Andy Hough

Get Free Stock from Robinhood

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When you sign up for a free brokerage account with Robinhood through my referral link they will give us both a free share of stock. The stock you receive is chosen at random and will be worth between $2.50 and $200. When I signed up the stock I received was worth about $2.93. The value of the stock you receive will most likely be worth about $2.50, but some people get lucky and get a more valuable stock. According to Robinhood you have a 1 in 250 chance to get a share of Apple, Facebook, or Berkshire Hathaway. That isn’t bad odds for something that will only cost you a few minutes of your time.

Robinhood is an app that allows you to make commission free stock, option, and ETF trades from your phone. They also have a desktop site you can use if you don’t want to use your phone. I was skeptical about buying stocks from my phone, but now that I have been using the app for a while I prefer using my phone and rarely use the desktop site. I like being able to just open the app on my phone and see how my portfolio is doing. Although that does lead to me checking my portfolio way more often than I should.

Of course, if you find the Robinhood brokerage account useful signing up for the free stock is an even better deal. When I signed up, I did it only for the free stock and didn’t have any plans to buy stocks through Robinhood. After selling my free stock and cashing out, I left my account dormant for about a year. Then I decided to take a flyer on the parent company of MoviePass (HMNY) and see if they could recover. That didn’t work out to well. I ended up selling the stock for pennies. I only invested $10 so it wasn’t too big of a loss.Since that purchase I have been buying stocks on a pretty regular basis. My focus is on dividend growth stocks. I’m not sure what return I’ve made on my stocks. They have done pretty well although probably not quite as well as the market overall since it has mostly been a bull market since I’ve started investing in dividend stocks. I’m not too concerned whether my stocks trail the total market a little since this is a small part of my total portfolio. The bulk of my retirement accounts are invested in index funds. I think of investing in these dividend stocks as a profitable hobby that leads to me saving more money than I would otherwise. It allows me to have a little bit of the thrill of gambling but with the odds in my favor.

If you would like to sign up for Robinhood please use my referral link and we will both get a free stock.

Dinner and a Dentist Visit in Thailand

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Sign for the noodle restaurant in Uttaradit, Thailand.
My girlfriend walking to the noodle restaurant.

This post is about a recent evening I had here in Thailand. Nothing too exciting happened, but I thought some people might be interested in my daily life here.

The evening started with a trip to a street food restaurant for dinner. There are a lot of restaurants similar to the one pictured above. These restaurants have outdoor seating with plastic stools and flimsy tables. The Thai people don’t seem to mind eating outside when it is over 90 degrees. We wait until dusk to eat so it is at least a little bit cooler and the sun isn’t beating down on us. We usually eat at a table 2 or 3 rows in since the outer row of tables is too close the noise and traffic of the street for me.

Thai Noodle Shop Menu
Thai Noodle Place Menu

The great thing about these restaurants is that they have yummy Thai food for cheap prices. The menu above shows how cheap everything is. For reference, the cheapest item on the menu is 35 baht which is about $1.11 U.S. Dinner for both of us usually is only about $2. Sometimes it is even cheaper. My girlfriend prefers to go to these types of place for dinner and that works out great for me. Eating at a Western restaurant would cost several times more than the typical Thai place. Since this is not a tourist town the menu is all in Thai. I rely on my girlfriend to order for me. She knows my limited palate and hasn’t made a bad order for me yet.

Chicken and noodles dinner.
Chicken and Noodles Dinner.

The picture above is what we had for dinner. My GF calls my dinner chicken and noodles.
I don’t know the Thai name for the dish. It doesn’t taste like chicken and noodle soup. It tastes better than that and is really good. Her dish contained chicken feet and was eaten with rice. I didn’t try that. This restaurant adds some kind of flavoring to their free water. Most places don’t do that. I don’t like the taste of the water with their flavoring added so I splurged and paid another 10 baht for a bottle of water. Not tipping is required or expected at these restaurants and tax is already included in the prices. Thus, the cost of your food is the cost of your meal.

Uttaradit Dentist Office
Uttaradit Dentist Office

After dinner we made a visit to the dentist office. The night before I had some fresh caramel popcorn that I bought at the Wednesday night market. Unfortunately, a piece of the popcorn got jammed up under my gums and I wasn’t able to floss or pick it out. I complained about it hurting during dinner and my GF suggested we go to the dentist after dinner. I didn’t realize we could visit the dentist at that time of night without an appointment, My girlfriend assured me it would be no problem. The first dentist we went to had a long queue. We left and visited another dentist. This one only had one person in front of me. It turned out this dental office had just opened the previous month. The office did look new and extremely clean. It might have been the nicest dentist office I’ve been too. It was definitely way nicer than the dental school where I’ve been getting my dental work done the last few years.

