What are the most important career break reasons?

 

These reasons are, to have the time to learn the true meaning of life and enjoy its beautiful gifts, found in abundance outside the work environment.

Have you forgotten that life's pleasant and exciting surprises, are presented to travellers?

Surprises and nature's strange things told and found in books seem fictitious until they're lived and experienced. So, go ahead, take a career break and find out what life is all about.

Another reason is, so that life will not leave you behind. Life leaves behind the redundant. 

It's an ever changing dynamic world out there. Acquiring a new set of skills keeps you ahead of the game. A new set of skills can hardly be acquired without taking a career break.

"Work is a rubber ball." Gary Keller observed and continued, "If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls- family, health, friends, integrity- are made of glass."

Your family is a glass ball, if you drop it, it could be irrovocably  shattered.  Sometimes to achieve a balanced life, you may need take a career break to spend quality  time with a disintegrating family and strengthen the bond.

You would also need to occasionally spend quality time with true friends to  prove their importance to you. Finding the time to be with friends could be a huge sacrifice that are greatly appreciated.

What about your health? The journey of life takes everyone to the crossroads, where it's unavoidable to take a career break from the stress of work to take care of one's mental health. Most people ignore the need to take a break and continue to work until they break down and become useless to themselves and their loved ones. 

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Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls-- family, health, friends, integrity-- are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. - Gary Keller

What are dividend growth stocks? Which are the best today?

"Returns matter a lot. It's our capital." — Abigail Johnson

The accumulation of wealth from investments in stocks is determined by the long run rate of return on investments.

Many investors find companies that pay regular and increasing dividends attractive. 

Investors believe that a company with a history of strong dividend growth are on the path of long term profitability and that, part of their profits, would consistently be appropriated to grow their dividend.

However, what is the primary input of the stock valuation method, investors in dividend growth stocks use to determine the best stocks to invest in? It's the dividend growth rate.

What is the dividend growth rate? 

The dividend growth rate is the percentage rate of growth that a company's stock's dividend experineces within a given period of time. It's calculated annually.

Examples of companies with dividend growth stocks for the month of February, 2023. - fool.com

What Is Project Cost Management?

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Thorough project management knowledge, skills and techniques are necessary for the successful execution of a project from iniatiation to closing. 

One of the tools for a successful  project execution is an effective project cost management.knowledge.

Project Cost Management includes necessary techniques or processes for the completion of projects within approved budget.

These processes are estimation of costs, determination of budget and control of costs.

1. Estimation of costs -

The establishment of monetary resources required to successfully complete a project is crucial.

Some of the techniques used to estimate costs include 

a. parametric estimating - the parametric cost estimates are calculated by using the relationship between historical data and other variables such as cost, budget and duration.

b. reserve analysis - cost estimates sometimes include reserve analysis- this analysis is relevant to cost estimates that contain cost uncertainty. 

The uncertainty is accounted for by including contingency reserves or allowances in cost estimates.

Contingency reserves are often required as part of funding requirements.

c. analogous estimating - this techilnique uses values obtained from scope, measures of scale, budget and duration. The technique relies on historical costs of similar projects done in the past, to make estimates for a current project.

There are other tools such as expert judgement and the bottom up estimating 

2. Determination of Budget.

Budget determination  is a process that aggregates cost estimates of activities to establish an approved baseline. 

The established baseline would include authorized budgets (standards for assessing project cost performance) and exclude reserves made by management.

Some of the tools used to determine project budgets are expert judgement and budget reserve analysis.

a. Expert judgement is made on the basis of expertise in industry, knowledge of the project area and relevant experience.

b. Budget reserve analysis is used to establish both managment and contingency  reserves for a project. 

Contingency reserves as pointed earlier, are necessary because sometimes during project execution, some unplanned changes may become necessary. 

3. Cost control.

This is the process of monitoring a project, updating the budget when it's necessary and managing changes to baseline.

Some of the techniques used are forecasting, performance reviews, Earned Value Management and variance analysis and To-Complete Performance Index (TCPI).

5 Great Ways To Prepare For A Job Loss.

Recently, job cut has become a constant reality. The reason is, many economies are frequently in and out of depression.

Businesses would always do all they could to push total revenue above total costs. If sustained profitability is the oxygen of every successful business, cutting costs would always be applied to avoid suffocation.

Job cut is most busineeses'  primary cost cutting tool. What this means is, right now, someone has just lost a job or is about to lose a job for no fault of theirs. But...that wouldn't be the end of life.

There's life after a job loss. A weak economy could recover quickly, grow rapidly and give businesses opportunities to hire again. But one would have to be alive, sound and prepared when the next employment opportunity shows up.  

This post gives useful tips on how to prepare for a job loss and survive a layoff.

1. Invest in continuous learning.

Don't stop learning after you've secured your dream job. Having a dream job is not the same as having job security.

As we already know, some extraordinary event could occur and cause business giants to layoff their employees. So in reality, there's no true job security in paid employment.

But you can build an enduring job for yourself. You can start from the scratch and build it all the way up while you still keep your day job. There's a condition, you must learn new things every step of the way to make a success of it.

