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Basic Income vs Guaranteed Jobs: What If We Paid Stay-At-Home Moms?
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By Stephanie Ervin, who heads up Civic Ventures’ special projects and is co-creator of the podcast Pitchfork Economics. Ervin specializes in community organizing, outreach, and public policy matters. Cross-posted from Evonomics.
Rising income inequality coupled with the fear that robots will soon occupy more jobs than average Americans has everyone calling for the creation of a modern safety net program. Recent debate on the left and the right falls between guaranteed basic jobs (UBJ) and universal basic income (UBI). Our team at Civic Ventures did an episode of the Other Washington podcast to explore the nuances and virtues of each approach.
UBI is built on the idea that any American of working age would qualify to receive some monetary stipend to supplement survival. This idea rests on the assumption that since we are all citizens of this country we should be guaranteed a minimum amount to live on—our very own piece of the wealth our country creates as an economic superpower.
UBJ hinges on the notion of work — that work brings value in a service being rendered, a bridge being built and for workers, the dignity that comes from earning a living and supporting your family. UBJ harkens back to the promises of grand infrastructure projects of yesteryear, that government-sponsored programs should always be available for anyone to earn a living.
Both of these programs assume that the future of work is changing, that some Americans will be left behind, and that any amount of cash in the pockets of average Joe and Sally in our consumer economy will mean more customers for business and economic growth for everyone.
Our office had the UBI vs UBJ debate internally, and I came up with my own idea about what could be done to address the desire to get Americans the cash they need to fully participate in our economy and exist outside of the scarcity and harms of poverty.
Wouldn’t it be great if we just paid women for the work they already do? We don’t necessarily need to create work (UBJ) or create value (UBI). Instead, we can look for opportunities to compensate Americans for the work they’re already doing — the services they already provide, which benefit other Americans. And, it has the potential to be a lot more practical.
We know that when women earn more money, families do better, because women tend to make economic choices that benefit the family: they invest in education, in healthy food choices, and in other things that lift kids and parents out of cycles of poverty.
What if we paid women (and some men) for the jobs they already do — in the home, raising kids? We have adopted some of these ideas within the in-home childcare space or in-home care providers, but what if we took it a much larger step forward?
Consider what would happen if we decided to pay women and men who choose to stay home with children from birth until they enter full-time school. The government could train those interested in the program in skills like first aid, CPR, basic childcare, on parenting techniques, early brain development. We can use the program itself to create jobs in training and coaching moms through the structured process. And then, most importantly, we can pay women who make it through the program for the primary role they already occupy — dedicated moms. I’ve long believed that modern feminism has lacked respect for and has not given credit to the inherent dignity women hold in the work they already do.
Nothing has to dramatically change, except now the hard work women are doing today would be compensated. We know if those kids were in daycare or with a nanny, that those services have market value, so does staying home with your kids. There is real value in the science that supports babies being bonded to their mothers with longer breast-feeding and close parental care in early childhood. But let’s be super clear, it also has market value in the childcare being provided. Most studies estimate that at least five million women choose to stay home and raise their children. We should pay them.
If Americans care about the strength of family, if we care about the strength of the economy, the death of rural America, generational poverty, then we should be looking at solutions that focus on getting more cash to women as quickly as possible.
Consider the data from the National Women’s Law Center (an organization founded in 1972 by four women secretaries who demanded among other things better pay and more women staff attorneys):
- Over half of all poor children in America (56.2 percent) live in families headed by women.
- About 525,000 single women with children (11.2 percent) who held full time jobs throughout 2015 were poor last year. That means they are paying for the rising cost of childcare or substandard childcare is taking place and STILL their full-time jobs aren’t enough to lift their families, those babies, out of poverty.
- Female-headed households with children were much more likely to be in poverty than male-headed households or households headed by married couples. The poverty rate for female-headed families with children was 36.5 percent, compared to 22.1 percent for male-headed families with children and 7.5 percent of families with children headed by married couples.
If Americans care about lifting children out of poverty, we should pay moms to be moms. It works out financially for everyone and will likely have a positive impact on families and rural America as well as early-childhood development. Women have worked in the home forever, and the cost of childcare has taken many women out of the workforce. It would be really empowering to give all women (and interested men) the opportunity to stay home and raise the kids by paying them to do just that. When we give women more money, by paying them for work they’re already doing, we grow the economy too, it’s just that easy.
