New York is 3 hours ahead of California,
but it does not make California slow.
Someone graduated at the age of 22,
but waited 5 years before securing a good job!
Someone became a CEO at 25,
and died at 50.
While another became a CEO at 50,
and lived to 90 years.
Someone is still single,
while someone else got married.
Obama retires at 55,
but Trump starts at 70.
Absolutely everyone in this world works based on their Time Zone.
People around you might seem to go ahead of you,
some might seem to be behind you.
But everyone is running their own RACE, in their own TIME.
Don’t envy them or mock them.
They are in their TIME ZONE, and you are in yours!
Life is about waiting for the right moment to act.
So, RELAX.
You’re not LATE.
You’re not EARLY.
You are very much ON TIME, and in your TIME ZONE Destiny set up for you.
A bank should be functioning as to excel at securing and enhancing the financial wellbeing of people, businesses and communities.
1. Before you go to sleep each night, ask yourself: Are you smarter, have you learnt something new?
2. Always pick up the phone. In life there will be so many things you want to run away from, but you should always confront them head on.
3. Be humble, no matter how high you rise.
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity." One explanation of Einstein's relativity theory. With four words, it is summarized as "mind is born of heart."
For financial success, plan for the best and prepare for the worst. Across ages, people said one of the key strategies for success was to live within their means. That can help you avoid having to take on debt.
Go on dates with your significant other. Take your kids on trips. Go to concerts with your best friends. Just don't forget that the money you work to make is useless if you're miserable.
As long as you are invested appropriately for your goals, stay away from your investment portfolio.
"I've seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage – leverage being borrowed money. Donald Trump failed because of leverage. He simply got infatuated with how much money he could borrow, and he did not give enough thought to how much money he could pay back," Buffett said.
Annoying is from the feeling of heart. Every time you feel not happy, the root is just the existence of feeling of "meaning." If the nature of your heart is pure enough and complete, then there is no feeling of "meaning" at all and then there will be no annoyance. When mortals hear the mystic truth, they will temporarily regain their concentration just because they have never heard of it, and then they will think for a moment, realizing what they have learned, and go back to be what they were immediately. It is true that the truth of the mystery is hard to understand for the unenlightened mind, but it is only natural for the enlightened Buddha. Therefore, it is not necessary to meticulously chase difficult and intangible truths. Whenever you meet, everything you encounter is a grindstone that best suits your current state of mind. It is only necessary to remember from time to time that spirituality needs to be tempered. Outer objects and inner knowledge are all tools. They are grindstones and they are just processes. A heart is like a jewel encased in stone. It is tempered by countless times, and it is also reacted to by countless of time, and finally takes off the stone cover and becomes a jewel. In this process, no matter whether it is a long or short period, whether it is a gradually realization or a suddenly realization, there should be no difference way of what we see through a thing. A mind with difference will see things have difference, therefor, a mind with difference will see a stone is not a gem and a gem is not a stone. But actually, stone is a gem after all. If you see things with difference, it means you still have desire, and if you have desire, you will keep within this space frame and could no longer leave it. There is one case, that the non-interest-related mercy and non-interest-related compassion may be correct. The world is bitter. If you think you are suffering, then you will suffer. But if you think it is just a smell of a kind of medicine, you will no longer feel that you are suffering from it, but you are recovering from it.
The Jewish business does have a high rate of profit. Amazon has an annual revenue of 177.9 billion US dollars, the profit rate was only 3.8%. The new Salomon King Zuckerberg's Facebook has an annual revenue of 40.7 billion U.S. dollars, the profit rate reached 45%. However, Jeff never felt embarrassed about profitability. On the contrary, he repeatedly stressed that when investors see the company's target is profit margins and dividends, it is time to leave. Shareholders want more profits and returns, but returning to shareholders will limit the company's financial capacity for expansion. If short-term financial returns are ignored, profits will be invested as much as possible into business expansion, and company will achieve their long-term goals more quickly. People who like to keep the cactus are more likely to be punctured. People who enjoy drinking are more likely to get drunk. People who like to play water have more chance of drowning. Shareholders who like dividends often do not get the fastest growing company. What you most want to get is often the one that hurts you most. It's just like the ring of Gollum.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is a Silicon Valley legend. He's no longer involved with the company he helped build, although he is still on the Apple payroll, yet he remains a figure of prominence in the tech world, speaking at conferences and offering insights on the state of the industry. He even did a stint on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" back in 2009. But his attitude toward money is surprisingly different from that of most of his peers. In an interview with Fortune, the tech icon shares his straightforward investing strategy, which is to avoid it and to keep his distance from finance altogether. "I do not invest. I don't do that stuff," Wozniak tells Fortune. "I didn't want to be near money, because it could corrupt your values." Wozniak says he doesn't like the growing Silicon Valley trend of "engineers as rock stars," a construct that didn't exist at the time he was helping build Apple: "Mostly it's because of how much money they have — and I went the other way. I did not want to be one of them." Wozniak aimed to build innovative products and improve the world with Apple, not to get rich. "I really didn't want to be in that super 'more than you could ever need' category," he says.
