Today I received a notice on how if you have purchased a domain name back from July 1st, 2006 till recently you may be entitled to a small refund. Normally when you register a domain you would pay the fee for whatever the domain registration company charges and on top of that you also pay a 25 cents ICANN registrar fee. The new fee is now 22 cents which means you can receive a 3 cent refund per domain.

Obviously it is not exactly a lot of money unless you registered a ton of domains. Even for myself I will only get back about 48 cents which isn’t exactly anything to brag about. Something is better than nothing I guess.

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For some reason this month it seemed like I kept bumping into old contacts as way back from my elementary school days. Whether it was simply browsing online or attending an event, everyone just seemed to have come out from the woodwork. The cool thing was learning about everyone’s current profession and for some it was great to know that we could help each other out in some way if needed from a business point of view. At the same time, it was funny to see how with certain people we could have bumped into each other earlier as we were already interconnected through our daily network of friends and associates.

I don’t know about everyone else, but early on I was always taught that you shouldn’t pick on say the quiet person who seems to be the least popular as that same person can end up being the owner of a powerful company or your boss of tomorrow. Likewise, if you are leaving from a less than admirable situation, such as finding a new job, that doesn’t mean it is time to start burning your bridges as you can easily end up working with the same people again except in a different way. It really is that small of a world.

One person told me a story on how he was an inventory buyer for a certain company and while he was there he refused to carry a particular line of product from a certain vendor and he wasn’t very polite in rejecting the person who represented them as well. A few years down the road, both of them were now working together for a new company with the same title position except in different departments. Obviously, the friction was still there as well.

Some people are actually very good at maintaining a relationship with others despite having been backstabbed or poorly treated. I must admit, for myself I tend to be on the less tolerant side if I know that the person intentionally did something harmful without any real remorse whether it be to myself or others. Even in those cases though I handle it professionally while at the same time keeping it in mind should I ever bump into them in the future. I suppose it is one of those you can forgive but you don’t forget situations.

So remember to be nice to the people that you meet. Especially in business, your contacts are a very valuable part of your daily operations.

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An interesting incident occurred recently where someone mentioned to me how he had a friend who needed money. What happened was that the person basically tried to get him to loan some money as he was told how he respected him so much and that he will change his attitude to ensure that he won’t be irresponsible anymore. As a result, he loaned the person a lot of money. What happened was that one day the person who received the money was being disrespectful to him as since he is not currently in a bad situation anymore he didn’t feel the need to listen to others. It even went as far as the person then claiming that he didn’t have to pay back the money as it was a gift rather than a loan and that even if he tried he couldn’t prove that it was a loan.

The retaliating response from the lender, keep in mind they were friends, was how he was disgusted over that and whether or not he would do that to family members as well. Now here was the interesting response as apparently he said family is different as it is wrong to take money from your family members but friends are different. While I would normally be shocked at that type of response, I’ve had nearly identical experiences like those happen to me before which is why it doesn’t surprise me too much.

Like they say, money can make people do crazy things and it can definitely change people. I guess in a sense I can kind of see how someone would be more inclined to say take/borrow money from a friend, but honestly I can’t see how one can have two standards to justify taking money from others in this type of scenario. Of course, I have seen this go the other way too where someone says it is okay to take from a family member but not a friend. I personally prefer to be consistent and I guess for myself if I ever say borrowed money from someone, in my view I am essentially taking their time that they used to earn that money. In that sense, I can’t really say one hour of this person’s time is worth more than one hour of the other person’s time as it is not something that I can buy back.

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I was recently watching a program that talked about the things people do in order to try and live longer. From a business perspective, I guess people don’t usually think twice before shelling out thousands of dollars to try and look/feel younger which is why the industry is pretty big. The interesting thing was that a lot of the things they mentioned that people do which affect their overall health are things that I personally don’t do. That just got me thinking on how much money I am able to save as a result of not having certain habits. Some of them were the following:

1) Smoking Cigarettes

A lot of people say they start at high school and it is basically a habit as they grow into their adult hood. I personally never understood the logic in forcing yourself to use something that harms you while at the same time being a huge money burner. Just thinking about it, some people say they smoke a pack a day which means about $300 a month assuming it is $10 per pack.

2) Drinking Coffee

This one is kind of funny as I have never really gotten into the coffee drinking norm and I have actually never drank a cup of coffee before(I have eaten coffee flavored candy though which doesn’t exactly excite me). When I think about it now though, I guess it has been something that actually benefited me more as I am usually more energetic than the people I know and I don’t have to rely on it as a way to say wake myself up. If people buy one cup of coffee per day at about $2 I guess it would be about $60 a month.

3) Alcohol Drinker

Alright, this is usually the one that gets the most controversy from everyone who knows me as similar with coffee this is not something that I got into. People tell me that you have to “acquire” a taste for it which means that you have to pretty much train yourself to like it. Again, I just don’t see the incentive in doing so. It’s kind of funny on the things people try to do to me to force me to become like a beer swelling maniac. It’s all in good fun though. Some people even went as far as to tell me that I should start becoming a frequent beer drinker for business reasons as people close a lot of deals during those drunken moments. Some people tell me that on average they spend about maybe $100 a month in alcohol.

Just thinking about those three key things, I guess on average I save about an extra $460 a month. The thing is it’s not like I do it intentionally to save money, but I guess that factors in on why I am able to have certain things that people think are way too expensive for them to ever get. At the same time, you can definitely see how you can save a lot of money if you are say like a chimney when it comes to cigarettes. Either way, small habits definitely add up in more ways than one.

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I was reading that news story about a group of people who were suing the Salvation and Army as the organization has a policy of some sort where the employees need to be able to speak English and two people were fired after failing to do so for about a year.

Now apparently this is being dubbed as a discriminating practice. For myself, I can’t really see how one can justify that as a discriminating practice especially when you are in North America. I think the main argument is that they still hired the people knowing that they didn’t speak English and so it shouldn’t be a valid reason to fire them. But as mentioned, apparently they were specifically told that they would have to learn how to speak the language. In my opinion though, overall I think those people who initiated the lawsuit are simply abusing and trying to twist a law that was meant to protect people.

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