bizRichard

According to researchers at the University of Utah, using a larger monitor screen could save you up to 2.5 hours per day.

Specifically, the test subjects completed everyday office tasks, like editing documents and manipulating spreadsheets, 52% faster when using a 24-inch monitor than they did the same work using an 18-incher.

I’m not sure who uses 18-inch screens - 17” and 19” are more typical in this country – but if they are referring to documents and spreadsheet work, then it would seem to be a mostly scrolling-based discrepancy?

Thanks to Tim Ferriss for this one (he’s an intriguing fellow).

In my book, that’s a whopping 33% increase in productivity!  Does this signal a frantic change of IT equipment across the office world?  (If so, maybe it’s an opportunity to nip in and buy a few shares in Dell, etc)

And, what hope is there for those of us who love our laptops?

Go, make changes, and make money the smart way.

Richard C

Wishing you, one and all, a happy Easter break.

I’ve never been entirely sure where the Easter eggs or Easter bunnies fit in, but Easter is a religious festival for many (with pagan origins we are told). It’s origins however seem to matter little these days, but what it certainly does mark is the ‘new start’, from whatever aspect we view it. Significantly, in the northern hemisphere, it also marks the end of winter and the start of spring. And spring brings a new vibrancy to everything around us and in everything we do.

And in business too, it seems, shaking off the winter bleakness brings out a freshness of ideas, new plans, enthusiasm, renewed vigour and energy. So, this weekend, take a little time off for yourself, sit down in a quiet place, and think about those activities (both in your business and in your life) that might become the ‘geese’ that will lay your golden eggs this Easter.

Now go have a ’smart’ moment or two this Easter.
(and if you don’t know what the acronym ‘SMART’ stands for, tune in again later this month when we shall be exploring planning and ‘goal setting’).

Richard C

Following the previous article on ‘Debt Freedom’ day, it’s timely now to mention ‘Tax Freedom day’ (possibly 2nd June) - as today is 12th March and it’s budget day here in the UK.

Again a hypothetical date in the calendar year, ‘Tax Freedom Day’ in the UK, as calculated by the Adam Smith Institute, it shows just how long we spend working for the Government Treasury, rather than working for ourselves.

Tax Freedom Day is calculated on the income tax, national insurance, council tax and indirect taxes (such as fuel duty or VAT) paid by someone on average income, as a proportion of that income. The boffins work it out by comparing government tax take with national income. They then convert that proportion into days of the year.

The preferences for stealth taxes in the past few years has meant that it’s becoming harder for people to understand how much they really are paying.

Currently in the UK, 41% of average income goes to feed the government tax monster, which translates to 153 days spent working for the Government and 212 days for ourselves, putting ‘Tax Freedom’ day as either 1st or 2nd June.

5 months of ‘slavery’ every year
(200 years after Wilberforce)

This means that if you are the average UK resident you will have to work a full five months of the year solely to pay your various tax bills. Last year, that meant working from 1st January to 1st June – just to pay your taxes! The March 2007 budget did nothing to improve that, and I suspect that today’s 2008 budget won’t either.

that leaves only 4.5 months to fend for ourselves

So, add that on to the 70 days ‘Mr Average’ works to pay just the interest on his borrowings (excluding mortgages), mentioned in ‘part 1′ two days ago, and the average working Briton still doesn’t earn a penny for themselves until 12th August, leaving just four and a half months to earn all the money needed for our food, clothing, etc, etc!! Any wonder then that personal debt continues to escalate annually?

Question for Gordon - maybe if he reduced the tax burden (the excessivenss of which he’s been warned about by his international peers on many occasions) perhaps Mr Average wouldn’t have to borrow so much, thereby making for a healthier and stronger UK economy?

Are we in a perilous state? I’ll leave you to work that one out!

Now get out there, beat the average, and earn money the smart way.

Richard C

PS.  Register on BurnsWaring.com now to receive a copy of the budget facts later today

I’m reliably informed that today(March 10th), in Britain, is ‘Debt Freedom day’.

But don’t get too excited – ‘debt freedom day’ is just the hypothetical point in the calendar year when the average worker has earned enough to merely service their debts - and it has fallen more than a month later than last year.

70 days

The average Briton now spends 70 days of the year working just to clear their interest on credit card and loan debt (excluding mortgages), according to Unbiased.co.uk’s annual survey.

That is 39 days later than last year, when ‘debt freedom day’ fell on 1st February.

Personal debt levels have increased by over 10 percent in the past year, and average levels of interest payable on this debt have increased by over 6 percent.

In the current economic climate, it has never been more important for people to realise just how much it costs to service their debts and to ensure they have adequate funds available to do so.

Interestingly, the number of rejected mortgage applications surged by almost 60% in the six months to 31st October, according to MoneyExpert.com, as five increases in the base rate since August 2006 started to bite and borrowers came up against tougher lending rules.

Sometimes in business we need to borrow - it helps grease the wheels of industry - and borrowing to produce a greater return makes financial sense. Beware, however, borrowing for consumption - buying things that do not generate a return - that becomes expensive and has to be paid for out of earned income.

