what's your financial age

You know how you come up with something, and then you check it on the internet, and tons of people have had the same idea.....well a while ago, I was speaking with a friend of mine...who will remain nameless, coz he's a great guy...but I called him a a financial toddler. He was just very financially unaware, and frankly was a serial overspender.

So I thought. We've got our chronological age, but what's our financial age.....do we save, do we have a plan, do we budget etc. etc. do we have financial maturity.

Anyway, so I thought maybe there would be a book in it, and there might be, but I found this incredibly insightful and short quiz on http://www.unbiased.co.uk/financial-age-tool which is on the site for indie financial advisers in the UK. Take the quiz and ponder what it's trying to ask you.

Then look back on my incremental exponentialism blog.....it all ties in!

Big Picture and all the Small Details

I'm old enough to remember listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. His signoff was always significant to me "Keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars." It's a big tangential but related to this post. Because when you look down at your feet, it's not very far away, it's right beneath you. You can see the detail. When you reach for the stars though, it's expansive, limitless, and requires a telescope to see the details.

I told my wife the other day, after a particularly bad decision I made. Please regularly ask me these two questions:

1) Are you keeping the Big Picture in mind?
2) Do you know all the Small Details?

As it has been said, "You need to know where you are going, to figure out how you are going to get there." I'm good at the Big Picture. Projecting, framing, conceptualizing. I'm also pretty good at Small Details. The minutae, the legalese, the things that can trip you up. But I'm sometimes not so good at keeping those two in balance, and context. I can easily get lost in the visioneering, or bogged down in the small details. So I'm happy that I have a wife who will keep me accountable to these two questions, which really help me make decisions, and proceed with my everyday.

After all, its the daily decisions we make that have a cumulative effect of our life's outcome, in technicolor dynamic real-time.

So ask yourself these two questions today.

Maintenance

Turned forty recently, and almost with clockwork precision:

1) Metabolism slowed down
2) Started to go grey
3) Skin not as bouncy as usual.

When you buy a new car, it comes under warranty for a good deal of time. Services are infrequent, and repairs are minor. Come 150,000 miles, and a many years later, maintenance may need to be more frequent, and repairs get more expensive, as do the accompanying parts.....

So what's my point.....as I ponder mortality for the first time in my life, it's come to my attention, that as we get older, we need to more purposefully take care of ourselves, as our physical selves from here on out may decline at an alarming rate without making an effort to keep things working. Yes, I'm talking about eating better, exercising more, and just paying more attention to upkeep.

Take a house for example. You don't even notice the paint flaking at first, but without attention and maintenance, it will quickly deteriorate.

So do something that's good for your body today. Something healthy. Let' live long and healthy lives.

Cheers

LIFE WITHOUT SEAT BELTS

I'm old enough to remember: laying in the back window shelf...yup, where the speakers are behind the rear seats. Usually I would look up at the sky and occassionally, get car sick looking back at the vehicle following us.

Yes I know Princess Di would probably have survived, if she were wearing her seat belt, and Lord knows how many lives have been saved since the advent of mandatory seat belts.

I have a couple of pet hates: the big food/big pharma/big insurance conspiracy, but namely big insurance. I really don't like insurance companies. For those involved in that industry, or have benefitted from having insurance, I don't intentionally want to offend you.

Now insurance feeds off fear. ie. what if negative scenario analysis. Flood, fire, accident......acts of God. Where maiming gets you more money than dying........where they calculate odds to do with your life/death issues.

Yes, seat belts save lives. And your insurance is lower because of them......

But remember life without seat belts? Unbridled, carefree. Think about it. A life without fear. Full of hope. Full of faith. Full of peace.

OPTIONALITY

I used to trade options based on stocks. These were known variously as call options and put options. You might be familiar with employee stock options: the employer gives employees the right to buy company shares at a fixed (usually discounted) price. It gives people ownership. But I digress.

There is inherent optionality in life. Options typically have a fixed expiry date. So does life. It typically has what is known as the strike price, this is the price from which the value of the option is calculated against. We could regard this as where we are at at birth for example. In a call option, the higher the value of the stock, the higher the value of the option. This is typically intrinsic value + time value. So during your lifetime, you have a fixed period of time to create value. You could measure this in $ earned in a lifetime for example.

On a balance sheet, you need to depreciate assets eg. computers. We all know that a computer is not going to last forever. In fact, even if it works fine, it will be incompatible with a lot of new software etc. in only a year's time. So suffice it to say that things don't last forever. Thus they ALL have optionality: a fixed period of time to be of value or not.

So when we expire, will we expire worthless? Or will we expire with a lot of intrinsic value......for those puzzled by this, I'll try and expand upon this concept in due course.

Thanks for reading.

