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

Exam Results

Yesterday I was filled with excitement and anxiety expecting ACCA exam results. I was anxious because I was convinced that I will fail F5 after coming out from exam hall with approximately 30 marks left answered. In the end, around 12:15pm Singapore time, the exam results were out and i was released to learn that I did not fail any papers. I was happy that I cleared both F4 and F5 in one time while, at the same time, I was equally sad that some friends did not get through certain papers. I sincerely sympatize with them as it's tough to muster up enough spirit to try another round again. It reminds me of a quote by Sir Winston Churchill.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal."

For me, this quote is useful in a time when we are emotionally down.

Anyway whether we pass or we fail, we got to try to move on and get geared up ourselves for the next round. As Churchill continued to say, it's the courage to continue that counts.

Forwarded Email: Marriage

Forwarded Email: Knowledge

Scrap Value in Reducing Balance Method

The topic in this post is related to ACCA F7 Financial Reporting subject. I will try to highlight a concept which is sometimes overlooked by students with respects to a depreciation method called reducing balance method.

What is Reducing Balance Method?

We all know that the reducing balance is a depreciation method which is used as an alternative to the commonly used straight line method. This method assumes that an asset loses more value during the earlier years of its life. Consequently, a depreciation rate (%) for reducing value is used, resulting in less value being lost each year. It is often used for tax purposes, but less often in published accounts.

What is often overlooked?

Although students have the understanding of the method and know how to use this method to depreciate a certain fixed asset, what is often overlooked is whether this method takes into account of the scrap value of the asset. For example, if a reducing balance of 25% is used to depreciate an asset, some students are often unsure if this 25% considers the scrap value(the residual value) of the asset at the end of its life.

The Fact

The fact is that this 25% is derived after taking into consideration of the scrap value. Let's take an example. The cost of the asset is $20,000. The scrap value is 2,000. Life is 8 years. If we input the given information in the following formula, we will get to the answer of 25% reducing balance.

1 - n √(s/c) ,

where

n is life,
s is scrap value,
c is cost.

25% is derived after taking account of the scrap value $2,000. If the scrap value is zero, the depreciation will be 100% which will never reduce the cost of the asset. Thus what is clear is that scrap value is critical in deriving the reducing balance percentage and that without the scrap value, the method will be very unlikely to be used.

Conclusion

The reducing balance method always uses the scrap value.

99 Years Lease

Does this question ever cross your mind before?

"What is the legal position of HDB owners in Singapore after the lease of 99 has run out?"

The fact is that real property in Singapore is classified as leasehold or freehold which applies to both landed and non-landed properties. Freehold property is held by the owner in perpetuity (unless another MRT line is extended to your neighborhood and your property has to make way for it). Leasehold properties typically run for 99 years but may also extend for up to 999 years.

Let's assume that either 99 years or 999 years period is running out tomorrow. What is going happen to the owners? Are they supposed to quietly pack their things and move out quickly? Will the government of Singapore enforce its rights and ask the owners to move out immediately? Is there any binding legal case in a Singapore court which is related to this enforcement before?

Although it can be said that Singapore Government retains the right to take over the property on the expiry of the lease period, chances are that most properties are likely to be extended or renewed so that Singaporeans can continue to live there. In fact there is no legal case that is tested on this topic yet and thus nobody is certain about this whole situation. Since Singapore gained Independence about half a century ago, this issue is still in the grey area. Let's watch the story unfold over the times.

Friday Vs Monday

Politician and accountant

It is easy for a beggar to tell the difference between a politician and an accountant. If he asks a man for money for a meal saying that he hasn't eaten all day and the man replies, "Sorry, no. But things will be better for you tomorrow" - that man must be a politician.

If the beggar asks the same question and the man replies, "Sorry, no. But I am interested to know how your financial situation compares with the same period last month" - that man must be an accountant.

Note: The source is here.

Friendship

Ah Beng

Ah Beng bought a new mobile.
He sent a message to everyone from his Phone Book & said,
'My Mobile No. Has changed.
Earlier it was Nokia 3310. Now it is 6610'

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Ah Beng : I am a Proud, coz my son is in Medical College.
Friend: Really, what is he studying.
Ah Beng: No, he is not studying, they are Studying him.

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Ah Beng : Doctor, in my dreams, I play football every night.
DR: Take this tablet, you will be ok.
Ah Beng : Can I take tomorrow, tonight is final game.

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Ah Beng : If I die, will u remarry?
Wife: No! I'll stay with my sister. But if I die will u remarry?
Ah Beng : No, I'll also stay with your sister.

