I wanted to end this year’s blogging activities with a few words of thanks and a random thoughts. First and foremost, a thank you for all of you readers for reading, subscribing and commenting.  This blog tripled its subscribers over the year. Thus, thank you to all of you for spreading the word.

A separate thanks to the personal finance blogsphere for linking into my blog or allowing me to guest post and share my comments on your posts. The community is intelligent, supportive and insightful. I hope I can continue to contribute and reinforce these qualities in the new year.

I wanted to end this year’s blog with a thought about 2009. I do some volunteering. Last week,  I was speaking to another volunteer and the topic of interest rates came up and a comment was made along the lines of “let’s see what Obama can do to help us when he gets into office in January…” I was immediately struck by two thoughts: (i) everyone sure is putting a lot on the shoulders of one man; and (ii) when did we abdicate our fate away so easily that we are relying on someone else to help us? Yes, you and I do not have the power to lower interest rates or pass bailouts but there seems to be a resigned indifference that we can no longer make an impact on our lives and we are relying on others to do it for us.

What has struck me about the last several panicky months is how many people have thrown up their hands and basically said “well, its out of my control. Someone else has to make my life better via a bailout, a tax cut, a stimulus…” On some macro-level, this is true. None of us are in the position to pass billion dollar budgets or order banks and car companies to do this and that.

But what about the smaller things? We seem happy to abdicate our financial fate to financial advisors who may or may not care about your best interests. Believe in all the marketing hype and buy what they are selling- whether we need it or not. Not take an active approach in how our schools operate, what our elected officials do and what our service providers are getting away with. We, collectively, seem to believe its all beyond us now and we have no say in how our families should live nor, more importantly, are we fighting for it.

Let me leave you with this thought though… in 2008, it all blew up good because we did not so much give our trust to people who mismanaged it as we let them walk over us years beforehand. And we continue to allow people to walk all over us:  we allow the same industry that put the world in this mess in charge of bailing it out.  Its tantamount to letting that a terrible school teacher tutor your kids at night to fix the mess they created during the day. Would you ever hire that person as the tutor?

I once interned for a city councillor who use to say “think globally, act locally.” I always took that to mean think big, act small. There are many small things we can do with our lives to take control of it. Educating ourselves is one. Being accountable to ourselves and our community and making other act accountable is another. These are not world shattering, history alterning moves but these are things that we can mentally comprehend and wrap our minds around.

So for 2009, I wish that we all take charge of our lives in some small and meaningful way whether in personal finance, relationships, work or, just generally, life.

Have a happy and safe holiday.

As my second last post of the year, I wanted to share some of the things I learned this year about personal finance and life. It sure has been a crazy year with a lot of learning experiences to be sure.

