Categories
advice and tips kids

Where to buy masks

Masks are much more widely available, and much more widely accepted now, compared to the early days of shutdown, or in February when the US was not directly impacted by COVID. I recall buying masks at Chinese grocery store, also at the Aliexpress.com (a subsidiary of Alibaba that serves customers outside of China). Also friends in China sent in some. All those are one time use “surgical type” or “dusk” masks. The quality was okay but great. Now those are more widely available in large websites or stores as well: Amazon, Costco, Walmart etc. The price came down as well.

But I am not a big fan of one time use masks. I had one cotton mask before the pandemic, and I used it a lot (I do need to wash it more often). Recently I found those Hanes masks are good or decent. They have 50 packs as well. It comes down to $2.50 per piece. I already received it, washed it, and started using it. I think one person can use one mask per day, just like undergarments. Use Code “SAFE20” for Extra 20% Off.

Also, some kids (and their families) in Ladue school, started this stl mask project: the money raised will be donated to operation food search.

I noticed some special purpose masks such as masks for running as well. Those cost a bit more than normal ones (see below), as cotton ones could easily cause sweat.

Last but not least, I think custom made or the name on mask can have some values, especially for teachers or healthcare workers. I found Etsy have some (adult personalized mask, adult custom name mask, and reusable kids mask).

(Update 07-20-2020) Found this deal on surgical masks at ebay. I ordered 300 🙂 Note I am still not big fan of one time use masks, but I plan to donate some and save some. Recently I found out I could misplace masks at home or in the car, so that’s the main use of one use masks.

Categories
advice and tips finance

CAGR compound annual growth rate of one of my IRA account

This IRA account was a bit unusual, as I took some meaningful losses earlier on. Then from 2017 (maybe a little bit more earlier, but I only have the balance history since Jan 3, 2017), things started to look up. In last 3.5 years, the CAGR is about 54.54%. My bigger winner during this time was $HUN, and more importantly $OKTA. This is the chart.

And the formula to do it via Google chart. Basically I imported the CSV (downloaded form broker website) into google sheet, and used the default chart, and added the formula for CAGR compound annual growth rate. Last but not least, one may adjust the formula a bit (maybe retype it), in my case, I used this formula: power (end value / beginning value, 1.0 / number of periods) . The ^ symbol (at least as I copied and pasted) seems have some issues, so I used the math power function, which is same as the ticker ^ symbol here. The period is year here, as I was looking for the annualized return.

Last but not least, this does not depict the full picture of my personal investments. I made some dumb mistakes here or there, and also, I put most of my 401k money in stock mutual funds (some in S&P 500 funds).

(Update 07-21-2020) The annual return is 13.34%, as shown in the chart. There was two meaningful drops in last 12 months. For comparison, the S&P 500 was up 9.25 % in last 12 months and Berkshire Hathaway was down -6.65% in the same period (yahoo Finance chart here).

In retrospect, I did not do well when I trade too much. One reason for more trading is since last last year, TDAmeritrade stopped the trading fees. Rohinhood was free since its beginning (2015?) and I did decently well in its early days. Then I got into sort of slump. This is similar to my main trading account (IRA at TDAmeritrade), I did well in 2017 and 2018, perhaps early half of 2019 too. But was just so-so in last 12 months (again refer to my chart). Update: actually I did not do very well in 2017 (+25%), but I did exceptional in 2018 (up 100%), then followed by 50% in year 2019. Overall still decent.

Categories
advice and tips finance

Review 401ks II

Today I started to look at other 401k accounts I have and evaluate whether I need to make any adjustments. This is a continuation of my earlier post.

In the past I do looked at them from time to time, but was not on a fixed schedule or anything. But I did start making some adjustments in last year or so, to my couple portfolios. For example, I got rid of the international funds in my Siemens 401k plan, I believe those will continue to underperform over the US equities in next 10 years or so. Most US companies are international companies too: I looked at the US large cap fund, the top 5 holdings are Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Facebook. And its performance in last 1, 3, 5 and 10 years (10.5% vs 10.5% annualized) is fairly comparable to S&P index. Note in my earlier post I mentioned I am mostly keen on 10 years performance. Because we were mostly in a bull market in last 10 years (2010 to 2020). I recall Sept 2008 and March 2009 were two market lows last time around during financial crisis / great recession. So this is a bit confirmation of the market effect.

For this Siemens 401k account, I actually don’t plan to do anything today. I did update the address, since I moved from condo to current single family house in last August. I will still have a few more portfolio to look, as you can see from my linkedin profile, I changed job a bit in last 10 years or so. And I mainly used two choices when I deal with the 401k: leave them alone (for the most part); or move them to IRA (applicable to my 401k when I was in contractor position, as they usually will not let me leave the money there). I end up with 2 IRAs over the years, and a few more 401ks. Maybe at some point, I will consolidate, as management of those can become more tedious. As a minimum I need to have user name / password for them. The only place they have single sign on is the credit card company I worked for. A bit off topic, I recall a gentleman who used to work for Disney, and he said Disney has at least three SSOs. Then my colleague commented then it’s MSSOs 🙂