=============================
Ah Beng : People consider me as a 'GOD'
Wife: How do you know??
Ah Beng : When I went to the Park today, everybody said, Oh, GOD! You have come again.

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Ah Beng complained to the police: "Sir, all items are missing,
except the TV in my house."
Police: "Why, the thief did not take TV?"
Ah Beng : 'I was watching TV news."

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Ah Beng comes back to his car & find a note saying "Parking Fine"
He Writes a note and sticks it to a pole, "Thanks for compliment."

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How do you recognize Ah Beng in School?
He is the one who erases the notes from the book when the teacher erases the board.

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Once Ah Beng was walking he had a glove on one hand and not on other.
So the man asked him why he did so. He replied that the weather forecast announced that on one hand it would be cold and on the other hand it would be hot.

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Ah Beng in a bar and his cellular phone rings. He picks it up and
Says 'Hello, how did you know I was here?'

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Ah Beng : Why are all these people running?
Man - This is a race, the winner will get the cup
Ah Beng - If only the winner will get the cup, why others running?

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Teacher: 'I killed a person' convert this sentence into future tense
Ah Beng : The future tense is 'you will go to jail'

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Ah Beng told his servant: 'Go and water the plants!'
Servant: 'It's already raining.'
Ah Beng : 'So what? Take an umbrella and go.'

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Net Share

It has been one of my habits that I will just right-click a folder and share it in the event that one of my colleagues need the documents inside that folder. Over the years (or months, to be more precise), I would end up sharing a number of folders from my PC.

It happened that I wanted to unshare those folders this morning for no apparent reason, I manually searched and unshared them in my windows XP PC. Guess What? The list of sharing folders kept getting fewer and fewer as I removed them from sharing one by one. But I end up with three folders still displaying in my list of share folders in the network but I could not remember the location of those folders so that I could de-share(not sure there exists such a word though) them. I made a search in my PC for a few minutes but no success. Fortunately one of my colleagues came to my rescue. :D

His way is easy.

Just click on Start Menu, and launch Run dialog.
Type cmd and OK.

In the command prompt windows, type net share

There it goes. you will see a list of the folders that you shared from your PC.

We may quickly go to root folder and unshare them now. :)

ACCA F4 Tips

I have taken the exam sitting for ACCA F4 and F5 on June 2008. F5 was a killer paper for me and I really did bad. As for F4, I did pretty well and have enough confidence that I will pass this paper. In this post, I would like to share some tips on how to prepare for ACCA F4 which I think should guarantee you the pass.

The exam format of the current F4 paper does not give you options, you have to answer all questions. If you are aiming for perfect marks, you have to cover all topics under the syllabus to be equipped with enough knowledge to answer all questions. If you cannot cover all topics, read on this post for some tips.

First of all, we will divide the whole syllabus into 5 main topics: Singapore Legal System, Contract Law, Company Law, Tort Law and Corporate Governance. Out of the above five topics, Contract Law and Company Law are considered two big topics and covers a number of areas. The coverage of the other three topics are relatively lighter. The questions will be based on all those areas and the main obstacle faced by the students in attempting this paper is the huge amount of memory work to be able to remember many facts from all those topics. Students are expected to remember case names from Contract Law and section numbers from Company Law in addition to the rules of the Laws. If a student does not study regularly from the beginning, it's nearly impossible to clearly remember all the topics in the exam hall.

Secondly, we will try to put our focus areas in preparing for the exam. Since the exam questions are to be based on all the above five topics, you can exclude one or some of them from your focus areas. Let's assume that you will exclude Company Law from your focus area, you can just read through the company law to roughly know about the rules of the Law. In my opinion, reading through the rules of the Law is easy since the Law is basically based on common sense. You are not supposed to remember sections names or subsection names from Company Law. Or you can exclude Contract Law from your focus area, ie., you are not supposed to remember all the English case names or local case names. But you are still required to know the rules of the contract law. Again, in my opinion, knowing just the rules of the law is easy to remember since they are all common sense. The need to remember those case names with some foreign names is a challenging part. In summary, I assume that you can either exclude Contract Law or Company Law from your focus areas.

Thirdly, since you have already excluded one of the big topics from your focus areas, you are supposed to cover up all details about the rest of the topics to guarantee you a pass. This includes remembering all the rules and sub-rules about the rest of the Laws. To be more precise, you are supposed to cover up the topics that you have chosen by thoroughly studying them from Exam Kit, Text Book and Lecture Notes.

In summary, by the time you go to exam hall, you know that in the worst case scenarios, you will be able to answer most of the exam questions but could probably miss a few. But missing a few questions while doing well for the rest of the questions could probably guarantee the pass for this paper.

