Investing - Peer to Peer, Fractional Investing, Loose Change

RateSetter - https://www.ratesetter.com.au/
- Connects investors and borrowers.
- Provision fund exist in case of borrower default in payment.
- Minimum investment from $10 and 3 months

BrickX - https://www.brickx.com/
- Investors buy bricks, which can be $100
- While holding the brick, investors earn income from the actual rental income.
- When selling, depending on the Brick Valuation of the actual property, the investor may have a capital return

Loose Change investments
- An example is Acorns. Using its app, if investor buys coffee $2.75 and use the app to pay, the app will pay $3.00 and will invest the change.
- Few companies doing this are:
Betterment,
Wealthfront,
Acorns,
Robinhood,
Stash.

Banking - Mysterious Transactions

In bank statements, sometimes transactions are made and listed under a mysterious name. This name may have no resemblance to the name of the merchant or the business.

However, there is a facility called "Look Who's Charging" that can help give more information. In addition, to date, the National Australia Bank has this feature.

NBN Broadband Providers

According to Money Magazine Dec 2017, the winners of the "Best-Value NBN Broadband Plans" category, in order from the winner, are:
1. Flip TV NBN - Family 25 plan
2. Hello Broadband Unlimited - family NBN
3. Barefoot Telecom Mild NBN

Mobile Providers

Some of the cheap Mobile Providers, which sometimes have better deals than the big carriers.

OVO Mobile

Jeenee Mobile

Vaya

Yomojo

TPG

Small Business Tools

This post is a collection of useful tools for Entrepreneurs and Small Business.

Accounting Software

Free Accounting Software
https://www.freeaccountingsoftware.com.au/
Yes, this is the name. Its a free software that conforms with Australian Tax system. It is promoted as Free Forever, CPA Practice and SRB Certified.
It is online, nowadays we say Cloud, and accessed using a browser.

GnuCash
http://www.gnucash.org/
This is another free accounting software which is free and available for Windows, Linux, Mac OSX. It is an international, more general type of accounting software and needs to be installed on your computer.

Google Sheets
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/
This is a general spreadsheet, part of the free Google Docs applications. It can be used to tailor to accounting purposes but you would need to design the accounting formulae yourself.

7 accounting packages for Australian small businesses compared: including MYOB, QuickBooks Online, Reckon, Xero
http://www.bit.com.au/Review/344651,7-accounting-packages-for-australian-small-businesses-compared-including-myob-quickbooks-online-reckon-xero.aspx/3
A detailed review of Accounting Packages - most of which are NOT free.

Website and other Online Tools

Neto

https://www.neto.com.au/

This is not free, but a subscribed service. It looks like a powerful platform that allows small business owners / entrepreneurs to setup their online store or online presence easily. It puts everything a modern business needs on a single platform and has got tools for payments and shipments as well. 

Changing Your Thinking 6 - Depression

Change your thinking - beating the blues
Worrying is a cognitive process
Anxiety is more primitive - sometimes not conciously thinking about it. Muscle tense up and arousal.
Anxiety - perception of threat.
Depression -perception of hopelessness.

Stopping behaviour - helps us change ourselves.
Cognitive bias - mood affects thinking - sometimes we get caught up in our thinking
Cannot trust content of our thoughts.

Feeling down-
Lack of energy, heaviness
Majority of depressEd people may also have anxiety, but not the other way round.

(clinical/major ) depression: long term, hard to function.
Symptoms: lose appetite, depressed mood, lost interest
Melancholic depression - biological

What causes depression.
- Not always due to a reason.
- Biological
- historical
- psychological - personality style
- environmental

Black dog institute day high risk for these groups
- Anxious worrier
- irritable
- socially avoidant
- reserved - don't feel they are ok so pretend things ok, don't let people know what you are really feeling
- sensitive to rejection
- self critical.

Biological based depression :
-Melancholic
-Psychotic - delusional, paranoid, really agitated - use electric shock
-seasonal affective disorder -

Bipolar disorder
-Bipolar 1- very rare but psychotic, mania
-bipolar 2 - severe black intense depression.
-Bipolar - strongly correlated with intelligence.

Stress triggers depression
-Acute stress
-chronic stress

Rumination
- Self doubt, over analysing, others have better things.
- unproductive and not really solving problems
- feeling defective failure guilty

Strategies for managing depression
- Perceptions feel 100% true
- feels like no solution and permanent
- in reality, things change or our perception change

Mindful observation
-Observe and label the thoughts - worry, over thinking, Rumination

Behavioural strategies :
Activity scheduling
Achievement activity
Pleasurable activities
Goals are important
Social support
Long term plans
Exercise

Apps;
Mycompass
Head space
Mood gym
Worry time

Controlling Your Thinking 7 - Self Esteem

To avoid depressed state :
Exercise, do pleasure things, socialise, do something leading to accomplishments.

Core beliefs or schemas hard Wire or brain - causes wrong thinking like mind-reading

SELF ESTEEM
way we perceive ourselves, relative to other people
- Affects what we put up with., confidence, sense of belonging, affects who we marry or make friends.
- Affects mood and risk of depression.
- Could be a state or trait
- everyone who is depressed has low esteem
- leads to self diminishing behaviour - gives negative feedback. High self esteem leads to more friendly - more positive feedback
- comes from past experience, early childhood, adolescent
- temperament - eg introvert find harder to make conversation and like to be alone. Extrovert - talking to people is positive.
- Subsequent life experience -social interaction, negative experience
- can be: healthy, fragile, poor
- core belief of self
- cognitive bias is like prejudice, when there is strong belief - accept info that aligns with our beliefs, but make excuse of opposite evidence.
- High reserve, perfectionism, workaholic is related to low self esteem. People trying to prove themselves.
- At the end, relationship more important.

Comparing yourself
- When feeling down to see others more successful, then low self esteem
- better to compare ourselves with our own self.
- Can set goals for ourselves - for our own sake.
- Unfair to compare. Irrational, self defeating

Challenge
-Self acceptance
- setting goals

Labelling
-Making gross generalisations
-no point labelling because that gives us a single label.
- we are all a complex mixture of things
- think: I'm not dumb - I'm not good at statistics
- think: I'm not social misfit -I'm shy with people
- good to be specific, not good to label

Social anxiety
-tend to focus attention on ourselves
-avoid pre event planning - mind reading, analysing

Address cognitive bias
- Focus on skills, strengths, qualities

Acknowledging shame can be good, eg with weakness.
-Shame tired to self esteem

Tips:
Acknowledge reality -drop judgement
Self diminishing behaviours
Body language, eye contact,
Honest assertive communication -builds relationship based on equality