This is based on an idea espoused, I believe, by Robert Kiyosaki in his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The theory basically says “pay yourself first”. Instead of salary coming in, immediately paying all of your bills and then treating yourself to a night out or some new clothes and saving only what is left at the end of month (little), pay yourself first. Take a set amount directly from your account before paying anyone else. By doing so, all the bills will still be paid and I will still be able to afford some luxury but I won’t be wasting so much money on useless tat.

So, while I have a summer to relax, I wanted to devote some time concentrating on my finances. The goal is to split savings into three segments (not necessarily equally). These will go into a “safe” bucket and a “growth” bucket which is divided into a “buy and hold” bucket and a “momentum” bucket. These have separate aims:

• The safe bucket will have to be solid and reliable. Probably mostly an ISA with possibly Government bonds on top
• The growth bucket is looking at riskier, and hopefully more rewarding, options. These might mean investing in the stock market or corporate bonds. The options I take will be pound-cost-averaged. This means buying the same option every month with the same amount of pounds. The effect is that when prices are low I purchase more shares and when prices are high I buy less.
  • The buy and hold bucket will contain long term investments that I will not review. Over time the stock market always does well – as long as you ignore the, ahem, glitches that happen now and again. One strategy I am looking at is America’s Finest Companies. This is a list compiled annually of any publicly traded American company which has managed higher earnings per share, or higher dividends per share, for at least ten consecutive years. Dividends are reinvested and shares are only sold when a company falls out of the list. Of the 19,000ish companies traded, approximately 300 make the cut.
  • The momentum bucket is a group of investments which are actively traded over time. Although I doubt I will have time once I start working to trade daily, this bucket will include items that I will trade regularly. I am not entirely sure at the moment what kind of strategy I want to pursue with these investments and they are likely to be the most risky. I am interested in checking out foreign exchange given the greater volatility of the market (not certain if that is a good thing or a bad thing actually).

I have set up some over-elaborate spreadsheets so that I know exactly how much I will be pocketing after tax, the maximum I could borrow for a mortgage and what that would cost, as well as various other expenditures.

I may have to delay my whole investment strategy for a couple of months after I start work to catch up with my first month expenses before I get that first golden pay cheque, assuming that I will have had to have put down a deposit, etc. I would like to get involved with America’s Finest Companies as soon as possible, with the 2010 edition being released next month. I am fully intent on steaming on with the whole scheme by the new year, one way or another.

Here’s to making some money!

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So this week I decided to travel down to Loughborough on the train. My course mates all had their final, final exam at 4 p.m. so I got a train which would get me in at 4.30 so I had plenty of time to sort my stuff in my digs, get some booze and meet everyone. As it was points failure at York station meant trains were one in one out on that line. Having changed at York fine (the train I needed to get on was stuck in the queue behind my train) we then missed the connection at Derby, meaning I finally arrived at 5.40 into Loughborough. Had just enough time to grab a taxi to the Union, buy some cans and get to the exam hall before everyone finished.

The night was a good one and it was great to bump into various friends as well as those on my course. FND surprised with some great music in the Fusion (Jimi Hendrix, The Smiths, The Jam, etc.). Got drunk enough and on the way home, via the Purple Onion to get some cheesy chips, I got challenged to eat a chilli in the P.O. Won myself two pieces of chicken so I was pretty happy – at least once I’d got back to my room and drunk a whole lot of water anyway!

So the plan this week is to try catch up with as many people as possible. On Tuesday we have to give a 10 minute presentation on our dissertation. At some point I’m expecting to have to present on the projects I completed in France but of course there has been no confirmation on that yet.

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First up this month was my dissertation submission. I flew back to Loughborough as there was no way I was going to trust the post to deliver. My first impression on landing was “damn this country is cold”. Getting to the university campus I collected my keys and headed to my digs for the week, which turned out to be the same halls I spent my first year in. The mattresses are still just as horrid (I really shouldn’t have expected them to buy new ones in the four years I’ve been absent). However given I’d be spending 16 hours a day in the library this was no real problem.

That’s what I had to do to get my project finished. Worked some crazy hours, through the night when I felt I could. I find myself least productive in the mornings but late at night, once everyone had gone, I would work through till 6am or so most nights. I have done enough all nighters in my time at university that I realise they were all just training for this one event. Come 8.30am on Tuesday 12th of May there I was at the printers with half a dozen others getting my project printed and bound. Very shiny it looked too!

How do feel about my project? I would say I have mixed feelings. I think there’s some good work in there and it was interesting in parts. However my concern is whether or not I drew enough succinct conclusions. I feel my Project Definition Document was pretty vague and so whether my dissertation actually matches what I supposedly set out to do is a matter for the assessor.

