I don’t have time for any of this; but I do it
… because I want the positive consequences of those things in my life
And I learned how to do this from a 12 year old.

One more thing I don’t have time for is being a big brother in the big brother big sister program.

I have a little brother, his name is Trae and he‘s older now, but when I met him when he was 12. Do you talk to 12 year olds on a regular basis?  Any time you ask a 12 year old a question, the answer’s the same; it’s a two word contraction of three words and it kinda  goes like this.  “I dunno”  So picture the scene when we met: I’m in his home, at his kitchen table with his mother and the Big Brother rep. I try to strike up a positive conversation.   I asked him, So Trae, what are your goals for this match?  “I dunno” What do you want to do the first time we get together?  “I dunno”      What do you want to do when you grow up?  “I dunno”   What’s  your favorite subject in school?  “I dunno”
Do you know how to communicate with someone who answers every question with “I dunno”?  Yah, me either.   I was at a loss as to what to do.  Then I saw this movie; “The Bucket List”.  Basically, the two guys in the movie come up with a “bucket list” of things they want to do before they “kick the bucket”.  So I thought, hey, maybe I can use this as a tool  with Trae.   So I explained the idea to him – he  seemed to have been listening – I  was very specific, set some deadlines, and I left him to do the work.
So next time we get together,  I ask Trae “so what’s on your bucket list?” and he replied                                 “I dunno”
It occurred to me during this time that he is not very much unlike me in that he was very busy being a kid and this was something that was a task that he was too busy being a kid to do.  It reminded me of when my banker wanted a business plan in order to fund me for my next Line of credit, and I know he was sitting there thinking that all I have to do is write out a business plan with a pro forma and he would give us a line of credit.  But I was too busy running my business; I wanted to have the line of credit without doing the work.  So when I asked my banker how increasing my line of credit was going, he asked me where my updated business plan was.  I said, “I dunno”
I finally figured that I better take some ownership for this communication issue, so I bought a composition notebook and wrote “Our Bucket List” on the front with a magic marker, and we actually sat down and did it together. We started brainstorming; and we wrote silly things down and fun things down and serious things down and we would cross them off and put them back on and before you know it, we had a bucket list.
The ah-ha moments were many but here are a few:
Spending the effort to work together has huge payoffs
- We found our purpose
- It’s now HIS.  HE maintains it, and gladly
- I learned the principle of working WITH people to establish common goals
- Establishing a process for how we “do” our bucket list – you know adding things, re-prioritizing, crossing things off – makes our time together infinitely more fun and rewarding
- We developed a way to communicate with each other
- With a plan, you don’t drift into just doing the same thing over and over or into patterns that are not useful and it gives us something to adjust so that it stays fun and rewarding.

We have a great time with this bucket list now, and the result is that we have been snow-shoeing and to the bottom of the Grand Canyon together.  We found out that he loves sculptures, especially moving sculptures, he also loves music and plays the trumpet and we are in a magic club together.  ( I am convinced these things are helping him in math and he is no longer failing)  He now has a goal: “ to have a two story house on a ranch in Switzerland, and grow vegetables” and he understands that to get there, he needs to do well in school.

Here’s the irony:  In this case, having the bucket list ensures our relationship will not “kick the bucket”

I now run my life by my own bucket list – and I have the time to do everything in it…

My own personal weaknesses: DVDs and Books. I used to get excited about purchasing a new DVD, looking forward to watching special features, etc. Now, with the lack of compelling movies out there, I find myself looking for excuses to buy old DVDs. I look for DVDs of old movies, just so I can say I have it. For example, I’ve been trying to justify a purchase a copy of the Godfather I and II DVDs. I think that Godfather I and II are GREAT movies, but I’d watch them once every 3-4 years. How does that make sense? If I really want to watch The Godfather, I can put it on my Blockbuster Online queue.

A recent change that I’ve implemented has help me to re-experience the pleasure I get from little treats. I go through books like reading is going out of style. My wife and I recently had to purge our personal library of about 150 books. I had no problem getting rid of most of the books; however I kept the books from my favorite authors: Clancy, Crichton, Deaver, and King. Over the summer, I ran out of books to read, so I went to my personal library and promptly devoured a book I had already read. It had been so long, I’d forgotten the climax as well as the twists and turns. It was like I had never read it before! I promptly picked up another book and have realized the same thing: I forgot what happens! I literally have a library full of books that I consider good enough to read again, and therefore, have no need to spend money on new books.

