Link Roundup #34: 10 Things to Know This Week

Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational 🙂

1. Experience Doesn’t Predict a New Hire’s Success – Harvard Business Review

Say whatttttt. But doesn’t the whole job hiring process center around experience??

So if not experience, what does predict new hire’s success in their new role? The professor recommends ‘focusing on the knowledge, skills, and traits directly rather than using experience or even education as a proxy.’

However, there are certain scenarios where experience matters, like task-based performance (like driving or operating machines).

Read the article to know more about this fascinating study.

2. The chart that predicts recessions – Vox

When it comes to economic predictions, I care less about what ‘experts’ say and more to what the charts say.

It turns out there is a chart pattern which predicts recessions – it’s called the inverted yield pattern. And it appeared in August 2019.

This will be my (our?) first recession as an adult. I hope we Malaysians will get out of it okay.

3. Investor Education: Encouraging minority shareholder activism – Tan Zhai Yun of The Edge Malaysia

I learned a new term  – shareholder activism.

“Shareholder activism has been on the rise in Malaysia, especially in relation to issues such as directors’ pay and corporate governance.”

“In July last year, the EPF strongly opposed the re-election of Sapura Energy Bhd’s directors, including its group CEO, due to the latter’s “excessive” annual take-home pay. During the AGM, shareholders also raised concerns about this matter.”

4. From sex to money: the eight deep discussions that can save a dying relationship – The Guardian

This part surprised me:

According to a study at the University of California, Los Angeles, couples with small children, and who both have careers, talk for just 35 minutes a week, and mainly about errands.

Healthy relationships is a core component to a happy life and something I’m happy to invest time, energy and money in. And I’d like to have a healthier, more nourishing relationship than 35-minutes-a-week conversation.

The article promotes a book called Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John and Julie Gottman, and I like that one of the essential conversations to have with your partner is about money. The idea is both of you dedicate time to go on dates and ask questions about your relationship and inluence of money behaviour, so you understand each other more.

5. How to Love Your Job Even When You Hate Your Job – The Ladders

LOVE this article. Finding things you like from a situation you hate, making the best of what you have – that’s a worthwhile lifeskill to develop.

If you don’t particularly like your job, then definitely read this. Actually, read it even if you like your job. Amazing perspective.

6. I interviewed over 200 millionaires, and about half of them followed the same straightforward path to wealth – Business Insider

100 millionaires interviewed said that the got wealthy from living below their means, saving consistently, investing those savings, and giving them time to grow.

The author called it the Saver-Investor path, and it’s fairly simple. These millionaires are ‘ordinary people who did not have any special advantages in life’. They didn’t grow up rich, or earn high salaries, or inherit money, or have any special knowledge. They just made sure that their home, cars, clothes and possessions were modest.

Doable, right? You can be wealthy via this method too.

7. Why you should never, ever hire a friend or family member –  The Ladders

The author’s stance is too binary; I’m more of a ‘never say never’ person. That said, I do kinda agree.

How about you? What’s your stance in this topic? Would you hire a friend or amily member in your company?

8. 6 futuristic jobs that will soon exist in the financial industry – The Next Web

How will jobs in the future look like? No one can say for sure, but I love this article for its predictions, based on current trends.

The jobs are:

• Fintech headhunter/liaison
• Self-driving finance engineer
• Sustainable wealth manager
•  Cryptoforecaster
•  Trust officer
• Cross-company cybersecurity liaison

Interesting titles, no? Click the article to read what their roles might entail.

9. How Women Can Escape the Likability Trap – New York Times

You want to know something? I like using my femininity to my advantage. I don’t want or need to be ‘like a man’ to succeed. I can just be, well, me.

Learning about behaviorial research in gender dynamics was a gamechanger. I had no idea women have distinct disadvantages (and advantages!) in the working life. Many of the career advice out there were given by men and can only work for men, in the same way that medical research used the adult male body as de-facto standard human specimen. Some of the tips they gave did not work for me.

Women with a career mindsets reading this, I highly recommend reading this NYT article. It’ll give you some tips that will help you get ahead in the workplace. Go crush it.

10. The most effective way to implement a behavior change – Fast Company

The article is a bit of a clickbait, since it eventually promotes a tool called RescueTime, which alerts you when you spend too much time dicking around.

Nonetheless, I’m sharing it anyway because the tool does look interesting to try out. In a study they conducted, using RescueTime to limit then block distracting websites worked well – ‘this group received higher grades, experienced a 24% increase in time spent working, and was 40% more likely to finish the (online) course (which usually have a high drop-off rate).’

Have you tried to block distracting websites so you’ll be more productive? I haven’t, but I’m curious enough to try and see if it works.

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That’s it for this round, catch you next time! Want to submit a link you thought was great? Reach out to me on FB or Twitter.

To read past link roundups, please click here.