Don’s Diary 

 

 

New Year resolutions once again are on many minds at this time of the year.  They are every year. 

 

No doubt there are some who are glad that the year 2010 has passed and look forward to changes in fortune in the year 2011.  Symbolically Janus, after whom the month of January was named, reflects the thoughts of many with one face looking backwards and the other forward.  Some say the pessimists look backwards and the optimists look forward.  I am one that always looks forward but not without regards to the lessons of the past. 

 

I am one who is prone to make New Year resolutions but have never been successful at achieving them. 

I am sure that there are many like me. 

 

New Year resolutions are a reasonable tool to achieve the “softer” objectives such attitude change and are more likely to be successful if you have somebody by you side who will regularly remind you of your masculine failings.  However, I have found a different approach is needed to achieve major changes in a New Year, a significant time for revaluation of one’s journey over the seas of passion. 

 

When I see a need for change I “set in concrete” the process for change.  The first is invariably is to get the budget right for unless the business plan is right nothing else is likely to succeed.  As individuals, unlike governments we cannot just increase taxes or make levies, benefit from shareholders by intervention in the share market to fund projects or to allow inflation to occur and effectively steal from those that have saved. 

 

The first thing to do is to get debt under control – change to the best mortgage option and make regular periodic payments through your bank for repayments.  If this will not solve the problem consider leasing the asset if it is a property and rent, or as a last resort sell the place.  Make the decisions early and forget about pride!  De-clutter especially with cars and keep those that do not incur major capital depreciation.  You have to earn a lot of money to make up the capital losses that so many will experience.  Always realise that all your changes with capital items delight the taxman, the salesmen and real-estate agents and the lawyers but you will be the looser and if you are retired it is likely that you will never recover. 

 

Should you plan to move to a provincial city?  In Victoria there are some great places and the costs are lower.  However, consider the transfer costs. 

 

You could then work out how to “re-invent” yourself because to survive and be employable you have to be adaptable.  Set in concrete a plan to equip yourself to become a more useful in society.  Study and try.  Mark up extensive calendar reminders.  Allocate and quarantine specific funds for activities.  Use synergy: even with your wife!  (A current expression in Canada for a divorce settlement is “being halved”.)  And Freemasonry in 2011? – you may enjoy it more in fewer lodges and other Orders: I do.  Above all, preserve your health – you have to do it: governments cannot and will not despite all the promises.  However even without a concrete New Year plan let us still have faith and hope for without whose we are all lost. 

 

Yours fraternally

 

Don