Financial Tools

Few people are given the tools to financial success. No schools teach them and unless there is an interest in ferreting them out, we move through adulthood having graduated from “Seat of Our Pants Financial University.”

With the internet, those tools are more available, but we still must seek them out. Here is where perception becomes important. If we can perceive the importance of these tools in our lives and if we can perceive that it is within the realm of possibility to achieve financial success, we can begin to use the tools, make a plan and move, step by step, to financial success.

Many of us have heard the story of receiving a penny a day compounded for a salary and becoming a millionaire in a month (see below.) The miracle of compound interest. How many of you can explain it to a twelve year old?

A penny doubled every day for 30 days will yield $10,737,418.23. The interesting pat is that the big money is made in the last five days. Most people can't stick with anything new for 30 consecutive days. They quit before their efforts are compounded into the big payoff. Can you stay in the game long enough to get you just rewards?

day 1 $ 0.01
day 2 $ 0.02
day 3 $ 0.04
day 4 $ 0.08
day 5 $ 0.16
day 6 $ 0.32
day 7 $ 0.64
day 8 $ 1.28
day 9 $ 2.56
day 10 $ 5.12
day 11 $ 10.24
day 12 $ 20.48
day 13 $ 40.96
day 14 $ 81.92
day 15 $ 163.84
day 16 $ 327.68
day 17 $ 655.36
day 18 $ 1,310.72
day 19 $ 2,621.44
day 20 $ 5,242.88
day 21 $ 10,485.76
day 22 $ 20,971.52
day 23 $ 41,943.04
day 24 $ 83,866.08
day 25 $ 167,772.16
day 26 $ 335,544.32
day 27 $ 671,088.64
day 28 $ 1,342,177.28
day 29 $ 2,684,354.56
day 30 $ 5.368,709.12
Total $10,737,418.23

Compound interest is one of the tools to gathering wealth. Here are some web sites that offer other tools. They are free to use and easy to understand. Kiplinger’s gives some good sites, http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/.  The ones at Bank of America are different but also very useful
http://www.bankofamerica.com/financialtools/.

A perception I would like to share with you is one that reminds you that, at this very moment you have enough.

Enough time, enough money, enough of anything you deem important. How you choose to use your assets and perceive them will dictate a good life or one that is lacking.

For many of us, this is a hard concept to understand. It sounds like psychobabble. But for anyone who knows me, that is not my style and I would not offer it to you unless I think it is useful and based in reality. Let me know what you think. As a colleague of mine asked, “when is enough, enough?”

HEALTH TIPS

The Tools of Health

The most important and most useful tool in the health toolkit is perception. Here is a little passage from the University of Winnipeg that nicely described perception:

Three umpires describe their upiring (sic) styles. The first ump says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and I calls them as they are." The second ump says, "there's balls and there's strikes, and I calls them as I sees them." The third ump says, "there's balls and there's strikes, but they ain't nothing until I calls them." Notice the difference between the umpires and the world that they are viewing.

Perception is not sensation. Perception is sensation plus interpretation. The interpretation is done in the brain. Information is sensed by the person, but then that information is taken to the brain for interpretation.

To prove this to yourself, take a piece of paper. Roll it up to form a tube. Holding the tube in your left hand, place your right hand against the far end of the tube. Now raise the tube to your left eye, keeping your right hand beside the tube. You should see a hole in the middle of your right hand.

Clearly, there is no hole in your hand, and by closing each eye in turn, you can tell that your eyes are not sensing there to be a hole in your hand. Yet, you do perceive a hole in your hand. Thus, perception is not sensation.

How we interpret what we sense is what we perceive. This is an elegant way to stay in good health, both physically and emotionally. It calls for us to use our thinking in a way that allows us to more easily understand what is happening and to cope with it.

Let me give you an example out of my own life.