After about a five minute wait we went back to see the dentist. My GF explained the problem I was having. The dentist did speak some English so I think I could have explained the problem to her if I didn’t have my GF there to do it for me. The dentist flossed between my teeth and then went in with the dental pick and got a small piece of popcorn out. I told her I felt like there was more in there and she went back in and pulled a much larger shard of popcorn out. Although my mouth was still sore it immediately felt better once the larger piece of popcorn was removed. This is the second time this year I have had to go to the dentist to get a piece of popcorn removed. It was in the same place both times. For now, I’m going to give up popcorn until I have some more dental work done.

When we went out to pay the bill, we were told there was no charge. I was very surprised by that. I indicated that I was willing to pay, but they waved off my money. I was impressed with this dental office. If I were going to be in this town longer I would have them do my dental implant or maybe redo my bridge. When I come back later this year or next year I will get some type of dental work done there.

After that we went back to the hotel and took our evening showers. It is normal in Thailand to take 2 or 3 showers a day. After the showers, we got in bed and watched a movie on Netflix until it was time to go to sleep. Other than the dentist visit that was a typical night for us. It isn’t too exciting, but I like it.

Tidying Up My Finances

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Earlier year there was a lot of buzz about tidying up due to Marie Kondo’s show on Netflix. After watching the show I decided to do some tidying up myself. Since I prefer not to own a lot of things and don’t own a lot of things there wasn’t much tidying up for me to do. I did manage to make my sock and underwear drawer look a little nicer.

After tidying up my material possessions I considered what else I could tidy up. I decided it would make sense to tidy up my financial life. Last summer I counted all the different places I had money and it turned out I had money in 16 different places. I also had quite a few credit cards due to opening many accounts for the sign up bonuses. Even though I can use an app like Personal Capital to help keep track of all my different accounts it can still be burdensome to stay on top of that many different accounts.

Over the last few months I have closed many of my smaller financial accounts. These were bank accounts or financial apps that I opened for the bonus and then didn’t both to close since there was no fee for keeping them open. Even though there was no fee to keep the accounts open, it was better for me to close them to preserve my mental bandwidth. Some of the financial apps were opened for small $5 or $10 bonuses. Going forward, I will require a more substantial bonus before I open a new account. Although the small bonuses were easy money I still might have been better off using my time on something potentially more rewarding.

I have also canceled three credit cards. Closing credit cards can hurt your credit score which is why I kept the ones with no annual fee open even after they no longer proved useful. Since I have an excellent credit score I don’t need to worry if my credit score drops 10 or 20 points from closing a card. A drop of that amount wouldn’t affect the credit available to me. I have monitored my credit score since closing the accounts and it doesn’t seem that closing them resulted in a noticeable difference in my score. It has stayed in roughly the same 10 point range all year. I’m not going to stop opening up credit cards for the sign up bonus since the bonuses can be quite lucrative. I will be quicker to close accounts that no longer provide me with any benefit after the bonus is earned. Also, when considering which credit card bonus to sign up for I will give a preference to credit cards that provide useful benefits to me after the bonus is earned.

To make my retirement accounts simpler I moved my Roth IRA to Fidelity. I had already moved my traditional IRA over a couple of years ago. Since Fidelity manages my work 401k having my Roth and traditional IRA with them as well makes it easy to see how I’m doing on saving for retirement. I still have a solo 401k with Etrade that I might transfer to Fidelity as well. When opening my solo 401k I chose Etrade over Fidelity for some reason, but I no longer remember what it was. I need to review Fidelity’s solo 401k offering and see how it compares. There is also a chance that I will just rollover the solo 401k into my work 401k or traditional IRA. Now that I’m over 50 and qualify to make catch up contributions to my work 401k and IRA I haven’t been able to max out those contributions. Thus, it isn’t really necessary to have the solo 401k as well.

Making those changes has simplified my finances quite a bit. Since I plan to continue chasing bank and credit card bonuses my finances will not get much simpler. I think getting the bonuses is worth making my finances slightly more complex. For now, I’m satisfied with the tidiness of my finances.

April Income – $4686.92

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Here is a breakdown of my income for April.

Interest $6.30
Amazon FBA $50.78
Job $4198.82
Class Action $40
Cashback $28.65
Dividends $15.81
Online $346.56
Total $4686.92

April was another great month for income. It wasn’t quite as great as March though. That was to be expected since I didn’t have a big boost from tax refunds in April.