JONAH & THE WHALE, AND GETTING THE MONKEY OFF YOUR BACK

For the last 9 years I've had a general sense of unease about something I believed I should devote my time to seeing come to pass. It involves putting on an event in a country where such a thing would be difficult to pull off. In the last 5 years in fits and starts I have kept the possibility alive, but never put it all on the line to get it done.

In the meantime I have variously spent my time:

1) Doing nothing
2) Doing things to distract myself from doing THE thing

So like Jonah, I've been running away. But the sense that this could be my "Signs" moment-- you know from the movie: the little girl who places glasses of water all around the house, the brother who has wasted his prodigious baseball batting skills; only to discover that the aliens threatening earth can be destroyed by water--this could be the moment, the task, the ONE THING, that I was asked to do by God, and I have found all manner of ways to avoid actually doing it. Tried to hand it off to others....

But it won't go away, I can't stop thinking about it, and it's possible I'm sitting in the belly of the whale and don't even know it.

I can't shake this perennial burden that I need to stop thinking of other things to occupy my time, and focus on getting this thing done. Mostly from the point of view that I need to be obedient to God, but really just to seek the peace, and the removal of the burden that I currently have.

SO......are you doing what you are supposed to do....or are you finding every reason not to do it. 9 years on. Mine is still here, and its getting unbearable.

Financial Statements VS. Life

I've been looking at a lot of financial statements lately. Profit and Loss statements. Balance Sheets. Cashflow statements. Reconciling accounts.

It got me thinking: if I were to take a snapshot right now of my life, and somehow could define and quantify the assets and liabilities, not financial, but personal: perhaps emotional, certainly spiritual....what would it look like? What would my accounts receivables be? What and how much would my accounts payable be? how much equity...positive or negative? Balance Sheets are notoriously unreliable as it is well and truly a snapshot, one slice of time.

P&L statements on the other hand, are over a period of time, so the crests and troughs are clear. Is there net profit? What were the costs of goods sold? What are the income items in my life. The expense items.....do I have a high overhead....

Have I lost you. These ruminations mean a lot to me, as I have always found powerful analogies to life in the world of financial concepts and terms. My first education in this perspective was in the world of optionality, and these days more in the realm of financial statements.

A company has to reconcile its accounts often, and people need to balance their checkbooks....how often do we take stock of our lives? Take inventory.....see what a snapshot looks like....see how we have spent the last year. Look for trends, imbalances....strengths & weaknesses.

Hope this has meant something to you.

Oooops. It's a new year already!

Well. My new year's resolution was to write more.....I was also going to keep to at least a monthly post on this blog...missed December, doh!

So dear reader, you find me at such a tumultuous time that I cannot even start. Though "drama" is nothing new with me, I have put myself in such a predicament that dramatic is the only way to describe it. After a fantastic break with friends in lake tahoe, though things have increased exponentially in terms of the aforementioned drama, my response to it has changed dramatically. Resignation rather than anxiety, with a dash of hope, would best describe it.

You know, in all of the power of perspective, truly, what doesn't kill me will make me stronger....so here's to strength.

Pray your next 12 months has started with a bang.

HUMAN DOING

What do I have to do today? What tasks must I accomplish? What's my plan of action? My objectives. My obligations. My responsibility.

No I am not advocating negligence. After all, what is adulthood without its commensurate responsibilities. Does that define us though?

Do you have a resume?

Recently, I gave a quick biography to a student, whose assignment was to give a speech about someone's life.

Aside from the pertinent details of birthplace, schooling, employment, most of the other aspects involved my accomplishments. All my doings. Like ingredients on a bottle. But I've talked about that before; humans as products.

Who am I really. All my doings surely reflect my being. My values, convictions, priorities.

Did my being match up to my doings?

If I reviewed how I had relayed the story of my life, clear areas emerged: faith, family, community, creativity, music and business. I didn't mind that to be honest. The definitions of my human BEING.

So in the midst of your human DOINGS today, why not take a moment and consider the human being you are. And how you are outworking that in your time/space continuum.

Until next time.

Belonging & Significance

BELONGING
Defined variously as happiness, security, intimacy and being at ease, in the context of relationships, BELONGING is at the core of humanity. We crave this from the day we are born. Our identity and our purpose are often driven from this key state of belonging. "Who am I" is often related to "where do I belong".

SIGNIFICANCE
Importance, meaning. We all want to matter. Down deep. Maybe some of us have given up, stuck in a routine of mediocrity and the mundane, where this side of us; the side that wants to make a difference, for our lives to mean something, to find meaning; has been snuffed out by the worries of this world.

Remember the movie "Signs". In it, the little girl has the curious habit of setting glasses of water all over the house. She belongs to her family, but her significance is not clear. It is not until the climax of the story, where they discover that the aliens, who threaten their entire existence, can be killed by water, does her TRUE significance come into play. Sometimes we don't really know our significance, but do as we are "guided". Have you had this moment yet?