Each morning and afternoon the school bus picks up and delivers our schoolchildren to the designated stop. Parents park on the dead end road, the only available parking area. This is across from a house with a round drive. Each car makes a turn and sometimes drives into the drive a bit. After two months, the owners moved their cars to the edge of the drives. Great hint. The parents, still needing to turn, cut their cars a bit sharper to avoid the drives. The owners, not satisfied, put up small signs along their property, “No trespassing,” “No turning,” they said, like little soldiers in a row.

Still, with no alternative, the parents continue to turn. Now the owners stand on their porch and watch the cars turn.

Even though the parents have stopped using the driveways, the homeowners continue to perceive the threat to their ownership.

I am sorry for the property owners. It is an annoyance to have a row of cars lined up outside your house. Mind you, it is community property that the cars are on and the cars do not use the drives any longer, but the perception of abuse continues and with it, I’m so certain, the upset.

Who knows where this will lead. Confrontation between owners and parents is a strong possibility. At the least, the easiness and calm of the task has been jeopardized. All this because the homeowners, seeing their driveways used, justifiably become upset but do not or cannot change their perception of the situation. The problem is resolved, the parents do not intrude on their property any longer, but the owners continue perceiving only the problem and not the resolution.

I want to leave you with a task. Over the next two weeks, I would like you to look at your perceptions and list the ones that are causing you problems. Be daring. Look at work, home, your inner life, all aspects of your life. Write them down and evaluate whether your perceptions are in line with what you sense. See what perceptions need to change or be updated. And be aware that this will have a good effect on your physical and emotional health.

Let me know if I can help. Send some of your work in and we’ll publish, if you give permission. Watch your energy grow!
 

What is your perception?

October 24, 2006
Tuesday

Ketchikan, Alaska - A few days ago, I was driving into town from Settler's Cove. It was rainy and there were "puddles" in the low lying areas of the North Tongass Highway, so I was cheerfully hydroplaning around the corners at 50 mph.
Somewhere around the Lighthouse Grocery I had a thought.
"Geeze, this commute would really suck."

About a mile or so later, another thought occurred to me.
"Geeze-Louise! What commute? We're talking 20 minutes tops here."
Of course had I been coming in on South Tongass it would have been a good 20 minute wait just get past the "excavation" zone south of the Homestead. But - as usual - I digress.

Living in Ketchikan spoils one because for most of the rest of the world, twenty minutes isn't a commute. Twenty minutes is the time you spend "saving time" by going through the drive-thru Latte line.

A few months ago, I read that Midas (the brakes guys, not the golden touch man) gave a special commuter award to some yahoo (not the search engine, just a software engineer in search of something) in California who spends more than 3 hours commuting to work.

Actually, he spends more than three hours commuting one way to work each day. At the end of the day, he spends another three hours commuting back home. It turns out that he lives in a lovely little wide spot in the road (Mariposa) in the Sierra Nevadas somewhere near Yosemite and he leaves home at 5 am each morning to get to work by 8. At 5 pm, he hops back in the car to get home by 8 pm.

I would guess that he then spends about 15 minutes of quality time with his family before turning in for the night so he can get up again at 5 am.
He does this in order to "enjoy" his 10 acre "ranch," something he could never afford if he lived near his job in San Jose. He says he "keeps his eyes on the road, listens to the radio and drinks lots of coffee" on his trips.
Well, isn't that special.

He must really enjoy spending time on his property from 8 pm to 8:15 each night. Then again he does have his weekends free to enjoy his "spread." Or maybe he's spending his weekends working on his car because it must need some extra attention racking up nearly a 1,000 freeway miles a week. That's probably where Midas comes in. I hope he gets some free car service along with his "road warrior" trophy.

It also occurs to me that even at 25 miles per gallon, he's burning through $120 worth of gas a week. Maybe he could afford a little bigger "spread" in San Jose if he wasn't combusting that much petrol? Oops, another digression. Sorry. My mind seems to be wandering as if I was stuck in my car six hours a day! Oh well.
Obviously, it would not be possible to spend three hours driving one way to work in Ketchikan. Even with a bridge to Gravina.

