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Basic Needs Index

August 11, 2009

I joined up with Lydia, my stepmom, in business. The small consultancy is called Spacets IT and we have a modest profit of about R12 million p/a. Just kidding. Its a little bit smaller than that :) . After I gave notice at the contracting house I contemplated how much time and money I would need to survive, scrape by, enjoy life or really cream it. Then I contemplated that I should’ve contemplated this before I did the Big Jump out of corporate South Africa, but like the saying goes, one cannot test the water with both feet in the boat (more about that phase later). About the basic needs index — it is a method I devised to figure out how much one really needs to keep breathing for an indefinite period on the face of this God-given earth, somewhere between being clothed in rags and eating worms, or clothed in Armani and eating frogs. The Life Surface Area model really helps in this regard because one’s existence is already mapped out for you, all you have to do is decide what’s more important and what you can live with at what quality of life scenario. Here’s how it works:
1. Take you Life Surface Area map’s main areas, here’s a simple list of main categories if you don’t have one yet:
2. Think of your current lifestyle in terms of the above areas, then dream about what it would be like if you had more time and money to spend on any of these areas. Specifically, think of your current lifestyle, how it would be if money and time constraints were worse or worst, and finally what it would be like if it was better than what you currently experience. For example,
3. Fire up that old, trusty excuse for a database. Yes, I mean Excel. Now, for each area on your life surface, enter what you’d expect at each quality of life level, together with a Rand amount (standardise to a monthly figure where necessary). Here’s some thumb-suck figures… my current needs are unfortunately much higher, and yours will differ too… things like dogs, bikes, travel and other ‘lifestyle’ choices makes every scenario unique:
QOL Amount Period Category Item R/m
Worst R 30 / day Food Beans and bread R 900
Worst R 1,000 / month Travel Sell all vehicles, get scooter. R 1,000
Worst R 0 / month Clothes No new cloths R 0
Worst R 50 / month Comms Payphone use R 50
Worst R 2,000 / month Housing Share flat/room R 2,000
Worse R 1,000 / month Comms Cellphone Contract R 1,000
Worse R 100 / day Food B/feast eat out, energy drinks R 3,000
Worse R 3,000 / month Travel New bike R 3,000
Worse R 200 / month Clothes Some new clothes R 200
Worse R 4,500 / month Housing Own house and rent rooms out R 4,500
Worse R 0 / month Housing Laundry, Cleaning R 0
Current R 100 / day Food B/feast eat out, energy drinks R 3,000
Current R 3,000 / month Travel New bike R 3,000
Current R 500 / month Clothes Some new clothes R 500
Current R 1,500 / month Comms Cellphone Contract, DSL R 1,500
Current R 8,500 / month Housing Own house R 8,500
Current R 1,600 / month Housing Laundry, Cleaning R 1,600
Current R 10,000 / year Holiday Local R 833
Better R 200 / day Food Always eat out, braais, parties R 6,000
Better R 8,000 / month Travel New bike, new car R 8,000
Better R 4,000 / month Clothes Some new clothes R 4,000
Better R 1,500 / month Comms Cellphone Contract, DSL R 1,500
Better R 12,500 / month Housing Own house, additions R 12,500
Better R 1,600 / month Housing Laundry, Cleaning R 1,600
Better R 40,000 / year Holiday Overseas R 3,333
4. Create summaries for each of the Quality of Life scenarios. I made a PivotTable by selecting my table, clicking Insert > PivotTable in Excel 2007 and adding the QOL to the Row Labels area, Category ot the Column Labels and Sum of R/m in the Values area:
Clothes
Comms
Food
Housing
Travel
Holiday
Grand Total
Worst
R 0.00
R 50.00
R 900.00
R 2,000.00
R 1,000.00
R 3,950.00
Worse
R 200.00
R 1,000.00
R 3,000.00
R 4,500.00
R 3,000.00
R 11,700.00
Current
R 500.00
R 1,500.00
R 3,000.00
R 10,100.00
R 3,000.00
R 833.33
R 18,933.33
Better
R 4,000.00
R 1,500.00
R 6,000.00
R 14,100.00
R 8,000.00
R 3,333.33
R 36,933.33
So what is the story this picture tellling us? First of all, one must understand that there’s basic needs that must be satisfied at every level — one must eat, sleep and travel whether you’re a bum or a billionaire. I also added a cellphone to my worst scenario — I cannot see myself getting by without one. Having said that, I know of people who had absolutely nothing to their name, yet survived on the streets – even with a baby to care for! – just fine for well under R4,000. But that’s not me. At four grand, I’ll live on beans and share a single room with someone (hopefully someone nice). I know that if it comes to a certain point, I can even forego the R30/day food budget and share a place, say, with 10 other nice people for R500. I guess you start with what you have. At this level, though, you’re just about down-and-out on the dole.
Having thought about the worst-case scenario, I then looked at what’s better than that (when that was just better than not being alive) but worse than what I have now. Which is a position many people find themselves in at the moment, I think. At this level, one can still hold on to the house but you must get creative about keeping the bond repayments up. You will rent out rooms, for example, give the dogs away, drain the pool, in short, make some drastic lifestyle changes that is in reach, but not nice at all. You’ll lay off the gardener and maid, do your own laundry for the first time in your life and there’s no DVDs and DSTV at this level. Also, you’ll get rid of all expendable expenditures such as gym memberships, clothing purchases, eating out, buying gifts and keeping vehicles that can otherwise be sold for profit. A sad picture, but not unusual to see this happening more and more as the credit crunch and recession drag their feet to blow over.
That leaves us with the current and better scenarios. If you did this diligently, your current situation’s not bad at all, is it? When starting a new business, I find my Current situation is the sweet spot to aspire to. The Better will come with profound customer satisfaction and diligent business practise, while I want to avoid the worse and worst at all costs — not for only for my own benefit, but also to spare the people around me the pain and embarrassment that these changes might bring about.
Having done this exercise, you can now decide what to do wit the leftover cash you may have at the end of the month. Using the example above, if your current lifestyle costs R18,933.33 — lets say R20k for ease), a hypothetical amount of R4,000 left over at the end of the month can be invested into securing the next month’s Current scenario, or used to bump your quality of life up by putting it away for an overseas trip instead of a local one for your next holiday. My advice is to save up three months of funds to maintain your current lifestyle before you bump up.
Interesting little exercise, isn’t it? I find this better than using a budget because one can see the effects of cash flow between multiple ‘budgets’, so to speak. If you have a current and active Life Surface Area map, you’ll also find a direct relation between the size of your areas and the financial outlay this brings to bear. In a future update I may add the element of time to this, but for now I’m going to rest a bit (sitting with a flu, hopefully not the flu — not that it should matter too much). In the mean time, consider giving this a go and let me know what you think.

