Reed Financial Group

Many people are struggling under the burden of debt and are having problems bringing order to their finances. Arguments between spouses increase, as do stress levels. Often, they may feel they are on a treadmill, barely maintaining their current positions but making no progress at all.

If this sounds familiar to you, you might find it interesting that there is a way to apply common sense to your situation and bring both your debt and your personal finances under control. It isn’t an instantaneous fix and it will not be totally pain free, but it will work where other personal finance plans fail. It also isn’t some new idea (although many may find the concept somewhat novel) but a return to how things were done for centuries. Simply put, it is the idea of not spending more than you earn.

You may not like the idea of living within your means, but that may be because you do not truly understand how it relates to personal finance. It is not eschewing all debt, nor does it mean giving up everything you love. It does not mean you must wear rags, make soup out of catsup, or never taste cappuccino again. What it does mean is that you take control of your personal finances and debt.

The first thing you need to do to take control of your personal finances is to establish a workable budget. List all of your normal expenses and how much you spend monthly on them. If you are like most people when they first tackle their personal finances, there are going to be some things you do not know. It is not uncommon for many people to have no clue how much groceries cost each month, for example, or how much is spent on clothing. It may be necessary for you to track your expenses for a few weeks to get a good handle on your personal finances. In the meantime, start with fixed costs, such as your mortgage or car payments, and include your best estimate for flexible expenses. You can always adjust these next month.

Include a line item in your budget for savings, something that is often neglected in money plans. Set some target percentage to save, since even 3% of your income is better than nothing. Over a period of time, gradually increase the percent going into savings until it reaches at least 10%. Savings accounts, when reserved for true emergencies, are an important part of personal finance security. They mean you do not need to pull out a charge card if the hot water heater breaks or your car needs a repair. This in turn means that you are not increasing your debt load.

To examine how you regard personal finance and debt, consider the following scenario. Your net monthly income is $3,000. Your total payments are $2,500. If you make a credit card purchase of $4,000 that requires a monthly minimum payment of $400, you still have $100 before you exceed your income. A lot of people will say that is a true statement. It is not, because you actually went $1,000 over your income and $1,500 over what you had available to spend that month. There will be times when you have no choice but to charge something. Just keep in mind that in personal finance, it is the debt, not the payment that determines the health of your financial situation.

Enlist the support of all family members if you need to bring your personal finances or debt load under control. Each individual needs to consider what is most important-a college education or designer jeans? Keeping your home after retirement or going out for a steak dinner every week? With just a little cooperation, you can make drastic improvements to your personal finances and reduce your debts substantially.

By: Jason Rodriguez

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With the increasing popularity of the internet, more and more industries are seeking ways to utilize this popular medium in an effort to keep up with the changing technological preferences of their customers. These days you can do just about anything online from grocery shopping to making a free phone call to a friend in Tokyo through your PC. The possibilities of the internet are seemingly endless and the banking industry has decided that it will not be left behind. While most people have at least heard of online banking, the majority of them have probably not tried it yet. Maybe it’s because we find more comfort in working with real people and real paper when it comes to money matters rather than performing transactions in the seemingly impersonal universe of the World Wide Web. Whatever the case may be, there are both advantages and disadvantages to online banking. This article will outline these advantages and disadvantages so you can either feel justified in your fears or see online banking as a safe way to quickly and efficiently manage your finances.

Let’s begin with the advantages of online banking.

First, online banking is convenient. It allows you to perform transactions, pay bills and check balances 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The bank virtually never closes because it is as accessible as your PC or laptop computer. No matter where you are in the country or in the world, you can visit your online bank and handle money matters. You can even schedule to pay several payees ahead of time rather than keeping up with paper bills or trying to remember when to visit a payee’s web site to make an online payment. Your bank will automatically send the payments on your behalf in the amounts and on the dates you specify.

Second, online banking is fast, efficient and effective. Through the internet, transactions are typically performed and executed at a faster rate than ATM’s. In addition, online banks give you the ability to handle several bank accounts (checking, savings, CDs, IRAs, etc.) from one site. The majority of banking sites are also compatible with programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money, so as to allow for more effective management of assets.