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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/12/basic-income-vs-guaranteed-jobs-paid-stay-home-moms.html
Financing the Response to Climate Change: The Pricing and Ownership of U.S. Green Bonds
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George Serafeim is Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. This post is based on a recent paper authored by Professor Serafeim; Malcolm Baker, Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School; Daniel Bergstresser, Associate Professor of Finance in the Brandeis International Business School; and Jeffrey Wurgler, Professor of Finance at New York University.
Climate change is accelerating. Since recordkeeping began in 1880, the six warmest years on record for the planet have all occurred since 2010. One estimate suggests that keeping the world below the 2-degree Celsius scenario, a threshold viewed as limiting the likelihood of devastating consequences, will require $12 trillion over the next 25 years.
In the absence of a global carbon pricing scheme, bond markets will be central to financing these interventions. In this paper, we study the U.S. market for “green bonds,” which we and others define as bonds whose proceeds are used for an environmentally friendly purpose. Examples include renewable energy, clean transportation, sustainable agriculture and forestry, energy efficiency, and biodiversity conservation. Since the first green bond was issued in 2007 by the European Investment Bank (EIB), the market has expanded to include a variety of issuers, including supranationals, sovereigns, corporations, and U.S. and international municipalities. It is a small but increasingly well-defined area of the fixed income markets. Yet in spite of the general acceptance of the notion of a “green” bond, there is not yet a single universally-recognized system for determining the green status of a bond. Green bonds may be labeled and promoted as such by the issuer, such as the 2007 EIB issue; formally certified by a third party according to a set of guidelines; or, labeled green by a data provider, for example Bloomberg. We review the origins of the market and standards for identifying green bonds in the next section.
Our sample includes 2,083 green U.S. municipal bonds issued between 2010 and 2016 and 19 green U.S. corporate bonds issued between 2014 and 2016. Our analysis of pricing and ownership patterns is organized by a framework featuring a subset of investors with a nonpecuniary component of utility, such as a sense of social responsibility from holding green bonds, in addition to standard portfolio mean and variance. In this framework, expected returns include the usual CAPM beta term plus a second term, reflecting demand for a security’s environmental attributes, which illustrates that securities with higher scores—such as green bonds—are priced at a premium. We confirm that green municipal bonds are indeed priced at a premium. After-tax yields at issue for green bonds versus ordinary bonds are roughly 6 basis points below yields paid by otherwise equivalent bonds. Depending on specification, the estimates control for ratings, maturity, the yield curve, tax status, other time-varying characteristics, other bond-specific characteristics, ratings-maturity-yield curve interactions, and even issuer fixed effects. On a bond with a 10-year duration, a yield difference of 6 basis points corresponds to a plausible and economically meaningful 0.60 percentage-point difference in value. Interestingly, this premium doubles or triples for bonds that are not only self-labeled as green (and confirmed by Bloomberg) but also externally certified as green by a third party, according to industry guidelines, and publicly registered with the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI).
Our framework also makes predictions for ownership concentration of green bonds. Green bonds should be held disproportionately by concerned investors, who must be willing to accept their equilibrium lower returns. This concentration will be particularly strong for small bonds, where tilting away from market weights is less consequential, and when the bond is almost riskless, since risk aversion limits the extent to which concerned investors are willing to pursue a nonpecuniary benefit. Using institutional bond ownership data, we find supportive evidence for these predictions. The Herfindahl-Hirschman index is indeed higher for green bonds, especially relatively small bonds and those rated AAA. Also, echoing the pricing effect, concentration is particularly elevated for CBI certified green bonds.
In brief, our contributions relative to this prior work are to provide: an academic introduction to the U.S. market for green bonds; a consistent framework to study both pricing and ownership patterns; a consistent set of empirical results in a comprehensive sample; and, evidence that certification is important in this emerging market. Nonetheless, the green bond market is just a first step toward addressing enormous problems. There is a commensurate need for additional research on green bonds and other areas of climate finance.
A draft of the paper can be found here.
Source: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/12/03/financing-the-response-to-climate-change-the-pricing-and-ownership-of-u-s-green-bonds/
Warehousing watchdog halts physical receipts by regulated players from June
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Warehousing sector regulator, the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA), has decided to suspend issuance of physical negotiable warehouse receipts (NWRs) from June 1, 2019, by all regulated warehouse.
At present more than 1,000 warehouses with 8.7 million tonnes of registered capacity are understood to have been registered by WDRA, on whom this directive will apply. They have been given over two months’ time to comply with the directive. All of them deal with farm commodities, said industry official, as the regulator is yet to finalise parameters for non-agriculture commodities.
