I've always wondered where most (hmm.. actually all) of the money from my paycheck vanishes. It looks like I'm getting paid, paying bills, debts, & loans - all virtually, expect for few times when I take some cash out to play poker and dine, I don't see much cash.
Do we ever get to see the money in real that we make in a month, like the old days? I remember my dad setting aside a monthly budget in all cash. Oh.. that smell of the new currency notes.. I simply love it. With most of the population catching up on plastic cards (as if that money on those cards were free), it might not be too late to see currencies world-wide in a museum. ;)
When coming to managing this hard earned money, there are very few softwares out there that does this job, not perfect though, but just enough to get by and give us a peek preview of what/where/how we play with our money. Quicken and Bank of America's (BOFA) Portfolio Management are the two that readily pop up on my mind. I have used Quicken before and I'm using BOFA regularly.
Recently, a new kid showed up in this block, named Mint. They call themselves the refreshing money management software. Well, I was fortunate enough to know about this startup thru' TechCrunch blog and I was one of the early beta testers. They won the TechCrunch40 $50,000 award.
They seemed to have nailed the application to give you the right personalization tool to manage and save money (for real!) for users who have no or limited computer knowledge, while excelling in giving a tool for computer geeks like me. I love their interface and their name (and their punch line - refreshing money management -- how true!). I don't want to give a lengthy lecture about what/how they do.. just skim thru' their website and you'll know what I'm taking about.
With identify theft hitting all year highs, most of us may not trust a third party software and give us our financial passwords (and thus our freedom) to them. But, hey, what's life without risk, I've given mine and its good to know that I'm doing more shopping recently, more than I thought of. I also came to know that I could save approximately $35 every month if I opt to make my own coffee instead of gobbling lot of Caramel Macchiatos from Starbucks. Now I know where my money is vanishing!! :)
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
My Poker Story
All I can see right now is playing cards in my mind. Am I dreaming now? May be.. hmm.. its 3:30 am, I just came from yet-another poker night-out from my friend KM's place nearby. I'm reminiscing some of the bad beats and few good hands, I played tonight.
I was introduced to this game by my colleague few years back. First time we played, it was just fun. Since I was learning the ropes, I had no pressure in performing well. :) The game had no stakes what-so-ever, no seriousness, just fun between friends and familes. The wives (of my friends) thought guys shouldn't spend money on gambling, so it was just play-money. Funny though, whenever a spouse's money got over, they borrowed some from their counter-parts. It was a never ending game.
After few months, I and my friends (who were singles) started playing, learning, making mistakes, fighting over the rules (and immediately googling it to find the right answers) and got slowly mesmerized into the game.
We started playing every friday night, sometimes even saturday nights, even in the daytime. All we think about in the weekend was poker. We graduated from 1 dollar game to 5 dollars pretty soon. Example: if 5 players played, we all would play for 25 (5 * 5) dollars. First place would get 20 dollars and the second would get back his/her money.
We always encouraged and allowed new players into our circle, as we thought we could squeeze some money from them. But most of the time, it turned out that the new-comers won more money... we concluded it was "beginner's luck". :) If a new-comer won the first time, we somehow pull him/her the next time we play and we make sure we get the money out from him/her. Most of them fall for it the second time. Well, you know, we had to maintain our poker status.. so we did it!
The problem started when we hit the casinos. Playing poker in casinos are completely different than at home-games -- you tend to lose more money quickly and frequently. We were the little fishes, wandering around not knowing what to do, playing all stupid hands, while the sharks were eating us alive. Above it all, you are literally sucked into the game after a while and are completely addicted. I realized what addiction meant, literally. I believe its worse than smoking cigarettes or drinking.
First time poker-in-a-casino was with my dear friend MS in LA. We had fun and made some money... (that's a whole different story marked exclusively for another post). Back at my home town, myself, two of my friends, KM and SG hit the nearby bay-101 casino. While we won some days, we mostly lost. You can catch us there most of the weekends. We have managed to pull lot of all-nighters, start around 11 pm friday night and play till 10 or 11 am the next day and of course sleep the whole day and get up at 7 pm and hit the casino again. :)
Only when I recognized how my hard-earned (really?) money was vanishing from my bank account, I decided to put a stop to this. I completely stopped going to the casino now, while KM is still hitting it and making some decent money now-a-days.
But, we are still playing poker at home, now its a 20 dollar buy-in. It has gone up from 1 to 20 in 2 years -- not bad... huh?
