#68 October 25th, 2022
Blake Carroll, CPA
PwC People Team - Manager | Helping Aspiring CPAs Navigate the CPA Exam with Confidence
CPA tip of the week: Remember this quote the next time you’re procrastinating on studying for the CPA:
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started."?—Mark Twain
It seems obvious but you can’t make progress toward passing if you can’t get yourself to sit down, focus, and study. It’s a big task, but don’t let that be an excuse for procrastinating.
It’s easy to think that lasting peace and fulfillment will finally be ours if we add just one more thing to our plate. Then another. And another. Happiness is over the horizon, just do more. But always trying to stuff our lives with more and more things is likely to burn ourselves out and run ourselves into the ground. This article offers advice that the solution is to actually do less, not more. Focus on one priority, not 10, since having multiple priorities is kind of counter intuitive anyway. You can only have one true priority. Focus on the few things that really matter rather than that several not important things that society tells us what we should be doing. Less really is more.?
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What do you do when you fail? Do you have a plan for how to deal with it? Most of us probably don’t, and so as a result we just sulk in our emotions and feel bad about ourselves. I think we’d all agree that is NOT the best way to learn from failure or move on from failure. It is important to allow for some time to feel the feelings and process the emotions, no doubt. Accept how you feel, but then it’s time to figure out WHY you failed. You can’t learn or improve otherwise. Before starting a new plan you can make sure you’ve vented and gotten all the negative feelings off your chest. Then it’s time to begin again, to try again but this time with the knowledge you have gained. It will be much easier to start new action if you have emotionally processed through everything that happened with the earlier failure. If you can’t get motivated maybe you need to improve your plan. The only way you lose is if you give up and quit.?
This article talks about a way to reframe every buying decision we make. Rather than think about how many dollars it cost you could think about how much would you have to work in order to make the amount of money that it cost? We are exchanging time and our lives for whatever we buy. Realizing that and thinking about the finality of time can help us spend money on the things that really matter and cut back where it doesn’t. When you get down to it money is not the currency of life, time is.??
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This article asks the question do we let our feelings take over and control us too often? A bus and its driver are the comparison tool that is used by the author, and it’s a very interesting analogy. If we succumb to strong feelings and emotions and let them dictate our actions, even to our detriment at times, then we are letting them take over driving the bus. When we have strong values that matter more than our feelings, those values will enable us to continue to act in alignment with who we want to be no matter what we are feeling. Think about how much better you feel about yourself when you stuck to what matters to you regardless of what you felt like doing. You have to get out of your feelings and into your values. That’s how you keep the driver in control. If you’ve never actually taking the time to sit down and think about what you value, this article gives you the perfect opportunity to do that.
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This author shares him and his wife’s experience in creating a personal household budget, which can be a role model for others looking to do the same. I like that the first step involves soft reflecting around why do you even want to budget in the first place. What is it you are hoping to get out of it? Is it a specific milestone/amount, more freedom, or something else entirely? If you are making your budget with a partner it is so critical to be on the same page. You need to be on the same team as money will naturally cause stress at times. Try to find ways to make it fun, not feel like a chore. Lastly, you must celebrate your achievements and goals along the way. That outcome or goal you have in mind will not bring ultimate fulfillment, so you need to still be happy and joyful as you work toward it.?
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Given that we’ve just passed the extended tax filing deadline it is timely to read on what we can do today to make tax day next year much easier. Yes, even though it’s almost a full year away. There are great tips like devising a reliable system to track charitable contributions or other itemized deductions you know you’ll have. You can save yourself from having to sift through receipts or credit card statements next spring. It’s also good to potentially adjust withholding. The author tries a unique tactic themselves by trying to think of completing their taxes as a game so it feels more fun. Admittedly one may be tough for some of y’all to do which is perfectly understandable.?
CPA video of the week: weekdays are for learning new material, weekends are for solidifying hard concepts. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gyOIOm3TUGE