In a direction to the registered warehousemen across the country, the regulator said, “The systems are in operations for quite some time now and are functioning smoothly with quite a good number of electronic warehouse receipts (e-NWRs) issued till now. Therefore, it has been decided that no warehouseman shall issue any NWR in physical form. Warehousemen will issue only e-NWRs for which they can get on boarded with one or more repositories registered with the authority.”
On derivatives exchanges like NCDEX and MCX among others, only regulated warehouses are empaneled and hence from June onwards in agri commodities, only negotiable warehouse receipts in electronic forms will be accepted. Sources said that on exchange platform, proportion of physical warehouse receipts is hardly 15 per cent.
Issuance of e-NWRs is currently confined only to central government-owned Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and some state warehousing corporations.
The WDRA as recognized two repositories as of now i.e. CDSL Commodity Repository Ltd (CCRL) and National e-Repository Ltd (NeRL) for this purpose. These repositories are operational since the launch of e-NWR on September 26, 2017. The warehouses registered with regulator have to also register with these repositories for issuance of e-NWRs against the underlying commodities deposited in warehouses.
The directive will not impact business to finance goods that is warehoused.
“Over 80 per cent of warehouses in India are owned and operated either by individuals including farmers, traders and bulk dealers to which collateral management companies like us have hired. These warehouses are not registered with the WDRA. Hence, such directives do not impact them. For us, our in house innovative technology has enabled mandatory issuance of electronic warehouse receipts (e-WRs) that are not negotiable,” said Sanjay Kaul, managing director, National Collateral Management Services Ltd (NCML).
Meanwhile, warehousemen have floated their own non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) through which they borrow from banks on low interest rate and lend to their own collateral management customers. Some of these companies have also set aside a large chunk of their funds for NBFC to fund their own clients based on the WRs generated either on physical or electronic form through a company-owned system.
To achieve the priority sector lending target, however, banks are comfortable doing business on trust with private collateral managers with physical WRs.
“Unless banks are prevented from funding on physical WRs, mandatory issuance of e-NWRs would make no sense. But banks are not regulated by the WDRA. Hence, the three parties of the warehousing eco-system like the regulator, collateral managers and banks should sit together to arrive at a conclusive regulation without affecting business,” said Amit Agarwal, Director, Star Agri-warehousing and Collateral Management Ltd.
Collateral managers are comfortable with their own systems. Kaul explains that, whenever there is an issue of short quantity or quality difference with warehouses when the warehouse receipts are e-NWs, there is lack of clarity on responsibilities and, “If collateral managers need to pass through the lengthy civil suit system, why would anybody go through such a complex procedure for recovery of the difference in underlying commodity,” asked Kaul.
Warehouses registered with WDRA - 1000+
Total regulated capacities estimated 8.7 million tonnes
They cater only to agri and horticulture crops
Share of e-NWRs by regulated WHs 85%
123 agri and 26 agri commodities (no-non agri) notified by WDRA
Source: industry estimates
Source: https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/warehousing-watchdog-halts-physical-receipts-by-regulated-players-from-june-119032300177_1.html
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567 Venezuelan soldiers defected to Colombia, and it could be a sign that Maduro's once rock-solid power base is starting to crumble
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A member of Venezuela's Bolivarian National Armed Forces, who defected to Colombia, waves at her relatives on the Venezuelan side while being escorted by Colombian police in Cucuta on February 23, 2019.(LUIS ROBAYO/AFP/Getty Images))
- 567 Venezuelan soldiers defected to Colombia, according to Colombian officials, amid a spiraling political crisis in Venezuela.
- The military is a vital power base for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, which his rival Juan Guaidó is trying to chip away at.
- Amanda Lapo, a defense analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Business Insider that the defections show that military loyalty "is not unanimous any more."
More than 500 Venezuelan soldiers have fled President Nicolás Maduro's crumbling regime for neighboring Colombia, the Colombian migration authority reported Thursday.
The wave of desertions comes as opposition leader Juan Guaidó continues to seek support from the armed forces, which are one of the foundations of Maduro's authority.
Colombia has counted 567 defectors since violent clashes between security forces and activists trying to bring US aid to Venezuela, according to CNN and Colombia's El Tiempo.
Venezuelans are living through one of the world worst's economic crises under Maduro's socialist regime, and are struggling with shortages of food and medicine.
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have called on Maduro to step down, saying that his presidency is unconstitutional and fraudulent. Guaidó, the leader of Venezuela's National Assembly, has declared himself interim president, on the grounds that Maduro's reign is illegitimate.
