Feedback, energy prices, government bonds - and asking how much your partner earns
Happy Sunday! I had something witty to put here, and then I forgot it... Hey ho!
It’s review season! At least it is at the company I last worked at…
Giving feedback is touted as being one of the most important skills a professional can develop. But, like most professional skills, it’s rarely taught.
(Nor is how to receive feedback, tbh, and I think that’s equally as important).
The Cut ran a piece this week called How to give constructive criticism without making it awkward. Some key points:
Put yourself in your colleague’s shoes first - and no one wants a feedback sandwich
Put the feedback in context
Be clear about what should change
The things I’d add to this:
Have a running document you’re ALWAYS adding to, to keep track of your experiences, feelings and insights, so that when it comes to giving feedback, you can substantiate it
Protect time in your diary to actually reflect on your work experiences, and either write up feedback to share with people (you might have an employee feedback software set up at your company) or book in time to talk to people to give them feedback
It’s a muscle, you have to get better at doing it (uncomfortable as it might be), so make sure you’re taking opportunities to train yourself so you can better at work - and ultimately earn more income!
What else would you add to this?
1. What the Ofgem energy price cap change means
Sone headline news this week has been that, from 1 April, the price cap will fall 12.3%.
But what on earth does this mean??
I really recommend watching this 5 minute segment with Martin Lewis on ITV’s Good Morning Britain show, where he explains what’s going on in more detail.
Your energy bill is comprised of two things:
How much energy you use (unit cost)
A flat fee for simply having energy (standing charges, wildly unfair and archaic)
So the cost of energy is going down by 12.3%, which is some good news. And then it’s expected to go down again from 1 July in line with another energy price cap.
But standing charges are going up (in line with all utilities and council tax costs, ‘cos ‘inflation.’ So you’re likely to see an overall small, but probably negligble reduction in your energy costs.
The good news is that competition is expected to come back to the energy market, so it should be worth shopping around for a better deal if you can.
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2. Government bonds - you’ve probably heard about them, but… what are they..?
Governments around the world issue bonds in order to borrow money to help pay their bills. Investors, including banks, insurers and pension funds as well as individuals, buy them in order to earn a return
Different governments’ bonds have different names:
UK = gilts
US = treasuries
Germany = bunds
France = OATs
Japan = JGBs
Governments issue bonds with a range of different maturities (three months, a year, 10 years, 30 years etc). This is how long they give themselves to pay the money back to investors.
If they don’t pay back the money, they default on their loans - and this is going to affect their country’s credit score, and ability to borrow money in the future
Short-dated bonds (like 3 months, one year) mature quickly, and are usually deemed less risky
Long-dated bonds are regarded as riskier because there is more time for things to go wrong
Just as you pay interest on a loan you take out, so do governments. So you have:
Bond prices (the cost to the investor of buying the bond)
Bond yields (the interest rate you earn for holding the bond)
As prices go down, yields go up
That feels like enough heavy information for a Sunday morning! Do have a read of the full article though. And if you want to learn more, check out:
This guide to the countries with the highest credit default risk in 2022, which also explains credit default swap
This short video explainer
3. When is it OK to ask the person you’re dating how much money they make?
The answer (unsurprisngly): it depends!
In a survey, 96% of American singles said that an important trait in a partner is having similar attitudes about debt and spending - this is the highest it’s ever been since this study started 12 years ago.
And I think this is the most important thing - it’s alignment in attitudes rather than the shape and size of their portfolio and credit score.
As soon as you see that there’s a probability that a relationship can be long term, you can start bringing up money topics more often
But, before that, you want to understand more about their relationship with money, which you can do through questions and seeing how they view money through how they spend it
And you also want to understand what’s really important to you, and to take the time to unpack the why behind this
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