• Personal finance lessons are life lessons and vice versa. People tend to separate their “money life” from their “non-money life” but they intersect. The lessons you learn in personal finance and the same lessons to be taken in life. For example, I learned this year the virtue of patience. As I wrote yesterday I jumped in early twice in the market- the second time buying BCE after the deal was first announced as potentially being off- when waiting a few more weeks would have made me better off.
• You judge people in bad times and not good times. This is one of my favorite sayings in life but it rang so true this year. I made a comment to my business partner this week that “people have sure gotten dumb the last two months.” A lot of people have done stupid things as the economy worsens but, money comes and goes, character is enduring- and people remember what you did when the times got tough. If you want a real life example, Bear Stearns was the only large institution not to participate in a mini-bailout in the 1990’s when a financial institution went down (the name alludes me right now…). When it was recently in trouble, many on Wall Street were happy to see them in trouble. Karma. Pure karma.
• The tyranny of the “expert” opinion is leading us to ruin. Remember when the experts said oil would hit $200/barrel? Those same experts now say oil will trade for $30/barrel…which, means given the accuracy of their predictions, we’ll see $100/barrel of oil soon enough! As my friend, who works on the trading floor said, most experts have spent their entire lives in glass towers forgetting the human side of finance and don’t really understand how a business runs outside the financial statements. They got us into this mess and we are still listening to them for advice? My financial advisor actually tells me not to listen to stock recommendations his own firm gives! He readily admits the experts’ agenda is to get you to buy something.
• Cash flow sure does ease the pain of declining net worth. I probably took a 20% haircut in my net worth this year but doubled my dividend income. I panic about the former but the latter makes me relax a little. Cash flow, not pure appreciation, is a key to personal investing. Better to be cash flow rich than asset rich without the cash flow.
• The more complicated something is, the more likely it will blow up. I have seen enough business ideas and investment products to last me a life-time (you know people make good money being lice pickers for schools? Who knew!). The ones that work are simple and elegant. Remember this early next year as the industry blitzes us with crazy products to pump up sales.
• There’s a lot of luck involved in personal finance. Sorry, as much as personal finance is portrayed as a science, there’s some dumb luck involved. I sold my position in GE for tax reasons in early spring in the high $20’s before the stock came crashing down. I had no insight into GE. I just needed to sell it.
• …but you also need to work hard. I am not sure if I have ever met anyone in finance, business or life who succeeded on pure talent alone. You have to put in an effort to get the reward.
• Stay positive. I don’t blog about it but I have been witness or part of some large business issues this year and we (we being business partners and associates) have muddled through or solved them because the supervisor in charge has remained positive and remained calm. The same applies in personal finance. Stay positive and don’t let negativity creep over you.
• Problems don’t go away, they just change. In my 20’s, I hated being an employee.  So, I started my own business and encountered the issue of trying to do too much with no help. In my 30’s I got help and now supervise employees and the challenges that come with it. In other words, just when you think you solved a problem, it changes to another. You just have to meet them all head on constructively.
• Money has no emotion, only a rate of return. ’nuff said.
• No one takes care of you but yourself. A lot of people want to be spoiled and pampered and feel entitled to it (and who doesn’t want to be) but if you base your happiness on what someone else can give you rather than yourself than you will never be happy. On a more practical level, every business deal that we contracted out to agents with no vested interest in the business blew up. As the ABCP debacle showed earlier this year, every decision made by someone else other than you is advancing someone else’s interest. If you are reading this blog hoping to take control over your financial life, the first decision you have to make is to say to yourself that you will control your own financial destiny and never forget that.

Sorry, lots of lessons. Lots of experience this year for me (a polite way of saying I messed up a lot). Anyone care to share any lessons?

This week is my last week of blogging for the year. I am taking the last two weeks off to, well, do nothing really. Sometimes getting couch ass is good for the soul. I wanted to spend the rest of the week as a year-end wrap-up beginning with the top 10 investing mistakes as so prominently displayed by the professionals all the way down to the average Mr. and Ms. investor.

1. The cure all to life and money lies in a magic bullet solution. At least Obama had the good sense of telling the nation that the recovery will be long. I don’t know why the media and the executives going to Congress hat in hand think that a bailout will solve everyone’s problems over-night. Even if all the governments in the world gave $5 trillion each to everyone, it won’t solve issues overnight.
2. Wall Street and Congress know how to manage money better than us. Hahahahahaha…
3. Trust other people with money- they’re professionals. A lot of poor souls who got caught up in the ABCP mess relied too heavily on their advisors. When the financial crisis hit, too many people opened up their statements to see that the advisors didn’t carry out proper asset allocation or made trades without authorization. Take control of your finances. No one cares about your money more than you.
4. A decline in net worth = a loss. Unless you sold money-losing stocks, you actually haven’t lost money. You are worth less than you once thought but unless you have some situation where you have to liquidate everything, its a paper loss at this point. And the decline of your home? Well, you buy a house to live in. Last time I checked, there wasn’t a lever on the side of your home that printed money.
5. The market is at the bottom/catch the falling knife. Guilty, guilty, guilty. I have bought on two different occasions this year where I thought we reached the bottom only to see the stock fall two or three more levels. As “amateur” investors, we are better to win the race to second than attempt to guess when the bottom has hit.
6. Head in the sand is the best approach. I am going to paraphrase the author Po Bronson who I once heard speak: if we showed our kids how to solve problems as opposed to shielding them from it, we would end up being better parents for it. Same thing with money. We will always have money issues of one kind or another. We have to learn to deal with it constructively.
7. The best product in the room wins. Did you notice that everything that cratered was some exotic financial instrument that, perhaps, 2 out of 100 people could explain? Simple wins the race.
8. The media is the best source of financial information. Bullocks. The media is feed stories by their sources who have an agenda which may not be the same as yours. Use your eyes and ears and to see what’s happening (…and read financial blogs…). An avid shopper could have told you years ago that the Gap had its day before the media ever picked up on it.
9. If in doubt, flee to cash. …which is ok if one didn’t liquidate all one’s position at a loss to get into cash…If you save money and put it in cash that’s find but if you panic and flee to cash from other positions then you’ve made the situation worse.
10. Its different this time. My Dad and I were watching the history channel one night and he turned to me and said: “Good channel but its like watching re-runs after a while. Every person in history seems to make the same mistake.” We have short memories and forget that this downturn is going to play itself in the same way as other downturns (although the scale may be different…). Remember the past since it is a blue-print for the future unless we change our behaviour.