You can see different sides of the person when they are in the poker table. As the famous poker mantra goes: "There are no friends at a poker table". It is not just about making little money (well, it wouldn't hurt to have some extra cash, say 40 or 60 dollars poker-money in your pocket), but winning against your friends, playing with their mind, teasing and taking advantage of their weaknesses in the table, understanding how they treat money, how far are they willing to spend another 20 dollars to play, how pissed they get when they have a bad-beat -- all of these are fun.
Well, my conclusion of poker game is that, yes, while I agree that poker is a skill game, you *still* need a little bit of tiny luck to get you thru'.
Yes, poker is a funny game, but I have fun playing it with my friends. At the end, that's all it matters, having fun for 4-5 hours, not thinking about any of your worries or your responsibilities and being into the game fully. In a way, that is like meditating for straight 4-5 hours. It might be a stretch, but it is true.
Playing poker is meditation. How funny, well, poker is still a funny game. :)
P.S: This is just a glimpse of all the poker fun we had for the past 2 years, while there are more stories to tell, this post has become very lengthy (at least according to my standards), so I'll stop here now. More on poker to come later.
I was introduced to this game by my colleague few years back. First time we played, it was just fun. Since I was learning the ropes, I had no pressure in performing well. :) The game had no stakes what-so-ever, no seriousness, just fun between friends and familes. The wives (of my friends) thought guys shouldn't spend money on gambling, so it was just play-money. Funny though, whenever a spouse's money got over, they borrowed some from their counter-parts. It was a never ending game.
After few months, I and my friends (who were singles) started playing, learning, making mistakes, fighting over the rules (and immediately googling it to find the right answers) and got slowly mesmerized into the game.
We started playing every friday night, sometimes even saturday nights, even in the daytime. All we think about in the weekend was poker. We graduated from 1 dollar game to 5 dollars pretty soon. Example: if 5 players played, we all would play for 25 (5 * 5) dollars. First place would get 20 dollars and the second would get back his/her money.
We always encouraged and allowed new players into our circle, as we thought we could squeeze some money from them. But most of the time, it turned out that the new-comers won more money... we concluded it was "beginner's luck". :) If a new-comer won the first time, we somehow pull him/her the next time we play and we make sure we get the money out from him/her. Most of them fall for it the second time. Well, you know, we had to maintain our poker status.. so we did it!
The problem started when we hit the casinos. Playing poker in casinos are completely different than at home-games -- you tend to lose more money quickly and frequently. We were the little fishes, wandering around not knowing what to do, playing all stupid hands, while the sharks were eating us alive. Above it all, you are literally sucked into the game after a while and are completely addicted. I realized what addiction meant, literally. I believe its worse than smoking cigarettes or drinking.
First time poker-in-a-casino was with my dear friend MS in LA. We had fun and made some money... (that's a whole different story marked exclusively for another post). Back at my home town, myself, two of my friends, KM and SG hit the nearby bay-101 casino. While we won some days, we mostly lost. You can catch us there most of the weekends. We have managed to pull lot of all-nighters, start around 11 pm friday night and play till 10 or 11 am the next day and of course sleep the whole day and get up at 7 pm and hit the casino again. :)
Only when I recognized how my hard-earned (really?) money was vanishing from my bank account, I decided to put a stop to this. I completely stopped going to the casino now, while KM is still hitting it and making some decent money now-a-days.
But, we are still playing poker at home, now its a 20 dollar buy-in. It has gone up from 1 to 20 in 2 years -- not bad... huh?
You can see different sides of the person when they are in the poker table. As the famous poker mantra goes: "There are no friends at a poker table". It is not just about making little money (well, it wouldn't hurt to have some extra cash, say 40 or 60 dollars poker-money in your pocket), but winning against your friends, playing with their mind, teasing and taking advantage of their weaknesses in the table, understanding how they treat money, how far are they willing to spend another 20 dollars to play, how pissed they get when they have a bad-beat -- all of these are fun.
Well, my conclusion of poker game is that, yes, while I agree that poker is a skill game, you *still* need a little bit of tiny luck to get you thru'.
Yes, poker is a funny game, but I have fun playing it with my friends. At the end, that's all it matters, having fun for 4-5 hours, not thinking about any of your worries or your responsibilities and being into the game fully. In a way, that is like meditating for straight 4-5 hours. It might be a stretch, but it is true.
Playing poker is meditation. How funny, well, poker is still a funny game. :)
P.S: This is just a glimpse of all the poker fun we had for the past 2 years, while there are more stories to tell, this post has become very lengthy (at least according to my standards), so I'll stop here now. More on poker to come later.
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