This was something interesting and kind of fun that I learned before. I’m pretty sure everyone has heard of how you can judge someone’s current situation in life by looking at how clean their room is or whether or not their working desk is organized. Awhile back I was watching this program and they had this speaker who mentioned that all people who are financially well off with say no debt always have an organized wallet.

What he meant by this is say we have a bunch of five, ten, twenty, fifty or hundred dollar bills(I think it is crazy to actually carry too much money btw and wouldn’t recommend it). For a lot of people they would simply just throw it in their wallets with all of the bills mixed up. Whenever they need to pay for something with cash they would literally take out all of their money at once and then attempt to gather the appropriate amount. He then mentioned that if you open the wallet of someone who doesn’t seem to be stressed out over money you would see that all of their money are organized where say all the five dollar bills are grouped up accordingly with the rest being the same as if it was organized in a folder. Basically they would literally have all their money from lowest to highest lined and grouped up.

That got me interested before as I always did organize my wallet like that too but never thought about it in that way. So for fun I actually asked some of my friends who would complain about money if I could see their wallets and sure enough they had a disorganized wallet. This was back when we were kids incase you are wondering and so of course I don’t ask adults this. While this is obviously not a law or anything, I thought this was kind of a fun and unique way of showing how it’s the little things that you do that can say a lot about your current situations and maybe it’s those little things that you need to do in order to turn things around if that is what you are aiming for.

I was in Metrotown today which is a large mall here in BC to quickly buy some things and of course some stores had decorations in celebration of Chinese new years. Most of the things that were displayed are things that you would typically see this time of year, but I thought this would be new to some people and so I thought that I would post some pictures up of some items that I saw. The items were actually behind a glass window:

This computer that I am using seems to be having its issues for the past two weeks as it seems to be unstable and unable to operate under a dual channel ram mode anymore. After doing some quick tests, it looks like replacing it with a new motherboard will be the answer. It’s one of those situations too where you have to make sure the other computer parts that you currently have will be compatible with the new board. By the looks of it though, I may have to buy a new video card as for my current set up all the suitable motherboards now seem to be PCI Express based.

I guess it’s good that I am comfortable in fixing it up myself which will save a lot of money. Maybe I’ll blog about it too as I know that I have readers who are truly only business and financial minded and has no clue what I just said above nor would they even dare to open up a computer. Maybe this will show how simple it can be. Don’t try it yourself if it is a computer that is work related of course and you are not sure what you are doing. I’ll probably be doing it sometime in the following weeks after all the festivities are done.

This is kind of a common question I was just asked where since the Spring Festival, better known as Chinese New Years, is coming up on what is suppose to be the significance in giving out money within those red envelopes. I’m not a historian or anything so I can’t give you this detailed background history, but I guess I can answer that based on my experience.

First of all, the color red is suppose to be a lucky color to Chinese people which should make the envelope color self explanatory. In general, the red envelope is supposed to give positive energy to the person. When a person gives this money to another it is suppose to bring good luck to both the person who is giving the money and the one receiving it. The way it goes is that people who are married give unmarried people these red envelopes with money in it or older relatives, such as a grandfather or grandmother, in a family give it to the younger members of the family. As you can tell, it is kind of like wanting to pass off some good fortune to the less fortunate and growing crowd.

That’s the basics of it from my experience anyways. This time of the year was one way I learned to save money personally and I guess in a way taught me that one should try to help others when you reach to the point where you can to maintain a strong and prosperous foundation.

This is a topic that I haven’t divulged into yet but is an important one I think. If this term is new to you, a confirmation bias is basically when someone attempts to confirm or deny a particular belief by selectively focusing on proof that validates their view while neglecting or undervaluing information that would go against it. I guess something like a horoscope is the best example where if it said you are going to have a good or bad day then many people who strongly believe in it will tend to focus only on events throughout the day that supports it.

Just recently I was talking to some people who were very intelligent as it seemed like everything they believed in they would use a lot of facts, events and documentations to back up their points. Now one person I guess you can say is not someone who would like to take risks when it comes to money and is more comfortable with a 9 to 5 routine as that is the most predictable and comfortable choice for his lifestyle. That’s perfectly fine of course and I was interested in learning more if he had ever tried to supplement his income in a “risky” way outside of his regular work such as investing. He said no as based on what he has seen most things are beyond the reach of an average person to make something worthy to be considered a success and that if there does look like something that an average person could do there is always some kind of deceitfulness attached to it so it is better to be safe.

He then gave me examples of people that jump into a business or money making opportunity that looks simple enough and does not cost too much money initially. They are absolutely convinced that they will be successful too as they see so many other people around them who are apparently doing the same. The unhealthy thing was that they strongly believed that as long as they followed the program they would eventually get to where they wanted. Whenever something good happened, they treat it as a sign that it is working while treating all of the bad things as irrelevant circumstances that are too minor to say that something doesn’t work. The cycle keeps going as they invest thousands of dollars in say motivation material and again they do the same thing where they only want to remember the good that came out of it as oppose to the bad. They eventually end up in a financially unpleasant situation.

I then asked an interesting question to him where for all those stories and examples he was giving me of people failing as if the world was designed that way if he could also tell me a story he read of people trying something similar and being successful at without any outside factor other than working hard and being smart. My point was that another way of looking at it was that these examples could just be a case of people blindly believing that making money is effortless and just requires you to blindly do exactly what someone tells you to. He then reiterated his point on how the success rate is so small with most things that people who do well do have some kind of competitive advantage and so any positive examples that we can give are too small to consider as a valid point to possibly dispute it.

The highlight of the moment I thought was that I then asked how were the thinking of those people different than what he is doing now in terms of limiting his view towards one side without taking the other into account in a bias banner? There was no immediate answer and I then followed up by saying “Don’t you think by limiting your views on a specific side that you are also in a way losing money like those people as you are limiting your opportunities when it comes to ways to generate an income to things that don’t work?” That was the light bulb moment for him. I thought these scenarios were great as it showed two different ways on how having a confirmation bias approach can hinder your growth in whatever it may be and in these cases it just happened to deal with making money.

Like with the first example, I perfectly agree that you need to have a positive attitude as you need to remain focus in reaching your goal. However, just completely ignoring the other side of the story though is kind of dangerous I think as you are leaving yourself open to being taken advantage of by not allowing yourself to be fully educated about something. There is a difference between taking the bad and turning it into a positive and completely ignoring it all together. If you take both sides of the information into consideration and still decide for one way or the other then I think that places you in the best spot to make the best decisions.