There has been plenty of discussion lately about personal finances. Maybe it made me wonder where people get their money using habits and I started to go back in time. So, while traveling back from work today I tried to find out important factors from my past.

My parents have a big role here. They are entrepreneurs and I have been following closely ups and downs of their small business. Now they are retiring and I think they made a good choice when they decided to start it over 30 years ago. There were times when the company was highly profitable and times when it barely profited enough money for food. And everything between those extremes. From this I think I learnt to have some buffer funds and not to consume everything as the income level can be volatile.

In addition of the business knowhow I learnt how to plan my money usage. I had my weekly allowance but it was not too big. Sometimes I could get some extra by lawn mowing and similar tasks. I also learnt how nasty feeling it is to lose money by playing a slot machine, by breaking a lamp of my brother's bike or by other stupid things. Most of my income ended up in my piggy bank. Those savings in my piggy were taken regularly to the bank and I was following my progress from my account book (time before online banking). I learnt what is interest and some other basic knowledge related to money.

Eventually I gathered enough money to buy something more expensive. My parents usually funded half of the purchase if it was sensible otherwise. But this way I had to plan before hand what do I want and is it really worth of it. And it kept me away from buying sweets all the time.

While I got older I was able to get my first summer job in a garage. The job was really boring and I had to bike 10 km to get there. It lasted a little bit over one month but it was long enough to gather money for a 28.8 Kbit modem. After that summer I worked almost every year, mostly in local post office, until my university studies. Just before finishing my high school studies I experienced my first scam.

This event took place next to a gas station where a man approached me and my friend. He asked whether we were interested to check some loudspeakers. Every guy in high school was interested in hifi so we took a look. He was selling a pair of speakers which were left overs from an order. And of course he could sell those to me with nice price. Unfortunately I got greedy and I did not check things carefully enough - even though I did not believe his well practiced marketing speech. I ended up thinking that I am about to make a very good deal with those Acoustic Response 707 speakers. I think I paid something like over 200 euros for those. The real value was closer to 40 euros and the worst thing was, that there was an article about those scam speakers in next hifi magazine. That ruined my chances to sell them to some other fool and also the whole school knew about my great purchase.

During my university studies I did not want to take study loan so I tried to cope with standard government student support and summer jobs. I also tried to avoid asking anything from my parents as I wanted to be on my own as much as possible. But that changed when I moved together with my ex-girlfriend. I was not anymore only one deciding how to spent money and that caused a lot of conflicts and tensions.

Today I am working full time and I am curious about finance and economy sector. Most of the time excess money is sitting in a time deposit so I am not investing aggressively. I think over my purchases carefully and I buy everything with cash or direct debit. I am also rather skeptical when someone is offering me opportunity to get rich with some strange scheme. I think this behavior is sum of many events and contributors from my past and very likely it will remain similar.

Reuters published an article about weapon ownership in different countries. I was a little bit surprised to see Finland on the third position on a per-capita basis. In Finland there are 56 weapons per 100 citizens. That would mean almost 3 million weapons.

Many of those are hunting weapons as hunting is popular hobby in Finland (around 300 000 hunters). It is common that a hunter has both a shotgun and a rifle. But even if every hunter had three hunting weapons it would make the total amount only 900 000.

So, then there are plenty of people having a pistol or similar for sport shooting. Maybe another million there. But there are still one million weapons somewhere. Apparently some individuals have plenty of firepower...

Oh, just for your information. Buying a firearm is not a simple process in Finland. First you need a buying license for certain type of a weapon and usually membership of a shooting club or a hunting club is needed. Then you buy the weapon and after that you get a license to own posses it. This is valid for one year and after that you have to proof that you have used it for the reason you announced in the first step. After that you get a long term license.

I have seen loan advertisements everywhere in Budapest lately. Especially television advertisements annoy me. The show a man who is sad because he cannot buy a new microwave oven, car or holiday for the family. But then the loan fairy comes and gives him bunch of 20 000 Forint notes. Just call this number and you too can become rich.