As reported by Money Gardener, the power utility Fortis announced it increased its dividend 4% last week, proving that financial news is not all bad news recently. Of  equal significance, Fortis also announced that it is implementing a discount of 2% on the purchase of common shares issued from treasury on its dividend reinvestment plans (DRIP).

In other words, assume that Fortis was trading at $10.00/share on the day a dividend is payable (its not, I am just making the math simple). Under their DRIP, shareholders enrolled in a DRIP will received reinvested dividends as if the shares were trading at $9.80. It doesn’t sound like a lot but it adds up if you have a lot of shares and over time.

The discount pricing on the DRIP has not been very popular on dividend paying stocks lately. It is part of some DRIP’s and share subscription programs for income trusts. But with companies cash strapped, it may make a return for several reasons:

1. A discount may encourage more shareholders to elect for shares rather than cash easing the amount of cash needed to pay dividends in the short-term and, given that cash is king, anything that a company can do to improve the balance sheet will be explored.
2. Companies do charge administration fees for administrating DRIP’s (and frequent source of criticism in investing circles). Thus, it may be a small revenue earner for companies as well.

Fortis’ 2% discount is a bit on the cheap side. By comparison, TD offers a 5% discount on its DRIP program.

Please remember that most companies only offer discounts if the shares are issued from treasury and not purchased from the general market (some DRIP’s allows companies to buy shares on the open market for shareholders enrolled in DRIP’s). Some companies have substantial DRIP terms and conditions (see GE’s DRIP as an example of a well-worded and clear policy and a good introduction on how a DRIP is administered). Be sure to check the appropriate DRIP policies for details.

The one thing I am trying to determine (and will follow up on) is whether the discount is only available if you subscribe directly with the company or whether if it applies if you bought your share through a brokerage. Anyone have the quick and dirty answer?

As almost an epilogue on the closing of the age of financial excess, the largest proposed privatization in history is now officially off since BCE (aka Bell Canada) could not meet the solvency test (i.e. the company would not be solvent after the privatization given the newly incurred debt load created by the deal combined with the falling price of its assets) proving, in some instances, the pen, when wielded by the accountants, is indeed mightier than the sword. As with any large deal that craters, enter the phalanx of lawyers to point fingers and extract a pound of flesh.

Just some quick and dirty thoughts on this deal:

1. This deal was a farce on the entire notion of shareholder rights. An under-performing company feels pressure from shareholders to perform and, rather than become more customer-focused, offer better pricing and product lines and actually become a better business, the Board of BCE basically allowed the investment bankers, hedge funds, pension funds and institutional players to run rough-shod all over the business and enrich themselves on some crazed debt and fee fueled deal with a million moving parts.
2. There was a lot more press about break-fees and debt tests than actually, oh I don’t know, making BCE a better company; if you are not a customer of BCE, it is a terrible customer-service company and the root of its problems is not its earnings per share lag or it didn’t pay enough dividend. Really, the fundamental business issue is that it lost small cities of customers a year with crap customer service.
3. Yet, no one on Wall Street ever thought that would actually be the cure for BCE’s problems did they? An i-bank can’t earn fees telling BCE to actually care about their customers can they? Remember that Wall Street often cloaks making their fees and profits under “shareholder rights.” Getting in bed with hedge funds and i-banks to advocate that a company do something, anything, to pump up share prices is truly a deal with the devil for the retail investor.
4. Does BCE ever have to buy themselves out of this mess with their tried and true shareholders. Suspending a dividend on a widows and orphans dividend yield stock is not exactly the way to endear yourself with your loyal shareholders is it? Remember Wall Street is with you win or tie. But in down times? Its Main Street that carries a company. Somehow everyone forgot that in the last 5 years.
5. Why did we trust the Teachers’ Pension Fund to see this deal through successfully? They own a large stake the Toronto Maple Leafs-an appallingly bad hockey team- and have fiddled while Leaf Nation burns (I use to be a hockey fan; can’t stand the product anymore). They also have a pension shortfall in the billions.  Shouldn’t that tip us off that, like the Leafs, its all hype and no performance?
6. Is BCE actually a good buy now? Not sure, but its share price is worth less than its NAV and, if the company buys itself out of this mess with a generous dividend, maybe its worth a look.
7. Do Michael Sabia (the CEO who came up with this idea) and Robert Milton (the CEO of Air Canada) have drinks and share ideas on how to take a monopoly and screw it up?
8. Well, at least the lawyers have a lot of work in 2009 now. Maybe an old law school colleague or two could buy me dinner with all the fees they are about to make.
9. You realize the accounting firm that gave the solvency opinion that tanked the deal are also the auditors for many of the same banks who were going to lend out money? Conflict of interest anyone? Maybe its time to break up the accounting firms…
10. No post tomorrow. If you are a shareholder of BCE, lobby hard for your own privatization blues bailout- a nice juicy “we’re sorry” special dividend.