Now that my dissertation is done I’m down to my last pieces of work. I have two reports due as part of my Erasmus placement. The first is a comparison of French and British education and engineering. the second could be anything and for which I have ended up doing a bibliographic study of low energy buildings in the UK. Other than that I basically have a couple of presentations to do mid June and I’m done.

The low energy building project is actually quite interesting. It is beginning to spark ideas in my mind as to whether I can get involved at a business level somehow. Construction is going to have to go in that direction so how can I catch the bottom of the wave? I’ll have me a think. In the mean time it’s back to night shifts to try get the projects knocked out. The afternoon is so warm here I’ll be off to the park again – rumoured to hit 28 degrees today whoop!

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I like to think that it does make a difference, trying to be a better person. Bringing benefits to the lives of others. That I don’t need to tell tales to try and get sympathy. And we’re not in a playground now, surely we can all grow up a little? Apparently not. Gossip can be fun and I am part of all of this new media stuff to share things about me and my life. I want to be able to engage new people in different conversations.

But.

But some things really don’t need to be shared like that. I find I don’t care about the argument that has been repeated for the thousandth time. I really couldn’t care less about such ridiculously tedious issues that have been blown up beyond all comprehension. Again. What I have discovered to affect me is the knowledge that these events are twisted and flipped and suddenly 5, 10, 100 or more (damn Twitter!) people have entirely the wrong impression. The overriding feeling is disappointment, that my image is tarnished, trust lost because of another agenda. To try change this paradigm means showing that pictures are more than just black and white. And to drop my level to their’s. Which I won’t do.

But don’t worry I’m sure another blog will provide “all” of the details soon enough.

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Christmas will have to be a post by itself though it’s one I’ve been putting off for a while so maybe it won’t

Got back to Lufbra shortly after the New Year with the intention of getting some work done. This has been my first week back and we have had three courseworks plus a French exam. Right now I’m shattered having submitted the final piece a couple hours ago. I had been running on adrenaline up until that point so my bodies crashing now and claiming expenses back on what I’ve been putting it through, feeding it naff food and sleeping at funny hours with no pattern.

Taking languages has turns out to be a two sided coin at Uni. I take French at level seven currently – that’s the level you go into if you have an A-level – having previously taken level three, five and six (don’t know how/why I skipped level 4 but there we go). A language invariably means that you have language assessment very early. It also means later on as our Engineering exams tend to be later on, I have less exams than anyone else and so more time to do revision. But it can screw you over when you have other stuff to do such as coursework.

It also doesn’t help that nine days ago one of my house mates texted to let me know she’s taking a leave of absence from Uni through till October. That wouldn’t be an issue but we have a house group for our Development Project work. She had done all the original research and so the rest of us didn’t bother getting involved expecting her to present us with that work and we could move on from there. Or at least using that as an excuse to be lazy. So to find out we had a couple weeks to do a bunch of research and put together a report wasn’t great fun. At least we’ll get an Impaired Performance form that should help. Incidentally to throw in a little tech here I did use Freemind to create a nice Mind Map of the information. It’s slow and I didnt have a clue about how to get it to print at 100% size over several pages instead of cramming it all onto one page. Ended up taking screen shots and sellotaping them together.

One thing about all this Social Media stuff, it does make you very aware of the power of sharing. We used this to good effect. Or at least I tried to. First up I stuck all my research onto our living room wall. If we had worked in the house and not gone onto campus I think it would have worked out really well. Also used
Zoho Projects as a way of sharing documents. This was more benificial but everything like this requires people to learn to use it. So whereas two of us what update version so there were only a couple files getting updated, the other member would upload each revision as a fresh. Easier for him than looking into the app but not using the kind of power available. Talking to the other member who at least made some effort she felt that it was too small a group to make really effective use given that a quick IM could update us on the latest information which is a fair point.

While I’m shooting off on tangents here’s another. I want to set myself up my own domain. I dont know how I want to approach blogging. I like finding out new things and setting stuff up to have a go. Hence this Tumblr blog when I haven’t updated Wordpress in a couple months. But maybe a Hosted Wordpress account would be more interesting and able. Or take a leaf out of Jennifr’s book and have a Tumblr subdomain as a Lifestream to a Wordpress account. I’ve been using Xona’s site to try and come up with some decent URLs. I’d love to have www.lu.ke but unfortunately Kenya aren’t selling .ke’s at the mo. Very disappointing. Then I got chatting with my ex and she Tweeted that she had, instead of a PA, a PG (Personal Geek) and that got me a-thinking. It’d be cool to set up a blog with absolute baby steps on how to set things up such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. Once the basics had been done I could move on to stuff that I’ve set using tutorials that weren’t very clear. But for that I need a good name and so the search continues.

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