I hate posting blogs that hit you with the facts - they never make comfortable reading during poor economic times. But my advice - times is getting tougher - THINK BEFORE YOU BORROW.

Now go make some money the smart way

Richard C

PS. I’ll tell you about ‘Tax Freedom day’ in two days time - on Wednesday 12th March as it is budget day in the UK - and what indeed further damage will that do to us poor citizens?

I went on an ‘educational’ course the other day, as I sometimes do, usually for the benefit of my clients. On this occasion it was to do with property investment and development.

Maybe not the most appropriate timing in view of the world’s worsening economies and credit difficulties, but I have a number of clients who have become heavily involved in property investment and development and I felt I really did need to get to understand a bit more about what was driving them forward. I understood what they did in broad terms, but not in detail, and clearly I was in need of some deeper knowledge so that I could help my clients as and when necessary.

The two hour introductory ‘freebie’ was held at a local hotel, which I attended, knowing full well that it was the funnel to the ‘actual course’ itself, to be sold at some stage during the evening. When finally revealed, the ‘property investment course wasn’t too expensive and, willingly, I allowed myself to be signed up.

I had a mission - to discover more

So the day arrived, the start of a three-day course into property investment - I was actually looking forward to this. The morning trickled along with lots of interesting facts and information, and then there was a period, just prior to lunch, on ways of extracting maximum benefit from the use of credit cards. The speaker, using Lucy as a metaphor for the call centre operatives, suggested that Lucy would be only ‘too willing’ to accommodate any request we might put to her – she would advance us additional credit, zero the annual fees, and reduce the interest rate, etc – all for the asking. After all, no one likes upsetting their customer do they? It sounded all too easy. And this was our task for the lunch break.

I can’t say that I had time to try the exercise during the lunch break (too busy talking to others), but a show of hands following lunch indicated that many of the participants (in total 100 attendees) had diligently made their phone calls, and of those approximately 10% had achieved varying degrees of success with Lucy. Good on them, and much applause.

The afternoon continued with some exceedingly good content and the evening homework was set - part of which was to

persevere with Lucy

The morning of day two commenced with a discussion about who had scored any success with Lucy. The results were varied and fairly mediocre in that being a Friday night many of the call centres had minimised operational staff, and certainly those with any level of responsibility had understandably gone home for the weekend.

There were several cursory references during the rest of the day’s proceedings about follow-on courses. And yes, I thought they might well try to ‘up-sell’ allied material or courses. However, what I was not prepared for was the speaker’s revelations and insistence that to achieve success in our property investment we needed more than this course on which we now sat. In other words, our current three-day course was not, contrary to what I’d been led to believe, sufficient to educate us in art of property investing – we would need additional tuition!

The final hours of the day concentrated on the six or seven add-on courses definitely needed to secure our success

and guess what

you had to attend the ‘university’ course before you could continue with the next ‘property specialisation’ course. Each 3 day course, at its “heavily discounted price provided you bought it during this course” cost in excess of £4,000 – i.e. a minimum of £8,000 - with the sky as the limit (as there were lots more ‘new’ courses coming over from America during the year they told us excitedly)!

Suddenly, it dawned on me!

Why had there been so much emphasis on wooing young Lucy? The additional facilities on our credit cards was not for the ‘seed capital’ to our future property ventures as had been heavily inferred many many times during the course, but to cover the cost of booking these additional courses.

How deceptively clever!

And there was considerable pressure to sign up. The main speaker, clearly a master of NLP, used huge swings of emotion, from joyous rescues ‘from the brink of disaster’ to even stooping to shed crocodile tears on several occasions, and all endorsed by a parade of ‘successful’ past attendees of these courses. Unfortunately (maybe) many fell into the trap, some parting with nigh on £30,000 (that possibly they couldn’t afford) - but I wish them well and hope they manage to recover their ‘investment’ over time.

Now I fully understand ‘up-selling’ – lots of organisations do it, some better than others – but I’m not sure how you feel about this one. To me, these guys seem to have crossed the boarder into the ‘unethical’. And I don’t like, or tolerate, unethical selling (hence this blog post).

You know, as well as I, the best way to build loyal customers

be honest and up front – always

Your customers then know precisely what they have to gain or otherwise; they feel informed and in control. And that is when they begin to trust you and will buy more from you.

In this instance, perhaps the initial course should have been sold as an ‘introductory’ course. The fact participants would be ‘encouraged’ to follow on with further ‘specialised’ courses should, I believe, have been disclosed right at the start, together with the content and costs of these additional courses. That way the customer can make an educated and informed decision about what and how far they wish to, and can afford to, go. Being bullied (otherwise ‘doomed to failure’) into parting with precious funds (to ‘ensure success’) during a charged and emotional appeal is, in my book, absolutely not ethical.

I believed, stupidly as it transpires, that the company involved (Rich Dad Education Ltd), working under what I thought was the reputable brand name (I read all the books several years back - they are good, and highly acclaimed), might have been above this sort of deceptive behaviour. But it seems not. Perhaps greed (do the calculations) has taken over.

Shame on you Robert Kiyosaki for ‘lending’ your name to these people.

Now go, be smart, make money, but be ethical - always

Richard C