Read more: Photos show chaos in Venezuela as protesters and soldiers clash over humanitarian aid shipments
Venezuelan migrants wait for free food being handed out by Colombian residents near the Simon Bolivar International Bridge in La Parada, on Colombia's side of its border with Venezuela, on February 24, 2019.Associated Press
Many saw Guaidó's attempt to transport aid over the Colombian-Venezuelan border at the weekend as a play to test the loyalty of Maduro's soldiers.
While the US, EU, Canada, and most of Latin America recognize Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president, he still needs the military's support to gain de facto control over Venezuela.
The Venezuelan armed forces are an important power base for Maduro. Military leaders in Venezuela publicly backed him last month.
Guaidó has claimed that he had met some members of the military in secret, implying that the military's solidarity with Maduro is not as solid as it may seem.
Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed President Juan Guaido in Caracas, Venezuela.REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
The soldiers who left for Colombia are mostly from middle and lower ranks, who are more affected by the country's hyperinflation and shortages, according to The Associated Press.
They also work with faulty equipment and are monitored by intelligence services, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) reported.
Amanda Lapo, a defense and military analyst at the IISS, said that it is not yet certain that increasing defections are a threat to Maduro.
"The defections don't appear to be on a senior enough level to undermine Maduro," she told Business Insider.
Venezuela's military, which employs between 95,000 and 150,000 active soldiers, has wide reach in the country. But the power is concentrated among high-ranking officials, who hold important government positions and control influential companies.
Many are also implicated in human rights abuses and drug trafficking, according to the AP. In other words, military leaders have a lot to lose if they defect.
Venezuelan officers also appear under pressure to support the Maduro regime. One defected soldier told Al Jazeera English that the government would "threaten us. If we weren't part of their political party, they'd lock us up."
Venezuelan police guard the Tienditas International Bridge in Venezuela on February 22, 2019.Associated Press
Lapo said, however, that the defection do show a split in the military.
"What they do reflect is that there is a division in the armed forces. Their loyalty is not unanimous anymore," she said told Business Insider.
"There is a growing gap between the middle and lower ranks who feel the effects of the crisis and the higher ranks which enjoy economic benefits."
Winning the military over has proved a daunting task for Guaidó. Despite saying in a New York Times op-ed that he had offered amnesty to any member of the armed forces who hadn't committed crimes against humanity, he has only garnered the support of one high-ranking officer.
Francisco Yanez, a general in the Venezuelan air force, announced via video that he had broken from Maduro and pledged allegiance to Guaidó via video last month. He also claimed that "90% of the armed forces are not with the dictator," referring to Maduro.
Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Venezuela's defense minister, slammed the defectors and accused them of betraying their country.
He said in a video posted on Twitter: "It doesn't matter how many there are. Those who dishonor their uniforms can't call themselves soldiers."
Guaidó, meanwhile, said he wants to focus on galvanizing support from the military and state workers. He told reporters in Brazil that he will return to Venezuela this weekend, according to The Washington Post.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/venezuela-soldiers-defect-to-colombia-threaten-maduro-power-2019-3?r=US&IR=T
Shipping Ministry unveils platform to fast-track payments
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Shipping sector users can now make payments to various stakeholders through a common platform which will remove dependency on bank-specific solutions. The Shipping Ministry will issue a notification soon to make this mandatory. This will lower the cost of transaction and drop the dwell time and also improve the ease of doing business.
The Indian Ports Association (IPA) has launched the Port Community System ‘PCS1x’.
A major feature is the deployment of a payment aggregator solution which removes dependency on bank specific payment ecosystem, it said. ‘PCS 1x’ is a cloud-based new generation technology, with user-friendly interface.
The system seamlessly integrates eight new stakeholders besides the 19 existing stakeholders from the maritime trade on a single platform. It will improve communication of trade with customs.
The platform offers value-added services such as notification engine, workflow, mobile application, track and trace, better user interface, better security features, improved inclusion by offering dashboard for those with no IT capability.
The system offers a database that acts as a single data point to all transactions. It captures and stores data on its first occurrence thereby reducing manual intervention, the need to enter transaction data at various points and thereby reducing errors in the process.
Source: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/logistics/shipping-ministry-unveils-platform-to-fast-track-payments/article25719698.ece?_escaped_fragment_=
Top User Adoption & Onboarding Trends for 2018 [Report]
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I don’t need to convince anyone that, for SaaS companies, recurring revenue is a make or break, or that keeping customers for the long-haul and achieving negative churn is the new measure of a company’s ability to grow and thrive. But what you may not know is that none of that is possible without successful user adoption.
