Personal Financial Management Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Personal Financial Management - Research Paper Example Following are my observations while reviewing the plan. During the first week while I was reviewing the expenses, it was an eye opening situation that the major spending were on account of food stuff, clothing and spending leisure time. The total expenses were $1,312/- excluding my credit card payments, rental payments and groceries. I then thought for remedial measures to curtail my expenditure and sort out the problem with the fact that if I start cooking myself, search for the discounted items and spend less to spent leisure and by doing this I can not only manage my finances, live my life accordingly but also save something for the rainy day. While reviewing the data of the second week I noted that I certainly curtail my expenses on food stuff by 33% and the overall expenses reduced from $1,312/- to $ 850/- in second week excluding my house rent and credit card payments which shows betterment and my interest towards savings, but still the major expenses were made on account of gr oceries where I spent $223.83/- and for spending leisure I spent $118.81. I realized that the daily log is helping me in managing my finances and I immediately checked my spending and realized that I must engage myself instead in some sports activities for spending leisure time rather to go to the massage parlor or some other places where I spend much more than sports and for the prosperous future I have to develop future goals and by realizing the importance of savings, I immediately create three stages of my future goals through which I can live a prosperous, happy and comfortable life and the stages are: Short Term Goals, Intermediate Term Goal and Long Term Goal. Short Term Goals are those that can be achieved within a year and can increase my future saving. For e.g. If I purchase a car it will save my transportation cost and the amount which I am expensing out every week will be saved. Intermediate Term Goals are those that can be achieved with in the period of 2 to 5 years and includes things that will certainly increase my savings. For e.g. If I purchase house it will be a onetime investment but it will save my monthly mortgage installment on which I have to pay interest. Long Term Goals are those that can be achieved after six years with no upper limit like my retirement plan which has no upper limit and more I save money during my employment, happier I will live my life after retirement. While selecting the amount which is to be expensed out on weekly basis in order to achieved the target, I set the priorities and assign education the highest priority with the weekly expense of $170/- and the total expense were of $420/- per week accumulating $1,818/- per month. My Intermediate Goals are several including purchase of house, starting own business, education and buy a new car. For this purpose after thorough discussions with my friends, I have once again given highest priority to the education with the expense amount of $350/-per week accumulating $18,2 00 per year and by doing this much saving I will be able to achieve the college funds for my children by the end of 2016 i.e. in 3 ? years. My final goal is to save something for myself which can be used in case of need and this the financial plan helps me lot and by the help of the plan, I not only opted a semi retirement plan but also plan to save some thing for the cruise which I always aiming for and for the accomplishment of both the aims I have started saving $5/- per week for the cruise and $250/- per week for

Socrates, Philosophy Essay Example for Free

Socrates, Philosophy Essay ?Socrates was a Greek philosopher, who is often considered to be the father of Western philosophy, and a key figure in the development of Western civilisation. The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. Socrates Republic 38c He left no actual writing so impressions of Socrates have come primarily from the writings of his student, Plato. There are also other contributions from Xenophon and a contemporary playwright Aristophanes. It is possible that Plato embellished the legacy of Socrates by making him appear the most noble philosopher; an ideal to be cherished and followed. The extent of this embellishment is hard to quantify, but the life of Socrates remains a great inspiration to many. Socrates married Xanthippe and together they had three children. Tradition suggests that Xanthippe was argumentative and hard to please, with Socrates the model of philosophic calm. Aristotle came to Athens as a teenager and studied with Plato for 17 years. After Plato’s death in 347 BCE, he traveled widely and ended up in Macedonia where he served as the private tutor of Alexander the Great. In 335 he returned to Athens and founded his own school, called the Lyceum. He was forced to leave in 323 because the death of Alexander allowed free reign to anti-Macedoninan sentiment and Aristotle was too close to the conqueror to dare stick around. Plato was probably born in 427 BC, and died around 347 BC, aged about 80. But the earlier extant biographies of him we may read have been written hundreds of years after his death : that of Apuleius, sometime during the second century AD, and that of Diogenes L? rtius, in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, no earlier than the third century AD. And these bear very little resemblance with what we expect from a biography nowadays. To make things worse, Plato almost never talks about himself in his dialogues (he does so only twice, once in the Apology and once in the Ph? do, each time in connection with the trial and death of Socrates). But, if we accept the authenticity of the VIIth Letter (which I do), we have there the closest thing to an autobiography we can dream of owing to the scarcity of our sources, though quite limited in scope despite its late date in Platos life (it could not have been written before Dions assassination in 354 BC, to which it refers, that is, at a time Plato was over 70).

