Controlling Expenses during the Holiday Season

Merry Christmas! While you spend quality time hanging out with family and friends, the holiday season is also a time you spend a lot of money on gifts and meals.

In order to grow your wealth, it is very important to control your expenses. There are many people with high income, but some of them are also big spenders so they can't save up to grow their investment portfolio or buy a house.

I recently read the book "The Millionaire Next Door", which was first published nearly 20 years ago about the common qualities between millionaires, and learned that playing great defense (control spending) is just as important as playing great offense (having a high income). Having a high savings rate is the key to financial success.

From the book, it is mentioned that it is good to exercise the habit of writing down the expenses each day. It is now very easy to write down the expenses with the help of a smart phone. I downloaded an app called iSpending which allows you to track your income and expenses. Every time I pay for something (food, bills, gifts or transit), I open the app and mark it down. This way, it is easy to see how much money I spend and what kind of expenditures I spend on each month. After I begin to write my expenses down, I immediately became a lot more conscious about controlling how much I spend. Personally, I aim to have over 50% savings rate (money for mortgage payment and investments).

Some Thoughts on Wedding Expenditure

We planned for our wedding for almost a year. Thankfully my wife is very organized and planned ahead for everything so the day went smoothly as planned. With wedding costing more and more each year, it is very important to control the costs and not overspend.

Here are some of the tips for saving money and controlling the expenses:

• Plan early and be organized
• Plan ahead and list out all the services you need and expenditures that will incur.
• Keep all the invoices and record how much you have paid for everything on an excel spreadsheet.
• Shop around
• There are many companies offering essentially the same services (gown rental, photographer/make-up artist, wedding car rental, venue decoration, etc), shop around before giving them the deposit.
• Resist the pressure from sales person! Don't give them deposit unless you are absolutely satisfied with them. There are lots of choices.
• Services provided by different companies in Hong Kong can vary greatly. Before choosing a company for a service, read online reviews of the company see if there are any complaints (ESDLife is the largest discussion forum about wedding service companies in Hong Kong).

Also, in Hong Kong, it is customary to give out red pockets to waiters and everyone who helped (photographer/videographer/make-up artist/MC) so prepare those expenditures ahead of time.

Because we didn't spend much money for wedding photo and we used a package for photographer/videographer/make up artist and gown rental, we were able to control our expenses within budget and actually came out ahead after netting all the red pockets received from family and friends. I think it is important to save up early so you can get the ball rolling, the earlier you start building up the investment portfolio, the more time the investments can compound and grow. So make sure you don't spend too much on the wedding party!

What This Blog Does

I just got married two days ago and this blog aims to put down what the newlywed's personal finances and investments look like, as well as laying out my investment strategy and thoughts on the market. Eventually I would like to use the knowledge I gained from my studying/work experience to help me realize financial freedom and be able to retire comfortably.

I will also try to update my transactions and reasoning behind each transaction. Hopefully this will allow me to look back and realize what I did was right or wrong and learn from my mistakes.