This is a BIG deal. With my wife no longer working, we are going to have to look at cutting some things out of our budget. I’ve just realized that the cuts don’t have to be painful. I’m looking forward to re-reading my entire library!

The point is simple: developing spending habits can rob the joy out of what used to be simple pleasures. It takes more and more to create those pleasures, just like a drug.

Read more at Get Rich Slowly.

What will you do to add the joy back into your buying habits?

Several articles could be written about strategies for reducing receivables aging and encouraging customers to pay on time or early. However, the purpose of this article is to reveal an underused tool that is powerful enough to simultaneously determine if there is a cash collection problem, the severity of the problem, as well as the cause of the problem.

This magic tool is called Daily Sales Outstanding (sometimes called Average Collection Period, Average A/R Aging, etc), or DSO for short. First brought to my attention by our banker, DSO is a simple calculation with powerful implications. The calculation is so simple that I decided it couldn’t be useful when my banker first showed it to me. My attitude regarding DSO changed when our Medicaid reimbursed business unit experienced a severe cash flow crunch after the State decided to have Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) administer the program. Our DSO for this program jumped from 7 days to as much as 159 days!

Over the course of a six month period, our goal was to bring our A/R problem under control, with DSO less than 30 days. However, we aren’t discussing A/R collection methods; we are discussing DSO. So, what does the DSO calculation have to do with bringing average A/R from 159 days to less than 30 days over a six month period?

DSO is simply the average number of days it takes to convert billed revenue into cash in the bank. Let’s look at the calculation and identify its application:

DSO = (Days in Period x Current Outstanding A/R) / Total Accrual Sales for the Period

Where:
• Days in Period = the number of days in the period we are looking at (I use 365 days for one year). The period can be shorter to fit your needs, but it should be long enough to ensure that Total Sales exceeds Current A/R.
• Current A/R = all outstanding A/R, including A/R that is considered current or within terms
• Total Accrual Sales = All billed (accrual) sales during the period.
• DSO = average TOTAL number of days it takes to collect $1 of revenue. If your terms are Net 30, and you have no collection problems, your DSO should be close to 30 days.

The application of DSO involves three steps:
1. Where is my cash? – DSO is more valuable as a trend over time than as an absolute number. Is your DSO going up or down?
2. Severity of the Problem or Rate of Success – is the DSO trend significant (like a jump from 30 days to 60 days over 2 months) or is the DSO trend within management’s acceptable range?
3. Cause of the Problem – though DSO can’t tell you WHY customers are paying late, it can certainly tell WHICH customers are paying late.

Using DSO to determine average A/R aging and the corresponding trend are obvious benefits of the calculation. However, the real power of DSO is in using it to identify which revenue sources or payers are having DSO problems.

For example, management should have a DSO goal or DSO range for each major revenue source and a plan to ensure success for each revenue source. In our company, we have identified an acceptable DSO range for each revenue source, as well as individual payers or payer types within each revenue source. Often, the DSO for a revenue source will be within acceptable parameters with the exception of a single payer.

How do you get this data? First, setup your accounting system to report Income and A/R data for each revenue source as well as individual payers or payer types. Our Medicaid business unit is separated by MCO. Our private pay business unit is segregated into Pre-Paid Contracts, Billing Agreements, and Insurance Billing. Our medical staffing business unit is segregated by contract group, with the contract terms defining the acceptable range for DSO.

What next? Once you have the data and the DSO trend identified for each revenue source and individual payers, you can identify your priorities. When addressing the DSO problem in our Medicaid business unit, we tackled MCO #1 first because it represented 50% of our revenue even though it had the best DSO record of the three MCOs. Next, we chose to elevate MCO #3 to top priority because although it represented only 12% of revenue, its DSO trend was heading in the wrong direction at a high rate of speed.

Daily Sales Outstanding (DSO) is a powerful tool for managing your receivables precisely because it’s simple to use, breaks the problem down to measurable numbers, and helps identify actionable steps. DSO trends also act like the oil light on your car’s dashboard; when the light turns red, your business runs out of cash and the engine grinds to a halt.