Rather, Wozniak chose to invest in things close to his heart, such as museums in San Jose, California, his hometown. "I was born there, and I have a street named after me there because of it," he says.
Wozniak gained his fair share of wealth when Apple went public and is worth millions. But his fortune is nowhere close to that of Steve Jobs, Wozniak's Apple co-founder, who was worth around $10.2 billion when he passed away in 2011. One initial reason for this contrast is Wozniak's disinterest in money from the start. Back in 1980, he offered $10 million of his own stock to early Apple employees, something Jobs refused to do. He later called the move "the right thing" to do. Jobs' eventual fortune also came primarily from his stake in Disney, not from his Apple earnings.
Current CEO of Apple Tim Cook shares Wozniak's concerns about the way riches can corrupt. He once told college students, "Don't work for money — it will wear out fast, or you'll never make enough and you will never be happy, one or the other." Instead, he suggested, "You have to find the intersection of doing something you're passionate about and at the same time something that is in the service of other people."
What you will be is much more important than what you have been.
When you think something will be a miracle, you’d better not to bet on it.
Australia's luck is running out
Australia stands at 21st place in the 2017 Global Competitiveness Report. It ranks 15th in the World Bank's ease of doing business list.
Australia's record of 26 years without a recession flatters to deceive. The gaudy numbers mask serious flaws in the country's economic model.
First and most obviously, the Australian economy is still far too dependent on "houses and holes."
During part of the typical business cycle, national income and prosperity are driven by exports of commodities -- primarily iron ore, liquefied natural gas and coal -- that come out of holes in the ground.
At other times, low interest rates and easy credit boost house prices, propping up economic activity. These two forces have combined with one of the highest population growth rates in the developed world (around 1.5 percent annually, driven mostly by immigration) to prop up headline growth.
Australia's property market looks substantially overvalued. supplied
Yet a significant portion of housing activity is speculative. Going by measures such as price-to-rent or price-to-disposable income, Australia's property market looks substantially overvalued.
Meanwhile, GDP per capita has been largely stagnant since 2008. Australia's manufacturing industry, once a significant employer and an important part of the economy, has increasingly been hollowed out.
The country's cost structure is high. Improvements in productivity have, as elsewhere, been lacklustre. Infrastructure is aging and unable to cope with the demands of a rising population, especially in major cities. Australia stands at 21st place in the 2017 Global Competitiveness Report. It ranks 15th in the World Bank's ease of doing business list.
Attempts to diversify the economy have had mixed results. Tourism and service exports, mainly of education and health services, have expanded significantly. But they're nowhere near replacing the revenues brought in by mineral exports.
Second, a debt bomb is growing Down Under. Australia's total non-financial debt is over 250 per cent of GDP, up around 50 percent since 2010.
Australia's manufacturing industry, once a significant employer and an important part of the economy, has increasingly been hollowed out. Supplied
Household debt is currently over 120 percent of GDP, among the highest proportions in the world. The ratio of household debt to income has nearly quintupled since the 1980s, reaching an all-time high of 194 percent.
Stagnant real incomes have contributed to the problem, as have high home prices and the associated mortgage debt.
Despite record-low interest rates, around 12 percent of income is now devoted to servicing all this debt. That's a third more than in 1989-90, when interest rates neared 20 percent.
Government net debt borrowing, ostensibly low at around 20 percent of GDP, is higher than it looks. That figure ignores borrowing by state governments, which adds around 10 percent to government debt levels. It also ignores contingent liabilities, such as implicit government guarantees.
The ratio of household debt to income has nearly quintupled since the 1980s, reaching an all-time high of 194 percent.
These relate primarily to Australia's large banking system, which accounts for over 200 percent of GDP. In 2008, the government was forced to guarantee bank deposits and borrowing to ensure liquidity.
In addition, governments implicitly bear a portion of the risk of private-public partnerships used to finance essential infrastructure and services, which can't be allowed to fail.
