Tagged: Idea Lab

Leveraging Your Relationships #2: How To Achieve Better Relationships

Now that you have got the idea what leveraging is I want you to know how you can improve upon your relationships? Most of you would know might these simple steps and may know that it is not a rocket science.

The day when you make your first relationship (the day when you are born) you grab the attention of your mom by crying. This practice of grabbing attention stays but the mode with which it is attained changes with age.You give a smile, and that’s the beginning of a positive relationship. But to sustain it you need and later utilize it, it requires certain efforts.

Some days back I had a target to complete a project, simultaneously; I had to make a presentation, both the tasks were of high priority. I asked a colleague of mine for some help to make the presentation. I just asked her to make a skeleton for it and I would add the rest of the details. But to my surprise she completed the whole presentation for me and I got out with both the targets with flying colors. I didn’t forget to appreciate her in front of the team for the help she provided me.

This was a leverage of my relationship with her. Over the period of time I have developed a very positive rapport with my colleagues that we have a very healthy competition and a great helping team.

I achieved this by following certain simple steps.

Respect: You should be giving respect to the other person; it comes by talking with respect, sticking to time or being punctual with appointments and keeping your commitments. You never know how much it hurts the other person when you don’t keep your commitments.

No disparaging: You should not disparage your friends, colleagues in front of others and even behind them. You never know when your deed reaches your friend/colleague and in what format.

With family members it’s even simpler.
Working closely with family: any assignments or a group activity should be participated with full heart.

Reminding some good old moments: When you are out of touch with a colleague or a friend you can make him remember certain cherished old moments and repeat them more often.

Show interest in future endeavors: Whenever there are discussions in your family/office team show genuine interest and put relevant inputs after researching that subject. This would also help develop your knowledge base.

Help: Try to help from the bottom of your heart as your eyes will surely say whether you are genuinely interested in the tasks/talks or not.

If you don’t want it the straight way to build relationships then you learn to kiss ass from Jon.

Well, I follow a mixture of these tips and I am growing at a decent pace in my organization as well as sharing a beautiful relationship with my friends and family members.

I would pose similar questions to the readers; how well they are with their relationships? and are they in a position to leverage it? And do you think you can add to the list that I have provided above?

Cookingmoney presents a line of thought on the attributes of money, managing debt, some great ideas you can use, and Investing tips. Join the community by subscribing!

Leveraging Your Relationships #1: Defining A Leveraged Relationship

Debt! This is the most commonly word used on this blog; I have used it in the context of how to reduce it, effects of debt and in various other forms. Paying off my debt is my number one priority. Debt is not necessarily as bad as I have mentioned before, by definition it is a leverage that you can utilize to enhance your return on investments, provided that the debt is invested and not consumed.

This post is not about debt but about leverage. You would have seen this word leverage in many financial books and novels. Some authors have written about leveraging money and some have written about leveraging time. These are primarily called as other people’s money (OPM) and other people’s time (OPT). Today I want to tell you something about leveraging our relationships.

Have a facebook, linkedin, myspace, or orkut profile? Then you know the concept of social networking. If you ask a question why these sites are so popular? you would get the answer as A network of like minded people with similar interests can give you further opportunities in your career, or You can remain in touch with those who are close to you but physically distant apart or you may find some other answer for your question. Nonetheless, you have an online social network.

In today’s world when networking is the happening phenomenon, people are resorting to virtual networks too as in Secondlife.com and There.com. If you go to the conceptual level then you will see that you are forming a community and want to share the relationships in those communities for mutual benefits.

Simply put, you want to use your relationships to improve your life.

The social networks are useful in long term but have you ever used or tried to improve your personal relationships that you created throughout your life? You have a debt of X amount, over which you are paying an interest, can’t you use your existing relationships with your close friends and family and borrow some money from them and pay of the debt. You might say that this would be rolling over your debt but this would be done at a lower interest or no interest (if you are in India).

You can leverage the relationships at workplace too. Ask your colleagues to do some minor works when you are in some work pressure or some deadline has to be met. This would provide efficiency in your work and you would be working as a good team player.

Now you would say that this is OPM and OPT but the underlying fact is that this is neither borrowed money (for which you pay interest) nor outsourced work (you pay for service). It’s just getting things done with your strong relationships. Now you cannot borrow huge amounts but you are borrowing relatively smaller amounts based on the strength of your relationship. Same is true with the work that you will ask from your colleagues.

Cookingmoney presents a line of thought on the attributes of money, managing debt, some great ideas you can use, and Investing tips. Join the community by subscribing!

A Five Stage Process of Getting Debt Free

It’s over a year and a half that I am in a bad debt situation and surprisingly it’s nearly one and a half years that I am into a paid job. If I correlate the two then I can conclude that steady income flow increased my debt taking tendency. In other words I will say that the security of getting my paycheck made me to overspend.

When I gave it a thought so as to find the reason for the above I could come up with only one reason I can pay it later when I get my paycheck. If I talk in time frames then I was spending future money into present but the problem with this concept is that you cannot account for future expenses (always) which come as an emergency e.g. bike/car repairs, health problems and many such unforeseen incidents/events.

So what happens next? I have already spent that money in the past and now I am stuck with a high credit card bill with no money to pay for, the result a bad debt and more importantly a way to a debt trap.

The cause: credit card spending! No, the cause here is trying to afford that you can’t just by assuming valid reasons for buying at that moment, but later in debt trap you feel that you could have deferred your purchase. For example, I need a new car, (mental process: the car I am driving is making sound, the mileage is very less and asks for more maintenance so why not replace it, I am getting a good deal with XX dealer). Next day you are with a new car along with a big debt on your head.

Now you are desperate to get out of it but you can’t as you cannot overclock your debt reduction process due to a simple reason, you don’t have any extra source of income and the debt brings interest and other charges with itself which further enhances it.

In this case my mind stopped thinking constructively for alternatives for reducing the debt as it is already preoccupied by the huge debt. The result, time wastage over trivial things and not be able to devise a plan. So what should I do? Well there is a way, which I am following and trying to get out of debt. Continue reading →