It is easy to talk to people about your products, but it can be challenging to get them to listen. Most consumers are bombarded every day by messages from companies that are trying to sell them something. As a result, there are many efforts to make a sale that fall on disinterested ears. How can you make someone want to listen up? You have to engage them. There is not one way to engage customers. The dynamic between a business and its customers varies from one business to the next. In many cases, companies rely on extensive market research to...
What a great success the Roth IRA Movement was. In a few days we are going to enter National Financial Literacy Month, what a great month to celebrate it, ohhhh the coincidence it also happens to be my birthday in April too! National Financial Literacy Month came about in 2004 when the Senate passed Resolution 316 which officially recognized April as my birthday National Financial Literacy Month. Originally started as youth financial literacy, it was realized that we all need to be well versed money and personal finance. For my Canadian friends sorry we will have to wait until November...
Just as it takes many small snowflakes to create a snowball, it takes many pennies to pay off thousands of pounds in debt. Snowballing debt is a debt reduction plan where you commit to paying a certain amount every month until you are debt-free. You don’t reduce your monthly payments as your debt decreases. This way those monthly payments take on a snowball effect. As your balance decreases so does your monthly interest charges. Your monthly payment then increasingly goes towards your principal balances. Much like a snowball that gets bigger and picks up momentum as it rolls downhill, your...
Shhhhhhhh…..can you hear that….that’s right baby it’s the Roth IRA Movement. So here is how the movement got started; Jeff Rose went to speak at his alma mater and polled the soon-to-be graduating seniors, and not a single one of them raised their hand when he asked if they heard of the Roth IRA. Here we are today a group of about 150 bloggers preaching to the nation and hoping they listen. For my friends following along on twitter it’s: #RothIRAMovement In case you were one of the ones polled, here is what a Roth IRA is: The Roth IRA...
For all of you that missed the Friday edition, we were taking part of the Yakezie blog swap. Basically what takes place is that we sign up for the blog swap and we are partnered with a fellow blogger. We post an article about a particular topic, which this time the topic was the best investment advice I ever received. I traded posts with my buddy over at Short Road to Retirement. Be sure to stop over there and check out his site and also to check out my article! I don’t know if you have been following along in...
The world has changed. And so has the way of using your credit card. Whatever you do, your credit card score is the thing that is first checked. Your borrowing history is analyzed and what not. A bad credit score is a provider of much stress, tension and despair, especially for shoppers. But like all things good and bad, the reign of a bad credit will end. And there are ways you can axe it and start depending on your credit card again. • Without knowing what aspects of your credit card you need to fix, you cannot improve your...
The rule of thumb is that bonds are for retirees. I am 35 years old and I love bonds. When I was really young, I remember receiving savings bonds for my birthday. I had no idea what they were at the time. I was told by my father that they were going to be worth “a lot” of money some day. Every year I would get these pieces of paper that were going to be worth “the number listed at the top left corner”. Fast forward to the 90’s and the Internet boom. The Internet boom created a huge jump...
Getting all the information together for a mortgage can be gruelling, especially when a mortgage lender tells you that their lending institution is unable to approve your property loan. This can leave you devastated and filled with disappointment. It’s natural to wonder why you were denied a loan. Lending institutions have stricter standards in place today making it difficult for consumers to obtain a mortgage. It’s important to do your research and educate yourself about how the lending process works so that you can look your best to prospective lenders. Here are five examples of why a bank may be...
Almost all of us start saving money when we start earning so that we can accumulate a handsome amount and use it to live our post retirement life in a lavish manner. If you are a government worker, you will have an automated monthly pension. But, if you do not want to be all idle in your retirement years then you can generate income in a way which is not hectic, is enjoyable and can complement your savings. As a freelancer, you have a treasure chest full of opportunities. We’ll look at six of those. 1. Be a Freelance Consultant...
Sure we would all choose take it today, but there is a finance theory behind why you may want to take it today. Ever heard of the expression a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow but less than a dollar yesterday. Well if not, now you have today we look at the time value of money. What the time value of money calculation and the principle means is that a dollar today is not equivalent in value to a dollar tomorrow or a dollar yesterday. It is a very simple principle to understand, but can have big...
Oh no here come the financial concepts, time to clear the cob webs we are going to talk about derivatives. Want to sound smart at work today, drop the word derivative in some random sentences and wait for the looks you get. This is how my wife fell in love with me. Except this was back in college and I was a Chemistry major at the time. I started dropping some names of the elements off the periodic table and the rest is history. What is a derivative? What does the word mean, let’s take the root, derive. Derive means...
As you might have heard, there are numerous advocates these days of the “debt snowball” method. This method entails paying of your various debts in order from smallest from largest. Here’s how it works: when you sit down to pay your bills, you lay out all your obligations from smallest to largest. Then, you pay the minimum balances on the larger debts while contributing as much as you can to the smallest balances. Once the smallest ones have been repaid in full you move on to the larger ones, in the process “snowballing” your debt by gradually tackling more substantial...
Student loans can bug you for a long time. You would take a student loan for getting an admission into a top university or a business school. But these educational institutions are expensive and paying off your loan debt can be a headache. And it so happens that after you complete your course and start working you wouldn’t be in a position to clear the loan debt. This is when more pressure is piled upon by the loan authorities. But there are ways of getting rid of your student loan. 1. Paying the loan amount on time is the simplest...
