What do ‘ketchup’ and Control Your Cash have in common?
No, they are not both red; one thing that Control Your Cash by Betty Kincaid and Greg McFarlane isn’t is ‘red’. You can’t figure this one out? At least you know Betty and Greg, right? They are the folks behind one of the blogs I regard very highly – Control Your Cash. (As a side note, because I suspect that by the time you have finished reading this you will really feel a strong urge to buy this book, you can do so through their site – just follow the link. And no, I am not on commission!)
Let’s get back to the question in the title! First I probably need to explain about ‘ketchup’. Have you noticed that Heinz ketchup has absolute monopoly on the market? In fact all other ketchup makers copy Heinz’s taste as closely as they can and any attempt to deviate from this fails. Malcolm Gladwell, well known for asking and answering interesting questions, set out to figure out why there are so many kinds of mustard and de facto only one type of ketchup. What he came up with was extremely interesting: the reason Heinz taste, objectionable as it is, is unbeaten is that it tickles all five senses of taste, namely salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami.
If ketchup tickles all five senses of taste, Control Your Cash excites all expectations of a good read. Continue reading
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe; catch ETF investing by the toe…
You know how for some time now I have been telling you that one of my concerns is that currently there is no reliable way to ‘store our labour’? Customarily we ‘stored our labour’ to ensure that at some point in the future we can live without having to sell our labour, or simply put work. I have been a bit concerned because traditionally this was done by saving and/or investing. Lately, however, saving is akin to pouring water in a bucket with holes and investing has become almost a cult where a small number of high priests make good and the rest of us worship from afar.
I want to be a high priestess, certainly I do. So I have been reading on investing and investment strategies. What I realised is three things:
a) Books on investment may be useful but readable and enjoyable they are not. And no, Ken Follett is not likely to write a book on how to build an investment portfolio that will get me out of the rat race by the age of 55.
b) Being like Buffet is harder than being like Beckham: it needs talent, dedication, long practice, specific knowledge and information and readiness to ‘loose it all’; well most of it, anyway.
c) My desire to develop an investment portfolio exceeds by far the level of dedication and time that I can afford – life is in the way. I have a day job to keep, career to build, stuff to write, students to keep happy, a young son to raise, meals to cook, marathons to run…well you get the picture. Continue reading
Five differences between women and men and their effects on our relationship with money
Today is the International Women’s Day and although we are not very big in celebrating it in the UK – we have shifted our celebrating to the much more politically neutral and commercially expedient Mother’s Day – I want to mark it. After all I am from Bulgaria where people really believe that ‘men are the head of the family but women are the neck’ and celebrating women and their strength is important. Every 8th of March Bulgarian women get flowers from husbands, lovers and children.
International Women’s Day started as a socialist event to promote equal rights for women, including the right to vote. A century later most women on the planet vote, most women have access to labour markets but we still earn only 10% of the world’s income and own less than 1% of the world’s property. This is despite the fact that women a becoming more and more prosperous in the Western world; this is not ‘the world’ right? Is there anything specific about women and money?
This made me think about key differences between the way in which men and women relate to money. I believe that apart from the layers of cultural conditioning the different ways in which men and women relate to women boil down to the following: Continue reading
Where to buy property 3 – local issues to consider
In earlier posts in this series, I suggested that you focus your search for property by geography then by broader amenities. Now look at local issues.
Again I start with some science – geology. The area may be overall one type of subsoil and rock but there are always local variations. Near our house is a very prestigious area built on sand. I remember one house with enormous settlement problems – it had to be underpinned at great expense. The house was built where two soil types met. It wasn’t new – it had been standing for at least 60 years when this happened. If there are such issues in your chosen area, you need to know where to avoid. Continue reading