User adoption is the process of ensuring each of your users is successful in using your product to achieve their business goals. When managed effectively, it leads to higher retention rates and drives new growth opportunities for your business.
Now you know that user adoption is the foundation to driving long-term revenue, and successful onboarding is an essential part of that journey. What is unclear, however, is how well companies are executing on their onboarding and user adoption initiatives. How well are companies prioritizing adoption, measuring it, and improving on these efforts?
To find out, we conducted a survey and developed the 2018 User Adoption & Customer Onboarding Benchmarking Report. In it, we uncovered three key trends that illustrate notable disparities between the perceived importance of user adoption and how companies are currently executing and measuring their efforts. The majority of our respondents came from Customer Success (65%) roles in the B2B market (72%).
The most shocking finding from this research was that 74% of people we surveyed spent half of their week dealing with user adoption challenges, but almost half of all respondents say they have no user adoption strategy in place. This finding reveals that SaaS professionals in customer success, product, and even sales and marketing, are spending a tremendous amount of time on user adoption, but they’re doing it without a strategy driving the execution.
Here are three specific trends we uncovered as well as a few recommendations for companies on how to close the gaps in their analytics and strategies that will result in user adoption excellence.
Trend 1: Companies want onboarding at scale.
The onboarding phase is where first impressions and quick time-to-value, critical to true user adoption, occur. Often people make the mistake of having onboarding be product-focused, when it should be customer-focused. Onboarding is the place where and time when product owners help users discover their best features as fast as possible with the ultimate goal of having those features drive business value for the customer. It is the “inflection point” for user adoption.
With these concerns in mind, 70% say that improving onboarding is a top priority this year, and 26% indicate that they are specifically looking to develop a more self-service/high-tech onboarding model.
This makes sense as 72% of onboarding teams consist of 1-10 people. Teams are relatively small and can easily become too overloaded to maintain a white glove approach for long.
For companies that want to better scale their onboarding, start with automating just a few areas, then learn and grow from there about what works best for your users. Many teams that rely on a high-touch strategy today often fear automation because they worry about “replacing” the personal touch today with “robots” or automated responses that won’t land well or miss the mark with their audience. My suggestion is to start with tech touch not as a replacement, but as a supplement or reinforcement to what you are doing within your high-touch strategy. Remember, people often need to hear things multiple times for new habits to stick. Think of tech touches as helping to reinforce these new habits.
Trend 2: Companies struggle to measure user adoption.
Measuring the degree to which users are successful in using your product to achieve their goals, i.e., how quick a customer gets to their WOW moment, and the payoff with your product, is as essential as it is challenging.
User adoption requires a holistic approach to measurement. It means thinking of your onboarding strategy as not just getting folks to use more of your product, but to ensure that they are getting business value. To that end, your measurement must align with your customer’s expectations and thinking.
Tracking the success of onboarding efforts, time-to-value (TTV), and ongoing user sentiment must all be considered. But, companies find it hard to measure user adoption because they aren’t tracking these metrics or don’t know where to look to find it.
Only 33% of respondents said they have visibility into their users’ onboarding progress. This is not surprising considering 18% said they are not evaluating their onboarding process at all, and 48% rely solely on informal calls with customers. This is a missed opportunity for companies to ensure they are delivering value on their customers’ expected business outcomes.
Many respondents indicated a lack of “visibility,” “data,” “VoC,” and “user analytics” as their biggest challenge in improving user adoption. Without the proper data or a way to disseminate that data to the right contact within the organization, companies will struggle to understand their benchmarks or areas for improvement.
Since almost three-fourths of respondents indicated that improving adoption is a high priority this year, focusing on establishing a proper metrics methodology and addressing gaps in data is a great place to start. Start by making sure that you are aligning your customer’s usage to business value. The expectations they set for the relationship with your business may become your KPIs for success.
Trend 3: Companies have little focus on and accountability to user adoption.
One notable problem appears to be a lack of accountability. Only 19% of respondents said they have a dedicated onboarding team.
This means most companies are without anyone truly accountable for ensuring their customers are adopting their product successfully. Respondents cited issues like “workflow confusion,” no “concise user engagement program,” difficulty securing “internal resources,” “management support,” and “funding” as reasons.
Thus, it’s not surprising that many struggle with prioritizing and gaining visibility into user adoption patterns.
Companies are unable to align the why (the reason the user bought) with the what (those things the user does inside the product) to provide that “aha” moment ROI to justify renewal.
