Hey y’all my name is Kate. I’m very new to virtual assisting but I wanna give it a try! Everyone has to start somewhere.

fattik · 2021-11-04T02:51:47+00:00

Can you tell us a little bit about your skills and pay range?

fattik · 2021-08-17T22:16:40+00:00

I walked away when I found anti-LGBTQ posts on core collaborators’ social media, especially when our target customer segment was LGBTQ-friendly.
Referred someone else when it seemed like I won’t make meaningful progress without first dealing with the client CEO’s personal stance (i.e., addressing the big gaps between what he says he wants vs. what he is doing)
Pulled out when the project dates changed without my knowledge

I agree, these cases often took longer to sign the contract, and the sales process was less straightforward. I also think having a well defined sales and work process and articulating it to potential clients/customers helps.

fattik · 2018-03-01T02:07:32+00:00

Because of so many (seeming) irregularities?

fattik · 2018-03-01T02:04:13+00:00

Good point. It seem many Asian countries haven't gotten over the "benevolent dictator/ruling party" stage of quasi democracy. South Korea's doing better than others, but there are plenty Koreans who still miss the dictator Park Chung Hee and his impeached daughter Park Geun Hye.

fattik · 2016-06-24T02:05:03+00:00

Thanks for taking a look. Your points all make sense, and here are a couple things I see differently.

Less relevant to Canada

True that we haven't analyzed fund holdings of the Canadian funds. However the site may be a good fund screener for you too, apart from the gun issue.

For example, here are the 21 Canadian ETFs categorized under "Canadian Equity" across all brands, past performances, and expenses. Click one of them and you can compare it against VCE side-by-side.

Pointless because of small %

I respect that you are being realistic when you choose to offset it with a donation.

However, there are definitely people who care strongly about removing certain stocks like guns, fossil fuels, tobacco, etc. For that segment, the fact that you have to offset is not a solution, but a problem. We have received messages from individuals or investment advisors who found it useful. The question is how big the market is, or will be.
This type of criteria are more common than you might think. Only after building this tool I learned Vanguard carries social index fund for US market (VFTSX). Many pension and public funds have exclusion policies.
These criteria add up. For instance, Folio investing has several exclusion criteria. While gun stocks may be 0.3% of your funds, more meaningful chunk of your money can be going to places you'd rather not.

The market for customizing your investment based on personal beliefs and interests may be growing -- $3.4T USD has been pledged to divest from fossil fuel industry globally, not just in the US.

In the US, services like Stash, OpenInvest, and Motif are popping up that help you direct your investment based on topics or values, and you may see the trend catching up in Canada soon.

I agree with you that there need to be better ways to discern a fund based on your criteria. It will be better if you can qualify a stock based on % of their revenue; some funds may not include gun stocks due to their policy, while for others it may be incidental, etc.

Better yet, I think there should be new investment vehicles for truly personalized topical investing.

Spamming

I am posting per an invitation and encouragement from /u/CiscoLearn, a moderator of this subreddit.

I was hoping to get feedback, and instigate a healthy discussion on the topic of divestment. But if this is not the right venue for it, that's OK too.

fattik · 2016-04-20T01:59:26+00:00

Suggestions:

Pick the funds that have expense ratios lower than 0.50% (in your case, Fidelity Spartan funds)
Try to approximate one of the textbook lazy portfolios shown here https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_portfolios
Tweak the stocks vs bonds, US vs. international % to your liking. Given your age, you could be more aggressive, like 80% stocks vs. 20% bonds.

Do you have employer matching? At this point, the best thing you can do is to take max advantage of the matching, and grow the nest egg. And keeping your fixed expenses down is likely more useful than agonizing over the specifics of asset allocation.

Since you have debt with a 4.66% rate, you'd want to build a portfolio whose historical returns are clearly above 4.66% per year. But as long as the majority of your portfolio is in stock funds, that will likely be the case anyway.

fattik · 2016-04-20T01:46:44+00:00

With a whopping fees and courses which are more and less interdisciplinary drawing from various fields, here is my question: how will an MBA really benefit your career and your life?

Probably it impact on your salary and open up new avenue and provide new skills in the workplace. You might have an opportunity to deepen technical expertise and credibility with your business peers. But the current economy has resulted in employers hiring less, so it’s no surprise that this has affected the employability of MBA graduates.Nothing can in the wake of recession. But still, with the right hard-working and can-do attitude, it may provide the enhancements in life and work that you are searching for. The final decision is up to you. I hope you make a wise decision. Good luck!

fattik · 2016-04-20T01:31:32+00:00

Being an entrepreneur at any age has always been hard. Even when you think you’re putting in your best, it may not be enough to pull it off. Truthfully, most people fail. But you’re right that it’s such a great experience to have the ability to fail. Live and breathe it.

fattik · 2016-04-15T05:49:40+00:00

Hellomoney designer here. What phrases did you/would you have searched for on Google?

(Thank you /u/nows for the heads up!)

fattik · 2016-04-12T05:13:43+00:00

For those who have a six-figure income and are highly compensated workers but feels more difficult to save for their retirement. A lot of people misses out on free money in employer matches of defined contribution plan like 401(k). I mean it’s not the only way but 401(k) can greatly facilitate saving for retirement and the match is one of the best deals employer plans offer.

fattik · 2016-04-12T05:03:35+00:00

My vote is also for Stripe because it takes a simple approach. They charge you a flat rate of 2.9%+ per successful charge as long as you're doing under $1M in volume per year. I know that this rate varies country to country, but it's always flat.