Pursuit of Happiness in Bridget Carpenter’s Up Essay -- Analysis, Econ

In the few scenes of Up the audience is introduced to Walter’s obsession with his inventions which would lead to him becoming increasingly frustrated. Notwithstanding that his ambitions would be reduced due to the realty issues he faces. As the play continues, the audience is then introduced to Petit, who re-installs happiness into Walter’s life through conversations which embody work which they are most passionate about. Petit’s conservations would in turn make Walter feel determined and free again to do his inventions. In Relational Goods, Sociability, and Happiness authors Leonardo Becchetti, Alessandra Pelloni, and Fiammetta Rossetti state that â€Å"relational goods turn out to have significant and positive effects on self-declared life satisfaction† (344). By relational goods one can claim that the affective or expressive, non-instrumental, side of interpersonal relationships. In Happiness: a Revolution in Economics author Bruno S. Frey claims that individuals derive utility from being self-employed because it gives them a higher measure of self-determination and freedom. From reading those to theories, we can claim that Petit and Walter’s relationship as a related good and it stimulates Walter self determination to invest in his inventions, which satisfies him in his life work. If people invested in relational goods then it will stimulate their companionship, emotional support, and social approval. In Relational Goods, Sociability, and Happiness Becchetti, Pelloni, and Rossetti claim that â€Å"the impact on life satisfaction of a wider set of non-instrumental social activities from volunteering, to spending time with friends, attending social gatherings and cultural and sports events† (344). However, Becchetti Pelloni, and Ross... ...urself down. Be free!† (Carpenter 10). A person does not have to assume that being self-employed is the only option to be exultant in life. One can say that the moral arguments of Frey, Becchetti, Pelloni, and Rossetti are that human civilization should invest pursuing their ambitions. They urge that money or the total amount of income a person makes should not be a factor on happiness. Civilization would be a more contented organization if we are self-determined to find true satisfaction in life. Works Cited Becchetti, Leonardo, Alessandra Pelloni, and Fiammetta Rossetti. "Relational Goods, Sociability, And Happiness." Kyklos 61.3 (2008): 343-363. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Dec. 2011. Carpenter, Bridget. Up. New York: Samuel French, 2009. Print Frey, Bruno S. Happiness: A Revolution in Economics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008. Print.

Hamlet’s Love for Ophelia

Hamlet is noted as being one of Shakespearean most puzzling and darkest plays. While the play has a concise story, there are numerous doubts relating to different issues behind the plot. One issue that is never truly resolved deals with the true feelings of Prince Hamlet, and whether he in fact loves Aphelia. The word love is extremely commanding, and the concept of love may be hard to grasp when one of the lovers remains undecided. In Act Ill, Scene 1, Hamlet claims to have lovedAphelia; however, four lines later, he states that he does not love her anymore. This makes it difficult to decipher when Hamlet is truly in love, as his feeling towards Aphelia regularly change. This confusing cycle is due to Hamlet's â€Å"madness†, and is further influenced by Hamlet constantly being pushed to his limits due to anguish and sorrow. Hamlet is portrayed as an unconventional lover, which explains why he sends mixed messages that confuse Aphelia, making her question whether or not his f eelings for her are true.Two people who are in love would not want to risk the chance of hurting one another because to them it is not worth it. Hamlet does not think in this manner, which raises the question of whether the love between them is strong enough to have lasted through the chaos and difficulty in Hamlet's life. It is true that Hamlet's love for Aphelia is debatable; however, when analyzing the â€Å"go thy ways to a nunnery† interaction, the dispute with Alerter, and Hamlet's twisted affection towards Aphelia, one can see that his love is authentic.