It’s clear that companies do care about improving their user adoption and onboarding efforts. Yet they are overlooking significant gaps in their analytics and strategies, resulting in processes that are not scalable, data-driven, and unified. To correct this, here are a few recommendations for how companies can get started:
Ensure adoption is a top-down, cross-functional initiative.
If your user adoption strategy is not being directed by leadership, it likely has no formal processes in place, and is not a top priority at your organization. Since successfully driving user adoption needs to come with a range of KPI’s and the ability to track users’ performance across a range of functions, it should be an organizational effort, with a cross-functional adoption team leading the way. Start by getting key stakeholders from all functions (like customer success, product, sales, marketing, and operations) together to document the user journey so you can begin to identify gaps.
Institute dedicated training and implementation resources.
Onboarding is a significant milestone on the journey to adoption, so it is best to have a leader, plan, and team focused on doing it right. While 19% of respondents have dedicated onboarding teams, many more lack a dedicated adoption plan and leadership. Understand the onboarding investment and timeline across each customer segment and ensure those individuals responsible for onboarding have sufficient resources to effectively perform the necessary activities required.
Introduce a high-tech approach where possible.
We know high-tech models are more scalable and proactive than high-touch approaches. Look for opportunities to replace current high-touch workflows with tech-touch engagements. The right technologies can help you keep an objective, data-driven view of your clients so you can better assess users and develop strong user adoption strategies based on their needs. Not to mention that proactively creating these automated engagements also frees up precious time and gives customer success managers more time and ability to act as a strategic partner to their customers.
Keep an eye on more applicable KPIs.
Sign-ups and usage alone as KPIs are not enough to know whether you’re delivering value and driving successful adoption. Not knowing the full picture can often lead to false positives or a false sense of security. Ensure you’re being holistic with your measurement efforts by also tracking time-to-value (TTV), desired outcome achievement, customer sentiment, and a smooth customer experience.
The above benchmarking analysis gives insight into how others are (or are not) addressing user adoption effectively. To understand where you fall in comparison, ask yourself – are you driving long-term user adoption or merely short-term usage?
To read more about our findings, download the full report here.
Source: https://labs.openviewpartners.com/user-adoption-onboarding-trends-2018/
Dow Jones Futures: This Hot Stock Broke Out Bullishly As Flawed Apple, AMD Falter
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Source: https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/dow-jones-futures-okta-stock-breakout-apple-stock-amd-stock/
Deep clean your house with ONE TASK per Day! (Printable cleaning schedule included!)
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Confession…I'm a messy person.
Don't get me wrong, I love having a clean house. Like, LOVE it. And I certainly try my best. But I have to really concentrate on staying on top of my messes (yes, MY messes). Not to mention, I have 5 kids (with one on the way!) and my house isn't exactly bite-sized. Between those excuses, the fact that I don't like cleaning, and the million and one other things I need to do each day, keeping my house deep-cleaned is a challenge!
Years ago I came up with a (fairly unconventional) system for being able to deep clean your house (and keep it deep-cleaned!) with 30 minutes or less of cleaning per day! I tried doing a cleaning schedule that focused on cleaning specific ROOMS each day, but it just didn't work very well for me. I found that certain rooms were getting super clean, and other rooms would never get touched! Or I would run out of time before getting past the surface-cleaning. Once I started choosing a single TASK (…zone, chore…whatever you want to call it) per day to focus on, everything changed. I now decide which room needs that TASK the most that day, and voila! Each month my house somehow got magically deep-cleaned, and it felt less overwhelming and much more manageable!
Sure, at first the task might take you some time. But as you stick to the list, each week you'll see the task going quicker and quicker because it becomes maintenance cleaning. Before you know it your house will be deep-cleaned REGULARLY, with little effort!
This system has gone viral on Pinterest and has worked for thousands of people. Since it's “Back to Productivity Month” over here, I thought it was time to update and re-post the system! PLUS…I'm sharing a FREE PRINTABLE cleaning schedule to help you stay on track with this system.
You're welcome!
Let's get to it, shall we?
Quick tips to keep in mind:
- This system focuses on DEEP CLEANING, so you will do this in addition to typical daily chores (dishes, taking garbage out, picking up your floors, wiping up spills, etc.).
- It may take quite some time at first to complete each daily tasks. But I promise, if you stay on top of the list you'll soon be able to complete the tasks in 20, 30 minutes or less! Can you imagine keeping your house deep-cleaned with just 30 minutes per day or less??
- Saturday and Sunday are DAYS OFF for me! We use the weekend to clean, work on the yard, and organize (or heck, just play!) as a family. So my list only focuses on M-F. You can use the weekend to catch up on additional deep-cleaning needs, use it to organize, or use it to have fun with your family!
