Archive for December, 2009

One more piece of useless data and I’ll blow a fuse!

December 16th, 2009

I’m buying a new computer to handle the junk mail.
When I tell someone that I’m a writer their immediate reaction is, “oh, you must be so well up on the news and all the goings on around town. How exciting! How do you remember everything? The truth: I don’t.

It isn’t easy
First of all I use 2 email addresses. I try and keep all the frivolous mail on one and all the money-associated mail on the other. Lately I’ve been thinking about buying myself another computer on which I will deal with business writing only. At the moment I have everything on one computer and I’m very nervous about the whole thing going up in smoke. Every time I hear the patter of grandchildren’s feet coming up the pathway I save everything in sight and switch off the computer so that my articles don’t get zapped by one of the infernal games they play on the computer.

New things
As a writer you need to keep up with the trends and changes that go on all the time. It seems that just about anyone with a good social networking idea can set up a website and start enrolling members. According to what I heard on the radio today, there are somewhere between 2 and 2.4 billion people using the internet. So if you launch an impressive site and target a particular age group, economic group, geographical group or particular gender, you are bound to end up with an impressive number of subscribers. Add a little advertising, stir well and you’ll be in the big money.

Social networks
There are hundreds of these sites, some good, some bad and some awful. As far as I can make out, they are used by others to harvest names and email addresses which later turn up in your computer as a Viagra or some other unwanted ad. The more common social networks are Facebook, Adult Friend Finder, Flicker, Geni, Linked In, Plaxo. Many of these social sites accept members from age 13, so be prudent – you do not want to find that you are exchanging notes with your grandchild’s friend!

Delete, delete, delete
Don’t be afraid to delete old emails! An inbox with a zero balance may look as though you have no friends in the world, but try to get all those non-critical messages off your screen.

Subscriptions
I recently changed computers and I made a list of all the sites I subscribe to before I made the change. I am renewing these subscriptions very slowly, thinking about each one before I hit “subscribe”.

The garbage heap
Last week someone described the internet as one giant information garbage heap used by millions of people around the world to dump anything and everything in the information field. It is so huge and grows at such an incredible rate that one has to be ruthless and selective to keep afloat in the information ocean. Happy holiday surfing!

Posted in Personal / Internet | No Comments »

What happens to a woman’s finances after divorce?

December 15th, 2009

Managing finances
Dealing with a divorce on the emotional level is tough enough. However, for many divorced women, their new financial reality can be even more intimidating. Having to take control of family finances and trying to get by on less income can be daunting, if not completely overwhelming.

The woman suffers more financially
According to a personal-finance expert, Trisha Wagner, “Women are far more likely to suffer financially than men after a marriage comes to an end. Twenty-seven percent of women versus 10 percent of men will experience a significant decrease in their standard of living. For women who decided to stay at home to raise their children while counting on their husband’s income to provide financial security, re-establishing financial balance can be a major challenge.” In many cases, the woman invests all her available energy on trying to limit the effect of divorce on the children and the issues of finance are pushed onto the back burner. By the time they finally get around to dealing with their finances, many feel like they’ve dug a hole they can’t get out of.

Take stock
The first thing a divorcee needs to do is establish and understand the budget. This is the most important step toward financial stability. Many clients say that by doing this relatively simple exercise, they feel that they have gained a level of financial control they never assumed they would have. It doesn’t matter if the woman kept a budget while she was married. In the state of divorce, whole new sets of expenses will emerge and the woman will probably have different sources and levels of income than she had pre-divorce.

Break down the expenses
We recommend that the woman breaks her expenses down to those that are monthly and those that are annual or one-time expenses. Once that is organized, write down all sources of income, salary, child support, insurance or other payments, etc. It’s important in budgeting to let the income drive the expenses. This means that once the income is known, one can create a budget that limits spending to the amount of income. While this seems basic, most individuals let their expenses drive the process, meaning that they spend money without discipline and hope that at the end of the month they don’t go into overdraft.

Understand the budget
Understanding the budget also plays a major part in the asset division during the divorce proceedings. A well-known family law expert recently told me that much aggravation and time would be saved if women knew how much money they needed to live on. With this information, women can avoid spending thousands of dollars fighting for every penny. If you know how much you need to live, you’ll know how much money to ask for.

Use your independence
Use this newfound independence and take control of your new financial reality. Speak with a financial advisor and create a plan that will enable you to get on with your life and be financially independent.

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Everything’s in Billions, These Days

December 14th, 2009

How much is a billion, exactly?

Take a look at the headlines. “Abu Dhabi Gives Dubai $10 Billion for Use on Debt.”

“U.S. Could See $13 – 14 Billion Profit on Citi: Official.” This word – billion – is all over the place. “Tiger Woods, the billion dollar sportsman.” Or he was. Everything seems to be at least a billion dollars these days. Has your child asked you to explain one billion yet? When we were kids there was almost no such word. The upper limit of our vocabulary and our imagination was about a million. There were few millionaires around and we knew all their names.

Billions are everywhere

These days the word ‘billion’ is on the front page of every newspaper every day. Look at this: “Exxon’s Natural Gas Holdings Grow With $31 Billion Deal.” There’s a chocolate deal going on with Cadbury’s for an amount of about 17 billion dollars. That’s a big pile of chocolate! French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday unveiled details of a 35 billion Euro ($52 billion) government-backed spending program.

The one billion dollar investigation

What exactly is this billion that everyone is writing about? I decided to investigate.

How long would it take to count to one billion?

If you count one number every second without stopping until you reach a billion, the task would take you 31 years, 259 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes and 40 seconds.

How much is a billion in time?

Here are some ideas to stun you:
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

And a billion dollars?

At the rate our government is spending money, a billion dollars lasts only 8 hours and 20 minutes.

A billion dollars is a lot of cash. Actually, that depends on who you speak to. Bill Gates made a cool 50 billon last year. According to Forbes there were 793 billionaires in the world in 2005.

And then there’s Mr. Madoff and other people’s billions

Bernard Madoff allegedly siphoned billion of dollars from the world’s economy. When you say it like that, it sounds like a kid’s game of Robin Hood or Ali Baba. It means that if the entire 7 billion person population of the world lined up in front of Madoff, every man, woman and child would hand over about 7 dollars as they passed him. Where has it all gone?

How much space would 50 billion dollars fill?

If one took 50 million dollars home and tried to hide it, he would have a problem. 50 billion spread over a football field would bury the players in about 30 feet of money.

Back to reality

After that brief excursion into the world of the billions it’s back to the real world where a small overdraft at the bank can lead to many woes.

Posted in Economy, Finance | No Comments »

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