Enforced holiday — a dangling afternoon

Posted in evolution on 31.03.06@901 by pjh

I’m sitting here on enforced holiday, which is weird in itself. My company, along with hundreds of others in the UK and probably elsewhere, has a twisted holiday policy. There’s always an important project ongoing or upcoming that means that they’d rather you didn’t take your holiday at just that time, or not for so long, please. Which is fair enough, since we’re a disorganized sort of organization that hasn’t yet come to grips with the occasional absence of key people.

We’re better than we used to be, which is a good sign. No longer do you find directors and other higher-ups on leave for the whole of March. Why March? Because here it’s the end of the tax/financial/HR year. Why forced? Because company policy is use-it-or-lose it. Can’t get paid, can’t defer it, can’t carry it forward indefinitely and take a sabbatical after a gajillion years service. Gotta take it.

Which is why I’m at home today, or at least the afternoon. I had a half-day left over that somehow I hadn’t taken. And this is the last day of the year. So I’m on vacation. Unless I’d like to donate it to the company of course… nope.

Why can’t we get it together to let holidays be a normal part of working and project life, with no individual so necessary to the functioning of the whole that they can’t disappear for a week or a month? Why don’t we flex the benefit so that each employee can take or not take, get paid in lieu or store them up, as suits their temperament and stress level and distance from home?

Trust, maturity, and complexity, I suspect these are at the heart of this. Of course, enforced paid leave isn’t the worst of problems to have. But what have I done with the time?

Distressingly little. There’s this post, the work of minutes. There’s a more automated scraping of financial data to support my ISA investments. Not completely useless but not completely useful use of time. Good night all.

Jim Slater’s Company REFS Reviewed

Posted in money on 22.03.06@815 by pjh

I received my free sample copy of Jim Slater’s Company REFS this week. Eagerly awaited, I’ve tried a few times before to get a copy. This is the first time that their online form seems to have successfully connected with the back end. It took a week or so to arrive, but arrive it did, in a lovely padded envelope surrounded by a sheaf of order forms and brief instructions.

My first hint of hesitation came when I opened the CD case and saw, on the back side of the booklet facing the CD, the ominous words “Installation instructions for Windows“. At home I use a Mac, so it was hopeful at least that the operating system is mentioned. Into the CD slot it goes, but no joy. It’s a Windows-only beast, with a README file dating from last century.

The next day at work, I installed it. It’s a clunky looking spreadsheet of a program, with a quirky interface that doesn’t always behave as you’d expect. Spreadsheet is too grandiose a word, it’s a table of data that you can filter in simple ways. It seems that you, the user, have three key abilities:

  • create custom column views of whatever data items are available
  • create custom filters, or table views by applying simple conditions like these:
    • if this field’s value is greater than this constant
    • and this other field’s value is less that this constant
  • create portfolios of selected stocks, although I fail to see how this aids in anything. It may be more useful after a few updates of the REFS data.

It’s strictly a filter program, with no ability to calculate or filter on fields compared to other fields. For example, if I wanted to restrict a view to contain companies with a market cap of >= £100 Million at the 52-week low price, REFS just can’t do it.

I’ve also heard that the fundamental data used is from the last annual report, so may be well out of date. The only evidence of the five year data that they advertise is a handful of data columns of five year averages. Showing a company’s full data only reveals current year figures.

Is it worth £304 a year, which was the price for quarterly updates offered to me in return for my direct debit details? I doubt it, unless you’re looking for simple filters against constant values and are investing sums large enough to justify the cost. Even then, I know that Stephen Bland gets his fundies from elsewhere. You’ll be the first to know if my opinion changes.

My Brother’s Getting Married — and she’s lovely

Posted in evolution on 16.03.06@712 by pjh

Congratulations. This could well be the best thing ever. Don’t screw it up.

Let me clarify. Marriage changes nothing. Sure you may swap surnames, co-habitate, have more kids, etc. But at the heart of it you’re still dating - divorces happen all the time, and to more people than you’d like to think about. Things can still fall apart, and so very easily. So that’s my piece of advice to you - don’t relax - don’t think that marriage is forever, because if you think that way it won’t be. Paradoxical, ain’t it? Keep up the involvement and the passion and all the rest, just as though each date could be the last and you never know, you could actually get to happily ever after. I hope so.

