Student Question: Hello Master! I have a small question and hope you can help me think it through: how should I best allocate a very small amount of USD? I graduated from the US just over a year ago. I had saved up $20,000 from part-time work — my entire personal savings at the time. The journey back to China during the pandemic and the quarantine costs ate into some of that. Recently, with the exchange rate so high, I converted nearly $10,000, and now I have $5,000 left. This week the rate is still high but slightly lower than last week, and the Fed last week apparently called its rate hike “the final one.” I don’t understand the forex situation very well — will the rate trend lower over the long term? If so, is now the peak, and should I convert while I still can? Besides converting, are there other allocation options? I’ve thought about putting this money into the US stock market — stocks or funds — but I keep hearing that US stocks have been crashing badly, so I haven’t dared to move. What’s your view on the US market? Or is my amount too small to bother with, and I should just convert it all back and focus on finding ways to build wealth domestically? Thank you in advance for your guidance! Please forgive me if my description or thinking is muddled.
Master Chi’s Response: No need to convert it back. Currency exchange isn’t easy now, so just leave it there. It’s not serious money — just throw it straight into a US stock index fund and be done with it.
【1112】 Questions About Renovation Cost-Saving Tricks
Student Question: Master, you mentioned in one of your posts: “Take renovation, for example — with the same full set of German imported appliances, various top-tier furniture brands, and an exceptional renovation outcome, the cost I manage to achieve is 25% lower than what others pay, or even more. That’s a blunt difference of well over 100,000 RMB — far more than the average person saves in a year.” Could you share those tricks on the platform?
Master Chi’s Response: Here’s the thing with renovation — there are a few things you absolutely need to understand. No matter whether you hire a big company or a small team, the actual work is ultimately done by craftsmen of various trades.
So the first blade you need to avoid: never hire the so-called big companies.
Go directly to the foreman (baogongtou) from any ordinary mid-to-low-end residential complex. And don’t think about handing everything over to them entirely. Have a few different foremen come look at your place individually, explain your requirements, and get separate quotes from each.
Even when you find one with a good price-to-value ratio, don’t take it on faith. Spell out the delivery milestones and your specific requirements clearly. Also tell them upfront not to touch your building materials — you want labor only, no materials included.
Then, for hard fixtures and finishes that you can source yourself online, do it online. Taobao and JD both work. Better yet, select materials from local mid-to-low-end building materials markets — state your requirements, compare at least three vendors, and avoid the high-end showrooms where you’ll get gouged. In reality, a lot of the products are identical; it’s just the platform that’s different, so the price gets inflated accordingly.
For cement and sand, let the foreman handle that — leave them a little margin there, it’s fine.
Then, critically: monitor the renovation yourself. Make a quick pass through the site basically every day, and confirm construction details and quality every two days.
Don’t be too easy-going. Start firm, then ease up with courtesy — be appropriately demanding so the pace is fast and the quality is good. Don’t let yourself get taken advantage of thinking you can just grin and bear it.
Foremen don’t respond to tears. They only respond to fierce persistence and meticulous penny-pinching.
As for furniture and appliances, the bluntest approach is this:
Only buy at the end of the month or end of the quarter. Avoid National Day and Labor Day holidays — in the period before those, vendors are chasing sales targets; during the holidays themselves, there are plenty of customers and they don’t need your business.
When you find furniture you like, don’t rush to negotiate the price on the spot. Exchange WeChat contacts, then send them a competitor’s listing — same function, same tier, 15% cheaper — and ask why they can’t match it.
This move works every single time.
Also, unless you have a psychological attachment to the latest model, you can absolutely consider last year’s flagship for virtually everything. The price difference is substantial; the quality difference is negligible.
Finally, for garden and outdoor equipment, there’s no reason to buy new. After exposure to sun and wind, everything fades and becomes brittle quickly anyway. Check Xianyu (China’s second-hand marketplace) — you’ll find items in near-new condition at very low prices.