Recently my mom was trying to convince me to buy a house again, and once again I had to tell her that San Mateo is ridiculously expensive and renting costs one half or one third of a mortgage.  I have said this about 10000 times already.  Yes, , but it still costs around $640 per square foot in my zipcode.  So I said that investing my savings in the stock market is better at this point, and to this she retorted, “You think it’s easy to make money on the stock market?  There has been no returns on the SP500 for the last 10 years while real estate doubled and tripled!”

Superficially, my mom is right.  According to , the returns for the last 10 years is 2.85%, and that doesn’t even beat inflation.  In the same time period real estate prices did double and triple at least in California.  However, this doesn’t mean that the SP500 gave no returns during any of those years.  If you look at Vanguard’s fund record, the return for the last 5 years is more than 7%, and that handily beats inflation.  Most people I know who invest in the SP500 do so through 401ks and IRAs and contribute money as time goes on. So even if the money they put in 10 years ago did not earn money, the money they put in during the lowest years of the market would be earning quite a bit.  The only situation where someone would be earning 2.8% on all their money is if they put in all their money 10 years ago and left it there and that is hardly the case with most investors.

Additionally, investors in stocks are not restricted to buying stocks in the SP500.  In the last ten years international stocks in South America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania have been performing quite well. Investors could have bought REITs which get their dividends from real estate and participated in the real estate boom. The possibilities are endless.  Even in the current down market, it is possible to make money in the stock market.

Ultimately, hindsight is 20/20, and I think my mom is wrong in saying that stocks are the lesser investment because she is cherry picking a decade where real estate appreciated abnormally. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is possible to make money in real estate, too, but worshiping one asset class as the ultimate holy grail is a bit short sighted.  I like stocks for their liquidity and hassle-free nature.  For example, I never have to mow the lawn of my mutual funds or fix their roofs.  If I can get enough return from my funds to come out ahead, then I am happy.  Basically, I still believe that having a diversified portfolio of low cost funds is the way to build wealth.  Eventually I will buy a house, but I will and the amount of cash I spend won’t exceed 25% of my portfolio.  I would do it this way so I don’t overload my portfolio with real estate.

As many of you bloggers already know, this weekend is the BlogHer ’08 conference in San Francisco. I was planning to attend, but got lazy and missed the registration deadline. Additionally, these couple months have been kind of crazy in terms of having free weekends. Nevertheless, several bloggers are flying in so we will be meeting for dinner in San Francisco tomorrow! I am pretty excited about meeting , , , , and . Anyway, I’m sure the conference will be awesome and they will be spreading the word for Wise Bread.

Besides that, we found out that our rent is not increasing. This is the advantage in finding a nice landlord. I know that his HOA fees went up a little bit, so keeping the rent the same actually means he is losing a little bit of profit, but having good tenants that pay on time like us is very valuable to a landlord, too.

As usual people are asking me when I will have babies. Honestly, that is up to God and the hubby. Obviously I can’t have a baby on my own, so I don’t know why I get the most queries about this subject. So I tend to say, “ask my husband” now. As I have said before, I prefer to have the first kid before I turn 30, but it is not totally up to me.

Finally, my husband and I are playing in the . He named our team Team Chimerica. It’s a combination of the words China and America, and also looks like the word chimera. He has been chronicling our battles against ancient evil . If you have never played before then my hubby’s posts may sound like insane nerd babble, but this cooperative game is the only board game where we don’t try to kill each other but instead work together to fight an Ancient One and other monsters.

That is all for this really random post. There are more personal finance topics to write about and more evil to fight, but for now I must figure out what to have for dinner.

Recently a news item highlighted a book called “” by Carol Dweck. Her research showed that those who believe they are innately talented and do not choose to grow tend to be less likely to fulfill their potential than people who believe their abilities can increase over time. She labeled the first group as people who have a “fixed mindset” and the second as people who have a “growth mindset”.

Dweck argued that the talented people with a fixed mindset are afraid to make mistakes and look stupid so they tend to take less challenges and develop their skills. On the other hand, those with a growth mindset jump at the chance to change and improve themselves and in the long run this group of people become more successful in business by learning from their mistakes and trials. Finally she says that it is possible for people to change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset even though it is not easy to let go “something that has felt like yourself for many years”.

Personally, I think I have been in a fixed mindset all throughout my childhood. It may have to do with being an Asian nerd who is good at school. People thought that I was smart at a pretty young age and that stereotype kind of stuck. I had very good grades in school and was really afraid of getting a B because that would be a failure. I thought that I was smart. That changed in highschool and college because I met too many people that are a lot smarter. I think when your friends are smarter or more successful than you it keeps you humble. Being in that environment also spurs a bit of healthy competition.

