Entries Tagged 'Marriage' ↓

Today a couple of our friends shared their testimonies for Easter, and it was quite moving. They are a very young couple that moved here to San Mateo from Alberquerque because they felt called to be here. They said that they did not really think much about the cost of living here, even though the husband read an article about the Silicon Valley that described a couple making over $100,000 a year living in a homeless shelter. Even so, they said that God provided for them every step of the way, and I have really seen how their living situation has improved in the past few years. Their testimony really made me think about what the phrase “God provides” really means, and here are my thoughts.

If you have seen the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, the little boy in there tells a pretty funny joke about a man and God’s grace. It went something like this:

A man was drowning in the middle of the river and a boat passes by and asked him if he needed help. The man said, “No thank you. God will save me.” So the boat passes him by. Then a larger boat comes by and asks him if he needed help. The man once again said, “No thank you. God will save me”. Once again another boat comes by and asked him if he needed help, and once again the man said that God will save him. Finally the man drowns and goes to heaven. In heaven he asks God, “God, why didn’t you save me?” God then replies, “you idiot! I sent you three big boats! “

I think the joke aptly illustrates that in many instances we don’t recognize what God is providing us and we don’t take the opportunity. God brings relationships and events into our lives that could change our lives completely, but it is up to us to be obedient and work on what God initiates. My friends that shared their life stories today didn’t just sit on their butts once they moved here and waited for God to drop a sack of money in their laps. They worked on what they were given and continued to improve their situation and they are leaps and bounds from where they were before.

I think another reason why we do not recognize God’s work is that we tend to think that a miracle should be a grand gesture as big as winning the lottery. In fact God provides us opportunities everyday that seem completely normal and even insignificant. It is up to us to be discerning enough to develop the leads that are meant for us, and be appreciative of the results.

Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. If you have missed the previous posts they are all in this category here:

Fifteen Years in America

Enjoy!

The next day, I arrived at Peter’s shop before 4pm. Peter introduced me to Meilan. Meilan is a Vietnamese born Chinese woman around 30 years old. She spoke both Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. She arrived in Hawaii in the mid 1970s with her parents as a refugee and worked with Peter for more than three years.

Peter told Meilan, “Please teach this man how to sell things here, and especially teach him how to price things and do solid business. Additionally you should teach him how to lock down the store at night. I have to go now. A few friends are waiting for me at a game of Mahjong.”

After Peter left, I learned a bit more about the marketplace from Meilan, and especially the skills involved in selling trinkets. Meilan told me that in these Waikiki stores generally the face price is ten times that of the wholesale price. If the item is a luxury item such as fine silver or gold jewelry then the markup is even higher. So even if a customer haggles, we could still sell it. However, we can’t sell our wares for too low of a price because our competitors sell similar things. People generally buy what is easy to sell, and if one store cuts the profit margin too low then the other stores would be quite angry. Additionally, Meilan told me a little bit about Peter. He was an international student from Taiwan. When he just arrived he worked at restaurants and went to school at the same time. After he got his degree, he bought this little shop in the international market place and became an entrepreneur. He and his wife also has an import and export company. In the few years prior to the recession their business was doing extremely well and they earned quite a good sum of money. Now business was not as profitable in Hawaii as years past, and Peter’s wife went back to Taiwan to find new opportunities. As a result Peter didn’t care about his little shop any longer, and he was glad to find me as a helper so he could go play Mahjong.

In the past I was just a professor of economics and only knew theoretic things about commerce. I didn’t know that in real life competition would be so fierce in a marketplace like this, and it really takes a good amount of work to be a good salesman.

To tell the truth, I manned the shop by myself on that first day, but after twelve hours of standing and hollering I did not even sell $100 worth of goods. After you take away my wage and rental fees from this bit of money, my boss Peter actually lost money. When he came to help me lock down the shop he checked out how much I sold. When he saw that I earned very little money he didn’t seem to disapprove. He said to me, “You just started! I really believe in you.”

