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Working Throught Sickness Weekend Summary

January 29th, 2012

Last week was a hard week since I was sick in multiple ways!

First on Monday, I had a small knee injury that prevented me from walking, but I was still able to go to work, with pain.

Tuesday while I was at work, I somehow caught a stomach virus.  By the time I was done with work and drove home, the pain was horrible.  I totally forgot about the pain in my knee…  This pain stuck with me Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  It was so bad that I stayed in bed both Wednesday and Thursday!  I really debated about going to the ER, as the pain was so sharp and never-ending…

Friday, I still was sick from the stomach virus, but able to work.  However, at the end of the day, it turns out I now have a cold.  Coughing and a stomach virus doesn’t mix well!  Saturday and Sunday again, I mostly rested (grrr).

So I had a horrible week!  But many of those days I was still able to be productive by taking the correct symptom reliever (except for the stomach virus).

Techniques to combat small illnesses:

  1. For my injured knee, it was simple, I just wrapped it in an elastic bandage and took ibuprofen, piece of cake.
  2. The stomach virus was tougher.  I endured hours of pain and drank too much of a bottle of pepto bismol (which didn’t help at all).  I was close to going to the ER when my wife suggested that I try a heating pad on my stomach.  At first this sounded like something that would make me even sicker, but when I tried it, it did help.  Still the continual cramping in my stomach knocked me out for days.
  3. Colder are easy, there is plenty of over the counter medicine that can help relieve the symptoms.  This particular time I used buffered aspirin.  If it get worse, I’ll keep moving up to heavier medicine.

All this to say try to figure out ways to keep moving (lol), as most things pass and the body recovers itself.

Now I’d like to mention some other great articles on the web while I was home sick last week:

Hope you had a better weekend than I did!

MR

 

Carnivals I participated in!

Yakezie Carnival at The Amateur Financier
Festival of Frugality at Squirrelers
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie at My University Money
Totally Money at Canadian Personal Finance
Canadian Finance Carnival at Canadian Finance Blog
Carnival of Financial Planning at The Amateur Finacier
Carnival of Retirement at Retire by 40

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Home Security! Deciding to Spend or Not to Spend

January 2nd, 2012

It’s Jan 1, 2012 at 4:14am, my dog started barking like an entire gang was at my front door trying to break in.

Beagle Boys

Much like the dad in Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “Twas the night before Christmas“, I sprang out of my bed in an adrenaline pumping state ready to encounter whatever threat might exist.

As I flew to the window to see what the environment looked like outside.  After a quick scan of the well-lite front yard, I suddenly came to realize that it’s not “bad guys” breaking in (most likely they are hung over, sleeping off the alcohol they consumed during New Years Eve), but instead the intruder was of a different “four-legged” sort.  Yes the big emergency was another dog, a collared Beagle to be exact.  Now my dog (a chocolate lab), doesn’t ever bark in the middle of the night.  To be honest, I thought she couldn’t hear well.  There has been times when I’ve come downstairs, turned on the lights, then turned on the TV and our dog never even moved, let along bat an eyelid…

The entire incident made me rethink my home protection philosophy!  You see right now I don’t have much in the way of worth at home.  Most of my money is in investments and other financial vehicles that are not lying around  in my house.  When I was in college, this was especially true, but things are different now.  Kids change the equation, burglars breaking in taking possessions is one thing, but burglars breaking in and potentially harming my kids in the process is another.  So since Jan 1, I’ve been thinking about increasing security for our home.

The following are some of the steps I’m considering to enhance my Home Security:

  • Buy a shotgun and put it in a lock protected plastic case.  Actually I want to do this anyway because I would like to go skeet shooting someday.
  • Researching the services provided by ADT Security.  I probably won’t go with them but if I had more money they would definitely be a worthwhile consideration.
  • Search for an individual electronic House Security system for that isn’t tied into a service.  I will probably go with such a system instead of ADT!
  • Keep my dog.  Like I was going to get rid of her (lol).  It’s nice to know that she responds to sounds that she doesn’t recognize.
  • Consider purchasing security signs, if possible.  Sometimes just the warning is enough.
  • Creating a home monitoring solution from old computers that I still have.  Mostly these would be used to capture video of a motion detector triggered it.  I’m just playing around with this idea currently.  No solid plans.
  • Automate lights turning on and off at certain times at night to leave the impression that someone is home (this would be very useful for times when your family goes on vacation).  During the day, the turning on and off of a radio via an automated timer would be of benefit too (although not very green friendly for the environment).

