One of my friends was telling me today on how he has met so many people that have tried to take advantage of him as a result of his financial success that he has kind of developed ways to quickly sort people who are genuine.

His example was that there was a person he met who seemed to be extremely friendly and willing to help him out all the time. Of course, he suspected the reason for this was that the person wanted to get on his good side because of his wealth. So, what he did was that one day he just kind of implied that he was having financial difficulties and needed some possible advice on what to do. As expected, the person had a “I’ll get back to you” kind of attitude which made it really simple to unmask the person.

It’s always hard to really find people who are genuine in these types of scenarios. This is really general based on my experience, but the way someone says “Thank You” when you say offer to pay for say a restaurant bill is usually a great indicator in terms of how genuine one is. Example, the person tries to fight for the bill, just says “oh thanks” and so fourth. I’m sure there are a lot of other ways people use too.

I was reading the news lately on how retailers here are beginning to re-adjust prices for the items to reflect a price that is closer to ones found in US stores as a result of the Canadian dollar. Feels like one of those “What is taking so long?” type of situations.

From what I see, a lot of items at some larger retails stores are about $5 to $20 less than normal. It does seem like it was mostly on electronic and entertainment products. I guess this will definitely make people spend more.

Today I was looking at the phone bill for a business line and there was a long distance fee charged on it. This was odd as no one ever uses it for long distance calls. Upon investigating, this was apparently some kind of monthly fee to make the rates cheaper. Of course, it makes no sense to pay for it if you don’t use it, so I proceeded to phone in to get it straighten out.

From what I gather, it seems like it was added on as they assumed that I would save more money that way. As an example, without it a long distance charge would be at least 40 cents a minute and with the plan it would be just over about 6 cents a minute. Of course, that was kind of the angle that was used to hopefully try and keep me on the plan.

A lot of times it does sound like a smart thing to do as the potential savings sound like a lot if you do use it for even that small amount of time. I can only imagine how many people just don’t bother canceling such plans as a result even if they don’t use.

I was having a conversation with a person today in regards to whether or not a person’s personality and actions within their personal life would automatically make them the same in a business situation. For example, if someone was constantly late in attending a family function in their personal life does that mean in business they would always be late as well?

Generally speaking, I definitely agree with the notion that what a person does in their personal life shouldn’t matter too much normally. In a business situation, from my experience it has been proven time and time again that how a person conducts themselves normally in their personal life usually carries over when doing business as well.

While you obviously shouldn’t pre-judge instantly, it sure can be a definitive sign and indicator.

One of my friends was telling me recently on how his parents still uses this really old TV that looks like it is at least 7 years old. The interesting comment was how he mentioned that to him five years should be the cut off period to start replacing something for most items.

This is one of those things where depending on the situation not updating can either cost or save you more money. For recreational things, like a TV for personal use, I think you should generally keep it until it breaks down. I say that mainly because most people buy the latest and greatest without really taking full advantage of it anyways.

If the sole reason was for productivity though, then that is a different story. For example, just a few months ago I was at an office and the secretary was literally still using a typewriter and they had piles of documents everywhere. Like with that even though it isn’t broken, I’m sure investing in a computer would help a lot.

When you think about it, I guess this is just like investing in anything and whether or not the return is worth it as oppose to basing it solely on a want.