Investing in continuous learning also gives you an edge, In case, you lose your job and start job hunting. Possession of extra useful skills is going to place ahead of the competition for a good job.

2. Update your resume regularly.

As you acquire new skills, add them to your resume and update it. Never allow the lucrativeness and security that present job seems to offer, lull you into forgetting to regularly update your resume.

Don't also be too comfortable in your present job and forget to constantly be on the look out for better opportunities. 

3. Set up an emergency fund.

You should be able to continue to fill basic needs for the short period you may be out of work. 

No job, no more income, so where would the money to pay bills come from? From an emergency fund, assuming one was set up when in paid employment 

If you don't have one? Now may just be the right time to set up one. You can't tell what's going to happen next 

Experts advise that you should have in that fund, an amount that would be enough to cover your living expenses for a period  between 3 and 6 months. Aim to have an amount that should cover living expenses for a longer period.

Keep this fund in a place that's secure, quickly accessible and not in a long term time deposit account.

4. Build a worthy network.

When you're in a good job, don't remove yourself from the circle of valuable friends and professional colleagues. Keep them, make yourself useful to your network and continue to expand.

A good network is a lauchpad to greater things . Don't forget that there's no limit to the support a good friend could give in times of need. 

5. There's life after a job lose.

When you lose your job, sit down and take stock of your life. Don't panic! It's not the end of life!

There are always bigger and better things ahead. You can rise from the ashes of a job loss to live your dream llife, become a role model and a source of inspiration to thousands or even millions of people 

The proposed common currency, the "sur": What investors should expect.

 Argentina and Brazil are set to begin preparatory work to establish the second largest currency bloc in the world. The name suggested for the new currency is "sur". 

The "sur" when it officially becomes a medium of exchange in the two largest latin American economies, would facilitate comparisons of prices and other key investment decision parameters. 

What else should investors expect?

A look at lessons from "euro", the largest currency union would be helpful.

The euro eliminates currency risk within the eurozone. It facilitates and promotes cross border invesments by businesses. Businesses operating in both Argentina and Brazil would no longer face currency risks if and when sur becomes a daily currency in both countries.

Elimination of currency risks and facilitation of price comparison would enable cross border businesses in the two countries to lower costs and increase profits. How?

Businesses would have a range of best deals from suppliers to choose from. They would also use the ease of labor mobility to easily move their best hands between both countries. 

They would have the enabling environment to create packages that attract best hands from competitors within the currency union.

There's also enjoy benefits deriveable from the possibility of currency stability. One of them would be the lowering of interest rates and the increasing of the possibility of appropriate capital allocation between subsidiaries. 

However, during a period of depression in a partner currency, economic growth would slow down and unemployment would increase. When this happens, investors would become apprehensive about liquidity. 

A shrinking in the volume of cash in circulation would cause interest rates to rise. The common currency policy is unlikely to allow a partner country to unilaterally print more money, inject it to stimulate the economy and reverse an economic depression. Businesses would have to cut jobs and eventually, die if the situation persists.

Balancing the budget is like going to heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there.– Phil Gramm.

Every budget is a test of your capability to balance your expenses and your income.

It's a tough test that many of us fail. The reason is simple, most of us are never prepared to live within our means.

Most of us when we have a little, we want to prove to those who don't really care about us that we have arrived 

and when we're sent packing from the heaven the people built for us, we go outside our means to buy mansions in the hottest part of hell in attempt to prove to the world that we are still in heaven.

Who really cares about where you're , what you have and how you are at any time of your life?

Maybe your loved ones, outside them you're alone.

So, if you want to balance your budget and achieve financial freedom,

you've to die to what people think of your lifestyle, how they live without fiscal discipline and live within your means.

Special Purpose Vehicle, SPV, Isn't Always Created To Commit Financial Fraud.

What's the primary job of every entrepreneur? Take profitable risks, do everything legitimate to at least preserve capital when profit can't be made.

This job wouldn't be done when a business survives the volatile early stage, breaks even, enjoys profitability for few years and then goes bankrupt as a result of venturing into risky ventures. The going concern concept would be defeated. 

So, what long term business survival options do some entrepreneurs pick to preserve their assets when they go into volatile ventures? One of them is the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) also known as Spechial Vehicle Entity (SPE).

A special purpose vehicle or special purpose entity is defined as a subsidiary created by a parent company for a special purpose.

The special purpose most often, is to isolate a parent company from financial risk by providing securitization of assets 

The above is made possible by the fact that SPV has Its legal status as a separate company. This status makes its obligations to secure its assets in the eventuality of the parent company going bankrupt possible. This is why SPV is sometimes called a bankruptcy-remote entity.

As a subsidiary with a legal entity status, a SPV has its own distinct balance sheet ( a picture of its assets, liabilities and capital) that's often off the balance sheet of the parent company. This is where investors have a problem with SPV, as it could be exploited to hide losses

However, some businesses create SPV for one purpose, to aecuritize debt and give investors the assurance of repayment. And not always to commit financial fraud