Public finances are deteriorating, since strong growth in the commodity sector no longer offsets weak domestic conditions. Budget deficits reflect an eroding tax base and an aging population, which is driving up health, aged care and retirement expenditures.
The high debt levels increase the risk of a banking crisis, which could be sparked by rising losses on real estate loans.
Australia's especially vulnerable because of its dependence on foreign capital; foreign net debt tops 50 percent of GDP, much of it borrowed by banks to cover the shortfall between loans and domestic deposits.
High debt levels also limit the government's policy flexibility. Lower interest rates have proven ineffective in stimulating the economy, as over-indebted consumers are reluctant to spend more. At the same time, easy money has inflated the prices of homes and some financial assets, benefiting the rich and exacerbating inequality.
The central bank has to be wary of normalising rates, given the impact higher rates could have on house prices and on financially stressed borrowers.
Engineering a reduction in the value of the currency could affect the ability of Australia to borrow internationally and reduce demand for Aussie-denominated securities. Devaluation would also potentially increase inflation, putting pressure on interest rates.
Finally, Australia's close political and defense ties to the US, and the widespread view that it is a European Christian nation, complicate its trading relationship to Asia. This is especially true of China, which absorbs over 30 percent of Australia's exports.
Australian criticism of regional governments over human rights and capital punishment is seen as interference in domestic affairs.
Asians deride Australia's hypocrisy, pointing to the historical abuse of its indigenous population and recent treatment of asylum seekers. Australia's "Whites Only" immigration policy ended only in the early 1970s. Recent decisions restricting foreign investment smack of latent xenophobia.
All these problems are exacerbated by political uncertainty and policy inertia. Australia has had six prime ministers in eight years.
Support for the major parties has declined, even as a number of populist parties have gained. Ruling governments have needed to govern in complex coalitions. A hostile Senate has limited their capacity to legislate.
Instead of educating the country about the need for far-reaching reforms, the government seems to be casting about for new slogans -- "clever country," "knowledge economy," "ideas boom."
In fact, if it wants to remain a "Lucky Country," Australia will have to change significantly -- and quickly.
One key rule is that Buffett believes investors should avoid going too far afield when buying stocks. Instead, he says investors should make sure they fully understand how a business operates, how it makes money, and the future sustainability of its business model and profits before buying its stock, per CNBC. He called this "operating within what I call your circle of competence" during the 1999 Berkshire annual meeting, as quoted by CNBC. In their own recent attempt to identify potential future purchases by Buffett, analysts at Credit Suisse Group AG noted that he prefers easy-to-understand businesses. Different people understand different businesses. And the important thing is to know which ones you do understand and when you're operating within what I call your circle of competence. Buffett stressed the importance looking at companies that are within his areas of expertise to avoid large investing mistakes. He wants to know how a business makes money and be confident on the sustainability of its profit streams over the long-term. He called the process "judging the future economics of a business."
He said if an investor is not sure if a company is within his or her circle of competence, it likely is not.
And I read Ben's [The Intelligent Investor] book in 1949 when I was at University of Nebraska, and that actually just changed my whole view of investing. And it really did, basically, told me to think about a stock as a part of a business … Once you crank into your mental apparatus that you're not looking at things that wiggle up and down on charts, or that people send you little missives on, you know, saying buy this because it's going up next week, or it's going to split, or the dividend's going to get increased, or whatever, but instead you're buying a business.
Look at each stock purchase as buying a slice of a business and avoid being distracted by stock price movements.
On the margin of safety, which means, don't try and drive a 9,800-pound truck over a bridge that says it's, you know, capacity: 10,000 pounds. But go down the road a little bit and find one that says, capacity: 15,000 pounds. When Buffett analyzes a prospective investment, he wants the value at his entry price to be much lower than his value estimate for the company. The difference between the two figures is his "margin of safety," which limits the size of losses in case there are errors in his business analysis or assumptions.
"The margin of safety concept boils down to getting more value than you're paying," Buffett's partner Charlie Munger once said.
'Never Look at a Headline'
For the average investor, who lacks Buffett's analytic prowess and sharp eye, he believes that just casting your lot with the long-term prospects for the U.S. economy and the U.S. stock market may be the safest bet. "The best single thing you could have done on March 11, 1942--when I bought my first stock--was buy a stock index fund and never look at a headline...as if you had bought a farm" he told CNBC earlier today, noting that a theoretical $10,000 investment in an index fund back then would be worth more than $51 million today, including reinvested dividends.