Wrong. The yearly interest (THM) is mentioned in the advertisements and it is from 200% to over 400%. Almost free money, right? If you are mathematically illiterate you do not see how much such loans cost you. A loan of 100 000 HUF for three months, so in 200% case you would pay 50 000 HUF extra. Pretty insane.

I have read that in Finland these quick loans are the last action to push a person in a economical catastrophe. Sometimes they are used to cover payments of bills or other loan. They are the last possible loan to get because all other sources are used already. A person who has already plenty of problems with money can mess up his finances for good with such loan.

But some people will always find ways to end up in a trouble and without money. No matter if such loans exists or not.

I had a chat with my Finnish friend who was visiting Budapest and Sziget. We were naturally comparing it to Finnish rock festivals. I used to visit Ilosaarirock couple times, Provinssirock once and then some smaller ones.

And there are differences. The first one is alcohol policy. You are not allowed to bring your own bottles in the Finnish festival area. Inside area there are fenced places to buy and consume beer and cider. You can imagine farmer's pig pen to get the idea. No strong alcohol sold usually and there is a mighty gatekeeper checking that you do not smuggle your drink outside restricted area.

In Sziget you are not allowed to bring your own palinka from your uncle's garage but once you are inside you are not controlled like cattle. You can get your drink from numerous places inside festival area. They sell those in plastic cups so they are not considered to be lethal so you can carry your beer everywhere. Apparently Hungarian adults are responsible enough not to pass beer onto kids.

Then another difference is the amount of clashes between people. Even though Sziget is huge, the security was not really visible. Maybe because of lack of those alcohol selling zones there was no need for controlling them either. Also, people seemed to have good mood instead of arguing and fighting while being totally wasted. Finnish festivals can be very nice as well - especially when they are a little bit alternative festivals.

On Saturday morning we went to Tokaj. It is famous for its wines so it was also our aim to taste some of it. But instead visiting a traditional wine cellar we did our wine tasting on a river boat.



The boat trip is organized by the producer of Mercatus wines who also has a winery in the town. The boat featured design details from 1950's and the roof line was like from 1956 Chevy. But we were there not to judge boat's outlook. So it was time for the wines.



We started with Tokaji Furmint 2004. It is a dry wine and I liked it pretty much. As I am not a serious wine hobbyist, I will save you from words like lively, fruity and such. I do not remember the detailes of all wines since we tried five different.

After Furmint we continued towards sweeter wines. Next ones were semisweet version of Tokaji Furmint 2004, semisweet Tokaji Hárslevelű 2004 and Tokaji Sárgamuskotály 2005. These were also okay but I don't like sweet wines that much. While tasting the host explained the history of the wine producing and characteristics of each wine.



The fifth and the last one was three puttonyos Tokaji Aszú 2001. The bigger puttonyos number the sweeter the wine is. Six is the sweetest possible. After tasting this wine we had possibility to try out more of these wines as long as the cruise on the river lasted.



However, we were not ready after cruise to go home so we visited the winery of the Mercatus wines. There we bought couple bottles to take home and we also did sugar test with six puttonyos Tokaji Aszú. The sweetness of the wine was very clearly over the sweetness of the normal crystal sugar. The sugar did not have any taste after tasting this wine.



We definitely had a good day in Tokaj. With good weather and tasty wines the boat trip was really pleasant.

Sometimes you might feel that the country you are currently working in is not the best possible for you. Taxes are too high, salary is too low, climate does not suit you, jobs are scarce or you simply want some adventure. Then it is time to change scenery. Luckily it is reasonably easy within information technology industry.

Because we all value things differently, I cannot give exact list of advices. You should think your own initiatives and reasons. But at least I can provide some ideas to check before making the decision.

