uudaddy

Last week (Friday), when at friends’ house, and the hostess offered snack, she asked “这是什么呀？(what is this)”?

Today, after we put her to crib, when my wife and I both read iPhone on bed (her crib is next to our bed), she said “在看什么呀？(what are you reading)?”…Later, she also said “what are you doing?”

Saw it at dealsea. This is a good deal, if one does not plan to travel Southwest using the points soon.

They offer wide variety of giftcards (not limited to Amazon). I got some Wal-mart gift cards instead, per my wife’s suggestion

(image credit: onlinegiftcardsblog.com)

(Update 10-01-2011) We went to Youyou’s school this morning for “Parents work day”, basically they have some small playground improvement projects (painting, making a new climber), and in the lunch time, we have a BBQ and potluck. The ethnic diversity of the students/parents background surprised me a bit, reminded of Rolla (a lot of Indian and Chinese faculties and graduate students). It took some efforts to pull together such an event, thanks to David and his staffs

(Original) Youyou is a 18 month and 18 days old. She started the program on Aug 29, and 4 weeks has passed. She has transformed from “crying when mom left her in the school” to today “she no longer cries when mom drop her”.

She can say quite a few Chinese words and some sentences. She has good memory probably due to genetic reason (we are both good at memorizing things). She also can feed herself a bit, and be much more proactive when playing with us. For instance, she came to grab me for dinner when I was on phone last Sunday evening (mom did not ask her). Not to mention grabbing my glasses (she is very fast). When I go to work, she will usually say “Mao Zi” which means “wear a cap”, and say “bye bye” (which she learned a while ago).

I attended a class offered by David (the head of Hope Toddler program) this morning, Dave is quite enthusiastic and I think the No. 1 thing for me is learn, because kid is learning from parents, all the time.

I felt it’s easier to make money from those offers from writing iPhone, iPad and iOS apps. At least this is true for me so far. Another plus side people may not pay attention is the “no tax” benefit of the bonus miles/points. Also keep in mind if one needs to apply for home loan (buying new home, or refinance), he/she should be careful not applying too many credit cards in the near term to hurt his/her credit score (and potentially pay higher rate for home loan). With that in mind, I would describe some of the cards I applied this year.

Airline cards
United Mileage Plus Visa Signature Chase: earlier this year I applied this via my Mileage acct, received the 50,000 bonus miles. UA is doing 30,000 miles with $50 coupon now. Check united.com web site.

Continental OnePass MasterCard Chase: applied this after UA card. 50,000 miles. They are offering 30,000 miles as of now. One needs to sign up OnePass from Continental site first. Continental has merged with United, and the milage program will be merged at the end of 2011.

British Airways Visa Signature Chase: applied this in May. Got 50,000 miles with remaining 50,000 miles pending (needs to spend $2,500 in first 3 months).

Hotel cards
Marriott Visa Signature via Chase: 50,000 points worth about 5 nights at Courtyard. And one free night at category 4 or above. The link is here.

Intercontinental Hotel Group Priority Club: 60,000 points, worth about 4 nights at Holiday Inns. New account only. Link is there.

Currently I am thinking about two cards, the Amex HHonors (62,500 points for Hilton family hotels, as described by Loyal Traveller) and Chase Sapphire reward card.

Note compared to writing apps, one can not expect make this as a business, rather than a nice way (almost effortless) to complement income. I have used my bonus AA miles, and Marriott hotel points for my recent travel to Shanghai. Not to mention the convenience brought by my Amex SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) when travel in the US.

(Update 07-09-11) I saw this Southwest airline reward card deal from myMoneyBlog. I jumped.

I got those questions from a reader:
Why there is no national 529 plan? Looking at some states plan, it’s pretty much mutual funds like 401k, the investment return is like S&P? Why bother (consider S&P return is so low)?

I am not expert on this, I think why each state has a plan is pretty much why each employer (or most employers) has a 401k plan. The main purpose for such as plan is this: 1) Save some money for future liability (retirement or college tuition); 2) Hopefully the money can grow with the power of compound interest (snow ball effect); The tax deferral (in the case of 401k) or tax deduction (most 529 plans) are just ice on the cake.

As to why there is no national plan and federal tax deduction, I think this partially explained by college savings is still very small compared to retirement savings. Another indicator is the sales (or willingness for people to pay) my iPhone retirement savings/college savings app. Basically I gave away college savings calculator there because very few people are willing to pay 99 cents.

A side note: most people think spx (S&P index) is just boring, and some people think their retirement savings investments can grow 20% year over year. I think those people are too optimistic about their future. WSJ has an excellent article “The other midlife crisis” which explains why people expectations on income growth and retirement investment return are unrealistic.