mercredi, janvier 25, 2012 Running Your Own Business: What, When and How To Pay Yourself, and Why You Need To Think It Through ...at least, in Singapore by Lim May-Ann 25 Dec 2011 (wow I'm SUCH a loser!) written for my friends Ed and Ad Given that you're essentially a one-man show, you need to remember what you're doing this for, and why you're doing this. It's easy to go for broke when you're first starting out, and take on as many clients as you can, but remember - there's a reason why fledging eagles don't fly too well at first: cos they're new at it! So take your time to learn the ropes of how to manage your business, your time, your clients. With the freedom to do whatever, whenever, you have the opportunity to find some kind of equilibrium first, then ramp up if you need to. From what I hear from you, it's not hard finding clients - which is great, but what happens later, when you're maxed out of time, but you aren't earning as much as you'd like? You'll appreciate space/time to expand then. What do you do then? Make a plan: 1. What are your financial commitments? Break it down: parents, church, self/travel, taxes, CPF, savings, madmoney. I usually run it by statistics: * Church 10%, Parents 10% (or however much it is), Income Tax 10% (this is an overestimation), CPF 20%. For CPF, note that you will be getting LESS than your peers who have employers, as employers contribute 16% of their income as well, making their CPF contribution 36% of their income. Which means that their CPF has an EXTRA 16% of what they earn going to it. http://mycpf.cpf.gov.sg/ You might also be interested to know that according to Financial Planners, the recommended savings percentage is 40%. I know, it's CRAZY. This generally leaves 50% left for yourself and your travel, savings and mad money. But not really, since there's always stuff to buy and things that break and need maintenance. 2. Assume makes an Ass of U and Me - make assumptions anyway Travel costs: assume that you have one student per weekday, and 5 over the weekend (spread over Sat/Sun). Assume that you'll take a cab to/fro their places, and each trip is a return trip (it probably won't be, but let's assume.) Assume each cab ride is $25. That's a sunk cost of $50 per student, so it will cost you $10*50=$500. 2. OK, so you've got a number from those financial commitments. How much do you pay yourself per year then? Factor in yearly inflation in Singapore, which is approx 4-6% (most people estimate it at 5%), and a 10% increase every year, plus a 13th month bonus. So take X (from above), multiply it by 13 months, and then again by 115%, divided by 12. That's how much you should be earning per month. 3. You've got to be kidding. Nope, it really is this mad. And I'm not even factoring in savings for the future and your retirement. Libellés : personal, working life [Running Your Own Business: What, When and How To Pay Yourself, and Why You Need To Think It Through] |
jeudi, janvier 12, 2012 If a tree falls in the forest without anyone to see it, does it make a sound? Similarly, if you didn’t blog, Facebook, Tweet or Tumblr something that happened in your life, did it ever happen?With the current level of self-management (or is it obsession?), many people would qualify as “self-stalkers”. You know the type – they constantly check their social feeds to see if they’ve been tagged, mentioned, “liked” or commented on. These are also the people who usually live their whole lives online, “checking in” to places, tweeting about things, posting photographs of their meals, and using Facebook to login and comment on various websites. The question from me to them usually is – what happens if you DON’T do it? Does that invalidate your existence? For many people, it does. It has been documented that people often do not feel the full completion an event until it’s been posted online in some form or other. Great holidays that lacked a certain je ne sais quoi – until the photographs were put on Flickr. Relationships that weren’t really exclusive until someone blinked, and changed their relationship status to “in a relationship”. (Relationships have apparently broken down because of this issue.) With this in mind, I’m looking rather mistrustfully at Facebook’s new Timeline feature. Touted as the ability to “tell your story with a new kind of profile” where you can highlight important and memorable events in your life, I’m not sure if it won’t enable us to manufacture a completely different story about ourselves altogether. Given the choice, most people want to put forward the best version of themselves. This is why we dress up when we head for a night out on the town, and why we put our best foot forward when we go for job interviews. Similarly, we curate our personal social media feeds to show the best versions of ourselves, and the best parts of our lives – great meals, fun parties, and amazing vacations. To us, these things “really happened” in our lives. But what happens to events which pass by unnoted and untweeted? Character-molding events have a tendency to leave a bittersweet taste in their aftermath. We probably won’t note a severe reprimand on our personal calendars, but what if, upon further rumination, it deeply impacts your life? A personal timeline should represent you in your entirety – the good, the bad, the highs and the lows. When we can obsessively curate our “public selves” to contain only the good, the happy, and the glorious, we become hyper-aware of our public image, and overly-concerned with what others’ responses to our actions are (you mean nobody “liked” the fact that I checked into the library today?) The choice of what to portray as our "public" selves may prove to be a boon to some, especially to people who value the integrity of keeping the public-private selves as closely related to each other as possible. However, it could also mean the annihilation of the breathing space we need in order to explore different facets of our personality as we grow into our own skins. For fear of ridicule or lack of validation, one could be stopped from trying a new activity that radically departs from your established personality. I'm someone who knows this more than most, since I seem to keep trying things which people find "out of character" or "not really your personality" for me. Case in point: I signed up for tap dancing classes for about 6 months in 2004; it was something I had always wanted to try out, so I found a school in Queensway, borrowed some shoes, and danced. Sometime later (just around the time that I had worked off my curiosity for the subject), someone told me that they had been walking around the shopping centre after dinner and had peeked in on the dance class, only to be surprised at seeing me in class. "Not really your personality leh," they had commented to me. I'm honestly not sure that I would have tried the class as earnestly, had thry made that comment to me just as I was starting out. I might have discontinued my lessons, considering it had I been discouraged from the activity - after all, it's "not my style/personality." With social media timelines conflating the public and private selves, we are going to spend more time obsessively curate our "public selves" that other people base their impressions of us on. People will assume impose certain notions of our behavior, and we will continue to reinforce them on ourselves. The question for us then is - are we ready for the responsibility of redefining who we are online? And in any case, who are we to censor ourselves? Remember how Jim Carrey's John in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind pleaded for the "scientists" not to delete his memories of Kate Winslet's Clementine. "Not this one, let me keep this one," he begged. We are the sum total of all our parts, experiences, joys, tears and laughter - what will become of our "selves" once we start to purge "unnotable events" from our public Timeline? Libellés : technology, thinking [Curation of the Virtual Self] |
mardi, janvier 10, 2012 I've already been quite disappointed at certain professional acquaintances who have dropped me like a hot potato because I've left my "well-connected" job for another which I find challenging (and therefore personally fulfilling.)While I understand less interaction, I think total silence from a simple greeting email is just plain rude. Libellés : personal, working life [Network Users] |
lundi, janvier 02, 2012  Libellés : technology [Best buy of 2011] |
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