2. Clear a space to work – You have to have a clear area to sort in. Ideally this should be a room, but if this is not feasible, a large space. An uncluttered clear area will motivate you, and, you will not be distracted. To clear an area you just have to be able to put the items in to boxes / bags, and, move them else where to sort and de-clutter later.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
De-Cluttering your Home: Top Tips to make a start, and, keep you motivated.
Although I have continually promised myself to undertake a mass de-clutter of my house, it is something I have been putting off for a while. The following are the steps I am going to go through in order to achieve my aim, and, to keep motivated.
1. Make a list of all the things you need to do - This will help you draw up a plan of action, and, separate the work in to manageable areas. You may be surprised just how much better you feel having written it all down, as you have now taken the first important step. In addition you can add to this as you proceed. If you just leave all the information in your head, your mind has a way of playing tricks on you, so you forget important elements, so Write it Down!
2. Clear a space to work – You have to have a clear area to sort in. Ideally this should be a room, but if this is not feasible, a large space. An uncluttered clear area will motivate you, and, you will not be distracted. To clear an area you just have to be able to put the items in to boxes / bags, and, move them else where to sort and de-clutter later.
3. Start clearing in manageable tasks - Choose specific drawers / cupboards / areas that can be undertaken in the time you have available. Achieving each task will motivate you to carry on to greater things.
4. Be ruthless about what you want to keep - Have separate storage areas / boxes for certain things that are not used regularly, for example holiday items, Memorable items, etc.
5. Think about selling unwanted goods on Ebay / other sites - It is estimated that every household has over £1,000 worth of unwanted goods, so not only will de-clutter lead to a more enjoyable life, it may also help your bank balance as well.
6. Think about how to make the most of the storage areas you have - Would adding a shelf in a cupboard make it have the ability to be used more efficiently?
7. Don’t buy anything to help you clear - e.g. storage boxes until you have finished your de-clutter. Only at this point will you be able to assess your need.
So if you also want to achieve clutter free living then start your quest today, and, let me know how you are getting on. Hopefully we can all inspire each other.
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2. Clear a space to work – You have to have a clear area to sort in. Ideally this should be a room, but if this is not feasible, a large space. An uncluttered clear area will motivate you, and, you will not be distracted. To clear an area you just have to be able to put the items in to boxes / bags, and, move them else where to sort and de-clutter later.
Monday, 30 May 2016
Top Gear 2016 - Episode 1 - Matt LeBlanc, and, Chris Evans
Well I had to write a review of the first episode of the "new" Top Gear. I can sum it up as follows:
- Boring - I kept looking at the clock to see how much longer I had to endure the programme for;
- Tedious - My view is that all the features were not really relevant;
- Not enough women - My limited mathematics counted one woman in the whole show;
- Old hat - A new team, but the same format, surely with all the money the BBC ploughed in to the programme it could have been more creative.
So for a quick overview of the programme.
It started out with the two hosts Chris Evans, and, Matt LeBlanc introducing themselves with the studio audience.
Next we headed to a US Air Base in Nevada to test the Dodge Viper ACR, and, the Corvette Z06. Here Evans is joined by co-host Sabine Schmitz (the only woman featured in the entire programme). To help out with the absolute tedious final part of the feature which involved trying to shoot the other hosts car, they were joined by two male US airmen.
The next part of the programme involved a challenge. Travelling to Blackpool in two fibreglass Reliant Robins painted in the colours of the UK, and, USA flags. This feature went on far too long, and, involved the obligatory hitting of each others cars.
Back to the studio now with two stars in rally cross car (oh, this must be the creative innovative part). The stars were Gordon Ramsey, and, Jesse Eisenberg, who were surprisingly both male.
Now to another feature involving LeBlanc, and, the off road Ariel Nomad, which amazingly called on the assistance of another three male paparazzi photographers.
So to end the show it was back to the Blackpool challenge, featuring a Willys Jeep, and, a Series one Landrover. To aid the hosts two Blackpool Council Officials were enlisted, the Fylde Vandals Rugby team, the Lancashire Wolverines American Football team, two men in drag, a power lifter called Nick Best, and Alistair, and, Jonny Brownlee. All males, albeit two dressed as women to address the gender balance.
A quick count reveals 12 individual males, two male teams, two males dressed as women, and, one woman. It's a good job the BBC said that they were changing the format so it was less "blokey".
I suppose the good thing is that from such a low base things can only get better. They also need to cut out the "beeped" swearing. It adds nothing apart from a lack of imagination. The programme is aired far too early to have to incorporate beeping.
A special mention has to go to the BBC 3 Extra Gear programme. Now this show I did find entertaining. Unfortunately it was nearly all male again, but it flowed, the features were more entertaining, and, it was interesting. I did not know the two presenters, but I imagine they are not paid as highly as Evans, or, LeBlanc. This is what the BBC should be all about promoting new talent. For some reason it feels that all the public are interested in are the same "stars" in the same formats.
