Missed Deadline Excuses Revamped in the Corporate World

The age-old “my dog ate my homework” excuse may not fly in this paperless startup age, but there are plenty of other excuses you can use when didn’t finish all your work. Especially if you’ve earned your MBA.

There’s an endless number of to-dos at a startup, but I am a big proponent of that elusive work-life balance, AKA sometimes skipping out of the office before 8PM to go get an acupuncture or meet friends for a Grouper.

The key to getting away with not getting everything done is to talk like a businessperson. MBA degrees are optional, but helpful. Pull out those banal MBA one-liners and you can circumnavigate your way through any missed deadline or incomplete spreadsheet. Whether you’re too busy or just a little lazy, here are ten surefire lines that will cover your butt and earn you some corporate cred to boot:

1.       I didn’t have the bandwidth this week

2.       We were trying to boil the ocean

3.       I had to prioritize other deliverables

4.       It wasn’t the right high-level strategy

5.       It fell below the line this week

6.       It’s really a time and distance problem

7.       There were other low-hanging fruit to attend to

8.       It’s just not quite in my wheelhouse

9.       It didn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel

10.   The problem was that we were working in silos

11.   It’s an issue of scalability

OK, that’s eleven. Bonus!

Article Source: Venturebeat.com

Great Tips for Working At Home With Children.

1. Create an office separate from the main living areas of the house and declare it off limits during working hours.
   Help your child make a child readable sign for the office door so that he will know when it is and isn’t acceptable to burst into the office.
2. Invest in some quality headphones for quiet, heads down, work.
   I can’t count the number of times my wife has apologized to me because the everyone was running around screaming, and I responded “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
3. Maintain a good work schedule, and stick to it.
   Something that really helps in our home is that I have set working hours during the day. At 4 PM, I emerge from my office like someone returning home from work, and I’ll take the children to the park, help with chores around the house, or run errands with the family.
4. Train the children to go silent when Dad’s cellphone rings, but make sure your cellphone ringer is turned on.
   In our house, we have a game. When our eldest son hears my phone ring, he runs and asks his mother for a sticker for his “Daddy’s Phone Log” on the refrigerator. It’s made him become more aware of when I’m on the telephone and has the added benefit of sending him running away when the phone rings. Make sure, though, that you turn your ringer on. If you forget, and answer your phone after it vibrates, no one else will know that you’re talking to someone else and will pester you with “Huh?” and “What?” when they think you’re talking to them.
5. Take a long lunch and enjoy your opportunity to work from home.
   Enjoy the fact you’re working from home and take a time out in the middle of the day to enjoy a long and leisurely lunch.
6. Ask your spouse to communicate with you via IM or email.
   Nothing makes it more obvious that you’re working from home more than having your spouse constantly talking to you. Ask her to email or instant message you so you can ignore them like you would your coworkers’ messages if you were at the office.

What are your tips and tricks for working at home with the kids?

Article Source: business-opportunities.biz

Sound and True Investment Advice

It's no wonder over 90 percent of individual investors pursue an investing strategy that has historically underperformed a globally diversified portfolio of low management fee stock and bond index funds. You are inundated with misinformation generated by the financial media, and sponsored by the securities industry. They have a vested interest in leading you astray. The consequences have been devastating.

Assuming the asset allocation is appropriate for you, most investors would be better off putting all their assets in the Vanguard Target Retirement Fund appropriate for them. I prefer Vanguard's Target Retirement Funds because the underlying funds are all index funds and the expense ratio of the funds is very low at 0.18 percent, compared to the average expense ratio of 0.49 percent for similar funds, according to Vanguard's website. These funds automatically adjust their asset mix over time to become more conservative. Once you purchase the fund, there is no maintenance. Just leave it alone. Since inception in October, 2003 to September 30, 2012, the Vanguard 2025 Fund (VTTVX) returned 5.79 percent before taxes and 5.26 percent after taxes on distributions. At present, it has 71 percent of its portfolio invested in stocks and the balance in bonds.

Note that Vanguard reports its returns both pre-tax and after-tax. Most actively managed funds (where the fund manager attempts to beat a designated benchmark) engage in significantly more trading than index funds, generating higher taxes for their investors. Higher taxes reduce your after-tax returns. As the saying goes, it's not what you make, it's what you keep that matters. If you hold an actively managed fund, ask your broker or adviser to provide you with after-tax returns of that fund.

It's unfortunate that most investors succumb to the sales pitch of brokers and advisers who tell them they can "beat the markets." If your broker falls into this category (and almost all of them do), ask her to describe her methodology. If it is based on past performance, is she able to predict tomorrow's news? Since tomorrow's news is what will affect stock and bond prices, why does looking backward have any predictive value?

If there was a reliable way to "beat the market," you can be sure it would be uncovered by the millions of investors and thousands of academics focused on the market every day. It would also be published in a peer-review journal. I have yet to find any credible evidence of investment expertise permitting anyone to consistently "beat the market." Nothing can beat good ol' investors Due Diligence.

I issue the same challenge to brokers every day. Tell me your methodology for beating the market. Demonstrate that it works. I will check it out and will publish the results. I am still waiting for takers.

While I am waiting, you don't have to engage in market beating behavior that historically has rewarded your broker and punished your returns. You have many options for breaking the cycle of below market returns. One of the easiest ones is to consider whether Target Retirement Funds are appropriate for you.

Article Source: huffingtonpost.com