That night, I felt a little depressed when I went home. If I couldn’t make a profit for Peter, how could I take his money? I had my heart set on being the best salesman in the entire marketplace.

When I set my heart on something, I always try to do my best. Thus I started studying other salespeople before and after my shifts. After a period of observations and experimentation, I discovered my own rules for being a good salesman. The following are some of my discoveries.

You must be direct and cordial, and call out to the customers first. The following is something I say often in Japanese, “Please take a look! We are having an 80 percent off sale right now!”

When two young Japanese ladies heard that there is an 80% off sale, they stopped in front of my shop. I really didn’t think that the little bit of Japanese I learned a long time ago could be so useful. However, if you want me to speak a lot of Japanese I would fail miserably. When the ladies came over I started to show them a selection of silver jewelry and other Hawaiian themed products.

“It is real silver, please try it on.” I picked out a silver dolphin ring and put it on one of the lady’s hands. Then I pointed to the dolphin and asked, “What do you call this in Japanese?”

The young lady looked at my sincere face and said, “Kore wa, nihongo de, iruka desu.” (This in Japanese is “iruka”) As she said this she lifted up her hand and admired the ring in the distance.

I stood behind her and started praising her, “Kawaii ne, anata wa hontoni kawaii.” (Very cute, you are really cute.)

Then I repeated what she taught me, “iruka, iruka”, and said “You are my Japanese teacher, and I am your student!”

The girl started to chuckle and said, “korewa, ikuradesuka?” (How much is this?)

Now I took the ring off her finger and checked the pricetag. It said $30, but I knew that the wholesale price was $2. So I plugged the price into my calculator and showed the lady that I took $24 dollars off, and sold it to her for $6. She was extremely excited that she got such a great deal, but actually the store still made a 200% profit. What is more important is that besides the small item she bought, she and her friend also bought some perfumes totaling over $150. My performance really surprised the Korean salesgirl across the way.

To be continued… More of my dad’s sales techniques in the next section! Stay tuned and subscribe to The Baglady if you don’t want to miss a thing.

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So we finally finished doing our taxes for the year of 2007. Since it was the first year for us to do taxes together it was a little more annoying than usual. Things used to be as easy as taking the standard deduction and reporting my W-2s and investment income. This year I had to read a lot more about filing as a married couple and the various marriage penalties. There were a few things we could have done to reduce our taxes. For example, I told the hubby to increase his 401k contributions last year, and he did do it, but his company seems to not have updated his contributions percentage. Since we didn’t get married until end of August last year I never looked at his paychecks for most of the year. It seems that financial planning for engaged couples really should start at the beginning of the year they intend to marry because the tax status is based on their marital statuses at the end of the year. By the time I got the hubby’s W-2 for last year it was too late to contribute more to his 401k for 2007. Another thing is that our W-4 status was wrong for most of last year because we didn’t change it. I don’t think that affected our taxes so much, though.

The end result is that we owe money this year simply because we got married. Both of us were bumped into the next tax bracket due to the marriage penalty. If we were both single we would both get tax refunds this year. However, we did donate a good amount of money so the tax bite isn’t so bad, and we don’t have a problem paying it off. This year, we are putting the following plans in action to reduce our taxes:

1. Got the hubby’s HR to up his 401k contributions - The hubby contacted his HR and now his 401k contributions are at the same level as mine. Last year I saved a lot more than him in my 401k and it is only fair that he gets to save as much in his own retirement account. This move reduces our combined adjusted gross income, and it means we will pay less taxes as a couple.

2. Donate more money - We are upping our donations each month to our church and charities because we have been blessed financially and we want to give a bit more out. I rather see the money go to causes I care about than the IRS or the Franchise Tax Board. Some people said to me that it is a dumb plan because I don’t really save money by giving money out, but donating isn’t about saving money.