Enjoy the weekend.

Fortis Inc. (not to be confused with the merchant bank of the same name) is a publicly traded utility with gas and electricity plants across North America.  As with most utilities, its profits are predictable since the rates they can charge customers are mostly regulated and it sells a good which is a necessity of modern life. In short, Fortis should be a recession proof stock.

However, lost in all the hoop-la of the last several weeks, Fortis quietly raised over $300 million by way of a new common share issue to close on December 19 but initially announced December 2 which is troubling in certain senses. Primarily, two interesting facts immediately pop out:

• Debt is dead, long live equity. In its public release, Fortis stated that it is using $200 million of the raise to pay off a debt of a subsidiary maturing on December 1. This is the reverse of the last several years were debt raises were easy and used to pay out equity via share buy-backs (witness GE with its easy access to capital and an ambitious share buy-back program now scuttled). The supply of large and readily available debt is gone for now (to state the obvious).

• Welcome to the new reality of valuations. The purchase price of the Fortis issuance was $25.65 which was below the trading price of $27.28 on the day before the public release. This is a stark reserval of a the last several years where equity issues were above the market price.

The banks have been issuing equity almost as fast as the United States can print money to prop up their balance sheets but Fortis is not a financial institution and its equity raise is subject to different considerations than the banks. Thus, its equity raise may give an interesting peek into the markets for the short term such as:

1. Don`t look for great rebound in the stock prices. When blue-chip, dividend yield, recession proof stocks are issuing equity at below market prices, you know that the short-term outlook on stock prices is not very positive.
2. Whoever can retire debt quickest will be in better shape. Fortis has an interest coverage ratio of 1.73 (this is a ratio measuring earnings before interest and tax over interest expenses; or, it measures how easily a company can pay back debt). This is not a great ratio (anything over 2 is ideal. For example, Johnson and Johnson, a paradigm of prudent management, has an interest coverage of 38.7) but in tightening credit environments, whoever can buy the most wiggle room by settling debt will be in better shape on the inevitable rebound since lenders will actually begin lending again on normal lending practices (i.e. pre-housing bubble standards).
3. Welcome to the age of diluation. If we assume the only way to raise money is through an equity raise in the short-term, current shareholders will be diluated from current positions. Large share issuances also affect earnings per share negatively which pushes down share prices.
4. Good money still follows good deals. The Fortis share issuance is a bought deal (this means the investment banks bought the shares and will re-sell them to the public). A bought deal is a sign of confidence that the markets believe the company is a viable entity. It appears for now the markets have not completely given up hope. The good money still chases good deals. If nothing else, if you are a shareholder of companies who are doing equity raises which are bought deals, it should give you reassurance that you continue to own fundamentally desirable companies- just not at unreasonable valuations.

For full disclosure, I am a shareholder of Fortis.

My favourite columnist, Mom2KG, wrap up her year of blogging with a summary of what her family has learned about investing this year. We are also happy to announce that she is returning in 2009 to continue to share her story with us (I need a better brand for this column though. Thoughts?). Without further ado…

Twelve months of living and learning, on my own, from Mr. Thicken My Wallet himself, and from you. Thanks to all of you who read my trials and tribulations, offered support and posted thoughtful comments.

In a recent, old-fashioned, face-to-face with TMW, we decided I would keep posting in 2009, though perhaps expanding my purview into personal finance lawyers generally. Since I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing me whine about my husband’s ‘tude towards money (or, more accurately, my ways of spending it), this might be a welcome change. However, I’ll also keep you up-to-date on significant personal fiscal issues.