Family is important, and any form of deterrent may be of benefit.  Sometimes just knowing a house is being monitored will be enough to sway crooks from attempt to break in.

Are you well protected from the Home Security perspective?

MR

 

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Too Error Is To Learn

December 8th, 2011

Always try to learn from your errors!

I was watching Morning Express with Robin Meade, when a new clip came on about a man that shot mistletoe out of a tree in a parking lot.  Obviously he was arrested.  When they went on to interview him, apparently this had happened before when he shot mistletoe out of his neighbor’s tree the previous year.

Personally, if I were to get arrested for shooting mistletoe out of my neighbor’s tree, I certainly wouldn’t take my shotgun to a parking lot and try to shoot the mistletoe out of the tree in a public location!  When they showed the man talking on TV, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t the most clever individual.

All of this leads up to the fact that if you error, you must learn from the experience or else you will continually lose and never get ahead personally or financially.  Most of us can’t play a perfect game in life and the stock market, even the investing legend Warren Buffett hasn’t played a perfect game!

I remember the first stock that I bought that went bust (or belly up)!  It’s was a small Canadian company call “New York Seltzer”, and while the company was questionable since part of their name was New York (even though they were based in Canada), their product was great!  So as a young teen with big dreams, I plopped down an even $200 in a company that I thought would expand and grow like crazy.  I was very, very wrong.

From my “New York” seltzer experience, I learned at a young age that sometimes having a great product isn’t enough.  Those that run the company are critical, and if you don’t have an “A+ team” running the company, then even with a great product, you can still lose!  Later, there was a company called SyQuest that also made a superior product (at the time) called Sparq drives.  I bought their product and loved it and considered buying stock in the company.  But then I looked at how it was run and the way they advertised their product and I decided not to take the leap!  This turned out to be a good move.

The point is that we all make mistakes, it’s part of being human, and life would be pretty dull if everybody was perfect.  But continually making the same or similar mistake is something to be avoided!  The man mentioned above should have learned from his mistakes last year, and if you aren’t sure about something, then Google it.  While Google doesn’t guarantee that the answer is correct, most of the time it will be if you read a few articles.

When you make an big mistake, think about and learn what happened and take corrective actions so it doesn’t happen again.

What do you do when you make mistakes?

MR

P.S. I know my title looks weird, but “Too Error” is actually a play on words, the real words phrase is “To Err”, but I thought it would be funny to error on the title (lol)…

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Never Lend Money To Friends Unless You Would Give It To Them For Free Anyway

November 29th, 2011

Borrowing money from friends is always a touchy matter.

Borrowing Friends like Whimpy

Borrowing Friends like Whimpy

Some people will borrow money from you continuously once you lend them money the first critical time.  I’ve even see this kind of borrowing “without repayment” action happen even between brothers.  Both brothers are good guys, but the one would continuously borrow from friends, his parents and his family.  In some ways, it’s like the borrowing brother is playing a game where money isn’t real.  It’s like he chooses to believe that the money is just paper like monopoly money, or that he’s special and doesn’t have to follow the rules and common courtesy conduct when it comes to paying back money.

Such behavior has prompted me to do the following when it comes to people asking me for money.

  1. I never have money sitting around doing nothing.  So once I get paid and have some discretionary income (money after taxes and in my possession), I try to put that money to work towards goals (usually investments).  That way when a friend (or really anybody) ask me for money I tell them that I don’t have any money on me (which is the truth).  If it’s a large number that a friend wants to borrow, I never have that kind of money sitting by idle!  By always running tight, it’s harder for a borrowing friend to slip in and take advantage of you if you have money money going to a cause (in my case it’s kid’s college funds, retirement, and goal specific tasks).
  2. Occasionally, I will lend small denominations to friends, but it’s money that’s less than $20.  When I was younger, it was $5, then later $10.  The amount has shifted as I continue to build my wealth, but it’s always a small number relative to the amount of money that I have.  I don’t see myself increasing the $20 cap that I currently use for a long time.
  3. I make sure that I get the amount that I lent back, or else I don’t lend that person any more money.  When someone comes to borrow money from me again, and if they haven’t paid off the first amount that they have borrow.  I have no problems pointing out that they still owe me money from the first $20 that I lent them.
  4. After anybody borrows money from me, I will then later ask to borrow money from them.  This puts you on the same financial borrowing level as them, and since they hate to lend money out (kind of ironic huh), they will start to avoid asking you from money.  At least this is the case in my experience.  Once I ask to borrow money from people that always ask for money from others, it’s like all of a sudden they think I’m broke all the time too.