Don't get swayed by emotion, don't underestimate customer loyalty, don't rely too much on numbers, and don't hesitate to cut losses. "You want to associate with people who are the kind of person you'd like to be. You'll move in that direction," he said. "And the most important person by far in that respect is your spouse. I can't overemphasize how important that is." Who you marry can significantly affect your level of success. People with supportive spouses are "more likely to give themselves the chance to succeed.
For Frank, the family unit is paramount. He was 13 when his father disappeared into Auschwitz and the loss was shattering. As an adult, his primary drive was to keep the family together. It was inevitable his sons would enter the business. They were fed business culture with their Weet-Bix, and every night he'd be home for dinner at 7pm and business would be on the menu. He never forced them in – he was too smart for that – but as they entered Westfield, so succession planning got under way. This warms Frank's heart because he knows how it began. He was born in a small Czechoslovakian town and, before he was big enough to see over the counter, he served customers in the shop his mother created in the front room of their house. It sold basics, such as flour and sugar, but he learnt about retailing, relationships and customer service. By the time he was 15, Europe was full of pain for him and he took an illegal boat to Palestine. There he fought in an elite commando unit for Israel's independence, before joining the surviving members of his family who had since travelled to Sydney. He arrived on Australia Day, 1952, aged 22. Three years later he was behind the counter in a delicatessen he owned with his new partner, John Schwartz (later Saunders). Business was so good, the pair took to dividing farm lands for housing. That went well so they decided to create a private company. But what to call it? One evening, as they drove home from the western outskirts of Sydney in their shared car, they threw some names around. "Schwartz & Lowy" sounded far too ethnic and eventually they combined "west" from the location and "field" from the farmlands. These days in Australia the phrase "going to Westfield" is synonymous with "going shopping", and Frank is looking forward to hearing a version in European languages. "Along the way we created our own formula," says Sir Frank, 87. "Succession is not a cookie-cutter business. It's complex, it evolves and it has to suit each participant." "If you are going to throw darts at a target, throwing one at a fixed target is much easier than a moving target. If you've got belief in the fundamentals of your strategy, then don't keep moving the target." But money is never the glue that will keep a family together. Day in and day out, I find myself explaining to people that successful succession depends on qualitative not quantitative issues.
I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, there's a certain freedom, meaningful freedom that comes with that. But once you get much beyond that, I have to tell you, it's the same hamburger.
You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.
We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services.
Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value. If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes.
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
Number one: Sales cures all. There has never been a company in the history of companies that has ever succeeded without sales. Anybody who has ever told you, 'Don't worry about sales, you can grow it and worry about sales later,' they are lying to you. They will fail, you will fail. You have to be able to sell and do you know who the biggest salesperson in your company has to be? You.
Buy the rumour and sell the fact.
Being a parent is a huge responsibility and many parents will feel that when their child is not doing well in life, they have failed. Good parenting is developing a child that has empathy, self-esteem, honesty and self-control. They will be happier, motivated by a desire to achieve when nurtured properly. Later in life, this will help the child through adolescence, protecting them from eating disorders and anti-social behaviour to mention only a couple of the upcoming challenges. Well-adapted children are less likely to turn to drugs and alcohol through their teen years as they become focused on intellectual curiosities instead. Your relationship with your child will reflect on how they act. If you have a good relationship, your kids will listen to you. If you do not, they will ignore you, with no reasonable possibility of teaching them anything. Be the kind of person you wish your children to grow up to be. Continue to strive for goals and be a positive influence on your kids. Avoid talking about other people or being rude to the individual who bags your groceries for example. Your children look up to you so what you do, they will likely mimic. Keep yourself busy and do things that allow you to feel good as well. Your child will see this and integrate it into their development. Remember that you are the adult and they are the child and it is okay to say No!!!
Melbourne has a radio station called LightFM, which calls for donations at the end of each financial year. It is not annoying to listen to music at ordinary times, but it is a bit boring to listen to broadcasts that are full of money. But now, it seems that the station can raise $150,000 in one morning is reasonable: A woman named Susan called in the morning and said she decided to donate $AUD1,000. The host asked her why. She said that she was sexually assaulted when she was 7 years old. She has always had a shadow in her heart. Unfortunately something similar happened at the age of 25. She felt that she couldn't afford to suffer. She had committed suicide seven times, but each time she was saved. One day, when she heard the broadcast on this radio station, she felt that the radio program gave her a meaning to live. She changed her name and moved to another place she was not known, and she always listens to the station's radio every day. She said that she now feels she worth more to live on. She said that the money was made by her every year specifically for this radio station. She thanked the radio station for encouraging her continue to live. "Seven times live saving love won't save two injuries. But one casual encouragement may be enough to keep one life."