As a year-end wrap-up, here are the Top 5 Things I’ve Learned:

5. Personal Finance is not Easy

At the beginning of 2008, much of the personal finance “stuff” was low-hanging fruit, and seemed easy. The introductory books are written for anyone who can pass tenth grade, and they all seem to pick a mantra, and say it ten different ways. The mantras seem easy to implement but are hard to stick to in the long term. Things like “have a weekly meeting” and “keep track of your spending” sound doable, but are in fact hard to stick to. And, well, boring. My blog also focussed on a family’s journey, and it became very demoralizing for both my husband and I to have the same arguments every week, even as we made progress.

4. Personal Finance is not Hard

The low-hanging fruit noted above is a good 50-75% of what every person and family needs to do. Even implementing one or two good finance habits go a long way. How hard it is to read a blog or two a week? Or schedule quarterly meetings with your financial advisor? Or even save your receipts in one place? Not hard at all.

3. Personal Finance Yields Results

While my husband and I still have a long way to go on ever agreeing on a budget, we’ve seen significant returns on our 2008 plans. Perhaps most importantly, when the fall crisis hit, we were able to react quickly, diverting some investment income into mortgage prepayments. We have reduced our amortization period even further, and are now on track to pay the whole thing off before the term is up.

2. Personal Finance is Personal

I won’t take credit for this one. Many readers drummed this into me with comments over 2008. My personal finance advisor, even on his best days, can never care as much for my retirement plans as I do. So it’s up to us to review his work, research the markets and the products, and take charge of our portfolio.

1. Personal Finance is Long-Term

My husband dreams of living in poverty (yes, one last dig) for the next several years so we can retire super-early. Not my style, but we’re compromising. No matter how we slice it, we have a finite income and a finite amount of time to prepare for our future. Even if we accumulate some magic amount of money, we’ll still have to manage it appropriately in retirement. We are coming to the conclusion that this is not short-term pain for long-term gain. It’s a completely different animal, requiring constant, though not intense, care and attention, forever.

With that, happy holidays and happy New Year! Best wishes.

My Dad just recently retired and, with that, he’s educating himself on personal finance as his new hobby. My Dad has been very good on reading up on things, asking me for back-issues of Moneysense magazine, picking people’s brains etc.

I most likely got my love of bank stocks from my Dad; his advice to me as a teenager was that governments do not let big banks fail no matter how badly they have been run so invest in a bank and hold on to them. Oh how true he was on the bailout account! You can well imagine then how torn we are between buying banks on sale or staying away from them altogether.

One thing to know about my Dad though is that he is a doer. He can’t sit still. He always has to be doing something. The worse thing you can tell my Dad is that a Saturday afternoon should be spent lounging lazily at home. He’ll find something to do.This same sense of being a doer translates to his personal finances.

So we have the exact same conversation every week for 6 months now:

Dad: “What do you think I should invest in?”

Son: “Nothing. Just wait.”

Dad: “Really?”

Son: “Yes, no one has a clue on what’s going on. Just wait.”

My Dad thinks I am being too patient (I am over 20% in cash right now) and that I am going to wait too long and miss a good opportunity. Me? I honestly have no clue what is happening (does anyone?) so I just sit and wait until there is some consistent pattern to the market. It is easy to say the market is going down but when will we reach the bottom? You have to remember that the unemployment rate in 1991 hit 11% in parts of the country; it sits at 6.3% right now so is this 1991 or 2001 or the 1970’s?

In the past, I would also have cash sitting in my account for “too long” and I would just buy something because I was scratching an investment itch. I don’t think I have ever made money scratching the itch so I am also stun by past experiences. I would rather win the race to 2nd.

The morale of the story is that sometimes action for action’s sake may do more harm than good and sometimes you just to have wait it out.

——————————————–

The flip side of this story is people putting their heads in the sand. The economy inevitably comes up at holiday events (which is why none of them I have attend have been dry events….) and I have heard a lot of “I don’t open my portfolio statement anymore. Its too depressing…” I find this behavior negligent and may explain why we make such easy marks for the investment industry.

My portfolio is taking the usual 20% plus beating that everyone else’s is but how do you know where you are going if you don’t know where you are? I dislike opening my statements as much as the next person: my typical routine is to open them, assume the fetal position for 5 minutes and then figure out what happened and to reaffirm to myself that the plan is good even if the short-term timing is not.