My two negative sources of income from last month turned into positive sources of income for April. Amazon FBA income was still weak. I’ve been having way too many returns this year. When I get back to the U.S. I will work on improving my FBA income. I’m also going to sell some stuff on eBay and perhaps locally.

I had a good month for online income. I almost made enough to cover the expenses I’ve already paid this year.  I got a payout from Google Adsense for the month and received payment for some sponsored posts on one of my other blogs.

I also was paid an affiliate commission during April.  Since it wasn’t received until May it will be included in May’s income. My links for Bluehost (aff link) and  (aff link) Hostgator for web hosting and Namecheap (aff link) for domain names didn’t result in any commissions.

My dividend income decreased slightly for the month.  I’m not adding anything to my dividend portfolio the next couple of months so this income will stay roughly the same

I made $40 from a random class action settlement. I don’t remember ever being notified I was part of the suit. Getting the check in the mail was a nice surprise.

April’s income mostly consisted of job income. It was a good amount considering it was only for two and a half weeks. Due to the lack of job income, this month’s income will be down significantly.

How was your month?

April Expenses – $989.05

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for April. Since it is a day ahead here in Thailand I can post my expenses for the month before the month has ended back in the U.S.

Household$39.08
Rent$341.50
Entertainment$35.95
Transportation$66.61
Food$175.95
Travel$73.99
Phone$0
Student Loan$132.58
Health$123.39
Total$989.05

My April expenses were nice and low. I managed to get my expenses under my target of $1000 for the month. For the year, I’m still averaging under $1000 a month. If I were able to keep my monthly average for the entire year under $1000 a month that would be great. That won’t be easy to do since I plan on getting over a $1000 of dental work done this year and there are always unplanned expenses sometime during the year. It will be a good goal to work towards.

Rent was low as usual. I paid $200 to my Mom for rent for the first half of April and paid $141.50 for one month’s rent in Thailand. My rent in Thailand is paid through May 22nd. That should result in an even lower rent total for May unless I rent a more expensive place when I move to Chiang Mai.

Transportation was super cheap. My transportation expenses consisted of two years registration for my car and the safety inspection which was required to renew my registration. I managed to not have any airport taxi or shuttle expenses for the month by planning ahead. My hotels in Shanghai and Bangkok both offered free shuttles to and from the hotel. I had to go from BKK (the international airport in Bangkok) to DMK (the domestic/budget airport in Bangkok) to take my domestic Thailand flight. I managed to do this for free by taking the free shuttle between BKK and DMK. Since I had a morning flight from DMK I arrived the night before to be safe. I stayed at a hotel about 15 minutes walk from DMK saving me from having to pay for a taxi there.

My food expense was high by my standards. I didn’t worry about keeping my food expense low for the month since my food expense is low by most people’s standards even when I’m not especially trying to keep it low. This amount was up a bit this month since I ate out a lot and I bought a few meals for my girlfriend as well. The only food expense I regretted for the month was paying $9.50 for a terrible breakfast buffet at my hotel for my girlfriend and me. I thought the breakfast was included with my room or I never would have had it. Oh well, there are always going to be some money mistakes.

The household expense was for some hangers, shampoo, a toothbrush, and some other small items. I also bought my girlfriend some clothes as a birthday present.

Entertainment was for three movies plus concessions. I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to see Avengers Endgame here. The week I arrived all of their movies were dubbed in Thai. Luckily, for Avengers they have one showtime a day that is English with Thai subtitles rather than being dubbed in Thai. My entertainment expense will go up in May if there are more movies with English audio that I can see. If not, I’ll have to wait until I get to Chiang Mai to see more movies which will keep this expense low.

Travel was for a VPN subscription and the annual fee for my Chase IHG card. Since I have to use public wifi when I’m traveling I thought it was smart to get a VPN. I managed to get a super cheap deal. Maybe too cheap, since I’ve had some trouble with the VPN getting disconnected. That wasn’t an issue with the VPN I used last year. Paying the annual fee on my IHG card gives me a free night at an IHG hotel so I’ll get more than $49 of value from that later this year.

There was no phone bill this month since I traded in my old phone and the credit I received completely wiped out the bill for the month. My only health expense was for my monthly health insurance premium. I’m still using my same Google Fi phone service here in Thailand. I mostly use wifi, but occasionally have to use my phone’s data so there will be a phone bill for May. I plan to see a dentist once I’m in Chiang Mai so my health expense will go up as well.

Overall, April was a great month for low expenses and I expect May will be as well, other than a possible big dental bill.