But for the most part, i sit. Sometimes slouch. Badly.

Then a few years ago i started with regular back pain. I won’t bore you with the details. We have all back pain somewhere between the thoracic and the lumbar. It happens. And so i tried almost everything to correct my bad posture. Surfing helps keep that back flexed “the other way” but you can’t -always- surf. Ok, so you can. But unless you’re really really (really really) good or have rich grandparents, you’re not going to eat nicely (an entirely different problem altogether).

Alexander Technique, sitting on a oversized (and somewhat colorful) swiss ball, taking frequent breaks; all the tips you can throw a Google search at. Even tried changing my desk setup and “sitting correctly”. I followed the diagrams and posters on the walls of the physio to the ‘T’. None of it was that practical and most of it interfered with “me”. The ball actually made my shoulder/back problem worse.

Then I got a Mac and that all changed. Just kidding. It wasn’t the Mac

No, quite accidentally, i came across working out with kettlebells right about the time my brother started working at this gym in cape town: one80. Of course he learned a lot working there and he shared his knowledge and as he settled in, i spent some time working out with one80 here and there. The short times that I have spent in their gym inspired me to do more body-weight and kettlebell workouts. The result: no more back pain!

I can code for hours longer… i can swim way more than i used to… i feel “lighter” on my feet and i’ve had to do some pretty amazing things around the house. For example; fix a curtain rail from a very awkward angle (which, in a thousand words i won’t get right in describing) needless to say when my daughter walked into the room and saw me she said: “Wow, Mommy. What’s Daddy doing?”

No to mention the almost-daily heater-goblet-squat up and down two flights of stairs (once in the morning, once at night). Not that easy when you have a baby-gate to navigate and the gas bottle is full. And of course, playtime is so much more fun when you can squat, press and launch a 13kg toddler for 20 quick reps.

So, yes. If you just know you need to get back in shape -even if it’s just so you can code for longer or survive behind the keyboard for those extra hours- turn your life around, one80 degrees.

It all started with Microsoft awarding me, not once, not twice, but over three times in the last few weeks, USD$10K at a time. Yahoo also followed and awarded me USD$1M. Just randomly. Can you believe my luck? Then, just as I thought I was getting lucky, I got real lucky.

In the space of 2 weeks, I won the Swiss Lottery (USD$100M), Spanish Lottery (EUR30M) and the Canadian Lottery (USD$28M). At least twice each. I kid you not. I have got the emails to prove it. Then my email address got entered into a lucky draw with billions of other people around the world and you’d never guess what happened? I won. 6 times. Twice, I won EUR1M, a couple times I won some other amounts. Whew! You’ll forgive me at this stage for not keeping track of exactly how much- you can imagine my giddiness. Besides, after a while, a bar here, a bar there. Who needs to keep track?

But it didn’t end there. The Nigerian government want to give me more money for compensating any losses I may have incurred because of email scams. Fortunately, I’m way too smart to fall for some pathetic email hoax. The Mali government want to apologise, in cash, for one of their citizens stealing my ATM card and transporting it all the way to their borders only to be apprehended by diligent border patrol. Apparently, the embarassment is too much? And the Saudi government want to use my bank account to transfer gazillions out of the country- a service they are only happy to pay for with 15% of the transfer. What’s 15% of a gazillion in USD converted to ZAR anyway?

On a sad note though, it just so happened that in the same last couple of weeks, a lot of my extended family have been dying. It turns out I have uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends of the family all over the world (whom I’ve never met) just bequeathing their entire estates (often worth more millions) to me alone. I need to chat to my mom about these family members and why we were never invited on ski holidays with them. Nonetheless, wrapping up all theses estates is going to take time and money- but money i have plenty of and I’ll just pay someone else for their time to do it.

The bad news however is that my bank have been sending me a lot of urgent notices to update my details so i can continue banking with them online. At first i ignored the emails- but then my millions weren’t arriving. No surprises there i guess. Afterall, they did say in the email that if i don’t logon with my username and password, all banking activity (online and off) will be suspended. Just shows: read your emails.

Anyways, so now I decided to update my online banking details after the umpteenth urgent final notice from my bank. Woohoo! My first of many millions should start arriving any day now….

And by word i do mean commitments and promises, both explicit and implicit. Explicit as in “I promise i’ll get that done by tomorrow” and implicit as in “Sure, i can do that by end of day”.

