I spent the past week starting training at a financial services company. Most of the 30-plus people going through training will be performing some version of customer service, and comprise a cross section of the area. The training began with an overview of the industry, and one of the interesting parts of the training was watching the questions that were asked of the trainers.
I remember being taught how to figure interest while in high school math. Reflecting on my memories, I remember the senior seminar teacher was much more concerned with teaching us how to write checks and balance and checkbook. Beyond teaching us where to sign our names, write the date, and how to make out a check, the focus on personal finance lessons in my school was an emphatic dictum to read everything in a mortgage agreement carefully. That may not have been much of a waste – high school students may not be ready to really learn personal finance.
It’s scary to realize how many people struggled to figure out how to compute interest. I was surprised that there were both younger people and older people who didn’t seem to understand the concept. It made me wonder what people actually know about personal finance. I turned to the Internet and spent a few minutes searching Google and Bing to see what turned up. I was looking for a study that showed how much people know about personal finance. Maybe I was using the wrong keywords, but the closest that I came were the studies that show that people aren’t saving enough money for retirement. (I wanted personal finance studies – you won’t have enough money to spend at an age that you may never reach stories. I believe it’s important to save for retirement, I just think it’s difficult to understand what standard of living I’ll expect, what my living situation will be, and what will happen with tax rates, inflation rates, etc.
More interesting was the people who offered their personal finances to the world on their blogs. It’s an interesting idea, but one I don’t expect to do. Perhaps I’ll keep reading their blogs for an idea of what people in the world know about the money they spend and save.
Image is Creative Commons licensed content from Flick’s borman818.
It’s the start of a new season of TV shows, which sent me to Hulu earlier today. After all, I have to catch up on the end of last year’s seasons before starting the new season.
One series that I wanted to watch last year – but never found the time – was Kings. It isn’t coming back this year. Hulu mentioned that the entire series was being taken offline on September 20. It didn’t take much poking around to discover why. DVD sales start September 29.
That left me with a question. I’d only seen a handful of episodes. Do I try to watch the whole series on Hulu in its last days in that incarnation? Or wait for the DVD release? Or skip the show as something I wanted to do but never had enough time?
Perusing Wikipedia’s plot summary of the series made it easier for me to make my decision. A familiar tale, retold. Just like another retelling that I stumbled across but never was able to finish. I’ll get to Kings on DVD after I finish reading the blog version.
Bloggers are snarky. The writers snipe anonymously at one another. But aren’t blogs just another way of producing content for the web? Can you take the format, the writing style – but change the tone – and use it in the corporate world?
That’s the question I’m looking at for my cumulative project for my graduate degree.
As part of my research, I’ve been reading Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg. Most of today was filled with typing and transcribing handwritten notes as I’ve made my way through the chapters throughout September. The great thing for my research – and for you, if you’re interested in blogging on behalf of an organization? Say Everything is a great resource, and it’s led me to a few other articles, books, and blog posts as part of my research.
I’ve been away from Who Is Listening for a few weeks as I take a series of courses on public presentation and marketing management. Both courses gave me stuff to mull over – and some fodder for future posts. But I wanted to mention something now that was covered in a class in the past week.
The idea of Who Is Listening is that the way the message is framed is important. It isn’t enough to say it – you have to say it in a way that connects with the audience. This is no less true in video as it is in audio.
New GM appears to want to be more responsive and transparent to the consumer. (Comments about the American consumer/taxpayer being a de facto owner and entitled to transparency are fine. Go ahead and add comments below.) The company is launching an online suggestion box. It has a website dedicated as the home of its blog collection. And it launched a spiffy new commercial detailing how new the New GM is going to be.
The problem with the commercial? Watch it and take a look at some of the images. Tattered American flag. Hockey player pinned to the ice. Lots of unsold vehicles. Some of the images invoke thoughts of worn, old, outdated, and defeated. That’s not the message GM should want to convey.
It’s important to think about more than who is listening – or in this case, watching. You have to think about what they hear and see as well. Make sure that is in line with your message.
Brian took less than 20 minutes to clean off both cars, clear sidewalks, and remove all snow from around parking places. football, cleaning, and laundry is all that's left today.
Spent too much time on ancestry last night. Off to the courthouse now. Still thinking about the person registered for WWI and WWII drafts [brianmclark]
