Link Roundup #52: 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. How to Track Your Income and Expenses [With FREE Template] – I’m Funemployed
“Once you’ve developed the habit of expense tracking, the rest will fall in place later.”
So true. You won’t know if you’re doing good or bad if there’s no measurement.
2. Are Flat Fines and Jail Time Fair MCO Punishment?: A Call for Means-Based Sentencing – The Centre
The BINTIAHMADZAHID promo code incident raised an interesting topic for discussion: means-based sentencing. It ‘considers a person’s economic capacity in setting penalties, particularly fines. The idea is to scale fines according to income so that the punishment is felt equally heavy by those with higher incomes and those who earn daily wages.’
The illustration below shows how a couple models of means-based sentencing would look like, if implemented in Malaysia.
Will it ever happen though. I don’t think so, not in current Malaysia.
Depressing thought of the day: we already know solutions to most problems. They just remain problems due to lack of political will
— Suraya Zainudin (@surayaror) May 25, 2020
3. The Mystery of the $2,000 Ikea Shopping Bag – Harvard Business Review
TL;DR – *truly* wealthy people don’t care about wearing fashion items perceived as ‘working class’, because people already know they’re rich. The difference is they get their ‘cheap’ items from premium labels (or pair the cheap item with expensive items). Therefore the $2000 IKEA shopping bags (worn with thousand-dollar watches).
On the other hand, middle-class folks care more about labels because they want to signal their status through the appearance of having wealth. Even if its fake and all the high-end items are purchased through debt.
Commerce is so strange because people are so strange lol.
4. Facebook Shops turn business pages into online stores – Engadget
Facebook domination continues. Facebook Marketplace, and now Facebook Shops. Setting up shop in Facebook = foot traffic in a busy mall. Good for the seller, more temptation for the audience.
How it looks like for Facebook
How it looks like for Instagram
Right now, purchases can’t happen *in* the app – you need need to pay via manual bank transfer or direct people to your website or whatever – but I think that feature will come in due time. I remember reading that Facebook was experimenting with that Libra cryptocurrency ecosystem and all.
5. How do people become wealthy? 2 case studies – Ladders
I like this article because (1) it doesn’t reference some billionaire and promote the idea that everyone can be ultra-wealthy only if they work just as hard (super unrealistic),
and (2) the two case studies tell of two very different approaches, in an ‘all roads lead to Rome’ kind of way. Person One is from someone who enjoys life, while Person Two is from a super competitive person. Pick a wealth approach that works with your style, or if both of them don’t particularly speak to you, find others who do.
6. How to Respond to “Take It or Leave It” – Harvard Business Review
What a fascinating article. I’ve always thought that “take it or leave it” offers are the final offers, but it seems like you can still negotiate on by adopting the ‘choice mindset’.
This has just expanded my ‘refuse to be refused’ line of thinking.
7. EQ Matters More Than IQ for Group Success, New Harvard Study Says – Inc
Teammates who can get along with each other > individually smart teammates who can’t work together.
You know who tends to be better at emotional intelligence? Women. Grow your business better by having women in your organisation, across all management levels.
8. You Need A Schedule – The Cut
I don’t know about you, but MCO really messed up my sense of time. Days just flow by, in a wake up-work-sleep pattern. Sometimes I don’t even know how I get things done.
Thank goodness, I suppose, for loose schedules and routines that I follow out of habit. But I know I can be better at it.
This article introduced an important aspect of time management that I’ve never really implemented, or even thought about: create an end-of-day schedule. No wonder I feel like I’m working all the time. I don’t have any routines or habits that mark the end of a working day.
This is why my brain is still in working mode almost all the time, and why I feel guilty doing non-productive things. I don’t know how to switch off yet. Related: How My Work From Home Schedule *Actually* Looks Like
Thinking seriously about what I action I can use as my end-of-day ritual. Suggestions?
9. There’s One Key to Not Wasting A Day Off During Quarantine – Apartment Therapy
Continuing on that line of thought, how does one create a balanced schedule? This is something I’m struggling with as well.
Something I’ve been experimenting in lately is to not just add work items in my to-do list, but also other noteworthy things I’ve done during the day.
It sort of helped. Sometimes I feel like I did ‘nothing’ but actually, I did a bunch of soul-nourishing activities. That counts, because rest and leisure is part of productivity culture, too.
10. How I Became An Adult – Wong Fu Productions
Last but not least, I want to show this video, which a commenter shared to me (shoutout to Alvin Choo! Thanks bro for sharing).
It’s about the process of taking responsibility for your own life.
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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.