5 ways to Better Personal Finance Management

28 05 2008

Submitted by: Janet Schlarbaum

Author: Joseph Then

Personal Financial Management is not easy and you have to learn what it means to better manage your finance.

Here are 5 tips to better Personal Finance Management:

Teaching children about money management

Do you find your children often want things that are expensive and out of your range for any budget? If you find that you don’t have the money to buy your children everything they want, you need to teach your children a little more about money. Children should be given an allowance, but only for the chores and things, they help you do around the house. Simple things like folding the clothes, sweeping the floor, doing the dishes and feeding the pets. As your child earns money, and receives money for their birthday or special occasions, they can then buy their own things they want. As they realize how long it takes to save that money they will treat it better, and they will appreciate it more. Money management can start at a young age, and children will learn easily, taking their habits to their older years.

Money management and your home

Do you need to save money in the home? Managing your money is all about saving money, finding more money to do things you want, and to create savings accounts for rainy days. If you need to save a little more money and to spend less on household things, you can start with your utilities. Shut off the lights when you are not using them, and shut down that computer when you are not working on it. This will lower your bill a little. Look at the lights you are using in the house, if you have forty or sixty watt bulbs you are using less energy than seventy five and one hundred watt bulbs in all the lamps in your home. Cut costs by starting with the electric bill. Manage your budget; manage your money by adding more to your monthly household budget.

Saving for a rainy day

The basic thoughts behind any type of savings plan is that you should have at least three months savings in the bank, or at least have access to three month of your pay in case of major disaster or problems in the home. Right now, if you were unable to get to work for three months, how would you survive? Prepare for the future and start now. Your personal finances demand that you prepare to protect yourself. You can start by putting just ten dollars a week in a savings account. If you find this is easy, up that to twenty dollars per week. If you have the money taken out before you get your paycheck, you won’t even miss the money. When you are putting, at least $200 a month away you are preparing yourself for a great savings and in the long run, you will find it easier and easier. Yes, it is going to be difficult to start, but after a few weeks, you will adjust and your household budget will as well.

Spend less on entertainment

Are you finding it difficult to pay your bills on time all the time? If you are not paying your bills, your heat, your credit cards, and your utilities on time, you are putting yourself at risk for bad credit, and a lower credit rating. To keep your personal finances on track you should sit down and write out a list of all the bills you have every month. Next, you are going to write down everything that you spend other money on. If you are not able to pay all the bills every month, you need to find where you can cut back on money spent. Generally, this is going to be in gifts, gas, going out to the bar, to the movies, renting movies, your television channels, the subscriptions for your cell phone, and the long distance bills you pay for your landline. Review your budgets, cut back on expenses so you can afford your bills, and when they are paid off, you can get back out there, and have a bit of fun!

Personal money management and your future

Your personal life involves more than the job you are working at, but also the welfare of your family. If you were unable to work, or if you died, how would your family continue on, paying the bills and getting groceries? If you don’t have an answer, you should look to personal lines of insurance. Insurance policies are a form of money management that will protect your family in case of emergencies or in case of death. Many families find that disability insurance comes in very handy when someone breaks their legs, or perhaps needs an operation and can’t get back to work for a few months. Insurance in the case of an accident, for a disability or in case of death is going to protect your family and everyone’s financial future.



Portfolio Career

10 02 2008

Article Recommended By: Janet Schlarbaum

Author: Robin Ogden

A new meaning for “career”?

Crystal ball or not, one thing is for sure – the definition of career is taking on a whole new meaning. Although there are many differences between our generations there is one common thread that brings us together. When it comes to employment, we all compete at the same watering hole called the job market. We all know that most employers are now less interested in “long-term employees” who show up everyday from 9 to 5 and want to hang around for ten for fifteen years, taking the lateral climb. In fact, these days if you’re in the same job for too long you can be viewed as a slacker.

Wondering what’s so different about the world of working today?

