Life after Leaving Mayo Clinc

I left Mayo Clinic for about a month now. There are so many things that I miss when I worked there. I do believe the patient cares at Mayo are exceptional, and the passion of the employees toward patient are the things that I miss the most. I read this article that summarized what I felt after I left Mayo. I agree that Mayo may pay a little lower; however, the work life-balance and the the holidays are definitely good when one wants to enjoy family life. I don't mind one day that I will go back to work for Mayo.

Anyway, I decided to take this challenge to leave Mayo to explore the business world. During this time, I often question myself about my decision; often, I did feel regret for a little bit. Nevertheless, thank you for my wife for her support and understanding, especially she has been going through a tough time lately too. Lately, all the changes and trials happen in our lives draw us closer to God. We once again remind ourselves the principles of humble and faith. We both are grateful to have the gospel in our lives, and I am especially grateful for my wife in my life.

Life Update

Usually, Tanya is the one to update about our life in the blog. However, she has been busy with some misc stuff that I don't know what she is doing sometimes.(j/k). So, I decide to help her to update this blog about our lives. Apparently, Tanya's blog has more traffic than my blog. I think people interested about our lives more than my own techie blog.

Both of Tanya's and mine school start in September. Tanya is taking two MBA classes. One is leadership and another one is her MBA core class. I am taking only one quality assurance class for my Master of Software Engineering degree. I hope that I can finish my degree by next June, and Tanya will finish her MBA by the end of next year.

August is a very interesting month. After my mom and brother spent 6 weeks with us for the summer, we were exhaust to entertain them. We thought everything would go back to the normal simple that we used to have. However, things have changed a lot. Apparently, I got couple good job opportunities that extend to me. I took my time and energy to interview couple jobs, and I got couple job offers too. The difficulty part was to decide which jobs that I should take because all of them are pretty good. Finally, we decide that I will take the job at Medtronic located in Minneapolis, and Tanya will still work for Mayo Clinic. Changing job means relocation. We are in the process of finding a home near the Twin cities. At the same time, since we own a townhome, we need to sell our townhome. As everyone knows, the market nowadays is not a good time to sell a property.

Anyway, I think we have a lot of blessings and changes in our lives, especially in the last two months. Tanya and I won 4 free movie tickets, a free chiropractor visit, and an iPod too. We anticipate more changes in the upcoming months. We will keep you guys posted.

Financial Planning

After talking about the spending habit, I think it's a good time to talk about saving for retirement. We are not professional financial planner, however, we try to educate ourselves enough to learn the principal of saving. We save 12% of our income toward our 403(b) account, and we will try to max out our Roth IRA contribution limit. Based on our current trend, we should be able to have enough money for our retirement, unless the inflation is more than 10% per year for the next 60 years. Anyway, I found a good quick and easy article to remind some of the basic financial principles.

Quick Retirement Fact

Tool to calculate your current saving goal

Again, the most important thing to reach a financial goal is to develop a saving habit and control spending.

Best Places to live ?? - Minnesota

When people heard us about living in Minnesota. The first thing that comes to their mind is cold. Yes. Minnesota is pretty cold. However, I do agree that Minnesota is a pretty nice place to live. You don't believe me? Look at this list. Best places to live 2008 According to the survey, the best place to live is Plymouth, MN, which host our favorite Chinese restaurant. Also, there are three cities from Minnesota that sit on the top 25 list.

So, if you think you can bear the winter in Minnesota, you should come to live in Minnesota.

P90X Graduate

Today, me, Andy, finally becomes the graduate of P90X. I am so glad that I finish it although it was two weeks longer than I planned. This workout program is pretty good. However, toward the end of the program, it gets pretty boring; especially with the nice and short nice weather outside in Minnesota, it was so tempting to give up the program and go out to enjoy the nature. Anyway, I am done, and I am happy with the result.