If you are planning to work for a company abroad, you should know what kind of professions are available and which skills are on high demand. This can be achieved in numerous ways. Job searching services are excellent source. There are multinational sites like monster.com but every country has also their own local job sites. You can also subscribe to a daily or weekly listing of new jobs well before so you can see situation in long term. There are also national or regional user groups and forums which might provide some clues. And if you ask nicely, you might get valuable hints or contacts. Of course you can simply google for name of the city and some suitable phrase, for example "Lappeenranta java solution provider".

Next thing is to find out how much you can earn and how much you have to give back to government. The usual rule is that if you move to another country permanently (over half a year) you have to pay taxes to that country. Tax rates can vary a lot, so checking them will prevent disappointments and trouble. However, many countries have tax agreements between each other and you should ask your local tax office about that and then double check that answer from another source. This is necessary because international cases are not the most common thing for local tax office staff.

Another income related issue is living costs. The Economist has its Big Mac index and there are also other sources to compare living costs. To find out first hand experiences you should check expatriate discussion forums. For the accommodation local property sites are pretty good source, both for costs and for available selection.

Depending on your nationality and desired country, relocation related paper work can be very simple or a process lasting months. Between older EU countries relocation is quite simple as in most cases no work permit is required. But if you are for example programmer from some Asian country moving to EU or USA you better reserve time and prepare for complicated process. In my case (from Finland to Hungary, 2005) took almost 1,5 months to get the necessary permits. And this was with help from relocation company. But laws and rules have changed and in 2007 this process is much easier.

After you have collected hard facts you should study country and maybe visit it. How is the culture, climate, history etc? Is the city too busy and polluted or way too boring? Are there some tensions between ethnic groups or areas of country? Can you do your favorite sports and hobbies there? Are there others with the same nationality? Visit local news sites, embassy's site, tourism office etc.

And finally very important point. The language. Even though you have fluent English and everybody at the work place can speak it more or less, you should study at least basics of local language if you are going to stay more than couple months. This will open plenty of new opportunities for you. You can go to local gym, you might receive better service and you are not that dependent on others help. This is the point where I have failed in case of my time in Hungary. I have taken lessons and read books but I did not manage to gain good enough spoken Hungarian.

Advices above are quite common for everyone and not just for information technology. But usually the situation is more complicated as you might have a partner or spouse, you might have to find daycare for your kids or you are an entrepreneur moving your business with you. In any case, you need to prepare in advance.

As I have made clear previously I am pretty much against network marketing schemes. But passive income can be also totally legal and wont create conflicts with your friends. A very nice blog - www.jarkkolaine.com - has now third post about alternative incomes which can be regarded as passive.

The ways he lists are pretty much web related. Monetizing blog, selling merchandise, independent software development and photo stocks. But there are bunch of traditional sources for passive income. Unfortunately they need some capital to get them started. Investing in stocks, property or funds can be exciting and depending on how much risk you are ready to bear you can receive nice gains while traditional high interest bank deposit provide steady stream of extra.

This actually leads to my own experiments with foreign currency exchange. As traditional stock markets was a little bit boring to follow I decided to take a look at forex. I have been following EUR/HUF since 2005 and I have been interested in finance markets for some time. But forex is not that common in Finland. I got this conclusion when I searched Kauppalehti's (Finnish business news) discussion forum. I also got the conclusion that I should practice with a game account beforehand.

I searched a little bit to find suitable trading provider and I chose OANDA FXTrade. They have a Java based client which I have been using two days now. Success is still to come, so far I have managed to lose 10% of my initial deposit. Luckily it is just play money...

Alright, I selected some photos taken by Dóra from Sziget festival. These are from Saturday, August 11th 2007.

Sziget world music stage around noon

Heavy rain created new recreational opportunities

While some did not care about there outlook...

... others were paying attention to every detail

Sziget main stage around 10 pm.

Heh, today we got a good idea. Instead worrying about the weather and the air show we decided to drop that plan and go to Sziget festival. So, while returning from Friday afternoon beer we did shopping at Nyugati pályaudvar and bought tickets for Saturday. We have not been to Sziget festival before so it is about the time to visit.

