Abercrombie/Hollister, etc. OH JOY!

To get there, I took BART to Fremont and then a VTA bus. I'd suggest driving, especially if you're going in a group, but I didn't want to get caught in possible rush-hour traffic in an unfamiliar place.

I walked inside the Coach outlet store, and it was being mobbed by hordes of Asian ladies buying armloads of 5-10 bags! HUH? Apparently everything in the store was 50% off, and some of them had a coupon for an additional 20% off (if you signed up and printed the coupon from the Coach mailing list).

Well, one of the items on my list was a new handbag, since my old one (the one I use the most) I had gotten in China 3 years ago, and was little more than a few layers of fabric, with more beads falling off every day. I got this blue patchwork cutie for a total of $114! ( If I had the 20% coupon, it would have been around $90)





Okay, so I usually dislike branded things, because their prices are high only because someone ran expensive marketing campaigns telling us a products will make us look more attractive/skinny/rich/fashionable. I really didn't like the signature Coach bags with "C" written all over (you might as well have "insecure" written all over it instead) . However, I am pleased that Coach decided to offer deep discounts, in light of the rough economy. Louis Vuitton and Chanel (brands that never discount, in order to preserve their "image") take note! I think you could use some mobs of Asian ladies buying 5-10 bags each to boost your profits.

In some ways, my trip is symbolic. Today's entry is titled "The End of Parsimonious Days", because I my poor-student days are over (for now). Now I shall simply be frugal...

Lilia

When I first turned 18, the first thing I did was open my very own savings account at ING Direct. (What did other children do? Buy cigarettes? What are you supposed to do? People don't even smoke much these days...) I was so excited at the 4.5% interest rate I was going to get! An I got more excited when I got emails ever so often about the interest rate increases (usually after the Fed bumped up their rates).

Now I'm 22, and ING's rates have dropped to somewhere around 2-3%, due to to the economy, of course. I've always hoarded my cash in my tiny savings and checking accounts during school because I felt like I was going to spend it all every month- and for the most part I did. I'm out of college and have been thinking about what to do.

Time to try my hand at investments!

Now, I am not, and probably will never be a risk taker. I would have bought treasury certificates if the yield wasn't so horribly low for what a poor college student had to spare. In finance class, we learned that on average, the stock markets well outperforms "risk free" investments in the long run. I am convinced this is true, but in practice was still unwilling to try it.

Recently, I've been reading tons of investment books, and have decided a small amount invested in a few well-diversified mutual funds could help me test the waters. Also, ING has been spamming me with these emails about their new investment service.

I took a look, and was pretty excited! ING's service is called ShareBuilder, and you can buy and sell stocks for only $4, which is really low. Most importantly, they have no load mutual funds (basically meaning there is no fee for buying/ selling since there is no middleman) from some of the top mutual fund companies! I did a little bit of research and found a list of 25 best no-load mutual funds for 2009 from Kiplingers.com. ING offers mutual funds from some of these top companies, including T Rowe Price and Vanguard.

Im pretty excited! My investment plan will be something like:
$300-500 to start, $50-100 added in every month.
I probably won't sell anything, and will just not invest if I feel it is a bad month (which is unlikely)
In at least a year, I may start taking money out, because I need it for school. This way, I avoid the short term capital-gains tax ( I must hold investments for at least a year and a day).

Consider ShareBuilder by ING! If nothing else, possibly losing $500 (with the chance of gaining a lot more) in mutual funds is probably better than two pairs of designer jeans that only get worn out, in my opinion!

Remember, the stock market returns average 15% in the long term : this could be years or even decades! This assumes also that your investments are well diversified- meaning diversity across industry, nationality, and company size, etc.

And a lot of the funds have lost value during this recession. Mutual funds are NOT FDIC insured, so only invest what you think you can afford to lose (or is not better spent elsewhere, like on tuition).


I'll keep you posted as I do more research and decide on what to do!

Hello, my name is Lilia. Welcome to my blog!


I am a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where I received a B. A. in Economics. Although I was not the best student, I love economics, and believe "regular people" can benefit greatly from the fundamental lessons.

I started this blog hoping to share with you interesting stories of our ubiquitous world. I'll could write about current events, random topics that fascinate me, as well as things I believe are important for my readers to know! I am particularly interested in personal finance topics, international business (especially Asia & Pacific) , as well as literature and art.

My goal dear readers, is to enlighten, educate and also entertain :) . I hope you will find my blog fun to read as well as edifying!

Lilia