- Adapt this to work for you! (obvs.)
Ok, here's the schedule!
(Monday is technically cheating because it is 3 tasks…but they are smaller, more intermittent chores so you can squeeze in more.)
- Laundry day. Always keep your machines running. Start first thing in the morning and consciously keep loads going throughout the day (or whenever you're home). Set an alarm in your phone if you need to. Fold laundry at night watching TV. Make sure all clothes are put away before you go to bed.
- Note: Yes, you'll probably need to do laundry throughout the week as well. But this is your day to FOCUS on laundry! Switch out towels and linens, and the day to make sure everyone in the family gets you their dirty clothes.
- Tidy the house. Go through every room in your house and put everything away.
- Tip: Never leave a room empty-handed! As you walk throughout the house ALWAYS pick at least one thing up as you come/go. Your house will be picked up before you know it.
- Vacuum main rooms (not bedrooms or stairs). As you walk through the house picking things up, drag a vacuum behind you. **NOTE: I vacuum a lot because I have a lot of kids, and used to have a dog that sheds, which created the habit in me. You may not need to vacuum as much as I choose to do, but it does prolong the life of your carpet and makes you feel SO GOOD to see those gorgeous vacuum lines in the floor ;). Sometimes instead of formally vacuuming, I'll make it a point to run my Roomba in different areas of the house throughout the day. (I got my Roomba from Costco for Christmas one year, but Amazon has several options as well.)
- Bathrooms. Do it all! Toilet, tub/shower, replace towels and wash clothes, sink, floors, wipe out drawers/cabinets, mirror, re-stock toilet paper/fresh towel supply. Spray some good smelling stuff in there when you are done, the satisfaction is amazing.
- Surfaces. Anything that can be dusted, mopped, swept, wiped, vacuumed, etc. For me, this is the biggest chore of the week.
- Tip: Make the list work for you. For me this includes disinfecting counter tops, cleaning windows, banisters, mopping the floors, cleaning out the microwave, kitchen sink, wiping down kitchen chairs, dusting and wiping all mantles/shelves/dressers/night stands/etc., wiping the top of the fridge, etc.
- I love using Ecloth disinfecting microfiber cloths (no, they didn't ask me to say this! Purely my opinion here!). They are basically a cheaper version of Norwex but clean just as well! All you need is water and you can clean/disinfect just about every surface in your house without chemicals or cleaners. I just keep one slung over my shoulder and wipe EVERYTHING down as I walk around!
- Note: Yes, you will probably need to clean surfaces throughout the week. So reminder that you are using this day to DEEP CLEAN. Focus on those surfaces that you normally don't get to, or use it to give your surfaces a good, hard, disinfecting scrub.
- Organize/clean out something. This can be a closet, your car, your child's toy box, your makeup drawer, pick one thing and don't stop until it's clean/organized! Get a good list of ideas HERE.
- Tip: Break it down into J.O.B's, or “Just One Bite” at a time. Instead of saying “I'm going to organize my entire master closet” break it down, Just One Bite (or, just one J.O.B) at a time, and say “I'm going to do this one drawer…or shelf…or clothing rack” instead. It will ensure you don't make more messes as you go, and actually complete things. Keep in mind, you will be doing this every Thursday so small J.O.B's really add up!
- Tidy the house. Go through every room in your house and make sure everything has a home. Never leave a room empty-handed!
- Vacuum all rooms including stairs.
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Divide up levels in your home
I originally made this list when we lived in our 2 bedroom town home. My house now is much larger. An option is to divide up the chores and levels of your home to make it manageable.
- Week 1: of the month, do your my main floor (but follow the same schedule – Monday, vacuum. Tuesday, bathrooms, etc.).
- On week 2: top floor.
- On week 3: main floor again (most used, after all),
- and week 4: basement.
That way you're staying on top of the floor you most likely use the most, but making the task and list realistic.
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Day or night, doesn't matter.
I'm a stay-at-home-work-at-home-mom (yes, there is such a thing). Yet, it's rare that I complete my chore during the day, I usually do it at night once the kids are in bed. So whether you work full-time or stay home full-time, just find the time of day that works for you!
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Stay consistent, or it might not work.
It's more important for you to do the tasks every day and only complete PART of the list, than it is to complete the chore in full, but not do the list every day. Keep the purpose of this system in mind: By doing A LITTLE EACH DAY, you conquer big tasks bit by bit and stay on top of the mess. If you do it one week, then not the next, then kind of do it the following week…yes, it's going to take you a long time to complete the chore when you finally get to it, making the system unrealistic, harder to do. Stick with it and you'll get to the point where you can bang it out in 20-30 minutes…or less!