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Life Surface Areas, Life Surface Areas | Leave a Comment

Solved: /etc/init.d/apache2 start does nothing

July 18, 2009

Subtitled: A meek little post to break a long spell of no posts…
There’s a bit of a rabbit trail if this command does nothing:
# /etc/init.d/apache2 start
# echo $?
0
My problem was that the file /etc/init.d/apache2 was empty! To restore it, follow the tips here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-68459.html

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Ubuntu, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

If you know this SOA then your life will be better

August 26, 2008

This post (<a href=”http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2008/08/21/malik-s-laws-of-service-oriented-architecture.aspx”>Malik’s Laws of Service Oriented Architecture</a>) is short, to the point and a no-nonsense comment on how Service Oriented Archictecure will (or will not) come of age in the enterprise. I’ve been thinking for a while that SOA evangelists are the enterprise counterpart of OO evangelists; both have reusability high on their [...]

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Information Technology | Leave a Comment

Is your website veiled?

July 25, 2008

On my one computer I had this straaaange behaviour. Everytime a page at lohan.me loads, the top gets a shaded block that keeps anyone from clicking on anything under it. I disabled all Firefox plugins, addons and, since its my blog, I disabled all bells and whistles. I tracked the issue down to Google Analytics, [...]

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Information Technology | 2 Comments

Watch out for historyshotz.com

July 25, 2008

This one almost got me — as I went online my dad sends me a link through MSN Messenger: http://lohanj.historyshotz.com. Sounds interesting, I thought, but as I clicked it I thought, whooaa, my dad never send me links, and I never heard of historyshotz, so what gives? A quick search revealed a that its a [...]

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Information Technology | 2 Comments

Interested in your Life Surface Area?

July 25, 2008

I’m releasing the first series of articles next week on the theory of Life Surface Areas (LSAs):
Your life surface area is the full extent of all relationships, assets, activities and desires that you have as you exist at this point in time. Think of your life as if it’s laid out on a land, where [...]

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Life Surface Areas | Leave a Comment

Comparing .NET 3.0 and IBM WebSphere 6.1 Application Server Performance

September 12, 2007

Earlier this year, Microsoft released a document comparing performance between the .NET StockTrader and IBM WebSphere’s Trade 6.1 sample application. While the .NET solution kicked some WAS-ass (best .NET configuration was 2422 peak TPS vs 630 of WAS), it was more interesting to note the performance difference between a WCF configuration and the ASMX configuration [...]

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under .NET | Leave a Comment

Installing Guidance Automation Toolkit May 2007

June 4, 2007

Getting this error?
Powered by ScribeFire.

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under CAB | Leave a Comment

Treeview height woes?

January 28, 2007

Use TVM_SETITEMHEIGHT to set a Treeview’s node height. It cannot be done individually, though, so use with care.

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Windows/.NET/.Whatever | Leave a Comment

CreateProcess tip

December 22, 2006

CreateProcess tip: Remember to double-up slashes when passing to Process.Start (eg \\My Documents\\Life.txt).
[Update 2008/07/27] I have no clue why I said that — it won’t compile anyway? Oh well.

Posted by Lohan | Filed Under Windows/.NET/.Whatever | Leave a Comment

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