Forwarded Email: Motivation Words for U & Me

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.

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.

If you are studying ACCA F5, ...

In June 2008 sittings, F5 was the one with the lowest passing rate among all fundamental level papers. The current passing rate of 28% is even lower than that of the previous sitting. With that in mind, students should realize that this particular paper demands quite a lot of efforts.

You can compare the passing rates of F5 with other papers in the following table.

There are a few things I would like to highlight if you are going to attempt F5 in this coming exam.

First of all, the thorough understanding of the topics under the syllabus is critical. In addition to textbooks and exam kits, you may read through online articles published on Student Accountant. For your reference, I list them down in the following.

1. Costing basics for the 21st century
2. Just-in-time operations and backflush accounting
3. The ABC of overheads
4. Relevant costs for decisions
5. Relevant costs for decisions Part 2: identifying relevant costs
6. Beyond Budgeting
7. Variance analysis
8. Variance analysis - part 1
9. Standard costs - an effective tool for business?
10. Standard costing and fixed and flexed budgets
11. Performance Management
12. The balance scorecard

These articles help improve your level of understanding on the subject matters.

Another thing is that, in the exam hall, time manageement is crucial although this is so not just for this paper. I didn't have enought time to complete the whole paper on jun 2008 sitting. About 30 marks of the paper was left answered although this is partly due to my lack of exam practice.

These are just some minor tips I could share with you as a student who attempted F5 in the last sitting. Hopefully these bits of information plus your hard work guarantee a pass for you in F5.

Blog Intro

Let me introduce to you two blogs in this post.

The first is focused on accounting and ACCA related stuff. I came across this site while making a Google search about some ACCA topics.

The second is mainly on Insurance, finance and current affairs in Singapore. The blog owner is a retiree from NTUC Income who completed 30 years as a Chief Executive.

Good Day