The second brain is a personal knowledge management system where we can capture, review and refine our knowledge and thoughts for future reference. 

The value of a second brain is creativity. When we capture, recycle and connect ideas heard and learned, we establish a playground for our creativity. We can borrow ideas from others, develop from our past, and create new ideas by unconventionally connecting existing ones.

The critical part of the second brain is to keep track of our knowledge, reflect on thoughts, organize opinions, and connect concepts for our use. It's always beneficial to revisit our second brain to search for ideas before our project to find inspiration and creativity. 

The US spends approximately $4.3 trillion annually on healthcare, which includes medical services, procedures, and medications. This accounts for 18.3% of the country's GDP. Medicare is significant in this healthcare expenditure. In 2021, it took up around $900 billion, which is 21% of the total medical spending and 3.8% of the US GDP. (source) It is crucial to understand how we can take advantage of this government-offered program created in 1965, especially for those eligible for its benefits.

To be eligible for Medicare, individuals must be 65 years or older or younger individuals with specific disabilities or conditions.. This means that before reaching the age of 65, we must have medical insurance. 

After turning 65, we can choose Medicare and purchase supplements to cover all our medical needs. It is essential to ensure that we have Medicare A (Hospital), B (Medical-Doctor services covers 80% of the cost),  D (Prescription Drug), and a supplemental plan like Medigap (Medicare Plan G)  or Medicare Advanage to cover all our requirements. According to research, the Medigap program provides better financial protection (covers 20% remaining from Medicate Plan B than Medicare Advantage when dealing with complicated medical conditions and can offer more freedom of choice in medical services. Enrollment is required within six months of turning 65; otherwise, the insurance company will review our medical history before approval.

Medicare provides access to many doctors, and it is essential to ensure that our most important doctors are in Medicare or the Medigap supplement.

Individuals who fall under lower income criteria may be eligible for Medicaid. However, as only some qualify, we will not discuss it further here.

We can save for a Health Savings Account (HSA) as early as possible and invest until we turn 65 to use it tax-free for medical expenses.

"If we can save money, we don't need to work until the age of 65 before retiring. In fact, if we manage our money properly, we can retire at the age of 37 with financial freedom." Do these words sound far-fetched? Well, this is Mr. Money Mustache's blog manifesto. I decided to spend my weekend reading Mr. Money Mustache's articles on personal finance and summarizing what I learned. The core principle of Mr. Money Mustache's approach is to reduce expenses and increase income streams.

Intercepting expenses means reducing living costs while still living a happy life. Cost-saving and happiness should go hand in hand. While the frugal lifestyle may not be suitable for everyone, Mr. Money Mustache's blogs offer guidance on how to understand this lifestyle and overcome the common middle-class dilemma of working hard, spending too much, chasing desires, and retiring late. Some practical suggestions include:

• No debt: this means no ​credit card debt, paying off the mortgage, avoiding borrowing money to buy a car, and saving for education or picking an education that minimizes the need for a student loan. It's making ends meet. Save for emergencies and retirement. 
• Live close to work: this reduces the commenting time, so more time for personal life. 
• Move to a city with a lower cost.
• Walk and ride a bicycle to work to stay healthy. 
• Cancel TV service
• Limit purchases each time to avoid waste and Limited demands. Focus on essentials, limit the nonessentials and avoid junk. Needs: food, clothes, housing, utilities, phones, insurance, cars, gas, transportation, internet, reasonable, education, family travel. Nonessentials: entertainment. 
• Avoid impulsive spending. Saving and investing in yourself. 
• "Learn to appreciate the life-enhancing joy of getting things done with your body." 
• "Learn to laugh at convenience." Interestingly, some of our pleasure comes with high costs, such as a luxury trip or restaurant dinner. Can we be happy in a different way?  
• Be Grateful: In Stonic's philosophy, we should be more grateful for what we currently have (learn to want the things you already have rather than other things). Curb unnecessary and never-ending desires. The Stoics believe that our primary purpose in producing energy is to fulfill all the obligations of our lives to the best of our ability and to help our fellow human beings.

Increasing Income Streams is about investments and passive income, which can include: 

• Rental Property 
• Index Funds and dividends.

There are other popular income streams and passive income discussions. In summary, some of these I know include: 

• ​YouTube Channel 
• Blog with Affiliated Marketing or their Monetizing Methods 
• Brokerage Company
• Online store

When Can We Retire? 
Talking about early retirement, we must find the answer to the question of when we can retire. The famous 4% rule or "The 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate" is discussed. The Safe Withdrawal Rate is the maximum rate at which you can spend your retirement savings, such that you don't run out in your lifetime. The 4% rate comes from assuming a 7% annual investment return with a 3% inflation rate which leaves a 4% withdrawal each year. ​ If we spend 100K per year, then the 4% requires 100K/0.04=2.5M saving. 

J got accepted when we just arrived at our San Lucas All-Inclusive hotel to begin our Christmas vacation. The Yes! message from his dream school made his day. I still remember the look of shock and happiness on his face. This was the satisfying ending to our seven-month-long roller coaster ride of college applications.

Six months prior, at the start of summer vacation in June, I discussed with my husband the need to help J prepare his college applications. "We need to start early to avoid last minutes panic." "Yes, we will start asap." We checked in with J several times during the summer. Time flies. J took some summer jobs, and we arranged two trips to Las Vegas+Utah, and Hawaii in between.  

Fast forward to Labor Day weekend, when I asked J to send me his application for review, and to our surprise, there was not a single word written. We had hired a consulting company to help us, but we did not pay attention to their reminders. Now what? Nothing on paper, and the deadline is November 1st for early decision submissions. The atmosphere was filled with anger and anxiety. 

Then, I put on my professional project management hat and took the challenge to get this project back on track. It has to work out. 

We have to get down to the details: what needs to be done and when. All the essays and ideas (research) must also be well-tracked. We create a Google folder called "College Application" with subfolders for different categories: 

• Project Management for project plans
• Common Files for essays that used for multiple schools 
• Teacher Recommendations for teacher recommendation letters 
• School Folder ( each school has its own folder)  

We then create a project plan in the "Project Management" folder tracking to track the progress of each essay being written for each school. The document is shared in Google Folder for easy editing and sharing. There are several key elements in this project plan: 

• School column with "All" for general tasks and each school's name to differentiate specific tasks. The "All" category includes common applications and teacher/counselor recommendations. 
• Check column indicates if the task is completed. 
• Type column includes "Follow" for follow-up and "Essay" for essay writing. 
• Name column provides the name of each task, such as "Teach-Recom-1" for teacher recommendation 1 or "UT-Essay-1" for the first essay needed for the UT application.  
• Prompt includes the full text of the essay prompt.
• Words column lists the word count requirement.
• Research column links to the Google document for the research results
• Link column links to the final essay write-up. 
• The plan also includes a column for each day from 9/6 until the end of the application process. Yes, it's daily. We have to hide the finished columns later for daily tracking and planning. For each task, we mark the required each day. For example, each essay is planned with 5 edits followed by a review with the consoler so that each article is marked with 1st, 2nd... 5th for revisions and rev for reviews.

The plan works well, as each deliverable can be tracked right from the plan. 

After submitting early decision applications, the tracking process can be reduced to a simple checklist format to confirm submissions and create a new plan accordingly. 

Please refer to the demonstration video for the details. We hope this information is helpful to you, and we wish you the best of luck on your college application journey.