3. Put more in tax advantaged funds and bonds - Treasury bonds do not incur California state tax and the Vanguard California Tax exempt money market fund is exempt from both Federal and State taxes. I am already putting money into these funds, and I plan to add some more. This is in our joint account and we can use the money for a house in the next couple years.

4. Maybe have a kid? - Our plan is to have a kid two years after we get married, and though a kid would reduce taxes he or she would increase our expenses quite a bit, too. We can’t really control the exact time of conceiving, but hopefully it will happen in a year or two.  I am reading up on this quite a bit.  I think it is best for us to have a kid sooner rather than later because each year the cost of having children goes up.  Also, I think the hubby’s mom is so lucky to have two adult children out of the house at the age of 46!  I want to be a young empty nester in twenty years.

The funny thing is, we still qualify for the economic stimulus tax rebate this year, but it is just enough to cover the taxes we owe so we will come out even.  Since we owe taxes I am trying to write the checks as late as possible and send out the returns in April.   Hopefully this year we will not owe anything!

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Today I opened a Roth IRA account at Vanguard for the hubby and fully funded it for 2007. Why so late you ask? Well, the hubby never ever had a Roth IRA account and since we got married last year I wasn’t sure if we were low income enough to contribute to a Roth IRA. The Roth IRA is one area where you can clearly see the marriage penalty. A single filer can contribute the full amount to a Roth IRA when he or she makes less than $99,000, but a married couple can only contribute the full amount if they make less than $156,000. I am not quite sure why it is structured this way because it seems to be saying that married people should get less tax advantaged accounts?

Basically I was afraid that we weren’t eligible to contribute any longer. However, after tallying up our income and donations our adjusted gross income was just a bit under the limit and I signed the hubby up and funded the account from our joint account. Right now I just parked his money in Vanguard Target Retirement 2045, but that could be changed in the future.

Looking back, I guess it is good that I had to wait a bit to open and fund this account because the market went down quite a bit. If we had opened the account back in the end of August when we got married then the money would have diminished quite a bit. Then again, it doesn’t matter that much because we plan to hold the funds for 34 to 35 years.

I really like Roth IRAs because they give us the option of taking out our contributions, and there are no taxes on the earnings in the future. I have had one since college and funded it faithfully every single year. The hubby just turned 25 recently so he can start withdrawing the money in 34.5 years, and I am sure these years will pass faster than we think.

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. If you have missed the previous posts they are here:
Fifteen Years in America — An Introduction
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 1)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 2)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (Part 3)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 1: The Struggle Before the Reunion by Jian (End)
Fifteen Years in America - Chapter 2: The Professor of Duke’s Lane (Part 1)
Enjoy!

When I saw that most of the salespeople nearby were young females I became a little disheartened.  I was afraid that I went there for nothing and wasted a whole $0.75 for the bus.  After I walked past eight or nine stores I saw a middle aged man standing in front of a shop.  I figured out that he is Korean from his face shape.  So I went up to him and muttered in broken English, “Do you need a salesman?”

He looked at me as if he were startled, and then shook his head and said, “No, I don’t need a salesman.  I need a salesgirl.”

I didn’t give up, and continued to walk forward.  I asked a few more Korean managers if they wanted help, and all the responses were “NO”.  Finally I was at the middle of the lane, and I saw a 30 something storekeeper who looked Chinese.  I looked at his products, and they were mostly crystal baubles like pineapples, dolphins, volcanoes, and coconut trees.  Besides crystal products, he sells  some perfume and Hawaiian print bags.  Additionally he had some Chinese imports such as exercise balls and other random knick knacks.

When I was in front of his shop, I heard the storekeep speaking to a teenage looking salegirl in the Chinese I am familiar with, “Ah-Mei, today the business is very light!”

The girl named Ah-Mei replied, “It sure is, until now I still haven’t sold anything.  Peter, how about you?”