Sunday, 29 May 2016
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Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Completing a Personal Financial Budget: Your goal to achieving financial freedom
In this post I am tackling
the important issue of personal financial budgeting. So what exactly does this mean? Well in this context it requires working out
the difference between your income (what you earn), and, your expenditure (what
you spend), and, it is important in that it enables you to live within your
means, and, ultimately manage your finances in such a way as to achieve
financial freedom.
Although I’m not a big
advocate of life plans in general, as I prefer to let things materialise
naturally, what I am a sworn advocate of is the financial life plan,
and, while the old adage of the earlier you start the better off you will be is
certainly true, it isn’t the be and end all. The fact you are reading this whatever your
age, I beg you to start now. As you will
see setting up a personal financial budget is not complex, and, involves common
sense; however, setting it up initially is time consuming, and, requires a
certain degree of discipline for the recording and monitoring.
Budgeting is not a new
concept, and, is routinely undertaken by companies, in fact you would probably
be very concerned if you learned that a business did not know what their income
and expenditure was going to be (although with some businesses they get it so
wrong it is frightening, however, that is another story.) For your personal budget you will get it
right.
There is also a
psychological issue at play here.
Constructing your personal budget will involve you writing down the
relevant information. This can either be
on a spreadsheet, or, paper (notebook), or both! The key is that it is in black and white,
and, the figures will not change however long you stare at them. This is in stark contrast to your mind. Many people will probably feel that they
spend within their means, but still seem to be utilising their overdraft on a
regular basis. This is because
unfortunately the majority of us have selective memory, which tends to
“conveniently” forget certain information like the cost of several take-aways
each month. This is human nature that
can be overcome by writing things down in an orderly fashion. It also applies to making a list of the jobs
we have to do, or, organising our food shelves / freezer in a neat and logical
way so as to avoid waste. It is usually
the underlying concept of getting things done (GTD) to improve the quality of
our lives. In addition in the case of personal
financial budgeting, once we have completed the initial analysis it will
aid the planning on how best to achieve our future goals, for example saving
for a holiday, without it costing more than the price of the holiday.
The first part of achieving
the personal financial budget is to analyse all your income and
expenditure. The greater detail the
better the results you will achieve when it comes to analysing, and,
potentially altering spending habits.
The following is a very
simple example of a personal financial budget for one month:
| Monthly | |
| Amount | |
| Income | |
| Salary | 1,000 |
| Expenditure | |
| Gas | 75 |
| Electricity | 30 |
| Rent | 450 |
| Telephone | 45 |
| Food | 220 |
| Socialising | 180 |
| Total Expenditure | 1,000 |
| Surplus / Deficit | 0 |
The above is known as a
balanced budget in that the income and expenditure amounts are equal. This person is spending exactly what they
earn. Now don’t get me wrong this is not
a bad position to be in, it is certainly a lot better than spending more than
you earn, however, what about when it comes to booking a holiday? For that month there will be an additional
amount that will be above your normal spending pattern. Where is this money going to come from? Presumably some form of finance, e.g. a
credit card. Then we get in to the
realms of being charged interest (making the thing we purchased more expensive),
and, setting up provision to pay it back.
The other issue with the
above example is that while it is a start, the brevity of the headings will not
help us with our analysis later on. So for
example what does the line socialising contain?
Does it contain a £30 monthly gym membership that we never use? By detailing this figure separately will
focus our minds when it comes to deciding if we need to incur this expenditure
at all.
Your homework now is to start building up your own personal financial
budget. I will be adding to this article
on how we will determine if our expenditure is either essential or
discretionary, with a view to altering our spending habits to put us in a
better financial position. Below is a link to download budget financial planner spreadsheet I have developed.
Please feel free to comment, or tweet me @MrMoanAE. Also check out the video on how to complete the spreadsheet below.
Thursday, 31 March 2016
Company Profit Warnings: The power of threes?
The power of threes? Is there a
psychological association with this number? In this post I am going to
talk about it in relation to profit warnings for companies. I’m sure I’ve
heard the phrase that warnings always come in threes. I was recently analysing
a company for a potential investment, at a share price that in all honesty
looked very enticing given the next two financial years forecasts. The
one thing that has held me back however, was that the share price had suffered
a 30% drop two months ago due to a profit warning, which related to a slowdown
in European orders, coupled with a restructuring exercise that is taking longer
to complete than expected, which when implemented will only deliver half of the
savings originally envisaged.
This started me wondering as to why profit
warnings in threes could be true, so I came up with the following musings to
try and explain the situation. You should be aware that everything
written below is from my own mind, and, is not based on any research work
undertaken by me or anybody else.