Lifes as a House Outline Essay

Erikson’s Psychosocial theory – How has the person matured? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Where is he/she on the hierarchy? Albert Ellis’ REBT – What irrational beliefs does the character display? Stress Management – What techniques are used to manage stress? Freud’s Defense Mechanisms – Identify any defense mechanisms being applied to the character’s life. Communication strategies – Does the character use I messages, understanding, probing, etc. Family systems – rules of healthy and unhealthy families – how are they applied here? Addiction – Do you see any addictive qualities? Love and Relationships – How is love expressed? What would you say about the character’s relationships with others? What strategies did the character use? What does the movie illustrate about the importance of family across the generations? What does the move illustrate about healthy and unhealthy family systems? How can this film illustrate the phenomenological/humanistic principle that life has more meaning because it must end? discuss certain themes, concepts and issues and relate them to our studies in psychology. Pick a character in the movie and tell how this particular person learned (for better or worse) new behaviors and/or cognition. Use their experiences, both past and present and their relationships (family, personal, friends) with other people, to convey what made them learn and/or change. Discussion should include topics such as: Developmental stages of life, Conditioning, Motivation, Emotions, Personality, Psychological Disorders He was Goth and suicidal†¦ he was reckless with drugs and sex. He tried to hang himself in the closet. He was disrespectful to his family. But it’s hard to pinpoint what exact disorder he had. I would simply say depression. Possibly bipolar because there were times when he was okay in the movie and then he would go into a rage of reckless behavior. Psychological focus areas: mid-age and adolescent re-invention in response to grief / loss; parenting adolescents; facing death and working out what kind of a legacy to leave Sam goes through new changes in behavior. When the movie begun Sam was a rebellious young teen with negative feelings toward his father. Throughout the plot of the movie Sam goes through experiences with his father as they spend time together over the summer, which brings them closer together and allows them to have a better relationship. Sam’s acting out and unwanted actions were results of his parents divorce and not having a healthy relationship with his father. In Psychology, the basic concept of Nature vs. Nurture is said to Influence Development. Nature, according to Laura A. King (2010), includes â€Å"the individual’s biological inheritance, especially his or her genes† (p. 64). Nurture involves a persons environment and experiences. In her book King (2010) also states â€Å"early experiences are important contributors to development† (p. 266). In the movie you could easily understand the nurture side of Sam’s behavior. Knowing and hearing about what kind of people Sam hangs out with we can kind of understand why he dresses a certain way and why he partakes in certain activities, such as drugs. The people he hangs out with leads us back again to the divorce. Sam chooses to hang out with others like him who fell pain inside. His behaviors are a cry for help. In the movie Sam says â€Å"I like how it feels not to feel†. He does drugs to forget his problems and not feel pain. The emotions that young kids and teens go through when parents get a divorce usually include depression, anger, sadness, and the feeling that maybe they could have done something to have made the situation better. While some children and teens choose to hide their feelings, Sam didn’t. He acted out with disrespect and constant anger.

The rise of Ngo Dinh Diem essays

The rise of Ngo Dinh Diem essays The story of the Vietnam conflict is one that will forever mark an important part of the world's history. The Vietnam conflict divided the world firmly into two camps, supporters of the south and supporters of the north. Ngo Dinh Diem was the president of South Vietnam for several years. During his reign the United States and other nation voiced strong opinions about his rise to power, and the actions he took once he was president. Diem spent his life preparing for that power, and the historical events just before he took over helped cement his ability to install himself as leader, to a nation, that would go down in history as one of the most stubborn and strong nations on earth. His rise to power cumulated in a United States sanctioned overthrow of then Emperor Bao Dai in 1955[1]. He then spent almost a decade at the helm of the nation while practicing oppressive and demanding politics. He cancelled democratic elections to insure that the competition would not be voted in. He was assassinated in 1963[2]. For one to understand how he became as powerful as he did and what allowed him to over through an in place regime one must understand the events that led to his rise in power. It is important to understand the life of Ngo Dinh Diem so that one can begin to understand what drove him to the power he Diem was born in a city called Hue which was the original capital of the Ngyuen Dynasty Vietnam. When he grew into a young man he became a civil servant in the Emperor government of Bao Dai[4]. He was a strong nationalist and was said to speak out as an anti communist throughout his initial adult life. Diem was not a stranger...

