OPENSOURCE LONDON

A little perspective on $315bln

I think kind of thinking is something we need more of - comparison in size to man - if this is one dollar bill, imagine what 315,000,000,000 look like...

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back to 1970's banking baby!

So on a whim I decided to begin a process of 1970's banking. What does this mean? It means I had to live without a visa card on my current account for 6 months. In a way it was a bit of a stupid idea, in another, I learnt a lot about the processes of modern banking and modern commerce. This situation occurred because I in a moment of confusion lost my bank card, It took about a week to get the card back, in that week I discovered that a trip to the bank was a quite an interesting experience. I had to make a decision, queue up in the bank every lunchtime to get money for the day or work out how much I needed, form a budget for the week and stick to it. After the first week I wondered what would happen if I didn't order a new card. So I didn't.

First of all, I began by making my purchases with cash based upon the debit card impulse, see it want it. I soon realised that my initial budget wasn't going to last, BUMMER. I either had two choices, increase my budget or curtail my impulses. Being a sucker for the experimental I decided to curtail my experiences and live on my budget. The first couple of weeks were tough because I had been used to spending whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I had to curtail my impulse!

However after the first month, I had begun to a climatise to the fact that I would have to make decisions upon  god forbid  "A PRE-DETERMINED BUDGET" - I managed to override the impulse buy mentality that I had acquired over numerous Friday night drinks and Saturday shopping trips. I began to decide what I actually needed and not what I wanted.

This maybe a strange thing, but my decisions became more about what I needed and not what I wanted. I wasn't unhappy, infact I felt like I became happier, more in control of my spending.

In my experience, a mobile spontaneous social life and the abstraction of money has led to a culture in which its not the danger of credit, but the danger of spending the money you already have that leads to financial difficulty. I had to seriously re-evaluate my spending/desire and found that I was better for it financially and mentally.

The interesting thing is that in losing my Debit card I was unable to pay for my typepad account - Hence I had to wait till the end of the six months to write about it. We are dependant on this system and I don't think it will do any harm to have a couple of uncut diamonds in a safe deposit box going into the future.

APG Planning course

Last night I attended the first of eight Account planning group "lectures". It was quite an interesting event. I met my group and we were given a team. Its a strange course. Kind of like a competition, which I don't mind because the real business environment is a competition. So our task is to understand the fizzy drinks market and try to reinvigorate an old brand in a shrinking market. We haven't been given much money for this imaginary task. So we will have to draw great insight and be innovative with the choices we make. The team I have seems to be really interesting, although I only managed to get a short time with them. We have set up a wiki and its looking good.
If you want to learn more about this check out the account planning group. In time I too will be able to be sexy like a chicken.....