Today is the first official day of summer as well as Father’s Day. So it’s entirely appropriate that parents across the country are busy lining up activities to keep their kids busy while they’re out of school.
Many parents find it a juggling act to pay for the additional expenses. According to a recent survey TD conducted – 71% of Canadian parents with children under the age of 18 who incur additional costs for their child during the summer spend up to $999 per child and half (51%) find budgeting for these additional summer costs stressful.
To help manage the financial heat wave that summer may bring, here are five quick tips for parents: Continue Reading…
Saturday featured Eternal Truth #4: Buy a Home and Pay if Off as Soon as Possible. At least that was my original headline: you can find it online under the title Eternal Truth #4: Don’t be a Renter.
In my book, Findependence Day, this truth is expressed as “The foundation of financial independence is a paid-for home.”
Of course, in cities like Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco and several other California cities, critics of sky-high housing prices continue to argue that renting and putting the difference in the stock market may make more sense. In Friday’s Financial Post, just this argument was made in no uncertain terms: You’d have to be crazy to buy real estate.
I’m not sure I’d be buying at these prices today but am glad we bought a starter home in 1988. It didn’t stop us from building a healthy stock portfolio as well: I don’t see home ownership and investing as mutually exclusive propositions. Continue Reading…
Are the Baby Boomers part of the Ageless Generation?
Many of us seem to act as if that were the case but there’s little doubt most of us feel younger than we appear. To me, the poster child for this ageless generation is Jane Fonda, whose famous workout videos appear to have held her in good stead in her personal twilight career.
(Technically, since she was born in 1937, Jane Fonda is not a post-war baby boomer but her spirit certainly seems to epitomize the zeitgeist of the generation that came soon after her).
If you get Netflix check out the recently released series Grace & Frankie, where Fonda plays a 70-year old recent divorcee: even though she herself is actually 77! Equally vibrant are her aging costars: Lilly Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston (best known as the prosecutor on Law & Order). Tomlin is 75 and the two male co-stars are 74.
Medical advances will transform the global economy
Amazon.com
The Ageless Generationalso happens to be the title of a recent (2013) book by Dr. Alex Zhavornonkov, director of the Biogerontology Research Foundation and founder of the International Aging Research Portfolio. It’s one of about a dozen books I read in recent months in preparation for a talk on Longevity that I gave on Monday to the National Elder Planning Issues Conference in Niagara Falls.
The book’s subtitle summarizes the gist of it: How advances in biomedicine will transform the global economy. Since the focus is on the United States, it will come as no surprise that Zhavornonkov believes breakthroughs in extending Longevity can only make a shaky Social Security and Medicare system that much more fragile in the United States, and by extension their equivalent programs in other advanced nations.
When I worked in the hospitality industry our hotel group placed a large emphasis on the profitability of its restaurants and catering departments. Considerable effort was made to drive overall food costs down while at the same time creating a sales culture that pushed the highest margin items in order to boost revenue.
One of the most effective ways to do this was through a process called menu engineering. Before hitting it big by turning around struggling nightclubs in the reality show Bar Rescue, Jon Taffer was a highly sought-after speaker and consultant in the hospitality industry. At the top of Taffer’s legendary revenue growth plan for restaurants and bars is the concept of menu engineering. Here’s how it works:
Restaurant owners divide their menu items into four main categories:
Stars – Stars are extremely popular and have a high contribution margin. Ideally Stars should be your flagship or signature menu items.
Plow horses – Plow horses are high in popularity but low in contribution margin. Plow horse menu items sell well, but don’t significantly increase profit.
Puzzles – Puzzles are generally low in popularity and high in contribution margin. Puzzle dishes are difficult to sell but have a high profit margin.
Dogs – Dogs are low in popularity and low in contribution margin. They are difficult to sell and produce little profit when they do sell.
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