Using the techniques above, I’ve been able to twist my way out of lending money to people, especially those that always borrow money from people but never repay the money back.

If you can think of another clever way to avoid habitual borrowers that don’t repay money back, please tell us in the comments section below!

Thanks,

MR

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Sometimes Statistics Lie

November 14th, 2011

Lately, I’ve been noticing that people are using statistics more often to lie instead of using common sense.

For instance, I work with a friend who was very upset because it wasn’t recognized that she increased survey participation by 50% versus the prior month’s participation numbers.  Since I’m a little more mathematically astute, she came to me to check if her calculations were correct (and to complain).  So I quickly ran the numbers in my head and she was correct, she did increase the survey participation by 50%.

Now most of us would agree that a 50% increase is fairly impressive, at least from a mathematical perspective!

Statistics Don’t Tell The Entire Story

The catch with my friend is that the number of participants involved with the survey the prior month was only two.  The month that she became involved with the survey results, the number increased to three participants.  So while technically she can claim that her involvement increased the participation rate by 50% versus the previous month… it’s still just one additional person!

To really make matters worse was the fact that her manager was upset because 2 month prior the survey participation number was four!  So in her manager’s viewpoint, the numbers actually decreased by 25%.  While I wholeheartedly agree with my friend, when you speak in terms one or two people, the statistics really doesn’t matter much.  It could be just luck that one more person filled out a survey in her month than versus the previous month, or two months ago.

Obviously, she was right in her calculations, but the significance of one person doesn’t really matter.  Especially when the goal is for having hundreds of responses per month instead of just single digits numbers.

I personally find that a floating average number, or some other kind of baseline is the best for comparing performance.

For example, with my friend, if the average participation rate for the surveys is one person per month, then realistically 3 actually is a phenomenal number and she should be acknowledge for her efforts.

I’m writing this because all to often I see people on all sides of arguments using mathematically correct statistics in a way that promote their argument without taking into account the historic average of numbers the statistics represent.  This is a common tactic with politicians in general.

Statistics that Use Bad Sampling Sets

Poor Statistical Sample Set

Sometimes Statistics Lie

Okay, I’m going to get nerdy on everybody here, so just bare with me… If the sampling set taken isn’t representative of the general population or the target population being represented, then the statistics that are used on the non-representative sample will be inaccurate.  For example, if you take a count of the eye color of 20 Swedish people as your sample set, you’ll derive a number that states that % of the eye color of everybody is blue.  Obviously, we know this isn’t true, but such sampling occasionally happens, especially in politics.  The above picture declares Dewey is the new president, but we know he wasn’t elected.  This was due to an error in the sample set or size of the sample set.

What to Use When Statistics Lie or Are Abused

Try to find unbiased results.  This isn’t easy though, since usually the statistics that a person or group presents was collected by them for the presentation.  This alone should set off red flags!  How accurate can the statistics be if they are using the statistics for their presentation?  Wouldn’t be be kind of silly of them to present statistics that would undermine there cause?

Personally, I try to come to a conclusion based on common sense with such matters.  This isn’t easy and is highly subjective, but without conducting a fair and representative sample, it’s just not possible to get what the real statistics are around a topic.

Statistics that Don’t Account For All Variables and Time

There is a concept called Spurious Relationships, which basically exists when two variables seem related but actually aren’t.  For instance, one of my favorite examples is that ice cream consumption increases in summer and so does the temperature in that given area.  So does eating ice cream raise the temperature of the climate in summer?  No, but yet the two variables seem to be highly correlated…

So basically, what I’m trying to say is just because a correlation may seem to be a statistical number that make sense, often time it doesn’t.  Using common sense, you can debunk such poor statistical usage and you should question the presenters and their motives.  Don’t be fooled by numbers, just because someone uses statistics doesn’t mean that they are right.

Don’t believe the hype, think things through!

MR

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