So the opposite is that you take your own word so seriously, you check yourself at every turn and make no commitments or promises, either explicitly or implicitly. Your speech changes to “I might have that done by the end day, but no guarantee”. It is a lot better in terms of expectation management, being realistic and does give yourself room to breathe a little; even under-promise somewhat. As a default, neither are great.

On the one side you get to disappoint a lot of people through broken commitments, and on the other side, you get to disappoint yourself because you never get to challenge yourself. It’s one of those situations where neither end of the spectrum really works, and the middle ground is pretty soft. The best is to fold the spectrum back on itself.

Take your word seriously AND make big (not brash) commitments (and then pull it off). Of course, the wisdom and grace to get that perfect won’t come without a bruised ego, but, like i read once, it’s hard(er) to stumble when you’re on your knees. Don’t be scared to commit and give yourself a challenge and then take your commitment seriously enough to see it through.

The ultimate is like saying “I do”. It’s not “I might” or “I could” or “I probably should”. Commit, lock and load and make it work. The fruit is way more than you could ever positively dream of.

In SA, we have an absolute mess of a political cam-pain *sic*; too boring and complicated to ever make it onto an episode of any soapie worth its suds. Politicians just blabber ****; the clamorous dings of empty gongs polluting the space inside my head and on the local internet. And i checked, our news is so boring, and so over-hyped, it doesn’t even make a small headline on bbc, sky or cnn. Let alone the Afghan Times. Apparently, the new Beatles album is more newsworthy than a southern african political party leader getting off the hook for corruption charges- despite threats to bring ‘em all down and not because he’s not guilty. And there are very big differences between “not guilty” and “innocent”. Ah well. Karma’s a bitch, right?

(And i don’t think it’s worth even touching on “the economic situation”- oh my goodness! If there ever was a phrase in danger of losing it’s vitality, meaning, pillow and marshmallow- that one deserves a righteous nomination. *Everyone* is suddenly an economist with an opinion- double you tea eff?)

On the other side of life though, tech is kinda stale. Some tech- not my tech Domains are dying (which is a funny read, btw). There’s Windows 7: the yawn version, is coming up. And more politics around that. Apparently it’s a bit of a boo-haa that you cannot upgrade from XP to 7. Shame.

But from all that fuss, i’ve learned one very important lesson: the media trashes your mind (not actively but by consequence) and robs you of your vibe- so be careful of what you fill yourself up with. They have no market in talking about the really cool things that are happening. And there’s also too much of that happening all over the world right now… but that too, it seems, remains underneath the radar.

Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee*. I keem peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Maw Juice peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Maw peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Look. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Juice peas. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Up. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Baba. Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee. Maw?

Gotta love it!

* Mommeedaddeemommeedaddeemommeedaddee is the common name bestowed upon both the parents by their 2-yr old and references whomever the toddler so choose at the time it is spoken.

And so on… Well, maybe true but maybe not true at all. Regardless of how you feel about it, there are times when it’s very practical, almost *fun*, to know just a little about it. And you don’t need first year university maths to work some things out.

Butlers Pizza (arguably the best pizza in Cape Town) have a deal where you can buy 2 large pizzas or get a 3 for the price of 2- for roughly the same price if you get 3 mediums. Which is more pizza? Which is better value for money? And more serious questions like: how much cold pizza will i have left over for lunch/breakfast tomorrow?

A medium is 26cm, a large, 32cm in diameter. Assuming the bases and toppings are all mostly equal, you can simplify your calculations to work on the surface area of pizza presented. And given pizzas are more or less round, you use the formula for the area of a circle (π r²). Once you’ve established the area for a medium, multiply the result by 3 to get a combined pizza surface area. For the larges, repeat the exercise and multiply by 2.

You can judge at this stage which deal is going to give you more pizza. But what about best value? Well, take the total amount of pizza and divide it by the cost. Your answer is pizza/rand. So go for the deal that has the highest number. So the “Big Deal” will cost you 98.95, the 3 pizzas will cost you 2×49.95 (assuming simplest case) . You should know pretty soon which you want: more pizza or best value for money?

Of course, it gets so-called “complicated” when you start adding extra toppings and wheat-free bases. But all those “complications” are just little additions to the same steps. It’s actually not complicated at all- it’s methodical. And all the information is there, you just need a simple calculator.

Of course, some might say: why bother? Indeed. Why bother at all? Well, why not? It’ll take you less than 5 minutes to arrive at an answer which maximises your utility- which is economic speak for: get the best bang for buck. And especially when it’s close to the end of the month. But there’s also a deeper truth which you start to uncover… just how “special” is a special really? And even more grave, what’s breakfast going to be like?