Profit warning one – I am assuming this situation arises out of the blue for
the Directors. I presume they are so overly confident and optimistic
about their ability to run a company that they cannot envisage the scenario of
profits ever falling. It would be interesting at this point if the
Directors revealed exactly what their contingency plan is (i.e. that is already
in existence before it happened, as part of their normal duties) to deal with
the situation. The usual format of communicating this to the market is by
a statement saying that profits are expected to be at the lower end of
forecasts. I’ve got to say this sort of statement is absolute
garbage. For many smaller investors they are probably not even aware of
the company forecasts. At the very least the company should restate the
profit and loss account, and, balance sheet, so it is transparent to all
investors as to what to expect. I believe this would certainly focus the
Directors minds, rather than issuing a form of words. It would also be
beneficial if the Directors also reduced their salaries and share options to an
absolute minimum level, both to increase profitability through reduced costs,
and, provide an incentive to management to achieve the specified target.
Profit warning two – At this point the Directors have presumably tried to
undertake some form of corrective action, but realise that companies are like
oil tankers and cannot be turned around in a short period of time, along with
the fact that the environment has turned out to be far worse than they
envisaged, and, at this stage the company is looking to report profits far
lower than forecast, if at all. Again a statement will be issued stating
this, with further wording suggesting the business environment has changed to
such an extent that could not have been foreseen by any sane commentators.
Profit warning three – As the reality of the situation bites, all hope is lost as
previous efforts to restore profitability have failed. The statement to
the market will consist of an outline that the company is undertaking a full
strategic review of its business model, usually with the help of a team of
third party consultants. This always puzzles me. Surely the
Directors should have instigated this review at profit warning one, and, in my
humble opinion should be undertaken by internal company staff. It just
shows you that it is not only investors who cling on to the hope a company will
recover, but the Directors do as well. Throughout the warning phases it
feels like the company have never really accepted the issues, or, the market
changes that first caused the problems in the first place. The whole
warning process should also highlight the role of the non executive Directors
as their role throughout is to hold the management of the company to account.
As always I welcome any
comment you may have.
Sunday, 27 March 2016
Blogger Right Sidebar Appearing at Bottom of Blog
After composing a relatively
lengthy blog regarding the problems I was having with my guttering overflowing,
and, a blocked pipe to the soakaway, which you can read about by clicking here,
I was distraught to see that the normal right sidebar was now appearing at the
bottom of the blog. On Googling the
problem the general consensus was that one of my blog posts contained some
erroneous HTML code.
To ascertain which post was
causing the trouble I reverted my most recent post to draft form and viewed the
blog again. This time all was well with
the right sidebar appearing where it should do.
This obviously meant that the most recent post was the problem. Unfortunately this post was quite complicated
as it combined pictures within the post etc., and, so the html code looked
quite involved. I copied the code in to
word, and, then began the process of inserting the various sections into a
draft blog post to try and isolate the problem.
My initial thought was that
it would be something to do with the images I had inserted, but I was surprised
when it occurred with the text I had inserted next to a picture in the second paragraph. I fixed this in the draft by highlighting all
the text in the compose menu, and applied the font (arial in my case), and, the
font size (normal). After applying this,
the sidebar was again on the right.
Having discovered this fix, I then went to the original post on the
guttering overflow problems, and, highlighted all the text in the post, and,
applied the font style, and, font size.
To my relief this fixed the problem and the right sidebar appeared in
its rightful (pun intended) place.
I hope this simple method
works for you too.
SKY+ Box Problems: No picture on the television screen: Blue Screen of Death
This morning a disaster struck
me in that I woke up to my Sky system refusing to show a picture on the
television screen. All I could view was
a blue screen. My Sky box is plugged in
to the HDMI1 socket of the television.
My immediate reaction was of
sheer panic. It is amazing how you think
your life will end when your Sky box fails.
The first thing I did was to switch the box on and off, but this failed to
work.
I then googled the problem
which suggested trying to re-download the software. You achieve this by turning off the Sky box,
pressing and holding down the backup button on the top of the box, whilst
turning the box back on, keeping the backup button held down until all four
lights come on at the front of the box.
The good news is the lights duly came on, and, after around ten minutes
went off again, as they should do.
Unfortunately there was still no picture on the television screen.
The next thing I tried was
to plug a scart cable in to my Sky box and the television, and, select the AV1
input channel on the television. Good
news a picture appeared. This was a
relief. I checked the planner and
everything was in order. What I was very
surprised at was the quality of the picture through the scart lead. It’s amazing the difference in quality the
HDMI connection makes.
The final thing I thought I
would do is plug the HDMI cable into the HDMI2 socket on my television, and,
select the HDMI2 input channel. Low and
behold, and, much to my surprise it worked, so I am now back in business with a
full HD picture. It appears as if the HDMI1
socket has failed on the television.
This is the second time I
have been faced with a blue screen of death.
The first was when the Windows operating system failed on my computer,
see my previous post for details of that escapade by clicking here.