Peter said, “I only sold a bottle of perfume. The business is so light that I don’t want to continue working.  However Meilan just had a child and only works four and a half shifts a week now.  My wife also returned to Taiwan so I have no choice but to work here.”

When I heard their dialog, I felt that it was my chance.  Because they spoke Chinese I didn’t feel shy.

I walked up to Peter and said, “Sir, do you need help?”

Peter said to me, “Oh, do you have experience in selling things?”  This was my third day in America, and of course I didn’t have any sales experience.

I had a sudden flash of inspiration and pulled out a business card from my university.  I told Peter that in China  I was the assistant department head of the Economics department, and I was also a professor.  I told him that of course I had sales experience, because that is a skill I teach my students.  Actually, this is a half truth because even though I have students that became businessmen, I really haven’t had actual experience outside of the school.  In school everything is theory in books, and I have never actually sold a single thing before.

Peter picked up my business card and read the titles I had printed in both Chinese and English.  Then he looked at me from head to toe and saw that I was clean cut and quite energetic.  He didn’t reject me right away like all the Koreans, and seemed a little bit interested.  At this moment a Caucasian couple walked to the store and started to peruse the goods.  Peter started to talk to the customers right away.  The woman seemed interested in the perfumes, and Peter immediately brought two bottles from his shelf for the customer.  The man didn’t seem to have any interest in buying things, and looked at the various products in the store.

When Peter was working on selling to the woman, I targeted the man.  When I saw that he seemed to be curious about a pair of exercise balls with a dragon design, I walked up and picked up the balls and started to roll them in my hand.  The exercise balls had tiny bells in their centers and when you played with them they would make ringing sounds.  My performance piqued the interest of this man.

“What is this?” He asked.

“These two balls are good for your health.” I told him.

“Really?”  He seemed a bit surprised.

It seems that the man was really interested, but I didn’t know much English.  However, I have been a professor for many years and I was used to giving a performance.  So I rolled the balls in my hands more quickly and more loudly.  When I saw this man was quite mesmerized by my performance I stopped playing with them and asked him, “could you turn around?”

He turned around and I started to roll the balls on his back, and as I rolled them I asked, “very comfortable?”

He nodded his head and said, “Oh, it’s massage, good, fast, faster!”

Finally he was conquered by my performance, and asked, “How much?”

Peter was negotiating with the woman, but he was also paying attention to what I was doing.  When he saw that the man was asking for a price, he said to me in Chinese, “just give it to him for ten dollars, if he haggles, you can give him a little discount.”

Now I remembered the rule about setting prices that I learned at school.  The idea is that you should “wear a three feet tall hat and let them take a cut.”  So I said to that man, “fifteen dollars a pair, and you also get a very nice box.”

That man must have known that in a street market haggling is normal.  So he said to me, “how about eight dollars?”

I replied, “eight dollars is a little bit too low, how about ten dollars?”

That man replied, “Ok, ten dollars.”

At the same time, Peter reached an agreement with the woman, and sold a bottle of perfume for 50 dollars.  That woman told her man to pay, and the man pulled out an one hundred dollar bill and said to Peter, “the total is sixty dollars, just give me back forty.”

Peter was quite happy, and as he got change he said to them, “you guys got a very good deal.  Thanks and come back again!”

When this couple left, Peter said to me, “come back here for a moment, I have something to say to you.”  Peter didn’t want Ah-Mei from the other shop to hear what we were discussing.  At that moment I knew there was hope that I found a job.  He said to me, “how about this, you come to work at 4pm, and I will have Meilan call you.  To begin I will give you the minimum wage, and after a month I will give you an additional 3% sales commission.  The more you sell the more you will get.”

When I heard this I was truly excited.  I told peter, “many thanks for giving this opportunity.  I know a little bit of Japanese also and I can sell thing to Japanese people.  I won’t let you down!”

Thus I started my first job in America.  I was a salesman!

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