Together, these two words: belonging & significance, are at the heart of every person, every group, every community. Are you part of something bigger than yourself? If so, are you important in that sphere? Do you know your purpose? Humanity, and indeed your own being, begs this question to be answered.

In this age of fragmentation, loneliness and despondency, we need to be agents of reconnection, and revealers of purpose.

Procrastination

OK. Some of you do not struggle with this.

But reality is, procrastination is well and truly wasting time. Aside from physically existing, the other area we occupy is time. It's a gift. No doubt about it. A gift.

So what we do we do with a gift. We cherish it, take care of it, make the most of it. Or we throw it away or never even open the box. Or we return it.

What will you do with your day today? Is there something you know you ought to do, get started on? Complete?

Nothing more present than today!

Antidote

An antidote is a substance which can counteract a form of poisoning.

Borrowed from wikipedia "Sometimes, the antidote for a particular toxin is manufactured by injecting the toxin into an animal in small doses and the resulting antibodies are extracted from the animals' blood."

I'm a Christian, and I heard this word today, and it really burst out in life to me.

As people we commit sin. So if we treat sin as a poison, which leads to death, and Jesus took all the sins of mankind upon himself, he then created the antidote, he became the antidote.

By having originally having sin in us, we create the antibodies to resist by accepting Christ, we ourselves become the antidote to sin.

Makes sense to me, I hope it does you.

Can I Pray For You

It's the cliche of Christians. I'll pray for you. My friend from a Jewish background, Mark, told me recently that "I'll pray for you" means "I'll think about your situation when it occurs in my consciousness next time". I think Christians may be on the same tangent.

It sort of cheapens the whole expression.

On the other hand, my friend recently wrote me an email.....it was a prayer. I was deeply moved and at the same time completely inspired to do the same. Now instead of praying for the person in private to God, I get to do that, and send the prayer to the recipient through cyberspace.

They can now keep that. Documented.

I think I'm on a roll on this email prayer thing.

So the next time I say, "I'll pray for you". Wait for the email. I'm going to do what I say.

Looking back, for just a moment.

Well. This won't be the most edifying posts, as I'm really just logging my feelings about a huge life change that we, as a family are embarking on.

We arrived in Sydney Australia, in Feb 1998, Susan 4 months pregnant. Sophia, Gabriel and Ella were all born here. On July 4th, 2007, we depart from here, after a whirlwind journey of diverse experiences, having made some deep lifelong friendships, to Los Angeles, for the next season of the Sohn family story.

Bittersweet, would be an apropos sentiment right around now. But mostly, there is a tenuous polar balance between a core sadness, and the giddiness of the promise of the future.

So, though it's brief and fleeting, I glimpse back on the road that we've travelled, and marvel at the goodness and faithfulness of God to bless us with incredible children, wonderful friends, profound experiences, purpose & fulfillment. I could say it's been a hard path that we've trodden, machete'd our way through to find direction, but if I'm objective for even a millisecond, that's really been the joy of our life together, for Susan and I, as we go forth, into the thickest jungle of all, La-La-Land.

Operating out of your Strengths

Seems like absolute common sense right? Find out what you are good at, what you've got natural talents in, and try and do as much of that as possible. When I got out of the car that took me to the university in the US decades ago, I always remember the driver saying, "whatever you do son, make sure you're good at it". How true.

I was a great swimmer & runner, mostly because I discovered I had some natural aptitude. Encouraged by that, I trained as much as I could to get better. On the flipside, I was terrible at volleyball. The ball would constantly bounce off the edges of my hands, wrists, making me a liability to my team. Needless to say, I did not feel motivated to get better at that.

True it takes time to learn something, riding a bike, studying chemistry, being a husband. But what are you a 'natural' at? Chances are, you or your parents have nurtured that, become skilled and knowledgeable about your God-given gifts and talents.

What about now? In the 16 hours that you are awake, do you operate out of your strengths? In your workplace, in your home?

As someone who feels like they have spent 9 years trying to overcome weaknesses, some of them skillbased, some of them character based, it was an eye and spirit opening experience to identify my 5 top strengths and realise how little of it I was able to use in the last 9 years, because I was busily trying to become more 'well-rounded' and 'balanced.'

I took the Clifton Strengthsfinder as well as other tests, for Mosaic's Origins conference. I found that out of 34 identified strengths, that mine were: Strategic, Futuristic, Activator, Connectness, Relator. I found that I engaged in these strengths in various degrees in many spheres of my life, but really never thought to develop them, ie. develop skills and knowledge around them. Furthermore, in my work life, even my present one, I found that I spent most of my time, outside of these strengths. Basically I'm a big picture, connector guy for new things. Once they get going however, I should really step aside. But more often that not, because I feel responsible for what I started, and carry the implementation and management burden, which I'm really not naturally gifted at. I've trained myself to be adequate at those things, but they take up 85% of my time.

