Personal Money Tips

2006 is drawing to a close. A challenging year to say the least, anyway, which year is never a challenge? Life is always a daily challenge, right? Most people are busy celebrating read spending in the holiday festivities, me too. Celebration is good. So is tasty food and deserts, and …. family and presents, ok, I’m going off on a tangent here. I apologize for that.

Where was I? Of reflection on the past year. You doing that? Hope you are. Otherwise, at the end of 2007, when you look back, it might be very similar to 2006. Not talking about new year resolutions here. So far, most don’t work. Why? People get caught up. Urgent matters, stuff like that.

What I discovered this year? Let’s see.

1. Should have stay quiet more often. Quiet not as in shut up and sit down, but really quiet down. Don’t do anything quiet. Why? Not listening enough to my deep inner voice. Not the thinking voice that goes a million miles an hour. The one that speaks gently when I’m still. Yeah, you have that voice too, but if like me, I’m so busy doing stuff, reading, getting more stuff into my brains, I wasn’t still enough. In this world where everybody wants to get things done faster, try this rather radical thing. Don’t do anything for say 15 minutes or more daily. No reading, no internet, no phones, no checking the email or even thinking of e-mail.

Amazing. You should try this sometime. It is rather refreshing. I’ve found, my thoughts are clearer, I worry less, and begin to enjoy the moment! This quieting period actually helped me focus for the rest of the day.

2. I can live without my PDA. When my PDA died, I thought I needed to get one back ASAP. But after several months without my old Clie, I’m ok. Sure, the inconvenience of not having my contacts at the finger tips can be a hassle, but I’ve found that when I’m not doing anything, I won’t be poking around my PDA. While looking around for a cheap PDA alternative, I stumbled upon a retro idea. Paper! Apparently nowadays carrying a Moleskin notebook is the trend. The other being using a paper clip with a stack of paper is also hip, therein the Hipster PDA. Nothing more than a stack of paper clipped together to write stuff down.

3. I should make decision early. Some call it advance decision making (ADM). Like now is a good time to do it if not for 2007, at least for the 1st quarter. I read somewhere in Readers Digest, the host of the Amazing Race, Phil Keoghan have a list of stuff he wants to do in his lifetime. Talk about making advance decisions. What happened was Phil almost died in a diving incident and after that, he decided life was too short, and wrote a list of things he would like to experience before the “checks in” for good. You can do something like that too. No need for near death experience.

That’s all for 2006. Happy New Year.

Ed

Recently, a post on SwissCash got a fair bit of comment, with many people claiming it to be genuine. They get paid what was promised. The article is here

A comment by a reader pointed out that the on Swiss Embassy in KL, they warned investors that no such company exists in Switzerland.

Now the million dollar question is this. Would you invest in something that you know is a scam, ponzi scheme or pyramid investment, doesn’t matter if it is SwissCash or others, if they honor the investment returns promised. Or would you still get involved and put your money in?

Let’s just say that you know you will get back your capital and some returns and it won’t blow up in your face. Would you still invest in it?

I read that Microsoft Vista will help Microsoft’s partners make US 70 billion in the 1st year of release. For every dollar MS earns, their partners will earn something like US 18! More than half of the 18 dollars will be spent on hardware.

In a situation like this, I prefer to be the partner. How about you? Just think about it. If you are in business or even being employed, is there something you can ride on. Riding the back of a wave can be more profitable than the main business. With the launch of Vista, you have a similar situation. Some time back, I posted about Levi’s jeans. Levi’s basically was borned during the gold rush days in the west. It has been long time since the gold rush days, but Levi’s is still around.

I know that at the moment in my country the Oil & Gas Industry is making tons of money. So those contractors who supply services and machines are also making tons as well. Remember the show Mac Gyver where he can come up with an escape plan just with basic stuff lying around and mostlyu his ingenuity to put things together. It’s the same.

Think. You how you can do also this.

Be creative!