Author Archives: Craig "hachiroku" Mercer

Transitions!

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Transitions! After 11 years, today will be my last day with Island Health as I begin a new adventure with Coast Capital Savings next Monday (Jan.20th). It has been an honour and a privilege to work with so many great colleagues at VIHA over the years. I am now excited to work with new colleagues, face new challenges and new opportunities. Here is to the transition points in our lives…Cheers!

The Lazy Investor – Derek Foster

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4 Stars = MUST READ

The Lazy Investor - Derek Foster

Two words…dividend investing. I am not sure when I stumbled upon the dividend investing strategy, but stumble upon it I did, which lead me to the Lazy Investor by Derek Foster. It is a really straight forward book about Dividend Reinvestment Plans (aka DRiPs or DRiPing) and Stock Purchase Plans (aka SPP) also also referred to as Optional Cash Purchasing (aka OCP) which when combined together over the long term make for a solid income generation plan.
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Five Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don’t Know – Craig Hill

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3 Stars = Good Read for Most

Five Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don't Know - Craig HillA gift from my Mom. She knew we were well into our war on debt and this handy little book got us thinking about more than just paying down debt. It got us thinking about the future and also what legacy we might leave for our descendants.The five wealth secrets are:

  1. Use Jars
  2. Focus on Vision
  3. Invest in Multiplication
  4. Anticipate Economic Cycles
  5. Leave an Inheritance for Two Generations

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Mercer Website Update 2015 – Tomidou Added

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website-icon It’s been a couple of years since we paid much attention to the Mercer’s website. We were working on a side project called “Tomi Dou“. Tomi is Japanese for “wealth” and Dou is Japanese for “the way of” Tomi Dou = “The Way of Wealth” which is a collection of our strategies for getting out of debt (something we accomplished in November 2014) and hopefully our journey to financial independence. Instead of releasing a whole new sub-blog we decided to that move all those articles into our main site here: https://themercers.ca/category/tomi-dou-the-way-of-wealth/. We’re hoping others will benefit from some our lessons learned.

Order Out Of Chaos has finally launched!

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I am happy to announce that I have finally launched my Order Out Of Chaos site (http://www.themercers.ca/OrderOutOfChaos/). It’s  a platform for project management and methodology which is what fills my work days. I love what I do and want to share it with others.

The purpose of the site is to:

  • Allow me to speak candidly about my thoughts primarily on project/program/portfolio management, secondarily on benefits realization management, change management and process improvement.
  • Explore how the above disciplines can be layered together and their effectiveness multiplied through systems thinking.
  • Allow me to explore the nature of variation (aka waste) and what we might do about it on the macro (e.g.: project management) and micro (e.g.: process improvement) levels.
  • Allow me to share tools and templates that I have either used in real life or want too but have not had the chance yet (perhaps even becoming a resource for new and veteran project managers alike?).
  • Share my experiences with using Microsoft SharePoint for project delivery.

I started creating content for this site back in the summer of 2012. Can you believe it took me almost 3 years to launch it?!?! Time flies when you are having fun. 🙂

Reduce costs on communications…bundle em up!

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internet-iconYou can reduce your monthly communications costs significantly by bundling services with the same provider. We classify communications as:

  • Internet Service
  • Telephone Service
  • Cable TV Service
  • Mobile Phone Service

We got rid of our cable TV years ago but had for a long time our internet service through Shaw and our telephone service through Telus. By switching our phone over to Shaw and bundling it with our internet service we were able to save on average $25/mth which when multiplied over a year is $300.00. Now I’ll admit that we’re a little old fashioned in that we keep a “landline” phone when in all honesty we could get by just fine with Kana’s mobile phone (I also have a phone provided by work but if it wasn’t provided by work I would not have one). However, the point is that there are options when looking to reduce your monthly communications costs. You could get rid of cable and just have NetFlix.

Reduce costs on your mobile phone – DITCH the CONTRACT and the DATA yo!

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iphone 4G shadowI’ve never really seen the point in a smart phone…or GPS for that matter because I don’t like trusting computers (but that is another story). Let me digress a little….when Kana and I moved to Japan in 2004 we went to get mobile phones (this was before the iPhone which came out in 2007) and the sales person was going on about the camera, the video options, the texting….and I said “Kana could you ask her if it is a phone?”. Kana asked and the sales person who looking a little puzzled said “Yes it is a phone”. I said “Good let’s buy 2!”. I wanted a phone and I wanted the cheapest one…the cheapest one to purchase and the cheapest monthly rate.
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Reduce costs on your groceries…do the research!

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Save money on your groceries...do the research!One of the biggest weekly/monthly expenses is groceries. Groceries are not optional without food you will die, but the price you pay for food can be optional depending on your location (e.g.: in cities there are way more choices than in the rural countryside).

Back in 2007 we made the choice to shop for groceries at our local Safeway because they had a member discount program and because we collected AIR MILES. This decision was also compounded by the fact that we bought our gas at Shell which also was an AIR MILES retailer and on the way to Safeway. The AIR MILES really came in handy over the years as we cashed in miles for a new vacuum cleaner, a king sized duvet, a home phone set, a DVD player, a Blu-Ray player and more.
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