I equate personal finance to parenting. Your portfolio is your child (in many respects true because your children will be inherenting it from you). You just don’t throw money at every problem your child has and think that’s all that is required. You have to spend time and attention to it- whether your child is good or bad. You also don’t blame the teachers if Johnny is misbehaving or not learning properly. At the end of the day, Johnny is your kid. You have a responsibility to spend the time to figure out the issues and fix them (which sometimes means replacing the teacher too).

Not opening your statements is equivalent of a parent sending their kids to school, completely abdicating their parenting to the teachers, not looking at your kid’s report cards for years on end and then wondering why your kid is 18 in jail and a drug addict and having the gall to blame the educational system and society. If everytime a parent walked away if their child misbehaved, we would all be orphans wouldn’t we?

Yes, these are very difficult times but the ones who will get through it ok are the ones who take responsibility for their lives and work through the issues. The ones who sit by passively, hoping the world will spoil and pamper them via some mythical magical bullet bailout, will end up on short-end because they are allowing others to dictate their lives for them.

In many ways, this is the best time to learn about pesonal finance since failure is the mother of all teachers.

In May, I mused that the price of oil was too high. With the price of a barrel of oil just below $47 USD, is the price of oil now too low? The theories of why oil has fallen are pretty clear: the economy is slowing down and this is resulting in lower demand. But what is also happening is that a lot of large institutions have had to unwind positions and, perhaps, driving down prices more than they should.

However, there has been a lot of rumbling from OPEC, a cartel of 12 oil-producing countries which produces approximately 35% of the world’s oil, that the “right” price of oil should be $75 a barrel. If OPEC really wants to drive prices up again, it probably could be make a concerted effort to limit supply in 2009.

Russia, one of the world’s largest oil producer and not a part of OPEC, has already signaled that it wants to co-operate closer with OPEC but has stopped short of agreeing to a coordinated supply cut (for now). This does not bode well at all does it?

One of the other over-looking facets of this downturn is that the “green movement” has taken a back-seat to other economic concerns. It seems that the pursuit of alternative energy sources has slowed considerably. One supposes that everyone will get a bail-out but Mother Nature. Obviously, as alternatives to conventional fuel slows down, eventually the price of oil will rebound.

Will it happen over-night? Probably not but the same factors that existed before the credit crisis which drove the price of oil up (perhaps unjustifiably high) still exist (growing developing world, lack of alternatives, United States at war) and there are, unfortunately, too many interests working against a low price of oil.  Could we see a price creep back to somewhere between May’s prices and today’s prices?

I have had a series of employees that do the same thing that annoys me. When I ask to see them to give them instructions, they come to my office without anything to write on. It frustrates me to no end since what ends up happening is that they forget half of what I ask them to do (I am fast-talker) and they have to sheepishly come in to my office saying “what was the last thing you asked me to do again?”

I mentioned this particular frustration to my esteemed columnist, Mom2KG, and her husband last weekend and, lo and behold, it happens to them too! I hate to generalize but the three of us agreed this tended to happen more to younger workers. My pet theory is that as that as you get older you tend to forget things so you always write things down. When you are younger, you have a better memory (its actually not better, its just not cluttered with a million different things) so you take for granted that you will remember everything. I have actually bought employees notebooks and they never bring them to meetings! Argh….

Now, its one thing to write it down. Its another to ask if you don’t understand it. This is something else we talked about too. ASK QUESTIONS WHEN YOU ARE GETTING INSTRUCTIONS IF YOU DON’T KNOW. Its better to be ignorant at the instruction taking stage then after you finished the assignment and its inaccurate because the instructions were interpretted incorrectly.

Ideally, if you want to give your boss confidence, please do the following:

1. Come prepared to the meeting. Bring something to write on. I actually have color coded notebooks. The black notebook are client notes, the brown notebook are management meetings etc. Loose pieces of paper make you appear disorganized (at least to me).
2. Ask your boss to slow down if you are taking down instructions. We know the file well so we tend to skip steps (my biggest mistake. I always find myself saying- “I better back up…” since I am so far ahead of myself. Sorry employees!)
3. Ask for a due date. I addressed this tip in a prior post. Ask your boss what type of priority to put on the assignment.
4. Repeat the instructions back at the end of the meeting. In other words, say: “If I understand you correctly, you want me to do the following…” There will be no misunderstanding on what you have to do if you repeat it back in your own words and the boss agrees with you (or, more cynically, you can cover your butt because your boss vetted your assignment).

Anyone care to share pet peeves of employees?