There would be interesting event this weekend for anyone interested in planes. The air show takes place on Saturday and Sunday. But the problem is that weather seems to be unstable, cloudy and rainy. An air show without flying planes is not that exciting idea. Hopefully tomorrow weather forecast shows some light on this and I can make my decision.

Alright, racing is now done and I did ok. The track and cars were in decent condition. Because those are rental cars, they also have a speed limiter. So getting a good lap time was all about cornering. We had three races and my lap time improved from over 50 seconds to 47 seconds. We had great fun and next day was filled with discussions and explanations about the events on the track.

Tomorrow I will do some karting with my colleagues. It has been some time since last time I sat in a go-kart and that time I raced against my brothers in a indoor track in Finland. It has been also some time since last time I was driving a car. That was also in Finland - last X-mas. Luckily roads were slippery and icy so I got some feeling back how to drift through corners with rear wheel drive car. But karting will be pretty different and some of the guys have been driving on that track before. Hmm... I am already figuring out explanations why I was not the fastest - no good. Maybe I should try to learn the track profile from the website of Budaring.

In Finland I used to do bicycling along forest trails but that is not possible in central Budapest. So I needed to find out some alternative sport to do. I like swimming so I decided to search for swimming pools in Budapest. That is not easy because I found mostly baths and not swimming pools. With help of my colleagues, girlfriend and a map I have visited two swimming pools.

The first one is named after famous Hungarian swimmer - Nyéki Imre uszoda. The location is a little bit far for me. The pool is also pretty crowded and worn out. The positive thing is free sauna.

The second one is nicely almost on the way to my work place and it is easier to reach. Császár-Komjádi Uszoda is somewhat bigger place as it has both outdoor and indoor pools. Unfortunately indoor pools have been closed due pieces of ceiling falling down. But outdoor pools do not have that problem so they are ok. They have also 50m pool which pretty nice for gathering kilometers without turning all the time. But the shower facilities are shabby and the building is not in its best condition anymore.

I have heard that the pool on Margit Sziget should be in better condition so I will check it out one day. In any case, if you plan to do swimming in Budapest pools you will need a cap and slippers. Wearing a cap is said to be compulsory and you definitely want to wear something to protect your feet.

Couple weeks ago I managed to find a place in Budapest to buy Xbox web camera with reasonable price. I do not have Xbox but I have a Apple PowerBook laptop and I was looking for a web camera which would work with both iChat and Skype.

The camera itself works well and the image quality is good. But the problem is that it does not have a suitable stand to be put on the laptop's screen. Because of this chatting is little bit awkward as I cannot look at the screen and the camera at the same time. So, it was time to be innovative...

I do not have a proper workshop here so I just used materials I found from home. I cut a square piece from some left over corrugated cardboard. Then I made two small cuts (a little bit smaller than laptop's lid thickness) and now this square piece looks like letter H. Then I bent it a little bit so those small cuts are facing down. If you think brown cardboard is ugly, you are right. I recommend to think about some nicer material.



Add some bluetac, glue or similar to attach your web camera to this stand and you are done. Just place your enhanced web camera over the screen. Now chatting is almost like in new MacBooks with their built-in iSight cameras. But with basically zero budget upgrade.

I thought until this point that my hosting provider was decent. It is one of those cheap ones but at least it works and I get mostly what I expect. But last weekend things got wrong.

My blog used to be on a server located in Germany. That server broke down and they could not fix it until late Monday night. Meanwhile, DNS entries were changed to point to another server in the USA. But that one did not have my files previously so I got one month old backup. Sort of stupid and embarrassing looking. Then the German server started to function again so they my www.hietavirta.net lead to that one and hietavirta.net pointed to the USA. Also my emails ended up randomly to both servers, so I had to check my account with two different settings. I was able to get some replies from support but the public announcements were lagging behind and were not accurate.

Anyways, now my hosting provider quit cooperation with German guys and my blog is now on a server in the USA. The lesson was that you know how trustworthy your hosting provider is only when something goes wrong.