Sunday, September 14, 2008

Forwarded Email: Motivation Words for U & Me












Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Job Interview

A businessman was interviewing applicants for the position of Divisional Manager. He devised a simple test to select the most suitable person for the job. He asked each applicant the question, “What is two and two”?

The first interviewee was a journalist. His answer was “twenty-two.”

The second applicant was an engineer. He pulled out a calculator and showed the answer to be between 3.999999 and 4.000001.

The next person was a lawyer. He stated that in the case of Jenkins vs. Commr of Stamp Duties (Qld), two and two was proven to be four.

The last applicant was an accountant. The business man asked him, “How much is two and two?” The accountant got up from his chair, went over to the door, closed it then came back and sat down. He leaned across the desk and said in a low voice, “How much do you want it to be?” He got the job.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Present Value and Future Value

In Financial Reporting(F7), we have to learn many words associated with "Value".

First we have "carrying value", which is the value of an asset stated on the company's balance sheet. This is followed by many more; "fair value", "market value", "current value", "present value", "future value", etc. There might be more because I could not recall all of them right now.

Out of these "value" family members, what confuses me most is "present value" and "future value". Having little background knowledge in investment terms, these two words sometimes confuse me.

Luckily this article, "Understanding the time value of money" from investopedia.com clearly explains the meaning and the use of these two words. So if you are someone like me who has no knowledge of these basic things, read the above article here and you will see light at the end of it.