This week is my last week away from my day job.  I am looking forward to going back, but also feeling a little bit of trepidation about leaving the baby.  So far I have had a wonderful Christmas break with the hubby and our new child, and here are some highlights.

First we were able to attend a Christmas party at our friends’ house.  There was a white elephant gift exchange, food,  and a couple other babies.  Our little ten week old is apparently almost as big as a 7 month old baby.  Since we have not gone to any social events for a while this was a great break from staying at home all day and night.

For Christmas Eve the hubby created a menu and made a five course dinner.  My favorite thing out of the whole meal was his butternut squash soup with ginger shrimps.  It turned out beautifully and he was marveling at how professional it looked and took photos  while I just slurped it down with gusto.  I shopped for all the ingredients and he did most of the cooking.  We are still eating the leftovers now but the whole thing cost around $3 per plate.

That night the hubby also sent me on a mission to buy a couple white elephant gifts for his family’s Christma party.  When I drove out at 8pm the streets were completely empty.  Most stores were closed and the only thing open was CVS Pharmacy.  CVS just recently entered Northern California when it took over all the Longs Drugs stores.  I have always heard of people talk about great CVS deals, but I have not ever visited one until this Christmas Eve.  When I got there I found two things under $10 and took them to the register.  It seemed like everyone had a CVS Extrabucks card except for me.  I sounded stupid when I asked, “how can I get one?”  At this moment a jolly guy behind me swiped his card for my purchase and saved me around $2.  He cheerfully said, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!  This is my gift to you!”  To be honest that really made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and I thanked him repeatedly.  I will probably shop at CVS in the future more often because some of the Extrabucks awards seemed quite good.

This Christmas is quite different for the hubby since it is the first Christmas he is not spending with his parents.  They moved to the Philippines last year and they visited this Thanksgiving, but the hubby sort of missed going back to Southern California and opening presents in front of a tree with his family. He did enjoy not driving for 6 hours in traffic, though.  We went to his grandfather’s home in San Jose for Christmas, and unfortunately I forgot the two gifts I purchased from CVS for the white elephant.  Nevertheless our baby was showered with a ton of gifts and now he has more clothes than me and the hubby combined. We had a lot of food and fun and the baby was totally  spoiled by all of the hubby’s aunts and cousins.

My parents visited the day after Christmas and brought many gifts for the baby from China.  My dad also brought a great letter from my grandparents hat expressed their joy and hopes for their first  great grandchild.  They hope that we can bring our kid to China to meet them in a few years.  We will definitely  try to visit China and the Philippines in a couple years with the baby.  We will also take him on a few tours of China when he is old enough to appreciate it.  There are definitely  a lot of things to see and experience.

As this year comes to an end, I am very thankful for the very special new addition to my family and every existing family member and friend we have.  It is impossible to purchase any of you with any amount of money.   May God bless you and your family in the new year to come.

sources have nowthat the Obama Making Home Affordable Program is . This is really no surprise since so many people are unemployed and many others simply do not want to continue payments on a debt that is much larger than the underlying asset.   The actual amount of people that could stick with a modification is quite small.   In response to the poor conversion rate of HAMP, the clownshow is continuing in congress and it is highly likely that unemployed folks will soon get taxpayer’s money to directly pay for their mortgages.  Is this really the best idea?

The provision I am talking about is embedded in the ginormous that recently was passed by the House.  The plan is a authored by Congressman Chaka Fattah.  It is based on a Pennsylvania program Fattah created a couple decades ago called .   The way it works in Pennsylvania is that before a homeowner is foreclosed on, they get a notice from the lender that tells them they can apply for the HEMAP program.  Then if they qualify for the program they are given another loan that is worth up to 24 months of mortgage payments or $60,000, whichever is smaller.  The HEMAP program determines whether or not the borrower can repay the loan in 24 months, and they consider many things including job skills and medical situation.  Once the loan is secured from HEMAP, the borrower starts paying HEMAP at least $25 a month and at most 40% of the borrower’s net income, and HEMAP pays the entire mortgage amount to the lender.  The HEMAP agency establishes a repayment schedule for the assistance loan, but if the borrower has enough equity and credit to the entire mortgage then the loan must be repaid in part or in full.

It is unclear what the final bill will look like in Congress, but if it is exactly like the Pennsylvania program it still might not do much good.  The main reason is that most people have no equity in their homes, so why would they get another loan to put themselves in further debt?  This is basically a shell game that uses debt to pay debt, and I don’t see how homeowners will benefit unless they have significant equity in their homes and just need a little help to tide themselves through a period of unemployment.    There are definitely people in this category, but they might do better to just get the money from friends and family, and the truly responsible folks would have an emergency fund that they could use.  I also could not find much information on the default rate of the HEMAP loans in Pennsylvania, so it is unclear just how “successful” it is for the taxpayer, but I guess the government is just planning to spend TARP money, and that is not real money to the congress people anyway.  What do you think?  Does it make sense to directly pay for the mortgages of those facing foreclosure?

Currently I am still on maternity leave, and I will be going back to work after the new year holiday.  However, I have been working on writing more since the baby is becoming easier to handle. I am now also an expert at typing with one hand so I can hold the baby while writing.  Here are some of the new things I have done in the past couple months.

First of all, I applied for a freelance print magazine assignment on a whim, and I was offered the job.  It was quite fun researching the topic and finally writing and editing my piece.  Hopefully I will get more assignments in the future since the pay is actually quite good. I feel that I should write a new resume specifically for my freelance writing.  Right now I have a pretty decent resume for my software engineering experience, but I do not have any writing related experience listed there because it is non-relevant to software engineering.