So if you ever end up having to plan something like this (not that you can always consciously time it so well) then i have a a tip for you…

Make sure you got a loving, enduring and patient wife backing you up and supporting you all the way. It makes it seem so easy. Thanks, Lolly! You simply rock! Your honorary degree is almost there

Seriously. Jack was due just after the first exam, Macro Economics. So we figured it’d be alright ‘cos we’d have two weeks before starting to prep for the next two to settle in. Then Jack decided… “Neh. Too warm and cosy in here, thanks. Think i’ll stay a little while longer.”

8 days later (over due), little Jack says: “Hello, world!” That was one week before my last two exams: Financial Modeling and my major: Applied Mathematics. Oops = MC^2?

Needless to say, we -and i do mean “we”- decided to forge on and today, on my last exam, as soon as the invigilator said: “Pens down. Your time is up.” a chorus of angels hauled out the trumpets and started singing “Hallelujah!”. Shew!

Until next year…

**DISCLAIMER: I’m NOT a financial advisor; am not pretending to be one; and certainly not qualified to be one. But i can kinda do the numbers, so this looking at it purely from a mathematical perspective.

When it’s not really the “best” advice is when you are servicing other debt, at higher interest rates. Then the numbers say: kill that debt first, and _then_ look at the mortgage. So if you’re servicing a credit card, overdraft or vehicle finance (which can typically be higher than prime) and your mortgage is sub-prime, service the higher first.

But more personally, i recently faced the opportunity of trading in my vehicle for a newer one (which would have been nice) and i was figuring out what to do with the trade-in amount and work out where it would best pay dividends. On an aside, i’m of the opinion that buying a vehicle is NOT a financially smart move at all- no matter how you try slice the numbers. You will always lose (and i’m not referring to collectors’ classics). So look after your car- treat it nice, drive nice, service it regularly so you can leave it in your will. After all, it’s __just__ a car, right

So down to the maths… Note: the numbers have been changed slightly to protect the prudent.
New car: R150k at 15.5% APR over 60 months.
Existing debt: R640k mortgage (±30 months into the schedule) at 14% APR over 20 years.
Trade in on car: R50k. What to do with the R50k? A) Plough it into the bond. B) Use 100% of it as a down payment on new car. A or B, what do you do? The “best” advice i received was plough into the bond and save thousands in interest on the bond! Uhuh. That’s half the truth.

As a down payment on the new car, I reduce the repayments from R3.6K to R2.4K, and end up saving, in effect, R44k in interest over the term. Not bad, not great.
In the bond, i reduce the interest _over the same term_ by R33K. Worse. But not a surprise. And that’s the important part here: the same term. 60 months. You see, over the remainder term of the mortgage, that advance payment will save you A LOT! But now you’re comparing a value of money of two different terms: 60 months versus N years on the mortgage, so don’t be too surprised if you draw bogus conclusions. Afterall, once you’ve finished paying off the car, you’re R3.6k deeper in the pocket which you can then plough into the mortgage anyway.

So, on face value, it’s more favourable, over the same term, to service the vehicle as quick as possible and then see to the lower interest obligations. But there are better options… which is the other half of the truth: discipline.

Add in some fiscal discipline into the mix, and suddenly your options are wild. For example…

Put down the down payment on the car, saving an extra R1.2k in repayments each month on the car, but then put the saving into the mortgage over the same term. Suddenly you start to save R64K in interest. Mmmm… Or…

And then there’s this. Which really was the best option (Thanks, A)…

Take your old car for a shmancy valet at about R200, pretend it’s new and “pay for it” anyway at R3.6k per month. Now you’re saving close to double your previous best!

The bottom line is; if you’re in the market for a car and can afford X, but you’re servicing other debt, service that debt first- forget about the car*. Unless it’s an absolutely necessity (and looking better than the Jones’ is not a necessity- i checked) you probably don’t need it.

*Forgetting about the car, probably anywhere in the world, is really hard to do though. In South Africa, households spend a disproportionate amount of their disposable income on vehicle financing, which says a lot about how we feel about our cars. Somehow, cars have so (too) much appeal. So much so that having 4 reliable wheels is just never enough. There’s always going to be something really “cool” about a car that makes you just wanna have it. And the price tag is just irritating. Can you say X-Trail… or Fortuner?