I have been getting some unexpected amount of money as a result of Chinese New Years and it got me thinking on how I usually treat these types of funds as invisible for the most part. What I mean by that is that I personally don’t consider it as reserved money to make planned purchases with but instead save these types of fund in a safe way such as a savings account.

I guess one reason for this is that like receiving gifts from people, don’t you ever get that extra uneasy feeling if you are mishandling it in some way? Another example would be if you bought something with your own money and decided to sell it you would have less reserve in doing so as oppose to if it was someone else who bought it for you. I personally see gift money in the same way.

Of course, some would say I just value the generosity of others a little too much. Although, when I think about it I would do the same even if it was a different scenario such as winning a lot of money. Not that I am a gambler, but if I say started to play the lottery while spending $5 and won say $1000, I would be inclined to just save $995 of it.

Unless the amount is truly ridiculous to the point where it would be silly not to say do something active with it (Like say ten million dollars), for the most part I have found that saving unexpected funds can be a good way to discipline your money management efforts and making you appreciate every dollar that you have.

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I’m sure everyone has heard of that writer’s strike that took place and as a result a lot of people in the entertainment industry were left without work. Since there is usually a lot of filming that is done here in Vancouver, I usually meet quite a few people who of course try to work at an unrelated job to generate an income during the downtime.

On the flip side, it’s interesting to see the difference in mentality that others would have where particular working professionals would instead create their own income source such as starting a workshop or offering coaching and consultation to others for a fee.

The most common reason I hear on why people say they wouldn’t be able to do that is that they have no special talent to do things like that. You’d be surprised at how many things you can do with your skills which may seem too natural for yourself to put any notable value on. For example, I would say having a second language is a very valuable asset to sell, which a lot of people think otherwise, as there are a lot of people who do say simple translations to earn money.

I guess another thing that this should make you think about is that if you are in a good situation financially, you should still always prepare too just encase something happens. Can be wise to plan and explore when you have the means and stability to do so.

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This episode was a lot more timid compared to the last couple of episodes. Continuing from last time, Omarosa was moved to Empresario and it was decided that Marilu Henner would move to Hydra. The task this time around was that the two teams would appear live on the QVC shopping channel and would have to select a product to sell. The team who makes the most money would win.

The project manager for Hydra was Marilu Henner and for Empresario was Stephen Baldwin. At first both teams wanted to sell the same product which was a portable ladder that could also be turned into a cart/dolly it seemed. The two teams simply decided to flip a coin to see who would get to sell it and Hydra won. As a result, Empresario decided to sell an electric sweeper product.

Hydra’s approach was to use Marilu Henner as the presenter and she utilized a super energetic and passionate approach to try and sell the product. Empresario used Trace Adkins who was a complete polar opposite it seemed as he had a very mellow and calm attitude with his presentation.

During the planning portion of the episode where the teams were in a meeting room strategizing, am I the only one that noticed what seemed to be blatant product placements to advertise Trump’s book “Think Big and Kick Ass In Business and Life” in the background? I took a screen capture of it here:

It looked like Trace Adkins was staring at that book in particular too wondering where the heck it came from and what it was doing there. Overall, Hydra’s presentation seemed to be a bit overwhelming with Empresario’s efforts being more down to earth for the viewer I thought.

Hydra decided to price their product at $49.99 while Empresario decided to sell their product at 59.95 while utilizing an easy payment plan gimmick to further generate sales which broke it down to five payments of $11.99. In the end, Empresario sold 716 units and made $43,000 while Hydra sold 703 units $35,145. As a result, Empresario won and Stephen Baldwin received $20,000 for his charity.

In the boardroom it came down to Piers Morgan, Lennox Lewis and Marilu Henner. There was some rumblings about the choice as it was questioned why Carol Alt wasn’t selected instead as she apparently has worked with QVC for years and should have had knowledge of things such as the easy payment plans. In the end, since Marilu played such a big role in virtually every aspect of the project, a lot of the results was aimed at her and as a result she was fired.

I thought this episode was interesting in the sense that a lot of energy can sometimes be portrayed as the person being extremely nervous whereas being calm can demonstrate a lot of confidence. At the same time, it was good reminder I thought that that being yourself is the best way to go rather than assuming that you have to necessarily copy someone else’s style/approach to succeed.

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Recently some people I knew were interested in selling their site and one person in particular told me that his site received over 10,000 hits a month which gave him confidence to sell it at a very high price as to him that was a lot of visitors. There is usually a misconception on what a “hit” really means and I thought this was a good time to write about it as I have a perfect example of it right here.

Back in the earlier Internet days everyone referred to a person visiting a site as a “hit”. A lot of people still carry this mentality as you see this on the news all the time as well. And yes, I purposely made the post title to say “hits” as I’m pretty sure most people had the mentality that it meant “visitors”. Nowadays it is usually broken down into multiple categories with a “hit” simply meaning a file or page request.

For example, if you visit a page with ten photos then that would be elevens hits(Ten for the photos and one for the page itself). Although, a lot of people would be inclined to think that meant eleven people visited the page.

So far for this month, the blog has been incredibly busier than normal and I thought this was such good visual example on how a “hit” doesn’t really mean too much from a statistics point of view if you are trying to correlate it with the amount of foot traffic that a site is receiving. Take a look at this screenshot of my statistics up until yesterday compared to last month:

I think it is safe to say that the amount of visits/sessions will easily double compared to last month, but notice how the amount of “hits” are more than five times as much? As you can see, it is mostly due to files such as certain posts that have multiple images. The real part you would want to focus on if you are trying to analyze your traffic in this case would be the “pageviews” and “sessions”. Based on looking at that, up until yesterday the average was approximately 3100 visits and 4656 page views a day.

Very simple knowledge to keep in mind if this is a new territory for you. Keep in mind that different site analytic programs may report things differently as well. In general, don’t focus too much on how many “hits” that you get if you are trying to compile statistical data for important analytical purposes.

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I was reading an article today where various people were surveyed on how much money they believe that they would have to save in order to be able to retire comfortably and the figure was close to $1,000,000. Unless I read it wrong, from what I gathered that didn’t account the current assets that people would have such as a house which made me think that everyone must have some pretty high standards when it comes to retirement.

I would think the average person would need about $300,000 or so to live comfortable with anything over that being more of a luxury lifestyle. While I usually try to avoid the borderline way of planning finances to avoid the just getting by mentality, one million in pure savings seems like a lot to consider as a type of necessity to retire.

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