Next, I started writing for ‘s sister blog .  I am planning to write down more mommy-related experiences on Parenting Squad since they are on topic.  It is pretty fun to write these stories down, and I think if the blog stays around long enough it would be hilarious to show my kid the stories once he is old enough to read.

Finally, I am working on building some more websites for affiliate/adsense income.  I built one at the beginning of this year as an experiment and barely updated it, and so far in a year it made a profit of $200 or so.  It is not bad considering that there is very little overhead to keeping the site around.  I really need to research good keywords and affiliate programs to make it more profitable, though.

Since my husband went back to work this month, it has been really quiet around the house.  Even though I am keeping myself busy I feel that I still need some human interaction, so I am sort of looking forward to going back to work.  On the other hand I really enjoy working on my own and spending all the time I want with my baby.    Another thing I realized in these few months is that I will probably do fine without a permanent job, too.  I have many skills that I could make a living with as long as I use them and work towards my goals.

In the past couple months a couple of my family members have been making offers on bank owned properties as investments.  Without going into too much detail, they are buying properties with positive cash flow when rented out.   It is harder than it looks, and there are good deals out there.  However, here are some of my thoughts as to why I would not be investing in a rental property.

First of all, it takes a lot of time and energy to find a suitable property that has positive cash flow.  My hubby and I just don’t have the time  or drive to go house hunting right now with a new baby.  My hubby simply thinks it is too much trouble.  When we bought our house from his parents all he did was sign the final mortgage papers, and he thought that was too much trouble.  I cannot imagine how annoyed he would be if we actually went on a house hunt and attended endless open houses.   I am actually glad that we purchased the house he grew up in because that saved us a ton of time and gas  in choosing a house  (and probably saved us some  arguments since I have seen how my parents bought their houses).  Since our assets are combined, there is no point in investing in something that the hubby does not want to deal with.

Second,    it takes quite a bit of cash to buy investment properties these days.  We have very good credit, but there is little chance that we will beat out investors with full cash offers.  I just don’t feel comfortable putting so much cash into a rental property because that would make our investments too heavy on real estate.    It is never good to put all your eggs into one basket.

Basically, we are not really in a very good position  to buy rental property now, but for some people that have a lot of time and money on their hands there are good deals out there since the real estate market tanked so much.  I think these opportunities will stick around for at least a couple more years.   The rental market has gone down in general, but many people are moving out of apartments and moving into single family homes because the rent price on single family homes have gone down.  There are also a lot of people who were foreclosed on renting now, so it is still possible to rent out a property.  The key is to do your research and find something with a positive rate of return, and don’t overextend yourself with too much financing.

Anyway,  I don’t think my husband and I like being landlords because it involves collecting money from real people.  It is great when you have a good, long term tenant, but when you .   It is much easier to just collect interest from a bond or CD because it is a lot less personal.   When you buy stocks and mutual funds you could lose money, but at least you won’t lose your life and your car won’t get keyed.  Actual human beings  are just too unpredictable of an investment.

Today my hubby went back to work after spending 7 weeks with me and the baby.  He is a really hands on dad and he calms the baby down better than I can in some instances.  In these weeks he also got a lot of gaming time and he loved it and needless to say he didn’t want to go back today. I think having the baby and this break made us  reaffirm our desire to reach financial independence as soon as possible so that we can enjoy our time the way we want to.    So here is a quick review  to where we are and where we need to be.

Since we got married we have been, and right now I think we are still on track to “retiring” in 7 to 10 years as long as we both work and continue to save and invest.  Last year I wrote that I only , and that makes the deadline 2015.  That is an extremely stretch goal now that we have a baby and  a house.  However, if we pay off the house as soon as possible we will eliminate a pretty big fixed expense and it would be easier for us to retire since housing costs the most after taxes.  I have made a budget for us if we stopped working and paid off the house, and assuming that I still have my current blog income we would only need to withdraw around $25000 a year from our nest egg to live fairly  comfortably.    That means we don’t really need $1.4 million in our nestegg.  A smaller nestegg of 650,000 to 750,000 would be enough as long as we stick to a safe withdrawal rate of 4% and manage it carefully.  This would be what Jacob at calls a “25 year emergency fund”.  Of course, if you include a paid off home the entire portfolio would be worth over $1 million.  Essentially, the money we pay into the home will essentially be generating the rent money we would have paid.  In the long term of 50 to 60 years paying off the home and living in it is still worthwhile since rent will go up.  In California property taxes cannot go up by more than 2% a year due to proposition 13 so according to my calculation it would take around 72 years for our property tax to go up to an average rent price now.  By then we are probably dead anyway.

There are also a couple other advantages to “retiring” early.  First of all, we will still have some income, but it will be a lot less than what we earn now.  This means we will pay a lot less taxes and qualify for more tax credits.  Additionally, having less income is advantageous when it comes time for our baby to apply for college financial aid.  The current FAFSA system looks at parental income to determine how much a student should receive in aid, and some private colleges give large grants to low and middle income families.  As I wrote in , sometimes the same scholarship offers huge discrepancies in monetary award just because of parental income.  As long as we raise our kid well, then we could possibly save a bundle by retiring before he applies for college because we would have financial need based on income.  Don’t get me wrong, we are saving for his college fund, too, but we would rather spend more time with our baby and let him work for the bulk of his college financing since he will be an adult then.

Anyway, we are really in love with our baby now, and hopefully we can achieve financial independence in less than 10 years because he will still be a kid then.  We might have another kid, too, but that won’t happen for a couple years.  I really feel like I’m living in that Nationwide tagline “life comes at you fast”  because so many life changing things have happened since I started writing here.  It is pretty awesome, and I am thankful.