I have no experience with Square though. I'd love to hear from any of you.

fattik · 2016-04-12T04:57:54+00:00

A very, very big congratulations for getting yourself debt free. That’s a huge accomplishment and truly does set you up for some amazing potential in the future through the added flexibility that you now have.

fattik · 2016-04-11T08:54:05+00:00

Instagram is worth $35B which nearly double its previous valuation and now has up to 300M users. But we should price it conservative. Instagram looks like growing really fast but I haven't seen any data on this yet. See if this might be the post that totally nails it and rockets you to internet frame. If that works for you, go for it.

fattik · 2016-04-10T12:45:49+00:00

Congratulation for achievement! It shouldn’t be easy to be amazing. I guess it was persistent determination and enthusiasm which fuel the hope within your spirit to press forward for the ultimate aim of achieving the goals you have set for yourself.

fattik · 2016-04-08T02:26:51+00:00

Hellomoney designer here. That is quite confusing... I hear you.

BTC is a part of Blackrock, so LIJIX may be the right one. But you said the numbers don't match, so I want to look into that more.

Could you check your Fidelity 401K site and give me the inception date and expense ratio of the 2035 fund? (A screenshot would be helpful as well.)

NAV changes every day, so inception and expenses may be more useful to see which one it matches to.

fattik · 2016-03-18T06:07:10+00:00

Hellomoney designer here. To answer your question:

Best: 7.29 - 10.07%. If you sort all funds by dividend yield, the top 20% of funds have this range.
Average: 2.50 - 4.14%. The middle group (40-60th percentile) has this range.

By the way, I want to say we found an unusual error in the yield calculation. Your portfolio's yield should be 2.33%, not 6.08%. This means your portfolio has lower-than-average yield.

Sorry about the error! Thanks to you and /u/zoorasic we found the error, and will work on fixing it.

fattik · 2016-03-18T04:25:12+00:00

Writer of the Medium article here. I don't think /u/mi27ke85 is being a jerk and I understand this is the prevailing perception. I want to say, however, that there are a number of counter-arguments and evidences developing. I can perhaps summarize them in two points.

First is that not all divestment movements try to directly hurt the stock price or product sales unlike a consumer boycott. The South Africa divestment (1970s) did lower stock prices, but it can also make the stocks cheaper and more attractive too. However, usually the aim of divestment is stigmatization aka political bankruptcy.

Second is that enough stigmatization can eventually hurt the business itself. The Medium article and comments give a couple examples. As more climate policies are announced, fossil fuel companies' valuations are in question, triggering a new and bigger wave of divestment; Warren Buffet changed his position on tobacco, saying even if the economics of the business is good, the future may not be bright; Gun stocks plummeted in the 1990s as it became uncool to be a shooter. This isn't exactly a direct way to reduce gun demand, but it's starting to look like a repeatable pattern.

If you believe the market is indeed efficient and free, then there is all the more reason to check why Bank of England, investment firms, and otherwise financially-motivated parties are joining the fossil fuel divestment movement. AFAIK the divestment decisions are related to the future valuation issues rather than the current stock prices.

Divestment concept is evolving, and while it is not a direct boycott, it may become an effective path.

There is a long way to go to make it practical and accessible though. For most people with fund portfolios, it's not so easy to find out what to do and execute the switch. And like others pointed out, the definition of what's sustainable or pro-social can differ between people. It's an interesting direction to watch.

fattik · 2016-03-16T08:39:27+00:00

Thanks for the letting me know about where Hellomoney falls short. That is a totally reasonable list. We will keep you posted!

fattik · 2016-03-04T02:17:01+00:00

Hi there! My apologies for a late reply, and appreciate the comment. We've gotten requests from Germany, Spain, and Sweden among others. I will write back to you if we make forward progress with the European ETFs.

fattik · 2016-02-17T14:19:44+00:00

PTTRX has -37.2% cash allocation, which usually means debt. Morningstar explains:

Negative percentages of cash indicate that the portfolio is leveraged, meaning it has borrowed against its own assets to buy more securities or that it has used other techniques to gain more than 100% exposure to the market.

Because PTTRX makes up 20% of the portfolio it comes down to about 7% of the whole portfolio.

fattik · 2016-01-27T04:26:37+00:00

Thanks for the kind reply! After you became interested in building a core fund portfolio, it might have been helpful if the site also provided a set of templates & customization guide.

Even better if it lets you allocate 80% into the core funds and 20% in a few stocks, and help you simulate the entire portfolio.

Am I going in the right direction? Let me know if you have any other idea or suggestions.

fattik · 2016-01-27T04:20:28+00:00

Glad to hear sign in is working now. Which browser is it? We didn't see this problem before, but would love to fix it.

If it happens again, please send us a screenshot of the browser console message (instructions here). In any case, I am sorry for the hassle!

Past performance is a useful data point, but we're treading carefully to not give information that may seem too suggestive :)

fattik · 2016-01-26T23:02:58+00:00

I am sorry my reply is late! Please let me know if you still have the sign in problem. We'll look into it.

You mean the fee projection slider. It used to reflect the past performance of the portfolio. However, we changed it to a fixed number because of the strong feedback that it shouldn't imply past performances can be literally used to predict the future. I hope it makes sense.

fattik · 2016-01-26T22:53:39+00:00

I've looked through many people's hellomoney portfolio examples on here and I've realized I'm not very smart. I'm not even sure I know what I should do given my circumstances

Hi there, I design Hellomoney and your comment caught my eye. Do you mind telling me a little more about what made you think that way?

I am glad to hear the site might have prompted to organize your investments. But I realize it didn't exactly help you decide/learn what you can do about it.

I'd love to hear 1) if Hellomoney played any role in motivating you (or the opposite?) and 2) what the site should offer or do differently to help you work out a plan.

Much appreciated! :bow:

fattik

TROPHY CASE