We've Grown Apart!

"We've grown apart" is a popular reason for people to get divorce. The problem isn't that people have changed, because we all change on a daily basis, it's that we failed to communicate that change to our partner hence why we feel like we've grown apart.

The "we've grown apart", at the core, is but a communication problem rather than a "we changed in opposite direction" kind of problem.

Hone Your Craft

Self-Improvement is important in everything we do. It's what give us the winning edge over somebody else. Doesn't matter what job we're doing, we should learn all that there's to know about it in order to increase our value as an employee.

John Bolinder, a 36 year old CFO, joined a mail room of a microbiology testing company at the age of 22 and was promoted to CFO at the age of 28. How did he do it? He worked on improving himself by completing his MBA at the University of Utah and the rest of the company by finding solutions to the various problem they faced in the mail room and other departments.

The job we do today will be the same job we do in 5 years if we don't work on improving ourselves.

For more information on John Bolinder, see the article on the Forbes website available here.

4 Rules for Saving Money

Wealth means how long someone can live forward, with his current lifestyle, without a source of income. For some people, it's not very long. It is good practice to have 3 to 6 months saved up in the bank in case of emergencies. The below rules can help achieve that.

1. Live below your means: If you make a million dollars a year but spend a million dollar a year, you're not better off financially than the person who made 30k and saved 5k.
2. Keep track of every penny spent: Keep track of your spendings to then make an accurate budget. Ideally, you want to save 25% of your monthly income so that you accumulate 1 month of freedom every 4 months.
3. Open a Tax Free Savings Account(TFSA) and/or retirement account: There's nothing wrong with a government to want his share of the money you make but when you use a TFSA (in Canada, we can save up to 5500 a year tax free when using this type of saving account) or a retirement account to store money in, the government gives you a little break. This will give you more money during tax season and I would encourage you to save it.
4. Don't finance things that depreciate: It doesn't matter if the item is at 0% interest, it's still not a good idea to buy new due to the depreciation.

We generally want to clear off our debt before starting to save for the simple reason that the interest rate on a debt is often way higher than the interest rate on money at the bank. For more information, pick up the book "The Millionaire Next Door" book by Thomas J. Stanley Ph. D. & William D. Danko, Ph. D.

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Revision Wednesday(on a Thursday)
Blog post edited/re-posted on May 21, 2015

A Move?

"The grass is greener where you fertilize it." -Lana Hamilton

A job is not the same thing as a relationship or a business... career decisions are difficult to make. The grass is greener where you fertilize it but what happens when you feel like you lost the drive to do so? One can always "fake it until making it" or move on. The best way is to weight in the good and the bad of staying vs moving on and go with which ever side we feel is better.

I'm Back!

2015 has been interesting to say the least. So far, I’ve learned that I’m not as disciplined as I’d like to think myself to be and that I lack some skills that would be beneficial in my career.

I’m thankful for my family, friends and the wonderful Christy for being there for me during the interesting times. :)