Paris Intellectuals

Posted in evolution on 15.03.06@782 by pjh

I’ve been in Paris for the past week, taking my morning coffee in the usual café. On the morning that I returned to London, there was a meeting of intellectuals, debating the mutual influence between Mozart and his father, Leopold. These men were not young, but they’d set themselves a specific topic and researched it passionately. One even had his wife along to ensure that he didn’t get overheated. Even in a city with an intellectual tradition, I’m impressed.

What they’ve got going is life-long learning. It may be that they’re all passionate about classical music to begin with, so that the topic isn’t completely random. What’s fascinating is the enthusiasm that they put into their respective theses. This was no book-of-the-month club that placidly agrees with the current opinion. It was the critical defense of carefully constructed viewpoints. The level of detail commanded by each of the participants shows that it’s no kaffee-klatsch laissez-faire event. Each has taken the time and effort to acquaint himself with the subject and to recall to memory details that I would normally have to keep as notes. Wow.

Unless it’s all faked of course, but assuming that the detail apparently known and the facts match up, it’s amazing. Try it yourself. Pick a topic, maybe in an area that you’re already interested in, maybe in something completely new. Learn it in obsessive depth, as narrow a topic as you like. It’s sure to stimulate your brain in a good direction. Those who learn, stay younger.

How to Calculate your Net Worth

Posted in money on 05.03.06@635 by pjh

I’m trying to decide whether to open an ISA, the UK’s tax-shielded retirement investment account. To help me make my decision, I took a look at my current net worth and how it’s changed over the past year. In order to do that, I need to calculate my current and previous net worth figures in a way that makes them easier to compare. If it turns out that I’m spending less than I earn, then I’ll go for it.

To do this, I’ll be using what tax accountants call the cash basis. This means that I only care about transactions that involve cash flow. I don’t worry about accumulating income or debt, and I don’t include changes in valuation.

For example, you might have holdings in the stock market. You bought them for a particular price, yet the value that you could sell them for varies as the market moves. To make life easier in comparing two calculations, I’m not going to look at current market value, or realizable value, for any asset.

That’s actually a small lie. I’ve got some Premium Bonds that I paid a certain amount for, that I can access as cash at a week’s notice. I’ll treat this as a cash equivalent, just as though it were an ordinary bank account.

Step 1: Assets

An asset is something that you own, something that you paid for that has lasting value. List all of your bank accounts, savings bonds, etc., and their current balances. If you’re doing this for comparison purposes, you can omit any asset that hasn’t had more cash go in or out over the year.

From an accounting perspective, if anyone owes you money, that too is an asset known as a receivable. For my purpose, even though my landlord owes me a couple hundred for fixing a gas leak, it isn’t going to materially affect the outcome.

Houses and other major assets

I thought about houses as I wrote this, even though I rent. A house is an asset which has a fluctuating market value, from which I want to exclude the influence of a changing market. It also probably has a mortgage, and I do want to include the shrinking balance in my net worth. I’d do this by including it on both sides of the net worth calculation. Once as an asset, at it’s purchase price, and once as a liability (don’t worry, that’s the next section) for the mortgage. That way, I have a stable asset value, but still see the benefit of any overpayments or the downside of any payment holidays.

You could also choose to exclude the mortgage and house altogether on the grounds that the change to your net worth is negligible. Including it, especially if you’re in the first few years of payments, isn’t going to do much other than increase both sides of the equation, assets and liabilities, by about the same very large amount.

Step 2: Liabilities

A liability is something that you owe, a debt. For most people, this will be things like credit card balances, loans, mortgages, and the like. I want to keep this simple, so I’m going to exclude the credit cards that I pay off every month. Yes, it’s a liability, a debt that I’ll be paying very soon. Unless it’s unusually large it doesn’t matter, because I’ll be comparing net worth figures from one year to the next. I can treat this just as though it’s paying by cash, just deferred by a month.

If you are carrying credit card debt, then include the current balances in your list. I’ve got a credit card that’s in a zero-percent interest period, so it has a balance. I’ve included it in my list because it’s a longer-term debt than just month-to-month.

Step 3: Net Worth

In accountancy, there are three categories on a balance sheet. Know it or not, what you’ve just put together is a personal balance sheet. It’s a list of assets and liabilities. To put the balance into balance sheet, accountants use a third category, called equity or capital. For us this just means taking the total assets and subtracting the total liabilities.

If it’s positive, congratulations!, you’ve got some savings. If it’s negative, then you’re in debt, sorry.

I’ve got a spreadsheet that I use to calculate all of this, and if anyone’s interested I’ll sanitize it and post it.