Law for General Knowledge III

Although it can be argued that a large portion of the topics which students are required to study does not necessarily appear applicable in real life, I believe that what we have learned in the textbook might sometimes be of some use in reality. You can guess why I am saying this at the very first line of the post. Yes. I have something which I would like to share with respect to this point. Read on.

A prominent notice at the entrance of a public park reads:

"The management of the park bears no liability for any death or personal injury to any person visiting the park."

Majority of people in Singapore often go out to a neighborhood park for leisure or exercise ,especially during the weekends. Public parks are therefore supposed to be in a reasonably well-maintained condition for the safety of the general public.

When such a notice is displayed at the entrance of the park, one might wonder if the Law practically allow the management of the park to bear no liability upon the occurance of certain unfortunate incident. I would not be able to know the legal position of the injured party unless I have studied some topic in this area. In the context of ACCA F4, I have come to realize that a party cannot by any contract term or notice exclude or restrict his liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence to any person, meaning the management of the park cannot escape liability for negligence so far as personal injury and death are concerned. The management must therefore exercise due care in its running of the park - it must take reasonable steps to ensure that visitors to the park do not suffer physical harm or injury. So for example jogging tracks should be suitable for their purposes, and netting should be provided where fruits or branches are known to fall off from time to time. The essence is taking such care as is reasonable in the circumstances. If the park is negligent and the negligence causes injury or death, the park is still liable even tough there is a prominent notice which seeks to avoid such liability.

Getting to know about this rule will not possibly enable one to go out to court and win the law case by himself, but knowing this enables a person realize his rights upon encountering such a case.

Note: This was an application-based exam question from ACCA F4 (Corporate and Business Law).

Are you curious?

Ever wants to find out who is hosting a certain web site? Just type the url of the site at whoishostingthis.

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Ever curious to know detailed particulars about any web site? Please proceed to whois. The information you will see there is extensive including the domain's registrant's details, administrative details and technical details since this is the information that is required whenever anyone registers a domain name.





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Ever wants to find out what your ip address is? Just go to whatismyip.

StreetMap@Singapore

I think we are aware of the recent legal case between streetdirectory.com and Singapore Land Transport Authority. It's not my intention to delve into this legal affairs on what happened between them. But streetdirectory happened to be the one place that I relied on in finding the directions or getting the maps and so on.

Since the company is currently resolving the legal case, they are unable to bring the maps back. Luckily we have alternative. Although user experience is somewhat different from streetdirectory, this alternative is more than good enough. We can use this site to achieve the same objective of using streetdirectory. The site is the official website of the Singapore Land Authority ("SLA"). It is owned and operated by SLA. It's free of charge and you will not see any advertisements.

In fact, I wanted to post a copy of their map here but who knows what will happen in doing so? :D

16 Triggers for selling

This is an excerpt from It's When You Sell that Counts by Donald L. Cassidy. I found it at a forum and I kinda like it. I hope you like it too.

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The company-related reasons to sell are:

1. Sell if the news cannot get any better.
2. Sell if things did not go as planned.
3. Sell when the broker's advice goes from 'buy' to 'hold'.
4. Sell if company fundamentals are getting sick.
5. Sell on the rebound in the aftermath of material, unexpected or discrete bad news.
6. Sell in certain cases when expected news is delayed.

The market-action reasons to sell are:

1. Sell when the stock reaches the target.
2. Sell on an unsustainable upward price spike on big volume.
3. Sell when a portfolio shows all gains.
4. Sell if the stock is lazy money and likely to stay that way.
5. Sell using above-market limit orders, letting the market come to the investor.
6. Sell with a stop-loss order, but never remove or lower it.

Investor-related reasons to sell are:

1. Sell if you would not buy the stock again today.
2. Sell after gloating or counting the chips.
3. Sell rather than hope against hope for a 'maybe' bailout.
4. Sell and step aside on a personal losing streak.

If you regularly sell stocks in a disciplined manner, say after periodic 6-monthly reviews using the signals above, you are likely to end up with a good deal of cash even before the market moves into a bear cycle. Relatively few of your holdings will survive the 16 triggers noted in the lists above.

Those stocks that do survive will tend to be high-quality growth issues that have continued to perform fundamentally and have not run up to unreasonable price levels. Some experts refer to these as core holdings or 'businessman's-risk' foundation stocks. They are stocks that have given consistent indications they can be held through good and bad in the market.

So if you are periodically reviewing and cashing in as prescribed, and if your buying discipline rejects new positions when valuations get too pricey, you will anyway end up holding only relatively few stocks as the market gets toppy - and even before it turns down. That, of course, protects your capital.