Over the past few years employer needs have changed. In order to compete and succeed in today’s global economy employers are now putting a higher value on your ability to be more creative, imaginative and “think differently”, as well as your ability to adapt as needed and/or morph to market conditions, much like Proteus, the Greek Sea Goddess who could change at will, we are now seeing the protean model career.

Sure, employers are still using words like “loyalty”, “generosity”, and “stability”, as a draw, but the forward thinking individual will know that these are merely words and in the end, the company’s bottom line dictates their employment actions. Employers are using globalization to their advantage, as well they should be, and its time for employees to use a form of this in their own career – a “portfolio” career approach.

Why should you take advantage of a “portfolio” career approach?

Well, there are plenty of reasons. For one thing nothing is carved in stone any longer with regard to your future employment with any one particular employer. The forces of supply and demand are strong when it comes to whether you have a job… or not. Sure, the employer “feels” terrible when they need to implement job eliminations, restructuring, layoffs, etc., etc. But, that doesn’t stop them from taking necessary survival steps. Where does that leave you? Knocking on doors – that’s where.

Many of you are ready to get off “auto-pilot” when it comes to your life, as well as your career, and start doing the necessary planning that will afford you to live with security – the security you can provide for yourself through your knowledge and skills. Giving you the ability to differentiate yourself from the pack. To live with joy – the joy you can provide for yourself by knowing where you are strong and what you have to offer in the career market. To find happiness – the happiness you know you deserve and can give yourself through careful career planning and support.

How do you grab onto to a fresh new approach while maintaining an alignment between your needs and the employer’s needs?

Change is constant and rapid. The portfolio approach to your career is the future. You must keep updating and adding to your skills and knowledge and matching your portfolio to the particular employer and their needs at any give time. Establishing and selling yourself in a portfolio manner will enable you to begin to lead the pack and keep you in the forefront of managing your career.



Mutual Fund As Your Alternative Investment Portfolio

10 02 2008

Author: Cornie Herring

People always say that investment is a money game with the playing rule of “high risk with high return and low risk with low risk”. You may want to invest in an investment portfolio that is able to give a good return and stock market is always the best choice in term of high return. But you aware that investment in the stock market will cause you to lose all your money as well, because the game rule said “high risk is high return and low risk comes with low return”. Hence, stock game might not suit your risk profile; you may want to look for an alternative that can give comparatively good reward but with much lower risk than stock. If you are categorized in this group, then mutual fund can be your game.

Mutual Fund Is A Risk Sharing Game

A mutual fund is simply a financial medium that allow a group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment objective. The pooled money will manage by a fund manager. The fund manager is a person who is widely expert in stock and bond markets. He/she is responsible to invest the pooled money into specific securities, usually stocks and bonds. When you are buying shares of mutual fund, you will become one of the fund’s shareholders. All the gains and losses will be shared among the fund’s shareholders. Hence, mutual fund is a risk sharing game.

Compare to stocks and bonds, mutual funds are one of the cost effective and an easy playing game. You do not need to really expert in stock and bond market because the fund manager will take care of it; and you do not need to crack your head to figure out which stocks or bonds to buy, because you have the expert, the fund manager to make the decision for you.

You do not need a lot of money to get your start the game; you decide the amount of money you plan to invest into the mutual fund. Some mutual funds may even let you start with just $100. The best part is the cost effectiveness. By pooling money together in a mutual fund, investors can purchase stocks or bonds with much lower trading cost. The biggest advantage of mutual funds as compare to stocks or bonds is “diversification”.

Diversification Will Lower The Risk

Investment experts always advise that if you want to invest you money, “Don’t put all your eggs into the same basket; else if the basket fall, all you eggs will break”, some will happen on your money, if you invest in one stock, if the stock perform negative, you loss all you money. Diversify your investment to spread out your money into many different types of investments. When one investment is down, another might perform in up trend.

Hence, with the diversification of your investment, you will reduce your risk tremendously.

You can diversify your investment by purchasing different kinds of stocks and bonds instead of one. But it may take weeks to buy all these investments. In contrary, you can get these done by purchasing a few mutual funds and mutual funds automatically diversify your investment across many stocks and bonds.






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