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Get your family involved.
Who says YOU have to be the one to keep your house deep-cleaned? Get everyone involved on the chore each night before dinner, before school, or whenever it works for you, and it will be done in no time.
So there you go!
Not too tricky, right? Give it a try and it might just work as well for you as it does for me!
Give it a try and let me know what you think! I'd love to hear how you adapted it to work for your home, or if my schedule works for you!
Also! Want more time-management and productivity system ideas? Then make sure to check out my new productivity program, ProductivityBootCamp.com. Use the code “AUGUST” for 15% off this month only!
Happy cleaning, Freebs �
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Source: http://funcheaporfree.com/2018/08/deep-clean-your-house-with-one-task-per-day-printable-cleaning-schedule-included/
Deutsche Bank board to discuss investment bank boss contract in October
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Deutsche Bank’s supervisory board will discuss extending the contracts of its investment bank boss Garth Richie and a small number of other senior executives at its October meeting, a spokesperson told the Financial Times.
German media reported earlier that Mr Ritchie’s contract, which is due to expire at the end of the year, had not yet been renewed. Mr Ritchie considered his future at the bank earlier this year, around the same time as chief executive John Cryan stepped down, but the South African was ultimately promoted to sole head of the investment bank.
“All our management board contracts are fixed term,” a Deutsche Bank spokesperson told the FT. “Several will come to an end within the next year. These contracts are due for renewal, and will be on the agenda at the next regular supervisory board meeting in October”.
The spokesperson would not confirm the identity of the other executives whose contracts are also up for renewal this year. Deutsche’s corporate governance disclosures show that Mr Ritchie is the only management board member whose contract expires in the 2018 calendar year.
The contracts of asset management head Nicolas Moreau and Asia-Pacific head Werner Steinmüller are both up in 2019.
The investment bank has been at the heart of restructuring and cost cutting initiatives instigated by new group chief executive Christian Sewing. Announcing its second-quarter results last month, Mr Sewing said the investment bank had “stabilised” its market share and was seeing “improvements in terms of revenue growth in some areas”.
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/43a6c278-9fb5-11e8-85da-eeb7a9ce36e4
Here's where Trump is getting money for his border wall
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President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency to gain access to roughly $8 billion to fund a border wall.
Before Trump's announcement in the Rose Garden, a senior administration official explained that the money will be pulled from the following areas:
- $1.375 billion from the Homeland Security appropriations bill
- $600 million from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund
- $2.5 billion from the Department of Defense's drug interdiction program
- $3.6 billion from the Department of Defense's military construction account
The $1.375 billion, which is part of a spending bill passed by Congress, is short of the $5.7 billion that Trump had asked for late last year but didn't get. A fight over the barrier money led to a record-long partial government shutdown that was resolved after 35 days. What's more, the $1.375 billion would specifically not allow construction of new wall prototypes proposed by Trump, and would instead put money toward 55 miles of bollard fencing.
"They say walls don't work. Walls work 100 percent," Trump said Friday from the Rose Garden.
"We fight wars that are 6,000 miles away, wars that we never should have been in. But we don't control our own border. So we are going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border and we're going to do it one way or the other, we have to do it," Trump added.
© Provided by CNBC LLCTrump also said that if there was a physical barrier at the southern border, "we'd save tremendous, just a tremendous amount on, would be sending the military. If we had a wall we don't need the military, cause we'd have a wall!"
The Pentagon announced earlier this month that it would send a deployment of about 3,750 troops to the U.S. border with Mexico. The additional troops will bring the total number of forces supporting the border mission to approximately 4,350, according to estimates provided by the Department of Defense.
The troop deployment, which was approved by Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Jan. 11, will last for 90 days. The border mission includes mobile surveillance capability as well as the emplacement of approximately 150 miles of concertina wire between ports of entry.
A congressional aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Trump can divert roughly $21 billion in military construction funds that aren't already obligated for use on border projects. Some of the $21 billion will be taken from the "wartime funds" account, which is known as the overseas contingency operations, or OCO.
The president "is free to spend without a vote from Congress," the aide said of the immediately available $21 billion. "He has to notify Congress of what he's done but he doesn't have to come to Congress to do it."
Related video: How the national emergency funding for the wall will break down
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Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/heres-where-the-money-for-trumps-border-wall-will-come-from/ar-BBTDIAh?srcref=rss
