Posted by Canadian Dream on September 11, 2009
This is just in. Apparently even the heavily flawed self interested bill from the US Congress, Waxman-Markey (aka: HR 2454), if implemented is actually a good thing for the US as a whole. This shocking conclusion is from a policy paper that found that once you include the social benefits of not flooding your coast line and other things under a conservative set of assumptions that in total the benefits outweigh the costs by a factor of nine to one or more.
Sorry if the scarcasim isn’t obvious in the above statement, but really isn’t this obvious to anyone who things about it for a while? It’s the classic an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Oh well, perahps in my lifetime I’ll see a government realize that isn’t a ‘right’ way to do any climate bill, but rather just pick one and adjust it as you go.
Have a good weekend everyone.
Posted by Canadian Dream on September 10, 2009
Gut feelings are interesting things. Sometimes they uncannily right, while others times they suck at getting close. Case in point, I recently had ignored my account balance for a while, so when I did finally move all the money to savings and pay off the Visa bill I had a gut feeling I was going to be short some money. End result: I’m sitting on a surplus of $100, so much for gut feelings and math eh?
Yet at the same time think about the number of times you invested in something because it felt right. I know I like to think my checking of company reports and new bits for the company should be the deciding factor but at some point it really comes down to my gut feeling saying this is good or not. If it says not, it almost takes a mountain of evidence to the contrary to make me change my mind.
So what is the value of the gut feeling? Actually a fair bit. You have to consider in life we almost always are making decisions with incomplete information. We can decide what to eat for breakfast sometimes before opening the fridge or seeing what’s on the shelf. We don’t know everything that we have for options, but we decide anyway based on feeling. That gut feeling is basically the sum of our knowledge to that point on that decision based on emotion rather than logic. We use it all the time and people can pretend about being logical all the time, but often we are not (sort of like Spock from Star Trek).
In personal fiance we like to pretend we are logical that we use numbers to guide our decisions, but at the same time we are often prisoners to our gut feelings. The point is to understand which one was used to decide something and accept that all decisions don’t have to be on logic. Case in point, if we all ate logically the world won’t have cheesecake, candy or chocolate bars. So remember, your not always logical, it’s ok. Just accept it as normal and do the best you can. You will be happier if not wealthier for it.
Posted by Canadian Dream on September 8, 2009
Perhaps one of the more annoying habits my oldest boy has developed is the assumption that we are going to buy something for him when we are out shopping. Unfortunately I know exactly how this has developed. My wife’s business recently got a grant to buy some toys, craft supplies and other equipment for her daycare. So often now when she is out she spends part of that grant money and our boy can’t separate in his head that some things are for the daycare and some are for him (he is only four).
So when I’m out with him he assumes I’m going to buy him something and it has often ended in tears. We have tried to explain many times over when we are shopping that some days we don’t have the money to buy him something, with limited success. Then recently I took a different tactic: I told him before we left, when we got into the parking lot that we are only buying certain items. We go look at the toys when we are in the store, but he does seem to get the idea that today we are not buying anything. I managed to get out of the store without a single whining noise or tear.
Now we have a effective method of controlling his expectations and he seems to get ‘not today’ better than ‘no.’ This makes sense if you think of it from an adults point of view. Saving for anything is actually just about the same thing. It’s saying ‘not today’ to something rather than ‘no’. So once I manged to wrap my head around that concept I can relate a bit better to my son’s issues. ‘No’ sounds a bit too final and can slip into the concept of ‘never’ very quickly. While ‘not today’ allows for hope and the continued dreaming about the item, which as some adults know can often be better than actually having that item.
So that’s is what’s working now for us. How do you manage your kids expectations? Does a flat out ‘No’ work, or do you have to use some different wording?
