Credit Cave

In this modern age, we are all busy people. We run around at a hectic pace and few people find spare time. Computers and the internet are making it possible for all of us to accomplish more, but at the same time, we have to take on more work to keep up with everyone else.

This makes is all the more important for each of us to value our time and make wise decisions about our time allocation.

In business we look at decisions from the perspective of will it make a profit or not first. Then we evaluate whether or not a chosen action will cost us the opportunity of pursuing a different action that may be more lucrative or worthwhile. We also look at marginal opportunities. Maybe we can create 50 widgets in an 8 hour day, but how many widgets can we make if we put in an extra 30 minutes? an hour? or 5 hours? This would be considered the marginal cost of doing more.

In our personal lives we can apply the same principles. We should evaluate whether something is profitable or not for us to proceed. We should insure that we are doing the most financially profitable opportunity over less profitable ones, and we can always look at the benefit of doing a little extra work.

Now, I’m not saying that we should give up the non-monetary things in life or that everyone should work 40, 50, or 80 hour weeks. However, we should have a good understanding of what our time is worth from each of these perspectives as we attempt to make the optimal decision about what we are going to do next.

Too often, especially at work we get caught up in business and getting the job done for our employer. We need to take a step back and make sure that we are getting the job done for ourselves as well. So as we head into the weekend, when hopefully your job and career are less amplified, take some stock of your self and your situation and consider what opportunities are presenting themselves to you and which ones will reward you the most effectively. Also, do not neglect to look for those marginal opportunities. Sometimes these opportunities can turn into new jobs, promotions, a new business and more. If we keep tunnel vision working that prevents us from seeing the world around us, we may miss something that could make all the difference in the world!

This sounds absurd, but according to a report from Reuters it appears to be true. Are you sitting down?

An Australian bank has issued a cat with a credit card. The Bank of Queensland was found lacking after a security-conscious customer, Katherine Campbell, decided to test their security system that controls who is eligible for a bank account based on identity. I assume that the Bank of Queensland employ the usual money laundering checks, but they slipped up on this!

Soon after applying for a secondary credit card on her account under the name of Messiah, her cat, the credit card came through. Since Mrs. Campbell went public with her story the credit card has since been canceled.

“I just couldn’t believe it. People need to be aware of this and banks need to have better security,” said Mrs. Campbell in an interview with local media on Thursday.

I think the takeaway from this is not so much the security slip-up, but it is indicative of just how keen the banks are to get credit cards into our wallets.

If you are a Mac-enthusiast like myself you’ll probably have no nails by now because MacWorld is just round the corner.  This time next week we’ll have trawled through all the new releases and spent far too much time posting on forums about how much we want the new gadgets.

Think Secret has uncovered pictures of the new spreadsheet application from Apple to be called Numbers or Charts, a bit of a moving target.  It’ll come as part of the iLife 07 suite of productivity apps, the working counterpart of Apple’s award-winning iLife suite.

I’m looking forward to this release a lot, finally I’ll be able to manage my finances without the need to fire up Excel.  Apparently the application will be able to import and export Excel formatted spreadsheets with ease, which also comes in handy if you want to use online services such as Google’s excellent AJAXified Spreadsheet.

Keep your eyes peeled, it’ll be an interesting few days for you as a Mac user and for your bank account! ;-0  Anyway, here’s a picture for you to enjoy courtesy of Think Secret.

I read a great article the other day in Entrepreneur magazine.  A CEO of a burgeoning company made the statement that he never throws away anything.  Its a concept straight out of the old days in the US straight out of the depression.

But its also a very practical suggestion.

When you keep all the stuff that you buy, make, build, acquire, inherit and more, you have a constant reminder of all of things you possess.  To control clutter, you build up a natural incentive not to buy more things that you do not need.  Plus, by keeping all of this stuff, you have lots of potential material to solve future problems or challenges with tools already in your possession.  That saves you money, it saves you from spending your cash and its very useful.

In this modern day and age, many people recycle a great number of items, from cardboard, newspapers, plastic, and aluminum cans to cell phones, cell phone batteries, clothing and more.  From the perspective of the global economy and environment this is good.

From the perspective of your personal finances however, why should you give this stuff away?  Take some time to find recyclers that reimburse you for these items as opposed to giving it away for free or paying to have it recycled.  The stuff usually has value.  If you find out how to extract this value, you might earn a little extra money.  Might pay for the fuel in your car a couple times of year.

Set it up as a chore for your children, let them learn the lesson of saving for financial reasons, and then these funds can offset their allowance or supplement it.  The price of aluminum along with many metals is very healthy right now, so don’t just kick the cans to the curb in a recycling bin.

Some paper can be recycled, but much of it can not.  Don’t just throw it away, if you have a wood burning stove, save it for the winter months and burn it.  Its going to be better for the environment to turn the paper to ash, than it will be to fill of a massive landfill with paper that will not biodegrade quickly as its mixed in with lots of other non-degradable garbage.

Plus, you will be helping the environment by using just a little less electricity or heating oil and reducing your heating bill too!  I find that a short fire during the winter months will take the chill off the house, and this decreases my motivation for notching the thermostat up an extra degree on those extra chilly days and nights.

So remember keep it for yourself, don’t throw it away and if you are going to recycle it, make a buck or two for your family in the process!