For as long as I can remember it has always been 1. McDonald’s 2. Burger King and 3. Wendy’s. Well that is not the case any longer as it has just been announced that Burger King was surpassed in US sales volume by Wendy’s. This change up brings makes me reminisce of those days back in college and that Nelly song “Number One.” You know you remember Nelly, he sung Country Grammar! Google it if you forgot who, but make sure you come back to finish up this article. As I digress….. Hey hey hey hey hey hey – now...
Before investing in the stock market you need to be well versed with two aspects of the market; how it works and how you can make it work for you. Understanding the stock market is necessary. Before you invest in any company, you must look at its current success and speculate its future growth and success. One must learn how to forecast profitable stock options and invest in them. In order to have a fool proof strategy, information about stock option trading is necessary. There is a lot that you can do with the stock options at your disposal. It...
While not directly related to personal finance, it can have big implications on your job search should you burn the bridges behind you. Let’s face it if you are looking for work and there are burnt bridges out there it can make it a little more difficult and that my friend will affect your finances…badabing! Let me share with you a little story of something that happened at work this past week. Jerry was a happy employee of my company (1),his boss left the company to go work elsewhere. His boss contacts Jerry and recruits him to work there with...
Credit ratings are probably the most misunderstood of all financial products (excluding, perhaps, the recent debacle with PPI). Most people assume that there’s some sort of score next to your name somewhere out there in the world of financial institutions, but it’s not strictly true. There are ways of finding out your credit rating, but it’s not all you need to consider when applying to borrow money. That said your credit rating probably is the most important factor to whether you get a loan, or a mortgage, or a credit card approved, which prompts the immediate question: But how do...
Well here it is the Five For Friday: March Madness Edition. This week we have had an explosion with traffic. Out of left field we must be getting noticed. Thank you and I appreciate you stopping by, hopefully I haven’t bored you too much that you come again or subscribe. Now to take a look at the sites that caught my eye this week: I wrote an article about your emergency fund the other week, but here another blogger, Frugal Portland, poses the question to the world. Great we have an emergency fund, now when can we use it? Anthony Thompson over...
An Entrepreneur – we all have associated this word with ourselves if we try to create our own path to success. But what defines an Entrepreneur? And what is the meaning of ‘definition?’ A definition is given by bringing together the qualities of that particular word. In the case of an entrepreneur, there are unique qualities which are brought together and form the word. If you lack any of these qualities, then you dissolve the word Entrepreneur and over time you are tagged as a wantrepreneur – someone who wanted or wants to be an Entrepreneur but never can or...
Childhood….Ahhh those were the days of no responsibility where my only recollection of money was that my parents had it and I needed it to buy candy or that new toy. But what I do remember as a youth was that my parents subscribed to Encyclopedia Britannica. I asked my mom a while back how they ended up with the encyclopedias and she gave me the spiel where a salesman came door to door saying something about how it was going to be the way of the future. They had just had me as their first child and they didn’t...
If four years of unfulfilled promises, inactive initiatives and the NDAA proposal weren’t enough, Mr. Barack Obama, our American Republic’s proudly chosen President/Orator has brought in more controversy this year. And yet he is confident enough of winning the coming elections and be re-elected as President. Well, if the American public hasn’t learned anything from the Bush Administration, he surely will. An estimated 45 million viewers in America were expected to tune into President Obama’s budget proposal for the year 2013. And this included the buzzing controversy that is around, he has proposed an inclusion of a new tax law,...
Now that I have your attention, you are probably scratching your head wondering why that would be on a personal finance website. Shame on you for thinking that!! What would your mother say? The word is in the news all over the world now. That magical word is BUDGET. The congressional budget, state budget, city budget, your personal budget, budget for that trip, some websites use that as part of their web address…this budget that budget… What in the world does the word budget even mean? According to my good friends over at Merriam Webster here are the origins of budget: Middle...
The bulk of us that read and blog have regular full time jobs. Many of us do this for fun or as a side hustle trying to make some passive income. I have been an avid reader for a few years and have seen some interesting side hustles over at Budgets Are Sexy side hustle series. This one that I am about to tell you about takes the cake. A New York marketing firm, Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s Labs (BBH), created a stir at the South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival (SXSW) recently. The festival held in Austin, Texas is...
Business is not a one man show. Business is exchange of commodities for money. Business is vast and has a lot of opportunities. And for turning these opportunities into profits, one need to find a place that will be most useful to the business, from transport to customer inflow. The mistake new businesses usually commit is that they establish their businesses in locations which are not suitable for their kind of business. Selecting a land which does not provide proper water, electricity, and transport facilities, which is surrounded by a public which does not appreciate that particular type of business,...
I don’t know where this one came from. I was sitting there yesterday thinking (not thinking in the bathroom) and I started rattling off ways to save some money in the bathroom. These ideas are not going to require any major design changes to your bathroom. Sure you look at the picture above and think where can I possibly save any money. The bathroom is probably one of the most frequented locations in the house and these simple changes can add up over the year. Water Saver – add a water saving showerhead to your shower and this can cut up...