You would have to drive from Settlers Cove to Beaver Falls about six times to do that. I understand that sometimes we Ketchikanders find ourselves driving back and forth aimlessly, but that would be a bit much, even on a sunny day with the top down.

Actually I once drove back and forth between Settlers Cove and Beaver Falls nearly six times. I was in high school and me and two friends were bored and wanted to see if it was possible to put 200 miles on my Chevy truck in one day.
So we drove between Settlers Cove to Beaver Falls a little over five times. Or just about 150 miles. At Ketchikan speeds (and road conditions), it took us well over four hours. When I realized that we'd have to keep going for nearly another hour and a half, I stopped. All I really accomplished was a serious case of bench seat bottom burn.

Those of you who are still with me (and aren't trapped in the endless road construction near The Landing) are probably thinking "Yeah, well, that guy in California is a doofus and most people don't commute that much."
And you are right.

The US Census Bureau says that in 2003, Americans spent 100 hours a year "commuting" in their cars to work.

That doesn't sound like much (only about 23 minutes a day) until you stop to realize that it's more than most folks spend on their vacation (80 hours) each year.

Of course bigger metropolitan areas had the longest commutes. Workers in New York City averaged nearly 38 minutes one way. Chicago was 33 minutes. Los Angeles was "only" 29 minutes. In New York, nearly 5 percent of the commuters reported a 90 minute one way commute.

Now on the other end of the spectrum, cities like Wichita, Kansas and Omaha, Nebraska reported average commutes of about 16 or 17 minutes, roughly the amount of time it takes a New York commuter to get a Latte to go from the little stand outside the parking garage.

Naturally, Alaskan cities are too small to be surveyed in the Census figures. Even Los Anchorage falls below the 250,000 population threshold.

Alaska as a state, though, has been quantified by the grand assessor of commuting.

The Census says that Alaskans - on average - commute 18.9 minutes to work each day. That places Alaska as 44th in the nation. The only states with shorter commutes than Alaska are Iowa, Kansas, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and North and South Dakota. That makes sense. It's a pretty short "commute" to the barn.
My own personal commute to work is just under 35 seconds. That includes the time it takes to parallel park on Dock Street. But not the time it would take me to get a Latte, if I wanted to get a Latte, which I don't because I don't drink coffee, but that's another digression. Maybe I should add the extra time it would take to me to drive to Tatsuda's to buy a soda.

Many of you are probably thinking " Thirty-five seconds! What a doofus Kiffer is for not walking to work."

And you would be mostly right.

It is only about a five minute walk from home to work. But that's downhill all the way. It is a little more "strenuous" commute home, back up the hills. Walking back up takes about two days, including pauses to stop to discuss acclimatization schedules with my Sherpas. One can't be too careful when pulmonary edemas are concerned.

But since it I have a "less than a minute" driving commute it is probably natural that I was somewhat horrified that my friends out in the Waterfall subdivision take 20 times longer to get work than I do.

After all, the average commuting time in San Jose is 24 minutes and the goofball who commutes from over the mountains only takes six or seven times that.
Using his yardstick, I should be looking for an affordable 10 acre "ranch" on the Far West Side of Gravina (how about by Grant Creek!) from whence to begin my morning commute.

So, now about that bridge.

Dave Kiffer is a freelance writer living in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Contact Dave at dave@sitnews.us
Dave Kiffer ©2006

Dr. Mastria is founder of Commuter-Assist.com, which publishes e-books, CDs and cassettes to help commuters get the most out of their commute and life in general.  Dr. Mastria speaks, offers workshops, and consults to businesses.  She also provides life, wellness, and executive and business coaching to groups and individuals.  To contact Dr. Mastria email info@Commuter-Assist.com or call 570-839-6394. 

All content Copyright © 2006, Dr. Marie A. Mastria, CLC, PCC / Commuter-Assist.com. All rights reserved. You may copy or send it to family or friends who may benefit from it so long as the format and credits are intact. You have permission to publish this article electronically, free of charge, as long as the by-lines are included and links are activated and maintained. A courtesy copy of your publication or link to website would be appreciated.