So I've been immensely challenged to 'specialise' in the strengths which I, my family, my friends know I have and apply them vigorously in all areas. For example, I find myself writing strategic plans about various things, but I've never developed one for myself, or my wife, or my family. Surely if I have Strategic as my top strength, I should apply it in the most important areas of my life. I have found that I am perfectly OK to be 'imbalanced' by emphasizing my strengths holistically, so long as I keep on working with God in my character issues, so I don't allow my strengths to overtake my character.

So I encourage you to think about how you are purposefully living out your life right now. Imagine what would happen if you decided to live out of your strengths, and that each member of your family, work team, church & community, did so as well.

Revolutionary, I believe.

Simplicity on Easter

I was on the beach yesterday with my son Gabriel, on an idyllic Easter Monday spent with great friends. We were on waters edge, and I decided we would write in the sand with sticks. I would write something, like G-A-B-R-I-E-L and he would write under it. Then I wrote out the alphabet to be more instructional, and we read it out together. Then I wrote a really big J-E-S-U-S. Then he wrote under it. Passersby, were reading our little lane of letters, and finally arrived at our double Jesus, and we heard them say "Jesus".

Father & son, writing the name of Jesus, on the beach for people to see, in the purpose of practicing writing, on an Easter holiday. As strangers uttered his name, I found a profound simplicity of the Gospel, and how we had been a heartwarming testimony on that day.

So celebrate the risen Saviour. My son and I have been learning how.

The Power of the Blog

Here I am showing a friend how easy it is to blog. I believe it is the way of the future church to connect and share ideas, and lives. how to keep accountability and keep out the fruit flakes & nuts? Not sure. But it's worth the try.

Transactional vs. Relational

Which one are you? Do you have relationships with people for what you do with them, or for who they are? A hard distinction sometimes, but here's an example: say you have a friend that you play golf with. But that's all you do with them, play golf. One day you break your arm, and don't play for months. No phone call, no contact. Transactional.

Or say you go to the corner store everyday, and chat to the storekeeper, who you see more often than your friends and family. Then one day you see them on the street. He doesn't greet you, and awkardly you don't acknowledge him either. Transactional.

On the flip side, your childhood best friend who you talk to on birthdays and Christmas, if that, turns up at your doorstep. He's like your brother, and regardless of the fact that you hardly see him anymore, the bonds are as strong as ever. Relational.

So the question is, are you transactional or relational in your interactions with people, your friendships. I believe we are created for relational connections, but the world has conditioned us to be transactional people. Food for thought.

Haven't quite decided the next topic, but I'm sure it will come to me. Thanks for reading.

Think of the exit, before the entry

Well this is all common sense, but I thought it would be interesting for some. I had a previous career as an equity derivatives trader. Without delving into the minutae of what that is, basically in 10 years I had to buy and sell 1 million things. Sounds impossible but it's true. One of the basic tenets of investing is to determine your upside target, and your downside limit. In life, "it's not how you start, it's how you end". Though this is just another way to say, "set goals", it actually helps you determine what you are going to do, by thinking of the results or consequences of your desired course of action. I recently invested into the company where I now work, and the "exit" was what convinced me to "enter". In marriage, if the exit is regarded as divorce, then what's the point of getting married? It really should be until death do us part. Getting to heaven, the ultimate exit, is determined by a decision to commit your life to Christ for example, which is your entry......and so on. I think you get the point.

Next time " transactional vs. relational".

Nth Degree & 6 Degrees of Separation

Well. Happy New Year. 2007.

I've recently started a new job, and have had some startling examples of the above 2 concepts.

The first one is the Nth Degree. Pretty simple really. Since a pretty young age, being an imaginative boy, I would think of crazy concepts like: I am a cyborg. I would extrapolate all the things that are relevant to a cyborg, and basically take it to the nth degree, such as a global society of cyborgs. In many ways it borrows from " from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the world." It's really just taking ideas to its most expansive and deep ends. This "no limits" nth degree approach to things, helps me see in the possibilities of the future, for myself, and the world at large. It frequently excites me. The next time you have an idea, how ever small, don't stop at the first thought. Take it to the nth degree. Then when you gring it back, you'll have more clarity.

Now the 6 Degrees of Separation. Ever heard of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon? In the mid-90s, it was a game to link Kevin Bacon to some other actor through no more than 6 other actors. It examines the 'small world' concept, and it has been empirically proven, even in the age fo the internet. Personally, in the last 4 months, while I was pursuing people involved in apparel, licensing, manufacturing and retail, I have been utterly amazed at the linkages that exist within people networks, and the old adage, it's not what you know, it's who you know, has become so evident.

Until next time, The topic will be, "think of the exit strategy before you start."