Just as with anything else, there are disadvantages to online banking.

The main issue for most people is that of trust. They may wonder if their transaction went through successfully or if they clicked on the correct button. The best way to overcome this uneasiness is to make a habit of printing the transaction receipt. Keep this receipt until your bank statement or online account view confirms that you have successfully executed the transaction.

Online banking sites can also take a while to start up and can be difficult to learn at first. Some banks require customers to provide some form of photo identification in addition to signing a form at one of their branches. Spouses may also have to sign a power of attorney if you both plan to access and handle your accounts together online. In addition to all of this, it may take a while to learn how to use your banking site. Most if not all banks will offer an online banking tutorial. Some even offer live customer support for online banking via chat, email, or phone.

Clearly, online banking has both advantages and disadvantages. It simplifies life for some people and for them it is frankly a better way to bank. For others it may be a little more complex and downright intimidating. In light of these two perceptions, more and more banks are offering online banking as a viable option for their customers.

By: Michael Russell

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“Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.” Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) The Social Contract, French political philosopher.

There is no true freedom without financial freedom. There is no financial freedom without financial literacy, financial understanding. We need to be financial literate to be able to gain and keep wealth. Mike Murdock, author, minister, public speaker says, “People who have what you don’t have, they know what you don’t know.”

Little do we understand that we are a slave to the one we are indebted to, be it mortgage, car loan or personal loan…and as long as our main source of income is active income, we are in essence bound (enslaved) to the one we serve (where we exchange our time (and skills) for income).

Financial illiteracy has led many to ruin their business, company and or personal life. Many financial decisions are taken based on assumptions on one’s understanding on what income (active and passive income) and expenditure, asset and liability, good and bad debts, opportunity cost and cost of opportunity are and the impact they have in one’s personal finance.

Financial illiteracy is the number one reason why most people would skip paying their loan and not be too concerned about it. We lack the understanding of how taking a loan, using credit card, moving too frequently, electoral roll affects the rate that we are charged when we take loan, credit card, mortgage. Financial illiterate person would skip a loan payment of £5, not knowing that eventually this will cost him dearly on other future financial deals.

What we need to understand is we live in a highly organized world, every person has a record (held somewhere electronically) of who he or she is, the financial decisions that one (including those that one is financially tied to) has taken in the past and the consequences thereof. This is what is known as credit record, credit score or credit worthiness.

Unfortunately, most of us do not know how we contribute either positively or negatively towards our credit record and how it affects us daily. This is due to lack of financial understanding otherwise known as financial literacy. We certainly know how to count numbers, but do we really know what counts?

By: Timothy Kyara

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The internet is an incredibly vast space full of information and opportunity. We’ve all heard the stories back in the dot com boom and of the overnight millionaires, but what about these days? What can you do to make money being online and get a living income going from the comfort of your home? Is it still even possible? A lot of people are hoping so, but just aren’t quite sure. Even so, how would you get started? Read on to find out…

The most common way people are making a living income online these days is with affiliate marketing. What this involves is simply becoming an affiliate of a vendor who sells digital products (or physical products in some cases) and promoting what they sell for a commission. Some products can earn you $500 a sale while others might only earn you $5 per sale, there is something for literally everyone out there. What it all boils down to though is sending traffic to these places through your specific affiliate link and making sales-that’s it.

The thing most people have trouble with is generating traffic and sending it through their affiliate links to make money. How do people do it? If you want to make money being online, using an online blog is a great way to achieve this. You can even set up blogs for free to send traffic to. Blogs are great because they are simple to set up and very user friendly in most cases. You can blog about the product you’re promoting and send traffic through your affiliate link, generating a commission every time you make a sale. How cool is that?

So the answer is yes. You can make money being online and earn a living income. There’s just a small learning curve and you can get started even if you have no product to sell or experience selling, it’s all very simple.

By: Craig Dawber

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