Jul

12

additional income possibilities: side jobs

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One way of keeping more money is to bring in some additional income. If you have a regular full-time job, then unless you really need the money, I probably wouldn’t recommend getting a permanent part-time job as it’ll knacker you out and quality of of life now is as important as the future. On the other hand, there are (employed)� jobs that you can do that are much more flexible. I’ve listed a few below:

Exam Invigilator
If you live near a college or University, then you may be able to get work as an exam invigilator making sure that the candidates aren’t chatting away or passing notes and generally maintaining the integrity of the exam as well as passing out extra paper and being glad that you aren’t taking an exam. Exams in academic institutions usually take place in two seasons, in the winter (between November and January, depending on the institution) and the main summer session (usually during May and June) and sessions can range from 1 to 3 hours, plus set up and clearing away time. There is also the possibility of invigilating for professional exams, that may be at other times of the year and some schools employ external invigilators. The flexibility of this job depends on the institution you are working for, but there is often the possibility of only carrying out a few sessions in any one exam season.

Temporary Deputy Registrar
Some registration districts employ extra deputy registrars in the summer to take weddings and civil partnerships in registered buildings on an ad hoc basis. The main disqualifiers for this job are being either a midwife or a religious minister as it would be a conflict of interest. You need to have smart clothes (like a suit or something) and you’ll almost certainly need access to a car as registered buildings (typically hotels, golf clubs and stately homes) are usually spread all over the district and may not have good public transport access.� Another aspect of the job is enforcing the law with respect to getting married or joining together in civil partnership, in practice this means reporting suspicions of marriages solely for the purpose of immigration and ensuring that there is no religious content to the service. Side benefits of this job consist mainly of the joy of watching other people get married or join in civil partnership - perhaps not a job for the single and bitter, the unhappily married or those opposed to gay weddings.

Clerk to School Governors
School governors are not employed, although they can claim expenses but in large schools they often employ clerks to take minutes and maintain associated paperwork. Usually governors meetings take place for a couple of hours between four and six times a year in the evenings. This job would suit someone with good secretarial skills and able to maintain the privacy of the meetings - note that you won’t be involved in making the decisions so this might not be for you if you have strong opinions on the education and policies of the school in question.

Seasonal Retail
Christmas is the best time of year to get a temporary part-time job in retail. Most shops recruit at the beginning of autumn and like to have seasonal staff in place to work between October and the January sales. Pay is not necessarily high, but can be worthwhile especially as it is generally possible to get evening and weekend shifts. Side benefits may include employee discounts on merchandise and subsidised canteens.

Have you got any other ideas for temporary employment?

Jun

21

interview part 4: lessons learned

Filed Under Featured, investment | 1 Comment

My posts concerning interviewing Christopher Traulsen from Morningstar UK have turned into a� bit of a trilogy in four parts. (See part 1, part 2, and part 3.) In this post I’m going to write about what I’ve learned from speaking to him.

First the things that are interesting but don’t help me with my personal finance:

  1. Not everyone that works in investment is odd
  2. Convexity is a term used in fixed interest investments
  3. Investments are� generally� cheaper in the US
  4. I can understand some Americans on the phone

Now onto stuff I can actually use in my investments. The things I sort of knew already:

  1. When I’m looking at investments, the last thing I should consider is past performance
  2. Charges for funds are pretty important when considering where to invest
  3. Fund managers do not have my best interests at heart
  4. Index funds are a good (but not the only) core for a portfolio

And now the things I learnt (that I should probably be ashamed to admit I didn’t already know):

  1. When I’m looking at fund costs I need to consider the Total Expense Ratio (TER)
  2. Not all indices are well-diversified and the FTSE 100 isn’t well-diversified
  3. Fund return isn’t necessarily the same as investor return
  4. Exchange traded funds are generally index funds but they might have high fees - especially for small trades

I should really be ashamed, my stakeholder pension fund is invested solely in the Virgin UK Index Tracking Trust and when I was doing my research for the interview I found that this was not rated as a good buy because it has high fees (1%). In my defence, I am planning to switch out of this once it reaches £5000 (as explained here). When we discussed high cost index funds I didn’t admit that I was invested in one. I’ve come clean now though.

Jun

20

interview part 3: information for investors

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This is the third part of my interview with Christopher Traulsen of Morningstar UK. The first part can be found here and the second part here.

In the final part of my interview we talked about what could be done to improve the level of investing knowledge in the UK. He suggested that fund managers could do more to make their products easier to use and do more marketing on the level of risk involved rather than leading investors to chase past performance.

However, he also pointed out that fund management companies are essentially in the business of selling funds so there is more responsibility on the FSA to get involved in educating investors and maybe there should be some government funded education programmes.

Christopher then also highlighted the role of the mainstream media and organisations like Morningstar in providing impartial opinions on investments and investing. In fact part of his work in Morningstar UK is to provide educational pieces (such as this one on ETFs). This led me to ask him what audience he had in mind for his articles. According to Christopher, the primary audience he envisages is the individual investor and his first key question in determining whether he has explained everything sufficiently clearly is ‘Would my mother understand this?’ He also seeks to provide enough detail that the article would be of use to a sophisticated Independent Financial Advisor since he is aware that they probably form the largest readership.

An example Christopher gave of the level of explanation he would give is that when discussing Fixed Interest products there is a factor called ‘convexity’ which can be important. He would never introduce this concept without explaining it clearly. (And no, I’ve got no idea what it means either.) He seeks to avoid jargon wherever possible.

We discussed the importance that Morningstar place on independence so that they are trusted by the individual investor. Christopher told me that the company began in the US by providing qualitative research for investors and that ‘investors come first’ is one of their key values. To this end and to maintain their impartiality they rate funds without payment and their business model derives its revenue from their premium web service and products for professionals and institutions. They maintain a ‘Chinese wall’ between their sales and analysis firm to avoid any conflict of interest.

I finished the interview by asking Christopher what was the best thing about his job. He replied that he’d never thought he’d get to wear the white hat whilst working in finance and that he most enjoyed helping investors make better decisions.

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