Now I am more up for new things and new challenges because I am no longer in school. I now understand that your grades do not matter that much in real life. Nobody cares what I got on my SATs 10 years ago, and nobody cares that I wrote an English paper that I got an A on. It is important to learn new things at work and try out new projects because otherwise I get extremely bored. If I had to do the same thing for the rest of my life then it would be like living the same day over and over again. That is a frightening thought, but most of us do it anyway because we are used to being institutionalized.

So I guess having a growth mindset means that I would be able to step outside of my comfort zone and try something unknown. I have done that when I moved out of my parents’ house, , and . I must confess that I am still afraid of failure because my life is pretty good right now, but I am now less afraid of making big changes in my life because change makes life more interesting and colorful.

How about you?  Are you in a fixed mindset or do you thrive on change?

I am pretty lazy in submitting my articles to carnivals, but I did do a few last week. Here they are:

– This is actually a pretty good carnival that I never participated in before. Better late than never.

-Some great stories here. I liked this one about .

– I was picked as a sparkling pick of the week for my article about . It’s pretty funny, but I used to send my scathing real estate related articles to this carnival and they always rejected it, but I guess the rosy sentiment towards real estate has changed.

– This carnival always has some funny stuff. I liked #13, which linked to a story that said liberal (and obviously juvenile) San Franciscans are . The stupidity of this  is that the job of waste management plants is to clean up waste and toxic stuff, so if they want to say that President Bush is crappy by donning his name on this plant, they deserve a big fat FAIL on their heads like the folks at

Another announcement is that I will be hosting The once again next Tuesday! I should have put up a post earlier but I totally forgot. Anyway, feel free to submit .

Finally, I wrote an article about on Wise Bread last night. I really enjoyed writing this article so I hope you enjoy reading it, too.

Have a great holiday everyone! Don’t eat too much and drive safely!

Well, 2008 is really flying by.  Now we are in the first day of July I think it’s time for a mid year review of my goals for 2008 which.
viagra canada reviews

viagra canada reviews- I am still looking into this, but I think the biggest obstacle is my weird working schedule.  I work from 11am to 7 or 8pm on most days.  Maybe I can find things I can do at home or before I go to work.

viagra canada reviews – When I set down this goal I was only writing .  In January I was invited to write for and then I started in March.  So combining all three blogs now I get on average 2000 pageviews  a day. This is a huge improvement.  So I think I will have to revise this goal to getting 4000 pageviews a day on average by the end of the year.
viagra canada reviews – Well, since getting the Wii Fit and getting I have been exercising with the hubby almost everyday.  So far I lost about 2 lbs, but I feel that I gained a little bit of  muscle and my thighs are more toned. So I guess we will carry on and see what happens.
viagra canada reviews – I am working on this, really.  I try to listen to the hubby when he tells me to clean certain rooms.  This weekend he said that my bathroom is above average in cleanliness.

5. Be awesome at my job – I have been at my job for almost 8 months now and I have pretty much settled in.  I learned quite a bit of new things so now my job isn’t that difficult once again.

Financial Goals
viagra canada reviews- I received a  small raise at work a couple months ago.  Since I was a new employee and had only been working there for four months they prorated my raise so it was about 3.5%.  I think after taxes I am earning about $100 more a month. It’s almost enough money for gas! Anyway,  I was pretty happy about it since I was expecting nothing.  My manager actually told me it was a special raise since pretty much all the other people who worked at the company for less than six months got no raise.  I believe him since in my last company all the people that has been at the company for less than nine months didn’t get a raise.  I guess it makes sense.    Anyway, my salary isn’t 100k, yet, but my blog income has grown quite a bit.  So it’s quite possible to break $100k in income this year.
viagra canada reviews- Well, we’re actually progressing nicely towards this goal.  Our networth has gone up 21% since 12/31/2007 despite the recent stock market drop. So I think we’re definitely on track for 40% by the end of the year.

viagra canada reviews – I think with is pulling in I would have to file taxes as a business at the end of the year so I can write off some of the expenses I have incurred.  I would have to pay income taxes anyway so I might as well deduct some of the valid expenses I had such as hosting and software.

So all things considered, 2008 is turning out to be a good year.  I think writing down my goals really helped me in working towards them. Now I just have to stay the course for the second half of the year!