How To Use Email Marketing For Lead Conversion

How To Use Email Marketing For Lead Conversion Besides social media, email marketing is the first thing that I tell anyone to do when it comes to online marketing. To succeed online, you absolutely must be using email effectively. The evidence doesnt lie. In a 2012 survey conducted by McKinsey Company, they found  that for e-commerce companies e-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media- nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined. Woah! E-mail is still a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media. While you may not be running an e-commerce company yourself, the implications seem to be well accepted across  the industry. Social media scientist Dan Zarrella of Hubspot came to a similar conclusion in research that he completed in 2012. Email converts well, and  is a key part of the customer acquisition process. Conversion rate scores as compiled by Hubspot. If youre not using email marketing, you could be missing out on huge potential for your company or blog. More than that, if you arent using email to convert readers into paying customers – YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. You might be leaving sales on the table! Here at , we have nearly 20,000  email subscribers that continually bring in new customers to our service. We like to think about it as a slow and steady drip. We keep sending out great content, and our readers  keep coming to us for help with their scheduling and social media needs. Its a great fit, and one that works because our email marketing is focused on building trust with our audience. So, how can you create an email program that converts for your own brand or business? Its actually not that hard if you are focused on the right things. Here are the top 5 ways that you can embrace email and turn your email marketing program into a lead conversion machine. Heres How To  Turn Your Email Marketing Into A Lead Conversion Machine #1. Designate A Clear Call To Action On Your Blog The first  lesson about creating an effective   email marketing program is getting good at collecting email addresses. There are many ways to go about this, and several plugins that you can start using right now to jump start your lead collection process, but the point is that you need to be making a concentrated effort on collecting emails or else your marketing list will never actually materialize. Mention.com offers a great call to action when you visit their blog. It is also important to make sure that your blog is properly configured to drive visitors to the lead collection option. This means reducing you sidebar clutter, and continuously driving your reader to a lead collection form. This is about creating a simpler blog layout. Email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than social media. For example, on the blog there are only three things you can do once visiting a page. You can read another blog post, learn about itself, or signup to recieve our email-based content. It is as simple as that. I always say that each page on your website should really be about having your readers complete one thing. At , we tend to make that one thing an email newsletter conversion. You will easily see that it is one of the  most prominent things on our page. #2. Keep Your Calls To Action Strong If youve ever worked in sales, youve heard the phrase always be closing. While it may be tacky, it certainly isnt wrong. Not only do you need to be creating opportunities for your customers to convert (by including lead collection points), but you also need to be positioning your copy in a way that specifically asks them to subscribe. While it technically does its job, its not quite a call to action. I cant tell you how many times Ive seen a bland call to action like this one above. Im sorry folks, but please join my email list just isnt going to do it for many people. Whats in it for them? Why should they? Take a look at a few examples of people doing it right. What do you see? They all identify a clear benefit that the reader will receive when they subscribe. They all offer a clear command or directive  such as subscribe now. This isnt a suggestion, it is a command. Many of them offer the reader social proof and provide good reasons for them to consider subscribing or at least taking the offer seriously. The point is that you cant  forget to be a pitch man  and downright ask for the sale on occasion. It may sound  tacky, but it certainly doesnt have to be implemented that way. #3. Send Email More Often Than You Think You Should Many marketers and bloggers like yourself instinctively shutter at the idea of sending more email, but  you  can probably send a whole lot more than you think. In a recent study, Hubspot found that there was essentially no correlation between both unsubscribes and click-through rates and the frequency of email being sent. There is almost no correlation between send frequency and click through rates. There is little correlation between the number of times you send your email and the number of unsubscribes you will receive. What they actually found was that if your email list is willing to put up with 5-10 emails per month, they are probably just as likely to put up with 15 or 20. From Hubspot: The more emails that were sent to the lists in my dataset, the fewer people unsubscribed. This is probably because if you’re sending very  infrequently, it can be easy to forget why I joined your list in the first place, but if  you’re sending regularly, I remember your newsletter.   #4. Make Your Email Something That People Actually Want To Read Never underestimate the importance of reader value. Everything that you do in marketing should offer your readers value. I like to think of it in terms of what you are trading them for their time. What you are  giving your readers in exchange for their time spent with your marketing. Social media consultant Jay Baer describes it another way as marketing so good that they would be willing to pay for it. Shoot for [Email] Marketing so good that your readers  would be willing to pay for it! #ContentNo matter how you describe it, you dont have an easy job ahead of you, your readers want it all. They want helpful content, they want it free, and they want it at a time when its convenient  for them. Who are you to let them down? One of the most common mistakes I see companies make is creating email-based content that is all about them. Wrong! What are your readers getting in exchange for their time? We always try to pack our emails with helpful information that our readers will appreciate. This is why at , we brand our email marketing around the theme of our Content Marketing Update. This weekly email includes helpful content from our blog and some of the best articles around the web. It is usually chock full of great tips and almost always worth the time and the price for admission. #5. Experiment With Your Email Template/Headline/Send Times One great way to continually improve your email marketing is to continually experiment with how and when you are sending it. At , there are a few ways that we do this. A/B  Test Your Subject Lines Honesty, this one is so easy that you should be doing it with every email that you send. Each time we send an email here at , we make sure to test our subject line using the automated A/B testing tool built into our email software (Campaign Monitor). This tool allows us to pre-send our email to a few hundred people with a couple different subject line options. Once a clear winner is found (and there almost always is one), our email tool will send the winning subject line to remaining portion of our list. After doing this for months, we were even able to pullout some key data points and define some email subject line best practices. Try  A New Design (Or None At All) Another great way to improve your email  marketing is to continually adjust your email template. Using the A/B testing tool build into Campaign Monitor and many other email marketing programs, you should be able to easily evaluate the effectiveness of one template over another. Many companies (including itself) have found that sometimes email is best sent without a design template at all. Each week we send thousands of emails using a variety of well-designed email templates and plain text versions. The results usually show us that plain-text emails (or emails that look like plain text) constantly drive higher click-through rates than those with more design. Of course, results may vary. Take this with a grain of salt, and always test your own results. Experiment With Different Send Times In his slide deck The Science of Email Marketing social media scientist Dan Zarrella  dug up a ton of fascinating data about when to send email. For example, he found that email click-through rates tended to be  almost twice as high  on Saturdays and Sundays – a slap in the face to  the traditional  idea that marketing only takes place on weekdays. Email sent on Saturday and Sunday get more clicks. He also found that emails sent  earlier in the morning tended to get more clicks as well. The results may not apply to everyone, but it is very good food for thought. 6a.m. just might be the best time to send an email if you want someone to actually read it. The point here is that you should never be satisfied with the status-quo, even if it is yours. Always be testing your marketing so that you can get the best results.